Hello anybody reading this! Not sick no more, which means that I'm finally going back to school! Yay! (Yeah, I never thought I'd say that.)

Blufox- Like I said, Hyotei is cool. Yeah, poor Fuji and Tezuka.

Acho0bl3ssU- Umm... Um... Of course he is! -Nervous Glance.-

Yoshikochan- Well, Yoshikochan, I hope this is soon enough!

KiriharaAkaya- Yeah, many pairings in that last one... I remember when Choutarou had a frog on his face! He made the best expression ever! I will never forget! My friend and I went around yelling 'F-f-f-frog!!' at random times for nearly two weeks. (Up to the point that our teachers threatened us with detentions.) And Bad Tezuka! Sleep very important! I once stayed up for three and a half days, getting only a half an hour of sleep. Yeah... Bad idea folks. Also, for the oldest regular, Jirou is oldest, I believe, because the school system in Japan starts it's year in March, (correct me if you find that to be wrong!), which would mean that Jirou being born in May would be like a person being born in October in a Western school system. But, I may be completely wrong! My memory is a bit fuzzy on that subject!

Skyblue147- I wuv Moulin Rouge... I want to watch it really bad now... And, Yes, I might as well tell you, Gaku is a bunny. -Laughs.- As for Kei and Ji... Oh man that was fun... XD

This chapter is a little more angst then normal... Sumimasen. (But I like it!)

Disclaimer- I do not own Prince of Tennis

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Ryuzaki was having what she thought was a usual practice, though she hadn't seen her captain, or resident tensai in a while. Okay, for Fuji, it was an overstatement, as the blue-eyed boy had just left a few moments ago to find the buchou. Then she saw something that truly worried her; Fuji in distress.

"Ryuzaki!" He exclaimed, but then realized that he needed to act normal around the other club members. He slowed his pace a bit, and his face calmed, though he couldn't seem to muster a smile. Not even a bogus one. "Ryuzaki," he said again when he was close enough that he could whisper, "Something is very wrong... I... Need your help. It's Kunimitsu."

Something shot through Ryuzaki then, and the bad feeling she'd had upon seeing the disheveled tensai became very real. She called Oishi over, and told him to keep practice running. The vice-captain, seeing the look on Fuji's face, nodded, putting on a strong front for those who couldn't just then.

The tennis coach noticed as Fuji led her along just how close the senior in middle school was to tears. She entered the locker room without hesitation, but nothing could have prepared her for the sight of Kunimitsu, out cold, shaking uncontrollably on the floor as the pains took him. This was the first time Ryuzaki had seen the buchou in this state. Actually, it was the first time anyone other that Fuji had seen him like this since before Kunimitsu's second time being effected by the Trivial Pulse.

Ryuzaki rolled the normally stoic looking boy onto his back and checked for a pulse. Seeing that was accelerated, she checked his pupils. Everything else checked out normal, but Ryuzaki was now at a loss for what to do. Fuji's hand touched her shoulder softly, but firmly, moving her to the side a bit. He then leaned down and gently placed his hand on Kunimitsu's chest, his teeth gritted for the pain he knew was coming.

It hit him harder then anything he could have imagined. He felt himself double over, as the last of the pain left Kunimitsu and entered him. It felt like his brain had exploded, and electricity was being run through his body. It was like dying over and over with no end in sight. He screamed soundlessly, over and over, his poor lungs unable to gather enough air for a single scream, let alone as many as he felt the need to let out. As it finally began to subside, he felt arms around him, as well as a strange wetness that kept falling on his face.

Oh, Kami-sama. It was Kunimitsu holding him so tightly, his wings out, and he was crying. It was a strange and new emotion from the captain, but Fuji had no time to scrapbook it.

"Why did.. You do that, Shusuke? What did you do?" Kunimitsu asked, as Ryuzaki watched on in a stunned silence. Fuji found himself able to smile, and reached a hand up to caress his buchou's cheek.

