Breaking the laws of DNA
Dead now. Be back later.
for riiche ♥
THE NTH REPEAT
it's a vicious cycle
Fuji/Yuuta. 1,785 words. Prince of Tennis.
1:
It rains in sleets on the day you leave. The temperature is cold outside but he insists on seeing you off at the station. I can help you carry the luggage, he says, smiling benignly. You watch him put on his long-sleeved coat, one thin arm through a cloth tunnel and then the other, nimble fingers pushing a black button, large as a beetle, through its corresponding eye, then another, then another, securing the right flap of the apparel over the left.
I'm done, he tells you, smoothing his hands down the coat, and it startles you. Your collar, you point out stiffly, mouth set into a rigid line. Oh? He cocks his head to one side, hands moving to the back of his neck to flip the collar out. Watching him. It is like watching him make love to himself.
Your father sounds the horn. Hurry up, you say irritably, hoping, at the same time, for him to take as long as possible to put on his boots. You are not ready to leave, not really. He does, though, and opens the black umbrella. Come on, he beckons. You frown and pick up your duffel bag, duck under the rain shield as the both of you wet your boots in a puddle. He huddles against you, taking wide strides down the front yard of the house toward the car. You struggle to keep up.
His body is warmer than usual in the cold. Your bag gets heavier.
2:
At St. Rudolph, you make quick friends with Mizuki and Yanagisawa. Mizuki trains you hard, making sure you get no rest until your shirt is so soaked with sweat you can wring it out and fill a small bucket. Give the boy a break, Yanagisawa will sometimes say, arm lazily slung over Atsushi's shoulder and racket limp in his other hand. You thank Yanagisawa-senpai for his concern with a respectful bow, ask if Mizuki-san would teach you how the Twist Spin Shot works again.
That kid is suicidal, Yanagisawa tells Atsushi later when they are alone in the club room. What do you reckon he trains so hard for? To beat you, says Atsushi offhandedly, throwing his tennis shirt at Yanagisawa. Yanagisawa dodges. Pass the towel please, Shinya.
He looks at Atsushi in bewilderment, at Atsushi's outstretched hand.
Quit joking, he says, stripping to his waist and tosses his own shirt at his doubles partner. The bunched up shirt hits Atsushi right in the face.
That day onwards, Yanagisawa hangs around you often, asking you to practices and bringing you to his favourite sushi bar. Later you find out he is good at mathematics and is not stingy to help. I like your spirit, kid, is what he tells you with a hand on your shoulder like a proud brother when you question his generosity. With him, you slowly forget what drove you here. The dorms feel more like home than home now, and tennis is what makes you happy instead of angry.
3:
You miss the air at St. Rudolph when you return home during the vacation. In this period of time, you have made a total of five telephone calls and received seven, one to Mizuki and four from him, not necessarily in that order. Your other correspondence is Yanagisawa. Soon, your mother complains about the bill.
If you are bored why don't you play tennis with your brother or something, she says. You concentrate on your video game and ignore her, but this is the fourth time you are doing this quest. When she disappears into the kitchen, you switch off the television screen and go back to your room.
It is stifling in your own house, or maybe the summer is to blame. Every day is humid. You try to sleep the heat off without your shirt and with the air-con on full blast. Your mother will throw a fit if she finds out what you are doing. You can catch a cold, for goodness sake! you can already hear her say.
The cool temperature lulls you into sleep. You dream of the tennis courts at St. Rudolph, you and Yanagisawa and Atsushi racing Atsushi's pet turtles down the length of the court. Evening. The three of you are slurping ramen soup noisily, mouths oily and laughing.
You wake up with a fever.
The room is dark and the air-con is still on full blast. You throw your hands out blindly, feeling for your shirt. Your head is heavier than your feet and you stumble out of bed. The floor is hard. As your eyes adjusted to the dark, you realise you are not in your dorm.
Dinner is tasteless and you suddenly crave for the katsu don they serve in the school cafeteria with too much soy sauce, even though you know you can get a kidney disease from the overdose of salt. Are you unwell, he asks suddenly. Everyone looks up from their rice bowls and stares at you.
No, you reply, but he can hear the strain of virus in your voice. You only hope your mother does not notice.
