"Innuendo."
Fandom: Prince of Tennis

Written for: Rikkai Exchange community at LJ. Pairing/Characters: Niou/Sanada/Yagyuu.Rating: PG/PG-13 for boy love.
Summary: There's something about Niou and Yagyuu that makes Sanada VERY embarrassed...

Notes: Ouch, this fic was HARD. But in the end, it paid off the effort. Sorry it kinda "deviated" from the premises I was given.

- - -

Just like every early morning during the weekends, Hiroshi Yagyuu went out very early to jog a little and stretch his legs before breakfast. According to his parents, doing such a thing in a regular basis was excellent for the body, mind and soul, and he currently had no real reason to think they were wrong.

However, this particular Saturday morning it seemed that he was too literal over the "early" part of the deal. When he left home it was still a little dark and misty, and when he stopped at a nearby part to take a break, the sun was only just taking peeks from behind the clouds.

"It looks like I should have done this a little later...," he murmured, sighing and taking off his glasses to clean them. The usual feeling of refreshment and alert that these exercises brought him wasn't as strong as always, and Yagyuu briefly wondered if it'd be there at all.

"Yagyuu. What are you doing here?"

After putting on his now clean glasses, Yagyuu turned slowly and stared at a tall youth wearing slacks and a black cap, standing not too far from him.

"Ah, Sanada-kun," he spoke, smiling. "I'm simply exercising, like I usually do in the weekends. I see you've been doing the same, judging by your clothing."

"Hm." Sanada nodded and looked at Yagyuu more critically and closely. "It looks to me that you're not doing it in full strength, though."

Yagyuu's glance hardened for a moment behind the glasses, but he held his tongue back. It was bad enough to not feel good; he didn't want to bring more trouble onto himself.

"My judgement was slightly clouded, I admit," he merely said, his voice firm and clear. "It certainly won't happen again."

Sanada nodded at his teammate, apparently pleased with Yagyuu's submission by the current moment. "I expect you to do your best during training, then."

"Don't doubt it, Sanada-kun." And Yagyuu relaxed a little, allowing himself to smile at his teammate and vice-captain. The sun was shining quite more brightly now, so he took a longer glance at the other, his smile growing a little as he did so...

Sanada noticed this and looked at the other harder. "Don't give me any reasons to doubt, Yagyuu. I'll see you in the afternoon training and later at Niou's house. We're supposed to keep him company for the weekend, remember?"

"Ah... perfectly understood, Sanada-kun." Yagyuu nodded. "I'll be there as well. See you later."

"See you."

Not expecting an answer, Sanada turned and left Yagyuu standing there, jogging his way back home (surely to train with his father and grandfather, Yagyuu assumed). The other watched him go, smile still on his lips, and two or three minutes after Sanada was out of his sight he went home.

"It wasn't such a bad exercise session, after all," Yagyuu told himself when he stepped inside of his house. He took a short shower, changed his clothes and went downstairs to have breakfast with his family; when he was reaching the kitchen, though, the phone started ringing...

"Oniichan!" His younger sister voice was heard. "It's Niou-san!"

"Thank you, Maya," Yagyuu told her when he came down and she handed him the phone. Maya looked at him curiously for some seconds, but when his smile suddenly changed after something that Niou told him and she couldn't hear, she very quickly went to help her mother in the kitchen.

- - -

"Sanada, are you feeling well?"

Sanada, who was sitting at the porch of Niou's house though everyone else was inside (he could hear Niou and Kirihara laughing and mock-fighting for the last red apples in a huge fruits basket that Niou's mother left for them), looked up at the person speaking to him.

"Yukimura..."

Yukimura calmly sat next to him. "I asked you something, Sanada. Renji and I are worried since you don't seem to be yourself today, so are you feeling well?"

Yukimura's voice sounded concerned and gentle as he spoke, but Sanada could perfectly see that, just like in tennis, his captain wouldn't admit a lie or an excuse for an answer. Even if the situation in itself was so... embarrassing, in a single word.

"I suppose you did notice the way these two have acted during these hours, didn't you?" he started, looking at Yukimura in the eye, though he had to make an effort to not blush.

