For Services Rendered

By: Bunny

Rated: Teen 15 and up

Genre: Romance, Comedy, AR

Summary: RyoSaku, AR. Ryoma is a world famous tennis player, but at 22 years old, the world has noticed his deficiencies in the romance department and they demand some action. Enter Ryuzaki Sakuno, a girl normal enough for him to tolerate as his pretend girlfriend.

Chapter Three

Ryoma and Sakuno sat back at their places at the kotatsu and Ryoma immediately started curling Sakuno's hair around one of his fingers, seeming unable to resist playing with it and touching it. Sakuno didn't know why, but she really didn't mind, it almost felt familiar, as weird as that was, so she didn't bother trying to stop him, or comment on it.

He was her boyfriend now after all, even if it was fake and he was paying her for it. Heh...

Still though, the fact that this guy, this practically perfect stranger was able to come into her home, disrupt her life, and somehow invade her personal space without making her feel uncomfortable was a bit of an enigma to her. Somewhere in the back of her mind that wasn't being swept away in the craziness of her evening was telling her this was WEIRD and she SHOULD have weird feelings that she somehow wasn't experiencing.

"We should probably decide what our official statements are going to be, but we kind-of need Horio for that," Ryoma said.

"Ah, well, knowing Horio-kun and Tomo-chan they'll probably be unavailable for the rest of the night," Sakuno offered.

Ryoma smirked at her knowingly, as he twirled her hair around, "It's like that?"

Sakuno nodded, "They were talking about getting married before Horio-kun got the offer to go work for you, maybe-maybe they'll stop fighting since you're going to move here...hmmm." She paused in thought for a moment and then asked, "So where is this temple? Is it close by?"

"I don't know, I don't know this city very well, but we can go there tomorrow," Ryoma offered glancing up from her hair to her eyes.

"I'd love to see it. Do I need to take you somewhere now then?" Sakuno asked.

Ryoma dropped Sakuno's hair abruptly and the strand floated back against her side, "I don't think I can leave. I'm sorry to impose on you. I'm fine here with the kotatsu if you want to go to sleep, I won't keep you."

Sakuno waved her hands in front of her face, "No, no, nothing like that, you're welcome to stay here, I have this huge place thanks to Syusuke-kun, so I have plenty of room if you need to stay, but I didn't want you to feel stuck here, I can drive you somewhere if you need a ride."

Ryoma shook his head, "I can't leave with the paparazzi camping outside your building." He paused to give her kotatsu an irritated look and then asked, "Who's Syusuke-san?"

"Our friend. He's a surgeon and he owns this building. We all went to school with him, he was our senpai," Sakuno explained.

Ryoma gave a nod of understanding before he fell back onto the floor and stretched out his legs under the kotatsu blanket and his arms above his head. He stared at Sakuno's white ceiling for a moment processing Sakuno's living arrangements and wondering at her history with his manager and his manager's girlfriend.

Sakuno laid down as well, but curled on her side around the corner of the table, keeping her eyes on the tennis star. She pulled the blanket under the kotatsu up as high as it would cover her and gave a sigh at the radiated warmth enveloping her from the heater under the table.

"So...tell me about yourself. I don't know anything about you except that you make millions of dollars playing tennis, Horio-kun is your manager, and that I'm your first girlfriend," She giggled nervously at her last comment.

Ryoma let out a snicker before he rolled to his side so he could see Sakuno. He scooted closer to her and propped his head up with his elbow, "You really don't know anything about me?"

Sakuno shrugged, "I know that might sound weird since you're super famous, but I don't really pay attention to any of that stuff."

"You don't like tennis?" Ryoma asked with a frown.

Sakuno shook her head, "I do actually, I even played on the girl's team in school. My Grandma is the coach for the boy's team, which is how Tomo-chan and I met Horio-kun and Syusuke-kun and all of our other friends. I just haven't had time to keep up with any of it since high school."

"All I've ever known is tennis," Ryoma shared seemingly horrified at he idea of a life without 24/7 tennis.

"Really? How did you get started?" Sakuno asked brushing off his shocked look. Her passion was making ramen, not tennis, so whatever.

"For as long as I can remember I've always been playing. All day, everyday. There's someone I still want to beat really badly, so I'll keep playing until I do."

"That's surprising. I didn't recognize you when you talked to me at the coliseum today, but now that I think about it, I've heard of Echizen Ryoma, the so-called 'Prince of Tennis' before." She paused and blushed in embarrassment before adding, "That is, I thought you beat everybody," She said with a little giggle.

Ryoma closed his eyes briefly, "Not everybody."

"Aren't you the world champion?" Sakuno asked.

Ryoma scoffed, "Yes."

"Okay," Sakuno decided not to probe further.

"You'll see what I mean," Ryoma said.

"Sure," Sakuno said.

"What do you do besides deliver ramen?" Ryoma teased.