"I took it from you, Kunimitsu," Fuji smiled, his voice soft, "I took the pain from you. I couldn't watch you suffer any longer. I knew... You wouldn't be happy, which is why I hid it from you before, this power, but... I couldn't just watch that. It... Was so much worse to see you... suffer, then to deal with it myself. Is it... Always this bad?"

"Not always," Kunimitsu said, taking the hand in his own, and rubbing it against his cheek, as if to reassure himself that it was still warm with life. "Please, please, Shusuke," Kunimitsu had taken to pleading, and it was something else Fuji thought he might never see. Not like this, anyway. "Please, Shusuke, never do that again. Please. Please, promise me."

"I... Can't promise you that, Kunimitsu," Fuji said, "But I could try. I could really try, if you would promise to actually sleep at night."

"...You knew?" Kunimitsu said after a moment, his tears still falling silently.

"I suspected," Fuji said, "But this proved it." Fuji smiled softly, "If you'll sleep, I can promise you that I will do my best to not use my power, unless it goes to far. And we, you and I, we can find a way to make the pains go away. We can do it." He felt his eyes drooping, and knew Kunimitsu was just as tired.

"You two, go up to my office," Ryuzaki said, "I know you can make it that far. Then, go to sleep. I'm worried about you, Kunimitsu, and I'll need to talk to your parents, but we can deal with all of that later. Don't worry about that now. Don't even worry about practice. Just go get some sleep, it will all be alright." Both boys nodded, and Ryuzaki made sure to watch them head towards her office for as long as she could before heading back for the courts.

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Fuji woke up long before he expected Kunimitsu to. He actually felt strangely refreshed, knowing that their secrets were slowly being exposed. He really hated keeping secrets from the stoic boy, but there were some things he needed to keep to himself.
His family, for instance.

Fuji's breath caught in his chest, thinking about that. The feathers in his wings shuffled restlessly. There was no way he could tell Kunimitsu about all of that, not yet. How did you tell someone that you cared about something like that? He couldn't tell Kunimitsu just how terrible it had been back then. He just couldn't.

'What is he?'

Stop...

'That thing is not my child.'

Please, Stop.

'Those eyes! He's a demon! A demon!'

Please, just stop. I can't take this.

'What did I ever do? Why does he keep watching me with those eyes!?'

Stop!

'My only regret is that that thing came from my body.'

STOP!!

Fuji sat up suddenly, Kunimitsu's arms surrounding him. "Shhh.. Just a nightmare," Kunimitsu was whispering softly into his ear, and Fuji realized he had fallen asleep again. "Just a nightmare, Love, you're fine now. It was just a nightmare." It wasn't until then that Fuji realized he was crying, and curled up against his boyfriend a little more, as if his warmth could drive out the icy feeling that had settled into Fuji's heart.

"I'm not a demon... I'm not..." Fuji felt himself whispering between sobs. He knew that Kunimitsu could hear him, and the other boy looked down at him, concerned.

"No, Shusuke, Love, you're not," Kunimitsu told him, smoothing his hair down in an affectionate gesture. He kissed the blue-eyed boy's forehead, which was wet with a cold sweat. "You're not a demon, you're you, and I love you."

Fuji moved against Kunimitsu even more, feeling like he might shatter if there was even the smallest distance between them. Maybe he could tell Kunimitsu. He could tell him because he was Kunimitsu. He couldn't tell him for that very reason. He was afraid to be left again. He was afraid to be feared like that again. Most of all, he was afraid of being told that he didn't have the right to exist. Because, if Kunimitsu told him, he would believe it, without a doubt.

As if reading his mind, Kunimitsu said, "Shusuke, you can tell me whatever you want to. You don't have to tell me anything that you don't, but you need to know that I will love you no matter what you say. I will always love you." Fuji could tell him. He knew he could. Kunimitsu was different, so different, from his parents, from everyone else back then. Fuji took one shuddering breath, and then began.

He told him about how he had begun talking very early on, just after he had started to crawl, at five months old. Still, he hadn't started talking in little words, or baby talk, like was so common. For Shusuke Fuji, it was sentences.

