Fic (PoT) - Things About Being in Love
Title: Things About Being in Love
Rating: R
Pairing: Momoshiro/Ryoma, Momoshiro/Kaidoh, implied Tezuka/Ryoma
Word Count: 4,827
Warnings: Angst
Summary: Momoshiro is in love with Ryoma. Kaidoh wants him to stop being an idiot.
Notes: Written in 2007. Thanks to cmere for the beta.
There are things about being in love with your best friend that are okay. Like the fact that you get to spend more time with him than anyone, or the way he looks at you differently than he looks at other people, even when you’re doing something incredibly stupid, even when you’re in the middle of a fight. Then there are the things that aren’t so okay. Always being the first one there when he needs to lash out. Never having the nerve to ask for an apology, even when you really need one. Watching him fall in love with somebody else.
It’s not like it’s a surprise that Ryoma’s in love with Tezuka. It’s been there since day one, really, and every day since you’ve watched it get worse, but you’ve always been good at denial, especially when it comes to love, and with Ryoma really it’s a simple matter of self-preservation. It takes Fuji finding you behind the clubhouse hunched over the sinks, washing your face to cover up the fact that you’ve been crying, to really get you to first acknowledge it. He rests a hand on your back, and you’re just on the verge of putting on your biggest grin and asking What’s up, Fuji-senpai, how about going out for some ice cream, when he leans over and says next to your ear, “Maybe you should try setting your sights somewhere else.”
He says it in his nicest voice and then smiles his nicest smile, the genuinely nice one with nothing scary behind it, and you open your mouth to ask him what he means but then close it again because you know you’re probably not fooling anyone, least of all Fuji.
“Yeah,” you finally say, because it’s the only thing you can choke out, and Fuji smiles again, maybe a little bit sad, and then he turns and walks away before you can begin to feel embarrassed.
A few hours later, when you’re sitting at your desk staring at a math worksheet that you haven’t absorbed a word or number of in over an hour, it occurs to you to wonder if Fuji’s advice was directed at you alone. In the end, you know it’s really none of your business.
~
On the day you graduate from middle school, you try not to feel disappointed that Ryoma hasn’t flown to Japan just to be there. You pretend that after the ceremony, when you step down from the platform you were crammed onto with your peers and instantly pull your cell phone out of your pocket and check it for messages, you’re looking for a congratulations from your grandma or an uncle, not some selfish little brat of an ex-teammate in America. You stay up late at a party hosted by some classmate you don’t really like, drinking something that tastes like throw-up until you feel dizzy and light-headed, and when you glance at the clock on the microwave and realize it’s two a.m., you pretend the ache in your gut is the result of school nostalgia, or at worst just alcohol poisoning. When you get sick a few hours later, heaving into a strange toilet bowl until your stomach is empty and your throat burning and raw, and the classmate you don’t really like kicks you out without so much as a glass of water, you can’t help but think it really didn’t have anything to do with alcohol at all.
Kaidoh calls and wakes you up, and while it’s technically three in the afternoon you have no reservations about yelling at him for interrupting your sleep. He calls you an idiot but you agree to meet up with him at the street courts anyway, because tennis is the only thing that always makes you feel better no matter what, and between your head and your stomach and your throat and something tight in your chest that’s been aching and growing progressively bigger and bigger for more than a year now, you could use some tennis.
“You look like shit,” Kaidoh says when you arrive at the courts, and you set your bag down and are just about to shoot back that he always looks like shit when you notice he doesn’t have a bag or a racket. He’s not even wearing tennis shoes.
“What the hell,” you say, because you know he’ll know what you mean.
“We play too much tennis,” Kaidoh says with a roll of his eyes, and you would punch him in the face except that making sudden movements today puts you off balance.
“Jerk,” you say instead, “I lugged my huge bag and racket all the way here. You could have said something on the phone.” Which is code for Carry my bag for me then, asshole, and luckily Kaidoh, despite being your worst enemy, is actually really good at figuring out your codes.
He picks up your bag and racket without a word and begins walking and you follow, hands shoved deep in your pockets, eyes fixed on the ground because it’s really, really bright outside today and you definitely don’t feel like looking at Kaidoh. Somewhere between junior and senior year of middle school you realized Kaidoh figures things out a lot more easily than you’d ever care to give him credit for, and right now you suspect he’s figured out a thing or two. You consider for a moment asking him what they are, because sometimes he even figures out stuff you haven’t quite gotten yet, but that would require admitting there’s stuff you don’t get that Kaidoh does, and you’re not that desperate so you keep your mouth shut.
“It’s not that big of a deal, really,” Kaidoh says, and you look up because he never starts a conversation first, plus you have no idea what he’s talking about.
“What?”
“Graduating,” Kaidoh clarifies. “We’re going to high school with almost all the same people we went to middle school with. And we’ll be regulars again.”
You consider calling him out on being too confident, but you’ve said the same thing countless times, so you say instead, “I thought you said we played too much tennis.”
Kaidoh snorts. “Don’t be a dumbass,” he says, and you laugh. “We just shouldn’t play tennis in place of doing other things.”
“What?” you say again. You know you sound like an idiot, but Kaidoh’s the one being all confusing and vague.
He stops walking then, turns around and sets the bag and racket down on a bench and faces you completely, and you’re so taken off-guard you trip on your own shoes and almost run right into him.
