GAH! This took me forever to write, forever, forever, forever

I'm way too busy.

However, I wish Tezuka a happy birthday. This is just for captain Tezuka! (And it's longer than some of my normal one-shots.)

Since I'll probably be writing birthday fanfiction in the future, please, constructive criticism is very much appreciated. I don't really like how this one turned out, because I think that they're both a little OOC, and I don't like the way in which I wrote this, but I think this is the closest thing that I get to pure fluff, so enjoy before I start going on my angst tirades again.

If you have any requests, feel free to drop me a line. I'm drop dead busy, but I love writing gift fiction for people, even though I rarely have the chance to.

Please review!

Red Roses

The dark, cool hallways of the old, abandoned building were often a path his dreams took, winding and twisting into paths that he could have only imagined to be real, yet were so vividly painted in the walls of his mind that they had to be tangible. The first time that Tezuka had dreamt of these walls, so forsaken, empty, and lonely, the darkness was impeding on him and only the slightest fringes of gloomy light was allowed into his mind.

The images slowly became more vivid, more real.

As if they had been put in a solution to develop a photograph, they sharpened in reality to a beautiful score of colors, tinted by light flowing into the dusky corners where darkness resided. The old, abandoned building, which seemed to be so much of a fragment of his imagination, was wild, truly wild. Its windows, broken, smudged and cracked gave the appearance of an old, old school building that had been abandoned for many years, even though it was of a fairly modern design. The building, though, seemed ageless, as if it had appeared at the very beginning of time. The building had allowed the wilderness in. In places, parts of the roof and floor were completely taken over by a dark green overgrowth. On the first floor, the grass was so tall that it grew halfway up the windowpanes and brushing the old glass secretively whenever the wind chose to blast the world.

There was echoing loneliness about it, though, something that couldn't have quite been placed, especially since in the matter of emotion, Tezuka often fell short of the mark. When he was in this building, his thoughts went into an idle sort of sojourn. His thoughts could only focus on how vast this place was, and how he was the only one there, and if he screamed there, if anyone would hear him, or if his call would be forever silenced among the wild blades of grass and the crumbling concrete walls. Of course, his lips always enclosed any noise that he was tempted to make with poise and control. He stood straight, tall, and stern… The intensity of his amber gaze was enough to set fire to all his surroundings.

Yet somehow, even through all this, all this solitude, his poise was not what earned him any company. So, he resorted to the echoing silence of the building, submitting almost completely in silent appreciation. His glasses flickered as if illuminated candlelight, and he pushed his fingers against an old sliding door leading into what looked to be the tatters of an old classroom. He would, after he was sure there was no monster following him, sit calmly on the one spot of the floor that was not covered in dirt and dust, a small part of the room, the very corner where weeds still had not crept.

As soon as he finally relaxed, to enjoy the tempting silence and desolate settings, he was suddenly awake to meet the shining rays making their way into his bedroom while his mother whispered kindly into his ear about how he had slept through his alarm clock. Naturally, she worried, because her perfect, all too traditional and mature son usually woke before the shrill melody of his alarm clock. Lately, however, he had seemed all but aware of the annoying noise, and Ayana found herself going into the bedroom more and more to wake her son.

Then, Tezuka was brought none-too-gently back to the world of realities, where school buildings did not sit in the middle of wild and overgrown fields as if time had forgotten the location altogether, where wild rose, such a strange plant to have been found locally, grew. He would look down at his fingertips, which had been pricked by the roses tragic thorns a minute ago to find unmarred skin, free of blood or any signs that his fingerprints had been pierced by thorns at all. His eyes lowered, and once again figured that it had all been a dream.

He was foolish to have allowed such influences of a far too vivid mind disrupt his normally calm and flowing manner.

The loneliness, though, had crept out of the door from his dreams, until it was engraved forever upon his sole like a hopeless scar, a scar that might have even showed to many other players. Tezuka was strong and silent. He did not convey very well the feelings of loneliness, and therefore he was never somebody to worry about. Tezuka was the stern and steady grip that kept his club under control, somebody who may have seemed cruel with his tendency to offer laps to any person that chose to misbehave. That was what made Tezuka even stronger of a leader, perhaps.

The only one who could really lead Tezuka was Fuji, and it brought Tezuka to realize with uncomfortable, hot feeling shivers that passed up and down his spine at times, when Fuji gripped his hand all too gently, or when Fuji was leaned against his desk in the classroom so that the displacement of his hair made him look like a man of incredible sensuality.

