FIC: The Great Rikkai Camping Adventure (Rikkai ensemble + D1) Part 1/3
Title: The Great Rikkai Camping Adventure: Or, he who finds the hole first, wins (Part 1/3)
Author: Ociwen
Wordcount: 19000
Pairing/Characters: Rikkai ensemble + D1
Rating: NC17
Warnings: Potential poor taste in humour.
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: A fractured fairytale about the perils of camping with one’s teammates before the Nationals…
Author's Notes: Written for 0rien in rikkai_exchange. Thank you to my friends for feedback and advice.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
Niou knew it was a bad idea from the start. As soon as Yukimura stomped into the clubhouse and tacked up a flier (printed on garish yellow paper) to the bulletin board, he knew. As soon as Yukimura stood in the middle of the locker room and said, “We need to go on a trip” Niou knew.
Normally, he would be up for getting into trouble and getting away from his parents. Sharing a room with a younger, asthmatic brother was a bucket of fun during hay fever season. But not when getting away from home meant he’d have to go camping- as in overnight for two nights- with:
Kirihara
Sanada
And
Marui.
“Is it, like, training camp, buchou?” Kirihara asked.
Yukimura looked at Sanada, who ducked his head and looked away. Still a bit red in the cheeks from where everyone had slapped him last week. Niou’s hand hurt, sure, and maybe he’d bruised his thumb in the process, but smacking Sanada hard enough to make their vice-captain stagger backwards? Yeah, it was worth the pain.
“Something like that,” Yukimura said. “We have to do some appeasing.”
Yagyuu mouthed the word and Niou just raised an eyebrow at him.
“What,” Marui said, “like go on a pilgrimage to some shrine to the God of Tennis? Do some clapping and splash some statues so we win the Nationals after Sanada’s big-”
All at once, Niou, Jackal and Yagyuu clapped a hand over Marui’s mouth to stop him. Jackal forced a laugh and Niou and Yagyuu joined in. Niou’s face ached from faking such a big grin.
Yukimura’s eye twitched and the pamphlet he held crumpled to the ground. Sanada was about to explode- his face contorted like he was constipated, his hand balled into a fist. Kirihara inched back away from him, bumping into Yanagi who looked a bit flustered himself.
They didn’t speak about that incident, namely Sanada’s Big Oops at the Kantou Regional Finals. At least in front of Sanada. Sure, the doubles teams laughed at him behind his back during practices and when they all went out for snacks at the Starbucks near Chinatown in Yokohama, but…
Thou shalt not speak of defeat in front of Yukimura or Sanada!
For spite, Niou dug his fingernails into Marui’s chin just a bit harder than he needed to. Marui wriggled and struggled and made so much noise that all three of them had to let go before a teacher came inside suspecting hazing.
(Like that time last year…with the swirlies and Marui and Niou hadn’t meant to give Kirihara a concussion, but the kid just wouldn’t hold still!)
Once Yukimura’s eye stopped twitching- maybe it was a side-effect of the operation, Niou sometimes wondered, or possibly the side-effect of losing to Seigaku- and Yanagi uncrumpled the pamphlet for him, Yukimura took a deep breath.
“On Friday, we’re meeting at the school parking lot at 6am.”
Yanagi and Kirihara dutifully handed out permission forms. Niou looked down at his. Where the signature of the tennis club coach should have been was an odd-looking scrawl that didn’t say Yamaguchi so much as Yamanaka. Which made no sense. Niou narrowed his eyes: someone had been forging signatures.
He could have done a lot better job, if Yukimura had only asked.
Yukimura went on, shouting over Marui’s complaining about how no one on the team respected him and his genius! “We’re going on a-”
“-CAMPING TRIP!” Kirihara shrieked. He bounced off a locker door, jumped off the bench with one foot and started to wiggle and flail his arms. “I LOVE camping, senpais! Don’t you guys?”
Kirihara beamed.
Sanada slapped his forehead.
Jackal groaned. So did Yagyuu.
Niou just shifted his eyes. There was no way this could be a good thing. Especially when the first item on the kit list was:
Gatorade.
Niou happened to hate the stuff.
☆ ☆ ☆
Okay, maybe the idea of camping with his teammates, in theory, wasn’t so awful. And even though “no fireworks” was bolded on the list, Niou stuffed three packages into his duffel bag anyway. Yukimura and Sanada wouldn’t know the difference, not if they were the ones who invited Kirihara along.
There would be matches.
And Kirihara.
Niou gulped.
But he added a fourth package of sparkles into his bag anyway.
☆ ☆ ☆
Yagyuu spread his list out across his desk. Methodically, he’d gathered up every item listed (and an additional pair of underwear, because wearing one pair for three days could get a bit smelly if they were traipsing around through the mountains) and proceeded to cross them off as he crammed them into his bag.
There was only problem that he could see with Yukimura’s plan, besides this entire trip. In August. During the rainy season.
No one had said anything about food.
Being pragmatic (Yagyuu figured he was at least as sensible as Yanagi, most of the time), Yagyuu assumed that Marui would be in charge of the food.
“Mmmm, Hiroshi, don’t you love this cream cake? I’d eat an entire cake for supper if I could…”
Yagyuu shook his head. There was no way in hell he’d be eating cake for supper for two days straight. For one thing, if he got the shits in the middle of the camping trip it would mean:
a) he’d be sitting in an outhouse in the middle of the summer. And everyone (especially Yagyuu) knows that outhouses in summer stink like…well, shit!
b) the possibility of sex…would be unpleasant
Yagyuu was, after all, almost fifteen and, being a teenager, a good number of his thoughts tended to involve sex. Or at least making out. But making out in the naked sense of making out. Sex was a bonus.
Yosh, he thought, this time we’ll do it right!
It made Yagyuu cringe at the memory and clench his ass. There would be no accidents in the middle of the camping trip. There would be no cake-eating for supper. It would all go well.
His phone buzzed across the room. Yagyuu kicked over a pile of rain gear and one blue tarp (size medium) in order to get to it.
Message from Niou.
His heart swelled. And so did his dick. Yagyuu smiled to himself and opened to message.
got condoms. plz bring booze bcuz we have 0 here
also bring xtra pillow sankyu
&hearts
Yagyuu frowned. Part of him- the Niou part- was smirking at the booze and condoms. After all, they’d need condoms (always be prepared!) and booze…well, booze was good. For them. Booze made Kirihara throw up and Marui just got hungry when he was drunk. Yagyuu didn’t want to know what would happen to the three of them when alcohol was mixed in.
The Yagyuu, gentlemanly part of him, though, was shaking his head and thinking don’t steal from your parents’ alcohol stash! You. Are. Under-age. Hi-ro-shi!!
Yagyuu sighed. He typed Will do. See you tomorrow right as his door swung open. A flash of pink streaked across the room and landed with a heavy thump across his lap.
“Who’re you messaging?” his sister asked.
Yagyuu held his phone up above his head to press send. His sister swatted her arms at his head. “Are you messaging your girlfriend?” she asked, this time giggling as Yagyuu’s face burned.
“No,” he said. “Go away, Yoko.”
She flung herself onto the floor and started to kick Yagyuu’s piles of clothing that had been neatly stacked and folded and organized. The Guide to Gay Sex Yanagi lent him (stolen from a friend of Yanagi’s older sister, apparently) was right underneath his shorts and if she found it and showed their parents, then-
“Oh really?” she said. “I bet you have a girlfriend and you’re just lying, Hiroshi. I bet she-”
“Go away!” Yagyuu yelled. Her foot was dangerously close to his shorts. He shoved her backwards, trying to get her to move.
She pouted.
Then poked him in the eye, laser-beam fast.
Lasers ran in the family, it seemed.
☆ ☆ ☆
Yagyuu arrived at the parking lot second, right after Yukimura. The sun had barely risen over the zelkova trees in the east. A lone van was parked in the middle of the parking lot with a pile of junk (possibly tents, possibly tennis equipment, Yagyuu wasn’t entirely sure) beside it.
“Touch of pink eye?” Yukimura asked.
Yagyuu blinked. His right eye was still a bit weepy. And red, clearly. He cleared his throat and said, “No, sister.”
“Aa.” Yukimura nodded in sympathy. “Punching mine in the stomach usually works.”
Yagyuu nodded. And stepped away from Yukimura. Gentlemen wouldn’t punch their sisters. Not even Niou would punch a girl.
The two bottles of plum wine packed into his backpack suddenly seemed a lot more like another brilliant idea of Niou’s.