“Echizen’s coming back,” he says before you can yell at him for making you trip, and then your throat closes up and your blood rushes to your face and you don’t know whether you want to punch him now or after you ask him to explain why he just said that, because obviously it’s not the truth and he’s just being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.
“What.” You say it one more time, weary and impatient and not even a question so much as a challenge, and you want to punch Kaidoh even more when he gives you that pitying look.
“I just found out today. From Inui-senpai,” Kaidoh says. “He’s not coming for another year. He’ll be going to high school with us. He wants to finish school before going pro.”
There are so many questions running through your head that you don’t know what you want to ask first. Who else knows, and for how long. Did Inui find out from Ryoma directly, or did he just hack into his personal computer. Why didn’t Ryoma tell you the last time he bothered to email you back.
What happens now.
“Oh,” you say in the end, because you don’t know if you can handle any of the answers.
Kaidoh watches you for a moment longer and then nods. “You have a year,” he says, frowning.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” you snap.
“Nothing.” Kaidoh turns away again, bends over to pick up your bag. When he hands it off to you, you refuse to meet his gaze. You like it better when you’re fighting.
“Don’t be an idiot, Momoshiro,” he says just before he walks away, and you watch the back of his head for a minute before dropping your bag and sitting down on the bench.
It takes a full half hour before you can muster up the stamina to get up and go home.
~
Ryoma comes back and he is at once the same and infinitely different, but it doesn’t take you any longer to fall in love with everything that’s new than it took you to fall in love in the first place. He’s taller and his voice is deeper and he’s more filled out. Those are the easy things to fall in love with. But he’s also quieter and more serious and distant. Those are the things that hurt but you fall in love with anyway. After he’s been home a year and things are mostly the way they were before he ever left - you’re all regulars again, just like you and Kaidoh said, except for Kawamura, who stayed true to his word and focuses on sushi now - you can’t figure out if you feel better or worse. You definitely find yourself overcome with an almost impossible to restrain urge to hit Tezuka at least once a day, and that more than anything scares you. But if you had the choice to send Ryoma back, you know you wouldn’t do it. There isn’t a solution out there that would make you feel better. Well, there’s one, but it’s generally understood that it’s never going to happen.
Which is why, the summer after your sophomore and Ryoma’s freshman year, when you’re both sitting in your basement sometime after one in the morning trying to figure out if it would be worth sneaking out to the public courts to play a night game or if it would be better to just go to sleep, and you’re seated on the floor next to Ryoma on the couch and he leans over and kisses the side of your neck, you think you’ve probably either gone crazy or died.
“What -“ you begin, voice strangling in your throat, but you can’t think how to finish because Ryoma is crawling into your lap and looping his arms around your neck and looking at you in a way he never, ever has, eyes drowsy and smile mischievous and breath quick and heady.
“I know you want to, Momo-senpai,” he says, and even though you’ve been waiting for this moment for what feels like your entire life you stupidly, ridiculously want to deny it. I haven’t, is what you first think to say, or You’re wrong, or even What are you doing Echizen, get off, but he traps your mouth under his before you can speak and thank God, you might have ruined this before it could even begin and it’s perfect, it’s really completely one hundred percent perfect.
Neither of you should know what you’re doing but Ryoma does, and you would probably stop to think about that except you’re far too exhausted with making yourself miserable. Right now you can just let out a shuddering sigh when he drags his tongue along your bottom lip, you can follow his lead and open your mouth when he does, you can let yourself get a little carried away and pull him in closer and suck and bite and secretly hope the places you attack along his neck leave marks. You want people to see him tomorrow and know he’s spoken for. You want people to see him and know he’s yours.
“Momo-senpai,” Ryoma says, breathless and needy, and that’s when you belatedly notice there’s something hard riding up against your hip bone, and in response your dick is about ready to jump out of your pants. You open your mouth to say his name back but all you can do is groan, because now he’s taken hold of your hand and is guiding it under the waistband of his shorts, and when you wrap your hand around his prick it’s hot and wet and perfect, and he squirms into your grasp and makes sounds that are entirely un-Ryoma and repeats your name and you have to close your eyes and dig the nails of your other hand into your thigh just to keep from coming untouched.
Ryoma whimpers when he comes and it makes you whimper too, and even though your hand is sticky and trapped against the cold wetness of his boxers you never want to move, you just want to stay like this until he’s ready to do it again or until the both of you die. But Ryoma has other ideas, and since they involve readjusting so he can better get his hand down your pants and jerk you off until you’re coming in an embarrassingly short amount of time, you’re willing to admit this idea works pretty well, too.
“Echizen,” you gasp, and you feel your face get red because you tangled your hands in his hair without realizing and now it’s damp and stringy with come and that’s probably not the most romantic move in the world. Ryoma grimaces when he pulls away and touches a hand to his head gingerly, but he doesn’t look mad, and in the end all he says is “Can I use your shower?”
You get up and find him a clean towel and lead him to the little downstairs bathroom in a daze, and after he closes the door on you you slip into the laundry room and take off your pants and leave them in a wet mess in the sink. You change into pajama pants and then stand in the middle of the room until you hear the shower turn off, at which point you remember where you are and what you’re doing and you hurry back into the living room. Ryoma comes out with the towel wrapped around his waist and you keep your eyes fixed on the floor while he changes. When you look up again, he’s in his pajamas and watching you coolly.
“Echizen,” you say.
“I’m tired,” he replies.
