Disclaimer: Tennis no Ohjisama is the property of Konomi Takeshi.
Author's Notes: This is for Mithas who requested a Rikkai fic with Yagyuu/Niou. It's a pretty light piece – no overflowing paragraphs or anything here. There is Yagyuu/Niou in it, but it's a bit light, and the characters might be a little out of character (Niou in particular), but that's because I don't really know much about Rikkai yet.
Tennis Balls and Bubble Gum
By CalicoKitten
"This is fun."
With a small smile on his face, Yagyuu busied himself with tugging his hair this way and that way. He turned it backwards upon his head and faced Niou.
"How does it look?"
Niou scowled and stated as if Yagyuu should know better, "It doesn't go that way."
He pulled it back, tugging it down over Yagyuu's face in the process.
"Hey, it's not like that's an improvement or anything," Kirihara joked from where he volleyed lightly against Marui, who was currently playing with a large pink bubble protruding from his mouth.
Niou gave him a death glare, not sure whether the second year player referred to his hair or the wig over his partner's face, and his eyebrow twitched.
Before he could cause any serious harm to the tennis ace, though, the captain – temporary captain, he supposed – came out then with, and there was really no surprise there, Yanagi.
"As much as I find it good that you're all staying after practice is over," Sanada began in that deep voice of his, ignoring Kirihara's conspicuous rolling of the eyes, "what exactly do you guys think you're doing?"
"This?" Yagyuu gestured towards the wig in his hand, and Niou was not pleased to see that the wig he had chosen now looked like a dead animal. "Niou came up with a plan to defeat the Golden Pair at Nationals."
"With dead animals?" Sanada did not look impressed.
"No," Niou responded, frowning. "We're going to psych them out by pretending to be each other."
"Really." Sanada still did not look impressed.
"Yes, I think it's a rather good idea myself," Yagyuu responded cheerfully, sticking the disheveled wig carelessly on top of his head. He took off his glasses, squinting slightly. "Niou knows my Laser Beam, after all."
Yanagi scoffed. "His Laser Beam is just a pale imitation of yours, Yagyuu-kun."
He smirked at Niou then, and Niou felt his eyebrow twitch again.
"You don't even know if you'll be playing against the Golden Pair," he continued.
"Why wouldn't we?" Niou interjected as he reached up to fix the wig atop Yagyuu's head. "We're the best in doubles. And besides, you know that Seigaku's first doubles always loses. Well, almost always loses. No use in sending us against their crappy doubles team. Put Jackal and Marui there instead."
Taking the opportunity, he gave Marui a condescending grin, and the other tried to glare back, but the pink bubble stuck to his face instead, and he stopped, not wanting to break it.
"Their plan will probably work," Kirihara interrupted, careful to hit easy returns to Marui, who was trying to make his bubble even bigger. "Seigaku isn't really known for their brains."
Jackal, observing quietly from where he leaned against the fence, spoke up, "Really? Is that why their first-year brat beat you?"
"He didn't beat me! He just…" the black-haired boy paused, trying to think up a plausible excuse for his loss.
"He just scored more points than you," Sanada said bluntly, and Kirihara fell over with a cough.
"Hey! That was mean!" Kirihara exclaimed, pointing at Sanada with his racket angrily. "It's not like I came out of it with nothing, you know."
"What else did you come out with then? Besides someone kicking your ass, that is," Niou said, smiling evilly at the expression on the younger boy's face.
"I – I can do the Twist Serve!" Kirihara shouted triumphantly.
He was met with blank faces.
"That serve is overrated," Sanada told him, ignoring Kirihara when the other fell over yet again. "It's not that hard to reproduce. Players reproduce other players' special moves all the time."
"I can show you!" Kirihara replied stubbornly as he took a tennis ball from the cart.
Sanada immediately appeared on the defensive. With a warning to his tone, he spoke, "Kirihara…"
But Kirihara had already thrown the ball up, hitting it to the other side.
The ball bounced on the ground, spinning as the Twist Serve would have it spin, but since Kirihara was not experienced in the serve, the ball came up in a different direction than he intended. It headed towards the unsuspecting Marui, currently unaware of it due to the pink bubble in front of his eyes.
Jackal warned urgently, "Marui, watch out!"
Said boy turned around a little too late, and the ball glanced off his cheek, bursting the bubble and spreading the pink goo all over his face as he fell backwards from the impact. The ball, in turn, skidded across the metal fence and smacked against the wheel of the tennis ball cart, causing a cascade of balls to pour around Niou and Yagyuu.
It bounced up again to the previous tennis players mentioned, aiming for Yagyuu, who was still squinting and holding his glasses protectively to himself. Niou, noting the danger to his partner, quickly took hold of his racket, practically throwing it in front of Yagyuu, and the ball flew away again.
It was luck that it managed to hit Sanada on the forehead, gum visible from where it left Marui's bubble.
Kirihara blanched at his misfortune as he saw the results of his meant-to-be-impressive Twist Serve, backing away silently while cursing his bad luck.
"Hehe…why can't I have that Yamabuki player's luck," he said to himself as he made his way quickly from the scene.
Sanada frowned, wiping the residue of gum off his forehead, and looked around for the perpetrator.
"Where is he, Renji?" he addressed Yanagi.
Yagyuu supplied helpfully, still without glasses, "He hightailed it out of here. Actually, he's just hiding behind the corner over there."