He had seen his mother taking money out of their family funds, singing about a new pair of shoes. By that time, Shusuke, already a tensai, though no one knew it yet, had already begun listening to everything that was going on around him. He understood what people said, and he knew that he could talk. He had tried it a few times, talking softly to himself when no one else was around. He knew that no one expected him to talk, because Yumiko would always repeat her name so slowly, expecting him to not understand. So, Shusuke knew it would be best to wait a little longer to start talking.

Still, when he saw her taking money from there, a place money was put into, and never taken out of, Shusuke became very curious. He didn't understand. He wanted to know, he wanted to understand everything around him, and he figured that the only way to find out this time would be to...

"What are you doing? Daddy says money goes in there, not out." And that sealed his fate.

She screamed, and Fuji opened his normally ever-closed eyes at the sound. Even then, his eyes were large, round and a deep cerulean. He knew that people liked his eyes, and thought they were pretty, so long as he didn't stare at them for too long. Fuji knew, because in the beginning, when he watched people, they said it gave them a creepy feeling.

She screamed again, and knocked over the jar in he panic. That was how it began, Fuji's condemning by the family. He remembered his mother crying to his father that Fuji had been throwing things, and had broken the money jar. After that, both of his parents watched him closely, and if they caught him watching them, they made a big deal out of it. He was a demon. His eyes weren't natural. He wasn't supposed to be there. This couldn't be their child.

If Fuji so much as opened his mouth to defend himself, his mother would see it and bawl to his father about something terrible that he had (hadn't) done that day. After saying things like that long enough, they came to believe it. You can imagine, I'm sure, how overjoyed they were when Yuta was born. A normal son. A good son, if a little stubborn. A son who belonged. A son who was supposed to be.

After all of that time, Fuji supposed that part of him had come to believe that he was a demon as well, which made it his obligation to protect Yuta. He had, on many accounts. Yuta loved him, as family, which made sense to Fuji, even then. Yuta didn't know any better. Fuji's parents never ever told him how horrible he was around Yuta. Yuta's precious ears had to be kept innocent, after all. So, Fuji went through life as well as he could, knowing that dieing wasn't an option, although a few times he had contemplated just stepping out in front of a car and ending it all.

Yumiko was his first saving grace. He remembered, that that was when it had been bad, when their father had been beating him. He remembered he was crying, and Yumiko had wordlessly put her arms around him. Fuji tried to shift away, thinking that a demon shouldn't be comforted, but she held him tight in her grip. She began speaking to him softly. She told him that he wasn't a demon, and she knew it. She told him that she loved him, and that she would never love someone evil. She told him that he was just special, and that their parents didn't understand that. She told him that their mother just wasn't prepared to deal with how smart he was, and it was easier for her to believe that he was something terrible then to except the truth. She told him that he couldn't just take their abuse. She told him that she didn't believe the things that they said, and that he shouldn't either. She talked to him for another hour, and Fuji sobbed against her.

Still, that did the trick, somehow. Fuji stopped submitting, after that, and fought for what he knew was right. He fought for himself. He wasn't sure, even today, if what happened afterward was an improvement or not, but after that, the beatings stopped. Fuji was nine years old, when it all ended. Still, after that, it seemed that they had decided that solitary was the best punishment for Fuji. His father got himself transferred over seas, and his mother, who had been a stay-at-home mom since Yumiko was born, was never around when Fuji was, unless he had already gone to sleep. When he was younger, in the beginning, Fuji had decided that she had a 'Shusuke Clock' that told her was Shusuke was doing at all times. Then they moved, away from everything Fuji had known, and away from Fuji's friends, the few he had permitted himself to have. He remembered how sad he was at having to leave Saeki, who he'd become quite close too, since after he had decided that he wasn't a demon, and deserved human rights.

They moved to Tokyo, and for a long time, his mother didn't act as if she had any interest in Fuji. She didn't even bother enrolling him in school. Yuta went, of course, and Yumiko went, but somehow he was forgotten. It didn't matter. Alright, it did, but Fuji had been through worse. He began to wander, mostly, after that. His mother found reasons to be gone all day, and he just felt lonely if he stayed at home. So, Fuji did what he had come so accustomed to doing; he went out and watched people.

