FIC: Shibuya 109, Niou/Kirihara, NC17 (1/5)
Title: Shibuya 109 (1/5)
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 32 000
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Eight months later, and Kirihara is more confused about Niou than ever. Sequel to Six Percent Doki Doki
Author's Notes: Written for pixxers' birthday- Happy Birthday, Pix! &hearts
This fic has been truncated into five parts due to length: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]
They've been going out eight months.
Sorta.
Kirihara doesn't totally know what going out requires. There's probably some secret code that girls have, stats and figures and confusing shit he doesn’t get in the first place. And, he's not a girl. Niou's not a girl either.
They play games at the arcade sometimes after supper. "I'll pay," Kirihara offers. He skips up to Niou and brushes up against his arm. The hair stands up, electrified, and Kirihara shivers. Niou shrugs his shoulders higher, so high that he looks like a hunchback.
"It's fine," he says.
"But I can-"
"It's fine," Niou says again.
Niou beats Kirihara at darts. Kirihara always wins the Nascar racing games. The gun games, it's a draw most times. Niou is quiet when he plays-he grunts, he sniffs, he chucks his head back so Kirihara can see his bobbing Adam's Apple, but he doesn't say anything when he's concentrating and his eyes glaze over with the violent explosions.
Kirihara shouts too much, he knows it. "Fuck you!" and "You shit!" and "Gonna get you motherfucker!" screamed so loud that the manager gives them both evil eyes and threatens to kick them out of the arcade. They've been kicked out of places before. If one place boots them, he and Niou-senpai move onto the next.
At first, they were all over each other. Kirihara flushes when he remembers Niou's hands on his hips, Niou's leg on his knee, Niou's dick on his belly, wet and hard. Niou kissed him, everywhere. He was shameless in the clubhouse. Kirihara tried his best too. The sublime look on Niou's face when he came, the stain of red over his skin and the flashing calm before the storm, before his mouth opened wider with a moan and his eyes rolled back…
Kirihara will never forget that.
It was like that for a while, a brief few weeks of fumbling in the clubhouse when no one was around. A brief few weeks of hot looks in the school hallways and passed notes and text messages at lunch, meetings in the abandoned garage by the canal when Niou jerked him off.
Kirihara closes his eyes. The train rattles and rushes on, jogging his body slumped against the carriage wall. He holds the metal rail harder, but his hand is slippery.
It's been eight months and they've never had sex. They barely touch anymore. They barely kiss-not since that one night, after the cherry blossom viewing, when Niou and Kirihara waited at the train station together. It was dark. No one else was on the platform, except some drunk salaryman who had passed out with a beer can next to his briefcase.
The sweet scent of sakura blossoms was in the air, and even on the platform, cold concrete and metal, remnants of the floating petals stained the pavement with delicate pink. The moment was ephemeral.
Niou nodded to the salaryman. He waggled his eyebrows. The drunk guy never woke up when Niou took the can from him and chugged the rest. Niou smelled of the blossoms, all floral and saccharine at once, and there was pollen on his hair. His nose was red and he giggled. Kirihara said, "We should just go home" but then the train pulled up to the platform and Niou kissed him, leaned onto him, into him, tasting of yeasty beer and springtime.
It happened and was over in a blur. Nothing remained but the lingering tingle of warmth on Kirihara's lips. When he licks his tongue over his bottom lip now, a month later, he can almost taste it if he tries hard enough.
Almost, but not quite.
The sakura were finished before the school year began.
***
He hasn't told anyone, but still his sister shrieks at him, "Your boyfriend called, Akaya!"
Kirihara dumps his bags. He's wet and cold-it started to rain after he left the train station. And his umbrella sits by the doorway now, forgotten this morning in his haste to get to school and practice on time. His sister, the bitch, walks into the hallway with a big toothy grin on her face and lame streaks of purple in her hair. She crosses her arms over her chest.
"Ne, did you hear what I said?" she snaps.
"Yeah! Shut up!" Kirihara tells her. "Jeez…stupid bitch…" he mutters. He walks past her and shoves her arm. She pushes back on him, elbowing his side.
If he was smart, he'd deny what she said. But he's not smart. He failed his English test last week. There was no one to help him study. Besides, the tennis season has started. District prefecturals next weekend and Kirihara will win. High school tournaments aren’t like junior high ones either. Scouts and reporters come. Famous magazines and managers. Yukimura-buchou is in talks with a management company for when he graduates. Kirihara thinks about that-it's the same thing he wants, to be number one.
The mangled list of senpais last year sits in his desk drawer. Kirihara closes the door to his room and pulls it out, unfolding the crumpled edges, yellowed and fuzzy from use. All but three names are crossed off. Those three monsters have been a dream since he was a kid. Kirihara leans back in his chair and sighs.
"I'll crush you guys too," he murmurs. He leans back further to look out his window, but the curtains are dark and there's nothing but streaks of rain running down the glass. And then his chair dips a fraction too low and there's freefall for an instant before that heavy, stunned impact that sucks the breath from Kirihara's lungs.
He lies on his bedroom floor, gaping like a fish. His back crunches on the dirty candy wrappers and tennis ball tubes and dirty clothes and comics everywhere. He gasps and sucks at the air, grasping at the floor until his lungs flood with air again and he starts to cough.
"Cra-ap…" he mutters. Kirihara pushes himself up with his hands. His back cracks-a comic book pile poked him in the kidneys and now sharp pains shoot through his back. He rubs the spot gently, but he knows it'll bruise.
With a heavy sigh, he looks down at his legs-they're covered in bruises too from being pummeled by the ball machine malfunction last weekend. Marui-senpai laughed at him and told him to take the machinery class next year if he wants to be buchou. Sanada-fukubuchou told him to be more careful. But it wasn't Kirihara's fault at all.
Niou just looked at him and shrugged. That hurt most of all. Kirihara closes his eyes and listens to the dripping rain. He should call Niou back. Niou doesn't call his home, like, ever, and now that Kirihara thinks on it, it's kinda strange.
He reaches into his pocket for his cellphone and flips it open. No messages. Kirihara scratches the side of his head.
Weird.
He scratches his head some more. Kirihara scoots over on his floor and climbs onto his bed, pushing a stack of Weekly Jumps onto his floor. The pages flutter. He shivers when a draft of frigid air blows over his damp, bare arms. Kirihara looks around. The light on his A/C is on-he must have forgot about it from last night, when it was muggy and hot and the crickets chirped through his open window. It's a whole different story now: the spring blossoms have closed up, the trees huddle in the park beside the apartment complex. It's a wet cold evening, the perfect sort of night to curl up next to someone warm and lick their neck, or something.
Kirihara doesn't even know if Niou likes that sorta stuff. He's never asked. Niou doesn't talk when they kiss-when they have kissed. Niou sighs and moans and once, Kirihara though Niou moaned his name, Akaya. It makes his dick swell now remembering that day. It was early autumn, around his birthday. They were in the tennis club tool shed. It was dark in there and smelled like mould, but when Niou rubbed his dick on Kirihara's, nothing mattered except the explosion of sensations and Niou's mewls on Kirihara's neck.
It seems like forever ago now. Kirihara flops back onto his bed, the mattress creaking under his weight. He cups his cock through his pants, a comfortable and easy feeling that doesn't do anything to satisfy the nagging worry in the back of his mind that something is really, really wrong.
***
He calls Niou-senpai under the safe strains of his mom and sister watching the latest Fuji TV drama. Even then, Kirihara whispers into his phone.
"Senpai?"
"….Yo."
"Uh…my sister said you called before."
"…yeah, guess so."
"Oh." Kirihara nods. Not that Niou would see it. "Cool," he says.
"Yeah."
"Senpai?"
"Hn?"
"Did you leave a message? 'Cause, uh, my sister didn't say anything, just that you called."
"Nothing important."
"Oh….okay. Thought I'd ask in case it was."
