FIC: Quicken to Silver, Ohtori/Shishido, NC17 (30/41)
Title: Quicken to Silver (30/41)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: In which time passes and people change and drift, but there is always tennis. Ohtori/Shishido
The alarm buzzes, a shrill, miserable sound that pierces Ohtori’s ears. He rolls onto his side to smash it with his fist, but his body hits something unfamiliar. And then that something yelps and wakes up and smashes the alarm for him and whips the sheets off their bodies.
Ohtori lies there for a moment, the chill of morning making him shiver. He starts to crack an eye open, unwilling to wake up, but unable to fall back asleep.
It takes him a moment to realize that someone is not a dream. That someone is a very naked Shishido-san, who is flushed and warm and standing beside the bed, stretching his arms far above his head with a loud yawn.
His chest is covered in small bruises. It floods back to his memory, as cliché and uncool as it seems, and Ohtori remembers tasting Shishido’s sweaty skin and making those marks with his mouth. Ohtori buries his face into the pillow, proud of those marks he made, and a little disconcerted, too, that he made all of those marks! Shishido is his, and Ohtori both wants the whole world to know, and to keep it private. Just between only themselves.
Shishido is half-hard, too. Ohtori can feel the hardness pressed against his leg.
Ohtori flings a lazy arm over the edge of the bed and wraps his hand around Shishido’s cock as he finishes his stretch. Shishido-san gasps, shivering and leans into the touch. He bites his lip as Ohtori wakens, his hand moving faster and harder, loving the feel of hardness in his hand, loving the way Shishido is starting to moan.
“Choutarou,” Shishido moans. “Choutarou!”
“Good morning,” Ohtori mumbles, his voice thick with sleep, and thick from making his own moans all through the night. They must have jerked each other off four, five times. He still has the bitter taste of Shishido-san’s come in his mouth. He can’t remember how many times Shishido’s cock was there, on his tongue, pushing forward so deep he nearly choked. And then his bum, his ass, when Shishido tugs Ohtori’s hand from his cock and turns to grab his towels for the showers, Ohtori closes his eyes.
The tightness, the weight of Shishido’s leg, when he finally managed to lift himself high enough that they could do it face-to-face, how many times, Ohtori doesn’t think it matters, but there are three condoms, all used, on the floor beside the bed. He wraps them up in kleenexes and throws them into the garbage bin.
Shishido-san goes to shower first. He walks slower than he usually does, and a little more carefully. Not enough that most people will notice, but Ohtori knows him well enough to see the slight mince to his steps. He knows it must have hurt Shishido-san. During the night, though, Shishido didn’t say one word about the pain, only “more” or a moan of Ohtori’s name.
Ohtori follows into the showers some five minutes later, not wanting to be too close to seem clingy. Even now, after all of that, he doesn’t want to disappoint Shishido-san by doing something way uncool.
In the breakfast line for rice, Shishido cocks his head to the side. “Sleep all right, Choutarou?” he asks as a few other boys fall into the queue behind them.
“Aa, yes, Shishido-san,” Ohtori says.
As they sit down, Shishido gives him a sly eye. “I thought you didn’t sleep well in strange beds,” he says in a quiet voice.
“Only as long as there’s not strange people, too,” Ohtori counters. He feels pleased with himself when Shishido clears his throat to hide his choke as Kenya Oshitari from Shitenhoji sits down at their table.
“Yuushi called me last night,” Kenya tells them. “He was asking if we’d played Atobe yet. Atobe is that miserable, pompous boy from your school, right?”
“If it’s a good day for him,” Shishido answers. He and Kenya share a laugh, but Ohtori doesn’t join in. He looks around for Atobe in the cafeteria, but he doesn’t see him anywhere. This is odd, because Ohtori knows that Atobe isn’t usually late for something like breakfast. There’s no one to impress here with a fashionable entrance. And doesn’t Kabaji usually give him a morning wakeup call?
Ohtori thinks, Maybe Atobe-senpai is having breakfast in his dorm room, fancy food that he likes. He did complain about the food at supper…
And at the same time, the last Senbatsu Ohtori had gone to with Atobe, he doesn’t remember Atobe having any special food at all. He ate whatever the rest of the participants ate.
He knows he shouldn’t be worried about Atobe. He doesn’t really even like Atobe very much. The sight of Jiroh-senpai waking up from a sprawling nap on a cafeteria bench when Marui enters the room, however, makes the twisting worry inside his stomach only worsen.
Ohtori knows how it feels to like someone so much and to see them with some one else. Each swing of the door makes him look up with the hope Atobe swaggers in with a self-satisfied smirk, but there is no sign of him by the time Ohtori has finished his breakfast. The coach eats at their table and announces the plan for the day. They trudge to the weighs training room after dumping their cafeteria trays on the conveyor belt.
Inui and Kaidoh from Seigaku immediately start talking to themselves in the training room. Inui has a notebook and Kaidoh hisses the senior from Rikkai away from the bench press.
“Kaidoh, try twenty reps of ten to start.” Inui pulls a stop watch from his pocket and starts to time.
Shishido rolls his eyes. “Che,” he mutters. “How is timing that going to help at all?”
Inui must hear this, because he tells Kaidoh next, a little louder, “Use eighty percent of your power to reach maximum efficiency with this machine.”
