Title: Sons of Torpor
Rating: PG-13 (just some mild swearing)
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Characters/Pairing: Echizen Nanjiroh, Osamu Watanabe
Word Count: 2,736
Summary: Two of the laziest men in PoT history duking it out on who has to get up to fetch beer from the refrigerator. Oh, and porn.
Notes: I imagine that Nanjiroh and Osamu are about the same age, if it's not the case, then pretend it's artistic license XD This is more about imagining Osamu and Nanjiroh as friends...cause face it, they'd both love porn mags, they're both around 30-ish layabouts, and horrifically lazy, could you imagine them in the same room?
This is the third time Echizen had "swung-by" this month. Osamu is starting to wonder if he should change the locks on his door, except for the fact that he was already too lazy to fix the broken air conditioner, and everyone who ever lived in Osaka knew that air conditioning took precedence over trivial things like private property and the idea of ownership.
"Oi. Don't you have any new stuff? This magazine is six months old."
It's to hot too answer Echizen's questions. Across the room, there's only a phantom gurgle of breath, the slack mouth of it's owner drooling open while a lazy arm skimmed across a really dirty brown rug, laden with Osamu's usual decoration of empty beer bottles, beer cans, senbei wrappers, and a chipped crystal ashtray. Another fat, rolling sweat drop made its way down the side of his head and into the crook of his nose. Osamu couldn't tell if having the hat on his face made it cooler cause of the shade, or hotter because of the stifling condensation that came from his breath when he exhaled. It didn't matter either way since his right arm is currently busy lying across his chest and the left one's preoccupied with being dead weight dragging on the carpet.
"Are you even listening to me?"
"It's too hot to listen. How can you find 'nough energy to even flip those pages? I'll find a newer magazine if you get up and get a beer from the refrigerator."
Osamu doesn't take the hat off his face to talk, but he does shift his head, a big concession on his part, to peer out from under the brim to look at his erstwhile guest, laying diagonally from him on his old orange futon. The magazine flopping from Echizen's hand is too far away to read the title, but the picture of double D's squeezed into an A sized bikini is big enough that Osamu could guess that it's issue number 34 of Big Time Osaka Babes. Well, at least Echizen had taste, even if he was a lazy, free-booting magazine stealing bastard.
"Ehhh? I'm the guest. If anything, you should get some drinks and find the later issue while you're at it."
Nanjiroh doesn't bother putting down the magazine when he's talking, instead opting to itch his leg with his foot that'd been propped in the cool crease of the futon cushion, laying next to the icy metal frame. The only hint of expression came from his tilted eyebrows going into a shaggy hairline in need of a trim. The heat's only bearable because he's out of the way of the window, whose broken slats shucked disjointed patches of burning sunlight onto Osamu's exposed torso, barely covered by the thin cotton shirt that was already sticking uncomfortably in the heat. Nanjiroh isn't even in the sun and already his yukata felt like a fifty million watt electric wool blanket.
Osamu's decidedly not pouting under his hat when his transparent ploy to get Echizen to get him a cold, icy beer was flippantly dismissed. The blonde man mutters under his breath, "It's not my fault Rinko-chan decided to crack down on yer porno fetish after taking one out of her bag in front of your son's school teachers at conferences."
Despite his desperate will not to think about all the hundred of magazines he'd collected thrown away in the trash compactor, being reminded by Osamu only make the beach beauties in Big Time Osaka Babes haunting memories of his lost porn collection. Pages and pages of his lovelies, gone! Inadvertently, he lets the stiff pages droop low, flopping over his hand while his bottom lip trembles on its own and slight nostalgic tears gather at his eyes. Now look at him. Once the king of American beach stars in California, reduced to looking at flat, lifeless pictures in his old college roommate's apartment. Sometimes his age really was catching on.
Even though couldn't see through the crack of his hat, Osamu could hear the small, trembling waver in his friend's voice as he spoke.
"Hey…don't talk about such depressing things."
"I wouldn't talk about such depressin' things if I were drinking some perfectly frozen beer."
The magazine is disinterestedly thrown back onto the floor where it had resided, all traces of tears and wallowing self-pity gone. Fine, so the sympathy tactic hadn't worked. Sluggishly, Nanjiroh lifts a pinky to his ear, scraping the inside of the shelf with his nail while looking off to the side at a desk with a built in shelf where there were stacks of taped tennis videos, and some questionable ecchi looking anime. Time to use some deflection.
"Then maybe you shouldn't have so many places to lie down! Being inactive makes people lack energy and is a gateway for depression."
It's a well known fact that Osamu had more places to lay horizontal than a hospital ward, or barring that, a love motel, in his apartment. It is tantamount in the Osakan's life that he be horizontal more than 50% of the time. Besides that futon Echizen is lazily posing on, or the couch Osamu is lazily sleeping on, there's a huge bean bag chair sagging in the corner, and an old, collapsing divan that was made more comfortable by piling on a sleeping bag over it. Discounting the bedroom where his surprisingly infrequently used bed was, that made four places in the living room where the Osamu and his guests could collapse.
