-twitch- There is no reason for this fic to be so long, but if I can keep this pace up and write 7,000+ words a day during NaNoWriMo? I'm set. --"
3-5. My heart can't stop beating faster, every time I hear your name or your laughter.
Yukimura had known since the third grade that a boy named Sanada Genchirou had a crush on him. He hadn't known who Sanada was, then, but his friends had come up to him and told him, very importantly, that Sanada Genchirou had a crush on him.
He had smiled and said, "Does that mean I get to call him just Genchirou, then?"
They had actually spent some time thinking about it and they had decided that, since Sanada had a crush on Yukimura, Yukimura had to call him 'Genchirou.'
Yukimura had thought it was really cool, but at the same time kind of scary, that someone had a crush on him. In the third grade, Yukimura hadn't known what a crush was.
It was the year Yukimura discovered tennis. He had been walking home one day (his parents had decided he was old enough to do so—it helped that they lived only two blocks from the elementary school) when he decided to go down a different street, for variety. It didn't take long for him to lose any sense of where he was, but he didn't panic. He didn't know to panic, then. It was all just horribly exciting. And in the midst of that excitement, he saw it.
Two high school boys were playing on a large, green surface, hitting a yellow ball back and forth in a way that a fourteen year old Yukimura would scoff at, and Yukimura thought that it was the most coolest thing he had ever seen. He had stared, because he hadn't known better than to stare, then, and when one of them asked if he wanted to play he had eagerly grabbed the racket.
The first time he had ever tried to hit a ball, it had headed right for his racket and he had missed.
He must have amused the high school boys with his confident proclamations of "I will definitely beat you guys one day" or maybe it was just his childish joy, but they stayed with him for hours until his frantic parents showed up and dragged him away, lecturing him on going off and (though they thanked the boys very carefully) talking with strangers. Who knew who might mistake their precious oldest child with a girl and rape him?
He would think later, when he was older and wiser at the age of thirteen, that guys could get raped too.
As they prepared to enter their second to last year of elementary school, Yukimura was fully obsessed with tennis. He played tennis before school, during recess, and then after school. His friends rolled their eyes and ignored his tennis-entranced rants and, since it was terribly boring to rant to people who weren't paying attention, Yukimura decided one day that he would just have to talk to someone else about the Coolest Thing Ever.
So he chose a nice quiet boy (of course it was a boy. In the fifth grade, girls all had cooties and wouldn't outgrow them for a few years, maybe, depending on the boy) who sat by himself and plunked himself down on a chair right next to him and started talking about how he had hit ten straight serves without missing. The boy had listened and seemed enraptured, so Yukimura, happy to have found an audience who understood, happily talked at him all through their math class, much to their teacher's dismay. He probably would have talked to the boy through lunch too, but lunch was an social important time which must always be spent with one's friends and not random boys that one just met, so Yukimura dutifully followed the age old tradition and, before he could even sit down, found that he was being laughed at.
He glared his scariest glare at his so-called friends who seemed to be having quite a good time laughing at him without telling him why until they stopped. And promptly started again at the thought that a glaring pretty-boy like Yukimura might actually think himself 'scary' (little did they know how the sight of Yukimura glaring might well throw the entirety of Rikkaidai into a panic four years later—and if it were a particularly weak glare or if the student body were feeling particularly suicidal that day, then at least the tennis club). When they finally did stop and explain, Yukimura blinked.
And blinked again.
And again.
And finally, he said, "Oh. So that was Genchirou?"
They started laughing again, of course, and Yukimura laughed with them this time because he had forgotten that Sanada had had a crush on him and because it was funny. Yukimura stopped soon after he started, though, because he realized that the lunchroom wasn't that big and if Sanada really still had a crush on him, then laughing at him would be Really Mean and that would be bad. So he stopped and looked surreptitiously around to see if Sanada was looking at him (he was) and then Yukimura blushed and excused himself nicely from his friends to sit next to Sanada as an awkward little apology for laughing at him.
Of course, they had to laugh at him later for it, but they did feel a little guilty, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Five months after he met Sanada, Yukimura tasted victory for the first time. He did not beat his opponents, he crushed them. It hadn't been a small sports club victory, either, it had been in a big (or at least, ten year old Yukimura thought it was big) tournament. Yukimura had won by a landslide, which confirmed to everyone what Yukimura had already known; he was very, very good at tennis. For the first time, his parents talked about a future that their son might have with the game, though not very seriously. Still, it was more than enough to plant the idea in his head.