☆ ☆ ☆
Marui showed up with a mega-sized box of doughnuts. He passed the box around the van. Right when Yagyuu went to pass it to Niou beside him, something heaved itself up over the seat and snatched the box away.
“Yeah, none for you,” Marui said.
Niou narrowed his eyes. His stomach growled. The chocolate-covered doughnut in Yagyuu’s hands, flaking icing onto his lap, looked tasty.
At least he had the bento his mom packed. A fat prawn and bean-filled mochi and gyoza (pork, Niou’s favourite) and a few bags of contraband chips, as well as a pastry he had picked up from Familymart on his way to the bus stop. Niou wouldn’t starve, but he sure as hell swiped the piece of doughnut Yagyuu offered him once the van rolled onto the expressway.
“Mmm, so good, Marui-senpai!” Kirihara moaned in the back of the van. “Can I have another? You’re the best senpai ever!”
“Matcha?” Marui asked. “Or sour-cream glazed?”
Niou sniffed. Marui might be munching now, but he’d sure be huffing and puffing up the mountain later this morning. Niou had checked the pamphlet Yanagi gave him. He’d even checked his father’s travel books: the mountain they were going to camp beside was big.
With the rain having started too, Niou figured that they could very well be the only ones camping there. He pressed his face to the window and watched the world splash by. Hiking in the rain to find some stupid tennis shrine just because Sanada (and Yanagi and Kirihara, too, but Sanada was more fun to blame) couldn’t win his regional finals game was not exactly Niou’s idea of fun.
Puri.
He poked Yagyuu in the side. Yagyuu’s leg was warm and pressed against his, their leg hairs static in the air-conditioned vehicle. “You bring the stuff?” he whispered.
Yagyuu pointed to his backpack.
“How many bottles?” Niou mouthed. Sanada happened to be glaring from the back of the bus. Jackal nicely offered to let Sanada sit beside Kirihara for the drive. Kirihara who had a tendency to punch his fists in every direction as he played his gameboy with a childish enthusiasm that made Niou feel a bit wistful.
Yagyuu shifted his eyes. He used three fingers to push up his glasses.
Niou leaned back in his seat. Excellent, as Jackal would say.
It rained the entire drive. Up mountains, the van swerved. Down valleys, they plowed through puddles. A/C blasted frigid air through the van, cold enough to make Niou shiver and snuggle closer to Yagyuu. Yagyuu radiated heat and even though he wriggled and tried to make motions that, oh by the way Niou-kun, everyone might be able to see us, Niou was too cold to care.
Besides, Marui and Jackal were curled up together in adjacent seats, nary a box of cookies between them. Nobody cared about that. Yukimura was zonked out in a seat by himself and Yanagi spent the drive scribbling notes to himself, humming and hawing over something Niou wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know about.
Training practice, possibly.
Team prayer chants for the shrine?
Possible rescue plans in case someone got attacked by a bear?
Niou dug his hands deeper into Yagyuu’s side, right into the squishy part under his ribs. Yagyuu grunted. Pretending to be a bear at night could be funny, Niou thought.
The rain splattered the roof of the van. Kirihara kept flailing. Yanagi kept scribbling and Jackal bobbed his head to an mp3 player filched from Marui (also sleeping by then). Sanada sat miserable and silent, stoically taking the brunt of Kirihara’s hands lest Yukimura be woken up by someone yelling at their not-so-little-anymore ace.
Signs passed for the turn off for Mitaka which Kirihara looked out at, longingly. “Can’t we go to the animation museum?” he moaned.
Sanada said no.
“Pleeeeease?” Kirihara whined. “This is boring! Are we there yet?”
“No!” Sanada and Yanagi said together.
Like parents, Niou thought. He snorted. The van jerked over a speed hump and Yagyuu slide closer to Niou, squishing him between the window and Yagyuu’s heavy weight. It reminded Niou of the one and only time they’d managed to get naked together. Alone together, for all of five minutes when his mom went to the post office and left them home alone a couple weeks ago.
Niou’s belly felt all warm. He wouldn’t mind all of Yagyuu heavy and naked and sweaty and warm pressed against him for even longer.
“Dibs on sharing a tent with you,” he murmured.
It could have been thirty-five outside or it could have been five, but the steam rising out of the forests they weaved in and out of suggested the former. Furry evergreens covered the mountains higher up, with thick bamboo forests in the valleys. There were signs to shrines and temples and pilgrimage routes everywhere and even a cable car above the treetops in the distance at one point, but the van still kept on trucking along through the rain, now intermittent as the forests got denser and the rice paddies lining the roads fewer.
“Are we there yet?” Kirihara asked. Again. After the fifth time, Niou lost count. It was too early in the morning to keep track of things like this. That was what Yanagi was for.
Sanada’s eye twitched. Somewhere along the ride he’d lost his cap due to either a bump in the road (which they drove over more and more as the road got crappy and cracked and pitted with potholes deeper into the mountains) or Yanagi stole it to amuse himself.
“Are we?” Niou asked Yagyuu, just to mock Kirihara.
Yagyuu sighed. “Soon I hope.” He toyed with something on his lap.
Sanada’s hat, of course.
Then Yagyuu leaned over Niou- nice and close enough for Niou to smell Yagyuu’s deodorant and shampoo and oh! Was that cologne, just for him?- and peered out the window. “I imagine we’re in Saitama by now.”
A sign flew by the van. Niou whipped his head around and up off Yagyuu’s shoulder to read Now leaving Saitama Prefecture: Thank you for visiting!
“I’d say we’re probably out of Saitama,” Niou said.
Another half-hour could have been an hour, or three, it was hard to tell with the sun hiding behind heavy clouds when the sky itself wasn’t hidden by the forest canopies. Just as Kirihara was complaining again and Marui woke up (empty stomach), the light changed. The rain stopped sluicing down the windows; now it was more like a drizzle and the sun peeked out from a black cloud, streaming light into the back of the van.
Sanada’s face looked a bit green in the yellow-tinted light. And then it hit Niou that the real reason Sanada was so miserable-looking this morning was that…
“You get carsick, don’t you, Sanada?” Niou asked, rather loud and obnoxious enough for Yukimura’s ears to twitch.
Sanada’s eyes bugged out and his throat bobbed just as the van jumped over another pothole. Kirihara tried to crawl back into the other side of the seat. Jackal was nice enough to hand Sanada the empty doughnut box. Just in case.
Niou snickered.
“Time to draw straws,” Yanagi announced. The van plowed on down the road, swinging around another bend. Sanada was a shade greener than nori.
“What for?” Yagyuu asked.
Niou shrugged.
Yanagi held a handful of bendy straws. Niou picked the blue, of course. It was short.
So was Yagyuu’s green.
And Marui’s red.
And Jackal’s yellow.
That left two: Sanada and Kirihara. And Yanagi, too, but Niou knew that their data master would use the excuse that since he was the straw judge, he would be exempt.
Sanada started to dry heave when the van flew off a bump on a gravel road. It was too damp outside to open a window and let the A/C escape, but if Sanada ended up barfing, there was no way Niou was going to sit here and smell it. He peeled himself off Yagyuu and readied his hand on the window latch.
Kirihara picked the long straw. “Do I win a prize?” he asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Yanagi said. Never a good thing, his prizes.
Kirihara looked about as green as Sanada when Yanagi told him what task he’d won. Tentatively, he crept up the van, leaning over Marui’s seat. His hand hovered on Yukimura’s shoulder.
“Go go A-ka-ya!” Niou said, toddlerfisting.
Jackal started to chant along with him. Soon, everyone else joined in. Kirihara was doomed. But at least it wasn’t Niou.
Kirihara took a deep breath. He drew his index finger back. A curtain of silence fell. Even Sanada stopped clutching the box so tightly in order to watch.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Kirihara made his move.
And at the same time, Yukimura flew upright and blinked.
A collective sigh passed through the team. Kirihara slithered back down into his seat and wiped his brow.
“Are we almost there?” Yukimura asked. He yawned and stretched his arms high enough to touch the van roof. “Why didn’t someone wake me up sooner? We’re almost there!”
Someone made a noise. Seven heads looked back to see Sanada, with the box to his face. Yukimura scowled.
“Oh put that down, Sanada! How the hell do you expect to survive our training weekend if a little car ride makes you sick? Where’s your stomach of steel?”
“Training weekend?” Niou mouthed, holding his hand over his face so Yukimura couldn’t see.
