A/N: This was a secret santa for keii aka kurootetsunya on tumblr right now. It's from about 8 months ago, but I figured I should post it up now. I'm sorry the title is so boring.
There weren't many things Marui loved, but sweets and tennis were among them, and he'd never leave them.
Sweets were his guilty pleasure, something he'd loved since childhood. Cookies, cakes, mochis? Love at first taste. There was nothing that worked as well as a slice of cake for a quick pick me up, a little bit of happiness in an otherwise dull day. Sure, he might have ended up with slightly more than his fair share of cavities, but he thought it was a decent trade off. If nothing else, the cavities gave him an excuse to chew more gum because it supposedly boosted saliva production.
That was the beginning of his gum obsession. He tried chewing mint, cinnamon, tropical twists, and watermelon in quick succession and discovered that while chewing gums were vastly divergent and interesting in their own right, they weren't something he could fairly compare to bubble gum. There was just something ridiculously satisfying about blowing and popping it. Maybe it was the sticky-cool texture of the gum against his skin, maybe it was the snap of the bursting bubble, or maybe it was the giddy feeling he got when he managed to blow a bubble the size of his own head, but after trying bubble gum he never went back to chewing gum. It was, in a way, sweets that had encouraged him to try tennis. His doctor had recommended that Marui try a sport if he indulged so often in sweets. Marui ended up choosing tennis.
When he had first started tennis, at the tender age of 9, it had been something that he'd had to work at, something that hadn't, unlike math, and language, and memorization, come naturally to him. It had been the first thing he had had to work hard at. Even if his stamina was less than fantastic, even if, after hundreds upon hundreds of strokes, his backhands were nothing like Niou's, and even if he wasn't even good at tennis compared to Niou, Marui could try. He practiced tennis like he had practiced nothing else, and he would play with Niou until their racket grips were too slimy to hold on to, and when he figured out that he was a natural volleyer, he practiced his volleys until his wrists were sore and his arms were aching and neither he nor Niou could run another step.
Eventually, he entered his first tournament, determined to win, and most especially, determined to beat Niou. He had used his serve and volley tactics to shoot straight to the semifinals, where he had met a scary boy who glared like Niou did when Marui tugged on his rattail. Though Marui hadn't been cowed by the glower at first, he quickly realized that this boy probably had some kind of secret, terrifying strength in that scowl of his. The only time he could get to the net was when he served, and even then, not even his drop shots worked. The match was over more quickly than any of his other matches, and the gruff "good match" the other boy grunted didn't help. Marui had been annihilated, and he hadn't even gotten to meet Niou in the finals the way like they'd agreed. As he left, spirits crushed, he had been silently debating whether those hard hours of practice had been worth it when he'd been accosted by Niou.
It turned out that Niou had been even more horribly defeated. During the semis, Niou had faced an angelic-looking boy with a sweet smile that could have flavored the most saccharine of cakes. Niou had been sure that he could defeat this "Snow White," who had dropped the smile, but seemed to have nothing better than ridiculously consistent strokes when he had lost the feeling in his foot, and then his entire body. He had been running around numb the entire time, and the other boy had only given a hardened smile when Niou had glared at him. Not even mimicking Marui, the illusion Niou had gotten the closest to perfecting, could make the boy flinch.
Unlike Marui, though, Niou had only been more determined to train and get better, and his resolve hardened Marui's own. After that unfortunate tournament, they trained harder. Marui developed a new move, Tightrope Walking; Niou perfected Marui and his new move and moved onto watching videos of the boy who defeated him – Yukimura Seichii, but couldn't figure out exactly how Yukimura had numbed him. Marui's half-hearted suggestion of magic gas was met with a pillow to the face.
The next tournament the two entered was a doubles tournament. While their styles didn't always match up perfectly, Niou was a decent, if not perfect, baseliner, and when they were both up at net, it was near impossible for them to lose the point. Of course, once they made the quarterfinals, they met a pair of, for lack of a better term, weirdoes. A cat boy and another smiling freak, but this pacific-looking boy hadn't stopped smiling. The two seemed to spend the match goofing off. Kikumaru had bounced around, flipping, and shouting things like "Kikumaru Beam, nya!" while Fuji never opened his eyes, but they were still tough opponents, and it stressed Marui out. As they swapped sides at 2-3, he flopped down, grabbing the box his mother had given him for luck. He and Niou split a slice of cake before Niou told him he had noticed Fuji's weakness - he seemed to hit to the backhand side whenever he got a short forehand. Niou could take advantage of this and run up to the net whenever he did this, and with that trick, they managed to beat the apparent "Dream Pair." The final match had been nothing in comparison – it seemed that the good teams had taken each other out in Marui and Niou's side of the bracket.
That night, in celebration, the two had had a sleepover and while they played Pokémon on their Gameboys, they had discussed their next move. Singles or doubles? What school would they go to? While they were both fairly good players for their age, Marui's volleying was far more effective when he could get to the net, which, against stronger players, was hard. Niou, on the other hand was much more flexible. He was developing his illusions faster and faster. In the end, they decided with a Pokémon battle. Marui won. They would play doubles in their tournaments.
The question of school was a much larger issue. Their parents wanted them to go to an academically talented school. They wanted one with a good tennis program. No one wanted to move outside of Kanagawa. In the end, the best candidate was Rikkai Dai Fuzoku Chuu. Close, the Kantoh Champions for the last 13 years, and academically successful, it was perfect.
