PoT: briefly held in the manner of one's shadow (silhouetted)
For ebonydragon, because she requested it; for aishuu/risingtides, because she talked about a d1 fic in which switching was not a way of life; for tongari, because she teaches and Yagyuu learns.
1. Let me in/ let me drown or learn how to swim/ just don't leave me at the window/ I could be the one to be your next best friend
This is what Yagyuu learns from Niou:
There are certain people in this world that no matter how much you hit them and hit them and hit them, they never shut up, and when you're out of breath and have finally given up hitting them, you'll realize that you're the one who has been changed, not them.
There are certain people in this world who never change at all.
Sometimes never changing is the greatest change of all.
2. The way you make me feel/ I could collapse/ an epidemic I cannot outlast
Yagyuu is a very simple person. He likes order and neatness and the certain degree of precision that only exists on the edge of a well-sharpened scalpel as it opens a human body. As a child he pinned butterflies to flat surfaces and framed them. They are still in his room. He likes being right. He is usually right. He likes sharpened pencils and working pens. He likes familiarity, knowledge, and brevity. He has at least one distinct memory for each year, excluding when he was one; his favorite memory is always his most recent one. He likes ice cream stores where there are more ice cream flavors than there are years in his life, because then he can try to apply one flavor to each year of his life. He knows that if up until now he has been Vanilla with a touch of Lemon Drop or Orange Sherbet, maybe even laden slightly with Neapolitan, from now on everything will be Bourbon Wind, Apple Walnut, Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Parfait, Old Fashioned Butter Pecan, and Turkish Coffee, with a hint of Ginger.
He knows this because Niou is anything but simple, easy things like vanilla, strawberry, orange, lemon, or banana, even beyond slightly complex things like chocolate, beyond any framework of simplicity or complexity that Yagyuu has ever known.
3. Happy birthday/ no one cares/ you come around here/ you better bring a witness/ everyone in here's on the guest list/ When you're gone you won't be missed
Everyone has one moment of their lives which they are constantly living for. Usually it is some moment in their life that has already passed, but from then on will influence everything that comes after it. It is comparable, but not identical nor parallel, to the image of a single drop of water hitting the flat surface of a pond, henceforth displacing everything else in waves and ripples.
If that's the case, Yagyuu knows that Niou is not a drop of water at all, but more a pebble skipped across the surface or wave that rips across the surface of a flat beach landscape.
Yagyuu's moment is not the first time he met Niou. That had been when they were first years and Niou had bumped Yagyuu as they stepped into their homeroom class together. Niou's hair was not long as it is now, and it had given Yagyuu the distinct impression of a rat-tail, which, now that Yagyuu thinks about it, is actually what it really is. And despite having classes together, Yagyuu had proceeded to forget Niou for the rest of the day until he had bumped into Niou again at the end of the day, when they were both standing in front of the tennis courts and mutually being impressed with the size. Their introductions to each other were brief and harmless, completely and totally unimportant, and left them with nothing to remember each other by, even weeks later.
Nor is Yagyuu's moment the first time they played doubles together towards the middle of second year, because that had been a mess. Niou ended that day by silently glaring at Yagyuu as they both retreated to the locker rooms together, a towel over his head like questionable hair. Niou had turned to Yanagi then, his hair wild and his eyes more, and snapped, "This is stupid." Yanagi had answered mildly with something about complementary players and trying out doubles pairs and a smattering of statistics, half of which Yagyuu knew already and half of which Yagyuu didn't have the interest to listen to, and proceeded to steer Niou toward the showers.
Yagyuu had counted until ten before he went in after them.
But in between then and now Niou became a regular as well; in between then and now Yagyuu discovers that Niou is less of an uncontrollable force than he had hitherto believed; in between then and now a summer passes; in between then and now they all grow one year older, one year wiser, one year colder, one year taller.
4. But nothing's as hard as/ getting free from places/ I've already been/ I've already been waste deep/ in the burning meadows of my mind
This is Yagyuu's memory of being six:
It's summer, and it's dark, and there is something festive about everything, like a holiday or just the idyll of summer getting drunker and fuller by the minute. Yagyuu is small and thin in shorts and a white t-shirt that is dark purple because of the night. There are streetlamps lit. There are fireflies. Yagyuu doesn't know which are brighter. There is a distinct ache in his feet and along his calves. His younger sister is with his mother somewhere farther off. His father is completely absent. Yagyuu's mouth and the space in between his fingers are kind of sticky from what he presumes to be a popsicle. In the distance Yagyuu hears the sound of fireworks whistling in the air before exploding. He can even almost hear the colored smoke fizzing away quietly before the next one whistles up and bursts. Yagyuu is running down the street, panting heavily, looking for the fireworks. But for some reason, even though the sounds of those fireworks get closer and closer, he still can't see them. It sounds like they're right above him, but he still can't find them. So he keeps running, sometimes changing directions, sometimes backtracking and starting down a different path, and the sounds of his sneakers hitting the ground are almost as loud as the explosions, but always the sky is a musky purple from light pollution and never aflame with fireworks.
Fade to black.
Yagyuu narrating over the black screen: "I never did find the fireworks that night. I'm quite sure they were real, but they weren't real enough for me to see them."
Silence.
Yagyuu's voice, again: "In my mind they were very beautiful."
