I should probably point out that I don't find all things where Ryoma bottoms make him really out of character. Most of them are completely fine, but there are some that uke-fy Ryoma, which I don't like...
It wasn't that Fuji liked BL. He didn't really read manga anyway, only what his siblings bought and neither of them were into BL.
He'd come into the bookshop to pick up a book for Yuuta and had his eye caught by the big display for a popular author's new book. The two main characters looked very familiar.
It must be a coincidence, Fuji thought, walking over to the display and picking up the first volume of the manga and flipping through it. A very scary coincidence. It was all so very familiar.
He grinned to himself and grabbed the four volumes that were out.
Tezuka always felt bad about how suspicious he felt when Fuji gave him presents. But then, he had known Fuji for years and had been given more than enough reasons to be suspicious.
"I read these books last night and thought you'd be interested," Fuji had said, smiling serenely as he handed over a bag. The books inside it had been wrapped in pretty blue paper and tied up with a ribbon.
Tezuka then had to make the choice; open the present here in the middle of his classroom or wait till he got home. He chose the latter.
He didn't get home right away, as Echizen cornered him after practice and took him out for ice cream (which Echizen ate whilst Tezuka watched). The only thing that had really changed since middle school was that Echizen was a lot more forward about what he wanted out of their relationship. Which Tezuka was thankful of as he wasn't very good at reading the mood or working out what Echizen wanted (unless it was tennis, in which case Tezuka was very good at working that out).
When he got home, he put Fuji's present at the bottom of his shirt draw so his parents couldn't find it and then started on his homework. He was almost finished his English work when his mother called him down for dinner and by the time he'd eaten, helped wash up and talked with his grandfather he'd almost entirely forgotten about what Fuji had given him.
He remembered just after he'd finished his homework and was about to write his diary. Cautiously, he opened his drawer and took out the present, just in case it had suddenly come to life and grown fangs. He put it on his desk and then stared at it, wondering what it could possibly be.
Of course, Fuji could have easily bought him books about mountain climbing or tennis. That made Tezuka feel very guilty about being so suspicious, but then Fuji had once given Momo some condoms and a book about how to take care of snakes.
Staring at it wouldn't let him know what was inside. He ripped off a bit of the blue paper, revealing that the book inside had sparkly pink flowers on it.
Tezuka sighed internally, it was going to be books giving sex tips to women or something equally embarrassing. He steeled himself and then tore off the rest of the paper, revealing four manga volumes.
Four manga volumes with himself and Echizen on the cover.
Tezuka blinked in shock and then looked closer. On the cover of the first volume was himself and Echizen, wrapped in each other's arms, Echizen blushing bright red.
Which was odd. Echizen did blush occasionally, but never that red. There weren't any tennis racquets anywhere either, but Tezuka supposed they wouldn't have added anything to the composition. He, or rather, the character based on him, was smiling rather arrogantly out at him, something that put Tezuka off him immediately. It was a look more suited to Atobe rather than him. He flipped the book over and read the blurb on the back.
Erizawa Ryousuke, volleyball prodigy, has a very big problem. He's in love with his hot captain, Takigawa Kuniyuki! And now he's fumbling his recieves and missing his spikes. How will be be able to impress his captain when every time he looks at him he blushes?
That sounded nothing like the Echizen Tezuka knew. If anything, being around his crush made him play a thousand times better and get a thousand times cockier. Tezuka knew first hand that that was true.
He assumed Echizen had been changed to suit BL archetypes and was scared to find out what had been done to him. He flipped the book open to a random page and ended up on the sex scene.
He shut the book immediately and collected his thoughts, before opening it again.
'N-No…please don't…' Ech-Erizawa was crying as Takigawa pushed him up against the lockers and had his way with him.
That would never happen, Tezuka found himself thinking, Echizen has never said 'no' to sex.
And Tezuka would never force Echizen to have sex. Especially not by pushing him up against the lockers. Flicking back to the start showed that he'd opened it during the couple's first sex scene and he internally sighed again, sex in the locker rooms could be fun (he guessed, he'd never tried it himself), but not for a first time.
Echizen was usually the one initiating sex as well and usually the one- Tezuka sought for the right word, but couldn't really think of one- putting it in.
He supposed he should read all four volumes, Fuji had bought them for him after all and it was probably better to see what had been written about them.
First he wrote his diary, making sure to omit the discovery of a BL series about himself and his boyfriend.
