Title: Reading and Writing
Author: Henzie (tennis-player)
Rating: T
Summary: AU – Sanada has the worst grades in the entire school, but he has a bunch of friends. Truthfully, he couldn't care less for grades. Yukimura has the best grades in school, but he isn't very social and doesn't have nor want any friends. What will happen when Yukimura is given the responsibility to tutor Sanada? Will the two clashing personal be able to get along? Alpha pair, yaoi, shounen ai, boy x boy, Sanada x Yukimura.
Character: Sanada and Yukimura
Notes: I wrote the end of this story while listening to the song 'cha-ching' by Headly, so that explains the part about the underage club. Also, if anyone knows what 'tarundoru' actually means, please message me, 'kay?
Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

"That's all for today, everyone. The results for the exams are posted on the school board. You are dismissed," their teacher, Hisagi-sensei said.

Sanada always dreaded the day results were posted. He had never been the best academically. Not that he cared. The thing that he dreaded about today was that everyone wanted to check their ranks and consult the teachers about their work, all week, and nobody really showed to Kendo practice or at the street tennis courts.

Yukimura, on the other hand, was the schools number 1 show off. He got top grades without trying and all the teachers loved him. He was the student council president and the only student with more say in what goes on in the school than Yagyuu, one of Sanada's close friends.

He and Sanada were like complete opposites and Sanada resented him for that. He could do everything effortlessly, and while Sanada had the capability to do anything he tried hard at, he didn't have the patience to, and so let his grades drop without really caring. But Yukimura could do it easily, and people respected him for that. It wasn't fair.

Sanada walked over to the ranking with his friends, Marui Bunta, Jackal Kuwahara, Yanagi Renji, Kirihara Akaya, Niou Masaharu and Yagyuu Hiroshi.

He sighed. Again, he was at the bottom while Yukimura was at the top.

"Wow, Yukimura! You did it again!"

"Congratulations."

"Nice work!" everyone said, praising Yukimura for a job well done, causing Sanada to stalk off, annoyed.

He scoffed, and walked down the hall towards the cafeteria, but was stopped by a hand falling to his shoulder. He turned around only to see Hisagi-sensei smiling at him.

"What would you like, Sensei?" Sanada said, trying to sound polite.

"Well, Sanada-kun, you do realize that you are at the bottom again, right?" Hisagi-sensei said.

"Yes, sensei, is that a problem?"

"Well, me and the rest of the staff decided that you need a little extra help in school, so we decided to get you a tutor."

"What? A tutor? Are you insane!? I don't need one!" he exclaimed, alarmed by the sudden decision he apparently had no say in.

"Yes, Sanada-kun, a tutor," Hisagi-sensei continued, pretending not to hear the previous comment. "We have decided that to get your grades up and to open opportunities for you to try hard is the best way to help you find success in your life. So, we have hired Yukimura-kun as you tutor."

It took a moment for Hisagi-sensei's words to sink in. "Yukimura's… my tutor?" he said.

"Yes, exciting, isn't it?"

"Exciting!? Are you insane? Why do I have to waste my evenings with him?!"

"Because you have the worst grades in the school, and Yukimura the top," he continued. "It's for you own good, so quit complaining. If you refuse, Madarame-sensei, your kendo coach, decided to kick you off as team captain and as a player, so, I'd like to introduce you to your new tutor, Yukimura-kun."

Yukimura walked out the classroom smoothly and gracefully. "Nice to meet you, Sanada-kun, let us do our best together, alright?" he said, with a sweet and feminine voice.

"What do you want, Asshole?!" Sanada shot, anger seething from him in every possible direction.

"Sanada-kun, be kind! He's trying to help you get better n school, you should appreciate it!" Hisagi-sensei said, angry over Sanada's abusive language.

"I don't want to have to waste my time with this girly-boy! He can go rot in hell for all I care!"

"Now, now, you two. Teachers and students mustn't fight. Sanada-kun, I'm sorry if you don't like this idea, but it is for a mere 2 hours a day. We will get as much done as we can, and when you start to get average grades, it will all be over. How does that sound?" Yukimura asked kindly.

"Shut up! That sounds like a death sentence, bastard! I don't need help for the likes of you!"

"Sanada-kun! You are going to study with Yukimura after school for 2 hours every day, you understand? Ev-er-y-day!" snapped Hisagi-sensei.

"Whatever!" Sanada said, exhausted, and stalked off.