5. Oh how I wish/ you were around/ so many friends I wish/ I had right now
Yagyuu's memory of being fourteen has nothing to do with tennis and everything to do with Niou.
6. Thank heavens I fell/ must look more like myself/ Now everyone is so kind/ everyone looks like a long lost friend of mine
Pan slowly across a scene of a park. Pass by briefly over two white undistinguishable dots under a tree, then come back. Carefully zoom in on Yagyuu and Niou. They are underneath a particularly thick willow tree, having come to the park after tennis practice because Niou didn't feel like going home and consequentially Yagyuu shouldn't either. Niou has already spent much of that afternoon slashing the overhanging branches with a stick snapped off from the tree, each hit causing a cascade of leaves to fall on the ground around Yagyuu, who had spent that time peeling the bark from the branches lying around. Everything smells vaguely of apples and green, the smell of broken willow leaves and stripped branches.
Niou's socks are lying on the ground a few inches away from his shoes. His bare feet are digging themselves into the grass. His tie is loose and the first three buttons of his shirt are open. He has his tennis wristband on which Yagyuu stares at while they're both lying on the ground together, even though Niou's head is actually closer to Yagyuu's waist. His arms are thrown against the grass above his head so that his hand is right next to Yagyuu's face, smelling of willow branch and sweat and just ever so lightly of rubber and grip tape.
They listen to everything get darker before Niou, who's heaving even though he hasn't done more than wave his arms around madly for the last few hours, says, "Why are you afraid of getting anything wrong?"
"What do you mean?" Yagyuu asks pleasantly, watching Niou turn over on his stomach. "You're going to get stains on your shirt if you do that. Here, let me--" Yagyuu's hand reaches across his body for Niou's shoulder, brushing off some of the matted willow leaves, and Niou shakes his head viciously.
"I don't care. I have shirts at home. And you're not," Niou flashes a smile at him, all teeth and lips and sharp, "answering my question. See, you are afraid of being wrong. Does it hurt?"
"Does what hurt?"
"Being wrong. Does it hurt you? Is it painful?" Niou reaches out and touches the waistband of Yagyuu's pants, flutters up as he picks absently at the last few buttons on Yagyuu's shirt, keeps moving up along his collar, touches his neck, under his chin, and then settles on the bridge of Yagyuu's glasses. Yagyuu is still breathing evenly without changing and his heartbeat is still steady under the cage of his shirt and skin.
"That's really the same question, isn't it," Yagyuu points out. He tries to move Niou's hand away, but it won't budge without taking Yagyuu's glasses with him, so Yagyuu concedes and falls into a state of blurred and softened drowsiness. He won't tell Niou that he's a little bit uncomfortable being without his glasses, because at least his glasses give him control over his vision and half of his expression. He can hear Niou click the legs together rhythmically like a metronome.
"At school. You never seem to get anything wrong. And if you do, you just shut it all up inside. Bottling it up." Niou punctuates his sentences with a click of Yagyuu's glasses. Yagyuu is pulling up grass without noticing it himself until his fingers touch a fallen willow leaf, jagged at the edges, hard and slick.
"I'm not afraid," Yagyuu says, and it sounds true, and it is true, and Yagyuu likes being truthful.
"You're not afraid," Niou repeats. Yagyuu decides that he isn't being sarcastic or skeptical at all and relaxes, fingernail scratching the edge of the willow leaf. Overhead the sky is getting darker and darker. Finally Niou asks offhandedly, "What do you want to do with your life?" as if Yagyuu were throwing it away or something.
"A doctor, probably. A surgeon, maybe. Cutting people open, fiddling with organs and broken bones." Yagyuu lifts his hand up and attempts some kind of gesture in the heavy air above the grass. "Fixing things."
And then suddenly Niou sits up, Yagyuu's glasses abandoned on the grass next to his knees, and he's rapidly undoing one button after another, pulling his shirt off so that it's bunched around his elbows as he grabs Yagyuu's hand and tugs, resting Yagyuu's palm against Niou's naked chest. Yagyuu is still lying on the ground, peering up at Niou curiously, his vision still slightly hazy without his glasses, and Niou's skin is warm and almost pulsating in the darkness under Yagyuu's skin. Niou says, "Cut right into me then." Niou says, "Inside we all look the same." Niou says, leaning in against Yagyuu's palm, "When we're both sliced open and bleeding, we're exactly identical."
Yagyuu answers, "I'm not afraid," and does not take his hand away.
Cut to black. Inhale, cut to Yagyuu's face, exhale, cut back to black. Inhale, cut to Niou's face, exhale, back to black. Inhale, cut to Yagyuu's hand on Niou's chest. Pause.
Niou's voice, unable to make out whether or not it's an echo of him earlier: "You're not afraid." The sound of the willow branches rustling imperceptibly in the wind. A couple long, almost fish-shaped leaves drift to the ground around them.
Cut to black.
7. But love was just implied
Afterwards Yagyuu takes Niou home because Niou says he'll need an explanation for why he's out that late and it would smooth things out with his parents if he says that he stayed over at Yagyuu's house. When they're done with dinner, Yagyuu takes Niou up to his room, and there, completely impromptu, Yagyuu sitting cross-legged on the floor with his hands propping him up from behind and Niou with one knee to each side of Yagyuu so he's almost sitting on Yagyuu's lap and his hands pulling Yagyuu's head closer, Niou kisses Yagyuu over and over. Niou tastes bitter and green and a lot like the orange he just ate; he had been chewing willow leaves earlier, and the taste is still there in his mouth when Yagyuu takes the initiative from Niou and continues kissing him. Niou doesn't take off Yagyuu's shirt or even his own shirt. They just stay like that for a long, long time, fully dressed and kissing slowly, unhurriedly, as if they had all the time in the world to just do this and all the air in the world to inhale in little gaps between kisses.