Yagyuu’s brow scrunched up and his glasses slid down his nose a bit. He was frowning. Hard.
Obviously thinking exactly the same thing Niou was:
Not, I thought it was a pilgrimage camping trip…
But instead, when are we gonna have time to do it?
☆ ☆ ☆
Yagyuu was a boy of the suburbs, through and through.
In theory, he could probably camp.
In practice, as soon as the van rolled into a parking lot in the middle of a forest, he was lost. Physically and metaphorically. Yanagi had the GPS and despite politely asking, “Yanagi-kun, could you…” Yanagi never actually let Yagyuu borrow it to make sure they weren’t in, say, the Kansai region.
The driver stood on the wet pavement with a cigarette dangling from his lips as Yukimura made Jackal and Sanada unload the bags. Kirihara offered to help, but after he tossed a bag onto the ground that made a definite smashing noise from inside, nobody wanted to let him continue.
The alcohol was safe in Yagyuu’s backpack. That was what mattered.
Condoms, of course, couldn’t break like that. And they were in Niou’s bags somewhere anyway. Nice and safe, too. Yagyuu sighed with relief.
They stood around in the drizzling rain, staring at the bags of luggage and what appeared to be nylon tents. Yagyuu’s glasses were steaming over and splattered with water; there was no point in cleaning them if they were just going to get wetter. He wore his favourite waterproof jacket, but it only made him sweat inside the shell even more. He probably stunk by now, although somehow he doubted if Niou minded.
The van drove off.
And they were alone.
Yukimura nodded to Sanada. “Take my bags, Sanada.” Then, to Kirihara, he nodded again. “Take the tents, Akaya. Jackal, you and Marui grab the-”
“Cooler, yep,” Marui said, saluting Yukimura with one hand and grabbing a handle of the cooler with another. Knowing that all they had packed into it was cans of fanta, a carton of milk tea and Yukimura’s medicine, Yagyuu was grateful he’d been intelligent enough to pack real food.
Yukimura led them, procession-like, past the wooden sign on the far end of the empty lot. The painted trails on the sign were faded and chipped and weren’t exactly clear, since the trail branched off almost immediately. Choice: follow the nicely paved right pathway into the bamboo brush chirping with birds, or, follow the left pathway into dense and overgrown forest that seemed to be more thorny shrubberies and vines and possibly bug- and snake- and god-knows-what-infested?
Yukimura turned left, naturally.
Yagyuu swatted at his first mosquito. Sanada, puffing like a packhorse at the back of the group, didn’t have any free hands to swat bugs, not when he was carrying Yukimura’s suitcase, duffelbag, his own bag and something that rattled and jangled and sounded like enough cooking pots for an army.
“So is this like a national campground, or something?” Marui asked. He and Jackal jockeyed the cooler between themselves, each with a hand on one end. The hills were getting steeper and the slope was slippery with mud. Yagyuu clung to tree branches and climbed the roots as best he could. Niou held onto Yagyuu’s backpack, and seemed hellbent on dragging them both backwards into a ravine.
Yukimura kept climbing. For someone who just had surgery a week ago, he was awfully spry- sprinting up the crumbling hills in races against Kirihara, telling them all to get their lazy asses in gear, scoffing at Yanagi’s attempts to read the map.
“Where’s all the tennis nets?” Kirihara asked, partway up another hill. It was a constant pattern of struggling up hills and then sliding down them. Marui and Jackal had dropped the cooler entirely and took turns pushing it through the muck. Yagyuu’s shoes were wet, squelching as he tramped along. Niou was sweating up a storm, red in the face and shaking his hair off like a dog.
“What nets?” Yukimura called from the top of the hill. He stood on top of a boulder, hand over his eyes and peering off into the distance. If it wasn’t for the trampled bushes Yukimura’s footsteps in the mud, Yagyuu wouldn’t have known they were following a path at all.
“We don’t need to practice tennis!” Yukimura told them as they ascended the hill and stopped by the rock, gasping for air too hard to even bother swatting at the bugs. “We need to practice our endurance! And we need-”
The last bit Yukimura saved right for when Sanada heaved himself up another set of tangled tree roots and finally collapsed beside Yanagi.
“-we need to do some serious appeasing to whatever god Sanada fucked over at the regionals. Ne, Sanada?”
Yukimura smiled sweetly. Dangerously.
Sanada gasped for breath. He was so flushed from carrying the bags that Yagyuu couldn’t tell if he was blushing or not. Judging from Niou’s snickers, he might have been.
“Besides,” Yukimura went on, “Seigaku went on a camping training trip. And anything they can do, Rikkai can do better.”
“Right-o, buchou!” Kirihara agreed. He yelped when Sanada boxed him on the ear. Yukimura didn’t seem to notice.
“What about those Shitenhoji guys?” Jackal asked. “I heard they went on something like this too. A cruise or something.”
“Who cares about them?” Yukimura said, snorting. A fat blackfly buzzed beside Niou, who waved the bug over to Yagyuu. Yagyuu ducked his head out of the way, just in time to be bumped into by Yukimura, who had started off into the forest again as though it was his own backyard and not some forest armpit of Gunma or Nagano.
“I’m bored,” Kirihara whined. “Are we almost there yet?” He stomped past Yagyuu and got mud splashes all over Yagyuu’s legs. Dirty sludge dribbled down his shins. Yagyuu frowned.
“I’m hungry!” Marui said. “It’s practically lunch time!” He pushed the cooler up the edge of the trail and over a bush. The bush snapped backwards, flinging water all over Yagyuu’s face. Yagyuu spat it off his lips and wiped his chin.
“I’m wet,” Niou said. He turned around to flash Yagyuu a toothy grin over his shoulder.
“Don’t be rude,” Yagyuu muttered. The forest seemed hotter than ever. His jacket was glued to his torso and Niou tugged on his backpack. Again.
“Not like that!” Niou said under his breath. “Jeez, Yagyuu, get your mind out of the gutter!”
Yagyuu didn’t think his face could burn any hotter than when Niou plodded ahead of him, bounced off a tree and winked at him.
Yagyuu smacked his forehead and shook his head.
“Whatcha talking about, senpais?” Kirihara asked. He wiggled his way between Niou and Yagyuu, smacking Yagyuu in the arm with a tent pole in the process. Yagyuu winced. Kirihara swung around the other way, whacking Yagyuu in his other arm.
“Ow,” he muttered.
“Nothin’, kid,” Niou said. Somehow, his little chuckle wasn’t all that reassuring. Yagyuu cleared his throat. Niou chortled even louder. Yagyuu coughed. Niou sniffed and wiped his forehead with a cloth from his pocket.
“You guys are always secretive,” Kirihara said. “I was just asking was all.”
“One day,” Niou said, clapping a hand down on Kirihara’s shoulder. Or up on it, since Kirihara was almost his height now, “you will understand, young kouhai. Until then you can remain with Marui in the happy world of ignorance.”
“OI!” Marui yelled. He started to say something else when Yukimura held his hand up.
They all fell silent.
Yukimura walked off the pathway, straight into a shrubbery. And then some tall bamboo canes. He pushed aside bushes and vines, crunching wet leaves and branches under his shoes. They all followed him, panting and puffing, although Sanada was the worst. But he didn’t complain, not once.
Not until Yukimura stopped entirely in the middle of the clearing and sighed happily. “We’re here!”
“Where’s the bathroom?” Sanada snapped. After having a blessed quiet-Sanada-morning, hearing his voice made Yagyuu twitch. “I- Yukimura- we are not going in the bushes. It would be-”
“Gross, I’m not stupid,” Yukimura said. He rolled his eyes and nodded behind himself. Sure enough, in the middle of the forest just over towards the crest of an adjacent little hill was a solitary building shaped like a temple of sorts.
“I hate squat toilets,” Kirihara said.
“Me too,” Sanada said.
Seven sets of eyes blinked in tandem, then stared at him. Sanada sucked in a breath and puffed up his chest before he ground out, “They’re…uncomfortable.”
“I brought extra-soft toilet paper,” Yukimura said. Sanada dumped the bags on the ground at his feet and Yukimura walked over, smiling slightly, and pointed to his teal backpack. “And I’ll share with you, Sanada.”
Too bad Sanada wasn’t wearing his cap, because Yagyuu figured he should cover up the fresh sweat beading along his forehead. Sanada had never been one to hide his emotions very well. Even Kirihara, obtuse about an awful lot of things, was whispering something to Marui and sniggering behind his hand.