The fever burns you up in the middle of the night. You are no longer sure if it is the air in this house or the absence of the well-worn familiarity of your dorm that makes you sick, like an allergy. You let your head swell along with the rising temperature, bundle it up with your blanket to contain the germs or to suffocate yourself.
Then you hear it, can picture the shape of his mouth as it wraps around your name.
He pulls the blanket off you and shakes you awake. Take these, he says, arm over your shoulder. You wonder, in delirium, if you would scald him. The tablets bump their way down your throat unsmoothly with a washdown of water. The back of his hand is pasted over your forehead, cool as jade. He slides his hand down your cheek, cups it over the column of your neck. You're hot, he says, removing the glass from your hand.
My head hurts, you say dully, thinking he just complimented you. It'll be alright, he soothes, cradles you in the crook of his arm, protective like a mother of her child, and you think you are splitting at the seams, your resistance giving way to another kind of disease.
4:
Which do you love more, tennis or me?
You don't think. You use the Twist Spin Shot. He returns it half-heartedly, still expectant of your answer.
Pay attention, you tell him, deeply annoyed.
He does because you ask him to. You hate it when he is like that.
It's a love game, he announces the score later.
He throws his racket on the ground. Leaves.
5:
He waters his cactus once every week. He has a small red plastic watering can that perches on the ledge of the window in his room beside a pot of cactus. You don't know this, but he spends most of his free time staring at the plant, pressing a gentle finger on one of its needles.
Loving a cactus requires patience. He cannot give it too much water, but he cannot not give it water. It is proud. It does not allow him to hold it, self-defense always at the ready, warding him off when he comes too close. He has already resigned himself to love at a distance.
You spend the day packing things in your room. You don't switch on the light even when it gets too dark to see. He slips in like a ghost, hiding in the shadows and watching you, how your back arches over the opened suitcase, a disarray of clothes littered around it, your rough hands folding a shirt carelessly.
Let me help, he says, materialising out of nowhere all of a sudden. He is neater than you, folds shirts in near perfect rectangles that fit nicely into the suitcase. You sit on your heels, notice the way his shoulders are angled in the dark, the jeans fabric stretched across the expanse of his thighs as he kneels on the floor, still folding shirts.
Tennis reminds me of you, you say suddenly and he looks up. You are staring at his wrists now, counting the skips of his pulse in a purple vein.
Then what do I remind you of? he asks.
That love game, you think.
Say, I can't outplay you.
You are not sure if this is even about tennis anymore, but he knows exactly what you mean.
Both of us can't win this time.
You hold his wrist. His pulse slides under your thumb like pearls.
Deliberate or by accident is unimportant: you tilt forward, losing balance off the pivot of a heel and crash into him, knocking the neatly folded shirts into a crumpled mess. You put your hands on his face.
You're hot, you tell him.
I don't have a fever, he says, breathless.
I know.
You kiss him, define the shape of his mouth with your tongue as he defines yours.
He places his hands, flat, under your shirt. They touch cold, hot, start to move, across your belly, across your ribcage. This is not love, you think, closing your mouth over his neck. Not the kind the world needs it to be and everything you want it to be. You were made in the same womb, written with the same genetic code; you can see the DNA strands twisting themselves into grosteque shapes in protest. But you are marking him all the same, carving a scroll of taboo incantation in his flesh that sounds like the way he chants your name like a possessed sorceror.
I wish I'm not me, you whisper to him as you rock him, and repeat, I wish I'm not me.
No, he says, let me wish that. Then he makes shushing noises so everything is okay and everything is quiet save his breathing and yours.
Eventually, you miss your train back to the dorm.
0:
The sky is as clear as day. You lie on the grassy court and shield your eyes from the sun with an arm. The St. Rudolph supporters erupt into cheers. Mizuki walks over to you and offers you a towel.
This year. This year the team will make it to the nationals.
When the boys throw a celebration party at your dorm, Yanagisawa almost knocks over the pot of cactus on your desk. You replace it high at the top of your bookshelf, unreachable without a stool but where the sunlight can still touch, like an open secret tucked away in a corner of your life.
You start to call St. Rudolph home.