He would go to the park, and watch whatever happened. He watched everyone around. He watched tennis. He watched a lot of tennis, which he hadn't had any time to play since coming to Tokyo. To be more honest, with himself, Fuji had felt no need to play tennis since coming to Tokyo. The fire that had powered him before was gone. Or perhaps just hidden. He preferred to think that it was withering, but still there. He knew that what he needed was a spark. He needed a second saving grace.

That was when he met Kunimitsu. He remembered it well. Yuta had been dragging him around that Saturday, obviously thinking that his flame had really died. The younger boy took him to a tennis match, where he saw Kunimitsu play. What he felt then was hard to explain, but he wanted to play. He wanted to play really bad, after that, and he knew who he wanted to play. He wanted to play a match against Kunimitsu Tezuka.

That very day, Fuji took an initiative. He went out of his way to do a little background check, and found out who Kunimitsu was and what school he went to. He enrolled himself in Seishun that weekend, Yuta tricking their mother into signing the papers, as Yuta himself asked for a transfer.

Fuji told Kunimitsu all of this now. Everything poured out, on and on until he felt that he had no more secrets left to tell. He refrained from going into too much detail about just how bad the early days were, but told him everything as a whole. Kunimitsu never interrupted, he never seemed to judge. He held Fuji closer to him when he heard it get tough for Fuji to say, and he loosened his grip at the exact times Fuji needed a little space. He never let go, however, and that was something that Fuji felt eternally grateful for. When Fuji finally finished, Kunimitsu just held him for a moment, not saying anything.

"Shusuke," Kunimitsu muttered, touching his lips to the tensai's hair. "Love, no one will ever hurt you like that again. I'll protect you this time. You're not a demon. You know that and I know that, and that's all that matters."

"Things are... Okay now," Fuji answered softly, "I won't lie to you, Kunimitsu, it sometimes hurts when they don't show any interest in me, but... I have you, and Yuta, and Yumiko. I'll e fine. I'm happy now. I'm content." Now. Fuji realized then that he did in fact have one more secret, but it was alright. Kunimitsu didn't need to know about that, because it didn't even effect the Tensai anymore. The thoughts of being worthless, the thoughts that everything might be better if he just died. Or perhaps, had never existed in the first place. No, he didn't think like that any more. Kunimitsu and Yuta made him feel needed, and he couldn't ever leave them like that. He didn't want to ever leave them like that. He smiled, as he leaned against Kunimitsu again.

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Shishido entered the room without thinking too much about it. He flipped off his shoes, and was about to call out to Choutarou when he noticed that the said junior was asleep on the couch. Shishido couldn't help but smile, as he watched Choutarou's nose wrinkle adorably in distaste at something in the dream, and then relax again as his mouth curved into a smile. He was just so cute when he was sleeping.

"Hey, Choutarou," Shishido said softly, shaking the slightly larger boy's shoulder as he tried to wake him up, kneeling down by the couch.

"Shishido-san...?" Choutarou looked a bit confused in an endearing moment, and then smiled again, clearly still dreaming. "Ah, Senpai..." Choutarou reached out just then and gave Shishido a loving, but short kiss.

Shishido froze. What had just happened? Had Choutarou just ki-ki-ki-ki-...? Shishido realized that he couldn't even finish the thought, so he dropped it, reverting back to 'what just happened?!' Choutarou settled back into his dream wit ha contented sigh, and Shishido found himself to be twice as confused. He hadn't been to obvious with his feelings, had he? Could this mean that Choutarou felt the same way? No, no way...

Looking at that face, Shishido made a decision. He put his hand, which he had pulled back in shock, back on the other boy's shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. This time, Choutarou's eyes fluttered open, and he smiled sleepily at his doubles partner. Does he even remember that he just ki-ki-ki-ki-...? Shishido gave up on that word again. Instead he smiled at his kohai softly, and said, "Would you like some cake?"