Niou is tense and uncharacteristically gentle and Yagyuu doesn't recognize him at all. But when Niou's fingers skitter over Yagyuu's neck for the second time that day, Yagyuu hears fireworks like he is six again, one loud explosion after another, like a steady volley of gunshots, like Niou's heartbeat against his palm, like his own heartbeat against his ribs.
8. And in the dead summer heat/ I feel asleep with blood on my teeth
Niou and Yagyuu aren't always doubles partners. Yagyuu plays doubles two with Jackal against Fudomine. Niou plays singles one. Marui plays singles two by himself, obviously [*]. But if Niou is good as a singles player, the problem is that Sanada, Yukimura, Yanagi, and Kirihara are still better; the problem is that Niou's even better when he's playing with Yagyuu.
Seigaku before nationals. The afternoon they find that out, Yanagi looks at Niou and Yagyuu so they know that they're going to be playing doubles one. Niou saunters over to where Yagyuu is standing and, stretching lengthily and laboriously, says, "The Golden Pair, huh?"
"They're not remarkable apart, but they're perfect together," Yagyuu says. "They know each other inside and out and complement what they know." Yagyuu turns his back to the fence surrounding the tennis courts.
Niou steps in and grabs the links beside Yagyuu's head, pressing Yagyuu closer against the fence. "Why Hiroshi-kun," he drawls out slow syllable by syllable, "are you saying that I don't know you?" Yagyuu gives him a look from behind his glasses, watching Niou carefully, but he isn't prepared for what Niou says next. Niou tousles his hair carefully, smoothing it back, and affecting a calm, smooth, refined tone, adds, "If I don't know you, I guess I'll just have to be you, then."
"Careful," Yagyuu says, calm, trying to push Niou away. "Fukubuchou is watching," but Niou kisses the side of Yagyuu's ear anyway, moving down to his neck and jaw, making it hard to talk, and Yagyuu has to pry Niou away before someone else notices.
"Would that be like masturbation?" Niou jokes as he backs off, forcing Yagyuu to laugh before he dismisses it. And that is that.
The ironic thing about the swap is that it wasn't supposed to be used against the Golden Pair as an actual tactic; it's actually just to help Yagyuu and Niou know each other better before they face Seigaku. At first it's just learning each other's good points and bad points, practicing each other's shots, playing against each other trying to use the other's style. And then Niou takes a few steps too far, like he always does, and starts patting his hair down and learning Yagyuu's voice. It's just a few days later that he steals Yagyuu's glasses and tries to play with them on. Niou's gotten Yagyuu's actions down pretty well before he drags Yagyuu into it as well. "For the good of our partnership," he says, tossing his head back and laughing, the collar of his Rikkai uniform trapping his small ponytail in against his neck, and because Niou runs his fingers lightly along Yagyuu's neck and smiles his sharp insouciant smile, Yagyuu can't resist, even though he knows better.
It's hard at first, because Yagyuu knows himself better than anyone else does and no one knows Niou at all, but if Niou can deceive the devil, then Yagyuu can certainly try. They do a good enough job of faking it that it makes Yanagi smile. Yagyuu can't get used to it, though, the feel of being in someone else's skin just long enough to drive him crazy, and he doesn't like it. Niou is White Chocolate and Almonds, is Butterscotch Toffee, is Red Bean; after all this time Yagyuu is still Vanilla. There are some things that he just can't hope to be. But no one else knows, because by now Yagyuu knows that he and Niou are two strangers who know each other the best only because they haven't let anyone else get familiar enough to try.
Less than a week before the match against Seigaku, Yagyuu and Niou are playing doubles as each other against Marui and Jackal, Yanagi watching them from afar, arms crossed thoughtfully. The sun has been hot on them since noon, heating the court under their shoes so that their feet are sweating, and being Niou means moving more. They're winning 5-3 when Yagyuu suddenly gets a nosebleed. He has a moment of purely impersonal panic as the blood is trickling over his mouth before Niou hurries over, grinning wildly because despite the loss of Yagyuu he's just scored a point by brilliantly flourishing Yagyuu's Laser Beam.
"The heat too much for me, is it?" Niou says, cheerful, pulling Yagyuu to a bench so that they can lay him relatively flat with his head thrown back. "I didn't know I was so susceptible to nosebleeds."
"You know the way it goes. Something new every day," Yagyuu says dryly, feeling dizzy and rather irritated with the way the sun still blinded him, haloing around Niou's face above him. "I didn't know I was so inconsiderate of my partner's well-being either. Now get me a Kleenex before the blood gets on my uniform."