"It wasn't," Niou says. His voice sounds sharp on the phone. Kirihara winces. He might be dumb, but he's not a retard. Niou sounds distant and hollow. Kirihara cradles his cell against his ear. With his hands, he plays with the sheets on his bed. Niou has never seen them. Niou has never been on them, messed them up and kissed Kirihara hard on them.
"Senpai?" he asks. Kirihara swallows. His heart flaps, doki doki pattering and light against his ribs as he waits for Niou to answer.
"Mn?"
"You wanna come over?"
His words hang in the air. The tv music swells in the background of the apartment, melodramatic and bittersweet and Kirihara hopes Niou doesn't hear or think that he's into weird girly stuff like that-he's not! Kirihara'd save up for the new Final Fantasy game for Wii if he had a job, or enough willpower to not blow his allowance at the arcade on Fridays.
Kirihara crumples the sheets up in his fist, groaning through his teeth. He doesn't breathe and Niou doesn't breathe into the phone either. His stomach churns, barfy and bloated, waiting for Niou to say something, anything. Kirihara bites his lip. It hurts. Senpai, don't you want to come over…?
Then after a long pause, finally, Niou says, "Maybe another time, kid. I got homework."
They hang up. And it's just like it's been for the past eight months. Kirihara gets worked up, gets nervous and sweaty palms and a twitching dick, all for nothing.
Maybe this isn't what Niou-senpai wants after all.
Kirihara lies in bed, on top of the sheets. It's not really warm enough for the A/C to be on and instead, Kirihara cranks his window open for fresh air. He can hear the trains and the traffic from the street below. Shining lights of the city reflect on his walls; they're covered in glossy posters that magnify everything and rustle, the edges peeling up when a spring breeze drifts in through his curtains. Kirihara rubs his dick through his pants with one hand. With his other, he plays with the unicorn charm on his tennisbag zipper. Some of the metallic paint has chipped off. It's been banged around for months, smacked into train doors and dumped on the floor. It's endured being stepped on and poked at by Marui, who laughs and asks Kirihara who his girlfriend is.
If he was brave, he'd tell Marui the truth.
But he's not.
Kirihara sighs. His insides feel awful, like he's gotta go sit on the toilet for a half-hour and crap his roiling guts out, except he doesn't. He doesn't get Niou. He doesn't get the mixed signals and the silences Niou likes. He doesn't get why things are weird right now and have been for ages.
But when he thinks about it, things were never normal. There's always been a gap of something Kirihara can't quite figure out.
And he's beginning to wonder if maybe he doesn't ever want to, either.
***
He dreams that he's sitting on a bus. Yagyuu sits in front of him, so Kirihara leans over the seat and pokes Yagyuu in the back of the net.
"Kirihara-kun?"
Kirihara talks about nothing and everything. He can feel his mouth moving, but he can't remember what exactly he's saying. He babbles, but the bus never stops to pick anyone else up. His tennisbag sits across his lap, so he shoves it off. He never checks if the Six Percent charm is still hanging off the zipper or not-he doesn't think to look.
"So who do you like most?" Yagyuu asks.
Kirihara's face burns. Does Yagyuu-senpai know??? But of course Yagyuu does, it's a dream and Yanagi who knows everything told Yagyuu about Niou. Yagyuu's smile is cold and thin. He doesn't have eyes behind his glasses. He's creepy, but Kirihara is forced to answer him. His dream makes him, even though his stomach cramps up and he has a hard time forcing the words.
"Niou," he says. "Niou. Niou Masaharu!" He tries again, but each time he says Niou's name, the words are thicker and thicker, like his mouth is full and woolen and dry all at once. Kirihara shakes his head.
"You have to speak louder," Yagyuu says. "Niou-kun can't hear you."
Kirihara groans through his teeth. He flails his fists and shouts, "YES HE CAN!", only Yagyuu never seems to listen. Kirihara tries again, but saying Niou's name is like talking through water. The louder he says it, the more muffled it sounds. Yagyuu stares at him without eyes. Kirihara squeezes his eyes shut and slams his fists down. The seats are pillowy.
"I like Niou the most!" Kirihara shouts.
He snaps his eyes open and his dark room swirls around him, the ceiling blurring, whirring into focus as he throws his covers off. His heart pounds and he's half-hard between the legs. Niou's name is on his lips.
The liquid red numbers of his clock read just past five. Kirihara sighs. He rolls onto his side to get comfortable, but the dream unsettled him. It drifts into memory, the details forgotten except for Niou's name and the cold, mean smiles from Yagyuu.
Kirihara doesn't know what to make of it. He lays awake until the first birds start to stir and sound in the morning.
It's the caw of crows.
***
In the clubhouse, at morning practice, Kirihara gets there first. Well, before Niou anyway. He lingers at his locker, pretending to organize the crunchy, dirty uniform pieces on his shelves when Sanada-fukubuchou stomps in and narrows his eyes. Kirihara stares at a crumpled tennis club notice that he pulled from the bottom of his locker. A reminder of fees, due last week. Kirihara can't remember if he paid them or not. He's been thinking about other things lately.
Jackal-senpai comes in and Sanada leaves. Jackal is nice, all waves and good mornings, no matter what the time of day or the weather. Today is sunny already. Jackal takes off his sunglasses and hat. He spins the bowler on his index finger.
"Want to rally today?"
Kirihara looks around. Still no Niou, but there are a few other pre-regulars through the window outside. He shrugs. "Okay," he says. He ties his shoelaces a third time and adjusts the overgrip on his racket. He sits on the bench and spins his racket around, clockwise, a whirl of the metal frame and gut that clatters to the floor when it falls.
At half past seven Niou shows up. Jackal's just grabbing his tennisbag. "Akaya?" he says from the doorway.
Kirihara's eyes flash to Niou, who avoids the stare by ducking his head and opening his locker door, closing Kirihara off. Bile rises, hot and sharp in Kirihara's throat until a little bubble bursts on the back of his tongue. He feels ill.
Jackal keeps looking at him, shifting his eyes back and forth from Niou to Kirihara.
Kirihara exhales through his nose, then without looking back to Niou, he follows.
It's really warm out this morning. Before Jackal's even started, Kirihara sweats at the back of his neck. The sun is bright and the courts are endless. Marui walks up to the net chewing a wad of gum. He rolls his jaw sideways and smacks his lips before he blows a bubble. Jackal raises his eyebrows. Marui waves his fingers. Kirihara looks up and sighs. Behind Marui, Niou walks across the far courts. He might be swinging his racket in a wide circle, but nobody is asking to play with him. In his stomach, Kirihara's breakfast churns harder.
Jackal serves. Kirihara runs left. The ball curves towards the net, almost-but-not-quite a snake. He narrows his eyes and swings back. The ball has force on his racket, but nothing like what Jackal usually plays like when he goes all out. Kirihara drags his racket through the swing, curving his racket to cradle the ball. It shoots up. Marui shouts. Jackal runs for it. It's a rising shot: return, easy. Kirihara swings for that too.
Behind Jackal, Niou shuffles at the baseline of the opposite court. Yagyuu is there with him, hands gesturing as he speaks and Niou's mouth twitches into a half-smile. Something pokes Kirihara sharp between the ribs. Wrist hand snaps. The ball flies up, straight up in a blinding line of yellow.
It hits the net post with a hollow ping then flies horizontal out to the adjacent courts. Kirihara cringes. Jackal yells, "BALL!" Other senpais ducks out of the way, but it's Yukimura-buchou, on the very last court, who catches the ball with his racket, making quick fast work with his reflexes.
All members, all sixty, seventy-five, one hundred members of the senior high tennis club stare at Kirihara. Including Niou-senpai. The breeze ruffles his hair, making his bangs translucent against the sunlight. Kirihara swallows hard. His face is blushing so hard and he's forcing himself to laugh it off, but the shame grows inside and twists.
Idiot! he thinks. Stupid stupid STUPID!
"Everything okay?" Marui asks. He offers a stick of gum. Kirihara shakes his head. It already feels like he has a wad stuck in his throat.
The day only goes down from there.