Sakuno flushed again in embarrassment, as she drew a swirling pattern into the carpet with her finger, "I guess, just making ramen and cooking other things, I don't really have time for much else, I talk to Tomo-chan a lot, and I get together with our friends sometimes."

Ryoma reached his hand out to her and grabbing a fresh lock of hair he began to absentmindedly curl it around his finger, "Being my girlfriend is going to be a big change for you."

Sakuno laughed his serious comment off, wondering if she really did understand what she was getting into, "I suppose it will. By the way you'll have to help me with my English, I studied it all through school, but it was never a strong subject for me."

Ryoma flashed her a knowing smirk, "That's fine."

Sakuno furrowed her brow in thought, "So then...next up is the Australian Open, right?"

"Next week, and we'll be in Australia for a little over two weeks," Ryoma informed her.

"So then, what were you doing here today?" Sakuno asked.

"An exhibition match. Since I'm Japanese I support all the tournaments here. Today was an exhibition to get everybody excited for the Australian Open next week," he explained.

"It's a wonder I haven't met you before today if you're at the coliseum that often," Sakuno wondered aloud.

"Hn," Ryoma agreed.

"Are you hungry, Ryoma? I forgot to ask if you've had dinner yet," Sakuno said as Ryoma's situation finally fully occurred to her. He'd been playing tennis at the coliseum, ran to her place, had a couple of ponta, and was planning on staying the night.

Ryoma shook his head, "I had something at the coliseum before I left. I was planning on going back to my hotel and sleeping. Wait."

Ryoma's hand that had been idly playing with her hair stopped to dig in his pocket to pull out a cell phone, "I need to call the hotel and tell them to feed Karupin."

"Karupin?" Sakuno asked.

Ryoma had already tapped a number onto his touchscreen phone and had it up against his ear, but at her question he looked back at her, "My cat," he explained.

Sakuno kept her eyes locked with Ryoma's and watched his facial expressions as he conversed briefly with the hotel staff to make a visit to his room and feed his cat since he would be out all night. No, that was all, and no he didn't need anything else, yes, thank you it was a good match today, yes, I'm looking forward to the Australian Open, of course I'm going to win, thank you, goodbye.

As Ryoma disconnected the call and put his cell phone back in his pocket, Sakuno asked, "Do people always talk like that to you?"

"It's annoying," Ryoma answered.

"I'm sorry," Sakuno said.

Ryoma scoffed, "You surprised me today at the coliseum when you didn't know who I was, it was...kind of nice."

Sakuno giggled, "I thought you were annoyed with me."

Ryoma shook his head, "You're not annoying."

Sakuno viciously fought down the part inside of her that started glowing in happiness at his backhanded compliment. And yes, she knew Ryoma well enough already to know that being a girl and being labeled "not annoying" was a really big compliment. Still...she really shouldn't let him charm her and get all gooey on him when he was relying on her to pretend to be his girlfriend, and not really like him like that. Wasn't that what Horio-kun had said? A normal girl that didn't like him? Oh, but it was kind-of hard with him being so good-looking and interesting to not start liking him. Time to change the subject before this got any more intimate.

"So, why is Horio-kun your manager then?" she asked giving Ryoma a wide-eyed innocent look as if to imply she wasn't implying Horio was annoying.

Caught off guard, he laughed outright at her question, "It is weird! He's Horio, but I trust him. A completely trustworthy manager is worth it."

Sakuno laughed with Ryoma a bit at their shared viewpoint of Horio and said, "I understand you actually!"

"You can't tell anybody you aren't really my girlfriend," Ryoma suddenly blurted through their laughter.

Sakuno stopped laughing. Ryoma had a worried look on his face, and she didn't know why, but it upset her. It touched a part of her in her heart that she didn't even know existed. What was this? Was it because he was worried about her loyalty or because she'd decided somewhere in her subconscious that she really did like him? She didn't know yet, but she had this intense desire to assure him somehow. She scooted closer to him on the floor, making the space separating them not even a foot apart. She reached her hand out and brushed his long bangs away to the side of his face and held them there so she could see both of his eyes clearly. Moving her head even closer so neither of them could see anything except the other person's eyes she said, "I promise Ryoma, I won't tell a soul. Only you and I will know of this, not even Tomo-chan, you can even tell Horio-kun we decided to date for real if you want to."

"I d-" Ryoma began, but Sakuno cut him off.

"I also promise I will stay with you by your side for as long as you need me to."

She wasn't sure why she added that part on, she just felt the need to say it. She felt a desire to tell Ryoma somehow that there was this part of her that wanted to be with him, this part of her that responded to whatever it was in him that was lonely and crying out for her help, for someone normal to share his life with. It was so surreal she caught her breath, being completely taken in by the moment.

What in the world was happening?