Unfortunately for his friends, this meant that he would be talking about tennis even more than he had been before and so, because Yukimura wasn't stupid and could tell when people were tuning him out, he started spending more time with Sanada, who never tuned him out. Well, he tuned Yukimura out sometimes, but it was okay with Sanada, because he never said much anyways, so Yukimura never expected any response. Which didn't make much sense once he thought about it, but ten year old boys have no business thinking about those things, so Yukimura put it firmly out of mind for a later time.
At first, only Yukimura talked and Sanada listened patiently listened and nodded and sometimes said a quick "Oh" or "Really?" but as Yukimura spent more and more time with Sanada (and less and less with his other friends), Sanada started saying whole phrases to Yukimura. One of those phrases happened to be "Wanna come over?" and Yukimura, who admitted to being more than a little curious about Sanada, agreed, even though it cut into his precious Tennis Time.
So that Friday after school, Yukimura, who had told his parents where he was going this time, walked gleefully next to Sanada down a road that wasn't actually very new or exciting to Yukimura, which was kind of exciting by itself, because he knew where Sanada lived. In a way. It was one of the older neighborhoods and, when Sanada walked to one of the larger houses, Yukimura realized with a bit of a start that Sanada was actually kind of rich and, more importantly, had a Really Cool House.
"Ah! Genchirou, welcome home!" Sanada's mother came running out of the house, a plump little woman that was nothing like him at all. Yukimura decided that he liked her.
"I'm home." Sanada said, slipping out of his shoes. Yukimura watched and then realized he still had his own shoes on and bent down to take them off.
"So this is Yukimura?" Sanada's mother asked him before turning to Yukimura without waiting for an answer. "Thank you for coming to play with Genchirou."
Yukimura finished taking his shoes off, straightened, and looked her in the eyes while extending a hand seriously. "Nice to meet you, Sanada-san. Thank you for having me."
She laughed and shook his hand. "Not at all, not at all. It's nice to know that Genchirou has some friends. We were afraid for a while that he was just antisocial."
"No, Genchirou—" Yukimura, out of habit, had called Sanada his given name once and, when Sanada didn't seem to mind, hadn't stopped "—and I are really good friends."
Which wasn't exactly true, but Sanada had looked more than a little embarrassed at what his mother had said and Yukimura felt it his duty as a... Well, he felt it his duty to help him out a bit. Besides, he had a feeling that it would be very true before long, a feeling that was only amplified when he watched Sanada practice kendo. Sanada was strong, and that strength could definitely be used in tennis.
He mentioned that to Sanada later, as they ate cookies that Sanada's mother had brought them. Sanada had munched quietly on a cookie then turned to Yukimura and said, "Okay."
Yukimura's heart did a quick little hop in his chest.
The sixth graders were told at the beginning of the year that they had to study hard and do well on tests in order to get into a good junior high. Yukimura took careful notes through the lecture and discarded them once the lecture was finished. He already knew where he wanted to go—Rikkaidai, which had a good team but not a great one, at least not yet, but was the only school in the area with a better than mediocre team—and they offered a sports scholarship. Then they were dismissed to see which classes they had and Yukimura hung back, intending to wait for the mob of sixth graders to thin out before he checked his class.
"You don't want to know what class you're in?"
Yukimura turned and looked curiously at the boy who had started talking to him. It was a new kid, he thought, and he should probably try to be friendly. "It'd be too hard to push through to see." He explained.
"I see. Yanagi Renji." The boy said by way of introduction.
"Yukimura Seiichi." Yukimura smiled. "Can I call you Renji?"
Yanagi looked a little taken aback but then shrugged. "If I can call you Seiichi."
"Okay." Yukimura eyed the crowd, which didn't look like it would be shrinking anytime soon.
"You're in class 6A, same as me." Yanagi supplied, looking at a notebook that he had out.
"Oh." Yukimura said. "How do you know that?"
"I'm good at getting data."
And a little light bulb lit up in Yukimura's mind. That'd be a good skill for tennis. "I'm good at playing tennis."
"I am too." Yanagi turned to him, though Yukimura couldn't tell if he was looking at him or not. "I play doubles."