Marui runs over to Yanagi to get something to plug up Yagyuu's nose and calls out from where he is, snapping his gum before he speaks, "Do you need to go to the nurse?" Yagyuu shakes his head, forgetting that Marui can't hear him, and Niou answers for him, "He's fine." Jackal is pouring water from a water bottle onto a towel so they can wipe the blood off Yagyuu's face. Afterwards Niou lays the towel across Yagyuu's forehead as if Yagyuu was running a fever. Marui and Jackal have left already. Yagyuu can hear Kirihara and Yanagi's voice, lightly punctuated by Sanada's, in the distance over the thud of tennis balls hitting the ground. Niou's fingers are cold and wet because of the towel. Yagyuu turns towards them instinctively, breathing through his mouth because Jackal had rather unceremoniously twisted tissue into plugs and stuffed them into Yagyuu's nostrils.
"I like you when you're trying to be me," Niou says. "You're horrible at it."
"How would you know what you're like to other people? And anyway," Yagyuu replies, "I like it better when you're being you." He touches the towel on his forehead deftly, folding it again so that the warm part against his skin is exposed to the tired summer breeze. "We're so much better when we are who we we're supposed to be." Niou puts his forehead against Yagyuu's, trapping the towel in between them, and Yagyuu heaves a breath through his mouth and says slowly, like speaking to a child, "Niou, my nose is bleeding, I can't breathe, there is blood crusted around my upper lip, I'm too hot already without your body heat, and I think I'm suffering from dehydration."
Niou pauses for a moment as if he were thinking about what Yagyuu had just said, but Yagyuu knows that can't be true because Niou doesn't think about what people have said after they've said it. Absentmindedly chewing his lips, Niou repositions his face, aligning it closer to Yagyuu's, and whispers, breath hot and dry on Yagyuu's skin, even behind the lukewarm wet towel, "That's fine. This is the way I like you the best."
Yagyuu's one moment in life is then, when despite the blood and Sanada in the background and the heat and the wet towel between them, Niou brushes the hair away from the corners of his mouth and kisses Yagyuu, and Yagyuu sees fireworks, whether it's from the halo of light around Niou's face from the sun or from Niou, he isn't sure.
9. Now another bad idea gets through/ down the assembly line to you/ you're every bridge I should have burned/ every lesson I've unlearned
Even though after Yagyuu's nose stops bleeding, Niou promises Yagyuu that they won't have to switch ever again, less than a week afterwards Niou shows up at the tennis courts on the day of the match against Seigaku looking like Yagyuu. But they beat the Golden Pair anyway, so it's okay, and later Yagyuu realizes that even though Niou can look like Yagyuu and adopt Yagyuu's voice when he promises something, in the end Niou is still Niou, and Yagyuu is still Yagyuu. If Yagyuu keeps his promises once he's made them, then Niou only keeps his promises when it suits him. After all, this is how Yagyuu likes Niou the best; this is how Niou likes Yagyuu the best; and Yagyuu wouldn't have it any other way.
10. You've been used by an army of kings/ you've been touched by the lips of a queen
This is what Niou learns from Yagyuu:
Love.
11. Birdcage
So sad
That you took it so badly
And acted so madly
So scared
Like a baby by the morning
With sunlight unfolding
Your eyes have turned red
And are holding me
Inside your story
In the end
You'll be starting on a new one
Of anguish and delusions
He smiles
Just like a magician
Who's just cast his illusions
Of castles and sandstones
On the backbeach
And bright lights
Within your reach
The sounds
Of a warning
By the morning
Of hound dogs coming for me
With the ropes
Leading back to your knees
And you looking straight at me
On your knees in the rain
With a basket of flowers
Just for me
As the bells in the trees up above
All swung and rang softly
You said you rang them for me
For me...
self-important A/N: If any one hasn't noticed, which is very possible, the lyrics used in the section headings are from each of the songs from the Wallflower's album "Breach", except for section 11, where it is the entire lyrics of track 10, Birdcage, simply because 1/3 of the time I spent writing this I wrote with that song playing in the background (the other third of the time was spent listening to Elliott Smith and the last third was spent mooching off m.e.'s Cousteau music happily). The song referenced may or may not have anything at all to do with the section. I am not as talented as tongari in her soundtrack drabbles. <3. Speaking of which, tongari is of course referenced/plagarized in the first section from her writing meme. [*] refers to what the HP fans would call a "flint": Yagyuu is listed as either partnering with Marui or Jackal against Fudomine, and either Jackal or Marui played singles two against Fudomine. I went with what FET had listed, just for simplicity's sake. FET also only lists Niou as a regular in his third year, so I'm assuming that of the entire team, Niou is the last one to become a regular. If it isn't obvious by now, all of my stories are always hopelessly inspired by my own experiences, because I am an unoriginal wreck of a writer. I have two gigantic willow trees in my backyard which I like to slash at murderously with a stick, if only because it is a more interesting way of keeping the branches from reaching our neighbor's yard than cutting them. Yagyuu must have had a lot of trust in Niou to allow himself to sit under the tree while Niou was hitting the branches; if Niou were to accidentally hit Yagyuu, it would have hurt. A lot. *speaks from experience, winces*. And yes, I have chewed willow leaves. It tastes really no different from any other leaves, except it is in a cuter shape, and when they fall they sort of look like fish. Fireworks-- it wasn't when I was six. When I was six, I was afraid of being under them because I thought the streaming fire bit of it would actually fall out of the sky and hit me. It was actually a year or so ago, when there were fireworks in my neighborhood, and I could hear them, but no matter how I ran around my neighborhood, I couldn't see them at all. As for the ice cream? I just like it. ^^
p.s. I would just like to inform everyone that after three whole bloody fucking years of braces, I have finally gotten them off. Finally.
