Surfacing [Renji, Inui]
The Nationals matches with Rikkai have really wreaked havoc on my PoT muses - hopefully, getting this out of my system will go towards rectifying that. :D
This turned out differently than expected....almost/sort of a really strange example of Renji!meta turned fic.
Title: Surfacing
Word Count: ~ 2,000
Characters: Renji, Inui. (Data Pair only if you squint.)
Notes: Mention of D2 at the final round of Nationals. No spoilers for how the match ends, though.
Time lies thick between them, like water.
And, like water, Renji thinks, it must be affecting his perception of distance, so that Sadaharu, standing - without his glasses - several feet away and across the net, can appear too close and too far at the same time.
More unfortunately, he knows he cannot blame the effect on heatstroke.
Walk around a bit, the coach tells him, on his first day at the tennis club in Tokyo. See if you can get a feel for the place.
Renji does exactly that. He spends the better part of fifteen minutes making his way slowly along the club’s long row of courts, each occupied by rowdy, exuberant children his age, dashing every which way as if in spectacular attempts to make up, in sheer energy, for whatever they might have been still lacking in skill.
After a while, Renji can’t help but smile to himself. He will remember, later, the moment when he blinks, and can feel the familiarity falling into place, almost like a blanket. When he thinks to himself that, yes, it might be worth looking forward to, getting used to this place and coming to know it inside out.
What he will not remember is how one particular occupant of the courts first catches his eye. He didn’t intend to observe any one of the players in great detail - that would surely come later. So, with dozens of them on the courts there was no real reason Renji’s attention ought have been drawn to one who was engaged in a match on the farthest court down. A boy whose hair sticks up in messy, black ridges, like a bird’s nest with too many angles.
Even more distinctive than that, though, his most distinguishing feature is a pair of thick, square glasses, that are much too big for his face and that reflected the sunlight of that cloudless summer afternoon and, by all rights, ought have made him look ridiculous. Except that they didn’t.
Not too much, at least.
Renji doesn’t believe in the accuracy of first impressions. It’s still several years before he’ll meet, at Rikkaidai, a first-year who will introduce himself as Yukimura Seiichi, and announce that he’ll lead their tennis team that year, to Nationals, in a way that makes Renji believe it immediately.
For the moment, though, Renji doesn’t think it’s possible to even to begin to form an accurate impression of a person, until one’s at least spoken to them several times, taken careful note of what they say, and sifted through their words, perhaps, find out which had been true.
The spectacled boy, though, all but forces him to form a first impression, before he is aware of having done it - one of a lanky, slightly awkward figure that nevertheless dashes and jumps about the court with an intensity that stops Renji in his tracks, in order to track the latter's progress.
He’s never quite seen anyone quite so intent on whatever it was they were doing.
If he had been forced to stop and think more about the determination emanating from the boy like a tangible aura, Renji would have associated with wind, with mountains, with the cloudless sky above them that is the clearest, most innocent blue. It’s irrational, but he knows, right then, that this was a person who would never stop working for what they wanted, would not stop until he had risen through - had understood and turned inside out - this small, isolated world, of perpendicular white lines and courts and rules as clean-cut as numbers.
Akaya sends him a glare. Kaidoh, who he had thought would have been glaring at Akaya instead, does the same.
Renji sighs. Focus, he wants to say to himself, because it wouldn’t be wrong to say, right now, that never in his life has he needed to focus more. But there are things in no way relevant to the match currently in progress that have nevertheless made their way onto the court, to lie the in the air around him, thick enough to smother, and he can’t help but let them drain his concentration. (Could a drowning person help the fact he was drowning?)
The net might have been made of fibers of lead and not of synthetic polymer, given the way it refused to even budge, much less flutter, in the fashion appropriate to a scrap of fabric suspended in open summer air.
There is no wind, he tells himself dully. Factor that into your calculations.
But the lack of wind doesn’t explain why, for example, the few steps Renji takes toward the net feel heavy and sluggish, as if a physical force was pushing him back and making it unbearable to approach. Nothing could, he supposed, unless people with like personalities were somehow meant to repel each other.
Focus, he reminds himself sternly. And it works briefly, until, handing Sadaharu the broken glasses across the net, he finds himself hit right there and then by deja vu - during what was arguably the most important Nationals match in the three years of his junior high tennis career.
First impressions, Renji learns, form in the matter of a second. It takes several more of standing at the edge of the court and watching the match before he frowns, realizing that something is not quite right.
The bespectacled boy, despite obvious effort and what ought to have been superior reaction time, is not gaining any points on his opponent. There is, at the same time, definitely something strange in the way he seems to either catch a return perfectly or miss it spectacularly, without any middle ground.