"Niou and Yagyuu, you mean?" Yukimura laughed slightly. "In fact, it'd be harder to not notice how they've acted. They haven't said a word about it, but not even a monk would've stayed completely indifferent to the way they look at you and touch you."

"This is stupid," Sanada said. "And ridiculous. They act like..."

Yukimura cut him off, smiling. "Like lovesick idiots tired of waiting for you to catch a clue and determined to jump you?"

"Yukimura!"

"Ah, don't be that defensive! I'm just joking." Yukimura raised his hands defensively, laughing. In the background, Sanada heard Renji saying something about wanting some peaches to brew juice and Akaya yelling at him that he didn't want to end up poisoned like the Seigaku team...

He did not want to know the outcome of that.

Sanada shook his head. "I still think of it as nosense, Yukimura."

"If it's so ridiculous to you," Yukimura answered, now more serious, "then go and cut them out. In fact, I'm surprised you haven't done so."

At that, Sanada recalled briefly all the... modifications in both Yagyuu and Niou's usual behaviour patterns during this particular day at the Niou household. It had started more or less normally, but soon the change was evident; they mock-fought to serve Sanada the best dishes of the lunch that Marui and Renji cooked for the team, spoke in low voices to each other to raise their vice-captain's curiosity and then denied to be hiding anything... and the touches they stole from him. These lingering touches, full of innuendo whether they landed on his hands or his shoulder, but always so casual that he couldn't accuse either Niou or Yagyuu of anything without making himself look like an absolute fool...

"... I will handle it adequately, Yukimura," he told the other youth. "Don't doubt it."

"Don't give me any reasons to doubt, Sanada."

Not knowing that he had used the same words Sanada told to Yagyuu in the early morning, Yukimura stretched his arms. "It's time to go to sleep, Sanada. I expect this handled by the end of our visit and the arrival of Niou's family - remember that."

Sanada nodded quietly and got up from his seat, going inside in silence. Yukimura smiled to himself and quickly followed.

- - -

"You..."

Sanada groaned. This was even worse than he thought √ not to mention he was almost sure the rest of his teammates were involved in it.

"Well, yeah, Sanada." And Niou laughed. "Stuck in between me and Yagyuu for the night, that's where you will sleep."

"But..."

"No buts. I'm afraid there's nothing to be done about it, Sanada-kun." Yagyuu's sweet smile was, in Sanada's opinion, even worse than Niou's snicker. "Your futon is in between Niou-kun's and mine. You kick when you sleep, after all; no one else but us is willing to risk getting a kick to the back..."

"And the other futons are already occupied, heh."

After quickly scanning the rest of the room (Yukimura was snoring snoring softly at one side, Kirihara was practically cuddling Yanagi next to him, and Marui was sprawled on Jackal on the other extreme), Sanada bit his lip. It was all settled already, and currently there was no way to reject it without causing serious problems; Niou was their host, after all, and there was his promise to Yukimura that he'd handle it adequately.

As dignified as the situation allowed him to be, Sanada quietly settled himself in the futon. Before lying down, though, he menacingly stared at both Niou and Yagyuu.

"Try something and I'll make you run laps until you pass out tomorrow. You've been warned."

He then lay down and closed his eyes. The other two boys did likewise, but Niou waited for some minutes, and once he was sure Sanada was asleep, he sat up and smiled at Yagyuu.

"Will this be worth all the laps we will get, Niou-kun?," Yagyuu asked in a whisper, before getting up and quietly starting to move his own futon closer to Sanada's own.

"And seeing his face when he wakes up in between us?" Niou replied as he did likewise, lying down and very close to the sleeping Sanada when done. "I'm sure the laps and the possible kicks in his sleep will be very worth of everything, Yagyuu Hiroshi."

"I hope it's true...," Yagyuu whispered, also laying down and close to Sanada, doing his best to not wake the other up.

Yagyuu could swear that he heard Kirihara whisper 'you guys are dead, so dead', followed by a 'shut up and let me sleep, Akaya', before he blocked everything else from his mind and went to sleep.