They get a chance to meet when their schools participate in a tournament.
Shiraishi watches as Atobe devours Ryoma's mouth, watches how he doesn't even have to struggle to keep him pinned against the wall of some building whose back affords them some degree of privacy.
Ryoma gasps as Atobe's hands push him up the wall a little farther. "Monkey King," he pants. "Match... in five... minutes... late..."
"My match started ten minutes ago, do you really think I care that you're late?" Atobe hums against Ryoma's jaw. Ryoma doesn't bother replying, just keeps breathing.
Shiraishi feels like something is piercing his throat.
Is feeling 'left out' selfish of him?
He leaves, unprepared for the wave of emotion overtaking him.
They don't notice until Ryoma stops biting Keigo's lips and says, "I want to kiss Kuranosuke, too." But then he's not there. Ryoma and Atobe glance at each other once. Something is hollowing them out from the inside. They hold each other's fingers; Ryoma looks at the ground, says, "Wish me luck."
Atobe wishes him luck with a quick swipe of his tongue against Ryoma's red lips, and they neglect to mention Shiraishi's absence.
"Why did you leave yesterday?"
"My team needed me." Lies.
"Kuranosuke, we -"
"Anyway, you were too busy drowning in each other, I didn't want to be privy to something so intimate."
His tongue is exponentially increasing its toxicity. Shiraishi tries saying sorry. It doesn't work on Atobe, whose lips are merely a line. Ryoma's eyes run over all of Shiraishi's visible skin, and he says, "Fuck me if you're so sorry, then."
Shiraishi tries. Ryoma reaches for Keigo after the first five minutes. See? Fucking see? Case in fucking point.
Why'd they even pull him into their relationship if they were going to push him out?
He's enough of a coward to remain passive-aggressive like this. He stops taking his clothes off anywhere except the bathroom. That does not stop Keigo from pushing him up against a wall and breathing into his skin the words that time would never give him.
All of us are busy, and we might not get time for each other, but we mustn't really exclude anyone, right?
Shiraishi totally gets it. It's Atobe's way of telling him not to be an attention-whore, but look, it's the pot calling the kettle black. How nicely ironic. Shiraishi breathes his own words into Atobe's hands.
If I act like this, it's because you're leaving me out and I avoid confrontations.
Atobe stops leaving kisses along Shiraishi's jaw and leaves hickeys instead, which hurt for days and turn purple and yellow before fading. Marks of possession? Shiraishi doesn't know. Shiraishi doesn't give a fuck.
When he's asleep in another room at night, sometimes Ryoma crawls in beside him and slings his arm around his own shoulders. "Love you. Love you," he mutters, over and over, trying to wake him up. Shiraishi never opens his eyes.
Atobe does it too, sometimes, invading Shiraishi's privacy at night. His attempts to wake Kuranosuke up are less subtle; blowjobs certainly do the trick, and Shiraishi's body hates his mind, and the moans wake Ryoma up, who slinks into the room and tries to swallow all the sounds Shiraishi makes.
Keigo, afterward, makes sure to put on Kuranosuke's shirt instead of his own. Every time. Always. "I'm happy with you," Keigo softly mumbles into Shiraishi's ear, because Shiraishi's always been one to stay awake after any semblance of sex, so he'll hear. Keigo hears a voice whispering back to him, "If only you'd show it more often."
"You know what you need to do? You need to fuck off."
Shiraishi's done with this. "Oh, fuck you, Keigo, the fuck do you think you are? Shouldn't have fucking made me fall for both of you when all you were going to do was fuck around and go on dates and kiss and do other sappy shit just with each other, okay? I really had no interest in learning the dynamics of being a third wheel."
Keigo isn't really stunned into silence. "Kuranosuke, I told you months ago that you needed to stop demanding so much of us, you needed to stop thinking we were excluding you from everything."
"And I replied months ago that it wasn't me thinking; it was me knowing."
"You selfish bastard!" In fury, Atobe swipes a hand across a table laden with glass and gold trophies. Shiraishi watches them fall and break. He falls and breaks himself.
Ryoma comes home from Seigaku tennis practice to find Keigo and Shiraishi kissing violently, destructively amidst the ruins of past achievement, glass shards and gold sparkling as their very own battlefield. Their hands are lost somewhere in their jeans - Ryoma has no doubt where.
They haven't really noticed him, because Shiraishi pulls away from Keigo's bruised lips (Keigo's teeth shift to Kuranosuke's jaw) and says, "You and Ryoma love each other more than either of you love me, and you can't tell me it's not true," and this sentence makes Keigo stop biting the corner of Shiraishi's jaw and his arms stop moving, and tears start falling from his eyes, fast. Ryoma's never seen Keigo cry like this.
"You... fucking... bastard." Keigo stops breathing heavily.
Shiraishi isn't crying. His hands haven't stopped whatever they're doing in Keigo's pants. His lips begin to kiss Keigo's neck.
Ryoma walks back out. They still don't notice, as Keigo comes with a moan that suspiciously sounds like a sob.
So Ryoma's never really held someone's face and shoved his cock into their mouth, but he tries to do it with Shiraishi; Shiraishi lets him do it. Looks up at him expressionlessly, as his mouth is abused by Ryoma's cock.
Ryoma comes in Shiraishi's mouth and Shiraishi spits the come out. Ryoma rides him afterward; they don't kiss.
Shiraishi can hear Keigo and Ryoma fucking in the adjacent room. He jacks off to their moans with tears in his eyes.
Keigo takes the packed bags from Shiraishi's hands and throws them back into his room. Kuranosuke's had it, really, with them and their games, shouldn't they at least have the decency to let him leave?
Ryoma unzips the bags and puts all the clothes back.
They sleep in one bed, making sure to put Shiraishi between them (the three have never been lonelier).
Shiraishi tries to leave, again, the next morning. Atobe makes him coffee. Ryoma slides into his lap and feeds him the coffee, straight from his mouth.
"Please don't go," Atobe whispers.
"Please don't go," Ryoma echoes.
Shiraishi loses it. His arms wind around Ryoma's body and pull him closer - when did it become so frail and lean? - and his mouth finds Ryoma's lips for a proper, proper kiss, the first time in months of alienation and unfamiliarity.
Then Kuranosuke remembers that Ryoma likes messy kisses with a lot of dirty licking. So he kisses Ryoma messily, with a lot of dirty licking. Ryoma starts crying.
Atobe takes a seat beside them, sipping his beverage. Shiraishi finds Atobe's free hand, and grasps it so tightly Atobe can't feel it anymore. Keigo leans his head on one of Kuranosuke's shoulders while Ryoma sobs into the other.
It's still fucked up.
It's still so fucked up.
Things get better, and then they get worse.
Atobe and Ryoma have barely looked at him in the past few days, too busy laughing and talking about the anniversary of the two of them meeting (they have a separate one for them and Shiraishi getting together). Barely looking might be a bit of an overstatement, but Shiraishi can't help his feelings of jealousy and insecurity and pain and pain.
They don't mean to do it. They don't mean to do it. They don't mean to do it.
And then he comes across Tezuka Kunimitsu - the person who makes Shiraishi scream.