It takes a bit more squinting, but Renji finally manages to catch him, on one shot, hitting the ball and immediately moving as if to intercept a return.
Moving, that is, too fast - picking a direction long before it should be possible to read the next move of his opponent through observation alone.
The pattern, now that he’s found it, proves to hold true for all of the boy’s subsequent returns, and it’s easy, after that, to see the reason he isn’t gaining any ground points-wise. From what Renji sees so far, he moves in the correct direction around half of the time, in which case he catches the return flawlessly and grins to himself furtively, quickly enough that his opponent doesn’t notice. For the other half, however, he ends up forced to turn awkwardly at high speed, and it's in this way that he loses most of his points.
He is trying to predict where the shots will land, is what Renji begins to think, not a minute into watching the match. And - though he doesn’t forget to breathe or anything like that - he is aware, throughout the rest of his observations, of time passing as if from a great distance, of the thud of one tennis ball, then another, all the way down the courts as he stands there, trying hard to look for any physical evidence to convince himself that no, it can’t be.
It's a habit of his - a sensible one - to cast a critical eye over his own theories. Though, in this case, it is also partly so that he doesn’t have to process the faint but rising excitement he feels, at finding anyone in the world who approaches the game even remotely in the same way he does.
The evidence, though, is clearly against him. The Yes, it can be settles into place three points later, at the exact same moment that the boy leans sideways to reach a particularly well-placed shot and loses his balance. Vaguely, Renji thinks that he couldn’t find too much fault with the boy’s clumsiness - he, even more so that Renji himself, has the lanky and uncoordinated looks of someone who has grown more than too much in too short a time.
As he goes sprawling across the court, his glasses manage to come loose and, flying in an arc parallel to the ground, come to a stop three feet in front of Renji.
Renji picks them up.
The thick frame and lenses are unbroken. It is reassuring, in a strange way. Almost as if it were an odd sort of omen - an assertion that that sort of simple-minded but irrefutable dedication would, and should, prove in itself indestructible, something never to be worn out.
Indestructible - Renji knows that it’s something he could stand learning from.
Sorry, calls the boy, as he grins sheepishly and walks over to Renji. I just got this pair yesterday, and there’s something wrong with the hinges.
No problem, Renji replies. He hands the boy his glasses, and watches him put them on to cover eyes that had, for a moment, been of the liveliest, clearest green.
And then Renji thinks, what if we’re the ones who could be indestructible someday?
You know, he says, stepping closer, with such uncharacteristic spontaneity that it surprises even himself. It would work better, if you had a more precise way of keeping track.
It seems like the more natural thing in the world for them to share a glance as if they were fellow conspirators. Which, from that moment on, he supposed, they were.
Directed at him from across the net, the eyes of his former partner echo with the precision that they’d worked together to develop, and perfect, in the months after that. They are half-lidded in a wry sort of resignation, saying that he understood, and did not blame - refused to blame - Renji in the least.
It might be a trick of the atmosphere, but they also appear to be a slightly different color. Not darker or lighter, exactly, as much as they were now several shades of green, each fighting to push the next down and aside, into the background.
I’m sorry, he says to Sadaharu across the net, keeping his voice light so as to not show that he could be referring to anything but the glasses. Renji knows, faintly, distantly, as if the thought were bubbling slowly up from the depths of a stagnant summer pond, that, if they were somewhere other on a tennis court during the final round of Nationals, if he had more time, he might have been able to bring himself to extend the apology further.
He might have been able to stand there and say it, as many times as necessary, I’m sorry. For leaving without any notice. For standing here and condoning tactics that Sadaharu would never approve of, but of course stubbornly refuses to resent him for.
For all the things that have led them to be standing on opposite sides of the net. They’re not his to apologize for, but he thinks that - under those circumstances - he just might feel selfish enough to do it anyway.
It is, he realizes, a very large ‘might have been’ that he’s constructed. But only that. At a time where he needed his full concentration for the game at hand, no less.
Tarundoru, Renji.
He feels himself pat Akaya on the shoulder as if it were another person performing the actions. Hears himself think, always win, Rikkaidai, as if he were reading the words from the page of a familiar book.
Here, and now, this is still the most important match of his junior high tennis career, even if it was no longer the most meaningful.
I’m sorry, he says again, silently, to the grinning boy under a cloudless blue sky. It wasn’t that we could not get the world together, but that, maybe, the world did not turn out the way that you - that we - thought it would. I’m playing part, right now, in everything that would be, by your standards, not right about it. Yet - having taken the past four years to drift to this point - it is inconceivable that I could do anything else.
There’s nothing I’m doing that I will regret.
Renji blinks hard, and concentrates. Imagines physically imposing order on the impractical and unfocused part of his mind, the part that had, to begin with, dredged up the time to hang between them like water, like a murky steam.
