Disclaimer: Tennis no Ohjisama is the property of Konomi Takeshi and its licensers.
Author's Notes: Written at the request of Arcina.
Piercing
By CalicoKitten
The trap – set and spun before you even noticed. Layers upon layers of sticky, pasty webs covering the oppressive lack of space – once so large, it kept shrinking, shrinking to conform, to change when you did, following your thoughts, however confused or angry they may be. You hate it.
Your only consolation is that you hope it's the same for him, and even then, you don't know if it is.
Sengoku likes to tease people. He enjoys baiting them and drawing their nice, secretive selves out to poke a little fun at them. By his looks, he'd fit right in at a circus, or a nice little carnival of some sort, juggling those multicolored balls and throwing them at unsuspecting people to jolt them into actual consciousness.
"You hit me again, and I swear you won't be here tomorrow."
He gives you a sheepish look, pocketing the next tennis ball he was going to lob at your back, and he makes no mention of the fact that he has just beaten you, seven to six, in a game of tennis. You remember when it used to be the other way around, when you were the one victorious and calling him a loser, with him just shrugging it off, smiling easily, as if he knew something that you didn't.
You knew he did, though. You didn't come back at the insistence of Dan, the freshman untouched by the competitiveness of the tournament, or by Minami, the third-year with more leadership in him than tennis skills, or even by Kawamura. You came back for him.
He's glad to have you back. They all are. You don't think you deserve their friendship – if that's what it's called. They smile at you, greet you, they act practically the same to you before you quit the team.
"Maa, I got lucky today!"
They're friendlier to you.
He places his racket carefully in his bag and pushes a button on his cell phone quickly, smiling when it illuminates the missed number it displays.
"See you tomorrow, Jin!"
You frown. "It's Akutsu to you."
He hears it, but chooses ignorance over compliance, waving as he runs off. You know where he heads off to. He conceals it well, but you see – just when you saw his defeat to the fukubuchou of the underdog team of the competition. No match with you has ever affected him so much. It almost makes you jealous.
"Akutsu, is it?" a voice asks, rough around the edges if ever a description was needed.
The speaker stands there, tall for a junior high student and perhaps taller than you. The red uniform tips you off as to what school he's from, the racket in his hand as to what team he's on, and his confident posture and tip of the hat as to who he is.
He makes you uneasy, and just a bit angry. A reminder is unwelcome. If one flew in your face hard enough, you would feel the sting in your knuckles, see the tears in Dan's eyes, the disapproval from Minami and Kawamura, and even worse, the empty smile on his face as he shakes his head, the color of his hair a mocking contrast to the blood on your fingers.
"What is it to you?"
"Nothing, really."
"Then don't ask."
You glare at him as you put your jacket on, and he stares back, unflinchingly. You know how he leads his team when his captain is in the hospital, and it reminds you all too much of you, and you can just imagine the pressure on your knuckles as your fist connects with flesh. It's almost second nature to you.
"Fuck off," you add, snapping at him just for the hell of it.
"The first time we met, you told me to fuck off," his voice whispers in your ear, tongue flicking out and tracing the outlines of your ear.
You answer by blowing into his own ear. "Fuck off."
He bites down on your shoulder roughly. You let him. You've been doing this for the past couple of weeks, ever since you saw him that third time when you were outside the school walls after classes smoking, when he came up to you and you met him head on in trying to dominate the kiss that left both of you with scrapes and bruises from the harshness of the wall's bricks.
"I'd rather fuck you," he replies, and this time, unlike other times, you don't put up much of a resistance when his fingers grip your hips hard enough to bruise.
It's about need between you two, or at least that's what you think it is. You know the reason he comes to you, what with the shit he's been through worrying about his team captain, but you think it's more fucked up for his friend who's actually going through whatever shit they put a person through in the hospital. But you're both selfish assholes, so when you fuck, the only thing that you center on is who's going to be fucking who.