Ohtori hesitates on which machine to work with first long enough for Shishido to take the check lists from the coach for the both of them. He tucks a pencil behind his ear and reads the list. “It gives a recommendation of how many reps we should try on each machine first,” he tells Ohtori. Shishido glances around for a free machine and nods to the leg curls. “Wanna try that first?”
It takes most of the morning to finish all of the machines in the weights room- the leg curls, the bicep curls, the bench press, the bicycles. The chin ups ache the most. Ohtori’s limbs are a little stiff from last night- he flushes all those his legs cramping up, and to have Shishido’s hands on his calves, stretching the cramps from his muscles, kneading his skin with the same hands that touched him everywhere just a few hours before this.
The chin ups, however, are the worst.
At Hyoutei, Ohtori can normally avoid doing chin ups on the bar because no one really supervises the freshmen in the training room. Only the regulars- with their shining new exercise machines that Atobe’s family paid for- have the coach or the captain overseeing their reps and their progress. It’s a free for all for the sub-regulars, pick and choose the machines you want, shove someone off if they’re on too long and you want it instead.
But here, the Yamabuki coach watches them carefully, yelling at Zaizen for taking too long with the bikes and telling Kirihara that he couldn’t benchpress for more than fifteen minutes at a time. Ohtori slows down when he sees the bar for chin ups looming above his head.
“Dammit,” he grumbles.
He spots Shishido-san first, keeping count and placing a hand on Shishido’s side, the lightest of touches, to keep him going. Shishido grunts and spits and sweats and turns all shades of red, but he manages to do five reps of ten before his hands let go and he jumps to shaking knees on the ground.
“Your turn,” he nods to Ohtori, scratching down on the paper that he has completed that activity.
Ohtori takes a deep breath and loosens his shoulders up. He hates this drill, he hates it. His legs and arms are too long and he curses his height because he has so much more weight to drag so much longer a distance. He’s strong, but he’s not built like Kabaji.
Ohtori spits into his palms, then rubs them on his shorts.
The first chin up aches. His arms are burning with the unfamiliarity of this drill. He groans his way through a second, and a third. His upper arms feel like they are on fire. He is straining to finish the rep. Shishido is at his side, nodding, but not encouraging. Ohtori can feel the coach’s eyes on him.
“Keep it going, Ohtori,” the coach says. “Don’t stop now. A Senbatsu team member has to be mentally and physically prepared.”
Ohtori wants to say through his teeth that he’s not a fool, he’s not going to make the team, that he doesn’t need to this, but instead he keeps quiet and sweats through the second rep.
He barely manages to finish the five reps. On the last chin up, the very last one, his arms finally give out and he cannot lift himself anymore. He falls to the ground, his arms as limp as noodles. Sweat stings his eyes. Shishido hands him a towel and says, “Good job, Choutarou.”
He can barely even feel his arms move. His hands aren’t working properly when he grabs the towel from Shishido-san to wipe his face. His grip is poor, his hands shaking and his knuckles are white.
Ohtori hopes the feeling will return by tonight. What if he can’t feel Shishido-san? What if his arms are so limp than not only can he not hold a racket later, but he will do something uncool like try to grab Shishido for a kiss and end up elbowing him in the armpit.
He worries all through lunch, but his chopsticks work and the tingling sensation in the tips of his fingers has dissipated mostly. Tachibana Ann eats with their group after she finishes serving sandwiches and rice cakes to the last team to show up in the cafeteria. Kirihara stiffens and his face goes pale when he sees her.
It is Atobe’s group who is the last to come for lunch. And Atobe is the last of the group to come into the cafeteria. He lingers at the food counters, scowling but silent before he saunters over to Ohtori’s table and plunks himself down beside Shishido.
Shishido drops his chopstick. “You have your own group,” he grumbles.
Ohtori glances over to the other tables. Jiroh-senpai is bouncing over Marui, who steals bits of food from Jiroh’s plate. Jiroh doesn’t notice and Marui doesn’t really notice Jiroh, though nearly everyone else can hear his squawking if the cringes and rolls of eyes are anything to go on.
“I don’t mind if Atobe-senpai sits with us,” Ohtori says.
“Yeah, well, I do,” Shishido says, crossing his arms with a huff.
Ohtori wants to explain to Shishido-san, about Atobe’s palm pilot, about Atobe’s crush, about Jiroh’s cluelessness. He wants to explain that he doesn’t want Atobe to feel any worse than he must already. Surely Shishido could understand that. But, he swore to Atobe he wouldn’t tell anyone. Atobe has power- he could have Ohtori kicked off the tennis club. He has influence with the captain and the coach. Ohtori is still just a freshman pre-regular and there are easily a hundred other students all willing to step into his ranking in the club.
Underneath the table, Ohtori reaches for Shishido’s knee. He touches it, squeezing it under his palm. Shishido looks at him. Ohtori smiles. Relax, Shishido-san, he thinks.
“We have free time this afternoon,” Ohtori says, stroking his fingers along Shishido’s bare knee. The skin is rough and dry and a little calloused. “That will be nice.” He tries to keep his voice cool and neutral, so that no one, especially Atobe, will suspect anything.
Shishido nods. He holds his chopstick in the air and waves it around as he speaks. “Wanna check out some of the other games?”
Ohtori closes his eyes. You are so clueless, Shishido-san, he thinks. “Okay,” he says, but his head hangs a little lower. He picks at his sushi rolls. The seaweed has gone a little slimy on the sides. His stomach feels slightly upset, roiling around the fried whitefish and eel and noodles and bit of pickled cabbage he’s eaten for lunch.