Before Niou could say anything, Yanagi stepped up beside Yukimura. He was sweating like a pig, too, only he dealt with it better. It could be pooling in the corners of his eyes, but damned if he would squeeze them shut.
Yagyuu was impressed.
“Tent assignments,” Yanagi said, holding up a piece of paper. “We need to have maximum number of hours of sleep for…”
Yanagi could have been saying blah blah blah and Yagyuu wouldn’t have noticed. Noticed anything except for the waggle of Niou’s eyebrows and the glitter in his eye.
He must have bribed Yanagi. Sometime on the trail, maybe, since there was a crossed off name between Yagyuu’s and Niou’s.
For a split second, Yagyuu smirked back.
☆ ☆ ☆
Niou was a man of numbers, but he took instruction from no one.
Let alone Sanada.
If Sanada was going to hog the “How to Put Up a Tent” instructions, then damned if Niou was going to read them.
He looked at his final product. Sure the tent sagged to the back and a pole stuck out into a tree trunk. Sure the tent was erected- Niou snickered- where the ground sloped and there were lumpy roots underneath the bottom. Sure half the reason the damned thing was standing was because Yagyuu suggested they have it “rest” (Niou’s father would use the term “structurally supported”) between several bamboo canes.
BUT
They’d done it all themselves. Absolutely no help from Sanada or the instructions or anyone else. Two boys from the Yokohama ‘burbs who’d had a combined camping experience of zero.
Niou patted Yagyuu on the shoulder, pleased as punch with their results. “Good job, Yagyuu.”
“As long as it doesn’t fall down when we’re asleep,” Yagyuu said.
“Who said anything about sleeping?” Niou whispered. Yagyuu’s cheeks suddenly spotted with pink, the same way he’d blush when they peeled each other’s shirts off before and looked each other in the eye right before they-
“-are you two done yet?” Yukimura asked. “The rest of us finished a half hour ago!”
Niou looked away from Yagyuu and their tent- thoughtfully erected off from everyone else’s since, Niou knew well enough, Yagyuu was a bit of a prude when it came to…things…and well, he had to agree. Three other tents were pitched near a semi-flat semi-cleared surface where you could almost see the trail again.
In the middle of the three tents, Sanada and Marui rolled stones around and seemed to be forming a circle with them.
Fire pit? Niou thought. Sacrificial altar?
Kirihara helped, too. If throwing stones at squirrels counted as help, that was.
Seeing the three tents, though, all set up perfectly with no poles sticking out and no bamboo stalks holding them and no sloping platforms only made Niou narrow his eyes.
Yagyuu touched his elbow. “I think you did a fine job,” Yagyuu said. His voice didn’t hide the waver that Niou knew wanted to become a full-blown laugh. Puri!
He ignored Yagyuu. And Yanagi’s self-righteous little smile, too. And Jackal who at least had the decency to laugh out loud and say “It’s not going to blow over in the rain?”
Just to spite Jackal, the trees rustled and another dump of rain started. Niou pulled out his umbrella, holding it down low enough over his head so that no one else could fit under it. Not even Yagyuu.
“So, Yukimura,” he shouted into the tent where Yukimura had ducked inside. “When are we going to this temple-thing?”
Marui dove inside the same tent a beat after. Despite the roar of the rain pelting down through the trees, Niou could hear the distinct sound of candy wrappers crinkling.
Standing in the rain rather like a six-foot-tall drowned rat, Sanada scowled. Yanagi handed him his hat from under his own umbrella, squarely setting it on top of Sanada’s soaked hair. Then, he stepped back.
And Sanada yelled, “Marui! NO food in the TENTS!”
Marui’s face peeked out of the tent flap, his cheeks stuffed and lumpy with candy. He chewed a couple times, then swallowed the lot in one gulp.
“You’ll attract ANIMALS!” Sanada bellowed.
A grocery bag flew out of the tent, right to Sanada’s feet. Then Marui rolled his eyes and followed Yukimura out. “All right, all right. I was just hungry for lunch,” he grumbled. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, Sanada…”
By the time they finished getting out umbrellas, Niou was starving too. They huddled around the fire pit which, incidentally, was more of a puddle in the ground than a fire pit. And seeing as there was no dry wood lying around in the forest, Niou didn’t exactly see quite how they were going to cook any food. If anyone had brought any food. The only thing Niou had was the rest of the bento he didn’t eat on the bus.
“There was,” Sanada grumbled, “a pile of wood by the bathrooms.”
Niou stopped poking his twig into the wet ground. He looked up. Everyone looked at Sanada.
“Except it was 500 yen a bundle,” Sanada said.
Yukimura shifted his eyes. He grabbed Niou and Marui by the neck and leaned closer. The huddle tightened: too many sweaty, wet boys in too close proximity. No wonder Yanagi made a gagging noise.
“But no one else is around,” Yukimura said. Thunder rumbled around them, but no flash of lightning accompanied it. “Besides,” Yukimura added, “I’m getting tired of listening to Bunta’s stomach.”
“Yeah!” Marui agreed.
“Yeah!” Kirihara echoed.
Niou just shrugged. Holding his breath was hard, but at least Yagyuu on his one side. Yagyuu who might have smelled a bit ripe, but Niou didn’t mind his sweat. Much. “I volunteer Yagyuu and I go get it.”
“You don’t want to start the fire?” Yukimura asked.
Fire.
Time alone with Yagyuu.
Fire.
Yagyuu.
Yagyuu crouched on his left and, even though he was dressed head-to-toe in a plastic rain suit, Niou could see the pants had bunched up around Yagyuu’s crotch. Yagyuu was definitely hard. So was Niou.
Niou angsted. Yagyuu looked at him hopefully through the little breathing hole around his face. Yukimura waggled his eyebrows and nodded to the fire pit, which Kirihara was rubbing his hands together over already.
“We need to have wood,” Niou said.
Yagyuu cleared his throat. “Niou-kun!”
“I don’t get it,” Kirihara said.
“Me neither,” Sanada mumbled.
No one seemed to notice so Yukimura sent them off. Niou sauntered, as best he could with his erection, through the wet brush. Maybe his umbrella kept the rain off, but his legs were soaked and he didn’t think he remembered to pack any extra socks. Yagyuu stomped and plodded in his rain suit and rubber boots. He looked like he was dressed in a cross between army gear and a space suit, but if he was dry, Niou was jealous.
The bathrooms weren’t actually quite as glorious as they looked from the campsite. Up close, they stunk like shit. Shit simmering in the humid summer heat. Flies buzzed everywhere. The cement floor was a shade of stained puce. From what Niou could see inside as they walked around to the back, the urinals were…caked with…Niou didn’t want to know what, but he doubted it was piss.
It was a good thing Yagyuu couldn’t see inside, not with his glasses entirely fogged over, otherwise he’d pitch a fit about it being unsanitary.
When the campsite was blocked by the building, Niou grabbed Yagyuu’s hand to stop him from tripping over the cement steps. It was a hot, sweaty grip. Yagyuu grunted.
“We have to get wood,” Yagyuu said.
“We will.”
Niou pushed him up against a wooden divider wall. It creaked; flakes of paint rained onto the wet ground. For now, the rain had slacked off. Niou ignored the box of wood with the sign “500 yen” on top and instead started to untie Yagyuu’s hood.
“Stop!” Yagyuu said. But his hands squeezed Niou’s shoulders and he pulled himself closer. “Niou-kun, this isn’t getting wood-”
Niou reached between their bodies. Through all the wet plastic of Yagyuu’s suit, he managed to squeeze Yagyuu’s dick. Yagyuu gasped and jerked back against the wall. “That is,” Niou whispered into Yagyuu’s ear.
He pushed the hood down and squeezed his hand harder. Yagyuu wiggled and moaned. His eyelashes fluttered. His suit was slippery and made things hard for Niou to do much more than cup his dick and rub his own shorts against Yagyuu’s thigh.
Their kiss was sloppy and tasted of the salt Yagyuu licked off his lips. There was doughnut somewhere, too, in his mouth making things sweet when Niou ran his tongue over Yagyuu’s. The vibrating groans in their mouths send shivers all the way down to Niou’s toes. For a moment, he could forget about the heat and rain sticking to their bodies.
Until Yagyuu pushed him away.
And wiped off his mouth. He adjusted his glasses, but left his hood flung back from his face. A faint pink blush spread across his cheeks, something which made Niou want him even more.