In the showers after practice, it's busy. Steam and soap and naked guys are everywhere. Kirihara drops his towel and joins the throng. Jackal starts to sing some new enka song by an American ("he's a quarter Japanese", Jackal says) but most of the other guys just talk about chicks. Kirihara ducks his head and tries to ignore it, he tries to ignore them as he steals the only free shower he can find-
Right between Niou and another senior, one of those guys who made fun of Niou last year. Kirihara purses his lips when he remembers all the nasty things they said about Niou. Even now, people still snicker behind Niou's back, but his gay germs haven't spread into an epidemic, or anything.
When Niou drops his soap, it's bad. The seniors stop talking. Niou freezes when he bends down. His ass is in the air-Kirihara is not looking, he's not!-and his eyes are wide behind his wet hair.
"Heh, just like a fag," one of the seniors says.
Niou says nothing. He reaches for his soap, but someone kicks it away. The showers are too steamy for Kirihara to see who; there's too many players, too many moving legs and arms and too many voices speaking at once, words like "sick" and "faggot" and "fucked up the ass like Aoi's girlfriend". Kirihara balls his fist. Anger rises inside, bubbling up into his eyes, the pressure intensifying the more people laugh and point as Niou scrambles across the showers, searching for his soap.
Jackal and Marui don't laugh, but they don't help Niou either. Yagyuu stares with his myopic eyes: he can't see a thing, and neither can Yanagi-senpai, who's probably taken out his contacts by now. Buchou and fukubuchou aren't here. Kirihara breathes through his nose, his nostrils flaring as his eyes pound with blood and sharp pains behind.
He could help Niou.
But his teammates would laugh at him too.
He should help Niou.
But then people would find out.
He-
Something bumps his foot. Kirihara blinks. He looks down, seeing a small, green-tinted block of soap on the inside of his heel. Niou is at waist-level, almost dangerously close to Kirihara's hips. Niou's eyes don't move-they stare, all black and asking him something Kirihara doesn't know if he really understands or not.
Kirihara breathes slowly. He doesn't reach down because Niou picks up his soap first. Kirihara should feel a sigh of relief pass through his chest, but instead, his ribs creak and tighten.
In the locker room when Kirihara mumbles that maybe they can practice together this afternoon, Niou doesn't say a word.
Kirihara's ribs crack, poking through his uniform shirt as he's fumbling with his tie.
Then, in second period, the math tests are handed out.
Kirihara looks at the mark on his. There is blood red ink and a big circle around the 32%. His stomach sinks. He flips through the pages, staring at his work: wrong, wrong, mostly wrong, a big question mark underlined by the teacher. A classmate leans over and asks what he got. Kirihara stuffs his test into his textbook and slams it.
As much as he wants to nap in class, fall asleep under the first wafts of A/C this spring as the teacher drones on about derivatives, his chest is swollen. His eyes hurt from this morning, and now, they hurt even more. He's never gonna be cut out to be captain next year if his marks keep falling. He's never gonna graduate and he's never gonna be number one at tennis! His parents will kill him. Sanada and Yukimura will kick him off the team.
Kirihara bangs his forehead on the edge of his desk. He closes his eyes and groans under his breath. Why am I so dumb? he thinks. He stares at his backpack. The zipper is half-open, revealing a couple old comics inside and some candy wrappers along with dog-eared textbooks that he scribbled his name onto the spines.
He can't even bring himself to look at his test. It was math he thought he got. It was math he didn't understand in the end, the same way that he doesn't understand Niou. Kirihara rubs his chin. Every time he tries, he just fails.
Maybe he should just give up.
***
There is a vegetable plot on the rooftop, at the opposite end of the school from the swimming pool and the area where some of the kids come up here to smoke. Kirihara walks past some of them-guys from the tennis club, guys from class 3D, guys who look old enough to be in university, all sorts of different guys. He might be taller than some of them, but the way they flick their cigarettes at him makes Kirihara rush past them awful fast. He holds his bento to his chest. It's nothing special, just whatever his mom packed this morning, but he doesn't want to risk these thugs with the shaved heads and bleached hair getting anywhere near his lunch.
He's hungry.
That, and there are two cans of fanta that he bought from the vending machine downstairs.
Kirihara walks past the vents which blast hot air up out into the sky. He walks past a group of girls gossiping about something dumb as they fix their nails and giggle. He walks past the random boxes and pipes and railings on the roof that don't make any sense but that make him trip when he's not paying attention.
Kirihara walks past the vegetable garden. Yukimura stands up, wipes his hand on his face and waves. There's mud on his nose. Kirihara tries to smile, but it's weird and wonky and Yukimura gives him a funny look before going back to his plants.
Behind another air vent, one that blocks the view of everything but the green school campus dotted with students, Kirihara finds Niou-Niou's back is turned to him and he leans over the railing, dangerously close to falling down four floors if he isn't careful. Kirihara sucks in a breath, then he coughs, just in case Niou doesn't hear his footsteps.
Niou doesn't turn around. His lunch is on the cement ledge, three bento compartments laid open: rice with shichimi and cold grilled beef and pickles and dumplings, too. Nothing has been touched. Kirihara furrows his forehead and scratches it.
"Senpai?" he asks.
Niou's shoulders tense, but he doesn't move except for drumming his fingers on the metal rail. "Do you ever wonder," he asks, "what would happen if you fell down to the ground from here?"
Kirihara blinks. Slowly, he sets his lunch set on a closed vent away from the edge. He takes a step closer to Niou.
Niou sighs, then pushes himself away. Kirihara exhales, but the tension doesn't leave his belly. Niou stretches his legs out and presses his back to the ledge. He isn't smiling. His eyes are distant, looking through Kirihara rather than at him. He smells of sweat and the soap from his shower-the same green one that was kicked around by their teammates.
Kirihara feels like crap for not doing anything then. He swallows. He tries to smile, but mostly he feels ill and tied up inside. The words to apologize are on the tip of his tongue, but he can't open his mouth. There is nothing but the soft rattle of the vents around them, and the faint laughter and shouts from the campus below.
Niou turns around again. He doesn’t say anything more. His back doesn't move and Kirihara isn't sure he's breathing at all until he hears Niou whisper, "Puri". After five, ten, maybe more minutes of struggling and failing to think of something to say to make things better, Kirihara grabs his bento. He sets down the can of melon fanta on the ledge, next to Niou's lunch. It clinks on the cement.
Only when Kirihara walks down the stairs to the third floor does he look out the tall window and see Yagyuu and a girl under a tree, behind the basketball courts. Niou would be able to see them perfectly from the rooftop as they neck.
***
It's raining. It's kinda cold out, enough that Kirihara remembers to pull his uniform sweater on before running to the bus this morning. Practice is cancelled due to the huge mud puddles that eat up the courts, but the regulars stay indoors in the gymnasium. Kirihara swats the ball against a wall. The thwok, schwook sounds are comfortable and the motions are involuntary. He can think about nothing and video games and how nice it might be to nap on the bench over there instead.
Buchou and Yanagi hog the ball machines.
Kirihara doesn't see Niou-senpai. Nobody asks about him either, except Sanada, who grumbles that the team is all skipping, the lazyasses. Then, he sends a pointed glare in Kirihara's direction. Kirihara narrows his eyes right back. Stupid fukubuchou, he thinks, can't he seem I'm working?
He swings again-backhand-and the ball smucks the wall, bouncing back once and allowing Kirihara to return it with an easy rising shot. It's mindless. The ball bounces. The rain pours. Niou still doesn't show up. Kirihara glances around the gym. Every flash of the clouds and downpour of rain changes the dim shadows and the fluorescent lighting. He sees a slash of white out of the corner of his eye, but it's never Niou's hair.
Kirihara sighs. His stomach shrivels up a little more, crunching up into a ball the same way he crunched up his English homework last night before he chucked it into his garbage bin.