He pointed to the spot, and they heard Kirihara hiss, "Traitor!"
Sanada seemed like he wanted to head over there and punish Kirihara for causing one of his incidents again, but his cell phone rang then, and he picked the call up.
"Sanada desu."
While he talked, Yagyuu put his glasses back on his face and went over to where Marui was attempting to peel the gum off his face.
"Are you okay, Marui?"
"Eh, I'm fine," Marui replied, a bit sulkily. He rubbed at the sticky substance on his face. "My cheek's probably going to bruise later. And gum is a bitch to get out."
"Try this." Yagyuu took a towel, wetting it with his bottled water and handing it to Marui, who gratefully accepted it.
"Aa. I'll be right over," Sanada finished then, nodding to himself while on the phone. "See you soon."
"Who was that?" Niou asked from where he and Jackal were picking up tennis balls off the ground and replacing them in the cart.
"Seiichi." Sanada paused then, tucking the phone back into his bag. "Yukimura. I'm going to the hospital to see him."
A voice in the distance muttered grumpily, "And Sanada's going because he's so Yukimura-san's bitch."
Sanada raised an eyebrow then, looking for all the world like he wanted to smack the second year right there, but he had told Seiichi he'd be there soon, and he didn't want to break his word to the rightful captain of Rikkai.
"I'm leaving," he said instead, purposefully turning and heading away. "Be sure to expect many laps tomorrow, Kirihara."
A muffled groan was heard.
"You deserve it," Yanagi directed to the spot where Kirihara hid. "You should know better than to provoke him."
"Oh?" Yagyuu arched an eyebrow into the air. "I see you're such an expert."
"No," Marui chuckled, obviously deciding he held immunity because of his plight of sticky gum all over himself. "Sanada is Yukimura-san's bitch, and he's Sanada's bitch."
Yanagi favored him with a glare.
"I'm no one's bitch, idiot."
Yagyuu decided to cut in before it turned violent and asked, "Well, who's yours then, Marui?"
"Jirou," Marui answered with a completely straight face after thinking for a moment.
"Jirou?!" Niou jeered, obviously not believing it. "That narcoleptic Hyotei player? No way."
"Uh-huh," Marui countered. He tried pulling a particularly long strand of gum out of his hair, wincing when he stretched it to its limit. "I totally kicked his ass when I played against him."
Jackal tossed a tennis ball at him, and it stuck to the shorter player's hair.
"That was a long time ago."
"Well, I did," Marui replied defensively. "And he was so excited at the end of the match, too."
Niou laughed. "If that's all you have to base it on, Jirou must be a whore by now. You're not the only one to beat him, you know. He's like that to everyone."
"Such a cheerful fellow, too, so I hear," Yagyuu added contemplatively. "Doesn't mind losing at all."
"He's an idiot then," Niou stated, tossing the balls behind him and into the metal cart carelessly.
Yagyuu, in response, came over to him and tugged a wig of straight hair – Yagyuu hair – onto his head. "Oh? Do you mind losing to me, then?"
"Duh." Niou frowned and shoved Yagyuu's hands away from where they were adjusting the wig. "But you're different, anyway."
Yagyuu smiled widely at his statement, and Niou wondered if he'd said something he shouldn't have.
"Thank you for the compliment, Yagyuu-kun," he replied while straightening the wig and making sure the strands of hair were straight around Niou's face.
"No problem, Niou-kun," Niou said, stressing the words while overlooking the bright smile that had suddenly appeared on his partner's face. "Where is Kirihara? He should be the one picking these balls up – not us. He's the one who made this mess."
Yanagi frowned. "He's probably still over there. I'll find him while you finish picking them up."
"Bastard," Niou muttered as the dark-haired player went off in the direction of Kirihara. "He's just leaving because he doesn't want to help clean up."
"And I'm leaving because I'm going to clean myself up," Marui told him, and Niou could see with quite some amusement the gum still stuck to the bright-haired boy's head – gum which had probably hardened by now.
The boy hesitated before he got up from where he was sitting, adding sweetly, "Jackal can come with me."
He grabbed onto the tall boy's arm, dragging him away from the mess and Niou's harsh stare that would have killed him if Niou was able to shoot bullets out of his eyes. But he couldn't, and only Yagyuu remained behind to help him clean the mess up.
He sighed.
"You don't have to stay if you don't want to. I know Sanada will expect this to be cleaned up by tomorrow, so I can do it if you want to leave."
Uncharacteristic words that left his mouth were only ever addressed to Yagyuu, and he sometimes suspected that his doubles partner knew of his unusual tolerance to the other boy by the way he smiled at him.
"I don't mind, Niou-kun," Yagyuu spoke, helpfully depositing the yellow-green balls one by one into the container. "We're partners, after all."
He winked unabashedly in response to Niou's sigh at his expected answer and threw a ball gently at the wild-eyed boy. Chucking balls one after another until the Yagyuu-wig fell off, he gave a grin at the low growl that emitted from the throat of the other boy and the lustful stare sent his way.
"Besides…we don't really have to pick them up now, do we?"
He leaned in closer to Niou, and Niou's hand came up to grab the back of his head, pulling him even closer so that they were nose to nose.
"I can think of better things we can do now."
And, according to what transpired later, Niou obviously agreed.