You give him the sofa like usual. There’s enough room for two, but just barely, and you know better than to ask. From the floor you can listen to his breathing, and it tells you that he drops off almost instantly, falling into the easy, slow rhythm of someone very deeply asleep. Your stomach hurts again, and it’s sometime after three before you lose consciousness. When you wake up, Ryoma’s gone. There’s a note on the coffee table, written on the back of an old grocery list from the kitchen.
Momo-senpai,
I had to go home early. See you Tuesday.
-Echizen
You drop the note into the trash on the way upstairs and try not to look at the damp towel draped over the arm of the couch. On Tuesdays you play tennis.
You wonder about the marks on Ryoma’s neck, if they’re even there or not, but in the end you know it doesn’t matter. No one is going to make the mistake of assuming he’s yours.
~
School starts again, the beginning of your junior year, and for the first time in memory you discover you don't want to go to tennis practice. You almost don't show up, then at the last minute wander into the clubhouse, get changed, and make it onto the courts just in time to not get yelled at by Tezuka. You half want him to. You half want to see what you would do.
When practice is over everyone is weird and too nice, and you find yourself bitterly wondering just how transparent you really are. Fuji gives you his sad smile again. Inui watches you more intently than usual. Eiji doesn't try to jump on your back.
Echizen leaves before you can even try and muster up the courage to ask him to go out for burgers. You wait until the clubhouse is empty, showering and getting dressed slowly, and then you shoulder your bag and look around the room and try to imagine what it would be like to not play tennis. You can't, so you turn off the lights and step outside and almost don't see Kaidoh fast enough to duck his punch. In fact, you don't completely duck his punch, but it hits you in the shoulder instead of the face, so that's some small victory anyway.
"What the hell?" you shout, dropping your bag immediately and grabbing hold of the collar of his shirt, pulling him in close.
He stares at you impassively and then wrenches out of your grasp. "I told you not to be an idiot," he says.
"Fuck you." You hate him and this, this feels right, this is back to normal. Some small knot in your stomach somewhere is working itself out. You lunge forward and it takes him by surprise so you actually manage to tackle him to the ground, and then you're rolling in a snarling kicking tangled mess, both of you trying to punch and hurt and end up on top. Kaidoh pins you first and you almost knee him in the groin, but that's pretty dirty so in the end you let yourself be pinned and wait for him to let down his guard so you can turn the tables.
"Jerk," you say in the meantime.
"Moron," he spits back, and you can almost see the venom dripping from the word. It makes you lift an eyebrow. He is genuinely mad.
"What's your problem?" you want to know. You give your arms a good sharp jerk but he's got them pinned down tight. The question seems to make him even angrier. His eyes narrow into dangerous slits and his grasp on your wrists tightens until it's painful enough to make you yelp.
"You," Kaidoh says, and he suddenly lets go and stands up and brushes himself off, leaving you in a bewildered heap on the ground to stare up at him dumbly while you massage your wrists. "You are always my fucking problem," he adds, and then he turns and walks in the opposite direction.
“Asshole,” you shout at his retreating form, but he doesn’t even look back.
The entire bike ride home you think about the fight. You can’t understand why remembering it comes as a strange relief until it occurs to you, hours later, that it’s probably the longest time you’ve gone without thinking about Ryoma in months.
~
The after-practice fights with Kaidoh start to become an almost daily ritual, and you find yourself looking forward to them, so much so that any time Kaidoh isn’t waiting outside the door with his fists raised you want to scream and hit the wall. Sometimes the thought of wrestling with him until you’re both blood-smeared and breathless on the cement is all that gets you through practice and watching Ryoma look at Tezuka and Tezuka look at Ryoma and everyone else look at them and then back at you. Today Kaidoh isn’t there, at least not right outside the door, and you grit your teeth and hoist your bag higher on your shoulder and stand there like an idiot because your feet feel heavy and your legs feel stiff and your chest feels tight, like it’s not getting enough air.
“What are you doing, dumbass.” Kaidoh’s voice comes from around the corner and your stomach lurches in anticipation. You almost stumble in your eagerness to get to him, rounding the corner and throwing your bag on the ground the moment he’s in sight. He’s standing with his back to the wall and his hands in his pockets and his eyes closed, and you push up your sleeves and tell your heart to stop beating so fast and wait for him to make the first move. But he doesn’t. He opens his eyes and glares at you and doesn’t move or say a goddamned word.
“Come on!” you snarl, and you feel stupid for saying it but he’s just standing there and your blood is already pulsing so hard in your veins you think if you don’t do something with it you’ll explode.
“No,” he says.
You want to kill him. Your hands ball into fists and you step forward until you’re toe-to-toe and your faces are barely an inch apart and you can feel his breath on your face and smell the sweat on his body and the shampoo in his hair. You’re satisfied to notice that finally you’re a little bit taller than him. You grab the neck of his shirt with both hands and bunch the fabric so tight it has to hurt and you wait.
“Come. On,” you say.
Something in Kaidoh visibly snaps. He hisses and knocks your hands away and pushes off from the wall just enough so he can twist around and slam you back against it.
“You are such a fucking idiot,” he says, and now he’s hitting you but it’s wrong, it’s all over the place and so weak it barely hurts. He’s not giving you a bloody nose or a black eye or even a bruise. He seems more intent on yelling than hitting, and that’s so weird you don’t even try to hit back, you just lift your hands to block your face and stare at him in shock.