1. Let me in/ let me drown or learn how to swim/ just don't leave me at the window/ I could be the one to be your next best friend
This is what Yagyuu learns from Niou:
There are certain people in this world that no matter how much you hit them and hit them and hit them, they never shut up, and when you're out of breath and have finally given up hitting them, you'll realize that you're the one who has been changed, not them.
There are certain people in this world who never change at all.
Sometimes never changing is the greatest change of all.
2. The way you make me feel/ I could collapse/ an epidemic I cannot outlast
Yagyuu is a very simple person. He likes order and neatness and the certain degree of precision that only exists on the edge of a well-sharpened scalpel as it opens a human body. As a child he pinned butterflies to flat surfaces and framed them. They are still in his room. He likes being right. He is usually right. He likes sharpened pencils and working pens. He likes familiarity, knowledge, and brevity. He has at least one distinct memory for each year, excluding when he was one; his favorite memory is always his most recent one. He likes ice cream stores where there are more ice cream flavors than there are years in his life, because then he can try to apply one flavor to each year of his life. He knows that if up until now he has been Vanilla with a touch of Lemon Drop or Orange Sherbet, maybe even laden slightly with Neapolitan, from now on everything will be Bourbon Wind, Apple Walnut, Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Parfait, Old Fashioned Butter Pecan, and Turkish Coffee, with a hint of Ginger.
He knows this because Niou is anything but simple, easy things like vanilla, strawberry, orange, lemon, or banana, even beyond slightly complex things like chocolate, beyond any framework of simplicity or complexity that Yagyuu has ever known.
3. Happy birthday/ no one cares/ you come around here/ you better bring a witness/ everyone in here's on the guest list/ When you're gone you won't be missed
Everyone has one moment of their lives which they are constantly living for. Usually it is some moment in their life that has already passed, but from then on will influence everything that comes after it. It is comparable, but not identical nor parallel, to the image of a single drop of water hitting the flat surface of a pond, henceforth displacing everything else in waves and ripples.
If that's the case, Yagyuu knows that Niou is not a drop of water at all, but more a pebble skipped across the surface or wave that rips across the surface of a flat beach landscape.
Yagyuu's moment is not the first time he met Niou. That had been when they were first years and Niou had bumped Yagyuu as they stepped into their homeroom class together. Niou's hair was not long as it is now, and it had given Yagyuu the distinct impression of a rat-tail, which, now that Yagyuu thinks about it, is actually what it really is. And despite having classes together, Yagyuu had proceeded to forget Niou for the rest of the day until he had bumped into Niou again at the end of the day, when they were both standing in front of the tennis courts and mutually being impressed with the size. Their introductions to each other were brief and harmless, completely and totally unimportant, and left them with nothing to remember each other by, even weeks later.
Nor is Yagyuu's moment the first time they played doubles together towards the middle of second year, because that had been a mess. Niou ended that day by silently glaring at Yagyuu as they both retreated to the locker rooms together, a towel over his head like questionable hair. Niou had turned to Yanagi then, his hair wild and his eyes more, and snapped, "This is stupid." Yanagi had answered mildly with something about complementary players and trying out doubles pairs and a smattering of statistics, half of which Yagyuu knew already and half of which Yagyuu didn't have the interest to listen to, and proceeded to steer Niou toward the showers.
Yagyuu had counted until ten before he went in after them.
But in between then and now Niou became a regular as well; in between then and now Yagyuu discovers that Niou is less of an uncontrollable force than he had hitherto believed; in between then and now a summer passes; in between then and now they all grow one year older, one year wiser, one year colder, one year taller.
4. But nothing's as hard as/ getting free from places/ I've already been/ I've already been waste deep/ in the burning meadows of my mind
This is Yagyuu's memory of being six:
It's summer, and it's dark, and there is something festive about everything, like a holiday or just the idyll of summer getting drunker and fuller by the minute. Yagyuu is small and thin in shorts and a white t-shirt that is dark purple because of the night. There are streetlamps lit. There are fireflies. Yagyuu doesn't know which are brighter. There is a distinct ache in his feet and along his calves. His younger sister is with his mother somewhere farther off. His father is completely absent. Yagyuu's mouth and the space in between his fingers are kind of sticky from what he presumes to be a popsicle. In the distance Yagyuu hears the sound of fireworks whistling in the air before exploding. He can even almost hear the colored smoke fizzing away quietly before the next one whistles up and bursts. Yagyuu is running down the street, panting heavily, looking for the fireworks. But for some reason, even though the sounds of those fireworks get closer and closer, he still can't see them. It sounds like they're right above him, but he still can't find them. So he keeps running, sometimes changing directions, sometimes backtracking and starting down a different path, and the sounds of his sneakers hitting the ground are almost as loud as the explosions, but always the sky is a musky purple from light pollution and never aflame with fireworks.
Fade to black.
Yagyuu narrating over the black screen: "I never did find the fireworks that night. I'm quite sure they were real, but they weren't real enough for me to see them."
Silence.
Yagyuu's voice, again: "In my mind they were very beautiful."
5. Oh how I wish/ you were around/ so many friends I wish/ I had right now
Yagyuu's memory of being fourteen has nothing to do with tennis and everything to do with Niou.
