A/N: For Meru, who requested a prompt and Royal, which happened to be lyrics from Driving with the Brakes On. It has nothing to do with it, but... um. Okay. XD The scenes are shuffled up, in no particular order, from one through to six. Enjoy? :D And please kick me if I failed. x_x

It's Like Swimming with your Boots On

i.

Atobe Keigo is up to his knees in mud.

Perhaps he's been like that since long ago, when they were in middle school and still had no clue about what was to come. They focused solely on the present, hitting ball after ball over the net on the tennis court. To aim for the Nationals. To become the best of the best. That was their goal.

He didn't know what was to come, really. He just knew that to be the best required practice. Gathering his team and ignoring everything else that he didn't believe to be important, he hollered across the courts, and encouraged them to become stronger.

He had already started sinking since then.

iv.

"…You bought me a present?" came Echizen's unmistakably gruff voice. Atobe took a moment to admire it - the brat did seem to have grown into some sort of man that made them all want to go back to the days when they all played tennis and they were able to call him cute without him glaring at them with those matured, refined golden eyes.

Atobe scoffed. "They cost a lot of money - more than you could ever afford. You'd better like them," he said, smirking, although the threat had no real depth to it.

"Hmph." Echizen took the box hastily and smirked right back. Even after the many years, it was one thing that Atobe was glad that hadn't changed about him. "Thanks, Monkey King."

iii.

Echizen Ryoma had a girlfriend.

She was Ryuzaki Sakuno, someone that nobody had expected him to like. She was shy and clumsy, and she blushed perhaps too often. And when Ryoma was asked, he simply replied, "Because she's good at cooking."

And apparently Ryuzaki was alright with this answer because the two spent lunchtimes together and talked, just for the heck of it. She was smiling every day, and Echizen was the same as always, though his first attempt at a smile resulted in a grimace with teeth.

Atobe was one of the last to find out. And when he did, he stood there, opened his mouth, and was not nearly as surprised as he had expected to be to hear nothing come out.

He faced Echizen, managed to somehow congratulate him, and pretended that a crack did not just form in his heart.

v.

Kikumaru came and jumped on Echizen's back, gluing himself to the now-not-much-shorter-than-him Ochibi. "Ochibiiiii," he whined, squeezing Echizen with every passing word. "You can't get married!"

Momo came to them next, and laughed, leaning his arm comfortably against his long time best friend. "Aw, Echizen," he said, sobbing fake tears into his other arm. "The youngest of us all and the first one to mature!"

"Ochibiiii!"

"Echizeeeen!"

"Get off," Echizen growled, and the two straightened immediately. "Just because I'm getting married doesn't give you permission to slobber my suit with man made liquid."

"Don't get married today, Echizen! We should run away together instead!"

"I want to come with! I want to come with! Will there be food and kitties and furry little animals?" Kikumaru wanted to know.

"No, Eiji-senpai, you're not allowed to come! You can marry his girlfriend."

"I don't want to go if there's no tennis."

Atobe laughed at this. It was so like Echizen to say something like that. But he was loyal at the same time, he knew. He wouldn't leave Ryuzaki for the two of them. It was the reason he hadn't decided to dump her after all these years.

ii.

The first person Atobe had gone to was Oshitari. He was smart, and he was a person that Atobe truly trusted, when he wasn't busy snickering at him.

But he soon learned that Oshitari did not provide answers, and only helped when the matter was not so trivial as the one Atobe was stuck in.

He was sinking. Sinking, sinking, sinking.

vi.

"Last chance to run away."

The music started playing, and Echizen turned around, a look of confusion on his face as he looked at Atobe. Atobe held his gaze for what felt like the longest time, but because he might've meant it, he pushed it away and chuckled in a way that sounded too fake even to his own ears.

"No? Then go, brat. The front of the church. Get married. Be happy." And then he added, "I want to see Momoshiro cry on you when he gets drunk enough."

"…He doesn't need to get drunk to do that…" he muttered, but shot him a satisfied look before walking slowly to the front.

The two exchanged a kiss, and Atobe stepped back, smirking so widely it hurt his face, and being so happy that his heart was all but breaking with it.