"I play singles. You should try, singles are more fun."
Yanagi shrugged. "Maybe."
"We can practice together sometime." Yukimura was ecstatic, though he didn't really show it. Someone else who liked tennis! "There are nice courts near Genchirou's house."
Yanagi thought about it for a moment before nodding. "Alright, then."
Yukimura smiled and asked Yanagi about where he thought he'd go to junior high—more to fight off the awkward silence that loomed close than out of actual interest—and was pleasantly surprised to learn that his new friend was also planning on going to Rikkai. "We can all become regulars together." Yukimura said.
"All?" Yanagi asked.
"Oh, right. You haven't met Genchirou yet." Yukimura pursed his lips in thought and scanned the crowd for Sanada. "He's the one walking towards us right now."
"Ah. I see." Yanagi jotted something down in the notebook and Yukimura found himself feeling more than a little curious. "So he's going to Rikkai too, then?"
"I dunno. I haven't asked him yet, but I'm sure he is." Yukimura started to wave at Sanada, but that was a little too immature for a sixth grader he thought, and he stopped quickly. They were sixth graders now. They had to be Mature and Grown Up. So he smiled at Sanada instead. Sanada, who was a bit more used to Yukimura's over-enthusiasm than this strange smile early in the morning, paused, but continued towards them after a moment. "Genchirou! This is Renji."
Yanagi smiled and nodded. "Oh." Said Sanada.
"Renji, Genchirou." Yukimura motioned to Sanada with his best adult-like manner. Yanagi nodded again and Sanada, remembering his manners but only barely, said, "Nice to meet you."
"Likewise." Yanagi wrote something down again. Yukimura made a mental note to find out what Yanagi wrote later. "We should be getting to class."
"Oh, right!" Yukimura smiled. "Genchirou! What class are you in?"
"6C."
Sanada looked a little apprehensive and Yukimura could guess why. It almost made him feel guilty for saying, "Oh. Renji and I are both in 6A." even though he had absolutely no say in which class they were thrown into. But Sanada looked so completely crestfallen that Yukimura just had to add on, "We were going to play tennis after school. Can we go over to your house today?"
Yanagi looked at him funny and Yukimura mouthed, 'I'll tell you later.' Sanada looked a great deal happier, though, and they went off to class.
Later, Yukimura would ask Yanagi if he would like to go over to Sanada's house to play tennis and Yanagi would smirk and write something down quickly before agreeing.
Yukimura realized one day when he was sitting on his bed and finishing his math homework that he was incredibly lucky. He had clicked instantly with Sanada and Yanagi in a way that was rare with anyone, much less with two people. He was a realistic boy at eleven, and he knew the amount of patience that it must take for them to listen to his unending rants about tennis. They liked each other, too, so there was no awkwardness at all when the three of them were together. It was perfect...
He wondered if Sanada still liked him. It had been really long ago, after all. He really hoped not. From what he overheard from the older boys talking at the public courts he went to, romance kind of sucked. Then he wondered if Sanada was going to Rikkai.
Frowning, he realized that he had never asked and the school year was already halfway over. Entrance exams would be soon. He bit his lower lip and stared at his homework for a moment before walking over to where his cell phone—his parents had decided, after panicking and searching every city block near their house only to find their son at the tennis courts one too many times, that it would be easier on them to just get him one—lay on his desk and punching in speed dial one. It rang for a few seconds and then Sanada picked up. "Hello?"
"Hey, Genchirou, where are you going to junior high?"
A pause. Then, "I don't know yet."
"Renji and I are both going to Rikkai." You're going too, right?
"Really..." Was it just Yukimura or did Sanada sound jealous? Yukimura's stomach clenched. So Sanada did still like him.
"Genchirou... Let's all become regulars together next year, okay?" His voice sounded weak and Yukimura hated that. He cleared his throat. "I mean, if we're going to, then you have to go to Rikkai too."
"Okay." Sanada's voice was starting to crack, Yukimura noticed. His own was still childish and almost feminine. "Let's completely dominate."
"Mm!" Yukimura nodded furiously, though of course Sanada couldn't see that. "Always win, Rikkaidai!"