6. Thank heavens I fell/ must look more like myself/ Now everyone is so kind/ everyone looks like a long lost friend of mine
Pan slowly across a scene of a park. Pass by briefly over two white undistinguishable dots under a tree, then come back. Carefully zoom in on Yagyuu and Niou. They are underneath a particularly thick willow tree, having come to the park after tennis practice because Niou didn't feel like going home and consequentially Yagyuu shouldn't either. Niou has already spent much of that afternoon slashing the overhanging branches with a stick snapped off from the tree, each hit causing a cascade of leaves to fall on the ground around Yagyuu, who had spent that time peeling the bark from the branches lying around. Everything smells vaguely of apples and green, the smell of broken willow leaves and stripped branches.
Niou's socks are lying on the ground a few inches away from his shoes. His bare feet are digging themselves into the grass. His tie is loose and the first three buttons of his shirt are open. He has his tennis wristband on which Yagyuu stares at while they're both lying on the ground together, even though Niou's head is actually closer to Yagyuu's waist. His arms are thrown against the grass above his head so that his hand is right next to Yagyuu's face, smelling of willow branch and sweat and just ever so lightly of rubber and grip tape.
They listen to everything get darker before Niou, who's heaving even though he hasn't done more than wave his arms around madly for the last few hours, says, "Why are you afraid of getting anything wrong?"
"What do you mean?" Yagyuu asks pleasantly, watching Niou turn over on his stomach. "You're going to get stains on your shirt if you do that. Here, let me--" Yagyuu's hand reaches across his body for Niou's shoulder, brushing off some of the matted willow leaves, and Niou shakes his head viciously.
"I don't care. I have shirts at home. And you're not," Niou flashes a smile at him, all teeth and lips and sharp, "answering my question. See, you are afraid of being wrong. Does it hurt?"
"Does what hurt?"
"Being wrong. Does it hurt you? Is it painful?" Niou reaches out and touches the waistband of Yagyuu's pants, flutters up as he picks absently at the last few buttons on Yagyuu's shirt, keeps moving up along his collar, touches his neck, under his chin, and then settles on the bridge of Yagyuu's glasses. Yagyuu is still breathing evenly without changing and his heartbeat is still steady under the cage of his shirt and skin.
"That's really the same question, isn't it," Yagyuu points out. He tries to move Niou's hand away, but it won't budge without taking Yagyuu's glasses with him, so Yagyuu concedes and falls into a state of blurred and softened drowsiness. He won't tell Niou that he's a little bit uncomfortable being without his glasses, because at least his glasses give him control over his vision and half of his expression. He can hear Niou click the legs together rhythmically like a metronome.
"At school. You never seem to get anything wrong. And if you do, you just shut it all up inside. Bottling it up." Niou punctuates his sentences with a click of Yagyuu's glasses. Yagyuu is pulling up grass without noticing it himself until his fingers touch a fallen willow leaf, jagged at the edges, hard and slick.
"I'm not afraid," Yagyuu says, and it sounds true, and it is true, and Yagyuu likes being truthful.
"You're not afraid," Niou repeats. Yagyuu decides that he isn't being sarcastic or skeptical at all and relaxes, fingernail scratching the edge of the willow leaf. Overhead the sky is getting darker and darker. Finally Niou asks offhandedly, "What do you want to do with your life?" as if Yagyuu were throwing it away or something.
"A doctor, probably. A surgeon, maybe. Cutting people open, fiddling with organs and broken bones." Yagyuu lifts his hand up and attempts some kind of gesture in the heavy air above the grass. "Fixing things."
And then suddenly Niou sits up, Yagyuu's glasses abandoned on the grass next to his knees, and he's rapidly undoing one button after another, pulling his shirt off so that it's bunched around his elbows as he grabs Yagyuu's hand and tugs, resting Yagyuu's palm against Niou's naked chest. Yagyuu is still lying on the ground, peering up at Niou curiously, his vision still slightly hazy without his glasses, and Niou's skin is warm and almost pulsating in the darkness under Yagyuu's skin. Niou says, "Cut right into me then." Niou says, "Inside we all look the same." Niou says, leaning in against Yagyuu's palm, "When we're both sliced open and bleeding, we're exactly identical."
Yagyuu answers, "I'm not afraid," and does not take his hand away.
Cut to black. Inhale, cut to Yagyuu's face, exhale, cut back to black. Inhale, cut to Niou's face, exhale, back to black. Inhale, cut to Yagyuu's hand on Niou's chest. Pause.
Niou's voice, unable to make out whether or not it's an echo of him earlier: "You're not afraid." The sound of the willow branches rustling imperceptibly in the wind. A couple long, almost fish-shaped leaves drift to the ground around them.
Cut to black.
7. But love was just implied
Afterwards Yagyuu takes Niou home because Niou says he'll need an explanation for why he's out that late and it would smooth things out with his parents if he says that he stayed over at Yagyuu's house. When they're done with dinner, Yagyuu takes Niou up to his room, and there, completely impromptu, Yagyuu sitting cross-legged on the floor with his hands propping him up from behind and Niou with one knee to each side of Yagyuu so he's almost sitting on Yagyuu's lap and his hands pulling Yagyuu's head closer, Niou kisses Yagyuu over and over. Niou tastes bitter and green and a lot like the orange he just ate; he had been chewing willow leaves earlier, and the taste is still there in his mouth when Yagyuu takes the initiative from Niou and continues kissing him. Niou doesn't take off Yagyuu's shirt or even his own shirt. They just stay like that for a long, long time, fully dressed and kissing slowly, unhurriedly, as if they had all the time in the world to just do this and all the air in the world to inhale in little gaps between kisses.