“You only look at one thing at a time,” he shouts, and his voice sounds strangled and rough. He hits you in the shoulder. “You’re too stupid to look at anything else.” He hits you in the stomach. “People tell you over and over again to give up but you just keep fucking going.” He hits you in the chest.
“Kaidoh,” you say, wide-eyed. He finally drops his fists and takes a step back but he doesn’t stop yelling, it seems like he can’t.
“Forget Echizen,” he says, and that blow hits you with more force than any fist could. “You never know when to give up.”
“Shut up about Echizen!”
Your response seems to disgust Kaidoh, and he just shakes his head and turns his back on you and begins to walk away.
And now suddenly you're mad, because you are really just so, so sick of being walked away from, so for the first time you don't let it happen, you scramble away from the wall and chase after him and shove him from behind so violently it makes you wince when his head snaps back.
"Don't fucking walk away from me," you say in your most dangerous voice, but for some reason that just makes him laugh. Without thinking, you punch him in the side of the face, as hard as you can. He almost falls over but catches himself at the last minute, lifting one hand to touch his cheek tenderly in the place that is already beginning to color. You can feel every muscle in your body trembling and, inexplicably, tears welling up in your eyes, but you just stand there and watch him. He straightens up and watches you back.
“Go ahead, Momoshiro,” he says. His voice is icy.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!” Your hands go slack at your sides and you can feel your cheeks redden, but it’s the truth and it almost feels good to say it out loud. You haven’t known what you’re supposed to do in years. You haven’t known what you were supposed to do since Echizen Ryoma turned up, twelve years old and scrawny and smug and too perfect for his own good, on the tennis courts at Seigaku middle school.
Kaidoh lets out a long, slow breath. “Go home,” he says wearily. “Think about someone other than Echizen for a change.”
There’s nothing you can say to this, so you don’t. Kaidoh hisses and folds his arms in front of his chest and walks away, and this time, you let him go.
~
You walk your bicycle home and it takes an extra half hour but you don’t care because it helps you think. You think about Kaidoh, because he’s crazy. You think about Ryoma, because you can’t help it. You think about yourself, because maybe that’s what Kaidoh meant. Once you get home, you lie on your bed and then get up and walk around your room and lie on your bed again and repeat this until you want to rip your hair out so you go outside. You get on your bike and don’t think about where you’re going and aren’t surprised at all when you end up outside the front gates of Ryoma’s house.
Ryoma doesn’t seem surprised to see you, either, and he agrees to a game without protest. You walk to the court in the backyard and he lets you have the serve. You won’t win; you never win. That’s not what this game is about, and both of you know it.
Nanjiroh watches from the sidelines and shouts insults at you, but for once they don’t rile you up. You’re watching Ryoma more than you’re watching the ball, the way his knees bend when he hits a return, the way he wipes sweat out of his face with the back of his arm. It still makes your stomach hurt, but it’s different now. Ryoma doesn’t tease you once. He’s deathly silent. After two matches, Nanjiroh announces he’s sick of watching a game between robots and wanders away. The game ends six-one, for Ryoma of course. You shake hands over the net, and Ryoma appears to be waiting for something.
“Thanks,” you say, and you smile.
“Momo-senpai,” he begins, and then he stops and you don’t say anything. “Let’s get burgers tomorrow,” he finally says.
You wait for the jolt of anticipation, the nauseating wave of hope to overtake you. It doesn’t come.
“Thursday,” you say, and the word comes out airy and exhausted because it’s partially a sigh. “Tomorrow I’ve got something I need to do.”
Ryoma looks surprised, but after a few seconds he blinks and smiles. “Thursday,” he says.
You grin and hand back the racket he let you borrow and head over to your bike. It’s the first time you’ve ever left without being asked to go. It’s the first time you bike through the front gates without stopping to look behind.
~
Kaidoh isn’t going to be outside the clubhouse today and you know it, so instead of taking extra long you hurry to get changed, waiting five seconds after he walks out the door before you rush after him, ignoring the looks you get from Inui and Oishi as you go.
He doesn’t look at you or speak when you appear at his side, and you’re grateful, because you haven’t quite figured out what you want to say yet. You walk in silence until you must be halfway to his house already, and by then your palms are beginning to sweat and you still don’t really know what to say but you know you had better figure out something because it’s not like you can just walk into his house uninvited.
“Thank you,” you say quickly, at the same time he mutters “I’m sorry.”
He looks at you sharply and you look at him and laugh. You think you see a hint of a smirk on his lips, but with Kaidoh it’s always hard to tell.
“Idiot,” he says.
“Yeah.” You laugh again. “But I think I get it now.”
Kaidoh looks uncomfortable then so you don’t say anything else. When he comes to a halt in front of a medium-sized blue house you blink stupidly before you realize this must be where he lives.
“I guess I should go home,” you say.
“I guess.”
You look at the sidewalk. There is more than a foot of space between your shoes and Kaidoh’s. Kaidoh clears his throat.
“We should play tennis this weekend,” you suggest. He’s silent so long you can’t help but finally look up, and when you do he’s watching you with something dancing across his face that might actually be amusement.
“We play too much tennis,” he says, but you know that means yes.
“Jerk.” You run a hand through your hair and then give him a half-wave as you turn around. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you.”
You have to walk all the way back to school because you left your bike there, but you still can’t do anything but smile. Tomorrow you’ll have hamburgers with your best friend. On Saturday, you’ll play tennis with your worst enemy. You'll probably fight with him again on Monday.