That year was the year that girls lost their cooties for Yukimura. He himself wasn't much interested—tennis took all his time and he had none left for girls, with or without cooties—but they seemed to have gained an interest in him. The first time a girl confessed to him, he was describing an 'awesome match' that he had seen on TV to some of his other friends. She had come up to them and stood there until the rest of the boys got tired of waiting for Yukimura to notice (he rarely noticed things in the midst of Tennis Talk) and pointed her out.
"Hey." He said softly. "Um... Kudo-chan, right?"
She nodded. "I..." She hesitated then looked steadfastly at the ground and said, "I-really-like-you-will-you-go-out-with-m
e?"
Yukimura blinked and thought quickly. Then he said, "I'm sorry, I'm not interested in—" he almost said 'girls' but then he remembered Sanada and he said instead "—stuff like that."
He would wonder later why people thought he was asexual, but at the moment he thought that it was a really good reply. He then went right back to talking about how amazing the serves were and how he thought he could do it just as fast if he practiced enough (he could) and how he would definitely be able to beat them all soon (he was able to).
He even forgot all about the girl until Yanagi came up to him at lunch and said without a preamble but with a smirk, "So you're not interested right now?"
Yukimura actually blushed, and he never blushed. "You're just jealous 'cause girls like me better."
Yanagi shrugged. "Apparently guys do too."
Yukimura sat on the bench and watched Yanagi serve against Sanada. Yanagi still tended to serve to the left and it made his plays a bit too predictable, though Yukimura was inclined to think he did that on purpose just to shock his opponent out of it later. Sanada, for his part, always hit too hard and expended far too much energy. Yukimura took note of these and reminded himself to not do those things.
"Damn, how old are those kids?"
Yukimura's ears perked up. There were no other 'kids' in sight, so whoever was speaking must have been talking about them.
"Can't be older than junior high." A second voice answered. Yukimura fought with all his will to not give in to curiosity and turn around. "Wonder which school they're going to. I'm not sure we can win if they all play like that."
Yukimura immediately lost his will and turned around to see four older kids in the ridiculous yellow of Rikkaidai's uniforms. "Are you guys playing right now?" He asked.
"Holy shit, another one." One of the boys laughed. "Probably just watching her boyfriend play."
Yukimura pouted inside, but managed to keep it from showing outside. Nothing would be more detrimental to proving that he was a boy than to pout. "I'm not a girl."
"'Course you're not." The boys laughed. At him. Yukimura felt truly angry for the first time in... in ever.
He said, his voice still very quiet (it was a habit he'd picked up, thinking that if he spoke softer, no one would notice that he still sounded like a little kid), "I'll prove it to you."
If he had been looking behind himself, he'd have seen Sanada with his jaw all the way on the floor, gaping at him, and Yanagi with a hand over his mouth and another on Sanada's shoulder. In a moment, Yanagi would tell Sanada to stop imagining perverted things, but for the moment, he just laughed at his friend.
As it was, Yukimura wasn't looking back, he was glaring at the boys, who were still laughing, but also trying through gales of laughter to tell him not to bother. Then, Yukimura got a Brilliant Idea. "Hey. I bet I can beat you."
To say the least, it wasn't very effective in calming their laughter, but when they realized that Yukimura was serious, one of the boys said, "So you're going to beat our vice-captain?"
Yukimura nodded, all seriousness and trying to pretend there was not just a breeze that ruffled his hair just so and made him look even girlier than normal. "I bet I could."
The boy who Yukimura presumed was the vice-captain scoffed. "Whatever."
"Hey, if I beat you, can I try to be a regular next year?" Yukimura smiled nicely.
"And if I win? Why the hell would I make such a stupid bet?" He was interested, Yukimura could tell.
"I dunno." Yukimura put on his most innocent look, the one that Sanada and Yanagi would know as the one he wore right before he did the craziest things. "What do you want?"
"You're going to Rikkai, right?" The boy seemed to be thinking about it.
Yukimura shook his head. "Nuh-uh. We will be next year, though."
The boys behind the vice-captain laughed again, but all he said was, "Fine. Well, next year, you have to do anything I say if you lose, then."
Yukimura's smile grew. He had accepted the bet. "Okay!"
It took them a while to stretch—whatever Yukimura might think about Rikkai's not-so-great tennis team, they knew how to warm up—and then the vice captain was standing across the net from Yukimura while Sanada and Yanagi watched on, Sanada in a state of panic over what Yukimura had gotten himself into and Yanagi already looking forward to the vice-captain's defeat.