Yagyuu opened the box of wood. “Should we bring two bundles or three?”
Author: Ociwen
Wordcount: 19000
Pairing/Characters: Rikkai ensemble + D1
Rating: NC17
Warnings: Potential poor taste in humour.
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: A fractured fairytale about the perils of camping with one’s teammates before the Nationals…
Author's Notes: Written for 0rien in rikkai_exchange. Thank you to my friends for feedback and advice.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
Niou knew it was a bad idea from the start. As soon as Yukimura stomped into the clubhouse and tacked up a flier (printed on garish yellow paper) to the bulletin board, he knew. As soon as Yukimura stood in the middle of the locker room and said, “We need to go on a trip” Niou knew.
Normally, he would be up for getting into trouble and getting away from his parents. Sharing a room with a younger, asthmatic brother was a bucket of fun during hay fever season. But not when getting away from home meant he’d have to go camping- as in overnight for two nights- with:
Kirihara
Sanada
And
Marui.
“Is it, like, training camp, buchou?” Kirihara asked.
Yukimura looked at Sanada, who ducked his head and looked away. Still a bit red in the cheeks from where everyone had slapped him last week. Niou’s hand hurt, sure, and maybe he’d bruised his thumb in the process, but smacking Sanada hard enough to make their vice-captain stagger backwards? Yeah, it was worth the pain.
“Something like that,” Yukimura said. “We have to do some appeasing.”
Yagyuu mouthed the word and Niou just raised an eyebrow at him.
“What,” Marui said, “like go on a pilgrimage to some shrine to the God of Tennis? Do some clapping and splash some statues so we win the Nationals after Sanada’s big-”
All at once, Niou, Jackal and Yagyuu clapped a hand over Marui’s mouth to stop him. Jackal forced a laugh and Niou and Yagyuu joined in. Niou’s face ached from faking such a big grin.
Yukimura’s eye twitched and the pamphlet he held crumpled to the ground. Sanada was about to explode- his face contorted like he was constipated, his hand balled into a fist. Kirihara inched back away from him, bumping into Yanagi who looked a bit flustered himself.
They didn’t speak about that incident, namely Sanada’s Big Oops at the Kantou Regional Finals. At least in front of Sanada. Sure, the doubles teams laughed at him behind his back during practices and when they all went out for snacks at the Starbucks near Chinatown in Yokohama, but…
Thou shalt not speak of defeat in front of Yukimura or Sanada!
For spite, Niou dug his fingernails into Marui’s chin just a bit harder than he needed to. Marui wriggled and struggled and made so much noise that all three of them had to let go before a teacher came inside suspecting hazing.
(Like that time last year…with the swirlies and Marui and Niou hadn’t meant to give Kirihara a concussion, but the kid just wouldn’t hold still!)
Once Yukimura’s eye stopped twitching- maybe it was a side-effect of the operation, Niou sometimes wondered, or possibly the side-effect of losing to Seigaku- and Yanagi uncrumpled the pamphlet for him, Yukimura took a deep breath.
“On Friday, we’re meeting at the school parking lot at 6am.”
Yanagi and Kirihara dutifully handed out permission forms. Niou looked down at his. Where the signature of the tennis club coach should have been was an odd-looking scrawl that didn’t say Yamaguchi so much as Yamanaka. Which made no sense. Niou narrowed his eyes: someone had been forging signatures.
He could have done a lot better job, if Yukimura had only asked.
Yukimura went on, shouting over Marui’s complaining about how no one on the team respected him and his genius! “We’re going on a-”
“-CAMPING TRIP!” Kirihara shrieked. He bounced off a locker door, jumped off the bench with one foot and started to wiggle and flail his arms. “I LOVE camping, senpais! Don’t you guys?”
Kirihara beamed.
Sanada slapped his forehead.
Jackal groaned. So did Yagyuu.
Niou just shifted his eyes. There was no way this could be a good thing. Especially when the first item on the kit list was:
Gatorade.
Niou happened to hate the stuff.
☆ ☆ ☆
Okay, maybe the idea of camping with his teammates, in theory, wasn’t so awful. And even though “no fireworks” was bolded on the list, Niou stuffed three packages into his duffel bag anyway. Yukimura and Sanada wouldn’t know the difference, not if they were the ones who invited Kirihara along.
There would be matches.
And Kirihara.
Niou gulped.
But he added a fourth package of sparkles into his bag anyway.
☆ ☆ ☆
Yagyuu spread his list out across his desk. Methodically, he’d gathered up every item listed (and an additional pair of underwear, because wearing one pair for three days could get a bit smelly if they were traipsing around through the mountains) and proceeded to cross them off as he crammed them into his bag.
There was only problem that he could see with Yukimura’s plan, besides this entire trip. In August. During the rainy season.
No one had said anything about food.
Being pragmatic (Yagyuu figured he was at least as sensible as Yanagi, most of the time), Yagyuu assumed that Marui would be in charge of the food.
“Mmmm, Hiroshi, don’t you love this cream cake? I’d eat an entire cake for supper if I could…”
Yagyuu shook his head. There was no way in hell he’d be eating cake for supper for two days straight. For one thing, if he got the shits in the middle of the camping trip it would mean:
a) he’d be sitting in an outhouse in the middle of the summer. And everyone (especially Yagyuu) knows that outhouses in summer stink like…well, shit!
b) the possibility of sex…would be unpleasant
Yagyuu was, after all, almost fifteen and, being a teenager, a good number of his thoughts tended to involve sex. Or at least making out. But making out in the naked sense of making out. Sex was a bonus.
Yosh, he thought, this time we’ll do it right!
It made Yagyuu cringe at the memory and clench his ass. There would be no accidents in the middle of the camping trip. There would be no cake-eating for supper. It would all go well.
His phone buzzed across the room. Yagyuu kicked over a pile of rain gear and one blue tarp (size medium) in order to get to it.
Message from Niou.
His heart swelled. And so did his dick. Yagyuu smiled to himself and opened to message.
got condoms. plz bring booze bcuz we have 0 here
also bring xtra pillow sankyu
&hearts
Yagyuu frowned. Part of him- the Niou part- was smirking at the booze and condoms. After all, they’d need condoms (always be prepared!) and booze…well, booze was good. For them. Booze made Kirihara throw up and Marui just got hungry when he was drunk. Yagyuu didn’t want to know what would happen to the three of them when alcohol was mixed in.
The Yagyuu, gentlemanly part of him, though, was shaking his head and thinking don’t steal from your parents’ alcohol stash! You. Are. Under-age. Hi-ro-shi!!
Yagyuu sighed. He typed Will do. See you tomorrow right as his door swung open. A flash of pink streaked across the room and landed with a heavy thump across his lap.
“Who’re you messaging?” his sister asked.
Yagyuu held his phone up above his head to press send. His sister swatted her arms at his head. “Are you messaging your girlfriend?” she asked, this time giggling as Yagyuu’s face burned.
“No,” he said. “Go away, Yoko.”
She flung herself onto the floor and started to kick Yagyuu’s piles of clothing that had been neatly stacked and folded and organized. The Guide to Gay Sex Yanagi lent him (stolen from a friend of Yanagi’s older sister, apparently) was right underneath his shorts and if she found it and showed their parents, then-
“Oh really?” she said. “I bet you have a girlfriend and you’re just lying, Hiroshi. I bet she-”
“Go away!” Yagyuu yelled. Her foot was dangerously close to his shorts. He shoved her backwards, trying to get her to move.
She pouted.
Then poked him in the eye, laser-beam fast.
Lasers ran in the family, it seemed.
☆ ☆ ☆
Yagyuu arrived at the parking lot second, right after Yukimura. The sun had barely risen over the zelkova trees in the east. A lone van was parked in the middle of the parking lot with a pile of junk (possibly tents, possibly tennis equipment, Yagyuu wasn’t entirely sure) beside it.
“Touch of pink eye?” Yukimura asked.
Yagyuu blinked. His right eye was still a bit weepy. And red, clearly. He cleared his throat and said, “No, sister.”
“Aa.” Yukimura nodded in sympathy. “Punching mine in the stomach usually works.”
Yagyuu nodded. And stepped away from Yukimura. Gentlemen wouldn’t punch their sisters. Not even Niou would punch a girl.
The two bottles of plum wine packed into his backpack suddenly seemed a lot more like another brilliant idea of Niou’s.
