Title: Spring Fever

Author: Tanith

Rating: G

Genre: Light humor and a bit of romance

Fandom: Prince of Tennis

Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis and all its characters belong to Konami-sensei. I have zero claim to them and I'm not making any money off of this. So don't bother suing me.

Pairings: Atobe/Tezuka/Fuji, Golden Pair, InuKai, bits of MomoRyo & Kamio/Shinji

Summary: It's Valentine's Day and love is in the air. Of course, this being PoT, chaos is never far behind, even unto White Day.

Spring Fever
I. Ryoma

To Echizen Ryoma, it was a normal day like any other. But when his father sat across from him at breakfast and started grinning at him in that particularly annoying way, he knew something was up.

"Got something to say, oyaji?" he finally asked over the last glass of milk.

Nanjiroh smirked at his son. "Do you know what day today is, shounen?"

Ryoma looked at him blankly.

Nanjiroh's smirk grew. "It's Valentine's Day!" he announced. He winked at his unresponsive son, who was clearly unimpressed by the declaration. "So, you think you'll get any chocolates from the girls at school? Got any girlfriends, eh?" He started snickering again.

Ryoma would have rolled his eyes if he had cared enough to. But instead, he treated the taunting like he treated just about everything else his old man said to him. He largely ignored it. Pushing away his plate, he grabbed his tennis bag and headed for the door. "Ittekimasu."

Unfortunately, Ryoma's own overwhelming apathy toward anything not tennis or Karupin – which obviously extended toward whatever holiday – was not shared by anyone else. The moment he stepped into the gates of Seishun Gakuen he was immediately mugged by a swarm of girls pushing chocolates into his arms. By the time he finally found his seat and dumped his burden onto his desk, his arms had been overflowing with the candies.

And then Tomoka had arrived to add her own contribution to the growing pile, with a blushing and stammering Sakuno in tow. This naturally was the last straw that set off Horio, who had been largely ignored in the chocolate-receiving department. Even the usually fair Sakuno had somehow forgotten him, strange as that was given his often-heard voice in the stands at all the tennis matches, both at school and in competitions.

Staring at the new chocolates and the growing pile before him in annoyance, Ryoma automatically tuned out Horio's envious ranting as he tried to think of some way to get rid of them so he wouldn't have to carry all of it home. The solution came in the form of one Momoshiro Takeshi as the cheerful second year suddenly popped out from nowhere.

"Oi, Echizen! Looks like you're pretty popular with the girls, aren't you?" Momoshiro teased the younger boy, though to no effect.

"Aa," Ryoma muttered absently.

"Hai! Ryoma-sama is the most popular boy among the first years!" Tomoka declared exuberantly. "But I bet you get a lot of chocolates from the second year girls, ne Momo-senpai?"

Momoshiro grinned at her sheepishly. "Sure I do… but I already ate all of them." He eyed Ryoma's candy pile and the other boy's completely unenthusiastic face. "Say, Echizen, you wouldn't mind sharing some of yours with your senpai, would you?"

Ryoma shrugged. "Aa."

"Ryoma-sama!" Tomoka sounded scandalized.

"Thanks!" Momoshiro laughed and began to tear into the pile of candy.

As the pile of sweets began to diminish at an astonishing rate, Ryoma's contemplation of the candy refocused to an amused study of his senpai, who was busy doing an impression of a vacuum cleaner. He idly hoped that Kikumaru-senpai wasn't going to pop up as well, as he also had a habit of doing, because at this rate there wasn't going to be any candy left.

Next Chapter: Eiji. Getting off to a strong start as well.

Author's Notes:

This is going to be a 10-chapter fic. Eight chapters will alternate between the POV of eight of the Seigaku regulars, and then the last two will deal with White Day and the rest of the aftermath the Valentine chaos. Right as of this moment, I've got 4 preliminary chapters up on my online journal (the link can be found on my author's page). These are more or less rough drafts which may be altered whenever I feel like it. I've got 3 and a half more chapters pretty much all sketched out on my hard drive. So I've only really got about 2 and a half chapters left to write. This means those of you out there who hate WIP's will probably not have to worry about this fic being left dangling indefinitely. I promise that it will be completed and posted before the month is out.

Vocabulary:
Oyaji - old man
shounen - (young) boy
Ittekimasu - I'm leaving now.
Seishun Gakuen -the full name of the school, Seishun Jr. High. Also, aka Seigaku for short.
Aa - yes; sure. A sound of agreement or informal grunt of assent.
Hai - yes.
senpai - upperclassman. A term of respect.
sama - highest form of honorific suffixes