It's the sort of day where he'd rather be anywhere but school. Curled up at home asleep on the couch with a video game console in his hand, yes. Rushing through an underground arcade to the big mega-arcade complex near downtown with a jingling pocket of change, yes. Maybe even tucked away in some hidden corridor of the school touching Niou's neck and kissing him hard enough to make Niou moan and rub against Kirihara's dick. Thinking about it during English class makes Kirihara hard. He squirms. He looks out the window and wiggles. The campus is a soggy green mess and the rain has cut through the delicate leaves of the confession tree, littering the remains across the grass. The tennis courts are a pool of greying water, growing bigger and bigger as the teacher drones on about participles.
Kirihara watches the window, but Niou's face never shows up. There's no reflection smirking at him through the sluicing water, there's no mole twitching as Niou tells him the wrong answers to the teacher's questions. There's just…nothing except a cold shiver that brushes over his skin, making his arms goosepimple and his dick throb a little more. Kirihara squeezes his legs together. His desk creaks. The teacher's chalk squeaks on the board and the entire class cringes.
Yesterday, he tried to call Niou. He made the effort and dialed Niou's number. It was late. It was dark. Kirihara was in his pajamas and half-hard thinking about Niou, in bed, on the other end of the line. Sometimes he wonders if Niou thinks about Yagyuu when he masturbates and not him, not Kirihara. If they haven't kissed in ages, if they haven't talked much either, except about the new Final Fantasy release or the arcade being open 24/7 now, then...Kirihara doesn't know what to think of Niou: what he wants or what he thinks about him.
Maybe he just can't do this gay thing.
Niou never picked up his cellphone last night. Kirihara tucks away his Jump issue. It's too fat to fit into his English textbook and the new Konomi Takeshi serial has a character with a mole on his chin. Seeing a panel with the mole next to a word bubble just makes Kirihara's throat all tight and he fidgets in his desk to try to ease the strain in his pants. He wriggles the other way, jerking into the corner of his seat and trying to be as quiet as he can but then he moves too fast, too far and the desk scrapes across the floor.
The teacher stops talking.
All eyes in his class turn to him.
Kirihara can feel the blood congealing in his cheeks. And his eyes. He squeezes his eyes shut, kicking himself inside for being so dumb when the teacher asks, "Kirihara-kun, are you paying attention to the lesson?"
Rain patters on the window. One of the girls starts to giggle. Kirihara whips his head around to see Yagyuu's girlfriend, Kimi-kun, or whatever her name is, laughing at him behind her hand. He grinds his teeth and curls his lip. The blood keeps rushing to his eyes, pushing on the backs of his eyeballs in that tell-tale pressure looking to burst.
"Yes," he says. He forces himself to laugh-it's unconscious, he doesn't mean to, but the teacher's lips thin. They have a new English teacher this year, some middle-aged American perv who, rumour has it, ran off to Japan with his Asian girlfriend who left him as soon as the plane touched down in Narita.
Not that Kirihara cares.
All English teachers are assholes.
The teacher nods to the textbook. "Put your comic away and pay attention," he says. "Next time, it'll be detention."
"Che," Kirihara mutters. His face still burns. One of Kimi-kun's friends catcalls and then the class joins in the jeering. Kirihara slinks deeper and deeper into his seat. He hates the attention like this, feeling and being stupid and not normal, or something.
Maybe that's his whole problem with Niou.
Maybe he just wants to fit in and Niou knows it.
Kirihara stuffs his Jump issue into his backpack. The candy wrappers crinkle and his fingers brush something sticky at the bottom of his bag. He pulls his hand out and cringes.
Spread all over his fingers is the slimy residue from a can of fanta.
***
Niou isn't on the rooftop at lunch.
No one except Yukimura is. He's hunched under a blue umbrella, crouched by a plug tray of plants. The garden looks more like a black soup than something alive. Kirihara creeps past, hoping to avoid buchou for the moment. His hand touches the latch on the door to the stairwell and he's almost home-free. Kirihara starts to exhale with relief.
"Akaya," Yukimura says. He doesn't turn around-he's got eyes in the back of his head.
Kirihara peers around. He sets his foot down carefully on the ground and he peels his hand off the latch, wet with the rain droplets splattered all over the cold metal. "Uh, hi buchou," he says.
Yukimura stands up and wipes his hands on his uniform pants, making long tracks of black earth across his thighs. He lifts his umbrella up enough at an angle to look out at Kirihara. His eyes narrow when Kirihara shifts his weight, feeling awkward as the rain continues to patter around them. Yukimura holds onto his trowel. "Everything okay?" he asks.
"Uh, yeah," Kirihara says. Wet rain splotches on his neck and arms, and it drips of the ends of his hair, getting all over his face. Yukimura's umbrella shields him from the rain rushing out of a drainpipe nearby, but the water forms a puddle around the spot he'd been digging. Plants sit tipped on their sides by the edge of the flower bed. Kirihara side-steps around them, but then he hears a tell-tale crunch of plastic and Yukimura shrieks.
"Watch out for the petunias!" he snaps.
"Sorry," Kirihara mutters. He hangs his head and hair hangs over his eyes. The water slides down his nose and falls off the tip, dripping cold and itchy. Kirihara rubs it with the back of his hand, but he smears a bit of snot in the process, too. He cringes. Kirihara takes a step backwards, careful of the crushed plant container this time.
Yukimura drops his trowel. It falls into the earth like a blade, straight up and dangerous and for a moment, the metal flashes in the crackling light of the approaching storm. Kirihara jumps, but Yukimura just lifts his head, raises his eyebrows and sniffs. "You've been really distracted lately," he says. He cups his hands around the crushed plants and his lip trembles. "Poor babies," he murmurs. To Kirihara, he narrows his eyes.
Kirihara nods. He stares at his feet. The foot of his school shoe is soaked through and the canvas of his toes is darker from the rain and the mud. His bag is heavy; he should have left it in his locker, but he was stupid enough to think that Niou might have been here again and that Niou might have wanted to share the bento he brought from home today, the one his father brought from the department store in Kyushu when he came home last night from his business trip.
Now, he just feels like the sludge weaving between the petunias Yukimura has already planted: dirty and useless and meandering, searching for nothing and something and going around in a circle.
"Your form looked sloppy on Thursday," Yukimura says. "Your shoulders were too tense."
Kirihara looks at Yukimura. "Eh?"
Yukimura blinks. Kirihara scratches the side of his head, and then his nose. He's getting wetter by the second standing here and Yukimura is nice and dry under his umbrella. Kirihara's uniform sticks to his body, uncomfortable and tight and bunched up on his legs in all the wrong places. He wiggles, but his pants ride up his butt a bit. He breathes through his nose, a huff that Yukimura doesn't hear.
"Well," buchou says, "it's not anything undoable, you'll just need to work a bit more on your form and posture and that follow-through was crap, Akaya. Your elbow shouldn't be locked like that."
"Sorry," he mutters again. "I'll…try not to be distracted again."
Yukimura nods. "Good." He pats Kirihara on the shoulder and when Kirihara glances down, there's a muddy print on his shirt. His shoulders sink a little lower and his stomach, too-his mom'll start making him do his own laundry soon if he keeps coming home with dirty uniforms and creaming his sheets in desperation and loneliness every night.
When Yukimura bends down to pick up his trowel, the door to the stairwell swings open. Kirihara darts out of the way, but barely in enough time to avoid Sanada slamming the door open on his shin. He shouts. Sanada yells at him. Yukimura just starts to dig a new hole for a purple petunia cupped in his palm.
Sanada snorts. "Tarundoru," he says. "Watch what you're doing!"
Kirihara glares. Sanada holds out a large umbrella over Yukimura and completely bypasses Kirihara, even though buchou has his own. Sanada leans down. Yukimura looks up. He smiles and wipes his face with his palm, smearing dirt over his nose again and for a second, Kirihara wonders if there's something weird going on when Sanada's expression softens and his mouth twitches.
"Akaya," Yukimura says.
Kirihara rubs the back of his neck. His stomach rumbles and he's gonna totally miss lunch if he stays out here any longer. Besides, with Sanada here, he wants to stay even less. Kirihara stops at the door, but he manages to push the latch at least.
As he's leaving, Yukimura calls out, "If it's girls again, just ask Marui for help. He's Pure Genius with them, after all."