A/N: Unwitting plagarism all over the place. Please don't kill me.
for riiche ♥
THE NTH REPEAT
it's a vicious cycle
Fuji/Yuuta. 1,785 words. Prince of Tennis.
1:
It rains in sleets on the day you leave. The temperature is cold outside but he insists on seeing you off at the station. I can help you carry the luggage, he says, smiling benignly. You watch him put on his long-sleeved coat, one thin arm through a cloth tunnel and then the other, nimble fingers pushing a black button, large as a beetle, through its corresponding eye, then another, then another, securing the right flap of the apparel over the left.
I'm done, he tells you, smoothing his hands down the coat, and it startles you. Your collar, you point out stiffly, mouth set into a rigid line. Oh? He cocks his head to one side, hands moving to the back of his neck to flip the collar out. Watching him. It is like watching him make love to himself.
Your father sounds the horn. Hurry up, you say irritably, hoping, at the same time, for him to take as long as possible to put on his boots. You are not ready to leave, not really. He does, though, and opens the black umbrella. Come on, he beckons. You frown and pick up your duffel bag, duck under the rain shield as the both of you wet your boots in a puddle. He huddles against you, taking wide strides down the front yard of the house toward the car. You struggle to keep up.
His body is warmer than usual in the cold. Your bag gets heavier.
2:
At St. Rudolph, you make quick friends with Mizuki and Yanagisawa. Mizuki trains you hard, making sure you get no rest until your shirt is so soaked with sweat you can wring it out and fill a small bucket. Give the boy a break, Yanagisawa will sometimes say, arm lazily slung over Atsushi's shoulder and racket limp in his other hand. You thank Yanagisawa-senpai for his concern with a respectful bow, ask if Mizuki-san would teach you how the Twist Spin Shot works again.
That kid is suicidal, Yanagisawa tells Atsushi later when they are alone in the club room. What do you reckon he trains so hard for? To beat you, says Atsushi offhandedly, throwing his tennis shirt at Yanagisawa. Yanagisawa dodges. Pass the towel please, Shinya.
He looks at Atsushi in bewilderment, at Atsushi's outstretched hand.
Quit joking, he says, stripping to his waist and tosses his own shirt at his doubles partner. The bunched up shirt hits Atsushi right in the face.
That day onwards, Yanagisawa hangs around you often, asking you to practices and bringing you to his favourite sushi bar. Later you find out he is good at mathematics and is not stingy to help. I like your spirit, kid, is what he tells you with a hand on your shoulder like a proud brother when you question his generosity. With him, you slowly forget what drove you here. The dorms feel more like home than home now, and tennis is what makes you happy instead of angry.
3:
You miss the air at St. Rudolph when you return home during the vacation. In this period of time, you have made a total of five telephone calls and received seven, one to Mizuki and four from him, not necessarily in that order. Your other correspondence is Yanagisawa. Soon, your mother complains about the bill.
If you are bored why don't you play tennis with your brother or something, she says. You concentrate on your video game and ignore her, but this is the fourth time you are doing this quest. When she disappears into the kitchen, you switch off the television screen and go back to your room.
It is stifling in your own house, or maybe the summer is to blame. Every day is humid. You try to sleep the heat off without your shirt and with the air-con on full blast. Your mother will throw a fit if she finds out what you are doing. You can catch a cold, for goodness sake! you can already hear her say.
The cool temperature lulls you into sleep. You dream of the tennis courts at St. Rudolph, you and Yanagisawa and Atsushi racing Atsushi's pet turtles down the length of the court. Evening. The three of you are slurping ramen soup noisily, mouths oily and laughing.
You wake up with a fever.
The room is dark and the air-con is still on full blast. You throw your hands out blindly, feeling for your shirt. Your head is heavier than your feet and you stumble out of bed. The floor is hard. As your eyes adjusted to the dark, you realise you are not in your dorm.
Dinner is tasteless and you suddenly crave for the katsu don they serve in the school cafeteria with too much soy sauce, even though you know you can get a kidney disease from the overdose of salt. Are you unwell, he asks suddenly. Everyone looks up from their rice bowls and stares at you.
No, you reply, but he can hear the strain of virus in your voice. You only hope your mother does not notice.
