Title: The Flow of Time
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3088
Pairing: Tezuka/Miyuki
Summary: Tezuka doesn't know it, but he's falling in love.
Authors Notes: I like how this turned out, though as usual I wasn't too sure how to end it. That's the hard part of writing fanfic, you know. Figuring out how to END the damn things. Anyway, this is my second TezuMiyu fic, and will probably be my last one for awhile. I adore this pairing, but I think I've burnt myself out on writing them for the time being.
-
It started with that time in Kyuushu, with Tezuka working hard to overcome his arm injury and encountering a spunky little girl while doing so. They played tennis, overcame their weaknesses, and were both left stronger because of it. Kyuushu would always be a good memory, but that was all that Tezuka had expected it to be when he had left without a word. He hadn't expected to see Miyuki ever again.
Then he saw her again at Nationals.
In retrospect he really should have figured it out. Chitose Miyuki, Chitose Senri. Tennis. It should have been painfully obvious. They even looked alike, vaguely. Both of them had that tanned skin. Miyuki wasn't obnoxiously tall, of course, but she would have time to grow into that. She was only nine, after all.
They didn't even have a chance to talk admist all the hustle and bustle of the tournament, so Tezuka just wrote the whole thing off as an odd coincidence and left it at that.
But that wasn't the end.
---
"Hi, Dorobo-nii! I didn't have time to congratulate you after Nationals, so I came to do it today!"
Tezuka blinked at the little girl standing on his doorstep, and wondered vaguely how she had found out where he lived. Or what she was doing wandering around Tokyo, for that matter. She was, after all, only a child. She shouldn't be wandering around a strange city on her own.
"Um... I hope it's okay that I showed up unannounced. I asked Kippei-nii for your address- he got it from that creepy nii-chan on your team..." Tezuka's silence was clearly making Miyuki uneasy, so Tezuka forced himself to be sociable and opened the door to let the girl in. After all, she was a long way from home.
"It's no problem. Is your family going to be in town for a while?" Tezuka inquired, unsure of what else to talk about. He really wasn't that good with making small-talk.
"Dad had to go back to work, but Mom turned this into a little vacation for us. It's all good though. It gives Sen-nii and Kippei-nii a chance to get caught up, and I got to come see you!" Miyuki flopped onto the couch in the Tezuka living room, dropping her racket bag onto the floor and grinning at Tezuka.
Tezuka thought it was kind of nice to have her there, like having a younger sister.
"Anyway, congratulations about Nationals! I know you didn't win your match against Sanada-kun, but you did really, really well! I was cheering for you the whole time!" Miyuki seemed content to just chatter on now, with no real need for Tezuka to do anything but offer a small nod here and there to show that he was listening.
"So, do you want to go play tennis with me, Dorobo-nii?" Miyuki finally concluded. Tezuka blinked and nodded. He had been wondering what Miyuki had come here for.
"I'll go get my racket."
---
They played tennis at the street courts until it was almost dinnertime and the sun was going down. Tezuka was sure to take it easy on Miyuki because she was a child and Miyuki was sure to fight back with all she had to get Tezuka to stop going easy on her. For awhile it was like being back in Kyuushu.
"Yo, Tezuka."
Tezuka stopped mid-serve to turn and watch Chitose Senri stride up to the court at a leisurely pace.
"Can I have my sister back? I'm headed back to the hotel, and if I return without her the cat will be out of the bag that she didn't actually go with me to see Kippei."
Well, that explained why Miyuki was wandering around the city on her own. What a careless older brother.
"Aww, it's time to go already, Sen-nii?" Miyuki fussed, although Tezuka could tell that she was getting tired. It was probably about time for him to head home himself.
"Ah. It was good spending the day with you, Miyuki-san," Tezuka offered up with a firm nod, leaning over to pick up the tennis ball he had dropped when he aborted his serve. Miyuki pouted a little and stuffed her racket back into her bag, going over to her older brother's outstretched hand.