This time, his need is greater than yours, but you don't really care. You've just recently satisfied yourself lately, and damned yourself at the same time. Your hands hurt like a bitch afterwards, your head more, and you figure you're too damn tired to fight him for the top.
So he fucks you hard into the mattress; you can feel the metal coils protest the tension upon it. You're always sore after he's finished, but you don't really care because it's just temporary, and you recover from it a lot faster than you do by the marks that knives and other shit leave on you. You welcome it, even.
But he's still a bastard, so you always leave after it's done, and he does the same when it's your turn.
Sengoku brings you to the hospital the next time you feel that pleasing ache in your hands, berating you with his words, mocking you with his smile, and killing you with his eyes. It's not his problem, you tell him, but he insists that it is, and you hate him for that.
"Get me some water," you order while waiting for the nurse to arrive. This hospital is convenient for you – they're lax in protocol, their doctors seem like perverts, and most importantly, you parents will never know enough to bitch you out at the end of the day.
Sengoku sighs exasperatedly and unconvincingly. "I'm not your bitch to call on whim," he says, eyebrows drawing together, and you tell him that if he were, you would have added the 'bitch' part to the end of your command. He leaves the room, finally, when you threaten to steal his cell phone and tell his so-called friend that you're fucking him.
The solitude of the familiar room doesn't disturb you in the slightest. You look down at the cloth bound around your hand – though Sengoku may seem like an idiot, he certainly has skill in basic first aid that you lack and should have.
The sting when you press down on it is accepted, pleasing even. Pain fucks you up like nothing else does, and there are times like this when you're alone that you gaze, as if in a trance, at the sterile pair of scissors sitting next to you, and you want to be fucked up by the press of them against the white paste of your shitty skin.
Red, the color that brings both ache and relief, passes by your small, suddenly stifling room. It's definitely him, by the undemanding confidence in his walk to that cap he insists on wearing that makes him look like an amateurish baseball player instead of an amateurish junior high player because, whether or not people like him would accept being called that, he is not even in high school yet. However, if anyone ever had the balls to call you amateurish, you'd probably go and shove their words up their ass.
"Yo, asshole," you call out. You know he's finished visiting a friend and wants to get out of there as quickly as possible, but you can't – won't – stop the words from leaving your mouth because that side of you with no fucking morals wants to see him stay and suffer here alongside you.
He recognizes your voice as you shout out to him and retraces his footsteps, coming into the room and kicking the door shut with his foot. You push him up against the wall when he's in, nipping at his neck because you know he likes it, and he holds your head with both hands, stopping you to pull your head up and driving his tongue into your mouth.
At this point, you really couldn't care if the nurse happened to walk in on two boys, let alone two boys having sex on the patient-waiting table. Your only thought is that you want to fuck him, up against the wall maybe, but he has other ideas when he grabs your head with one hand and holds onto the other.
Fingers trace over your fucked up hands, and his tongue pauses in its game against yours. The door flies open at that time, the shittiest time possible, and he walks in – you don't think he's that lucky after all.
"Jin, I…" he begins but stops when he sees the two of you intertwined against the door. You push off of the Rikkaidai fukubuchou abruptly. It's not your problem that he walked in on you, though you suppose you might have wanted him to, but really, you're too fucked up to recognize whatever the hell you really want.
You tell him when he's gone, that redhead who's too busy being torn between looking apologetic, confused, or somber, that no, he's definitely not your bitch, and it's probably better that way.
Play a game with me, bitch, you say, but you leave out that last word.
And he does. You knew he would, with that damn arrogance of his, and the game helps keep your mind off of things, the way it never did before. You aren't even a bitch about losing, even if you're incredibly pissed by it.
He plays his best that day, though, and you don't. You're sure it has something to do with the stench of disinfectant on him, the too-clean yet too-dirty feeling you can only get from one place. It's not your problem, however.