Author: Ociwen
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 32 000
Disclaimer: Konomi owns all.
Summary: Eight months later, and Kirihara is more confused about Niou than ever. Sequel to Six Percent Doki Doki
Author's Notes: Written for pixxers' birthday- Happy Birthday, Pix! &hearts
This fic has been truncated into five parts due to length: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]
They've been going out eight months.
Sorta.
Kirihara doesn't totally know what going out requires. There's probably some secret code that girls have, stats and figures and confusing shit he doesn’t get in the first place. And, he's not a girl. Niou's not a girl either.
They play games at the arcade sometimes after supper. "I'll pay," Kirihara offers. He skips up to Niou and brushes up against his arm. The hair stands up, electrified, and Kirihara shivers. Niou shrugs his shoulders higher, so high that he looks like a hunchback.
"It's fine," he says.
"But I can-"
"It's fine," Niou says again.
Niou beats Kirihara at darts. Kirihara always wins the Nascar racing games. The gun games, it's a draw most times. Niou is quiet when he plays-he grunts, he sniffs, he chucks his head back so Kirihara can see his bobbing Adam's Apple, but he doesn't say anything when he's concentrating and his eyes glaze over with the violent explosions.
Kirihara shouts too much, he knows it. "Fuck you!" and "You shit!" and "Gonna get you motherfucker!" screamed so loud that the manager gives them both evil eyes and threatens to kick them out of the arcade. They've been kicked out of places before. If one place boots them, he and Niou-senpai move onto the next.
At first, they were all over each other. Kirihara flushes when he remembers Niou's hands on his hips, Niou's leg on his knee, Niou's dick on his belly, wet and hard. Niou kissed him, everywhere. He was shameless in the clubhouse. Kirihara tried his best too. The sublime look on Niou's face when he came, the stain of red over his skin and the flashing calm before the storm, before his mouth opened wider with a moan and his eyes rolled back…
Kirihara will never forget that.
It was like that for a while, a brief few weeks of fumbling in the clubhouse when no one was around. A brief few weeks of hot looks in the school hallways and passed notes and text messages at lunch, meetings in the abandoned garage by the canal when Niou jerked him off.
Kirihara closes his eyes. The train rattles and rushes on, jogging his body slumped against the carriage wall. He holds the metal rail harder, but his hand is slippery.
It's been eight months and they've never had sex. They barely touch anymore. They barely kiss-not since that one night, after the cherry blossom viewing, when Niou and Kirihara waited at the train station together. It was dark. No one else was on the platform, except some drunk salaryman who had passed out with a beer can next to his briefcase.
The sweet scent of sakura blossoms was in the air, and even on the platform, cold concrete and metal, remnants of the floating petals stained the pavement with delicate pink. The moment was ephemeral.
Niou nodded to the salaryman. He waggled his eyebrows. The drunk guy never woke up when Niou took the can from him and chugged the rest. Niou smelled of the blossoms, all floral and saccharine at once, and there was pollen on his hair. His nose was red and he giggled. Kirihara said, "We should just go home" but then the train pulled up to the platform and Niou kissed him, leaned onto him, into him, tasting of yeasty beer and springtime.
It happened and was over in a blur. Nothing remained but the lingering tingle of warmth on Kirihara's lips. When he licks his tongue over his bottom lip now, a month later, he can almost taste it if he tries hard enough.
Almost, but not quite.
The sakura were finished before the school year began.
***
He hasn't told anyone, but still his sister shrieks at him, "Your boyfriend called, Akaya!"
Kirihara dumps his bags. He's wet and cold-it started to rain after he left the train station. And his umbrella sits by the doorway now, forgotten this morning in his haste to get to school and practice on time. His sister, the bitch, walks into the hallway with a big toothy grin on her face and lame streaks of purple in her hair. She crosses her arms over her chest.
"Ne, did you hear what I said?" she snaps.
"Yeah! Shut up!" Kirihara tells her. "Jeez…stupid bitch…" he mutters. He walks past her and shoves her arm. She pushes back on him, elbowing his side.
If he was smart, he'd deny what she said. But he's not smart. He failed his English test last week. There was no one to help him study. Besides, the tennis season has started. District prefecturals next weekend and Kirihara will win. High school tournaments aren’t like junior high ones either. Scouts and reporters come. Famous magazines and managers. Yukimura-buchou is in talks with a management company for when he graduates. Kirihara thinks about that-it's the same thing he wants, to be number one.
The mangled list of senpais last year sits in his desk drawer. Kirihara closes the door to his room and pulls it out, unfolding the crumpled edges, yellowed and fuzzy from use. All but three names are crossed off. Those three monsters have been a dream since he was a kid. Kirihara leans back in his chair and sighs.
"I'll crush you guys too," he murmurs. He leans back further to look out his window, but the curtains are dark and there's nothing but streaks of rain running down the glass. And then his chair dips a fraction too low and there's freefall for an instant before that heavy, stunned impact that sucks the breath from Kirihara's lungs.
He lies on his bedroom floor, gaping like a fish. His back crunches on the dirty candy wrappers and tennis ball tubes and dirty clothes and comics everywhere. He gasps and sucks at the air, grasping at the floor until his lungs flood with air again and he starts to cough.
"Cra-ap…" he mutters. Kirihara pushes himself up with his hands. His back cracks-a comic book pile poked him in the kidneys and now sharp pains shoot through his back. He rubs the spot gently, but he knows it'll bruise.
With a heavy sigh, he looks down at his legs-they're covered in bruises too from being pummeled by the ball machine malfunction last weekend. Marui-senpai laughed at him and told him to take the machinery class next year if he wants to be buchou. Sanada-fukubuchou told him to be more careful. But it wasn't Kirihara's fault at all.
Niou just looked at him and shrugged. That hurt most of all. Kirihara closes his eyes and listens to the dripping rain. He should call Niou back. Niou doesn't call his home, like, ever, and now that Kirihara thinks on it, it's kinda strange.
He reaches into his pocket for his cellphone and flips it open. No messages. Kirihara scratches the side of his head.
Weird.
He scratches his head some more. Kirihara scoots over on his floor and climbs onto his bed, pushing a stack of Weekly Jumps onto his floor. The pages flutter. He shivers when a draft of frigid air blows over his damp, bare arms. Kirihara looks around. The light on his A/C is on-he must have forgot about it from last night, when it was muggy and hot and the crickets chirped through his open window. It's a whole different story now: the spring blossoms have closed up, the trees huddle in the park beside the apartment complex. It's a wet cold evening, the perfect sort of night to curl up next to someone warm and lick their neck, or something.
Kirihara doesn't even know if Niou likes that sorta stuff. He's never asked. Niou doesn't talk when they kiss-when they have kissed. Niou sighs and moans and once, Kirihara though Niou moaned his name, Akaya. It makes his dick swell now remembering that day. It was early autumn, around his birthday. They were in the tennis club tool shed. It was dark in there and smelled like mould, but when Niou rubbed his dick on Kirihara's, nothing mattered except the explosion of sensations and Niou's mewls on Kirihara's neck.
It seems like forever ago now. Kirihara flops back onto his bed, the mattress creaking under his weight. He cups his cock through his pants, a comfortable and easy feeling that doesn't do anything to satisfy the nagging worry in the back of his mind that something is really, really wrong.
***
He calls Niou-senpai under the safe strains of his mom and sister watching the latest Fuji TV drama. Even then, Kirihara whispers into his phone.
"Senpai?"
"….Yo."
"Uh…my sister said you called before."
"…yeah, guess so."
"Oh." Kirihara nods. Not that Niou would see it. "Cool," he says.
"Yeah."
"Senpai?"
"Hn?"
"Did you leave a message? 'Cause, uh, my sister didn't say anything, just that you called."
"Nothing important."
"Oh….okay. Thought I'd ask in case it was."
"It wasn't," Niou says. His voice sounds sharp on the phone. Kirihara winces. He might be dumb, but he's not a retard. Niou sounds distant and hollow. Kirihara cradles his cell against his ear. With his hands, he plays with the sheets on his bed. Niou has never seen them. Niou has never been on them, messed them up and kissed Kirihara hard on them.