Sakuno's hand slipped away as Ryoma leaned his head in closer to Sakuno's and paused a few inches away. Sakuno, frozen in the moment, watched him get closer in fascination and continued to hold her breath. He moved another inch closer, his eyes still locked on hers, but not really conveying any message to her, and she stared on blankly also at a loss. He moved closer still, and after another brief pausing point, the distance was lost and Sakuno felt the softest brush of Ryoma's lips against her own as her only notification before he kissed her fully. Whhaaaa...gently sucking her upper lip between his lips he slipped his tongue against the opening of her mouth and suddenly, Sakuno came to life. She kissed him back, wondering at the sensations she'd never experienced before.

So this was why people dated and kissed and fell in love and got married! All these years, she'd had no idea!

Ryoma broke the brief kiss and pulled away a few seconds after Sakuno had kissed him back, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with sensations and feeling a need to explain himself to her, they were, they were...what were they again?

"I just - I've never - and so we will...it's practice," he tried, desperate for an excuse. He tried to catch his breath and calm down his racing heart. Why had he kissed her? He'd never even wanted to kiss anybody before. What was she doing to him?

Sakuno was giving him wide shining eyes and nodding in understanding, "I've never kissed before either, we definitely need to practice in private to be convincing." Her heart leapt in response to the very thought of touching his lips again.

How was she able to make so much sense right now when he couldn't even wrap his mind into a full sentence?

"Right," he found himself saying as he grabbed the back of her head to bring her closer to him.

"Right," he heard her agree as she eagerly followed his movement of grabbing onto the back of his neck, they met somewhere in the middle with anxious open mouths and allowed themselves to be consumed with the sudden desire to get closer, touch more, feel more. They kept at it until exhaustion won over their burning excitement for each other and they dozed off and eventually fell asleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Ryoma got up and turned the lights off and then rejoined Sakuno under the kotatsu blanket. Instead of moving over to his own place, he resumed his spot next to her, wrapping her smaller body in his arms, he thought nothing further on the rare level of comfort he had with her, and rather went back to sleep.

A/N: Weekend is over, boo! So here's another chapter, I hope it cheered you all up. ...dances...

You guys have all been so great! So many cool thoughts and things you shared with me. I can't believe how many of you have mentioned your favorite lines! Everytime, it makes me SQUEE! hehehehe

I have to warn you all though, don't get too spoiled by my frequent updates right now, these chapters I wrote sometime in February so they've already been highly edited and were mostly ready for posting when I put up chapter one. As we progress further into the story and get into chapters I did more recently the updates will take me longer because I'll need to go through them with a fine tooth comb several times. T_T

I have other news for you guys though...I've been slamming out another fanfic. It's a little darker and very...sexy. It's not done yet, but I'm on chapter 7 and it's wrapping up, chapter 7 might end up being the last chapter. Going with the name "Coming Home" for it. If you guys are interested in hearing more about it in my little rambles at the end of these chapters, let me know, I don't want to bore you.

Thank you very much to everybody that's been reviewing so far (the number of readers to reviews as usual with fanfic is a huge difference) so I hope those of you not communicating with me are actually enjoying the story and not doing the if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything mentality. ...cowers in fright...

For anybody interested in getting into my brain on the plot/characterization on this, etc. my comments to the reviewers below should be interesting to you, if not I have another small blurb at the very end that's for everybody. ^_^

mae, AnimeLover8797, kawaii-witch181, Maria-Reynne, jerui, AlphaSigma, Umi, ai-chan97, foureyesfreak27, sakuno echizen & faeriespark thank you all for your reviews for chapter 2! (And ai-chan97 again for chapter 1 as well.)

kawaii-witch18 - Gotta forewarn you, the rest of our dear boys don't get much time in this story, in fact, most of them don't get any. Fuji gets a little bit - he has already been mentioned, but there is a real appearance, not just mention of him. The reason for this primarily is because this is an alternate reality where Ryoma didn't go to school with them, so he's not friends with them. On top of that Ryoma & Sakuno are 22 at the beginning of this fanfic. At 22, contact with school friends is fairly limited because everybody is busy starting their lives, off doing different things, and in addition to that Ryoma is uber busy with the professional tennis circuit (you'll see as we get more into the story what I mean) so he's not going to have time to be running around with Sakuno meeting the guys that were on the tennis team from her school, you know? It just wouldn't really work, and let's be honest, making them ALL into professional tennis players wouldn't be very realistic either. I made a real effort to keep this story out of fantasy and in reality as much as possible which involved a lot, a lot of research on ATP world tour, cities, hotels, tourism places, etc. etc. I was thorough like a crazy woman about it...hehehe. I love all our PoT boys very, very much, but this story plot just wasn't the place for them. :(