They place their trays on the conveyor belt after they finish lunch and start to walk towards the meeting rooms, towards the dorm rooms, nowhere in particular. The whole group, all ten of them, ambling through the hallways having nothing better to do now.
Tachibana breaks off when a group of Seigaku students pass by with their rackets in hand. Ohtori recognizes them all from being in Atobe’s group. Tezuka walks by and Ohtori knows they are in Atobe’s group.
“Are they having open games?” Shishido asks.
Ohtori shrugs. He and Shishido have fallen back from the group, and now stand in a shallow alcove between meeting rooms. The footsteps from other participants echo down the hallway, until they disappear around a corner. They are alone, but not really. The hour of the day, just after lunch, means anyone could be anywhere nearby, picking up a forgotten racket or changing a pair of running shoes in their dorm.
Shishido places a warm hand on Ohtori’s forearm. His palm is clammy, but Ohtori doesn’t mind. He closes his eyes as Shishido murmurs, “Is everything all right?”
Ohtori sighs. “I’m fine, Shishido-san,” he says.
“What?” Shishido presses. He glances over his shoulder, but no one else is around. For the moment. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to- you know, right now, it’s just…” Shishido stares at his feet, voice muffled against his chest. Ohtori leans down to hear better. Shishido repeats himself. “I’m kinda sore is all,” he admits.
“I’m sorry!” Ohtori says. “I’m sorry, Shishido-san,-”
“It’s not a big deal,” Shishido says, cocking his head. He presses his fingers to Ohtori’s mouth to shut him up. Ohtori stops protesting, but he feels even worse. Bad for Atobe, but worse for Shishido. He had hurt Shishido-san last night, and he didn’t even realize what he had done. The sushi rises in his throat, stinging with bile and a not very pleasant half-digested fishy taste.
“Don’t worry about it,” Shishido tells him. When Ohtori bites his lip, he leans closer, close enough that Ohtori can feel hot breath on his neck. “I just need a bit of time. Not right now, but tonight, yeah? We can do more stuff then.
“I really want to,” he adds.
Ohtori’s insides melt like the shaved ice in the cafeteria line. He swallows and nods. “Okay,” he says thickly.
“Let’s go watch the games from Atobe’s group. We don’t have anything better to do, unless you want to go back to the weight room.”
Ohtori shudders, then shakes his head. “No thanks, Shishido-san.”
***
They have spent the entire day inside the building, where the temperature is a cool and comfortable twenty degrees. Outside, however, Ohtori doesn’t have to take more than a step before a wave of damp, searing heat blasts his face.
It feels a hundred degrees. And then some.
His skin feels like it’s melting off his bones, sweat and muscles and tendons and everything pooling into a mess of sludge under his running shoes. Shishido pulls his cap off and fans his face.
“Glad we don’t have to play in this,” he says.
One of the other groups is doing rallies on one set of the courts. In the courts adjacent to them, closer to the relay track, Atobe’s group is warming up. A few other participants have grouped to watch, too; he and Shishido aren’t the only ones. Rikkai’s Sanada and Yukimura stand by the water cooler, filling their waterbottles. Shishido plunks himself down on the bench and nods for Ohtori to join him.
“This outta be interesting,” Shishido says. “I think Hiyoshi’s playing Atobe. See?” he motions to the courts, where Atobe stands across the net from Hiyoshi. Hiyoshi stretches long and low, doing a last few lunges before he stands up and tells the referee to begin.
“Has Hiyoshi ever played Atobe?” Ohtori asks.
“Not since junior high,” Shishido says.
“Look, Sanada. Marui’s playing that boy from Hyoutei,” Yukimura says nearby. Ohtori turns to listen, but not enough to intrude. Yukimura points to the courts, two down from Atobe’s game, where Jiroh is hopping on the baseline, waiting for Marui to start the serve.
“Oh crap,” Ohtori says.
“What?” Shishido asks, furrowing his brow and wiping the sweat off it with the back of his hand. “Did you see that? Atobe flubbed! Ha!”
Sure enough, Atobe must have done something that threw his balance off because Ohtori can see him stagger to his side and stumble, using his racket on the clay ground to regain his balance. Hiyoshi, however, smiles darkly from the other side of the net when the referee calls, “30-0” in his favour.
Ohtori watches.
Atobe’s insight is off today. Hiyoshi’s shots should be easy for him to return. Ohtori thinks that Hiyoshi’s volleys, in particular, even he could return with a slice or a lob and take the advantage back. But instead, Atobe stumbles and staggers. His arm swings too wide. He hits too many chance balls and too many punts. His shots are erratic. One hits the net- fault. Then a second- double fault.
Hiyoshi’s lips move. Ohtori knows exactly what he says before he even speaks.
Gekokujou.
Except it isn’t a lower class person trying to outdo their betters here. Atobe is better at tennis. He should be better. Hiyoshi moves like a snake on the court, all fangs and poses, but he strikes too fast and too quickly. Atobe has the perseverance to overcome that.
But he doesn’t.
He jogs to his waterbottle and guzzles it furiously.
“Not playing very well today, Atobe,” Sanada says.
Atobe’s eyes narrow.
“What’s wrong with you?” Shishido calls.
Atobe sniffs. His fingers twitch, as though he wants to give Shishido-san the finger, but he doesn’t. He stomps back onto the court and throws his sweat towel on the ground behind himself.