Tonight, you will think about Ryoma, but it won't be so bad.
end
Rating: R
Pairing: Momoshiro/Ryoma, Momoshiro/Kaidoh, implied Tezuka/Ryoma
Word Count: 4,827
Warnings: Angst
Summary: Momoshiro is in love with Ryoma. Kaidoh wants him to stop being an idiot.
Notes: Written in 2007. Thanks to cmere for the beta.
There are things about being in love with your best friend that are okay. Like the fact that you get to spend more time with him than anyone, or the way he looks at you differently than he looks at other people, even when you’re doing something incredibly stupid, even when you’re in the middle of a fight. Then there are the things that aren’t so okay. Always being the first one there when he needs to lash out. Never having the nerve to ask for an apology, even when you really need one. Watching him fall in love with somebody else.
It’s not like it’s a surprise that Ryoma’s in love with Tezuka. It’s been there since day one, really, and every day since you’ve watched it get worse, but you’ve always been good at denial, especially when it comes to love, and with Ryoma really it’s a simple matter of self-preservation. It takes Fuji finding you behind the clubhouse hunched over the sinks, washing your face to cover up the fact that you’ve been crying, to really get you to first acknowledge it. He rests a hand on your back, and you’re just on the verge of putting on your biggest grin and asking What’s up, Fuji-senpai, how about going out for some ice cream, when he leans over and says next to your ear, “Maybe you should try setting your sights somewhere else.”
He says it in his nicest voice and then smiles his nicest smile, the genuinely nice one with nothing scary behind it, and you open your mouth to ask him what he means but then close it again because you know you’re probably not fooling anyone, least of all Fuji.
“Yeah,” you finally say, because it’s the only thing you can choke out, and Fuji smiles again, maybe a little bit sad, and then he turns and walks away before you can begin to feel embarrassed.
A few hours later, when you’re sitting at your desk staring at a math worksheet that you haven’t absorbed a word or number of in over an hour, it occurs to you to wonder if Fuji’s advice was directed at you alone. In the end, you know it’s really none of your business.
~
On the day you graduate from middle school, you try not to feel disappointed that Ryoma hasn’t flown to Japan just to be there. You pretend that after the ceremony, when you step down from the platform you were crammed onto with your peers and instantly pull your cell phone out of your pocket and check it for messages, you’re looking for a congratulations from your grandma or an uncle, not some selfish little brat of an ex-teammate in America. You stay up late at a party hosted by some classmate you don’t really like, drinking something that tastes like throw-up until you feel dizzy and light-headed, and when you glance at the clock on the microwave and realize it’s two a.m., you pretend the ache in your gut is the result of school nostalgia, or at worst just alcohol poisoning. When you get sick a few hours later, heaving into a strange toilet bowl until your stomach is empty and your throat burning and raw, and the classmate you don’t really like kicks you out without so much as a glass of water, you can’t help but think it really didn’t have anything to do with alcohol at all.
Kaidoh calls and wakes you up, and while it’s technically three in the afternoon you have no reservations about yelling at him for interrupting your sleep. He calls you an idiot but you agree to meet up with him at the street courts anyway, because tennis is the only thing that always makes you feel better no matter what, and between your head and your stomach and your throat and something tight in your chest that’s been aching and growing progressively bigger and bigger for more than a year now, you could use some tennis.
“You look like shit,” Kaidoh says when you arrive at the courts, and you set your bag down and are just about to shoot back that he always looks like shit when you notice he doesn’t have a bag or a racket. He’s not even wearing tennis shoes.
“What the hell,” you say, because you know he’ll know what you mean.
“We play too much tennis,” Kaidoh says with a roll of his eyes, and you would punch him in the face except that making sudden movements today puts you off balance.
“Jerk,” you say instead, “I lugged my huge bag and racket all the way here. You could have said something on the phone.” Which is code for Carry my bag for me then, asshole, and luckily Kaidoh, despite being your worst enemy, is actually really good at figuring out your codes.
He picks up your bag and racket without a word and begins walking and you follow, hands shoved deep in your pockets, eyes fixed on the ground because it’s really, really bright outside today and you definitely don’t feel like looking at Kaidoh. Somewhere between junior and senior year of middle school you realized Kaidoh figures things out a lot more easily than you’d ever care to give him credit for, and right now you suspect he’s figured out a thing or two. You consider for a moment asking him what they are, because sometimes he even figures out stuff you haven’t quite gotten yet, but that would require admitting there’s stuff you don’t get that Kaidoh does, and you’re not that desperate so you keep your mouth shut.
“It’s not that big of a deal, really,” Kaidoh says, and you look up because he never starts a conversation first, plus you have no idea what he’s talking about.
“What?”
“Graduating,” Kaidoh clarifies. “We’re going to high school with almost all the same people we went to middle school with. And we’ll be regulars again.”
You consider calling him out on being too confident, but you’ve said the same thing countless times, so you say instead, “I thought you said we played too much tennis.”
Kaidoh snorts. “Don’t be a dumbass,” he says, and you laugh. “We just shouldn’t play tennis in place of doing other things.”
“What?” you say again. You know you sound like an idiot, but Kaidoh’s the one being all confusing and vague.
He stops walking then, turns around and sets the bag and racket down on a bench and faces you completely, and you’re so taken off-guard you trip on your own shoes and almost run right into him.
“Echizen’s coming back,” he says before you can yell at him for making you trip, and then your throat closes up and your blood rushes to your face and you don’t know whether you want to punch him now or after you ask him to explain why he just said that, because obviously it’s not the truth and he’s just being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.
