PoT: Ordinary
Ordinary
by omi
They weren't joined at the hip like Seigaku's Golden Pair, nor as flashy as Hyotei's Oshitari and Gakuto. They hadn't the cast-iron trust in each other like Rikkai's Jackal and Bunta. They were the Jimmies.
Dependable. Solid. Normal.
Definitely not gay.
Right. Which was why Higashikata Masami was not looking at his partner cum captain like a love-sick puppy. He was looking at him... in a perfectly normal partnerly way. Nope. Not eyeing his partner's cute butt and the way his shorts rode up his tanned honed thighs as he strode around the Yamabuki courts. Not staring at the spiky hair and resisting the urge to run his hand through the strands and forcing them flat. He was, you know, just... looking.
It was all part of being a good partner. Like playing tennis with each other so often, they can anticipate what signals the other will give, nine times out of ten. Like knowing what the other needs, and providing it, at the right time.
Yeah, that's all there is.
Besides, Minami would kill him if he knew his partner was thinking of him that way.
***
Minami Kentarou resisted the urge to look behind him. He knew Masami was looking at him.
He couldn't remember when exactly did this start, this innate sense that enabled him to pinpoint exactly where his partner was, what his partner was doing. It probably started sometime after they became partners.
Anyone who knows anything about tennis doubles would know that good partners should always be aware of where their other half was.
Anyone who know anything about the current batch of Tokyo junior high tennis doubles would know that all the really really good tennis doubles have a ... special kind of connection with their partner.
Really. One only had to look after all.
Oshi and Kikumaru. Oshitari and Gakuto. Jackal and Bunta. Heck, even St. Rudolph's Yanagisawa and Atsuhi. It was always the tall dependable one paired with the shorter, pretty excitable one. More or less. It's practically traditional by now.
But Misami and him weren't like that at all. Nope. Irritating as Sengoku can be, the orange-head happy-go-lucky player had hit the nail on the head when he called them the Jimmies.
Nondescript. Ordinary. Common.
A arm drapped suddenly over his shoulders, and Minami looked up into the dependable face of his partner.
A smile broke over his face. It wasn't too bad, being ordinary, sometimes.