He was not disappointed. Yukimura won in straight sets.
"Genchirou!" Yukimura ran a little to catch up to Sanada, who was about a twenty yards ahead of him. "What are you doing here?"
Sanada looked everywhere except at Yukimura and muttered something that sounded like 'tennis,' but then, everything sounded like 'tennis' to Yukimura so that didn't necessarily mean that Sanada said anything related to tennis at all. Still, Yukimura preferred not to do his Christmas shopping alone, so he was happy to have found Sanada, who he already had a gift for anyways. And, after a bit of interpretation on Yukimura's part, he learned that Sanada was Christmas shopping too.
Shopping with Sanada, Yukimura discovered, was much more fun that anyone would have thought. Of course, Yukimura might just be biased because they found a few new tennis sports stores to visit, but Sanada was actually a very nice shopping partner and Yukimura told him so and amused himself by watching Sanada splutter and blush.
"You're too easy to tease, Genchirou." He admonished Sanada later.
"Sorry, Yukimura." Sanada actually looked sorry, so that Yukimura felt a little bad for being amused. A little, but not overly so.
In transitioning from elementary school to junior high, Yukimura met two major bumps. One, He became acutely aware of how very many girls giggled when he passed and tried to slip chocolates—which were Not Good For Athletes—into his locker. That might well have been because there were simply more girls at Rikkai, though. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, they were starting all over again at the bottom of the food chain and Yukimura was neither used to it nor happy with it.
So when they went to try for regulars and were turned away, Yukimura just stood there and crossed his arms and informed his upperclassman that he was told that he could try out and if he wanted to stop Yukimura from trying out, then they could step out into the court and Yukimura could show him just why he would not only try for the regulars' position but also attain it. The upperclassman had written his name down on the list immediately and Yukimura had, rather pointedly, looked at Sanada and Yanagi. "Them too."
He was obeyed and when they were walking away, Yanagi clapped his shoulder and said "Good job" while Sanada just stood next to him, as solid as always.
Later that week, they did what they'd meant to and they became regulars of Rikkai's tennis team.
Yukimura had always known that Love was between a Man and a Woman, but his first year in junior high was the year that he realized that Love between a Man and another Man was weird.
He was actually very popular amongst his classmates in Rikkai and it was a good thing, because he was in a different class than both Sanada and Yanagi. So he sat with other boys, many of whom were in the tennis team, which was another good thing because they took better to Yukimura's tennis rants than most other people would have. One day, they were joking around as boys were apt to do (this was before the invisible line betweens boys and girls were crossed by more than one or two of their grade) when someone dared the pink-haired boy named Marui to kiss the boy that had been following him around. Marui's face had turned into a shade almost like that of his hair and he had refused loudly.
Yukimura had tilted his head and asked why not. He saw Marui kissing a girl earlier at the mall, surely he could kiss Jiroh too.
Marui balked. "But he's a GUY!"
Yukimura shrugged, sure that they all saw him as unafraid of anything when he was really just confused. But he could ask Yanagi later.
Yukimura would, if pressed, guess that that was the year the he started associating Sanada with tennis, because they spent so much time together on the courts. Of course, Yanagi was there too, but he was often aloof, collecting the data and then he would go practice on his own, so that no one could collect his or something stupid like that, Yukimura was sure. No one else collected data like Yanagi did, so there was no chance of that but that didn't stop Yanagi from taking precautions.
Still, because he associated Sanada with tennis, he always seemed to have a butterfly or two fluttering around his stomach when he was around Sanada. Or at least, that's what he told himself.
In eighth grade, Yukimura started getting wet dreams. His dreams, though, had nothing to do with any naked girls (or naked guys, for that matter). All he dreamt about was that one match, that one single match, where Sanada had lost to Tezuka a year ago. And when he woke up, he didn't feel pleased, but angry. Angry at Sanada and angry at Tezuka. No one was allowed to beat Sanada except himself. No one should beat any member of Rikkaidai unless they were a member of Rikkaidai, because Rikkai should stand on top of everyone.
Sometimes, he wondered why he didn't dream about Yagyuu or Marui or Niou or even Yanagi (though Yanagi's losses always seemed more calculated than actual losses), but he didn't choose to dwell on it.