“What.” You say it one more time, weary and impatient and not even a question so much as a challenge, and you want to punch Kaidoh even more when he gives you that pitying look.
“I just found out today. From Inui-senpai,” Kaidoh says. “He’s not coming for another year. He’ll be going to high school with us. He wants to finish school before going pro.”
There are so many questions running through your head that you don’t know what you want to ask first. Who else knows, and for how long. Did Inui find out from Ryoma directly, or did he just hack into his personal computer. Why didn’t Ryoma tell you the last time he bothered to email you back.
What happens now.
“Oh,” you say in the end, because you don’t know if you can handle any of the answers.
Kaidoh watches you for a moment longer and then nods. “You have a year,” he says, frowning.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” you snap.
“Nothing.” Kaidoh turns away again, bends over to pick up your bag. When he hands it off to you, you refuse to meet his gaze. You like it better when you’re fighting.
“Don’t be an idiot, Momoshiro,” he says just before he walks away, and you watch the back of his head for a minute before dropping your bag and sitting down on the bench.
It takes a full half hour before you can muster up the stamina to get up and go home.
~
Ryoma comes back and he is at once the same and infinitely different, but it doesn’t take you any longer to fall in love with everything that’s new than it took you to fall in love in the first place. He’s taller and his voice is deeper and he’s more filled out. Those are the easy things to fall in love with. But he’s also quieter and more serious and distant. Those are the things that hurt but you fall in love with anyway. After he’s been home a year and things are mostly the way they were before he ever left - you’re all regulars again, just like you and Kaidoh said, except for Kawamura, who stayed true to his word and focuses on sushi now - you can’t figure out if you feel better or worse. You definitely find yourself overcome with an almost impossible to restrain urge to hit Tezuka at least once a day, and that more than anything scares you. But if you had the choice to send Ryoma back, you know you wouldn’t do it. There isn’t a solution out there that would make you feel better. Well, there’s one, but it’s generally understood that it’s never going to happen.
Which is why, the summer after your sophomore and Ryoma’s freshman year, when you’re both sitting in your basement sometime after one in the morning trying to figure out if it would be worth sneaking out to the public courts to play a night game or if it would be better to just go to sleep, and you’re seated on the floor next to Ryoma on the couch and he leans over and kisses the side of your neck, you think you’ve probably either gone crazy or died.
“What -“ you begin, voice strangling in your throat, but you can’t think how to finish because Ryoma is crawling into your lap and looping his arms around your neck and looking at you in a way he never, ever has, eyes drowsy and smile mischievous and breath quick and heady.
“I know you want to, Momo-senpai,” he says, and even though you’ve been waiting for this moment for what feels like your entire life you stupidly, ridiculously want to deny it. I haven’t, is what you first think to say, or You’re wrong, or even What are you doing Echizen, get off, but he traps your mouth under his before you can speak and thank God, you might have ruined this before it could even begin and it’s perfect, it’s really completely one hundred percent perfect.
Neither of you should know what you’re doing but Ryoma does, and you would probably stop to think about that except you’re far too exhausted with making yourself miserable. Right now you can just let out a shuddering sigh when he drags his tongue along your bottom lip, you can follow his lead and open your mouth when he does, you can let yourself get a little carried away and pull him in closer and suck and bite and secretly hope the places you attack along his neck leave marks. You want people to see him tomorrow and know he’s spoken for. You want people to see him and know he’s yours.
“Momo-senpai,” Ryoma says, breathless and needy, and that’s when you belatedly notice there’s something hard riding up against your hip bone, and in response your dick is about ready to jump out of your pants. You open your mouth to say his name back but all you can do is groan, because now he’s taken hold of your hand and is guiding it under the waistband of his shorts, and when you wrap your hand around his prick it’s hot and wet and perfect, and he squirms into your grasp and makes sounds that are entirely un-Ryoma and repeats your name and you have to close your eyes and dig the nails of your other hand into your thigh just to keep from coming untouched.
Ryoma whimpers when he comes and it makes you whimper too, and even though your hand is sticky and trapped against the cold wetness of his boxers you never want to move, you just want to stay like this until he’s ready to do it again or until the both of you die. But Ryoma has other ideas, and since they involve readjusting so he can better get his hand down your pants and jerk you off until you’re coming in an embarrassingly short amount of time, you’re willing to admit this idea works pretty well, too.
“Echizen,” you gasp, and you feel your face get red because you tangled your hands in his hair without realizing and now it’s damp and stringy with come and that’s probably not the most romantic move in the world. Ryoma grimaces when he pulls away and touches a hand to his head gingerly, but he doesn’t look mad, and in the end all he says is “Can I use your shower?”
You get up and find him a clean towel and lead him to the little downstairs bathroom in a daze, and after he closes the door on you you slip into the laundry room and take off your pants and leave them in a wet mess in the sink. You change into pajama pants and then stand in the middle of the room until you hear the shower turn off, at which point you remember where you are and what you’re doing and you hurry back into the living room. Ryoma comes out with the towel wrapped around his waist and you keep your eyes fixed on the floor while he changes. When you look up again, he’s in his pajamas and watching you coolly.
“Echizen,” you say.
“I’m tired,” he replies.