"Bye, Dorobo-nii! I'll come play with you next time I'm in Tokyo, okay!?" she called out to him as her brother led her away. Tezuka almost smiled.
The next week the first letter from Miyuki arrived.
---
The letters continued coming on a regular basis after that. Each time one arrived Tezuka would read it and politely write up and send out a reply to the girl. Then he'd wait for the next letter to arrive so that he could repeat the proccess all over again.
At first the main theme of the letters was tennis- asking for advice about various things and talking about differant tournaments that Miyuki was participating in. Tezuka wasn't surprised to hear that the girl was doing well in them. Miyuki had the same knack for tennis that her older brother had; he had felt it when he first saw her play. With a little bit of hard work he was certain that Miyuki would be able to make a name for herself.
Before long Miyuki started bringing up other subjects in her letters as well, though. Things like how she'd been having trouble in literature class, or mentions of teammates and all the strange antics they seemed to get up to. After awhile things like this seemed to be the main focus of their letters, though tennis was still amply discussed. They just talked about other things as well.
Dorobo-nii, you're such a good friend.
When Tezuka saw that written in a letter he couldn't help but smile faintly. He didn't reply with anything like that in turn of course, but he took that letter and filed it away in his dresser for safe keeping.
---
The next time that Tezuka saw Miyuki in person he was in his first year of high school. She was ten now- almost eleven- but she still seemed just the same to him when he looked at her. Scrawny and energetic. She tagged along with her older brother on a visit to see Tachibana again, and had managed to slip off to visit Tezuka early Sunday afternoon.
"I haven't had lunch yet, Dorobo-nii. Can we stop and eat something before we play tennis?"
It was phrased as a question, but it was clearly more of a demand. Miyuki had decided that they were stopping for lunch, so they were stopping for lunch. And so a few minutes later Tezuka followed Miyuki into a hamburber joint and bought her a lunch combo. He got himself a small iced tea- he'd already eaten by the time that Miyuki showed up and wasn't really hungry again yet.
"Hey! It's buchou!"
"He's not buchou anymore, Momo-sempai."
Tezuka barely spared his old teammates a passing nod as he headed for the booth Miyuki had settled at with the tray of food. This didn't seem to deter Momoshiro and Echizen, though- they followed him all the way there. Well, Momoshiro followed him. Echizen just kind of trailed along after Momoshiro looking bored.
"Huh? I didn't know Tezuka had a little sister!" Momoshiro proclaimed, pointing right at Miyuki. Echizen didn't seem that interested at all, choosing to just observe the whole situation as if it were pointless while he waited for Momoshiro to stop making an ass of himself in front of everyone.
"I don't. This is Chitose Miyuki. She's a friend of mine," Tezuka replied. Miyuki grinned brightly at the other boys.
"Dorobo-nii is going to go play tennis with me once we finish lunch!"
Echizen seemed to be drawing the connection between Chitose Senri and Chitose Miyuki at this point. Momoshiro, however, had come up with far less astute observations.
"You mean you're on a date!?" he finally spit out, looking as if he'd just learned something amazing. Tezuka's face drew itself into a slightly irritated looking frown. Miyuki looked like she might start laughing.
"She's ten," Tezuka pointed out, as if that would totally crush the whole notion of him being on a so-called date.
Momoshiro didn't seem convinced.
---
"When I get home I'm going to tell all my friends that I went on a date with Dorobo-nii," Miyuki proclaimed on the walk from the street courts to the Tachibana household. When Tezuka frowned a little Miyuki just laughed at him.
The letters resumed as normal once Miyuki returned to Kyuushu.
---
Over the next three years Tezuka and Miyuki continued their corrispondence, meeting up to eat and play tennis several more times when Miyuki happened to be in Tokyo and able to seek him out. Tezuka actually found himself looking forward to those times, really. Spending time with Miyuki was always enjoyable.
He wasn't dating her, however. No matter what his former teammates seemed to think (It was too bad that he couldn't assign Momoshiro laps for gossiping when they weren't attending the same school. If he hadn't mentioned that 'date' with Miyuki it was quite possible that nobody else would have found out) they were not dating. He was nineteen and Miyuki had just turned fourteen. Besides, he really wasn't all that interested in things outside of tennis. He had gone pro the previous year and didn't have time for a relationship.