☆ ☆ ☆
Marui showed up with a mega-sized box of doughnuts. He passed the box around the van. Right when Yagyuu went to pass it to Niou beside him, something heaved itself up over the seat and snatched the box away.
“Yeah, none for you,” Marui said.
Niou narrowed his eyes. His stomach growled. The chocolate-covered doughnut in Yagyuu’s hands, flaking icing onto his lap, looked tasty.
At least he had the bento his mom packed. A fat prawn and bean-filled mochi and gyoza (pork, Niou’s favourite) and a few bags of contraband chips, as well as a pastry he had picked up from Familymart on his way to the bus stop. Niou wouldn’t starve, but he sure as hell swiped the piece of doughnut Yagyuu offered him once the van rolled onto the expressway.
“Mmm, so good, Marui-senpai!” Kirihara moaned in the back of the van. “Can I have another? You’re the best senpai ever!”
“Matcha?” Marui asked. “Or sour-cream glazed?”
Niou sniffed. Marui might be munching now, but he’d sure be huffing and puffing up the mountain later this morning. Niou had checked the pamphlet Yanagi gave him. He’d even checked his father’s travel books: the mountain they were going to camp beside was big.
With the rain having started too, Niou figured that they could very well be the only ones camping there. He pressed his face to the window and watched the world splash by. Hiking in the rain to find some stupid tennis shrine just because Sanada (and Yanagi and Kirihara, too, but Sanada was more fun to blame) couldn’t win his regional finals game was not exactly Niou’s idea of fun.
Puri.
He poked Yagyuu in the side. Yagyuu’s leg was warm and pressed against his, their leg hairs static in the air-conditioned vehicle. “You bring the stuff?” he whispered.
Yagyuu pointed to his backpack.
“How many bottles?” Niou mouthed. Sanada happened to be glaring from the back of the bus. Jackal nicely offered to let Sanada sit beside Kirihara for the drive. Kirihara who had a tendency to punch his fists in every direction as he played his gameboy with a childish enthusiasm that made Niou feel a bit wistful.
Yagyuu shifted his eyes. He used three fingers to push up his glasses.
Niou leaned back in his seat. Excellent, as Jackal would say.
It rained the entire drive. Up mountains, the van swerved. Down valleys, they plowed through puddles. A/C blasted frigid air through the van, cold enough to make Niou shiver and snuggle closer to Yagyuu. Yagyuu radiated heat and even though he wriggled and tried to make motions that, oh by the way Niou-kun, everyone might be able to see us, Niou was too cold to care.
Besides, Marui and Jackal were curled up together in adjacent seats, nary a box of cookies between them. Nobody cared about that. Yukimura was zonked out in a seat by himself and Yanagi spent the drive scribbling notes to himself, humming and hawing over something Niou wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know about.
Training practice, possibly.
Team prayer chants for the shrine?
Possible rescue plans in case someone got attacked by a bear?
Niou dug his hands deeper into Yagyuu’s side, right into the squishy part under his ribs. Yagyuu grunted. Pretending to be a bear at night could be funny, Niou thought.
The rain splattered the roof of the van. Kirihara kept flailing. Yanagi kept scribbling and Jackal bobbed his head to an mp3 player filched from Marui (also sleeping by then). Sanada sat miserable and silent, stoically taking the brunt of Kirihara’s hands lest Yukimura be woken up by someone yelling at their not-so-little-anymore ace.
Signs passed for the turn off for Mitaka which Kirihara looked out at, longingly. “Can’t we go to the animation museum?” he moaned.
Sanada said no.
“Pleeeeease?” Kirihara whined. “This is boring! Are we there yet?”
“No!” Sanada and Yanagi said together.
Like parents, Niou thought. He snorted. The van jerked over a speed hump and Yagyuu slide closer to Niou, squishing him between the window and Yagyuu’s heavy weight. It reminded Niou of the one and only time they’d managed to get naked together. Alone together, for all of five minutes when his mom went to the post office and left them home alone a couple weeks ago.
Niou’s belly felt all warm. He wouldn’t mind all of Yagyuu heavy and naked and sweaty and warm pressed against him for even longer.
“Dibs on sharing a tent with you,” he murmured.
It could have been thirty-five outside or it could have been five, but the steam rising out of the forests they weaved in and out of suggested the former. Furry evergreens covered the mountains higher up, with thick bamboo forests in the valleys. There were signs to shrines and temples and pilgrimage routes everywhere and even a cable car above the treetops in the distance at one point, but the van still kept on trucking along through the rain, now intermittent as the forests got denser and the rice paddies lining the roads fewer.
“Are we there yet?” Kirihara asked. Again. After the fifth time, Niou lost count. It was too early in the morning to keep track of things like this. That was what Yanagi was for.
Sanada’s eye twitched. Somewhere along the ride he’d lost his cap due to either a bump in the road (which they drove over more and more as the road got crappy and cracked and pitted with potholes deeper into the mountains) or Yanagi stole it to amuse himself.
“Are we?” Niou asked Yagyuu, just to mock Kirihara.
Yagyuu sighed. “Soon I hope.” He toyed with something on his lap.
Sanada’s hat, of course.
Then Yagyuu leaned over Niou- nice and close enough for Niou to smell Yagyuu’s deodorant and shampoo and oh! Was that cologne, just for him?- and peered out the window. “I imagine we’re in Saitama by now.”
A sign flew by the van. Niou whipped his head around and up off Yagyuu’s shoulder to read Now leaving Saitama Prefecture: Thank you for visiting!
“I’d say we’re probably out of Saitama,” Niou said.
Another half-hour could have been an hour, or three, it was hard to tell with the sun hiding behind heavy clouds when the sky itself wasn’t hidden by the forest canopies. Just as Kirihara was complaining again and Marui woke up (empty stomach), the light changed. The rain stopped sluicing down the windows; now it was more like a drizzle and the sun peeked out from a black cloud, streaming light into the back of the van.
Sanada’s face looked a bit green in the yellow-tinted light. And then it hit Niou that the real reason Sanada was so miserable-looking this morning was that…
“You get carsick, don’t you, Sanada?” Niou asked, rather loud and obnoxious enough for Yukimura’s ears to twitch.
Sanada’s eyes bugged out and his throat bobbed just as the van jumped over another pothole. Kirihara tried to crawl back into the other side of the seat. Jackal was nice enough to hand Sanada the empty doughnut box. Just in case.
Niou snickered.
“Time to draw straws,” Yanagi announced. The van plowed on down the road, swinging around another bend. Sanada was a shade greener than nori.
“What for?” Yagyuu asked.
Niou shrugged.
Yanagi held a handful of bendy straws. Niou picked the blue, of course. It was short.
So was Yagyuu’s green.
And Marui’s red.
And Jackal’s yellow.
That left two: Sanada and Kirihara. And Yanagi, too, but Niou knew that their data master would use the excuse that since he was the straw judge, he would be exempt.
Sanada started to dry heave when the van flew off a bump on a gravel road. It was too damp outside to open a window and let the A/C escape, but if Sanada ended up barfing, there was no way Niou was going to sit here and smell it. He peeled himself off Yagyuu and readied his hand on the window latch.
Kirihara picked the long straw. “Do I win a prize?” he asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Yanagi said. Never a good thing, his prizes.
Kirihara looked about as green as Sanada when Yanagi told him what task he’d won. Tentatively, he crept up the van, leaning over Marui’s seat. His hand hovered on Yukimura’s shoulder.
“Go go A-ka-ya!” Niou said, toddlerfisting.
Jackal started to chant along with him. Soon, everyone else joined in. Kirihara was doomed. But at least it wasn’t Niou.
Kirihara took a deep breath. He drew his index finger back. A curtain of silence fell. Even Sanada stopped clutching the box so tightly in order to watch.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Kirihara made his move.
And at the same time, Yukimura flew upright and blinked.
A collective sigh passed through the team. Kirihara slithered back down into his seat and wiped his brow.
“Are we almost there?” Yukimura asked. He yawned and stretched his arms high enough to touch the van roof. “Why didn’t someone wake me up sooner? We’re almost there!”
Someone made a noise. Seven heads looked back to see Sanada, with the box to his face. Yukimura scowled.
“Oh put that down, Sanada! How the hell do you expect to survive our training weekend if a little car ride makes you sick? Where’s your stomach of steel?”
“Training weekend?” Niou mouthed, holding his hand over his face so Yukimura couldn’t see.
Yagyuu’s brow scrunched up and his glasses slid down his nose a bit. He was frowning. Hard.