The last days before school started were stressful, but in the typical ways. There were the standard last day panics of unfinished homework and the last minute lists of school supplies to be bought. Marui needed a new tie. Niou needed new tennis shoes. They ended up getting both on the very last day before school started.
When school finally started, they picked up the forms for the tennis team from a senpai by the courts before rushing to find their homerooms. Niou and Marui weren't the in the same classes, but neither had an eventful day. Teachers came and went, introducing themselves and their subjects and expectations. They met their classmates. A transfer student from Brazil was in Marui's class, and Yukimura and Sanada, the boys Niou and Marui had lost to in their first tournament, were in Niou's. When Niou came to Marui's homeroom for lunch, the way they'd agreed the night before, he found Marui chatting with Jackal in between bites of both their lunches. Jackal, it turned out, was a tennis player, too, and a good baseliner – exactly the type of player Marui wanted to play with.
At the end of the day, Yukimura and Sanada, with a boy with a pageboy cut, Yanagi, led the way down to the courts. There, they handed in their forms, and were instructed of the rules for first years. They were, in essence, ball boys who practiced swings but never played. After the first senpai left, Marui was reminded of a phrase a boy at a tournament had muttered before the match started. "Gekokujyou," he whispered to Niou, who snickered before the senpai turned to glare at him. Yukimura, on the other hand, turned with a smile reminiscent of a shark. A revolution, it seemed, would suit him very well.
Yukimura and Yanagi planned it at the street courts that afternoon. Yukimura, Sanada, and Yanagi, it seemed, were tennis fiends. Yukimura played like a devil, showcasing his perfected yips. Niou had been numb when he had played Yukimura the first time. This time, Yukimura stole away all his senses. Sanada was an absolute powerhouse. With his FuuRinKaiZan, he would and could steamroll over almost everybody there. Yanagi's Data Tennis seemed to analyze every breath. Within a set, he had all of Marui and Niou's weaknesses memorized. Compared to the trio, Niou and Marui were nearly laughable, but Marui's skill at the net was still unrivaled and Niou's Illusions were still impressive. Besides, Yukimura had laughed, he was incapable of playing doubles. They needed at least one doubles pair to have it actually be a revolution. So Yukimura, Sanada, and Yanagi would challenge for first, second, and third singles. Next, Marui and Niou would go for second doubles. They would find another doubles pair later, but the current pair was good – Juzaburo Mori seemed to work well with anybody, even if he missed practice at least once a week.
Together, the quintet trained for a month, watching and analyzing their targets as they picked up balls or practiced strokes. Marui ended up playing against Niou just as much as he played with him – Niou's Illusions, though not perfect, were good enough to at least mimic the other players' special moves. Then, at morning practice, as soon as their stretches were done, they challenged. By now, Marui and Niou had seen everything they needed to see to win. Ryou had a weak forehand, Ren was awful at the net, and neither had seen Marui's Tight-Rope Walking, nor could they predict how Niou would play, especially when he decided that he would show off his impression of Ren. Ryou and Ren were screwed. Even if this was the regulars they were playing, even if Marui could hardly believe that they had accepted the challenge, even if Marui was rapidly getting tired despite his gum, Marui and Niou were winning.
It was harder than playing against Niou's Illusions. Niou could only imitate one at once, anyway. The real people worked together and changed strategies frequently, and even if Marui knew their weaknesses, he couldn't always use them – Ryou's forehand meant nothing when he was at the net, and Ren's groundstrokes were still powerful.
In the end, Niou and Marui won in two sets, 6-2, 6-4, but they were far from the first finished. Yukimura's had ended ages beforehand, the captain having forfeited his match after losing all his senses. Sanada and Yanagi's opponents had kept playing despite Yanagi's constant statistics on their chances of winning, but even they had ended up winning without trouble.
The revolution was complete. The first years were established. Now all they needed was a last doubles pair. In the end, Niou ended up recruiting a golf player, Yagyuu Hiroshi, to the team. Though he had rarely played tennis, Yagyuu seemed to be a natural. He and Niou worked well, better than Niou and Marui had, and soon Marui was playing with Mori. Though Mori seemed to resent the rest of the team for being first years and was notoriously absent, he and Marui worked well together. They dominated the other doubles pairs.
As Marui grew stronger, he learned to rely less on Mori to cover for him – he was finally developing into a better singles player, and he showed this new improvement at the Newcomer's Tournament, against a rather hyper fanboy. Though he couldn't help but be shocked, Akutagawa's obvious appreciation of his skills did inflate his ego quite a bit.
After that day, he and Jirou saw each other occasionally during combined practices, though he was soon perturbed by Jirou's excitement. It had been mildly odd when the boy had stolen his wristbands, but the boy seemed to be hyper, all the time, and Marui had never met somebody quite so enthusiastic. It wasn't until that fateful day at the sweets store in third year that he truly got to know Jirou and found out more about him. Unlike most of the players on the middle school circuit, Jirou, too, played not just to win, but because he truly loved the sport and found it fun. Of course, Jirou's affinity for sweets and sweet shops was another thing Marui found in common with him. From then on, the two hung out much more often, sometimes on weekends, sometimes when the other had a match, and sometimes just at the sweets shop they had run into each other at. Their fast friendship developed into a strong bond. It was this unusual bond that Marui had been contemplating the day he finally realized what it was that he had truly loved about tennis. It was fun, sure, but it had never been as fun without the people he had played with and met because of it – Niou, Jackal, and the rest of the team, and now Jirou.
In the end, Marui mused, sweets were nice and quite delicious, tennis was fun, and the cheering fans were icing on the cake, but the things he truly couldn't leave behind were the people he had met through them.