"Are you going to be visiting Miyuki-chan when you're at the tournament next month, Tezuka?"
Tezuka glanced up from his water bottle, giving Tachibana a hard look. He had suspected something was up when Tachibana had invited him out for a quick game or two.
"I wasn't really planning on it," Tezuka responded. And it was the truth. It had occurred to him that he was going to be where Miyuki lived, but he had never visited her. It always worked the other way around, with Miyuki showing up on his doorstep.
"You should. Senri said she couldn't get tickets to the tournament in time, but I'm sure if you stopped by it would make her happy."
Tezuka had known that Miyuki hadn't been able to get tickets- she'd complained about it for a good portion of her last two letters. He just didn't see how his stopping by would make her feel any better.
"I'll be very busy the whole time I'm in Kyuushu," Tezuka finally responded, as if justifying his reasons for not stopping by to see her. Tachibana just shrugged.
"Surely you have time to take her for dinner or something."
Meeting up without tennis. That idea had honestly never occurred to Tezuka. He suggested that they go for dinner in his next letter. Miyuki seemed happy enough with the idea.
---
Miyuki looked a lot older than Tezuka remembered when he showed up to take her to dinner after the tournament in Kyuushu. This really didn't make much sense to him- he'd seen her just a couple months before then, and while he had noticed that she had steadily been gaining curves where there hadn't been any before he would have sworn that she didn't look quite this grown up.
Maybe it had something to do with how she was dressed. Tezuka had seen her many times over the years, but this was the first time he'd actually seen her in a skirt. And was that makeup on her face?
It suited her a little too well, he decided. Her legs were long and pretty now, and the skirt helped to show them off. She was bound to attract the wrong kind of attention from the boys her age if she continued dressing like this.
"Don't be careless," Tezuka instructed. Miyuki just gave him an odd look.
---
Dinner was really fun. That's what Tezuka expected the next letter to read. He got a phonecall instead.
"Sen-nii's going to Tokyo next week and said he'd let me come along then. Do you want to go out for dinner again?" Miyuki asked. Tezuka wasn't opposed to the idea.
---
Weekly letters turned to nightly telephone calls. Outings to play tennis turned into dinners out together (though there were still meetings to play tennis in there as well). Time kept passing. Tezuka was twenty-one now, and Miyuki was sixteen.
In Tezuka's opinion they were very good friends. They spent a lot of time together when Tezuka wasn't at foriegn tournaments- Tezuka sometimes even going out of his way in order to stop by Kyuushu to see her, and Miyuki going out of her way to see him even more often. Last Christmas she'd even managed to get to Tokyo all on her own just to give him his gift.
He really couldn't imagine going more than a couple days without hearing from the girl about something or the other.
---
"Wow, Tezuka. Have you seen the papers? They have you paired up with that idol."
Tezuka frowned a little and looked at his coach, taking the newspaper from him and looking it over. Sure enough, a picture of him with some pretty little pop idol- he wasn't sure of her name, he'd just met her briefly at a party last week- graced the page. How ridiculous. It was careless of the people printing this story to assume they were dating based on just one photograph.
"This won't cause trouble between you and that little girlfriend of yours, will it?" his coach continued. It took Tezuka a good minute to figure out who he was talking about.
"Miyuki-san isn't my girlfriend," he replied, looking mildly annoyed that even his coach seemed to be getting in on teasing him about his friendship with the girl now.
"Really? You spend so much time with her, though. Didn't you say you were going out for dinner together on your birthday?" his coach asked. Tezuka frowned.
"Dinner as friends. And we're not going out. She's going to cook for me at my house," he pointed out. It had been Miyuki's idea. She was going to be in Tokyo over his birthday in two months and had decided that she would treat him to a special birthday dinner. Tezuka knew better than to argue the point with her. If Miyuki said she wanted to come over and cook him dinner, that was what she was going to do.