Obviously thinking exactly the same thing Niou was:
Not, I thought it was a pilgrimage camping trip…
But instead, when are we gonna have time to do it?
☆ ☆ ☆
Yagyuu was a boy of the suburbs, through and through.
In theory, he could probably camp.
In practice, as soon as the van rolled into a parking lot in the middle of a forest, he was lost. Physically and metaphorically. Yanagi had the GPS and despite politely asking, “Yanagi-kun, could you…” Yanagi never actually let Yagyuu borrow it to make sure they weren’t in, say, the Kansai region.
The driver stood on the wet pavement with a cigarette dangling from his lips as Yukimura made Jackal and Sanada unload the bags. Kirihara offered to help, but after he tossed a bag onto the ground that made a definite smashing noise from inside, nobody wanted to let him continue.
The alcohol was safe in Yagyuu’s backpack. That was what mattered.
Condoms, of course, couldn’t break like that. And they were in Niou’s bags somewhere anyway. Nice and safe, too. Yagyuu sighed with relief.
They stood around in the drizzling rain, staring at the bags of luggage and what appeared to be nylon tents. Yagyuu’s glasses were steaming over and splattered with water; there was no point in cleaning them if they were just going to get wetter. He wore his favourite waterproof jacket, but it only made him sweat inside the shell even more. He probably stunk by now, although somehow he doubted if Niou minded.
The van drove off.
And they were alone.
Yukimura nodded to Sanada. “Take my bags, Sanada.” Then, to Kirihara, he nodded again. “Take the tents, Akaya. Jackal, you and Marui grab the-”
“Cooler, yep,” Marui said, saluting Yukimura with one hand and grabbing a handle of the cooler with another. Knowing that all they had packed into it was cans of fanta, a carton of milk tea and Yukimura’s medicine, Yagyuu was grateful he’d been intelligent enough to pack real food.
Yukimura led them, procession-like, past the wooden sign on the far end of the empty lot. The painted trails on the sign were faded and chipped and weren’t exactly clear, since the trail branched off almost immediately. Choice: follow the nicely paved right pathway into the bamboo brush chirping with birds, or, follow the left pathway into dense and overgrown forest that seemed to be more thorny shrubberies and vines and possibly bug- and snake- and god-knows-what-infested?
Yukimura turned left, naturally.
Yagyuu swatted at his first mosquito. Sanada, puffing like a packhorse at the back of the group, didn’t have any free hands to swat bugs, not when he was carrying Yukimura’s suitcase, duffelbag, his own bag and something that rattled and jangled and sounded like enough cooking pots for an army.
“So is this like a national campground, or something?” Marui asked. He and Jackal jockeyed the cooler between themselves, each with a hand on one end. The hills were getting steeper and the slope was slippery with mud. Yagyuu clung to tree branches and climbed the roots as best he could. Niou held onto Yagyuu’s backpack, and seemed hellbent on dragging them both backwards into a ravine.
Yukimura kept climbing. For someone who just had surgery a week ago, he was awfully spry- sprinting up the crumbling hills in races against Kirihara, telling them all to get their lazy asses in gear, scoffing at Yanagi’s attempts to read the map.
“Where’s all the tennis nets?” Kirihara asked, partway up another hill. It was a constant pattern of struggling up hills and then sliding down them. Marui and Jackal had dropped the cooler entirely and took turns pushing it through the muck. Yagyuu’s shoes were wet, squelching as he tramped along. Niou was sweating up a storm, red in the face and shaking his hair off like a dog.
“What nets?” Yukimura called from the top of the hill. He stood on top of a boulder, hand over his eyes and peering off into the distance. If it wasn’t for the trampled bushes Yukimura’s footsteps in the mud, Yagyuu wouldn’t have known they were following a path at all.
“We don’t need to practice tennis!” Yukimura told them as they ascended the hill and stopped by the rock, gasping for air too hard to even bother swatting at the bugs. “We need to practice our endurance! And we need-”
The last bit Yukimura saved right for when Sanada heaved himself up another set of tangled tree roots and finally collapsed beside Yanagi.
“-we need to do some serious appeasing to whatever god Sanada fucked over at the regionals. Ne, Sanada?”
Yukimura smiled sweetly. Dangerously.
Sanada gasped for breath. He was so flushed from carrying the bags that Yagyuu couldn’t tell if he was blushing or not. Judging from Niou’s snickers, he might have been.
“Besides,” Yukimura went on, “Seigaku went on a camping training trip. And anything they can do, Rikkai can do better.”
“Right-o, buchou!” Kirihara agreed. He yelped when Sanada boxed him on the ear. Yukimura didn’t seem to notice.
“What about those Shitenhoji guys?” Jackal asked. “I heard they went on something like this too. A cruise or something.”
“Who cares about them?” Yukimura said, snorting. A fat blackfly buzzed beside Niou, who waved the bug over to Yagyuu. Yagyuu ducked his head out of the way, just in time to be bumped into by Yukimura, who had started off into the forest again as though it was his own backyard and not some forest armpit of Gunma or Nagano.
“I’m bored,” Kirihara whined. “Are we almost there yet?” He stomped past Yagyuu and got mud splashes all over Yagyuu’s legs. Dirty sludge dribbled down his shins. Yagyuu frowned.
“I’m hungry!” Marui said. “It’s practically lunch time!” He pushed the cooler up the edge of the trail and over a bush. The bush snapped backwards, flinging water all over Yagyuu’s face. Yagyuu spat it off his lips and wiped his chin.
“I’m wet,” Niou said. He turned around to flash Yagyuu a toothy grin over his shoulder.
“Don’t be rude,” Yagyuu muttered. The forest seemed hotter than ever. His jacket was glued to his torso and Niou tugged on his backpack. Again.
“Not like that!” Niou said under his breath. “Jeez, Yagyuu, get your mind out of the gutter!”
Yagyuu didn’t think his face could burn any hotter than when Niou plodded ahead of him, bounced off a tree and winked at him.
Yagyuu smacked his forehead and shook his head.
“Whatcha talking about, senpais?” Kirihara asked. He wiggled his way between Niou and Yagyuu, smacking Yagyuu in the arm with a tent pole in the process. Yagyuu winced. Kirihara swung around the other way, whacking Yagyuu in his other arm.
“Ow,” he muttered.
“Nothin’, kid,” Niou said. Somehow, his little chuckle wasn’t all that reassuring. Yagyuu cleared his throat. Niou chortled even louder. Yagyuu coughed. Niou sniffed and wiped his forehead with a cloth from his pocket.
“You guys are always secretive,” Kirihara said. “I was just asking was all.”
“One day,” Niou said, clapping a hand down on Kirihara’s shoulder. Or up on it, since Kirihara was almost his height now, “you will understand, young kouhai. Until then you can remain with Marui in the happy world of ignorance.”
“OI!” Marui yelled. He started to say something else when Yukimura held his hand up.
They all fell silent.
Yukimura walked off the pathway, straight into a shrubbery. And then some tall bamboo canes. He pushed aside bushes and vines, crunching wet leaves and branches under his shoes. They all followed him, panting and puffing, although Sanada was the worst. But he didn’t complain, not once.
Not until Yukimura stopped entirely in the middle of the clearing and sighed happily. “We’re here!”
“Where’s the bathroom?” Sanada snapped. After having a blessed quiet-Sanada-morning, hearing his voice made Yagyuu twitch. “I- Yukimura- we are not going in the bushes. It would be-”
“Gross, I’m not stupid,” Yukimura said. He rolled his eyes and nodded behind himself. Sure enough, in the middle of the forest just over towards the crest of an adjacent little hill was a solitary building shaped like a temple of sorts.
“I hate squat toilets,” Kirihara said.
“Me too,” Sanada said.
Seven sets of eyes blinked in tandem, then stared at him. Sanada sucked in a breath and puffed up his chest before he ground out, “They’re…uncomfortable.”
“I brought extra-soft toilet paper,” Yukimura said. Sanada dumped the bags on the ground at his feet and Yukimura walked over, smiling slightly, and pointed to his teal backpack. “And I’ll share with you, Sanada.”
Too bad Sanada wasn’t wearing his cap, because Yagyuu figured he should cover up the fresh sweat beading along his forehead. Sanada had never been one to hide his emotions very well. Even Kirihara, obtuse about an awful lot of things, was whispering something to Marui and sniggering behind his hand.