“Hurry up and serve!” he yells to Hiyoshi. Atobe scuffs his shoes on the baseline, sending dust and dirt flying behind himself, far enough back that Shishido-san suddenly shouts and rubs his eyes.
“Asshole,” he grumbles, rubbing the dirt from his eyes. “Jeez, he’s pissy lately.”
Hiyoshi throws the ball up to serve, his shot clean and fast from the racket, with a slight sidespin, but nothing that should cause Atobe problems. Ohtori crosses his fingers behind his knee. Please hit the ball, Atobe-senpai. Please get a point and don’t embarrass yourself anymore.
The game is already in Hiyoshi’s favour 4-1.
And then two courts away, Atobe’s poise is ruined when Jiroh’s shout echoes loud and clear: “WOW! Bunta-kun you did THAT SHOT! It’s SO COOL!”
The ball whizzes close to Atobe. Atobe freezes, his head having turned to Jiroh’s voice, and then he falls over to his side, the ball bouncing softly away from his shin.
Ohtori closes his eyes and smacks a palm to his face. “Get it together, Atobe-senpai,” he murmurs.
Atobe groans and waves the referee off. “I’m fine!” he snaps, flailing his racket in the air. “And you, stop with the fucking gekokujou crap!” he shrieks as he marches back to the centre of his court, ready for the next serve.
“Atobe…” Tezuka says from another court.
“Shut up!” Atobe says. Hiyoshi continues to snicker. Ohtori thinks he sees Tezuka rolls his eyes, but the glare of his glasses makes it hard to be certain.
Jiroh continues to flap and dance and shout at Marui’s shots. Ohtori knows them all from Jiroh’s excitement- the tight-rope walking ball, the metal post ball. It would be funny, maybe, if it wasn’t distracting Atobe so much. Hiyoshi’s confidence grows as Atobe’s skills falter again and again. Hiyoshi plays well, the few occasions Atobe manages to hit a decent ball and start a rally, but those are few and far between.
Ohtori breathes a sigh of relief when the game finishes. At least Atobe won’t have to play anymore, even if the score was an abysmal 6-1.
Atobe grabs his waterbottle and his towel and he rushes off the court. He walks past Shishido and jabs his elbow into Shishido’s shoulder before Shishido-san has said anything to Atobe. Ohtori glances over his shoulder to see Atobe walk back to the complex buildings and slam a door behind himself, disappearing in a huff.
“I don’t think he was this mad when we lost the Nationals spot, was he?” Shishido asks, scratching his temple.
“No, Shishido-san,” Ohtori agrees.
Hiyoshi walks up to the two of them, sighing heavily, but all dark smiles and glittering eyes. “Gekokujou-” he starts to say.
“Success,” Ohtori finishes glumly.
Hiyoshi blinks. “How did you know that?”
“Lucky guess,” Ohtori mumbles. Shishido-san gives him a funny look with a raised eyebrow, an invitation for Ohtori to explain, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t feel like it.
Poor Atobe-senpai, he thinks.
Marui and Jiroh’s match continues for some time more. Even watching it is like a match, the back and forth bounce of heads like the back and forth bounce of the ball in the long rallies Jiroh sets up. Marui seems to be amused by Jiroh, who flaps and shouts when Marui changes the pace with a net ball, or maybe a deep drive to the corner of the baseline.
Shishido-san stands up to get a drink from the table set up with the water coolers above and more coolers below, filled with ice and sports drinks. Ohtori drips and feels himself sticking to the bench where his skin touches it. Shishido holds out a bottle for him.
“They had orange sportsade,” he says, popping the lid of his own bottle. “I know you like that stuff, Choutarou.”
“Thank you, Shishido-san,” Ohtori says. The drink is cool and wonderful sliding down his throat. Icy cold and wet all over the outside with condensation.
“Marui’s having fun, isn’t he?” Yukimura says. The group of viewers is bigger now, with another group having finished practice sets on the furthest courts.
“Look how much he’s sweating, though,” Rikkai’s Niou says.
“Jiroh’s working hard, too,” Shishido tells Ohtori. “I didn’t think he had this much stamina.”
The air is so hot the courts shimmer, mirage-like on the net. Jiroh drips sweat and the smell of hot teenage boys is almost stifling where Ohtori sits, a little rank and a little too much. Jiroh keeps going, hitting balls with a thwack of his racket and a grin on his face. His shoes slap across the court, the only sound besides the ball and the hums of a hundred cicadas, hidden in the shade of trees and shrubs.
Ohtori feels like he is melting, drooped over the bench like the flowers in the gardens. It’s so hot, he thinks. His hair burns to the touch and his skin oozes, sweat stinging the corners of his eyes. His sportsade is finished and the bottle sits empty under the bench as the flies start to buzz around it.
And then Marui finally collapses on the court. Not so much with fainting, but with a dramatic flourish. “The tensai requests an end to the game,” he says.
Jiroh bounces. “Okay!”
The referee nods, wiping sweat from the back of his neck with his own towel.
As Marui walks off the court towards Sanada and Yukimura, flashing them a thumbs up, he moans, “I’m so hungry! I couldn’t keep playing anymore! My legs were about to fall off…”
Jiroh follows him. Ohtori wants to reach out and grab Jiroh-senpai, to drag him off and explain what Atobe has been through, but he hesitates and by the time he has balled up enough courage inside, Jiroh is gone.
