Gravity [Prince of Tennis; implied Tezuka/Ryoma]
There are days when I wish the world would just... stop. Freeze, suspended, and leave me entirely to my own devices. There are times when I wish I wasn’t constantly caged in by time. Time, time, time, not enough time.
Daylight savings irritates me. I’ve lost an hour that I didn’t have. If by some freak of nature I hadn’t been trying futilely to catch up with my flist during lunch and clicked links and snagged on someone’s really old post about Daylight Savings, I would have completely forgotten. And would have arrived at class an hour late tomorrow.
I wish I could just stay in my room and forget about the world. I wish I could curl up in my bed with my laptop and just read in peace, without having the nagging feeling at the back of my head telling me three essays, a million revisions, a poster presentation worth 20% of your grade. I wish sometimes I didn’t care so much.
Sometimes, I wonder why I was always fascinated by amnesic stories. Written badly, they irritate me, because it’s such a horrible story cliché, but when it’s written well, it’s like.. the ultimate psychological kink of all my psychological madness.
I think I know why. Because sometimes I would very much like to forget the world. It’s a way of breaking free of time.
Three essays, one poster presentation, a million revisions and coding. Instead, I wrote this. When I'm stressed, I have self-destructive tendencies. What is wrong with me? =__=
-----
Prince of Tennis | Ryoma-centric, future-fic | 1700 words, written in 100 minutes.
You arch your entire body into the serve, leaping as high as you can and the sharp snap of your wrist sends the tennis ball in a devastating curve that earns you the first point of the set, fifteen-love.
It’s easy to forget, to pour all your attention into the twist and flow of the game. There’s nothing but the breath flowing in and out of your lungs, the easy give of muscles, the squeak and scuffle of tennis shoes. You don’t have to look to see the ball, just the way you don’t need to look to know your senpai-tachi are watching the game in silence, the last of a round-robin you’ve been playing with all the Seigaku Regulars this past week, the only farewell gift you deem worthy of them.
[of him]
You don’t have to look across the net to see your opponent either. Buchou is buchou; no one else can make you want to break your limits, each and every time you play.
[tennis makes you feel alive. buchou gives your tennis life]
Too often have people remarked at your openness, the way you open your mouth first before thinking. The Regulars know better. They know you always think first - you just can’t be bothered to filter out anything.
They also know you say less than half of what you think. You are a hoarder by nature; you corral secrets and words unsaid to your side like Karupin with his coveted toy mice. Hey, it’s not your fault everyone else is too fixated on your tennis and your small stature - you are no longer twelve, and it’s irritating that at sixteen you can still be mistaken for thirteen... until they catch a glimpse of your eyes - in fact, it gives you a psychological edge.
Mada mada dane.
It’s their lost, you think, grinning fiercely under your cap as the tennis ball rebounds towards the outsides of the court only to curve in its path. Buchou’s brought out Tezuka zone and you know the match’s just begun, as buchou rakes in the points and you put your mind and body into breaking the zone. It’s a fight for dominance, and just because buchou’s controls everything around him like the sun with it’s revolving planets doesn’t mean you’re going to let him have that control forever.
[catch and release. you are catalysts; nothing ever stays stable when one or the other is part of an equation. buchou always stays one step ahead of you; you’ve made it your goal to breeze past him and make him chase you, for once]
You know you’re painfully easy to read on the court, in the middle of a game, and your life’s story spills out whenever you’re in a match with buchou. It’s like reliving time and it should scare you except no one else notices, save for Inui-senpai, who fills notebooks upon notebooks with his neat handwriting but never speaks a word about it, and Fuji-senpai.
Fuji’s eyes are open today, thin slits of blue. But his eyelids are almost lazy despite the deep gleam in his eyes and the tiny, enigmatic smile hovering on his lips. His eyes only open completely when you cross him while changing courts - you wonder what’s different about today, what Fuji sees when that electric gaze slides away from you and fixes on buchou.
Maybe you feel transparent during your matches because of the ease buchou reads you with, although you shouldn’t be surprised; he knows you and himself best, after all, and it’s both of your life-stories you’re reenacting on the court, time and again.