Before Niou could say anything, Yanagi stepped up beside Yukimura. He was sweating like a pig, too, only he dealt with it better. It could be pooling in the corners of his eyes, but damned if he would squeeze them shut.
Yagyuu was impressed.
“Tent assignments,” Yanagi said, holding up a piece of paper. “We need to have maximum number of hours of sleep for…”
Yanagi could have been saying blah blah blah and Yagyuu wouldn’t have noticed. Noticed anything except for the waggle of Niou’s eyebrows and the glitter in his eye.
He must have bribed Yanagi. Sometime on the trail, maybe, since there was a crossed off name between Yagyuu’s and Niou’s.
For a split second, Yagyuu smirked back.
☆ ☆ ☆
Niou was a man of numbers, but he took instruction from no one.
Let alone Sanada.
If Sanada was going to hog the “How to Put Up a Tent” instructions, then damned if Niou was going to read them.
He looked at his final product. Sure the tent sagged to the back and a pole stuck out into a tree trunk. Sure the tent was erected- Niou snickered- where the ground sloped and there were lumpy roots underneath the bottom. Sure half the reason the damned thing was standing was because Yagyuu suggested they have it “rest” (Niou’s father would use the term “structurally supported”) between several bamboo canes.
BUT
They’d done it all themselves. Absolutely no help from Sanada or the instructions or anyone else. Two boys from the Yokohama ‘burbs who’d had a combined camping experience of zero.
Niou patted Yagyuu on the shoulder, pleased as punch with their results. “Good job, Yagyuu.”
“As long as it doesn’t fall down when we’re asleep,” Yagyuu said.
“Who said anything about sleeping?” Niou whispered. Yagyuu’s cheeks suddenly spotted with pink, the same way he’d blush when they peeled each other’s shirts off before and looked each other in the eye right before they-
“-are you two done yet?” Yukimura asked. “The rest of us finished a half hour ago!”
Niou looked away from Yagyuu and their tent- thoughtfully erected off from everyone else’s since, Niou knew well enough, Yagyuu was a bit of a prude when it came to…things…and well, he had to agree. Three other tents were pitched near a semi-flat semi-cleared surface where you could almost see the trail again.
In the middle of the three tents, Sanada and Marui rolled stones around and seemed to be forming a circle with them.
Fire pit? Niou thought. Sacrificial altar?
Kirihara helped, too. If throwing stones at squirrels counted as help, that was.
Seeing the three tents, though, all set up perfectly with no poles sticking out and no bamboo stalks holding them and no sloping platforms only made Niou narrow his eyes.
Yagyuu touched his elbow. “I think you did a fine job,” Yagyuu said. His voice didn’t hide the waver that Niou knew wanted to become a full-blown laugh. Puri!
He ignored Yagyuu. And Yanagi’s self-righteous little smile, too. And Jackal who at least had the decency to laugh out loud and say “It’s not going to blow over in the rain?”
Just to spite Jackal, the trees rustled and another dump of rain started. Niou pulled out his umbrella, holding it down low enough over his head so that no one else could fit under it. Not even Yagyuu.
“So, Yukimura,” he shouted into the tent where Yukimura had ducked inside. “When are we going to this temple-thing?”
Marui dove inside the same tent a beat after. Despite the roar of the rain pelting down through the trees, Niou could hear the distinct sound of candy wrappers crinkling.
Standing in the rain rather like a six-foot-tall drowned rat, Sanada scowled. Yanagi handed him his hat from under his own umbrella, squarely setting it on top of Sanada’s soaked hair. Then, he stepped back.
And Sanada yelled, “Marui! NO food in the TENTS!”
Marui’s face peeked out of the tent flap, his cheeks stuffed and lumpy with candy. He chewed a couple times, then swallowed the lot in one gulp.
“You’ll attract ANIMALS!” Sanada bellowed.
A grocery bag flew out of the tent, right to Sanada’s feet. Then Marui rolled his eyes and followed Yukimura out. “All right, all right. I was just hungry for lunch,” he grumbled. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, Sanada…”
By the time they finished getting out umbrellas, Niou was starving too. They huddled around the fire pit which, incidentally, was more of a puddle in the ground than a fire pit. And seeing as there was no dry wood lying around in the forest, Niou didn’t exactly see quite how they were going to cook any food. If anyone had brought any food. The only thing Niou had was the rest of the bento he didn’t eat on the bus.
“There was,” Sanada grumbled, “a pile of wood by the bathrooms.”
Niou stopped poking his twig into the wet ground. He looked up. Everyone looked at Sanada.
“Except it was 500 yen a bundle,” Sanada said.
Yukimura shifted his eyes. He grabbed Niou and Marui by the neck and leaned closer. The huddle tightened: too many sweaty, wet boys in too close proximity. No wonder Yanagi made a gagging noise.
“But no one else is around,” Yukimura said. Thunder rumbled around them, but no flash of lightning accompanied it. “Besides,” Yukimura added, “I’m getting tired of listening to Bunta’s stomach.”
“Yeah!” Marui agreed.
“Yeah!” Kirihara echoed.
Niou just shrugged. Holding his breath was hard, but at least Yagyuu on his one side. Yagyuu who might have smelled a bit ripe, but Niou didn’t mind his sweat. Much. “I volunteer Yagyuu and I go get it.”
“You don’t want to start the fire?” Yukimura asked.
Fire.
Time alone with Yagyuu.
Fire.
Yagyuu.
Yagyuu crouched on his left and, even though he was dressed head-to-toe in a plastic rain suit, Niou could see the pants had bunched up around Yagyuu’s crotch. Yagyuu was definitely hard. So was Niou.
Niou angsted. Yagyuu looked at him hopefully through the little breathing hole around his face. Yukimura waggled his eyebrows and nodded to the fire pit, which Kirihara was rubbing his hands together over already.
“We need to have wood,” Niou said.
Yagyuu cleared his throat. “Niou-kun!”
“I don’t get it,” Kirihara said.
“Me neither,” Sanada mumbled.
No one seemed to notice so Yukimura sent them off. Niou sauntered, as best he could with his erection, through the wet brush. Maybe his umbrella kept the rain off, but his legs were soaked and he didn’t think he remembered to pack any extra socks. Yagyuu stomped and plodded in his rain suit and rubber boots. He looked like he was dressed in a cross between army gear and a space suit, but if he was dry, Niou was jealous.
The bathrooms weren’t actually quite as glorious as they looked from the campsite. Up close, they stunk like shit. Shit simmering in the humid summer heat. Flies buzzed everywhere. The cement floor was a shade of stained puce. From what Niou could see inside as they walked around to the back, the urinals were…caked with…Niou didn’t want to know what, but he doubted it was piss.
It was a good thing Yagyuu couldn’t see inside, not with his glasses entirely fogged over, otherwise he’d pitch a fit about it being unsanitary.
When the campsite was blocked by the building, Niou grabbed Yagyuu’s hand to stop him from tripping over the cement steps. It was a hot, sweaty grip. Yagyuu grunted.
“We have to get wood,” Yagyuu said.
“We will.”
Niou pushed him up against a wooden divider wall. It creaked; flakes of paint rained onto the wet ground. For now, the rain had slacked off. Niou ignored the box of wood with the sign “500 yen” on top and instead started to untie Yagyuu’s hood.
“Stop!” Yagyuu said. But his hands squeezed Niou’s shoulders and he pulled himself closer. “Niou-kun, this isn’t getting wood-”
Niou reached between their bodies. Through all the wet plastic of Yagyuu’s suit, he managed to squeeze Yagyuu’s dick. Yagyuu gasped and jerked back against the wall. “That is,” Niou whispered into Yagyuu’s ear.
He pushed the hood down and squeezed his hand harder. Yagyuu wiggled and moaned. His eyelashes fluttered. His suit was slippery and made things hard for Niou to do much more than cup his dick and rub his own shorts against Yagyuu’s thigh.
Their kiss was sloppy and tasted of the salt Yagyuu licked off his lips. There was doughnut somewhere, too, in his mouth making things sweet when Niou ran his tongue over Yagyuu’s. The vibrating groans in their mouths send shivers all the way down to Niou’s toes. For a moment, he could forget about the heat and rain sticking to their bodies.
Until Yagyuu pushed him away.
And wiped off his mouth. He adjusted his glasses, but left his hood flung back from his face. A faint pink blush spread across his cheeks, something which made Niou want him even more.
Yagyuu opened the box of wood. “Should we bring two bundles or three?”