The latter obeys, though not before offering one last thought.
I will make it up to you.
This turned out differently than expected....almost/sort of a really strange example of Renji!meta turned fic.
Title: Surfacing
Word Count: ~ 2,000
Characters: Renji, Inui. (Data Pair only if you squint.)
Notes: Mention of D2 at the final round of Nationals. No spoilers for how the match ends, though.
Time lies thick between them, like water.
And, like water, Renji thinks, it must be affecting his perception of distance, so that Sadaharu, standing - without his glasses - several feet away and across the net, can appear too close and too far at the same time.
More unfortunately, he knows he cannot blame the effect on heatstroke.
Walk around a bit, the coach tells him, on his first day at the tennis club in Tokyo. See if you can get a feel for the place.
Renji does exactly that. He spends the better part of fifteen minutes making his way slowly along the club’s long row of courts, each occupied by rowdy, exuberant children his age, dashing every which way as if in spectacular attempts to make up, in sheer energy, for whatever they might have been still lacking in skill.
After a while, Renji can’t help but smile to himself. He will remember, later, the moment when he blinks, and can feel the familiarity falling into place, almost like a blanket. When he thinks to himself that, yes, it might be worth looking forward to, getting used to this place and coming to know it inside out.
What he will not remember is how one particular occupant of the courts first catches his eye. He didn’t intend to observe any one of the players in great detail - that would surely come later. So, with dozens of them on the courts there was no real reason Renji’s attention ought have been drawn to one who was engaged in a match on the farthest court down. A boy whose hair sticks up in messy, black ridges, like a bird’s nest with too many angles.
Even more distinctive than that, though, his most distinguishing feature is a pair of thick, square glasses, that are much too big for his face and that reflected the sunlight of that cloudless summer afternoon and, by all rights, ought have made him look ridiculous. Except that they didn’t.
Not too much, at least.
Renji doesn’t believe in the accuracy of first impressions. It’s still several years before he’ll meet, at Rikkaidai, a first-year who will introduce himself as Yukimura Seiichi, and announce that he’ll lead their tennis team that year, to Nationals, in a way that makes Renji believe it immediately.
For the moment, though, Renji doesn’t think it’s possible to even to begin to form an accurate impression of a person, until one’s at least spoken to them several times, taken careful note of what they say, and sifted through their words, perhaps, find out which had been true.
The spectacled boy, though, all but forces him to form a first impression, before he is aware of having done it - one of a lanky, slightly awkward figure that nevertheless dashes and jumps about the court with an intensity that stops Renji in his tracks, in order to track the latter's progress.
He’s never quite seen anyone quite so intent on whatever it was they were doing.
If he had been forced to stop and think more about the determination emanating from the boy like a tangible aura, Renji would have associated with wind, with mountains, with the cloudless sky above them that is the clearest, most innocent blue. It’s irrational, but he knows, right then, that this was a person who would never stop working for what they wanted, would not stop until he had risen through - had understood and turned inside out - this small, isolated world, of perpendicular white lines and courts and rules as clean-cut as numbers.
Akaya sends him a glare. Kaidoh, who he had thought would have been glaring at Akaya instead, does the same.
Renji sighs. Focus, he wants to say to himself, because it wouldn’t be wrong to say, right now, that never in his life has he needed to focus more. But there are things in no way relevant to the match currently in progress that have nevertheless made their way onto the court, to lie the in the air around him, thick enough to smother, and he can’t help but let them drain his concentration. (Could a drowning person help the fact he was drowning?)
The net might have been made of fibers of lead and not of synthetic polymer, given the way it refused to even budge, much less flutter, in the fashion appropriate to a scrap of fabric suspended in open summer air.
There is no wind, he tells himself dully. Factor that into your calculations.
But the lack of wind doesn’t explain why, for example, the few steps Renji takes toward the net feel heavy and sluggish, as if a physical force was pushing him back and making it unbearable to approach. Nothing could, he supposed, unless people with like personalities were somehow meant to repel each other.
Focus, he reminds himself sternly. And it works briefly, until, handing Sadaharu the broken glasses across the net, he finds himself hit right there and then by deja vu - during what was arguably the most important Nationals match in the three years of his junior high tennis career.
First impressions, Renji learns, form in the matter of a second. It takes several more of standing at the edge of the court and watching the match before he frowns, realizing that something is not quite right.
The bespectacled boy, despite obvious effort and what ought to have been superior reaction time, is not gaining any points on his opponent. There is, at the same time, definitely something strange in the way he seems to either catch a return perfectly or miss it spectacularly, without any middle ground.
It takes a bit more squinting, but Renji finally manages to catch him, on one shot, hitting the ball and immediately moving as if to intercept a return.