You tell him that when he pulls you into a rough kiss – all teeth, and the harshness that can only mean one thing, one fucking truth – and you leave him, knowing he's not waiting for you but for someone else that he might never get the chance to catch.
You pity him, the fucking bastard, just as you pity yourself, and if you ever do see him again, you might just tell him that.
He tells you in the fewest words possible what you've longed to hear ever since you met up with his fukubuchou. It doesn't quite pain you to hear it, though you do feel pity for the poor bastard – who, like that little freshman, isn't really a bastard at all. The worst, most fucked-up things always happen to the nicest assholes, you reason, and it certainly works out in your favor.
Even though he informs you of that with the politest of manners, you can't help but snarl back, "And why the hell are you telling me this?"
He's amused with you, and it annoys the shit out of you. "You know, I'm not stupid, Akutsu."
"I could kill you right now," you say as morbidly and intimidating as possible just to get a rise out of him.
He laughs, and it shakes his thin body all over and brings more of that color to his face. You're just slightly pissed off – or would that be jealous – that a sick boy could have more of a flush to his face than you've ever had, or even will have. "You could. But wait until I'm gone, why don't you?"
"I hope it's soon," you state bluntly. The words leave your mouth before you really think it through, and you don't have time to take it back before you leave, slamming the door behind you.
"Kiss me, Kate!" Sengoku shouts as he drapes himself over you. Apparently, it's a quote from some American musical that he'd watched recently, but really, who would give a shit about stuff like that?
"My name isn't Kate, fucker," you snap at him distractedly, pulling the strings of your racket. They're a little loose, and it pisses you off because it was your favorite racket. The most expensive one, too, and you don't tend to buy pricey items unless you steal them.
Sengoku frowns and pouts at you. Wherever he got the notion that it would work on you, you don't know, but you wish he would stop. It makes him look like he wants to be fucked. "Maa, Kamio-kun would kiss me."
"Duh," you say, in awe of the total stupidity of the statement. "He'd probably do a whole lot more with you, if you asked him."
He blushes hotly, and you smirk at him. Sengoku really thought too highly of his inconspicuous relationship with that hot tempered Fudomine brat. You knew exactly when he was dating him even when he didn't tell you, and it was obvious that Minami and the others knew he was fucking the other fukubuchou as well. That is, if they have even gotten that far.
"You're just mad that you're not getting any from me," he jokes, striking closer to home than he realizes.
"Shut up, asshole, or I'll rip your lungs out."
He pouts again. "You're so mean, Jin. Mean, I tell you!"
"Well, duh."
Opening his mouth, it looks as if he's ready to spout another derisive – insipid, more likely – comment at me, but he pauses with his mouth open. He's like a fish out of water, gasping and flopping about while dying in the harsh air, and if you weren't already aware of it, your mind would probably be laughing its head off right now. Kamio would love a picture of Yamabuki's fukubuchou catching flies with his mouth.
The moment vanishes when he closes his mouth, scratching the back of his head like so many idiots like to do, and making a weird hand gesture with his other hand. "Ne, Jin, I think I'll head home now. Maybe I'll call Kamio along the way."
You frown as he makes a quick exit, scowling as that annoying presence becomes even more irritating when its shadow comes and covers your expensive racket.
"Akutsu," he says, and his head is lowered to your neck, the breath whispering into your ear absolutely infuriating.
You ignore him, playing with the strings on the racket, pulling them together and stretching them apart. "Enough with the formalities, why don't you?"
You turn around suddenly, fast like a lioness leaping onto her prey, and crush your lips together. It's been so long; you don't remember when you saw him last, but ironically, you can only recall the time, that one time, when you met his buchou. You've almost forgotten how it was like to fight him, and your tongue fights with his, teeth clashing in the background.
Pulling away for a moment, you pause, and you're definitely a bitch – a fucking bitch – when the words come out of your goddamn mouth.
"So, I guess he's gone then?"
You're definitely one fucked up boy, you realize.