You’re not entirely sure of what to do when your senpai graduates. It’s not the same as when they left middle school, because they were all still there, still Seigaku, and it was only a matter of time before you join their ranks in high school and complete the Regular team. Not so with high school. Life after your senpai-tachi’s graduation is a blur of grey noise, uncertain, unstable and completely different from the clean strokes and lines of tennis. You’d always have tennis, but tennis has never been the same since the Regulars [buchou] grabbed hold of you.
They’re the ones who changed you, and now they’re all trooping off to goodness knows where. Time triumphs you this time around. Che. How annoying.
The twisted smash you use to break buchou’s zone is fierce, almost desperate, and your lips curl in a frown briefly, not liking the lost of control, no matter how minute it seem.
[you are too used making the world revolve your way that it claws in deeper, this futility. you look up and catch buchou’s gaze across the court, and even though math and physics dictates that it impossible for you to see clearly from this distance, you can still read the words, the emotions, the thoughts off buchou’s eyes.
it’s hard to imagine having this silent communion with any other player, and even harder to close your eyes and hear the silence you know will descend when buchou moves on with his life]
The zero-shiki that comes after more than an hour of rallies is apt, so apt. It flies in a curve, strong and powerful despite it’s deceptive gentleness, and you watch it from across the court, diving and skinning one knee even though you know it’s pointless. The tennis ball lands and rolls back towards the net, towards buchou, and you stare at it from two feet away. That shot takes the match, the set and the game.
You know that whatever symbol’s supposed to represent you in this strange tennis metaphor for life - the tennis ball, the racket, you don’t know, the ebb and flow of the game, maybe? [literature was never your strongest point; you do decently enough at school without having to study] - buchou would still be the same: the gravity of the game that keeps you tethered, the exhilaration of a game well played.
You pull yourself to your feet, the strain and tension of pushing yourself to your limits a pleasant ache now that the focus of the game has dissipated. You reach for your cap, only to realize you’ve abandoned it halfway through the match - Momo-senpai or Eiji-senpai has it now.
There’s a buzz at your fingertips, adrenaline that has not run its course, and when you stretch your hand out for handshake, buchou reaches out and grabs hold, a warm, firm grip. You can feel tennis calluses on buchou’s hand; it's easy to imagine that electric buzz coiling between your hands.
You want to follow buchou, like a curious cat, all aloof and smug but edging closer, just to see where he can take your tennis. You want buchou to watch you, because the weight of his gaze is often impetus enough for you to do your best, not only because you’re always trying to challenge him but because your every match is a reflection of buchou and his guidance. You’ve become the pillar of Seigaku, but now you want to be more than that and at some point things have ceased to be about tennis but about buchou and you, except there will always be tennis between the two of you.
You raise your chin to say something, because even if you hate being sentimental, buchou will be graduating soon and it might be months [years, his mind tells him traitorously] before they have a match and a moment like this again.
Instead, you say “buchou,” and it comes out gruff and low and not at all how you intended it to be and you’ve never wished for your cap more.
But maybe it’s okay, because buchou says “Echizen,” and although it sounds exactly the same as all the other times he’s said it, it feels different to you. There’s acknowledgment in it, [but you always had that], and pride [and that was there, even if buchou never showed it to him]. And something deep and measuring that you can’t quite put into words.
“Nyah, Tezuka won!” Kikumaru-senpai’s call snaps you from the moment, and you turn to see the rest of the Regulars standing in a row outside the court lines, grins (or in Kaido’s case, blunt glare) abound. And then you realize that you’re still gripping buchou’s hand - have been, for the past five minutes - and quickly slide away, gripping your tennis racket hard.
“Wonderful game, the two of you,” Fuji-senpai says, and the others burst into sudden discussion.
“Echizen,” you hear again, and you turn to see buchou holding out a tennis ball. Your hand lifts up automatically to accept it.
“Pay attention to what’s in front of you, Echizen,” buchou says, before releasing his grip and walking towards the team, accepting a water bottle from Oishi-senpai. The rest of the team clusters around buchou, leaving you a moment to regroup, recollect yourself.
You glance down at the ball, stiff and new, and toss it idly in the air. As it falls, a flash of black catches your eye, and you twist the ball around to read the neat handwriting written in black marker on the fuzzy green surface.
The dates and name of the first international tournament you’re competing in after you go pro, after your senpai graduate is imprinted there.
You look up, eyes wide, because you haven’t told anyone about your decision although you’ve signed all the paperwork, completed all the applications weeks ago, and buchou is looking at you.