Such thoughts were uncharacteristic of Tezuka, but many would agree.

Which only brought him to remember why exactly that mattered so much.

Tezuka disliked birthdays.

No, if loathe were a word that could be applied without worry to his personality, it would qualify for his view on birthdays. To Tezuka, he saw no reason to celebrate. In his eyes, and in his view of his world, as common of an environment it may have been, birthdays only disrupted the gentle, natural flow of life like a rock that displaced the water of an otherwise peaceful river. Tezuka did not like order to be disrupted, and one thing lead to another. Birthdays were always a cause for his club to lose focus, and therefore Tezuka would not tolerate any of the birthday nonsense.

When he fist came to Seishun Gakuen, nobody had known what his birthday was, and that was the way that Tezuka preferred it to be. He did not like any disruption to his day, be it that if everyone knew it was his birthday, fellow first years would venture away from Yamato's commands and travel across the tennis courts to wish him a happy birthday.

Fuji, of all the people, was the most persistent.

To him, he who could only technically have a birthday every four years, he had gotten into quite a habit of giving his fellow regulars customary cacti for their birthdays as gifts, as if in hope that at least one unwary soul would reach out to stroke the attractive blossom on the cactus and be pricked by it's unnaturally long needles. Fuji would go so far as to try and use a birthday as an excuse to play one of the silly, harmless, yet absolutely frightening pranks he often resorted to for sheer amusement.

It hadn't taken Fuji long to pin Tezuka down with it, too.

Tezuka had thought he had been safe. He was, in fact, a master of concealing the very fact that it would be his birthday, but Fuji, knowing that Tezuka wouldn't tell him, had unceremoniously ventured home with him one day and asked his mother what day Tezuka's birthday was on. Tezuka was none too pleased with the woman's pleasant reaction. The following week, on the exact day of his birthday, Tezuka had found a small flowering cactus sitting right in front of his locker, with a large blue bow tied around it's pot in a matter that it might have been considered a small, cute puppy.

Of course, he had taken home the cactus and cared for it. That was the only polite thing to do. However, that cactus was something that looked very out of place among his personal belongings, all the practical things along with a small bonsai that he actually did harbor affection for. Bonsai, though, unlike Fuji's cacti, were not deadly. Tezuka found them to be a beautiful, strong sort of plant, one that he could focus his energy on during those rare times that he had nothing else to do. The cactus got water, and the cactus go sunlight, but not the pretty much uncharacteristic affection that he harbored for his valued bonsai. Other than the basic necessities, the plan received nothing of greater significance.

Tezuka had never known he liked Fuji's presents. That was, until his third year, when he walked in, and Fuji said nothing.

Tezuka didn't like birthdays.

He didn't like his birthday.

No, no, he couldn't. Still, it was a difference not having Fuji dote over him simply because it was his birthday. Maybe it was true, that he could fade away, and he would soon be nothing but soil covering the earth, in the air and dirt, helping the trees and nature that he respected so much that he would help it grow.

Maybe his dream, this loneliness, which resounded of foreign unhappiness, was coming true.

Tezuka walked home in the rain, and allowed his umbrella to be blustered off to the side so much that eventually closed it and held it at his side while the rain poured down, soaking every inch of space. He'd have to change when he got home. It was cold, oddly. For once, he was satisfied that aside from a few confessions from girls he had never met once, he had been left alone on his birthday.

But Fuji… Fuji… did it matter?

It must have.

In a way, this was humiliation, to realize for two years, the tricks that Fuji played often times, the same pranks that Tezuka sorely disapproved of, was something that he had grown so accustomed to that it was strange not to see them at all. His heart fluttered strangely, but after dismissing his club, he paid no mind to it. Rather, he dressed quickly without saying anything to Fuji, and then waited so that he could lock the clubhouse after everyone left for home.

The realization didn't even strike him—the realization that on the way out, Fuji's stare had penetrated his back.

When he got home, he only threw off his shoes, perhaps in a rougher manner than usual. In his action of straightening them, and calling that he was home to his mother, who sounded like she was in the kitchen.

"It's young Kunimitsu," echoed the voice of his grandfather.

"Happy birthday, Kunimitsu," his mother called, all too cheerfully for Tezuka's slightly soured mood, that crept up on him surprisingly. Nonetheless, he was still courteous to his family.