"Senpai?" he asks. Kirihara swallows. His heart flaps, doki doki pattering and light against his ribs as he waits for Niou to answer.
"Mn?"
"You wanna come over?"
His words hang in the air. The tv music swells in the background of the apartment, melodramatic and bittersweet and Kirihara hopes Niou doesn't hear or think that he's into weird girly stuff like that-he's not! Kirihara'd save up for the new Final Fantasy game for Wii if he had a job, or enough willpower to not blow his allowance at the arcade on Fridays.
Kirihara crumples the sheets up in his fist, groaning through his teeth. He doesn't breathe and Niou doesn't breathe into the phone either. His stomach churns, barfy and bloated, waiting for Niou to say something, anything. Kirihara bites his lip. It hurts. Senpai, don't you want to come over…?
Then after a long pause, finally, Niou says, "Maybe another time, kid. I got homework."
They hang up. And it's just like it's been for the past eight months. Kirihara gets worked up, gets nervous and sweaty palms and a twitching dick, all for nothing.
Maybe this isn't what Niou-senpai wants after all.
Kirihara lies in bed, on top of the sheets. It's not really warm enough for the A/C to be on and instead, Kirihara cranks his window open for fresh air. He can hear the trains and the traffic from the street below. Shining lights of the city reflect on his walls; they're covered in glossy posters that magnify everything and rustle, the edges peeling up when a spring breeze drifts in through his curtains. Kirihara rubs his dick through his pants with one hand. With his other, he plays with the unicorn charm on his tennisbag zipper. Some of the metallic paint has chipped off. It's been banged around for months, smacked into train doors and dumped on the floor. It's endured being stepped on and poked at by Marui, who laughs and asks Kirihara who his girlfriend is.
If he was brave, he'd tell Marui the truth.
But he's not.
Kirihara sighs. His insides feel awful, like he's gotta go sit on the toilet for a half-hour and crap his roiling guts out, except he doesn't. He doesn't get Niou. He doesn't get the mixed signals and the silences Niou likes. He doesn't get why things are weird right now and have been for ages.
But when he thinks about it, things were never normal. There's always been a gap of something Kirihara can't quite figure out.
And he's beginning to wonder if maybe he doesn't ever want to, either.
***
He dreams that he's sitting on a bus. Yagyuu sits in front of him, so Kirihara leans over the seat and pokes Yagyuu in the back of the net.
"Kirihara-kun?"
Kirihara talks about nothing and everything. He can feel his mouth moving, but he can't remember what exactly he's saying. He babbles, but the bus never stops to pick anyone else up. His tennisbag sits across his lap, so he shoves it off. He never checks if the Six Percent charm is still hanging off the zipper or not-he doesn't think to look.
"So who do you like most?" Yagyuu asks.
Kirihara's face burns. Does Yagyuu-senpai know??? But of course Yagyuu does, it's a dream and Yanagi who knows everything told Yagyuu about Niou. Yagyuu's smile is cold and thin. He doesn't have eyes behind his glasses. He's creepy, but Kirihara is forced to answer him. His dream makes him, even though his stomach cramps up and he has a hard time forcing the words.
"Niou," he says. "Niou. Niou Masaharu!" He tries again, but each time he says Niou's name, the words are thicker and thicker, like his mouth is full and woolen and dry all at once. Kirihara shakes his head.
"You have to speak louder," Yagyuu says. "Niou-kun can't hear you."
Kirihara groans through his teeth. He flails his fists and shouts, "YES HE CAN!", only Yagyuu never seems to listen. Kirihara tries again, but saying Niou's name is like talking through water. The louder he says it, the more muffled it sounds. Yagyuu stares at him without eyes. Kirihara squeezes his eyes shut and slams his fists down. The seats are pillowy.
"I like Niou the most!" Kirihara shouts.
He snaps his eyes open and his dark room swirls around him, the ceiling blurring, whirring into focus as he throws his covers off. His heart pounds and he's half-hard between the legs. Niou's name is on his lips.
The liquid red numbers of his clock read just past five. Kirihara sighs. He rolls onto his side to get comfortable, but the dream unsettled him. It drifts into memory, the details forgotten except for Niou's name and the cold, mean smiles from Yagyuu.
Kirihara doesn't know what to make of it. He lays awake until the first birds start to stir and sound in the morning.
It's the caw of crows.
***
In the clubhouse, at morning practice, Kirihara gets there first. Well, before Niou anyway. He lingers at his locker, pretending to organize the crunchy, dirty uniform pieces on his shelves when Sanada-fukubuchou stomps in and narrows his eyes. Kirihara stares at a crumpled tennis club notice that he pulled from the bottom of his locker. A reminder of fees, due last week. Kirihara can't remember if he paid them or not. He's been thinking about other things lately.
Jackal-senpai comes in and Sanada leaves. Jackal is nice, all waves and good mornings, no matter what the time of day or the weather. Today is sunny already. Jackal takes off his sunglasses and hat. He spins the bowler on his index finger.
"Want to rally today?"
Kirihara looks around. Still no Niou, but there are a few other pre-regulars through the window outside. He shrugs. "Okay," he says. He ties his shoelaces a third time and adjusts the overgrip on his racket. He sits on the bench and spins his racket around, clockwise, a whirl of the metal frame and gut that clatters to the floor when it falls.
At half past seven Niou shows up. Jackal's just grabbing his tennisbag. "Akaya?" he says from the doorway.
Kirihara's eyes flash to Niou, who avoids the stare by ducking his head and opening his locker door, closing Kirihara off. Bile rises, hot and sharp in Kirihara's throat until a little bubble bursts on the back of his tongue. He feels ill.
Jackal keeps looking at him, shifting his eyes back and forth from Niou to Kirihara.
Kirihara exhales through his nose, then without looking back to Niou, he follows.
It's really warm out this morning. Before Jackal's even started, Kirihara sweats at the back of his neck. The sun is bright and the courts are endless. Marui walks up to the net chewing a wad of gum. He rolls his jaw sideways and smacks his lips before he blows a bubble. Jackal raises his eyebrows. Marui waves his fingers. Kirihara looks up and sighs. Behind Marui, Niou walks across the far courts. He might be swinging his racket in a wide circle, but nobody is asking to play with him. In his stomach, Kirihara's breakfast churns harder.
Jackal serves. Kirihara runs left. The ball curves towards the net, almost-but-not-quite a snake. He narrows his eyes and swings back. The ball has force on his racket, but nothing like what Jackal usually plays like when he goes all out. Kirihara drags his racket through the swing, curving his racket to cradle the ball. It shoots up. Marui shouts. Jackal runs for it. It's a rising shot: return, easy. Kirihara swings for that too.
Behind Jackal, Niou shuffles at the baseline of the opposite court. Yagyuu is there with him, hands gesturing as he speaks and Niou's mouth twitches into a half-smile. Something pokes Kirihara sharp between the ribs. Wrist hand snaps. The ball flies up, straight up in a blinding line of yellow.
It hits the net post with a hollow ping then flies horizontal out to the adjacent courts. Kirihara cringes. Jackal yells, "BALL!" Other senpais ducks out of the way, but it's Yukimura-buchou, on the very last court, who catches the ball with his racket, making quick fast work with his reflexes.
All members, all sixty, seventy-five, one hundred members of the senior high tennis club stare at Kirihara. Including Niou-senpai. The breeze ruffles his hair, making his bangs translucent against the sunlight. Kirihara swallows hard. His face is blushing so hard and he's forcing himself to laugh it off, but the shame grows inside and twists.
Idiot! he thinks. Stupid stupid STUPID!
"Everything okay?" Marui asks. He offers a stick of gum. Kirihara shakes his head. It already feels like he has a wad stuck in his throat.
The day only goes down from there.