He was surprised to find the series was set in high school. Echizen's character looked like a 12 year old, nothing like he did nowadays. Tezuka wondered whether whoever had written this had seen them back in middle school and hadn't seen them in high school. It would make sense seeing as Echizen had gone to America after his first year of middle school and had only just come back for his first year of high school.
The author had, at least, got Echizen's brattiness down when he was interacting with his friends and teammates, but when he talked to Tezuka he got all blushy and started stammering. It was like they were trying to cram Echizen into a BL archetype and it just didn't work.
The first half of the story was just Echizen's character playing volleyball, blushing and mooning over Tezuka's character. When Echizen's character hung back after practice to confess his feelings the couple ended up having sex. Without a condom or lubricant, Tezuka noted disapprovingly and felt very sorry for Echizen's character. Especially when there was a joke in the next chapter about Echizen's character not being able to walk properly the next day.
Apparently, having sex (or being raped-Tezuka was very dubious about the level of consent there had been) meant that the two of them were dating and the rest of the volume was spent with the pair trying not to let their friends finding out they were dating.
He finished the first volume and looked down at the three others on his desk. Reading the rest of this would not be fun. But he had finished the first volume quickly, so it shouldn't take too long to get through it all.
The volleyball team didn't seem to take part in many matches, Tezuka thought idly as he read about another senpai from the volleyball team (who looked remarkably like Fuji) flirted with Echizen's character and Tezuka's got unreasonably jealous. He'd of actually been interested in reading about volleyball practice and all the matches that the team played instead the team just seemed to be a backdrop for the romance.
Fuji's character ended up getting rejected after as much melodrama as possible had been extracted from the situation. And then Echizen's character and Tezuka's had sex again, Tezuka was please to see that it was consensual this time, although lubricant and condoms were still missing. At least it was in a bedroom this time.
Did everyone think Echizen was this submissive in bed? Or had the author just never met Echizen before? Tezuka pondered these questions as he started the third volume.
The third was just the same as the previous two. Full of melodrama, mainly due to the couple not talking to each other. Tezuka supposed that was understandable, as he and Echizen were not the most communicative of people, but they knew how to understand each other and their relationship had survived two years of long distance due to them being totally honest with each other.
Tezuka was starting to notice a theme throughout this story. Someone flirted with either Echizen's character of Tezuka's, the other got jealous, they argued, they realised how much they missed each other, they made up and then they had sex. Tezuka was starting to get bored of them (and really disliked the character based on him, he was far too possessive and quick to anger) and felt far more invested in the cute little side relationship of Fuji's character and a character that looked like Kawamura.
By the fourth volume though, an actual plot had seemed to arrive in the form of a training camp with actual matched. The author seemed to have run out of people to throw at the couple and had decided to move onto do something with the actual premise of the story. And then, there was an actual match! By the end of the volume, the main team was down ten points and about to mount a comeback and it ended with Echizen's character about to take a crucial shot.
Tezuka found himself wanting to find out what happened next, but not wanting to buy the next volume.
Still, someone had taken his and Echizen's (middle school) likenesses and used them for their BL manga. Was it someone they actually knew, or had they just seen them in Pro Tennis Monthly and decided to base their characters off of them? He looked at the author's name and didn't recognise it, no matter how hard he looked at it.
Before going to bed, he hid the books in a place he hoped his parents (and Echizen) wouldn't ever look in. He didn't think he could give them back to Fuji and he didn't want to throw them out. They had been a present after all.
He really really hoped, that the books never fell into Echizen's hands (although, with Fuji as a friend, it was probably inevitable).
If he thought getting the images out of his head before going to sleep would be easy, he had another thing coming. As he lay in bed, all he could picture was Echizen's flushed face as he was pushed into a mattress and pleasured.
The problem was, he knew exactly what Echizen's skin felt like, what it tasted like and all the lines of his muscles. He had kissed him so many times that the feeling was almost burnt onto his lips and he knew all the sounds he made when they were…intimate.
All of this made reliving the manga images in his head all the more realistic. He knew exactly how Echizen would moan if he played with one of his nipples whilst fondling between his legs.
Tezuka serious contemplated suffocating himself with his own pillow as he remembered the scene where Echizen's character sucked off his own whilst wearing a dress (due to some contrived plot with a play). It just wasn't fair! He should be asleep, resting ahead of their practice match with Rikkai the next day, not lying in bed, wide awake and hard.
He should just masturbate and get rid of his erection, but getting himself off to those manga-inspired images made him feel ashamed of himself and it would look suspicious if he went to have a shower at midnight. Any attempt at clearing his mind inevitably lead to images of Echizen underneath him, naked, flushed and arching into his touch.