Along with Marui, too.
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: In which time passes and people change and drift, but there is always tennis. Ohtori/Shishido
The alarm buzzes, a shrill, miserable sound that pierces Ohtori’s ears. He rolls onto his side to smash it with his fist, but his body hits something unfamiliar. And then that something yelps and wakes up and smashes the alarm for him and whips the sheets off their bodies.
Ohtori lies there for a moment, the chill of morning making him shiver. He starts to crack an eye open, unwilling to wake up, but unable to fall back asleep.
It takes him a moment to realize that someone is not a dream. That someone is a very naked Shishido-san, who is flushed and warm and standing beside the bed, stretching his arms far above his head with a loud yawn.
His chest is covered in small bruises. It floods back to his memory, as cliché and uncool as it seems, and Ohtori remembers tasting Shishido’s sweaty skin and making those marks with his mouth. Ohtori buries his face into the pillow, proud of those marks he made, and a little disconcerted, too, that he made all of those marks! Shishido is his, and Ohtori both wants the whole world to know, and to keep it private. Just between only themselves.
Shishido is half-hard, too. Ohtori can feel the hardness pressed against his leg.
Ohtori flings a lazy arm over the edge of the bed and wraps his hand around Shishido’s cock as he finishes his stretch. Shishido-san gasps, shivering and leans into the touch. He bites his lip as Ohtori wakens, his hand moving faster and harder, loving the feel of hardness in his hand, loving the way Shishido is starting to moan.
“Choutarou,” Shishido moans. “Choutarou!”
“Good morning,” Ohtori mumbles, his voice thick with sleep, and thick from making his own moans all through the night. They must have jerked each other off four, five times. He still has the bitter taste of Shishido-san’s come in his mouth. He can’t remember how many times Shishido’s cock was there, on his tongue, pushing forward so deep he nearly choked. And then his bum, his ass, when Shishido tugs Ohtori’s hand from his cock and turns to grab his towels for the showers, Ohtori closes his eyes.
The tightness, the weight of Shishido’s leg, when he finally managed to lift himself high enough that they could do it face-to-face, how many times, Ohtori doesn’t think it matters, but there are three condoms, all used, on the floor beside the bed. He wraps them up in kleenexes and throws them into the garbage bin.
Shishido-san goes to shower first. He walks slower than he usually does, and a little more carefully. Not enough that most people will notice, but Ohtori knows him well enough to see the slight mince to his steps. He knows it must have hurt Shishido-san. During the night, though, Shishido didn’t say one word about the pain, only “more” or a moan of Ohtori’s name.
Ohtori follows into the showers some five minutes later, not wanting to be too close to seem clingy. Even now, after all of that, he doesn’t want to disappoint Shishido-san by doing something way uncool.
In the breakfast line for rice, Shishido cocks his head to the side. “Sleep all right, Choutarou?” he asks as a few other boys fall into the queue behind them.
“Aa, yes, Shishido-san,” Ohtori says.
As they sit down, Shishido gives him a sly eye. “I thought you didn’t sleep well in strange beds,” he says in a quiet voice.
“Only as long as there’s not strange people, too,” Ohtori counters. He feels pleased with himself when Shishido clears his throat to hide his choke as Kenya Oshitari from Shitenhoji sits down at their table.
“Yuushi called me last night,” Kenya tells them. “He was asking if we’d played Atobe yet. Atobe is that miserable, pompous boy from your school, right?”
“If it’s a good day for him,” Shishido answers. He and Kenya share a laugh, but Ohtori doesn’t join in. He looks around for Atobe in the cafeteria, but he doesn’t see him anywhere. This is odd, because Ohtori knows that Atobe isn’t usually late for something like breakfast. There’s no one to impress here with a fashionable entrance. And doesn’t Kabaji usually give him a morning wakeup call?
Ohtori thinks, Maybe Atobe-senpai is having breakfast in his dorm room, fancy food that he likes. He did complain about the food at supper…
And at the same time, the last Senbatsu Ohtori had gone to with Atobe, he doesn’t remember Atobe having any special food at all. He ate whatever the rest of the participants ate.
He knows he shouldn’t be worried about Atobe. He doesn’t really even like Atobe very much. The sight of Jiroh-senpai waking up from a sprawling nap on a cafeteria bench when Marui enters the room, however, makes the twisting worry inside his stomach only worsen.
Ohtori knows how it feels to like someone so much and to see them with some one else. Each swing of the door makes him look up with the hope Atobe swaggers in with a self-satisfied smirk, but there is no sign of him by the time Ohtori has finished his breakfast. The coach eats at their table and announces the plan for the day. They trudge to the weighs training room after dumping their cafeteria trays on the conveyor belt.
Inui and Kaidoh from Seigaku immediately start talking to themselves in the training room. Inui has a notebook and Kaidoh hisses the senior from Rikkai away from the bench press.
“Kaidoh, try twenty reps of ten to start.” Inui pulls a stop watch from his pocket and starts to time.
Shishido rolls his eyes. “Che,” he mutters. “How is timing that going to help at all?”
Inui must hear this, because he tells Kaidoh next, a little louder, “Use eighty percent of your power to reach maximum efficiency with this machine.”
Ohtori hesitates on which machine to work with first long enough for Shishido to take the check lists from the coach for the both of them. He tucks a pencil behind his ear and reads the list. “It gives a recommendation of how many reps we should try on each machine first,” he tells Ohtori. Shishido glances around for a free machine and nods to the leg curls. “Wanna try that first?”