"If I didn't have that futon you wouldn't be layin' anywhere," Osamu continues in a deadpan, too hot to inflect his voice, "What's depressing is when a guy's beat from rigorous tennis instruction and beatin' practice into a bunch or crazy, unruly brats, his free-loading friend won't even get him a beer from the refrigerator."
A hand swipes the floor clean of another magazine as Echizen picks up a different issue on the floor, entitled, Special Edition: Super Tasteful Beauties, Shinto Shrine Girls!.
"Are you forgetting who gave you that couch and bean bag chair after leaving for America? Think of how much I could have made from reselling it, 30,000 yen at least."
He doesn't even address the coaching issue, they both knew that's a blatant lie. The most Osamu probably did was make the effort to give the captain the playing roster before flopping down somewhere to watch the match-ups horizontal.
With one hand propping his head up, Nanjiroh squints at the page the magazine had automatically flipped to. Some of the spreads looked vaguely familiar. "Hm…? Didn't I give this to you when you graduated?
Osamu's running out of reasons to give why it was more feasible for his guest to get up rather than him. His opponent is getting pretty creative. Who the hell starts debating in the sluggish humidity like this? No wonder he and Echizen only see each other twice a year. Damn that Rinko-chan and her moralistic ways. Couldn't she have just confiscated them so this irritating guy who wouldn't get him a chilled Asahi would be moping around the temple instead of bothering him?
"The point is, I'm not payin' you 30,000 yen to go get me a drink. Christ, I already paid for the beer it's only like, ten feet away."
"For you. For me it's more like eleven feet." Nanjiroh says, as if a one foot difference were the height of logic. He looks pointedly at the cans around the foot of Osamu's couch, one of them precariously tipped from its slouched position by the other man's hand. "Besides, I bet you don't have anything worth drinking in there. It's probably all chrysanthemum Chu-Hi."
"Fuck! It's not like chrysanthemum ain't the most cooling thing to drink. Besides, that was only from that time when Shirai- er, when I had a complete lightweight crash my apartment. How many times have you been here this month? Three? Be a more grateful guest."
"You think I wanna laze about here? My R-Rinko-chan t-t-ook away my whole collection! How many years did I spend building up the most supple, tanned bodies in all the world?"
Osamu quietly rolls his eyes at the tiny violins playing in minor key from across the room.
"I'd play tennis instead but-"
Ahh, here was the crux of it. This time, Osamu actually lifts the Hawaiian print hat off his face to peer at his friend, the abrupt cut-off sending a wave of discomforting silence that permeates the room. It's rare, but there's something in those normally frivolous brown eyes that seems kind of wistful, looking out the poorly covered window into the bright, blinding sheet of sunlight.
Nanjiroh quickly gets over it though, and spears Osamu with that familiar look in his eye.
"Wa-ta-na-be-chan. Play a game with me."
The blonde resists the urge to roll his eyes, instead he slides the hat over his face once more. Christ, why did he put up with this guy again?
"No."
"Why not? I can see your racket across the room, it's stacked under that shopping bag full of photos from your middle school teams that you pretend you don't keep.
Allowing himself one exasperated groan, Osamu flips over on the couch to flop his left hand up accusingly at the other man. "You freak, who wants to play tennis when it's like this outside? It's like you've never been to Osaka before."
Like always, the small grin spreads across Echizen's lips as he deliberately stares irritatingly at his kouhai's face, a glint of amusement in his eye to bait him.
"Hm? Don't tell me you're afraid you're gonna lose. Skills are getting rusty? Eh, I guess it's not too much of a surprise knowing how much you like to sleep and eat tonkatsu every day."
"Pfft." Like hell he was taking it easy, last year training up Shiraishi after his extreme disappointment with the match at finals with Seigaku's Fuji was enough to last him a lifetime. He already knew the kid was a crazy Spartan tennis freak, but man, that was taking it to another level, imposing on Osamu's poor horizontal time and asking him for extra help. Really, these middle schoolers were so earnest, tennis encompasses almost all of their lives and now they were actually forcing Osamu to work. Even Echizen had a fifty fifty attention span between that and hot chicks during his school years. Next time he's ordering all of Shitenhouji to an arcade for skee ball as practice for hand eye coordination.
"I'm not playing a match with you, so forget it. It'd only make you more frustrated. You hate the kind of tennis I play, 's not what you'd want. Now stop distractin' me, I'm trying to imagine I'm soakin' in a pool of ice cubes."