"Ha! Looser! Only an idiot would pick a fight with a teachers' pet like Yukimura, let alone with one standing right there!" Marui said. Half between teasing and laughing at his close friend.

"More than that, you don't really have a reason to hate Yukimura like that, do you?" Yagyuu asked, part way through a game of old maid, with Niou and Kirihara.

"Actually," Jackal pointed out, "What I wonder about is how Yukimura can just stand there with people trashing him like the way you and your irrationally dirty language do."

"Oh, wow. Thanks for that, Jackal. You're a real friend," Sanada said sarcastically.

"No problem, buddy, I'm always here to help."

"But isn't that Yukimura kid, like, really unsociable?" Kirihara pointed out.

"Yeah, he's a real drag," Niou said, reaching over to take one of Yagyuu's cards.

Marui popped his bubble gum. "But if you do well on you next test, you won't have to be tutored anymore, right?" he said.

"Yeah, but Sanada doing well in next test, even with tutoring, is a mere 4.2%," Yanagi pointed out.

Sanada growled. "You guys are real great moral support, you know?" he said sarcastically.

"You're very welcome to our advice whenever you need it," Yagyuu said, winning the game of old game and starting another.

"Yeah, wonder when that will be happening," Sanada said, rolling his eyes.

After school, Sanada headed over to Hisagi-sensei's room, grudgingly. Very reluctant, he opened the door and saw Yukimura waiting for him.

"Ah, hello, Sanada-kun. I am glad you made it," he said, smiling sweetly.

"Oh, yeah? Well I'm not," he said, annoyed. Why did he have to waste an entire afternoon with Yukimura? It wasn't fair, he wanted to go to kendo practice and the street tennis courts, not stay here and continue learning after school was over.

He walked over and sat down in the desk standing before Yukimura.

"Well, then, Sanada-kun, we will mainly be working on reading and writing," Yukimura said kindly.

"Why? I already know how to read and write! I'm 15, for god's sake!" he complained.

"Yes, I know, Sanada-kun, but I think this is the place to start. You can understand math and science fine, but where you struggle is comprehension and vocabulary. By reading and writing, you can learn new words to develop a more refined vocabulary, thus this is the place to start. Also, by practicing you get faster, and that will prove greatly useful when you get to high school and University."

Sanada just stood there, trying to figure out what Yukimura had meant. "Uh… what?"

"That's another point, you don't understand more complicated language and will zone out during ling lectures. If it continues like this, you won't get very far in life."

"Oh, yeah, thanks for putting it gently," he said sarcastically, "Now I'm totally psyched about this."

"That's great! You should be," Yukimura said innocently.

Sanada gave him a "you-live-under-a-rock-don't-you?" look and said, "I was being sarcastic."

"Hm? Sarcastic?" Yukimura asked.

"Are you an idiot? You're fifteen and don't know what sarcasm is?"

"W-well, I've read about it and stuff, but I've never been able to identify it…"

'What an idiot!' Sanada thought. 'Jackal was wrong, it's not that he doesn't care that people say bad things about him, it's that he can't tell! '.

"What the fuck? Are you serious, Yukimura?" Sanada asked.

"I don't really see the big deal about it…"

"Are you kidding? Everybody uses sarcasm and you can't tell it apart from regular speech! That's a really big deal."

"A-anyways, we're here to talk about your, uh, studies, so we better get going." Yukimura, his voice had an awkward feeling, showing that he was embarrassed.

"You're trying to change the subject, coward," Sanada said, feeling empowered.

"I am not, I have merely decided that we should start now, because you should still get home in time for dinner," Yukimura said.

"I live by myself, so I can have dinner whenever," Sanada countered.

"That may be true, but that doesn't mean you won't get hungry or should wait until 10:00 to eat."

"What if I normally eat dinner at 10:00?"

"Then you should change you habits to be healthier, the healthier the body, the healthier the brain."

"You suck," Sanada said, disregarding Yukimura's 'honor student lecture'.

"Now, you're going to read through this book here. It's a book written many years ago and is called 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen. The language and vocabulary in that book are very advanced. They speak with an old accent and vocabulary, so they use words like 'thou' and 'thee'," Yukimura explained.

"Why should it matter to me how they spoke in the 18 hundreds? I don't see how that's valuable in the current day and age," Sanada said, irritated by his first assignment.