The fever burns you up in the middle of the night. You are no longer sure if it is the air in this house or the absence of the well-worn familiarity of your dorm that makes you sick, like an allergy. You let your head swell along with the rising temperature, bundle it up with your blanket to contain the germs or to suffocate yourself.
Then you hear it, can picture the shape of his mouth as it wraps around your name.
He pulls the blanket off you and shakes you awake. Take these, he says, arm over your shoulder. You wonder, in delirium, if you would scald him. The tablets bump their way down your throat unsmoothly with a washdown of water. The back of his hand is pasted over your forehead, cool as jade. He slides his hand down your cheek, cups it over the column of your neck. You're hot, he says, removing the glass from your hand.
My head hurts, you say dully, thinking he just complimented you. It'll be alright, he soothes, cradles you in the crook of his arm, protective like a mother of her child, and you think you are splitting at the seams, your resistance giving way to another kind of disease.
4:
Which do you love more, tennis or me?
You don't think. You use the Twist Spin Shot. He returns it half-heartedly, still expectant of your answer.
Pay attention, you tell him, deeply annoyed.
He does because you ask him to. You hate it when he is like that.
It's a love game, he announces the score later.
He throws his racket on the ground. Leaves.
5:
He waters his cactus once every week. He has a small red plastic watering can that perches on the ledge of the window in his room beside a pot of cactus. You don't know this, but he spends most of his free time staring at the plant, pressing a gentle finger on one of its needles.
Loving a cactus requires patience. He cannot give it too much water, but he cannot not give it water. It is proud. It does not allow him to hold it, self-defense always at the ready, warding him off when he comes too close. He has already resigned himself to love at a distance.
You spend the day packing things in your room. You don't switch on the light even when it gets too dark to see. He slips in like a ghost, hiding in the shadows and watching you, how your back arches over the opened suitcase, a disarray of clothes littered around it, your rough hands folding a shirt carelessly.
Let me help, he says, materialising out of nowhere all of a sudden. He is neater than you, folds shirts in near perfect rectangles that fit nicely into the suitcase. You sit on your heels, notice the way his shoulders are angled in the dark, the jeans fabric stretched across the expanse of his thighs as he kneels on the floor, still folding shirts.
Tennis reminds me of you, you say suddenly and he looks up. You are staring at his wrists now, counting the skips of his pulse in a purple vein.
Then what do I remind you of? he asks.
That love game, you think.
Say, I can't outplay you.
You are not sure if this is even about tennis anymore, but he knows exactly what you mean.
Both of us can't win this time.
You hold his wrist. His pulse slides under your thumb like pearls.
Deliberate or by accident is unimportant: you tilt forward, losing balance off the pivot of a heel and crash into him, knocking the neatly folded shirts into a crumpled mess. You put your hands on his face.
You're hot, you tell him.
I don't have a fever, he says, breathless.
I know.
You kiss him, define the shape of his mouth with your tongue as he defines yours.
He places his hands, flat, under your shirt. They touch cold, hot, start to move, across your belly, across your ribcage. This is not love, you think, closing your mouth over his neck. Not the kind the world needs it to be and everything you want it to be. You were made in the same womb, written with the same genetic code; you can see the DNA strands twisting themselves into grosteque shapes in protest. But you are marking him all the same, carving a scroll of taboo incantation in his flesh that sounds like the way he chants your name like a possessed sorceror.
I wish I'm not me, you whisper to him as you rock him, and repeat, I wish I'm not me.
No, he says, let me wish that. Then he makes shushing noises so everything is okay and everything is quiet save his breathing and yours.
Eventually, you miss your train back to the dorm.
0:
The sky is as clear as day. You lie on the grassy court and shield your eyes from the sun with an arm. The St. Rudolph supporters erupt into cheers. Mizuki walks over to you and offers you a towel.
This year. This year the team will make it to the nationals.
When the boys throw a celebration party at your dorm, Yanagisawa almost knocks over the pot of cactus on your desk. You replace it high at the top of your bookshelf, unreachable without a stool but where the sunlight can still touch, like an open secret tucked away in a corner of your life.
You start to call St. Rudolph home.
A/N: Unwitting plagarism all over the place. Please don't kill me.