In the showers after practice, it's busy. Steam and soap and naked guys are everywhere. Kirihara drops his towel and joins the throng. Jackal starts to sing some new enka song by an American ("he's a quarter Japanese", Jackal says) but most of the other guys just talk about chicks. Kirihara ducks his head and tries to ignore it, he tries to ignore them as he steals the only free shower he can find-
Right between Niou and another senior, one of those guys who made fun of Niou last year. Kirihara purses his lips when he remembers all the nasty things they said about Niou. Even now, people still snicker behind Niou's back, but his gay germs haven't spread into an epidemic, or anything.
When Niou drops his soap, it's bad. The seniors stop talking. Niou freezes when he bends down. His ass is in the air-Kirihara is not looking, he's not!-and his eyes are wide behind his wet hair.
"Heh, just like a fag," one of the seniors says.
Niou says nothing. He reaches for his soap, but someone kicks it away. The showers are too steamy for Kirihara to see who; there's too many players, too many moving legs and arms and too many voices speaking at once, words like "sick" and "faggot" and "fucked up the ass like Aoi's girlfriend". Kirihara balls his fist. Anger rises inside, bubbling up into his eyes, the pressure intensifying the more people laugh and point as Niou scrambles across the showers, searching for his soap.
Jackal and Marui don't laugh, but they don't help Niou either. Yagyuu stares with his myopic eyes: he can't see a thing, and neither can Yanagi-senpai, who's probably taken out his contacts by now. Buchou and fukubuchou aren't here. Kirihara breathes through his nose, his nostrils flaring as his eyes pound with blood and sharp pains behind.
He could help Niou.
But his teammates would laugh at him too.
He should help Niou.
But then people would find out.
He-
Something bumps his foot. Kirihara blinks. He looks down, seeing a small, green-tinted block of soap on the inside of his heel. Niou is at waist-level, almost dangerously close to Kirihara's hips. Niou's eyes don't move-they stare, all black and asking him something Kirihara doesn't know if he really understands or not.
Kirihara breathes slowly. He doesn't reach down because Niou picks up his soap first. Kirihara should feel a sigh of relief pass through his chest, but instead, his ribs creak and tighten.
In the locker room when Kirihara mumbles that maybe they can practice together this afternoon, Niou doesn't say a word.
Kirihara's ribs crack, poking through his uniform shirt as he's fumbling with his tie.
Then, in second period, the math tests are handed out.
Kirihara looks at the mark on his. There is blood red ink and a big circle around the 32%. His stomach sinks. He flips through the pages, staring at his work: wrong, wrong, mostly wrong, a big question mark underlined by the teacher. A classmate leans over and asks what he got. Kirihara stuffs his test into his textbook and slams it.
As much as he wants to nap in class, fall asleep under the first wafts of A/C this spring as the teacher drones on about derivatives, his chest is swollen. His eyes hurt from this morning, and now, they hurt even more. He's never gonna be cut out to be captain next year if his marks keep falling. He's never gonna graduate and he's never gonna be number one at tennis! His parents will kill him. Sanada and Yukimura will kick him off the team.
Kirihara bangs his forehead on the edge of his desk. He closes his eyes and groans under his breath. Why am I so dumb? he thinks. He stares at his backpack. The zipper is half-open, revealing a couple old comics inside and some candy wrappers along with dog-eared textbooks that he scribbled his name onto the spines.
He can't even bring himself to look at his test. It was math he thought he got. It was math he didn't understand in the end, the same way that he doesn't understand Niou. Kirihara rubs his chin. Every time he tries, he just fails.
Maybe he should just give up.
***
There is a vegetable plot on the rooftop, at the opposite end of the school from the swimming pool and the area where some of the kids come up here to smoke. Kirihara walks past some of them-guys from the tennis club, guys from class 3D, guys who look old enough to be in university, all sorts of different guys. He might be taller than some of them, but the way they flick their cigarettes at him makes Kirihara rush past them awful fast. He holds his bento to his chest. It's nothing special, just whatever his mom packed this morning, but he doesn't want to risk these thugs with the shaved heads and bleached hair getting anywhere near his lunch.
He's hungry.
That, and there are two cans of fanta that he bought from the vending machine downstairs.
Kirihara walks past the vents which blast hot air up out into the sky. He walks past a group of girls gossiping about something dumb as they fix their nails and giggle. He walks past the random boxes and pipes and railings on the roof that don't make any sense but that make him trip when he's not paying attention.
Kirihara walks past the vegetable garden. Yukimura stands up, wipes his hand on his face and waves. There's mud on his nose. Kirihara tries to smile, but it's weird and wonky and Yukimura gives him a funny look before going back to his plants.
Behind another air vent, one that blocks the view of everything but the green school campus dotted with students, Kirihara finds Niou-Niou's back is turned to him and he leans over the railing, dangerously close to falling down four floors if he isn't careful. Kirihara sucks in a breath, then he coughs, just in case Niou doesn't hear his footsteps.
Niou doesn't turn around. His lunch is on the cement ledge, three bento compartments laid open: rice with shichimi and cold grilled beef and pickles and dumplings, too. Nothing has been touched. Kirihara furrows his forehead and scratches it.
"Senpai?" he asks.
Niou's shoulders tense, but he doesn't move except for drumming his fingers on the metal rail. "Do you ever wonder," he asks, "what would happen if you fell down to the ground from here?"
Kirihara blinks. Slowly, he sets his lunch set on a closed vent away from the edge. He takes a step closer to Niou.
Niou sighs, then pushes himself away. Kirihara exhales, but the tension doesn't leave his belly. Niou stretches his legs out and presses his back to the ledge. He isn't smiling. His eyes are distant, looking through Kirihara rather than at him. He smells of sweat and the soap from his shower-the same green one that was kicked around by their teammates.
Kirihara feels like crap for not doing anything then. He swallows. He tries to smile, but mostly he feels ill and tied up inside. The words to apologize are on the tip of his tongue, but he can't open his mouth. There is nothing but the soft rattle of the vents around them, and the faint laughter and shouts from the campus below.
Niou turns around again. He doesn’t say anything more. His back doesn't move and Kirihara isn't sure he's breathing at all until he hears Niou whisper, "Puri". After five, ten, maybe more minutes of struggling and failing to think of something to say to make things better, Kirihara grabs his bento. He sets down the can of melon fanta on the ledge, next to Niou's lunch. It clinks on the cement.
Only when Kirihara walks down the stairs to the third floor does he look out the tall window and see Yagyuu and a girl under a tree, behind the basketball courts. Niou would be able to see them perfectly from the rooftop as they neck.
***
It's raining. It's kinda cold out, enough that Kirihara remembers to pull his uniform sweater on before running to the bus this morning. Practice is cancelled due to the huge mud puddles that eat up the courts, but the regulars stay indoors in the gymnasium. Kirihara swats the ball against a wall. The thwok, schwook sounds are comfortable and the motions are involuntary. He can think about nothing and video games and how nice it might be to nap on the bench over there instead.
Buchou and Yanagi hog the ball machines.
Kirihara doesn't see Niou-senpai. Nobody asks about him either, except Sanada, who grumbles that the team is all skipping, the lazyasses. Then, he sends a pointed glare in Kirihara's direction. Kirihara narrows his eyes right back. Stupid fukubuchou, he thinks, can't he seem I'm working?
He swings again-backhand-and the ball smucks the wall, bouncing back once and allowing Kirihara to return it with an easy rising shot. It's mindless. The ball bounces. The rain pours. Niou still doesn't show up. Kirihara glances around the gym. Every flash of the clouds and downpour of rain changes the dim shadows and the fluorescent lighting. He sees a slash of white out of the corner of his eye, but it's never Niou's hair.
Kirihara sighs. His stomach shrivels up a little more, crunching up into a ball the same way he crunched up his English homework last night before he chucked it into his garbage bin.