You give him the sofa like usual. There’s enough room for two, but just barely, and you know better than to ask. From the floor you can listen to his breathing, and it tells you that he drops off almost instantly, falling into the easy, slow rhythm of someone very deeply asleep. Your stomach hurts again, and it’s sometime after three before you lose consciousness. When you wake up, Ryoma’s gone. There’s a note on the coffee table, written on the back of an old grocery list from the kitchen.
Momo-senpai,
I had to go home early. See you Tuesday.
-Echizen
You drop the note into the trash on the way upstairs and try not to look at the damp towel draped over the arm of the couch. On Tuesdays you play tennis.
You wonder about the marks on Ryoma’s neck, if they’re even there or not, but in the end you know it doesn’t matter. No one is going to make the mistake of assuming he’s yours.
~
School starts again, the beginning of your junior year, and for the first time in memory you discover you don't want to go to tennis practice. You almost don't show up, then at the last minute wander into the clubhouse, get changed, and make it onto the courts just in time to not get yelled at by Tezuka. You half want him to. You half want to see what you would do.
When practice is over everyone is weird and too nice, and you find yourself bitterly wondering just how transparent you really are. Fuji gives you his sad smile again. Inui watches you more intently than usual. Eiji doesn't try to jump on your back.
Echizen leaves before you can even try and muster up the courage to ask him to go out for burgers. You wait until the clubhouse is empty, showering and getting dressed slowly, and then you shoulder your bag and look around the room and try to imagine what it would be like to not play tennis. You can't, so you turn off the lights and step outside and almost don't see Kaidoh fast enough to duck his punch. In fact, you don't completely duck his punch, but it hits you in the shoulder instead of the face, so that's some small victory anyway.
"What the hell?" you shout, dropping your bag immediately and grabbing hold of the collar of his shirt, pulling him in close.
He stares at you impassively and then wrenches out of your grasp. "I told you not to be an idiot," he says.
"Fuck you." You hate him and this, this feels right, this is back to normal. Some small knot in your stomach somewhere is working itself out. You lunge forward and it takes him by surprise so you actually manage to tackle him to the ground, and then you're rolling in a snarling kicking tangled mess, both of you trying to punch and hurt and end up on top. Kaidoh pins you first and you almost knee him in the groin, but that's pretty dirty so in the end you let yourself be pinned and wait for him to let down his guard so you can turn the tables.
"Jerk," you say in the meantime.
"Moron," he spits back, and you can almost see the venom dripping from the word. It makes you lift an eyebrow. He is genuinely mad.
"What's your problem?" you want to know. You give your arms a good sharp jerk but he's got them pinned down tight. The question seems to make him even angrier. His eyes narrow into dangerous slits and his grasp on your wrists tightens until it's painful enough to make you yelp.
"You," Kaidoh says, and he suddenly lets go and stands up and brushes himself off, leaving you in a bewildered heap on the ground to stare up at him dumbly while you massage your wrists. "You are always my fucking problem," he adds, and then he turns and walks in the opposite direction.
“Asshole,” you shout at his retreating form, but he doesn’t even look back.
The entire bike ride home you think about the fight. You can’t understand why remembering it comes as a strange relief until it occurs to you, hours later, that it’s probably the longest time you’ve gone without thinking about Ryoma in months.
~
The after-practice fights with Kaidoh start to become an almost daily ritual, and you find yourself looking forward to them, so much so that any time Kaidoh isn’t waiting outside the door with his fists raised you want to scream and hit the wall. Sometimes the thought of wrestling with him until you’re both blood-smeared and breathless on the cement is all that gets you through practice and watching Ryoma look at Tezuka and Tezuka look at Ryoma and everyone else look at them and then back at you. Today Kaidoh isn’t there, at least not right outside the door, and you grit your teeth and hoist your bag higher on your shoulder and stand there like an idiot because your feet feel heavy and your legs feel stiff and your chest feels tight, like it’s not getting enough air.
“What are you doing, dumbass.” Kaidoh’s voice comes from around the corner and your stomach lurches in anticipation. You almost stumble in your eagerness to get to him, rounding the corner and throwing your bag on the ground the moment he’s in sight. He’s standing with his back to the wall and his hands in his pockets and his eyes closed, and you push up your sleeves and tell your heart to stop beating so fast and wait for him to make the first move. But he doesn’t. He opens his eyes and glares at you and doesn’t move or say a goddamned word.
“Come on!” you snarl, and you feel stupid for saying it but he’s just standing there and your blood is already pulsing so hard in your veins you think if you don’t do something with it you’ll explode.
“No,” he says.
You want to kill him. Your hands ball into fists and you step forward until you’re toe-to-toe and your faces are barely an inch apart and you can feel his breath on your face and smell the sweat on his body and the shampoo in his hair. You’re satisfied to notice that finally you’re a little bit taller than him. You grab the neck of his shirt with both hands and bunch the fabric so tight it has to hurt and you wait.
“Come. On,” you say.
Something in Kaidoh visibly snaps. He hisses and knocks your hands away and pushes off from the wall just enough so he can twist around and slam you back against it.
“You are such a fucking idiot,” he says, and now he’s hitting you but it’s wrong, it’s all over the place and so weak it barely hurts. He’s not giving you a bloody nose or a black eye or even a bruise. He seems more intent on yelling than hitting, and that’s so weird you don’t even try to hit back, you just lift your hands to block your face and stare at him in shock.
“You only look at one thing at a time,” he shouts, and his voice sounds strangled and rough. He hits you in the shoulder. “You’re too stupid to look at anything else.” He hits you in the stomach. “People tell you over and over again to give up but you just keep fucking going.” He hits you in the chest.