It takes most of the morning to finish all of the machines in the weights room- the leg curls, the bicep curls, the bench press, the bicycles. The chin ups ache the most. Ohtori’s limbs are a little stiff from last night- he flushes all those his legs cramping up, and to have Shishido’s hands on his calves, stretching the cramps from his muscles, kneading his skin with the same hands that touched him everywhere just a few hours before this.
The chin ups, however, are the worst.
At Hyoutei, Ohtori can normally avoid doing chin ups on the bar because no one really supervises the freshmen in the training room. Only the regulars- with their shining new exercise machines that Atobe’s family paid for- have the coach or the captain overseeing their reps and their progress. It’s a free for all for the sub-regulars, pick and choose the machines you want, shove someone off if they’re on too long and you want it instead.
But here, the Yamabuki coach watches them carefully, yelling at Zaizen for taking too long with the bikes and telling Kirihara that he couldn’t benchpress for more than fifteen minutes at a time. Ohtori slows down when he sees the bar for chin ups looming above his head.
“Dammit,” he grumbles.
He spots Shishido-san first, keeping count and placing a hand on Shishido’s side, the lightest of touches, to keep him going. Shishido grunts and spits and sweats and turns all shades of red, but he manages to do five reps of ten before his hands let go and he jumps to shaking knees on the ground.
“Your turn,” he nods to Ohtori, scratching down on the paper that he has completed that activity.
Ohtori takes a deep breath and loosens his shoulders up. He hates this drill, he hates it. His legs and arms are too long and he curses his height because he has so much more weight to drag so much longer a distance. He’s strong, but he’s not built like Kabaji.
Ohtori spits into his palms, then rubs them on his shorts.
The first chin up aches. His arms are burning with the unfamiliarity of this drill. He groans his way through a second, and a third. His upper arms feel like they are on fire. He is straining to finish the rep. Shishido is at his side, nodding, but not encouraging. Ohtori can feel the coach’s eyes on him.
“Keep it going, Ohtori,” the coach says. “Don’t stop now. A Senbatsu team member has to be mentally and physically prepared.”
Ohtori wants to say through his teeth that he’s not a fool, he’s not going to make the team, that he doesn’t need to this, but instead he keeps quiet and sweats through the second rep.
He barely manages to finish the five reps. On the last chin up, the very last one, his arms finally give out and he cannot lift himself anymore. He falls to the ground, his arms as limp as noodles. Sweat stings his eyes. Shishido hands him a towel and says, “Good job, Choutarou.”
He can barely even feel his arms move. His hands aren’t working properly when he grabs the towel from Shishido-san to wipe his face. His grip is poor, his hands shaking and his knuckles are white.
Ohtori hopes the feeling will return by tonight. What if he can’t feel Shishido-san? What if his arms are so limp than not only can he not hold a racket later, but he will do something uncool like try to grab Shishido for a kiss and end up elbowing him in the armpit.
He worries all through lunch, but his chopsticks work and the tingling sensation in the tips of his fingers has dissipated mostly. Tachibana Ann eats with their group after she finishes serving sandwiches and rice cakes to the last team to show up in the cafeteria. Kirihara stiffens and his face goes pale when he sees her.
It is Atobe’s group who is the last to come for lunch. And Atobe is the last of the group to come into the cafeteria. He lingers at the food counters, scowling but silent before he saunters over to Ohtori’s table and plunks himself down beside Shishido.
Shishido drops his chopstick. “You have your own group,” he grumbles.
Ohtori glances over to the other tables. Jiroh-senpai is bouncing over Marui, who steals bits of food from Jiroh’s plate. Jiroh doesn’t notice and Marui doesn’t really notice Jiroh, though nearly everyone else can hear his squawking if the cringes and rolls of eyes are anything to go on.
“I don’t mind if Atobe-senpai sits with us,” Ohtori says.
“Yeah, well, I do,” Shishido says, crossing his arms with a huff.
Ohtori wants to explain to Shishido-san, about Atobe’s palm pilot, about Atobe’s crush, about Jiroh’s cluelessness. He wants to explain that he doesn’t want Atobe to feel any worse than he must already. Surely Shishido could understand that. But, he swore to Atobe he wouldn’t tell anyone. Atobe has power- he could have Ohtori kicked off the tennis club. He has influence with the captain and the coach. Ohtori is still just a freshman pre-regular and there are easily a hundred other students all willing to step into his ranking in the club.
Underneath the table, Ohtori reaches for Shishido’s knee. He touches it, squeezing it under his palm. Shishido looks at him. Ohtori smiles. Relax, Shishido-san, he thinks.
“We have free time this afternoon,” Ohtori says, stroking his fingers along Shishido’s bare knee. The skin is rough and dry and a little calloused. “That will be nice.” He tries to keep his voice cool and neutral, so that no one, especially Atobe, will suspect anything.
Shishido nods. He holds his chopstick in the air and waves it around as he speaks. “Wanna check out some of the other games?”
Ohtori closes his eyes. You are so clueless, Shishido-san, he thinks. “Okay,” he says, but his head hangs a little lower. He picks at his sushi rolls. The seaweed has gone a little slimy on the sides. His stomach feels slightly upset, roiling around the fried whitefish and eel and noodles and bit of pickled cabbage he’s eaten for lunch.