You stare, caught and captured and throw off guard, because - if he reads it correctly - this decision could change your world. But once again, your mind races ahead of you and your mouth even more so, because you simply grin and say “we’ll meet at the top, buchou.”
[you don’t realize that buchou is tethered to tennis as tightly as you are, or that despite constant challenges from other schools, other people, others, it’s you he always plays his best for. and that's fine, because there will be time for that in the future now]
Kikumaru latches onto you, demanding to know what you and buchou are talking about. It’s noisy and annoying and you really wish you had your cap, but in between all the questioning and talking there is a calm, quiet space around buchou, and buchou is smiling, a slight quirk of the lips, but a smile nonetheless.
----
asdkgjlaksjdg Ryoma is 16, going pro after the year ends; the rest of the team (save Momo and Kaido) are graduating and going to university and whatnot, shattering the Seigaku Regulars team permanently. Ryoma being Ryoma is bothered by the prospect of moving beyond them, moving away and especially not being able to play Tezuka, but then Tezuka is going pro too and springs that on Ryoma (to keep him on his toes. I don’t know, I think Tezuka can be sneaky if he wants to).
I imagine Tezuka’s the type that would go to university but will not let Ryoma languish too much as a pro alone. Ryoma needs someone to push him, the way Hikaru needed Akira before he ever took interest in go - I mean, even Sai couldn’t get Hikaru to play go, it was Akira. Ryoma’s a weird mix of Akira and Hikaru in that he loves the game but needs someone else to let him move on and see beyond tennis as just tennis. Anyhow, I think Tezuka’s the type that would go pro eventually... and will study courses long-distance because it’s Tezuka.
... I don’t know. Things are bothering me a lot lately, which is why this fic is all weird and messed up, but I’m still me and somehow the fluff sneaks in. I don't think I'll write more for this fandom - it's a lot like Hikago for me, but I never intended to write this fic either, so... whatever.
ETA: askdljgal;ksdjgag of course, I just had to write this before I finished the manga. Buchou, you're going to Germany? What's up with Germany? Is it the land of amazing lawyers and professional tennis players and rock star-prosecutors and psychopaths and tsunderes?
But they're all still in Japan in that new PoT series, so whatever. This fic still stands ;__;
Daylight savings irritates me. I’ve lost an hour that I didn’t have. If by some freak of nature I hadn’t been trying futilely to catch up with my flist during lunch and clicked links and snagged on someone’s really old post about Daylight Savings, I would have completely forgotten. And would have arrived at class an hour late tomorrow.
I wish I could just stay in my room and forget about the world. I wish I could curl up in my bed with my laptop and just read in peace, without having the nagging feeling at the back of my head telling me three essays, a million revisions, a poster presentation worth 20% of your grade. I wish sometimes I didn’t care so much.
Sometimes, I wonder why I was always fascinated by amnesic stories. Written badly, they irritate me, because it’s such a horrible story cliché, but when it’s written well, it’s like.. the ultimate psychological kink of all my psychological madness.
I think I know why. Because sometimes I would very much like to forget the world. It’s a way of breaking free of time.
Three essays, one poster presentation, a million revisions and coding. Instead, I wrote this. When I'm stressed, I have self-destructive tendencies. What is wrong with me? =__=
-----
Prince of Tennis | Ryoma-centric, future-fic | 1700 words, written in 100 minutes.
You arch your entire body into the serve, leaping as high as you can and the sharp snap of your wrist sends the tennis ball in a devastating curve that earns you the first point of the set, fifteen-love.
It’s easy to forget, to pour all your attention into the twist and flow of the game. There’s nothing but the breath flowing in and out of your lungs, the easy give of muscles, the squeak and scuffle of tennis shoes. You don’t have to look to see the ball, just the way you don’t need to look to know your senpai-tachi are watching the game in silence, the last of a round-robin you’ve been playing with all the Seigaku Regulars this past week, the only farewell gift you deem worthy of them.
[of him]
You don’t have to look across the net to see your opponent either. Buchou is buchou; no one else can make you want to break your limits, each and every time you play.
[tennis makes you feel alive. buchou gives your tennis life]
Too often have people remarked at your openness, the way you open your mouth first before thinking. The Regulars know better. They know you always think first - you just can’t be bothered to filter out anything.