“Kaidoh,” you say, wide-eyed. He finally drops his fists and takes a step back but he doesn’t stop yelling, it seems like he can’t.
“Forget Echizen,” he says, and that blow hits you with more force than any fist could. “You never know when to give up.”
“Shut up about Echizen!”
Your response seems to disgust Kaidoh, and he just shakes his head and turns his back on you and begins to walk away.
And now suddenly you're mad, because you are really just so, so sick of being walked away from, so for the first time you don't let it happen, you scramble away from the wall and chase after him and shove him from behind so violently it makes you wince when his head snaps back.
"Don't fucking walk away from me," you say in your most dangerous voice, but for some reason that just makes him laugh. Without thinking, you punch him in the side of the face, as hard as you can. He almost falls over but catches himself at the last minute, lifting one hand to touch his cheek tenderly in the place that is already beginning to color. You can feel every muscle in your body trembling and, inexplicably, tears welling up in your eyes, but you just stand there and watch him. He straightens up and watches you back.
“Go ahead, Momoshiro,” he says. His voice is icy.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!” Your hands go slack at your sides and you can feel your cheeks redden, but it’s the truth and it almost feels good to say it out loud. You haven’t known what you’re supposed to do in years. You haven’t known what you were supposed to do since Echizen Ryoma turned up, twelve years old and scrawny and smug and too perfect for his own good, on the tennis courts at Seigaku middle school.
Kaidoh lets out a long, slow breath. “Go home,” he says wearily. “Think about someone other than Echizen for a change.”
There’s nothing you can say to this, so you don’t. Kaidoh hisses and folds his arms in front of his chest and walks away, and this time, you let him go.
~
You walk your bicycle home and it takes an extra half hour but you don’t care because it helps you think. You think about Kaidoh, because he’s crazy. You think about Ryoma, because you can’t help it. You think about yourself, because maybe that’s what Kaidoh meant. Once you get home, you lie on your bed and then get up and walk around your room and lie on your bed again and repeat this until you want to rip your hair out so you go outside. You get on your bike and don’t think about where you’re going and aren’t surprised at all when you end up outside the front gates of Ryoma’s house.
Ryoma doesn’t seem surprised to see you, either, and he agrees to a game without protest. You walk to the court in the backyard and he lets you have the serve. You won’t win; you never win. That’s not what this game is about, and both of you know it.
Nanjiroh watches from the sidelines and shouts insults at you, but for once they don’t rile you up. You’re watching Ryoma more than you’re watching the ball, the way his knees bend when he hits a return, the way he wipes sweat out of his face with the back of his arm. It still makes your stomach hurt, but it’s different now. Ryoma doesn’t tease you once. He’s deathly silent. After two matches, Nanjiroh announces he’s sick of watching a game between robots and wanders away. The game ends six-one, for Ryoma of course. You shake hands over the net, and Ryoma appears to be waiting for something.
“Thanks,” you say, and you smile.
“Momo-senpai,” he begins, and then he stops and you don’t say anything. “Let’s get burgers tomorrow,” he finally says.
You wait for the jolt of anticipation, the nauseating wave of hope to overtake you. It doesn’t come.
“Thursday,” you say, and the word comes out airy and exhausted because it’s partially a sigh. “Tomorrow I’ve got something I need to do.”
Ryoma looks surprised, but after a few seconds he blinks and smiles. “Thursday,” he says.
You grin and hand back the racket he let you borrow and head over to your bike. It’s the first time you’ve ever left without being asked to go. It’s the first time you bike through the front gates without stopping to look behind.
~
Kaidoh isn’t going to be outside the clubhouse today and you know it, so instead of taking extra long you hurry to get changed, waiting five seconds after he walks out the door before you rush after him, ignoring the looks you get from Inui and Oishi as you go.
He doesn’t look at you or speak when you appear at his side, and you’re grateful, because you haven’t quite figured out what you want to say yet. You walk in silence until you must be halfway to his house already, and by then your palms are beginning to sweat and you still don’t really know what to say but you know you had better figure out something because it’s not like you can just walk into his house uninvited.
“Thank you,” you say quickly, at the same time he mutters “I’m sorry.”
He looks at you sharply and you look at him and laugh. You think you see a hint of a smirk on his lips, but with Kaidoh it’s always hard to tell.
“Idiot,” he says.
“Yeah.” You laugh again. “But I think I get it now.”
Kaidoh looks uncomfortable then so you don’t say anything else. When he comes to a halt in front of a medium-sized blue house you blink stupidly before you realize this must be where he lives.
“I guess I should go home,” you say.
“I guess.”
You look at the sidewalk. There is more than a foot of space between your shoes and Kaidoh’s. Kaidoh clears his throat.
“We should play tennis this weekend,” you suggest. He’s silent so long you can’t help but finally look up, and when you do he’s watching you with something dancing across his face that might actually be amusement.
“We play too much tennis,” he says, but you know that means yes.
“Jerk.” You run a hand through your hair and then give him a half-wave as you turn around. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you.”
You have to walk all the way back to school because you left your bike there, but you still can’t do anything but smile. Tomorrow you’ll have hamburgers with your best friend. On Saturday, you’ll play tennis with your worst enemy. You'll probably fight with him again on Monday.
Tonight, you will think about Ryoma, but it won't be so bad.
end