It's the sort of day where he'd rather be anywhere but school. Curled up at home asleep on the couch with a video game console in his hand, yes. Rushing through an underground arcade to the big mega-arcade complex near downtown with a jingling pocket of change, yes. Maybe even tucked away in some hidden corridor of the school touching Niou's neck and kissing him hard enough to make Niou moan and rub against Kirihara's dick. Thinking about it during English class makes Kirihara hard. He squirms. He looks out the window and wiggles. The campus is a soggy green mess and the rain has cut through the delicate leaves of the confession tree, littering the remains across the grass. The tennis courts are a pool of greying water, growing bigger and bigger as the teacher drones on about participles.
Kirihara watches the window, but Niou's face never shows up. There's no reflection smirking at him through the sluicing water, there's no mole twitching as Niou tells him the wrong answers to the teacher's questions. There's just…nothing except a cold shiver that brushes over his skin, making his arms goosepimple and his dick throb a little more. Kirihara squeezes his legs together. His desk creaks. The teacher's chalk squeaks on the board and the entire class cringes.
Yesterday, he tried to call Niou. He made the effort and dialed Niou's number. It was late. It was dark. Kirihara was in his pajamas and half-hard thinking about Niou, in bed, on the other end of the line. Sometimes he wonders if Niou thinks about Yagyuu when he masturbates and not him, not Kirihara. If they haven't kissed in ages, if they haven't talked much either, except about the new Final Fantasy release or the arcade being open 24/7 now, then...Kirihara doesn't know what to think of Niou: what he wants or what he thinks about him.
Maybe he just can't do this gay thing.
Niou never picked up his cellphone last night. Kirihara tucks away his Jump issue. It's too fat to fit into his English textbook and the new Konomi Takeshi serial has a character with a mole on his chin. Seeing a panel with the mole next to a word bubble just makes Kirihara's throat all tight and he fidgets in his desk to try to ease the strain in his pants. He wriggles the other way, jerking into the corner of his seat and trying to be as quiet as he can but then he moves too fast, too far and the desk scrapes across the floor.
The teacher stops talking.
All eyes in his class turn to him.
Kirihara can feel the blood congealing in his cheeks. And his eyes. He squeezes his eyes shut, kicking himself inside for being so dumb when the teacher asks, "Kirihara-kun, are you paying attention to the lesson?"
Rain patters on the window. One of the girls starts to giggle. Kirihara whips his head around to see Yagyuu's girlfriend, Kimi-kun, or whatever her name is, laughing at him behind her hand. He grinds his teeth and curls his lip. The blood keeps rushing to his eyes, pushing on the backs of his eyeballs in that tell-tale pressure looking to burst.
"Yes," he says. He forces himself to laugh-it's unconscious, he doesn't mean to, but the teacher's lips thin. They have a new English teacher this year, some middle-aged American perv who, rumour has it, ran off to Japan with his Asian girlfriend who left him as soon as the plane touched down in Narita.
Not that Kirihara cares.
All English teachers are assholes.
The teacher nods to the textbook. "Put your comic away and pay attention," he says. "Next time, it'll be detention."
"Che," Kirihara mutters. His face still burns. One of Kimi-kun's friends catcalls and then the class joins in the jeering. Kirihara slinks deeper and deeper into his seat. He hates the attention like this, feeling and being stupid and not normal, or something.
Maybe that's his whole problem with Niou.
Maybe he just wants to fit in and Niou knows it.
Kirihara stuffs his Jump issue into his backpack. The candy wrappers crinkle and his fingers brush something sticky at the bottom of his bag. He pulls his hand out and cringes.
Spread all over his fingers is the slimy residue from a can of fanta.
***
Niou isn't on the rooftop at lunch.
No one except Yukimura is. He's hunched under a blue umbrella, crouched by a plug tray of plants. The garden looks more like a black soup than something alive. Kirihara creeps past, hoping to avoid buchou for the moment. His hand touches the latch on the door to the stairwell and he's almost home-free. Kirihara starts to exhale with relief.
"Akaya," Yukimura says. He doesn't turn around-he's got eyes in the back of his head.
Kirihara peers around. He sets his foot down carefully on the ground and he peels his hand off the latch, wet with the rain droplets splattered all over the cold metal. "Uh, hi buchou," he says.
Yukimura stands up and wipes his hands on his uniform pants, making long tracks of black earth across his thighs. He lifts his umbrella up enough at an angle to look out at Kirihara. His eyes narrow when Kirihara shifts his weight, feeling awkward as the rain continues to patter around them. Yukimura holds onto his trowel. "Everything okay?" he asks.
"Uh, yeah," Kirihara says. Wet rain splotches on his neck and arms, and it drips of the ends of his hair, getting all over his face. Yukimura's umbrella shields him from the rain rushing out of a drainpipe nearby, but the water forms a puddle around the spot he'd been digging. Plants sit tipped on their sides by the edge of the flower bed. Kirihara side-steps around them, but then he hears a tell-tale crunch of plastic and Yukimura shrieks.
"Watch out for the petunias!" he snaps.
"Sorry," Kirihara mutters. He hangs his head and hair hangs over his eyes. The water slides down his nose and falls off the tip, dripping cold and itchy. Kirihara rubs it with the back of his hand, but he smears a bit of snot in the process, too. He cringes. Kirihara takes a step backwards, careful of the crushed plant container this time.
Yukimura drops his trowel. It falls into the earth like a blade, straight up and dangerous and for a moment, the metal flashes in the crackling light of the approaching storm. Kirihara jumps, but Yukimura just lifts his head, raises his eyebrows and sniffs. "You've been really distracted lately," he says. He cups his hands around the crushed plants and his lip trembles. "Poor babies," he murmurs. To Kirihara, he narrows his eyes.
Kirihara nods. He stares at his feet. The foot of his school shoe is soaked through and the canvas of his toes is darker from the rain and the mud. His bag is heavy; he should have left it in his locker, but he was stupid enough to think that Niou might have been here again and that Niou might have wanted to share the bento he brought from home today, the one his father brought from the department store in Kyushu when he came home last night from his business trip.
Now, he just feels like the sludge weaving between the petunias Yukimura has already planted: dirty and useless and meandering, searching for nothing and something and going around in a circle.
"Your form looked sloppy on Thursday," Yukimura says. "Your shoulders were too tense."
Kirihara looks at Yukimura. "Eh?"
Yukimura blinks. Kirihara scratches the side of his head, and then his nose. He's getting wetter by the second standing here and Yukimura is nice and dry under his umbrella. Kirihara's uniform sticks to his body, uncomfortable and tight and bunched up on his legs in all the wrong places. He wiggles, but his pants ride up his butt a bit. He breathes through his nose, a huff that Yukimura doesn't hear.
"Well," buchou says, "it's not anything undoable, you'll just need to work a bit more on your form and posture and that follow-through was crap, Akaya. Your elbow shouldn't be locked like that."
"Sorry," he mutters again. "I'll…try not to be distracted again."
Yukimura nods. "Good." He pats Kirihara on the shoulder and when Kirihara glances down, there's a muddy print on his shirt. His shoulders sink a little lower and his stomach, too-his mom'll start making him do his own laundry soon if he keeps coming home with dirty uniforms and creaming his sheets in desperation and loneliness every night.
When Yukimura bends down to pick up his trowel, the door to the stairwell swings open. Kirihara darts out of the way, but barely in enough time to avoid Sanada slamming the door open on his shin. He shouts. Sanada yells at him. Yukimura just starts to dig a new hole for a purple petunia cupped in his palm.
Sanada snorts. "Tarundoru," he says. "Watch what you're doing!"
Kirihara glares. Sanada holds out a large umbrella over Yukimura and completely bypasses Kirihara, even though buchou has his own. Sanada leans down. Yukimura looks up. He smiles and wipes his face with his palm, smearing dirt over his nose again and for a second, Kirihara wonders if there's something weird going on when Sanada's expression softens and his mouth twitches.
"Akaya," Yukimura says.
Kirihara rubs the back of his neck. His stomach rumbles and he's gonna totally miss lunch if he stays out here any longer. Besides, with Sanada here, he wants to stay even less. Kirihara stops at the door, but he manages to push the latch at least.
As he's leaving, Yukimura calls out, "If it's girls again, just ask Marui for help. He's Pure Genius with them, after all."