Niou is tense and uncharacteristically gentle and Yagyuu doesn't recognize him at all. But when Niou's fingers skitter over Yagyuu's neck for the second time that day, Yagyuu hears fireworks like he is six again, one loud explosion after another, like a steady volley of gunshots, like Niou's heartbeat against his palm, like his own heartbeat against his ribs.
8. And in the dead summer heat/ I feel asleep with blood on my teeth
Niou and Yagyuu aren't always doubles partners. Yagyuu plays doubles two with Jackal against Fudomine. Niou plays singles one. Marui plays singles two by himself, obviously [*]. But if Niou is good as a singles player, the problem is that Sanada, Yukimura, Yanagi, and Kirihara are still better; the problem is that Niou's even better when he's playing with Yagyuu.
Seigaku before nationals. The afternoon they find that out, Yanagi looks at Niou and Yagyuu so they know that they're going to be playing doubles one. Niou saunters over to where Yagyuu is standing and, stretching lengthily and laboriously, says, "The Golden Pair, huh?"
"They're not remarkable apart, but they're perfect together," Yagyuu says. "They know each other inside and out and complement what they know." Yagyuu turns his back to the fence surrounding the tennis courts.
Niou steps in and grabs the links beside Yagyuu's head, pressing Yagyuu closer against the fence. "Why Hiroshi-kun," he drawls out slow syllable by syllable, "are you saying that I don't know you?" Yagyuu gives him a look from behind his glasses, watching Niou carefully, but he isn't prepared for what Niou says next. Niou tousles his hair carefully, smoothing it back, and affecting a calm, smooth, refined tone, adds, "If I don't know you, I guess I'll just have to be you, then."
"Careful," Yagyuu says, calm, trying to push Niou away. "Fukubuchou is watching," but Niou kisses the side of Yagyuu's ear anyway, moving down to his neck and jaw, making it hard to talk, and Yagyuu has to pry Niou away before someone else notices.
"Would that be like masturbation?" Niou jokes as he backs off, forcing Yagyuu to laugh before he dismisses it. And that is that.
The ironic thing about the swap is that it wasn't supposed to be used against the Golden Pair as an actual tactic; it's actually just to help Yagyuu and Niou know each other better before they face Seigaku. At first it's just learning each other's good points and bad points, practicing each other's shots, playing against each other trying to use the other's style. And then Niou takes a few steps too far, like he always does, and starts patting his hair down and learning Yagyuu's voice. It's just a few days later that he steals Yagyuu's glasses and tries to play with them on. Niou's gotten Yagyuu's actions down pretty well before he drags Yagyuu into it as well. "For the good of our partnership," he says, tossing his head back and laughing, the collar of his Rikkai uniform trapping his small ponytail in against his neck, and because Niou runs his fingers lightly along Yagyuu's neck and smiles his sharp insouciant smile, Yagyuu can't resist, even though he knows better.
It's hard at first, because Yagyuu knows himself better than anyone else does and no one knows Niou at all, but if Niou can deceive the devil, then Yagyuu can certainly try. They do a good enough job of faking it that it makes Yanagi smile. Yagyuu can't get used to it, though, the feel of being in someone else's skin just long enough to drive him crazy, and he doesn't like it. Niou is White Chocolate and Almonds, is Butterscotch Toffee, is Red Bean; after all this time Yagyuu is still Vanilla. There are some things that he just can't hope to be. But no one else knows, because by now Yagyuu knows that he and Niou are two strangers who know each other the best only because they haven't let anyone else get familiar enough to try.
Less than a week before the match against Seigaku, Yagyuu and Niou are playing doubles as each other against Marui and Jackal, Yanagi watching them from afar, arms crossed thoughtfully. The sun has been hot on them since noon, heating the court under their shoes so that their feet are sweating, and being Niou means moving more. They're winning 5-3 when Yagyuu suddenly gets a nosebleed. He has a moment of purely impersonal panic as the blood is trickling over his mouth before Niou hurries over, grinning wildly because despite the loss of Yagyuu he's just scored a point by brilliantly flourishing Yagyuu's Laser Beam.
"The heat too much for me, is it?" Niou says, cheerful, pulling Yagyuu to a bench so that they can lay him relatively flat with his head thrown back. "I didn't know I was so susceptible to nosebleeds."
"You know the way it goes. Something new every day," Yagyuu says dryly, feeling dizzy and rather irritated with the way the sun still blinded him, haloing around Niou's face above him. "I didn't know I was so inconsiderate of my partner's well-being either. Now get me a Kleenex before the blood gets on my uniform."
Marui runs over to Yanagi to get something to plug up Yagyuu's nose and calls out from where he is, snapping his gum before he speaks, "Do you need to go to the nurse?" Yagyuu shakes his head, forgetting that Marui can't hear him, and Niou answers for him, "He's fine." Jackal is pouring water from a water bottle onto a towel so they can wipe the blood off Yagyuu's face. Afterwards Niou lays the towel across Yagyuu's forehead as if Yagyuu was running a fever. Marui and Jackal have left already. Yagyuu can hear Kirihara and Yanagi's voice, lightly punctuated by Sanada's, in the distance over the thud of tennis balls hitting the ground. Niou's fingers are cold and wet because of the towel. Yagyuu turns towards them instinctively, breathing through his mouth because Jackal had rather unceremoniously twisted tissue into plugs and stuffed them into Yagyuu's nostrils.