They place their trays on the conveyor belt after they finish lunch and start to walk towards the meeting rooms, towards the dorm rooms, nowhere in particular. The whole group, all ten of them, ambling through the hallways having nothing better to do now.
Tachibana breaks off when a group of Seigaku students pass by with their rackets in hand. Ohtori recognizes them all from being in Atobe’s group. Tezuka walks by and Ohtori knows they are in Atobe’s group.
“Are they having open games?” Shishido asks.
Ohtori shrugs. He and Shishido have fallen back from the group, and now stand in a shallow alcove between meeting rooms. The footsteps from other participants echo down the hallway, until they disappear around a corner. They are alone, but not really. The hour of the day, just after lunch, means anyone could be anywhere nearby, picking up a forgotten racket or changing a pair of running shoes in their dorm.
Shishido places a warm hand on Ohtori’s forearm. His palm is clammy, but Ohtori doesn’t mind. He closes his eyes as Shishido murmurs, “Is everything all right?”
Ohtori sighs. “I’m fine, Shishido-san,” he says.
“What?” Shishido presses. He glances over his shoulder, but no one else is around. For the moment. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to- you know, right now, it’s just…” Shishido stares at his feet, voice muffled against his chest. Ohtori leans down to hear better. Shishido repeats himself. “I’m kinda sore is all,” he admits.
“I’m sorry!” Ohtori says. “I’m sorry, Shishido-san,-”
“It’s not a big deal,” Shishido says, cocking his head. He presses his fingers to Ohtori’s mouth to shut him up. Ohtori stops protesting, but he feels even worse. Bad for Atobe, but worse for Shishido. He had hurt Shishido-san last night, and he didn’t even realize what he had done. The sushi rises in his throat, stinging with bile and a not very pleasant half-digested fishy taste.
“Don’t worry about it,” Shishido tells him. When Ohtori bites his lip, he leans closer, close enough that Ohtori can feel hot breath on his neck. “I just need a bit of time. Not right now, but tonight, yeah? We can do more stuff then.
“I really want to,” he adds.
Ohtori’s insides melt like the shaved ice in the cafeteria line. He swallows and nods. “Okay,” he says thickly.
“Let’s go watch the games from Atobe’s group. We don’t have anything better to do, unless you want to go back to the weight room.”
Ohtori shudders, then shakes his head. “No thanks, Shishido-san.”
***
They have spent the entire day inside the building, where the temperature is a cool and comfortable twenty degrees. Outside, however, Ohtori doesn’t have to take more than a step before a wave of damp, searing heat blasts his face.
It feels a hundred degrees. And then some.
His skin feels like it’s melting off his bones, sweat and muscles and tendons and everything pooling into a mess of sludge under his running shoes. Shishido pulls his cap off and fans his face.
“Glad we don’t have to play in this,” he says.
One of the other groups is doing rallies on one set of the courts. In the courts adjacent to them, closer to the relay track, Atobe’s group is warming up. A few other participants have grouped to watch, too; he and Shishido aren’t the only ones. Rikkai’s Sanada and Yukimura stand by the water cooler, filling their waterbottles. Shishido plunks himself down on the bench and nods for Ohtori to join him.
“This outta be interesting,” Shishido says. “I think Hiyoshi’s playing Atobe. See?” he motions to the courts, where Atobe stands across the net from Hiyoshi. Hiyoshi stretches long and low, doing a last few lunges before he stands up and tells the referee to begin.
“Has Hiyoshi ever played Atobe?” Ohtori asks.
“Not since junior high,” Shishido says.
“Look, Sanada. Marui’s playing that boy from Hyoutei,” Yukimura says nearby. Ohtori turns to listen, but not enough to intrude. Yukimura points to the courts, two down from Atobe’s game, where Jiroh is hopping on the baseline, waiting for Marui to start the serve.
“Oh crap,” Ohtori says.
“What?” Shishido asks, furrowing his brow and wiping the sweat off it with the back of his hand. “Did you see that? Atobe flubbed! Ha!”
Sure enough, Atobe must have done something that threw his balance off because Ohtori can see him stagger to his side and stumble, using his racket on the clay ground to regain his balance. Hiyoshi, however, smiles darkly from the other side of the net when the referee calls, “30-0” in his favour.
Ohtori watches.
Atobe’s insight is off today. Hiyoshi’s shots should be easy for him to return. Ohtori thinks that Hiyoshi’s volleys, in particular, even he could return with a slice or a lob and take the advantage back. But instead, Atobe stumbles and staggers. His arm swings too wide. He hits too many chance balls and too many punts. His shots are erratic. One hits the net- fault. Then a second- double fault.
Hiyoshi’s lips move. Ohtori knows exactly what he says before he even speaks.
Gekokujou.
Except it isn’t a lower class person trying to outdo their betters here. Atobe is better at tennis. He should be better. Hiyoshi moves like a snake on the court, all fangs and poses, but he strikes too fast and too quickly. Atobe has the perseverance to overcome that.
But he doesn’t.
He jogs to his waterbottle and guzzles it furiously.
“Not playing very well today, Atobe,” Sanada says.
Atobe’s eyes narrow.
“What’s wrong with you?” Shishido calls.
Atobe sniffs. His fingers twitch, as though he wants to give Shishido-san the finger, but he doesn’t. He stomps back onto the court and throws his sweat towel on the ground behind himself.