Across the room Osamu could feel the wave of disappointment, a small pouting frown now gracing his friend's face. Nanjiroh's already worked himself into a bored restlessness lounging on the couch, and only two things could cure it. So what if Watanabe-chan played the slowest, most lazy, frustrating defensive tennis he'd ever known? It was better than no tennis and no new magazines. He's startled out of his thoughts by the abrupt words that floated out clearly from under a red patterned hat.
"Isn't this like the time Kaori-chan broke up with you sophmore year? For like four months after you read nothing but trashy mags in homeroom and at lunch, pretending you weren't mopin' about it."
Nanjiroh instead pretends he doesn't know what Osamu's really getting at, opting to stare fitfully at the wall while he rubs the stubble of his day old beard. "Whaaat? You keep on bringing up these really depressing things. Maybe I should slide open those blinds wide open so you can get some nice, warm sun in this dark room."
Osamu doesn't take the bait, instead going forward with his analysis, connecting the dots easily despite the fact that he and Echizen almost never see each other often anymore.
"How old's that kid of yers now?"
It takes less than a millisecond for his Nanjiroh's face to turn from wide eyed, empty boredom back to that dissatisfied pout. He didn't really feel like talking about the kid. "Tch. Not old enough, yet."
A long pause passes that Nanjiroh doesn't even know he's made before he reluctantly starts talking again. "When is that chibi going to grow up and get some real skills?"
A slight smile crosses Osamu's face as he hears the same slight, wistful tones in Echizen's voice that were painted on his face not a few moments ago. So he hit it right on the mark, eh?
"You think he's growin' slow now, but just wait when he comes back from America and it'll feel like he's a century ahead." At least, that's what Osamu felt when Echizen had come back from America after college. He doubted that Echizen Jr. would be much different; he'd seen that boy play at nationals and it'd been one of the most nostalgic things that he'd ever witnessed. Pft, no wonder this guy came here so often nowadays. Must have already been a few months since his kid left Japan.
"Yeah, well…" Nanjiroh couldn't help the slight embarrassed streak to his voice, so he decided to deflect to something else. "Mou, if only that greenhorn hadn't left I'd have been playing tennis against him instead of lounging around the dining room reading Tokyo Flash Dancers."
Osamu couldn't help the involuntary twitch of laughter building up in his chest.
"Let me guess, Rinko-chan was all 'Nan. Ji. Roh! You better not be reading another one of those magazines again!' when she came back from getting the mail and you idiot decided to stuff it in the nearest hiding place, which was her bag."
The dead silence in the apartment only confirmed his suspicions. This time, Osamu doesn't even bother to stifle his laugh- it rips out of him in one loud bark that echoes in the small room.
Feeling sheepish, Nanjiroh turns around to try and distract himself from that embarrassingly sugary talk only to spot a small, crowded group of brightly colored cans behind the futon. Ho ho, and Osamu said he didn't drink the stuff.
"There's an awful large amount of Chu-Hi cans lying around here."
"What? Stop lyin'."
Stupid Shiraishi and his need for cold, flavored drinks. He'd absolutely refused to buy non-alchoholic beverages for his refrigerator when there was such a thing as tap, forcing Shiraishi to choose the lightest thing he could find for some after practice drink. If it weren't for that time he'd never had touched a can of Chu-hi with his lips and he wouldn't be addicted to the girly stuff.
"Heh heh heh…"
A tan, bare foot fishes around under the futon to drag out a series of chrysanthemum beer cans and expose them to the judging world. Underneath the red hat Nanjiroh can see his friend's slight scowl at being found out, the clink of metal a glaring indication that yes, he'd found Osamu's guilty pleasure.
Satisfied now that they'd evened the score, Echizen starts to drag his foot out from under the metal legs of the futon before he feels a papery rustle against his heel. Stacked under last week's Chu-Hi cans was a pristine cover with slim, classic black script over a picture of a tight navy pencil skirt with sheer, dark pantyhose draped across a pair of perfectly turned legs.
"Ehh? This month's Tokyo Skirts with the super extra short cut? So lucky! Haha, Osamu-chan, you're on your own after this. No way am I going to move to get you a beer now."
There's a long pause before Osamu makes his first big move of the day. The loud thunk of a metallic can crashing into Echizen's skull ends their motionless feud.
"Idiot."
Echizen hardly moves from flipping the pages of the new magazine as they both, once again, resume their supine and sloppy positions. Osamu sighs. Looks like his dreams of a cold, refreshing drink would have to wait till another day.
THE END
End notes: I think the horrific heat of this past week inspired me to write this. So, I hope the narration wasn't too confusing. I made it so whenever Osamu was thinking about Echizen he called him Echizen, but whenever the POV switched Echizen would refer to himself as Nanjiroh. This kind of made me want to write a fic where they play tennis against each other when they were in college... _ I could just imagine Osamu being a lazy defensive player who uses the least amount of moves to score points cause he hates moving around. Maybe that's where Shiraishi gets his efficiency from xD
Anyways, this was just taken from my livejournal, I thought I'd share it on here too.