However, as soon as he was done he excused himself for homework, grabbed his school bag, and treaded up the stairs to his bedroom. He left his shoes by the door and made sure that he didn't let water touch the carpet, somehow managing it even when his clothes were positively dripping. There, the silence was comforting; he could do his homework there and perhaps forget about how it seemed that Fuji had practically ignored him today, because he didn't want to remember. He didn't want to remember that for some strange reason today, he had actually, for one minute, hoped to see one of Fuji's silly presents for his birthday, perhaps something that could have been considered deadly. Fuji had a thing for giving deadly presents, it seemed.

The cactus that Fuji had given him two years ago was sitting by the windowsill, generally out of sight when he sat at his desk. Today, though, at the small thought of Fuji, he gathered it, set it on his desk, then went to gather some more water for it. Surprisingly, it didn't look so much out of place in his room now. Instead, it sat auspiciously on his desk rather than the sill, seeming to perk up even though Tezuka had taken it away from the main source of sunlight.

When Tezuka came back and glanced at the plant that was currently in bloom, he was reminded with cold, stricken resemblance of the empty and wild hallways of the abandoned building still haunting his dreams.

So soon as he finally managed to get his thoughts off Fuji, and gathered his mathematics notes and began solving equations that his teacher had given him. His room remained lonely, though, echoing solitude he hadn't imagined before, even though he knew that his mother and grandfather were just a minutes' walk away, while his father would be home from work soon.

"Kunimitsu, there's a friend at the door who is looking for you,"

His mother's pleasant voice broke through the haze, and he stood, wondering who in the world it could be. The cactus sat there forsakenly, almost in a way that he expected it would speak to him and tell him who had decided to come to the door, and why. Closing his notebook, he pushed his bedroom door, laying his fingers against the wood. Carrying on, he straightened his back and went to his mother.

His mother was conversing amicably with Fuji.

Fuji.

Why was he here?

His mother drew away from her conversation with his friend and gave a small, kind chuckle. "Kunimitsu, your friend is very charming." Fuji smiled gently. Ayana had never met Fuji before, so Fuji was doing what he did best—capturing the attention of anybody who came within five feet of him by using general charm.

"You're kind, Ayana-san." Fuji smiled all too brightly at her, his hands held inconspicuously behind his back. "Tezuka, your mother is very kind to people." His mother was beaming in a way that he hadn't seen her smile for quite a few months.

"I'll leave you two alone. Kunimitsu, why don't you show Fuji-kun to your room? I'll bring you some snacks and tea, all right?" Tezuka nodded formally, and his mother went back to the kitchen. Tezuka turned to Fuji, who was standing about a meter away from him. Even then, though, he felt as if those empty, lonely hallways had returned. It felt so desolate, cold, freezing…

"Is there something you need, Fuji?"

"Well, can I not visit my captain on his birthday?" Fuji's response provoked something between a twitch and a jump. Fuji's smile didn't waver; in fact, it widened. From behind his back, Fuji drew out a bouquet of flowers, red roses. "Happy birthday, Tezuka-buchou" The honorific was so passive, spoken so casually.

Tezuka blinked, wondering if he was just dreaming, a dream that could almost be considered a nightmare. He was betwixt with ordeals, not sure so suddenly if he wanted Fuji to acknowledge his birthday. His mind was rarely indecisive, and the rare moment came up that he wasn't sure of anything pertaining to the matter. His mind raced, bringing up arguments to create an uncharacteristic war in his mind. Tezuka shook his head at his own ordeals and rubbed his temples, doing his best to forget that he was being foolish, and to focus his mind on something more practical.

Tezuka had already turned on his heels, and behind him followed Fuji, who followed merely two steps behind him, so that his breath nearly danced across the back of Tezuka's neck, mixed with a strange, floral fragrance that caught his nose and made him all too suspicious.

Fuji presented the suspected gift at Tezuka's door.

He must have been saving up for months, really, because roses were so hard to get, and always at a pretty high price. Yet here they were, exactly fifteen red roses bundled up in plastic and paper. He knew he should have expressed some sort of consideration, the gratitude that wasn't there, because Tezuka didn't like flowers. Any girl would have liked them, especially since they were presented from a lovely man. Of course, he would accept the gift, but within the depths of his heart, he shamefully could not draw out any type of gratitude towards Fuji.

"I couldn't give these to you during school because they would have died, so I brought them over. Your mother told me that she would bring up a vase for you when she brought up our snacks."