"The way they spoke isn't as valuable as the words that are used in this book. The author was a smart and sophisticated young woman who is famous in the current day. They have even made movies about how her life as an author was," Yukimura explained.

"Yeah, whatever…" Sanada said, opening the book Yukimura had laid on his desk and starting to read.

"You had to read the entire afternoon?! That's hilarious! Serves you right for taking my breakfast buns," Marui said, bringing up the source of a fight they had last week.

"This has nothing to do with your breakfast buns, smart one!" Sanada shot, saying the nickname sarcastically.

"I am smart, aren't I?" Marui said, pretending not to hear the sarcasm.

"OH! That reminds me, Jackal?" Sanada asked, looking over at his friend.

"Yes?" he replied.

"Remember when you said that it was strange how Yukimura was always disregarding the way people insult him?"

"Yes, I remember. Why?"

"It's because Yukimura can't tell sarcasm apart from regular speech," Sanada said, matter-of-factly, making Marui choke on his bubble gum, Jackal drop his water bottle and spill it all over himself, Kirihara spit take with his cola and Niou go into a coughing fit.

Yanagi and Yagyuu exchanged glances.

"You didn't know?" asked the latter, re-adjusting his glasses.

"That is something that I had figured out months ago…" Yanagi said, looking as curious as possible with his eyes closed. "You didn't know?"

"Why didn't you tell us!?" Kirihara asked, annoyed.

"Well, it was kind of obvious, wasn't it?" Yagyuu asked.

"How was it obvious!?" Niou said, annoyed at his best friend's negligence. "Of course Bakaya didn't know, he's the densest human on the planet!"

"Hey! You didn't know either, Niou-sempai!" Kirihara replied, ticked off at the nickname that seemed to be coming up more and more often.

"Yeah, well I'm not the densest human on this planet, Bakaya!" Niou taunted, dodging Kirihara's flying punches.

"Why didn't you say anything, Yanagi?" Marui asked in a somewhat calmer matter than the other two.

"I didn't know you hadn't realized yet," Yanagi replied.

"Next time, though, remember to tell us, even if you think we already know, alright?" Jackal asked, equally as calm, if not more so.

"Alright, then," Yanagi replied, making Yagyuu wish his interrogators were as calm as Marui and Jackal were.

Sanada sighed, exasperated by his friends. 'Well, Yukimura's not this loud, if that damned honor student is nothing else'.

Speaking of which, said honor student was speaking to some the very few students of Rikkaidai he'd actually talked to before, which were the only three people in his year he's ever spoken to.

"Um, Hikaru-san, may I ask you something?" Yukimura asked.

"Hm? Yukimura-kun has a question? That's very rare. Sure, ask away," he replied kindly, happy that his classmate was speaking to someone for once, instead of being engrossed in one of his University text-books.

"How do you tell sarcasm apart from regular speech?" Yukimura asked.

Hikaru kind of just stared at him for, maybe, 72 and ½ seconds, and then replied, "Well, if something is said with a cockier air than that person normally speaks, or if it is said in a way that that person normally doesn't speak, it's normally sarcasm. Also, if someone is saying something you know they don't actually think, then they are probably being sarcastic, as well.

"Really? Thank you very much, Hikaru-san," Yukimura replied sweetly.

"Yeah, no problem," he replied, and then turned to his classmates. "What do you think that was about?"

"Who knows with Yukimura-kun," replied another.

After school, Sanada, once again, headed towards Hisagi-sensei's classroom. Yukimura was sitting in the teacher's desk, looking all sophisticated. Sanada assumed he had permission because, well, honor students just didn't do that sort of thing without it.

"Ah, hello, Sanada-kun. Did you read at all after our tutoring sessions yesterday?" Yukimura asked kindly.

"No, I didn't, why would I? I don't want to waste more time studying than I have to," he replied.

"Well, you should, because it is good for your brain."

"Oh, you're right! I'll definitely read all the time now," he said, voice heavy with sarcasm.

"I'm serious! It's important," Yukimura replied, surprisingly.

"Oh? You could tell I was being sarcastic?" Sanada asked.

"Yes, I have learned. Now, we'll do both your homework and extra work in properly distributed proportion. In the line 'Mrs. Bennet was profuse in her acknowledgements' on page 60, 2nd last paragraph, what does that mean?" Yukimura asked, trying to stay on topic today.

"Well… it means her acknowledgement was in, err, great abundance, right?"

"Yes, nicely translated, now here, in your English project, where they are speaking of single and double negatives, do you know the rule?"