“Hurry up and serve!” he yells to Hiyoshi. Atobe scuffs his shoes on the baseline, sending dust and dirt flying behind himself, far enough back that Shishido-san suddenly shouts and rubs his eyes.
“Asshole,” he grumbles, rubbing the dirt from his eyes. “Jeez, he’s pissy lately.”
Hiyoshi throws the ball up to serve, his shot clean and fast from the racket, with a slight sidespin, but nothing that should cause Atobe problems. Ohtori crosses his fingers behind his knee. Please hit the ball, Atobe-senpai. Please get a point and don’t embarrass yourself anymore.
The game is already in Hiyoshi’s favour 4-1.
And then two courts away, Atobe’s poise is ruined when Jiroh’s shout echoes loud and clear: “WOW! Bunta-kun you did THAT SHOT! It’s SO COOL!”
The ball whizzes close to Atobe. Atobe freezes, his head having turned to Jiroh’s voice, and then he falls over to his side, the ball bouncing softly away from his shin.
Ohtori closes his eyes and smacks a palm to his face. “Get it together, Atobe-senpai,” he murmurs.
Atobe groans and waves the referee off. “I’m fine!” he snaps, flailing his racket in the air. “And you, stop with the fucking gekokujou crap!” he shrieks as he marches back to the centre of his court, ready for the next serve.
“Atobe…” Tezuka says from another court.
“Shut up!” Atobe says. Hiyoshi continues to snicker. Ohtori thinks he sees Tezuka rolls his eyes, but the glare of his glasses makes it hard to be certain.
Jiroh continues to flap and dance and shout at Marui’s shots. Ohtori knows them all from Jiroh’s excitement- the tight-rope walking ball, the metal post ball. It would be funny, maybe, if it wasn’t distracting Atobe so much. Hiyoshi’s confidence grows as Atobe’s skills falter again and again. Hiyoshi plays well, the few occasions Atobe manages to hit a decent ball and start a rally, but those are few and far between.
Ohtori breathes a sigh of relief when the game finishes. At least Atobe won’t have to play anymore, even if the score was an abysmal 6-1.
Atobe grabs his waterbottle and his towel and he rushes off the court. He walks past Shishido and jabs his elbow into Shishido’s shoulder before Shishido-san has said anything to Atobe. Ohtori glances over his shoulder to see Atobe walk back to the complex buildings and slam a door behind himself, disappearing in a huff.
“I don’t think he was this mad when we lost the Nationals spot, was he?” Shishido asks, scratching his temple.
“No, Shishido-san,” Ohtori agrees.
Hiyoshi walks up to the two of them, sighing heavily, but all dark smiles and glittering eyes. “Gekokujou-” he starts to say.
“Success,” Ohtori finishes glumly.
Hiyoshi blinks. “How did you know that?”
“Lucky guess,” Ohtori mumbles. Shishido-san gives him a funny look with a raised eyebrow, an invitation for Ohtori to explain, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t feel like it.
Poor Atobe-senpai, he thinks.
Marui and Jiroh’s match continues for some time more. Even watching it is like a match, the back and forth bounce of heads like the back and forth bounce of the ball in the long rallies Jiroh sets up. Marui seems to be amused by Jiroh, who flaps and shouts when Marui changes the pace with a net ball, or maybe a deep drive to the corner of the baseline.
Shishido-san stands up to get a drink from the table set up with the water coolers above and more coolers below, filled with ice and sports drinks. Ohtori drips and feels himself sticking to the bench where his skin touches it. Shishido holds out a bottle for him.
“They had orange sportsade,” he says, popping the lid of his own bottle. “I know you like that stuff, Choutarou.”
“Thank you, Shishido-san,” Ohtori says. The drink is cool and wonderful sliding down his throat. Icy cold and wet all over the outside with condensation.
“Marui’s having fun, isn’t he?” Yukimura says. The group of viewers is bigger now, with another group having finished practice sets on the furthest courts.
“Look how much he’s sweating, though,” Rikkai’s Niou says.
“Jiroh’s working hard, too,” Shishido tells Ohtori. “I didn’t think he had this much stamina.”
The air is so hot the courts shimmer, mirage-like on the net. Jiroh drips sweat and the smell of hot teenage boys is almost stifling where Ohtori sits, a little rank and a little too much. Jiroh keeps going, hitting balls with a thwack of his racket and a grin on his face. His shoes slap across the court, the only sound besides the ball and the hums of a hundred cicadas, hidden in the shade of trees and shrubs.
Ohtori feels like he is melting, drooped over the bench like the flowers in the gardens. It’s so hot, he thinks. His hair burns to the touch and his skin oozes, sweat stinging the corners of his eyes. His sportsade is finished and the bottle sits empty under the bench as the flies start to buzz around it.
And then Marui finally collapses on the court. Not so much with fainting, but with a dramatic flourish. “The tensai requests an end to the game,” he says.
Jiroh bounces. “Okay!”
The referee nods, wiping sweat from the back of his neck with his own towel.
As Marui walks off the court towards Sanada and Yukimura, flashing them a thumbs up, he moans, “I’m so hungry! I couldn’t keep playing anymore! My legs were about to fall off…”
Jiroh follows him. Ohtori wants to reach out and grab Jiroh-senpai, to drag him off and explain what Atobe has been through, but he hesitates and by the time he has balled up enough courage inside, Jiroh is gone.
Along with Marui, too.