Why had Fuji chosen to tell his mother about the fact he was giving her son red roses as a birthday present.

"Aren't they pretty, Tezuka?" The voice sounded so far away and distant that Tezuka could barely hear it. The voice appeared as only a garble to his ears and he was still blinking, as if the shock still had yet to wear out. Fuji waved a hand in front of the line of Tezuka's vision, and he closed his eyes, calmly.

"Th-Thank you." His answer was delayed almost. Fuji took it as a chance to step into his room.

"I'm glad that Tezuka likes them." His smile brightened considerably at the thought, it seemed, until Tezuka realized that he had been looking at the cactus, which was still sitting on the desk.

"Oh, you still have the cactus."

Fuji seemed all too pleased that he had, indeed, kept the cactus. Fuji went over and touched the blossoming flower, gently. His blue eyes, open, yet surprisingly, uncharacteristically, were gentle towards it. "You've been taking care of it. Tezuka, I think that my cactus has really taken a liking to you. You know, it used to be my favorite cactus? Now, I'm glad that it likes you so much." Tezuka didn't know how it was even possible for a cactus to like him.

Tezuka ignored what Fuji had said, as if it had been ludicrous and unbelievable. Fuji merely leaned across the desk and began talking amicably to the cactus, his words so low spoken that Tezuka couldn't even hear what Fuji was saying, or asking; every minute or so, Fuji would pause and continue talking to the plant as if he was giving time for response, a response, that in Tezuka's opinion, would never come.

Fuji was a prodigy.

They said some prodigies were strange.

Therefore, he could have considered Fuji strange. Somehow, though, somehow, Tezuka didn't mind Fuji's strangeness as much as he might have last year, or the year before last. Maybe things were taking a turn for the worse, Tezuka thought. It was at these times that he thought the world was truly crazy. There were times that through the craziness, a blurred and dark painting of the world, the only clear image was a smiling Fuji. The very picture sometimes sent shiver down his spine, or small warmth through his chest that was otherwise completely foreign.

He watched with a calm, resounding silence, a sort of glow radiating softly from his eyes as he watched Fuji converse with the cactus as if it were an actual being. That whole time, he hadn't realized that he was completely stiff, and refused to draw breath. Tezuka didn't like those sorts of feelings, so calmly, ever so calmly he drew himself away from him and allowed Fuji some solitude with what had been his favorite plant by sitting on the edge of the bed and flipping through the pages of a novel he had been reading.

"Kunimitsu?" Fuji stopped talking to the cactus, and Tezuka looked up from the page of his book, stood, and took a tray from his mother as she edged her way through the door with a glass vase in her arms. While he went to set the tray of tea and snacks on the floor, kneeling to pour steaming tea into the two cups that she had provided, his mother put the flowers and some rose food into the vase, cooing to Fuji about how beautiful the flowers were and how kind he had been to give them to Tezuka as a birthday present.

A girl might have thought they looked lovely in a vase, and that Fuji had been so charming to give such a wonderful gift.

Tezuka did not find it charming, but he figured that the flowers would make his room smell nicely for a few days, anyways, and that it would be rude to Fuji to not thank him properly.

His mother left, and they were brought into a symphony of silence once again. Fuji went to sit down on the floor by the tray, taking one of the cups of tea and taking a sip from it to test the temperature of the liquid, hoping that it wouldn't be too hot. Fuji smiled against the cup. "Your mother makes excellent tea." Tezuka sat across from Fuji, drinking from his respective cup. Tezuka nodded calmly; his mother always had her special method of brewing tea that made it taste good, but she only made that specific type when guests were visting, or on special occasions. Maybe it wasn't so bad that Fuji had come over.

"So, how do you like your birthday present?"

The flowers reminded him far too much of his dreams, of the rosebushes and flowers, all the types of plants that were not native to Japan that seemed to grow there. Their striking red petals gleamed in his eyes with almost unnatural beauty and more fragility than usual, until the flowers resembled but drops of blood that had been spilled across blades of grass. Tezuka's imagination, was, perhaps, growing a little too morbid as of late. That wouldn't be good. Tezuka was not usually a morbid person at all.

"They are nice. Thank you."

His reply was something that could have easily been fabricated, but Fuji smiled nonetheless that stunning smile that made so many girls sway, and even at the time, made Tezuka's head feel a little dizzy. He scoffed at the feeling, slightly annoyed, and took another sip of tea, only glad that he had pleased Fuji.