They also know you say less than half of what you think. You are a hoarder by nature; you corral secrets and words unsaid to your side like Karupin with his coveted toy mice. Hey, it’s not your fault everyone else is too fixated on your tennis and your small stature - you are no longer twelve, and it’s irritating that at sixteen you can still be mistaken for thirteen... until they catch a glimpse of your eyes - in fact, it gives you a psychological edge.
Mada mada dane.
It’s their lost, you think, grinning fiercely under your cap as the tennis ball rebounds towards the outsides of the court only to curve in its path. Buchou’s brought out Tezuka zone and you know the match’s just begun, as buchou rakes in the points and you put your mind and body into breaking the zone. It’s a fight for dominance, and just because buchou’s controls everything around him like the sun with it’s revolving planets doesn’t mean you’re going to let him have that control forever.
[catch and release. you are catalysts; nothing ever stays stable when one or the other is part of an equation. buchou always stays one step ahead of you; you’ve made it your goal to breeze past him and make him chase you, for once]
You know you’re painfully easy to read on the court, in the middle of a game, and your life’s story spills out whenever you’re in a match with buchou. It’s like reliving time and it should scare you except no one else notices, save for Inui-senpai, who fills notebooks upon notebooks with his neat handwriting but never speaks a word about it, and Fuji-senpai.
Fuji’s eyes are open today, thin slits of blue. But his eyelids are almost lazy despite the deep gleam in his eyes and the tiny, enigmatic smile hovering on his lips. His eyes only open completely when you cross him while changing courts - you wonder what’s different about today, what Fuji sees when that electric gaze slides away from you and fixes on buchou.
Maybe you feel transparent during your matches because of the ease buchou reads you with, although you shouldn’t be surprised; he knows you and himself best, after all, and it’s both of your life-stories you’re reenacting on the court, time and again.
You’re not entirely sure of what to do when your senpai graduates. It’s not the same as when they left middle school, because they were all still there, still Seigaku, and it was only a matter of time before you join their ranks in high school and complete the Regular team. Not so with high school. Life after your senpai-tachi’s graduation is a blur of grey noise, uncertain, unstable and completely different from the clean strokes and lines of tennis. You’d always have tennis, but tennis has never been the same since the Regulars [buchou] grabbed hold of you.
They’re the ones who changed you, and now they’re all trooping off to goodness knows where. Time triumphs you this time around. Che. How annoying.
The twisted smash you use to break buchou’s zone is fierce, almost desperate, and your lips curl in a frown briefly, not liking the lost of control, no matter how minute it seem.
[you are too used making the world revolve your way that it claws in deeper, this futility. you look up and catch buchou’s gaze across the court, and even though math and physics dictates that it impossible for you to see clearly from this distance, you can still read the words, the emotions, the thoughts off buchou’s eyes.
it’s hard to imagine having this silent communion with any other player, and even harder to close your eyes and hear the silence you know will descend when buchou moves on with his life]
The zero-shiki that comes after more than an hour of rallies is apt, so apt. It flies in a curve, strong and powerful despite it’s deceptive gentleness, and you watch it from across the court, diving and skinning one knee even though you know it’s pointless. The tennis ball lands and rolls back towards the net, towards buchou, and you stare at it from two feet away. That shot takes the match, the set and the game.
You know that whatever symbol’s supposed to represent you in this strange tennis metaphor for life - the tennis ball, the racket, you don’t know, the ebb and flow of the game, maybe? [literature was never your strongest point; you do decently enough at school without having to study] - buchou would still be the same: the gravity of the game that keeps you tethered, the exhilaration of a game well played.
You pull yourself to your feet, the strain and tension of pushing yourself to your limits a pleasant ache now that the focus of the game has dissipated. You reach for your cap, only to realize you’ve abandoned it halfway through the match - Momo-senpai or Eiji-senpai has it now.
There’s a buzz at your fingertips, adrenaline that has not run its course, and when you stretch your hand out for handshake, buchou reaches out and grabs hold, a warm, firm grip. You can feel tennis calluses on buchou’s hand; it's easy to imagine that electric buzz coiling between your hands.