Moving, that is, too fast - picking a direction long before it should be possible to read the next move of his opponent through observation alone.
The pattern, now that he’s found it, proves to hold true for all of the boy’s subsequent returns, and it’s easy, after that, to see the reason he isn’t gaining any ground points-wise. From what Renji sees so far, he moves in the correct direction around half of the time, in which case he catches the return flawlessly and grins to himself furtively, quickly enough that his opponent doesn’t notice. For the other half, however, he ends up forced to turn awkwardly at high speed, and it's in this way that he loses most of his points.
He is trying to predict where the shots will land, is what Renji begins to think, not a minute into watching the match. And - though he doesn’t forget to breathe or anything like that - he is aware, throughout the rest of his observations, of time passing as if from a great distance, of the thud of one tennis ball, then another, all the way down the courts as he stands there, trying hard to look for any physical evidence to convince himself that no, it can’t be.
It's a habit of his - a sensible one - to cast a critical eye over his own theories. Though, in this case, it is also partly so that he doesn’t have to process the faint but rising excitement he feels, at finding anyone in the world who approaches the game even remotely in the same way he does.
The evidence, though, is clearly against him. The Yes, it can be settles into place three points later, at the exact same moment that the boy leans sideways to reach a particularly well-placed shot and loses his balance. Vaguely, Renji thinks that he couldn’t find too much fault with the boy’s clumsiness - he, even more so that Renji himself, has the lanky and uncoordinated looks of someone who has grown more than too much in too short a time.
As he goes sprawling across the court, his glasses manage to come loose and, flying in an arc parallel to the ground, come to a stop three feet in front of Renji.
Renji picks them up.
The thick frame and lenses are unbroken. It is reassuring, in a strange way. Almost as if it were an odd sort of omen - an assertion that that sort of simple-minded but irrefutable dedication would, and should, prove in itself indestructible, something never to be worn out.
Indestructible - Renji knows that it’s something he could stand learning from.
Sorry, calls the boy, as he grins sheepishly and walks over to Renji. I just got this pair yesterday, and there’s something wrong with the hinges.
No problem, Renji replies. He hands the boy his glasses, and watches him put them on to cover eyes that had, for a moment, been of the liveliest, clearest green.
And then Renji thinks, what if we’re the ones who could be indestructible someday?
You know, he says, stepping closer, with such uncharacteristic spontaneity that it surprises even himself. It would work better, if you had a more precise way of keeping track.
It seems like the more natural thing in the world for them to share a glance as if they were fellow conspirators. Which, from that moment on, he supposed, they were.
Directed at him from across the net, the eyes of his former partner echo with the precision that they’d worked together to develop, and perfect, in the months after that. They are half-lidded in a wry sort of resignation, saying that he understood, and did not blame - refused to blame - Renji in the least.
It might be a trick of the atmosphere, but they also appear to be a slightly different color. Not darker or lighter, exactly, as much as they were now several shades of green, each fighting to push the next down and aside, into the background.
I’m sorry, he says to Sadaharu across the net, keeping his voice light so as to not show that he could be referring to anything but the glasses. Renji knows, faintly, distantly, as if the thought were bubbling slowly up from the depths of a stagnant summer pond, that, if they were somewhere other on a tennis court during the final round of Nationals, if he had more time, he might have been able to bring himself to extend the apology further.
He might have been able to stand there and say it, as many times as necessary, I’m sorry. For leaving without any notice. For standing here and condoning tactics that Sadaharu would never approve of, but of course stubbornly refuses to resent him for.
For all the things that have led them to be standing on opposite sides of the net. They’re not his to apologize for, but he thinks that - under those circumstances - he just might feel selfish enough to do it anyway.
It is, he realizes, a very large ‘might have been’ that he’s constructed. But only that. At a time where he needed his full concentration for the game at hand, no less.
Tarundoru, Renji.
He feels himself pat Akaya on the shoulder as if it were another person performing the actions. Hears himself think, always win, Rikkaidai, as if he were reading the words from the page of a familiar book.
Here, and now, this is still the most important match of his junior high tennis career, even if it was no longer the most meaningful.
I’m sorry, he says again, silently, to the grinning boy under a cloudless blue sky. It wasn’t that we could not get the world together, but that, maybe, the world did not turn out the way that you - that we - thought it would. I’m playing part, right now, in everything that would be, by your standards, not right about it. Yet - having taken the past four years to drift to this point - it is inconceivable that I could do anything else.
There’s nothing I’m doing that I will regret.
Renji blinks hard, and concentrates. Imagines physically imposing order on the impractical and unfocused part of his mind, the part that had, to begin with, dredged up the time to hang between them like water, like a murky steam.
The latter obeys, though not before offering one last thought.
I will make it up to you.