"Cooking for you and everything, huh? Lucky guy."
Tezuka wasn't too sure what his coach was getting at.
---
That night Miyuki didn't call him.
She didn't call him the next night either.
By the third Tezuka was considering calling her instead, but he brushed aside the notion. Miyuki was a teenage girl. It was perfectly likely that she was just busy- going out with some friends or studying or something. She would call again when she had the time, he was sure of it. Except the days kept passing and Miyuki still hadn't called him.
Tezuka wasn't sure what to do. He wondered if something had happened to the girl. Was she okay? No, she was probably just busy, he reminded himself. She was sixteen, he was nearly twenty-two. It was natural that she'd eventually find other things to interest herself with.
Tezuka hoped she wasn't being careless in her new interests, though.
---
"So. Have you been having fun jerking around my kid sister?"
Tezuka blinked and stoicly tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes. The last thing he had expected to find on his doorstep early on a Sunday morning was an irate Chitose Senri, and his tired brain was having a hard time processing what was going on.
"What are you talking about?" he finally responded, holding the door open so that Senri could come in out of politeness and nothing else. He wasn't happy with the man showing up on his doorstep making all kinds of strange accusations, but this was Miyuki's brother. Maybe he would offer insight as to why Miyuki wasn't calling anymore.
"I'm talking about how you're an asshole!" Chitose continued, not looking at all amused with Tezuka. "Miyuki's been waiting over two weeks for you to call, and you haven't."
"Waiting for me to call? Why?" Tezuka didn't understand this. If Miyuki wanted to talk to him why didn't she just call him herself? That's how it had always worked up until now.
"You really need to get a clue, you know that?"
Chitose left. He didn't explain anything to Tezuka.
---
Tezuka showed up on Miyuki's doorstep later that day. He had to postpone practice in order to do so, but he'd just train extra hard later. Normally he wouldn't allow such a move, but this was about Miyuki. Something was wrong here and he wanted to figure out what it was.
Miyuki's mother looked surprised to see him- he'd never shown up uninvited before- but let him in, leaving him alone in the living room while she went upstairs to tell Miyuki that Tezuka-san had come to see her, won't she please come down and talk to him. She returned a few minutes later to apologetically tell him that Miyuki didn't feel up to seeing him right now. Tezuka was dissappointed, but thanked Chitose-san for her efforts before leaving.
He was several blocks away when Miyuki changed her mind and his phone vibrated.
"I'll meet you at the park near the train station," she instructed before hanging up. Tezuka knew the place- it's one that he and Miyuki have visited a couple times. There's a tennis court there that Miyuki regularly played at. He headed to the park without hesitation. Miyuki arrived a few minutes later.
"Miyuki-san." Tezuka's greeting was stiff, confused. He was still not sure what was going on, but it made his stomach feel tight and constricted, like he might get ill at any time. Miyuki didn't look like she was doing much better. She was staring at the ground and biting her lower lip.
The two of them went and sat on a bench. Tezuka offered to get them some tea from a nearby vending machine, but Miyuki turned him down, saying that she isn't thirsty.
"You stopped calling." Tezuka was surprised with himself over how accusing his tone was. Miyuki didn't really seem to notice, however. Or care.
"I heard you were dating that idol."
"I'm not dating anyone."
"Yeah... I realized that. That's why I stopped calling."
She sounded so vunerable saying it, as if she were afraid that the world would fall apart. For a minute Tezuka still didn't understand what was going on, but then it dawned on him. All the phonecalls and visits and the carelessly short skirt. It all made sense now, as much as he wished that it didn't.
"I just really love you, y'know? And I guess that I kinda thought maybe... you liked me too."
In retrospect Tezuka would consider his next move a poor one. After all, she was just sixteen, and he was twenty-two. But caught up in the moment, he didn't really care. He just wanted Miyuki to stop looking so broken.
Tezuka Kunimitsu leaned over and kissed Chitose Miyuki.
The calls started up again after that.
-owari-