"I like you when you're trying to be me," Niou says. "You're horrible at it."
"How would you know what you're like to other people? And anyway," Yagyuu replies, "I like it better when you're being you." He touches the towel on his forehead deftly, folding it again so that the warm part against his skin is exposed to the tired summer breeze. "We're so much better when we are who we we're supposed to be." Niou puts his forehead against Yagyuu's, trapping the towel in between them, and Yagyuu heaves a breath through his mouth and says slowly, like speaking to a child, "Niou, my nose is bleeding, I can't breathe, there is blood crusted around my upper lip, I'm too hot already without your body heat, and I think I'm suffering from dehydration."
Niou pauses for a moment as if he were thinking about what Yagyuu had just said, but Yagyuu knows that can't be true because Niou doesn't think about what people have said after they've said it. Absentmindedly chewing his lips, Niou repositions his face, aligning it closer to Yagyuu's, and whispers, breath hot and dry on Yagyuu's skin, even behind the lukewarm wet towel, "That's fine. This is the way I like you the best."
Yagyuu's one moment in life is then, when despite the blood and Sanada in the background and the heat and the wet towel between them, Niou brushes the hair away from the corners of his mouth and kisses Yagyuu, and Yagyuu sees fireworks, whether it's from the halo of light around Niou's face from the sun or from Niou, he isn't sure.
9. Now another bad idea gets through/ down the assembly line to you/ you're every bridge I should have burned/ every lesson I've unlearned
Even though after Yagyuu's nose stops bleeding, Niou promises Yagyuu that they won't have to switch ever again, less than a week afterwards Niou shows up at the tennis courts on the day of the match against Seigaku looking like Yagyuu. But they beat the Golden Pair anyway, so it's okay, and later Yagyuu realizes that even though Niou can look like Yagyuu and adopt Yagyuu's voice when he promises something, in the end Niou is still Niou, and Yagyuu is still Yagyuu. If Yagyuu keeps his promises once he's made them, then Niou only keeps his promises when it suits him. After all, this is how Yagyuu likes Niou the best; this is how Niou likes Yagyuu the best; and Yagyuu wouldn't have it any other way.
10. You've been used by an army of kings/ you've been touched by the lips of a queen
This is what Niou learns from Yagyuu:
Love.
11. Birdcage
So sad
That you took it so badly
And acted so madly
So scared
Like a baby by the morning
With sunlight unfolding
Your eyes have turned red
And are holding me
Inside your story
In the end
You'll be starting on a new one
Of anguish and delusions
He smiles
Just like a magician
Who's just cast his illusions
Of castles and sandstones
On the backbeach
And bright lights
Within your reach
The sounds
Of a warning
By the morning
Of hound dogs coming for me
With the ropes
Leading back to your knees
And you looking straight at me
On your knees in the rain
With a basket of flowers
Just for me
As the bells in the trees up above
All swung and rang softly
You said you rang them for me
For me...
self-important A/N: If any one hasn't noticed, which is very possible, the lyrics used in the section headings are from each of the songs from the Wallflower's album "Breach", except for section 11, where it is the entire lyrics of track 10, Birdcage, simply because 1/3 of the time I spent writing this I wrote with that song playing in the background (the other third of the time was spent listening to Elliott Smith and the last third was spent mooching off m.e.'s Cousteau music happily). The song referenced may or may not have anything at all to do with the section. I am not as talented as tongari in her soundtrack drabbles. <3. Speaking of which, tongari is of course referenced/plagarized in the first section from her writing meme. [*] refers to what the HP fans would call a "flint": Yagyuu is listed as either partnering with Marui or Jackal against Fudomine, and either Jackal or Marui played singles two against Fudomine. I went with what FET had listed, just for simplicity's sake. FET also only lists Niou as a regular in his third year, so I'm assuming that of the entire team, Niou is the last one to become a regular. If it isn't obvious by now, all of my stories are always hopelessly inspired by my own experiences, because I am an unoriginal wreck of a writer. I have two gigantic willow trees in my backyard which I like to slash at murderously with a stick, if only because it is a more interesting way of keeping the branches from reaching our neighbor's yard than cutting them. Yagyuu must have had a lot of trust in Niou to allow himself to sit under the tree while Niou was hitting the branches; if Niou were to accidentally hit Yagyuu, it would have hurt. A lot. *speaks from experience, winces*. And yes, I have chewed willow leaves. It tastes really no different from any other leaves, except it is in a cuter shape, and when they fall they sort of look like fish. Fireworks-- it wasn't when I was six. When I was six, I was afraid of being under them because I thought the streaming fire bit of it would actually fall out of the sky and hit me. It was actually a year or so ago, when there were fireworks in my neighborhood, and I could hear them, but no matter how I ran around my neighborhood, I couldn't see them at all. As for the ice cream? I just like it. ^^
p.s. I would just like to inform everyone that after three whole bloody fucking years of braces, I have finally gotten them off. Finally.