Eventually, he decided that some sleep was better than none. Feeling rather ashamed of himself, he slid his hand into his pyjama pants and resolutely picture Echizen as he was now, not as he was in the manga.
He didn't sleep well at all and Fuji knew, judging by the smile on his face at practice the next day. He ignored him and tried to actually meet Echizen's eyes when talking to him.
"What's up?" Echizen asked, when Tezuka snatched his hand away when he brushed his own against it lightly.
"Nothing," Tezuka lied, remembering the panel of Echizen's character pressed up against the lockers, pants around his ankles and looking back at Tezuka's character.
"There is though," Echizen said.
"I'll tell you after school," Tezuka relented. Echizen was very stubborn when it came to Tezuka and would have been questioning him all through their practice match.
Echizen didn't seem happy about this, but couldn't argue because, just then, Rikkai arrived.
"Echizen's grown a lot," Yukimura said as he greeted Tezuka. He thought this was a weird greeting, but Yukimura was was weirder than Fuji, so Tezuka didn't question it.
"His tennis skill has grown as well," Tezuka informed him, trying not to sound too proud of his boyfriend.
Yukimura laughed, "I bet it has."
The practice match went very well. Tezuka's lack of sleep was swept aside as he got into a tough match against Kirihara, eventually managing to defeat the other boy 7-6.
He then went to watch Echizen's match against Sanada. Really, Tezuka had wanted to play Sanada or Yukimura himself, but doing it this way meant he could put other members of his team up against strong players.
Yukimura came to join him in watching the match, having just beaten Fuji.
Tezuka was surprised to find that he was looking at Echizen a lot more than Sanada. Probably checking out the opposition, Tezuka told himself and then went back to enjoying the match. Watching Echizen play tennis was always enjoyable.
After practice, Echizen followed him home. It was lucky that Tezuka's parent's liked Echizen and were always happy to see him as he often followed Tezuka home without warning.
They greeted Tezuka's family when they got in and then went straight up to Tezuka's room.
"So, what's wrong?" Echizen asked, sitting on Tezuka's bed.
Tezuka didn't answer, just went to his bookcase and pulled out the four manga volumes from underneath it. "Fuji gave me these," he said, handing them to Echizen.
Echizen looked at the front cover and looked up at him, "those are us," he said.
"I believe they are," Tezuka said as Echizen started to flip through the manga.
"They don't act like us," he said dismissively. "Oh Buchou, take me in your big manly arms," he said in a squeaky voice, "pathetic." Tezuka couldn't help but agree. "whoever wrote this has clearly never met you," Echizen said after a while, "you're too cute to be this guy."
Never in his life had anyone described Tezuka as 'cute'.
"He is rather forceful," Tezuka agreed.
"Yeah," Echizen said, "They must think that you're hiding a pervert under your upright exterior," he said and Tezuka remembered the previous night and wished he hadn't, "but anyone who actually knows you knows that you're just kinda dorky."
Echizen was breaking all kinds of new ground in finding words to describe Tezuka tonight.
"I mean that in the nicest way," he clarified and Tezuka nodded. "Do I ever come across as this cute and innocent?"
"You used to when you were confused by something," Tezuka said, "I don't think you do now though. You don't look like you did when you were 12."
"That's good," Echizen said, moving onto the next volume. "Should we do something about this?"
"I think raising a fuss will just make it worse," Tezuka replied, "I doubt many members of our acquaintance read Boy's Love."
"If we say something everyone will find out about it."
"Indeed."
"Then we should just ignore it," Echizen said, "I'm sure Fuji'll get bored of it all eventually."
Tezuka doubted it, "Fuji's in there as well."
"I've just met him," Echizen said, "he's trying to fuck me."
"Did that ever happen in real life?"
"Nope," Echizen replied, "not that I know of anyway. I was always too focused on you to notice, to be honest."
A warm glow bloomed inside Tezuka at that. "He's dating Kawamura in the book."
"That bit's true in real life," Echizen said, "didn't you know?"
"I'm afraid not," Tezuka replied. He was glad his friend had found someone though.
Echizen continued reading, occasionally pointing something out. Tezuka, meanwhile had picked up his own book and sat next to Echizen, who quickly leaned against him.
"Buchou, if you want to be on top sometimes I don't mind," Echizen said as he finished the last book.
Tezuka felt himself go red, "I'll think about it.