Maria-Reynne - You know, I have to thank you for commenting on Sakuno being a ramen chef being unique. When I was brainstorming this before I started writing I went back and forth and back and forth with possible scenarios for what Sakuno would be up to in this AR world where Ryoma & Sakuno had never met before and how neither of them would have any previous romance experience. It was hard. She needed to be into something that would keep her so busy & focused that she wouldn't have time to mess with boys and I really didn't want to do anything overused already either. I dunno about everybody else, but I hate it in fandoms when ideas get copied to death so much so that people start thinking it's cannon. We gotta keep our stories fresh. ^_^ And YES, Ryoma is disgustingly rich. I didn't just make that up either, I went on the ATP world tour website and actually did the math numbers on prize money earned in a year. Granted, a lot of professional tennis players don't make MILLIONS every year, because they don't win every tournament, but they aren't Echizen Ryoma. We all know Ryoma's going to be #1, and he's not going to put up with losing matches, so with that in mind I ran the numbers of how much a tennis player would make a year doing only the tournaments the TOP players do and if he WON ALL of them. I want to say it was something like 22 Million USD a year. (Which is gross, but in this fanfic that's what I used to figure out how rich Ryoma is, I even did the research on what someone in that income bracket could realistically afford (you'll see more of what I mean on that later) and kept it in reality instead of fantasy riches.)

jerui - Thank you for commenting on Ryoma! Yes, he's not so overly stoic in this story. He's still very much Ryoma (IMO) as it is, I worked hard to keep him in character while still giving him the needed changes for 1) what he's doing 2) who he is as a) an adult and b) a professional tennis player/celebrity and 3) a guy with zero previous romance that is suddenly struck with meeting a girl that gets his attention and awakens his dormant hormones. I agree with you as I've also noticed that it's common for RyoSaku writers to make Ryoma a "one word answer machine" and personally, I don't get it. Ryoma TALKS in the series. Sure he doesn't talk a lot like some of the other characters do, but he does talk, in full sentences - especially when it's called for. XD With his family he talks and complains, etc. He initiates conversations with Sakuno and Momo, and people he's about to pwn in tennis, but I do notice that he gets quieter when he's with all of the regulars, maybe because he's not one to compete for attention and just lets other people do the talking. (That's my take on him anyways.) In this story he doesn't really talk a lot unnecessarily, which is how I view Ryoma as a character, but he talks to Sakuno (because he's interested in her) when they're alone especially, and he talks when he needs to convey information that only Ryoma would know. I think it's also important to keep in mind that in this story Ryoma has been a pro tennis player for a few years. All the interviews, sponsorships and other media work such as making commercials or ads, etc. would broaden his talking to others more naturally as well. That's where I'm coming from with it anyways, and I just want to thank you so much for understanding that right away! It's really cool as a writer when people understand what you're up to with character development / plot development, etc. ...hearts...

Umi - Thank you also for the Ryoma input. (Probably you should read my comments to jerui above.) Ryoma IS being a little forward and flirty for him, but there is a reason for it, it's not like I don't know Ryoma's character...the readers aren't onto it yet really, but it's some foreshadowing of things you'll find out later. You guys will all start to guess at it as things progress and more foreshadowing comes up. As for if he should be a dense and clueless boy, I have to say no because in this story Ryoma is 1) not really dense, he's a 22 year old celebrity that's been in the limelight for at least 4 years, so if anything, he's jaded and 2) he's not a boy, he's a man, an overly confident man that knows what he wants when he sees it and goes after it (even if it's something he's never wanted before.) Like I mentioned at the onset of this story, this is an AR, and at times it might seem in some people's opinions that the characters are a bit OOC, but again that's from the differences I've incorporated into the story plot, not so much a deliberate attempt to be OOC or a flagrant disregard on their characterizations. I put a lot of thought into every line of dialogue and action in this story, especially Ryoma's since he's a complex character - which is why I love writing him so much, but I think putting him into a box and keeping him there just makes for a boring character and a boring fanfic; especially since in my opinion there's more depth to Ryoma than a lot of us give him credit for. Of course, it's possible that people will feel I've botched him up horribly and not like the story. :/ But I honestly tried my best to make it all very believable of his character, given the situation, circumstances, setting and the AR background I established.

ai-chan97 - Thank you so much for telling me you're enjoying the RyoSaku characterization and interactions! That makes me so very happy! I love it when people get where I'm coming from and picture it! Yayayayayayay. ^_^ I'm really happy to hear you're having fun reading the story too, that's just so great to hear, I don't even know how to express how wonderful it is to hear that. I love it that you liked the boys banging their heads on the kotatsu! So awesome! Thank you for reviewing both chapters and I'd love to know what other stories of mine you've read, if you remember.

faeriespark - Ufufufufufu! Don't you just love Horio? HAHAHA! I'm so glad you picked up that line! :D

Okay everybody, talk to you more on the next update! Hopefully sooner rather than later. Love you all lots and lots. xoxo Bunny