When they won that year, Yukimura felt as if he stood at the top of the world. This wasn't like winning with a bunch of upperclassmen that he didn't care about. They won. His team won. They stood around him and laughed and Marui even started crying. Yukimura couldn't help himself, he laughed and laughed and screamed at the top of his lungs, "Rikkaidai!"
Yanagi stood there, calm, collected, watching. He had, apparently, caught them on tape, but Yukimura would never be embarrassed by his antics then. He would only smile and glow in remembrance of that perfect win.
Sanada was like Yukimura had never seen before. He let down his cold, calm exterior and he came out and screamed and laughed and celebrated with them. Yukimura thought to himself then that, if nothing else, this was worth it. This was worth all the work, all the tears, all the ridiculous hours that went into training. This was their reward.
And he would go through it all again, just for this.
When they returned form their ever so short winter break, Yukimura knew that he was getting a flu. Still, a slight fever couldn't stop him from going to tennis practice, so he went through the day with heavy arms and rubbery knees. It was tiring and a bit frustrating, to the point where he even questioned having practice in the middle of winter.
Once he got to the indoor courts, though, he felt better. Enough to offer to help a promising first year practice, since he knew that he would be captain next year and he would need to train the next generation immediately. He was admonishing the little first year about hitting the ball too hard—Sanada had had that problem, he remembered—when his legs gave out.
His first thought then was how much he wanted to die of shame. Then, when he couldn't even get up, he started to panic, until he remembered to take deep, calming breaths. He must have been sicker than he had realized. Sanada was already next to him, overreacting as usual, telling them to call an ambulance. He wanted to laugh and tell him it wasn't necessary, but then he had trouble taking in breaths.
And then he was glad that Sanada overreacted, because suddenly he was scared.
In the hospital, while he lay with the respirator pumping air into his lungs, Yukimura thought a lot and he had never realized just how despicable he was. He wasn't afraid that Rikkai couldn't get to Nationals without him, he was scared that they could. He was scared that they wouldn't need him, that they would forget him here, hooked up to more machinery than he even knew, unable to even breath by himself.
Whenever his self-pity got particularly bad, though, Sanada came. Sanada, who just a few months ago rarely spoke a full sentence even to Yukimura, would occupy the silence with tales of what happened at practice, which idiotic stunt Akaya tried to pull, what Niou had done to the clubroom, how the team was doing. They were doing well. They would go to Nationals, Sanada promised, every day as he left. They would go to Nationals, and Yukimura would recover and bring them to the top again. It was a promise.
After the miraculous surgery that would show months later to have a less than ideal success rate of roughly ten percent, Yukimura, who could breath on his own at the start of it, was told he could walk on his own in a week, if he would just rest. It was a good sign, he was told. He started to call Sanada once to tell him, but he found that he couldn't move his arms, and he panicked again. They reassured him, though, that it was just the pain medication.
So he lay down and waited for Sanada to come.
But he didn't. Yukimura waited through the night, fighting the drowsiness until he couldn't, and Sanada still didn't come to bring him the Kantou medal that Rikkai had claimed for five years straight, even before the Troika brought them two national victories. Yukimura was scared then, more than he had been when he couldn't breath on his own, because they had forgotten him.
The next day, he demanded that the nurses take him off the pain medication. He was going start rehabilitation, he said. He wanted to do it right away. The nurses called the doctor in and the doctor told him to wait, just one more day. Then they would see if his body could handle it.
He had obeyed, disgruntled, and let the nurses stick the little needle into his arm again.
The next day, the doctor let him start rehabilitation, a little earlier than he would have, but he said that if Yukimura could complain that much, then he might as well put that energy to use. He said it like rehabilitation was some sort of punishment, which Yukimura couldn't understand.
When he tried to stand on limbs that had always obeyed flawlessly before only to fall on his face, he understood.
One day, he wasn't sure when exactly, but he thought it was afternoon, his mother came in with a videotape and smiled. "Your friends brought this, but they couldn't stay." She said.
He wanted to cry but didn't, partly because he knew it would hurt her more than anything to see him break now but mostly because he felt that it was the one last bit of pride that he had left. They hadn't forgotten him, but they certainly didn't need him anymore. They couldn't even stop by inside, and the Kantou Regionals was not an excuse, not now. "Just the tape?" He asked weakly. Not even the medal...? Was he not a part of the team?