"The flowers were beautiful," Fuji continued, "But I wasn't sure if you would like them. However, I gave them to you and present you a proposal." Fuji paused for a minute. "If it becomes troublesome, I apologize."

"Fuji, what do you want?" So, Fuji had actually come here for reasons other than wishing him a happy birthday. In fact, he hadn't even expected that giving him a friendly greeting was the only reason. Tezuka may not have been perceptive like some were, but he had tactile intelligence, and knew the way in which Fuji's mind worked. He paused for a minute, as Fuji fumbled with a small sweet resting on a plate on the tray, as if nervous. Fuji's eyes, closed and gentle, probably betrayed all the emotions that he was feeling on the inside, which were probably a stormy mess.

"How would you like to come with me for ice cream after school? It would be my treat."

Tezuka's eyes narrowed only slightly, though out of complete, warranted suspicion. Fuji knew that Tezuka and sweets did not go well together when he tried forcing the most sugary cake down Tezuka's throat while Tezuka protested that the moment was not the best time to eat. Sugar and Tezuka sometimes mixed, but it was devastating what large amounts could do. He was sick for three days afterwards, and for a while after that, Fuji seemed to back away from trying to feed him anything with more than a teaspoon of sugar.

"Fuji, what do you really—" Tezuka was cut short when Fuji nearly pounced at him, entangling his fingers within the locks of brown hair and pulling him towards the ground. Thank goodness he had set his teacup on the tray only a minute ago, for if he hadn't, scalding tea would have gone flying across the room, showering both Fuji and Tezuka to the point where they would have been burned.

Their position had the creeping feelings of unrest, awkward discomfort. Fuji's back was pressing the floor and Tezuka was half-lying on his stomach next to Fuji, half-on top of the prodigy. Long, elegant fingers were still tangled in his hair and there was a tangible tingle in his nose from the point during the fall where their noses had rubbed.

"Let me go, Fuji." Tezuka's voice was still eerily calm and even. There was a strange, foreign chuckle that rumbled out of Fuji's throat and crept across his spine like burning ice, or a slithering snake. It was so eerie, in such a low pitch that it could have made Tezuka's heart race, making him do everything that was unlike him, everything that was uncharacteristic of his normal reactions. Tezuka did not feel like himself anymore. Here Tezuka was, usually stern and withdrawn, nearly on top of the school's prodigy, who had for once chosen to be absolutely direct.

"You know, Tezuka, you're stupid sometimes." The words may have been cruel, but there was something else behind them that made Tezuka stay still rather than squirming away from Fuji's grip that lived and breathed death, because Tezuka was not used to being held so closely. Almost, he wanted to pin Fuji back to the floor to prove the point that having force applied was not the most pleasant of situations. Fuji's warm breath brushed his ear, and Tezuka almost shuddered. "You don't need to be alone."

Tezuka blinked.

"Do you even know what red roses symbolize? Need I be more direct with you?"

Tezuka felt a cool breeze, and then spreading warmth creep across him when a pair of lips touched his own.

Tezuka had admitted before that Fuji was a sensual person, but kissing him was a completely different thing. His throat constricted on him, and after a moment's hesitation, he pinned Fuji a little more, sliding his fingers to meet Fuji's softer, lighter hair before he drew backwards once Fuji's grip slackened, the fingers sliding across his cheeks before gravity took effect, and they met the ground.

Fuji, in fact, looked more dazed than anyone, even if his original intentions had been to daze Tezuka. The prodigy lay on the ground still, reveling in what a returned kiss had tasted like, while his heart throbbed deafly and his breathing came out slow and quiet. Tezuka moved back to his original spot without a glance at Fuji paused and made a small noise in his throat, as if to signal that he accepted the returned kiss. By the time the prodigy had sat up, Tezuka was sipping from the cup of tea again, looking at the cactus on his desk.

The cactus didn't look that out of place in his room, and now Tezuka decided that he preferred it on the desk, where it was in plain sight.

"Would you like to study with me, tomorrow?"

Fuji had zoned out, almost, the feelings of confusion fringing on his eyes, with almost worried glances over towards the cactus that Tezuka had chosen to stare at, his eyes transfixed on it for only a second, perhaps, three glorious seconds in fact. "Hm?"

"Ice cream will be inconvenient. We may study together after practice if you wish, though."

Fuji's smile brightened considerably.

"Of course, Tezuka-buchou."