"Err, well, in English, a double negative means a positive, right? Like, 'I don't think he can't do that' means the same as 'I think he can do that', right? But 'I don't think he can do that' and 'I don't think he can't do that' would mean the same thing had there been no double negative rule, like how in Russia, both the previous statements mean the same," Sanada explained, confusing himself slightly.

… And so the evening went on until…

"Are you serious? How am I supposed to know that, Yukimura? That's like, 12th grade stuff!"

"Oh, you're right, aren't you? But we worked really well through the 11th grade stuff, didn't we? See, you're capabilities are really amazing, but you need to pay attention to learn how to do things in the first place. How well do you suspect a doctor doing surgery would do if he never paid attention during lectures?" Yukimura asked.

"Not well, I suppose. But the way you teach is easier to understand than the way the teachers teach," Sanada ½ complained to him, ½ complimented him.

"Really? Well, thank you, Sanada-kun," Yukimura said sweetly. He was starting to like the unnaturally sarcastic and extensively rude boy (yup! Because the real Sanada is just like that, right?).

"Ne, Yukimura?" Sanada asked hesitation evident in his voice.

"Yes, Sanada-kun?"

"Err, never mind…"

3 weeks of tutoring with Yukimura later

"Sanada, what's wrong, you've been spacing out a lot over the past few days," Niou said half-heartedly, noticing that Sanada had been ignoring him for the 4th time that day.

"Niou," Sanada said, leaning back and crossing his arms around the back of his head. "I think I kind of like Yukimura."

"Yeah, you've been studying with his everyday for the past for weeks, it's only natural," Niou pointed out.

"No, I mean, it's more than just that…" Sanada started, but was cut off by:

"How much do you like him?" Marui asked, appearing from nowhere and popping up behind Sanada.

"Oh, Marui, where are the others?" Niou asked.

"Hm? Oh, they're in the cafeteria. Well, Sanada, how much?" Marui said, repeating the question.

"Huh? Well, like, a lot…" Sanada said, looking off into space. Had it already been 4 weeks?

"Do you mean, as a friend or…" Marui started.

"Or as a lover? Niou finished, and they both looked at him expectantly.

"Wha-? Well, I think I like him as… a lover," Sanada said, knowing he should have talked to Yanagi and Yagyuu about this. No, even talking to Yukimura himself would have been smarter than telling these two, of all people, but he had just told them. Sanada was a real idiot.

"You mean you're gay!?" Marui said, a look if utter shock and horror on his face.

"I KNEW IT! SANADA GENICHIROU IS GAY, EVERYONE, GAY!" Niou yelled at the top of his lungs so that everyone within a square light year could hear.

"SHUT UP YOU FUCKING RAT! I AM NOT!" Sanada yelled at an equally loud volume.

"OH MY FUCKING GOD! I'M FRIENDS WITH A GAY! A GAY!" Niou continued to yell.

"I TOLD YOU TO FUCKING SHUT UP YOU DAMNED RAT! I AM NOT BLOODY GAY, AND YOUR GAY, TOO, IF YOU HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN!" he yelled back again, oblivious to the fact that the entire Rikkaidai campus had gathered, and people were looking out the windows of the school and staring as the two friends yelled at each other.

"OH MY FUCKING GOD! HE ADMITTED IT!"

"I DID NO SUCH THING! TARUNDORU! TARUNDORU!"

And so the fight went on until Hisagi-sensei came to take responsibility for his homeroom students. (TT_TT – those two are so immature…)

"You caused a big commotion on the campus at lunch today, didn't you?" Yukimura asked as Sanada walked in to the classroom. This was his first day of his fourth week in tutoring with Yukimura, and the two of them had become pretty close over that time-period.

'Whose fault do you think it is?' Sanada thought to himself. "I know," he said.

"What was it about?" Yukimura asked.

"Niou was under the false impression that I was gay," Sanada said, knowing that Niou's impression wasn't actually false.

"Oh? Why would he think that?" Yukimura asked curiously.

"Who knows? The only one who can understand that idiot is Yagyuu, and he wasn't even there."

"Is that so?" Yukimura asked, absentmindedly going through some papers as he sat with his feet on the desk of the teacher's seat.

… Wait, Yukimura had his feet on the desk?!

"Yukimura?" Sanada asked.

"What?" Yukimura asked.