She nodded and put the tape into the VCR player that the hospital had. That was why it was a tape in the first place, Yukimura knew. The hospital didn't have a DVD player else Yanagi would have given him a DVD of the match. He supposed he should be thankful they remembered that much at least, and gone to the trouble of making a tape.
He almost didn't watch it. He didn't want to see them win. He didn't want to see Sanada and Yanagi leading their team to victory, leaving him behind, but he couldn't not watch. They were still his team, whether they remembered or not. So he smiled as best he could and asked his mother, "Can I watch it now?"
She smiled back and pressed the 'play' button before heading out. Tennis bored her, he knew, so he let her.
It was a good thing, too. He hadn't wanted Rikkai to win without him, but never had he ever imagined that they would lose. The nurses came running at the sound of shattering glass from the patient who they had all collectively seen as an angel. All three singles. The strength of Rikkai, their perfect, strong singles, every one of them, crushed. Two of the three demons, brought down.
Curiously, he wasn't even angry at his team. Or at least, not as angry as he rightfully should be. Sanada, especially, he should have been ready to gut and skin alive for losing to a first year, but oddly he felt only... disbelief. Shock. And a tiny part of him was glad that they had not forgotten him; they were just too ashamed to see him.
"What's wrong?" The nurses asked. Yukimura looked at the vase he had thrown. It was fully across the room... His strength was coming back, slowly, yes. But it was coming back. He smiled and answered, "Nothing."
Yukimura had known since the third grade that Sanada Genchirou liked him, but it wasn't until his final year of junior high that he realized that he liked Sanada back. He was re-watching the tape for the third time, wincing at each point that the little Seigaku brat took from his vice-captain when he realized that he wasn't wincing because Rikkai was slowly losing but because he knew what Sanada must have been feeling with each point lost.
Because Yukimura was not like Sanada, who carried his feelings with him without a word for years, and because Yukimura already knew that Sanada liked him as well, Yukimura planned on confessing. But not then, not when he had only started regaining control of his limbs.
When he realized that he liked Sanada, Yukimura had stood up and walked, steadily almost, to the window. He had looked outside for a few minutes before walking to the door, fully intending to go to the rehabilitation unit again.
The door opened before he could reach it and the doctor stepped in. "Congratulations, Yukimura-kun. You get to go home today."
Yukimura's mother stood behind him, relief in her eyes. Yukimura himself smiled, though he dreaded going to school and letting everyone see him so weak.
Yanagi was the first one to greet him when he returned to Rikkai. Yanagi acted like nothing had happened, and Yukimura let him. If he knew Sanada, they had probably all run their share of laps for the loss, and all Yukimura had to do now was tell them how to improve. The team stopped in the middle of morning practice to see who dared come late, with the vice-captain in the mood that he was in recently. Sanada turned as well and froze when he saw him. "Yukimura..."
Yukimura smiled and looked around, his gaze steely. "Why did practice stop?" He wanted to know and immediately it began again.
When he looked for Sanada again, he was helping Kirihara with a slice. Yukimura shrugged. Sanada couldn't possibly avoid him forever.
The regulars all shrank away from him, knowing that they had done badly and he was likely to be angry. He pretended not to notice and commented on how slow their moves were, how lax their grip, how awkward their footing. How low their spirit.
When he told Niou to put his heart into it, because it was obvious Niou was only going through the motions, Niou stared at him. Then a grin slowly grew on his face and he said, all mischief and trickery and Niou, "Yes, buchou."
Yagyuu and Marui caught on quickly enough. Jackal didn't show it, but he did as well. Kirihara hadn't lost any spirit, but even he caught the fire that seemed to spread and Yukimura could smile and know that they were getting better. Yanagi caught his eye and Yukimura returned his gaze, determined and proud. They had suffered a setback, but Rikkai would win.
Later that day, when he was walking with Yanagi to the tennis courts, Yanagi looked at him and said, "They're fired up, you know. Everyone's been talking all day about how you're as good as new and how you'll definitely lead Rikkai to victory again."
Yukimura shrugged. He knew that. He didn't really want to talk, then. He wanted to sit down. It took all his effort to keep his knees from shaking and collapsing. Yanagi would understand; that was why he was walking with Yanagi then and not anyone else. Yanagi knew better than anyone the weaknesses of everyone on the team.