You want to follow buchou, like a curious cat, all aloof and smug but edging closer, just to see where he can take your tennis. You want buchou to watch you, because the weight of his gaze is often impetus enough for you to do your best, not only because you’re always trying to challenge him but because your every match is a reflection of buchou and his guidance. You’ve become the pillar of Seigaku, but now you want to be more than that and at some point things have ceased to be about tennis but about buchou and you, except there will always be tennis between the two of you.
You raise your chin to say something, because even if you hate being sentimental, buchou will be graduating soon and it might be months [years, his mind tells him traitorously] before they have a match and a moment like this again.
Instead, you say “buchou,” and it comes out gruff and low and not at all how you intended it to be and you’ve never wished for your cap more.
But maybe it’s okay, because buchou says “Echizen,” and although it sounds exactly the same as all the other times he’s said it, it feels different to you. There’s acknowledgment in it, [but you always had that], and pride [and that was there, even if buchou never showed it to him]. And something deep and measuring that you can’t quite put into words.
“Nyah, Tezuka won!” Kikumaru-senpai’s call snaps you from the moment, and you turn to see the rest of the Regulars standing in a row outside the court lines, grins (or in Kaido’s case, blunt glare) abound. And then you realize that you’re still gripping buchou’s hand - have been, for the past five minutes - and quickly slide away, gripping your tennis racket hard.
“Wonderful game, the two of you,” Fuji-senpai says, and the others burst into sudden discussion.
“Echizen,” you hear again, and you turn to see buchou holding out a tennis ball. Your hand lifts up automatically to accept it.
“Pay attention to what’s in front of you, Echizen,” buchou says, before releasing his grip and walking towards the team, accepting a water bottle from Oishi-senpai. The rest of the team clusters around buchou, leaving you a moment to regroup, recollect yourself.
You glance down at the ball, stiff and new, and toss it idly in the air. As it falls, a flash of black catches your eye, and you twist the ball around to read the neat handwriting written in black marker on the fuzzy green surface.
The dates and name of the first international tournament you’re competing in after you go pro, after your senpai graduate is imprinted there.
You look up, eyes wide, because you haven’t told anyone about your decision although you’ve signed all the paperwork, completed all the applications weeks ago, and buchou is looking at you.
You stare, caught and captured and throw off guard, because - if he reads it correctly - this decision could change your world. But once again, your mind races ahead of you and your mouth even more so, because you simply grin and say “we’ll meet at the top, buchou.”
[you don’t realize that buchou is tethered to tennis as tightly as you are, or that despite constant challenges from other schools, other people, others, it’s you he always plays his best for. and that's fine, because there will be time for that in the future now]
Kikumaru latches onto you, demanding to know what you and buchou are talking about. It’s noisy and annoying and you really wish you had your cap, but in between all the questioning and talking there is a calm, quiet space around buchou, and buchou is smiling, a slight quirk of the lips, but a smile nonetheless.
----
asdkgjlaksjdg Ryoma is 16, going pro after the year ends; the rest of the team (save Momo and Kaido) are graduating and going to university and whatnot, shattering the Seigaku Regulars team permanently. Ryoma being Ryoma is bothered by the prospect of moving beyond them, moving away and especially not being able to play Tezuka, but then Tezuka is going pro too and springs that on Ryoma (to keep him on his toes. I don’t know, I think Tezuka can be sneaky if he wants to).
I imagine Tezuka’s the type that would go to university but will not let Ryoma languish too much as a pro alone. Ryoma needs someone to push him, the way Hikaru needed Akira before he ever took interest in go - I mean, even Sai couldn’t get Hikaru to play go, it was Akira. Ryoma’s a weird mix of Akira and Hikaru in that he loves the game but needs someone else to let him move on and see beyond tennis as just tennis. Anyhow, I think Tezuka’s the type that would go pro eventually... and will study courses long-distance because it’s Tezuka.
... I don’t know. Things are bothering me a lot lately, which is why this fic is all weird and messed up, but I’m still me and somehow the fluff sneaks in. I don't think I'll write more for this fandom - it's a lot like Hikago for me, but I never intended to write this fic either, so... whatever.
ETA: askdljgal;ksdjgag of course, I just had to write this before I finished the manga. Buchou, you're going to Germany? What's up with Germany? Is it the land of amazing lawyers and professional tennis players and rock star-prosecutors and psychopaths and tsunderes?
But they're all still in Japan in that new PoT series, so whatever. This fic still stands ;__;