'OMFG! Yukimura just said 'what'! Not 'yes', but 'what'!' Sanada thought to himself.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"Me? I'm fine. Why do you ask, Sanada-kun?" Yukimura asked half-heartedly.

"You're acting… strange…" Sanada pointed out hesitantly.

"I am not… ne, Sanada?" Yukimura asked.

"What is it, Yukimura?" Sanada replied.

"I don't feel like tutoring today, so let's go do something outside of school," Yukimura said.

'WTF! Yukimura wanted to skip school?! … Well, technically school was already out, but the teachers said they had to do tutoring together and Yukimura wanted to skip! Yukimura did!'

"Are you sure you're feeling alright?" Sanada asked the used-to-be honor student.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine!" he snapped. "Now do you want to go or not? Because even if you don't want to, I'm going myself!"

"Hm? Uh, sure." Sanada said.

"Alright then, let's go!"

After they leave the school grounds

Yukimura led Sanada down the street and into an alley way.

"Where are we going, Yukimura?" Sanada asked.

"Well, I was watching TV yesterday, and they talked about the new club for underage kids. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be neat to see a place like that?' and now that's where we're going!" Yukimura explained quickly.

"We're going to a club? But we're only middle schoolers!" Sanada exclaimed.

"Yeah, but we're third years. In another two months, we'll be high schoolers, so it's no big deal, right?" Yukimura said. "Anyways, even if we do drink, we won't get drunk… probably."

"Probably!?" Sanada said, shocked.

"Yeah, probably," Yukimura replied, and he led Sanada through a door into a loud, no, a very loud club.

This club was the size of any other club you would have seen, except there weren't 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds here, but high schoolers. The dance floor was packed and sweaty and the bar was dark and reeked of alcohol.

"Come on, let's go!" Yukimura exclaimed and dragged Sanada onto the dance floor.

Despite the fact that the girls were all older than these two, there were millions of them who came to flirt with the two. In Sanada's case, he made it clear he was not interested in the girls who came up and tried to grind with him, but Yukimura was the exact opposite. He let the girls crawl all over him and he flirted back to anyone who tried to get in his pants. It irritated the hell out of Sanada.

Once it was, like, 2 or 3:00 am, Yukimura finally had enough and let Sanada pull him out of the club.

"Wasn't that fun?" Yukimura laughed.

"ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?! WHAT PART OF THAT WAS FUN?!" Sanada both asked and yelled at the same time.

"Why? You didn't like it?" Yukimura asked, shrinking somewhat under Sanada's outburst.

"Why did you like it? You actually enjoy having girls crawl all over you and trying to fuck you in the middle of a dance floor?" Sanada asked incredulously.

"What about you? Don't you like girls?" Yukimura asked.

"… What?"

"You said that you liked girls, so I thought you'd like that place…" Yukimura said hesitantly.

"I never said I liked girls," Sanada said.

"You said you weren't gay, though."

"…"

"What?"

"I am gay…" Sanada said, looking away.

"Really?"

"Yeah…" Sanada said, determined not to make eye contact.

"You lied?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't want you to know who I liked…"

"Why not?" Yukimura said, attitude staring to show through his speech.

"W-well…"

"Well what!?" Yukimura was now annoyed.

"It's because…"

"Oh, speak in coherent sentences, unless I have to tutor you in that to," Yukimura said, rolling his eyes.

"When did you get so cheeky, smart one?" Sanada said sarcastically.

"It's your fault."

"Whatever," Sanada replied.

"Well, why didn't you want me to know?"

"W-well…"

"Let's not go there a second time, please."

"It's because… you're the one I like, Yukimura," Sanada said, his back to the tutor.

"… What?" Yukimura said, bewildered.

"You heard me, so don't make me repeat it!"

Yukimura stared at Sanada's back for a good 5 minutes. Not hearing anything, Sanada turned to see if Yukimura had left, but to his surprise, he was still in the same spot, but now he had tears pouring from his eyes.

"What the-? Are you alright!?" Sanada asked shocked.

"Thank you," Yukimura whispered, barely audible despite the silence in the street.

"What?"

"I… I love you, too, Sanada," he whispered again, this time walking into Sanada's chest and pressing his forehead against it.

"Yukimura?" Sanada asked, but when he got no reply, he let his arms wrap around Yukimura's thin waist. Yukimura buried his face deeper into Sanada's chest, and Sanada buried his face in the soft, blue hair of the boy before him.

"Thank you, too," he whispered back into the hair.