They passed several benches on the way to the public tennis courts. Yukimura ignored them and Yanagi did likewise. He didn't expect his captain to quit before he reached his goal and he knew Yukimura wouldn't forgive him for assuming that he would. When the reached the court, though, Yukimura headed straight for the bench and fell on it. Only then did he let himself take in gasping breaths and wipe the sweat from his face. Then, still breathing as if he had run a full marathon with weights (breathing harder than when he had run that marathon, if Yanagi remembered correctly), he asked, "Why didn't you visit?"
Without missing a beat, Yanagi said, "I didn't want anything thrown at my head."
Yukimura actually laughed, for the first time in weeks. "But I wanted to throw something and the walls were boring targets."
Yanagi nodded seriously. "I'll remember that." He did not say next time even though they both knew it was likely. He just stood there and waited for Yukimura to catch his breath before taking his racket out. "Rough or smooth?"
"Rough." Yukimura said.
Rehabilitation started right then.
Yukimura was scared, more scared than he had been when he couldn't breath, more than when he thought he had been abandoned by his team, more than anything, because he knew what he used to be capable of doing and he also knew that he couldn't do that anymore. He was used to fighting a battle against his body, asking for just one more ball, just one more mile, just one more sit-up, but this was the first time that he had asked that of his body to find that it could not comply.
He knew how to fight the battle, but he found that, suddenly and without warning, the rules had changed and he could no longer fight the way he knew how. Everyone kept telling him that he was finished with the hardest part, he just had to recover now, but this felt harder than anything Yukimura had ever done before. He felt weak and useless and he knew that, when the time came, he would let his team down. He would be the one who everything depended on at the end and he would lose in utter humiliation because his body couldn't do what he wanted of it.
But he wasn't weak. He knew that. He knew that he could do this. He knew that he could win. He wasn't the useless shell of a human being that lay in the hospital room, he had recovered. He could bring his team to nationals and he could win. He would win.
He had to.
For two people who lived in almost the exact same world—same class, same club, practically the same route home—Sanada and Yukimura seemed to have a hard time meeting up the next few weeks. Or, rather, Yukimura had a hard time finding Sanada, who seemed to be inhumanly good at avoiding him. It was almost deterrent enough that Yukimura gave up, but Yukimura was not very good at giving up and so he ended up cornering Sanada in, of all places, the basketball courts. 'Cornering' in the literal sense, of course, with Sanada trapped in a corner of the room and Yukimura right in front of him.
Sanada put on his best stoic face, probably learned from Tezuka, Yukimura noted, and gave off the aura of a cornered hare while Yukimura smiled nicely. "We haven't talked for a while, Genchirou."
As if Yukimura had not just run through the halls of the school after Sanada who had run just as hard to get away from him.
"Yes, Yukimura."
Yukimura felt the strangest urge right then to start on a long lecture, because that seemed to exactly what Sanada expected, but he suppressed it quite nicely and said instead, "You know, in third grade, my friends told me that there was a boy who had a crush on me in our school."
Alright, so perhaps he was a little bit sore over being ignored for weeks. And perhaps it was a bit cruel, but Yukimura thought that Sanada really did deserve it for being such an ass and it wasn't often that even he saw Sanada that flabbergasted.
"I don't know what you're talking ab—"
It must have affected him, being so close to Sanada after being wholly incapable of getting within five feet of him, because Yukimura found that his lips were on Sanada's before he finished the sentence. It was a sloppy kiss, since neither of them had had any experience with kissing before and the situation wasn't quite ideal for it, but it was a kiss and Yukimura thought that it got the point across quite well.
"That's a pity." Yukimura said when they broke apart. "I could have sworn that that boy was you, but if it wasn't..." Yukimura let himself lean against Sanada. The run had tired him out, even if he hated to admit it. "...then I'd have to make you fall in love with me and I have enough work as it is, catching up in class."
He could feel Sanada gulp and awkwardly wrap his arms around Yukimura's still too-thin shoulders. "N-no... You don't need to do that."
Yukimura knew that there were people staring, because the basketball team had told him very specifically before that they did not want any tennis members running through their basketball courts at that very hour, but he didn't care. "Good."