Outside, Looking In

Disclaimer: ...um...no ownership. I have no money anyway. ;

Pairings: FujiTezu, AtoTezu

I'm not sure when my interest in Tezuka turned into an attraction.

It doesn't lie in his looks, although I'd be blind to say that he lacks in that department. It doesn't lie in the scintillating conversation. Talk to him and soon, you will find yourself talking to a wall.

Actually, now that I reflect on it, I think I've fallen in love with what he makes me feel than the person he is.

Look at it this way. I know that there's a hole in my heart. It's there, so wide, so empty that the beats echo, bounce off the walls, and brush past each other coldly. Maybe I was born with that hole. I don't remember ever picking up a shovel and digging up the ditch.

Not that I'm depressed or anything. Everyone takes it that way. I used to go around with that face of blankness every day because I felt nothing and everyone took it the wrong way. My parents kept on asking if I was unhappy or something but goddamnit, didn't they realize that I was only being myself?

Smiling was much easier. Just keep on smiling, Syuusuke, just keep on smiling. Keep on smiling even though you have no clue just what the hell you're smiling for. Keep. On. Smiling.

I wanted to feel these things called emotions. Oh yeah, they've touched me before. I've been happy with my family, but for some reason, I've just haven't been satisfied. There was just something… I guess I was just wondering why every time I looked at them, I had to cover my face with a fake smile.

My little brother gave me happiness. I loved protecting him; I loved how that felt. Maybe I loved the feeling of being the protector more than the actual thing.

I remember my first encounter with intense pain. It was the first time that Yuuta really blew up at me. I couldn't understand what he was saying. His mouth was moving faster and faster, his voice rising and rising. He might have wanted to hit me and damnit, I would have just stood there and let him beat me to a pulp. I couldn't take it; how was I supposed to prepare myself from that agony when I was still a virgin to that degree of anger? Yuuta began distancing himself from me and then, he introduced me, indirectly, to a new emotion: motivation.

I never knew what motivation felt like. I was sound where I was. I was content to stand by my abilities and watch them grow for me because that's what they have been doing since I was small. For Yuuta, it was different. He had to develop his abilities through practice. I offered to help him with whatever he was trying to prove but all I got, usually, was a cold shoulder.

I met Tezuka during my first year in Seigaku. I didn't even notice him until I saw him practicing one day with the tennis club. I heard about him, you know? The ambitious freshman who wanted to take the team to the nationals. The freshman who stood up to his seniors and goddamn beat the captain of the team.

I joined the tennis club because of him. Not that I really wanted to beat Tezuka; I felt that if I was closer to him, I would understand just what motivated him. What drove him to want to push Seigaku towards the Nationals.

I learned nothing. Tezuka wanted Seigaku to be the best simply because…he wanted to.

Mildly put, I became intrigued with him. I thought that if I hung around him enough, maybe I'd feel this motivation and it'd rub off on me. In a way, it sort of worked, but I developed a different kind of drive.

I found out the satisfaction behind the element of surprise.

Surprise gave me an edge that I pleasantly enjoyed. I suppose others would define it as 'sadism', but I just called it 'having fun.' I had Tezuka to thank that for too. As he got more and more molded into the role of stone-cold buchou, I found myself dreaming up more and more ways to break that icey face of his. It sort of became an obsession.

I enjoyed my second place in the team because it gave me direct access to him. There was a reason why I wanted to distance Ryoma's skill from mine and it was not because of tennis. If Ryoma took my place, that would probably mean Tezuka would be asking him to practice and that was not going to happen as long as I had say in it.

I later realized that Tezuka, yet again, managed to get a response from my empty heart: jealousy.

Sometimes, I would just pause in the middle of class or something and then suddenly have to mentally slap myself. They would ask me what was wrong and I'd flash them my signature smile and all questions would be answered.

I was thinking about Tezuka again. I was thinking about how to surprise him, to pull a satisfactory reaction out of him.

I'd scare myself.

As I said, I soon realized that I was attracted to Tezuka in more ways than a friend. The feeling gave me chills. I wanted to be where he was. I wanted to hear him say my name. I wanted to feel him shudder, soften, melt under my hands when I touched him. I wanted to taste his skin so badly and I wanted to memorize the look in his eyes when I run my hands up and down his body.

Because I knew that when I felt him beneath me, when I gazed his eyes and when I drank him in, that I'd feel that intensity I've been searching for so long. I would satisfy myself.

…and that was the reason I could not have him.

Later, after all the regulars and club members had left except him, Tezuka, and Fuji, Inui heard footsteps behind him. Turning around, expecting Ryuuzaki-sensei, Inui received an unwelcome surprise as he was introduced to the back of Atobe. It seemed as if the Hyotei captain was waiting for some one.

Fuji had noticed too and also paused to glance Atobe's way. Tezuka, on the other hand, simply ignored the other captain's presence and continued to zipper up his bag where he had just stored his racket in.

Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Fuji gave his two good byes, receiving a wave from Inui and a grunt from Tezuka.

As he left the courts, he coldly brushed past Atobe.

"Wait," Atobe suddenly said. "Ore-sama wants to talk to you."

Fuji refrained from rolling his eyes and turned around. "Yes?" He had been tempted to keep on walking, but curiosity kept him rooted in place. After all, the tensai wanted to confirm that Atobe was here for the exact reason he suspected of.

"You…" Atobe hesitated uncharacteristically. "You like Tezuka, don't you?"

Let me make something clear. As much as I want to derive some impact out of Tezuka to pleasure myself, the last thing I ever want to do is hurt him because that would only bounce back to hurt me.

That was the reason why I knew I couldn't be with him. I'd be using Tezuka and frankly, if I had learned anything during my years alive, it was that people didn't like being used, whether they acted like Momo, Taka, or Tezuka.

I knew that pushing myself away from Tezuka would be an impossible task. The problem was that, even though I wanted to break this attraction to him, it just kept on getting stronger and stronger, fiercer and fiercer. I knew that my desire for him only stemmed from the desire to discover the intensity of my own emotions and I knew that it was wrong… But I couldn't stop.

So, I thought of a perfect solution.

"No," Fuji replied without a moment's pause. "But you do."

Atobe was never the one to be roundabout of his thoughts. He nodded, tossing a quick glance over his shoulders at Seigaku's buchou.

"Ore-sama admits that he doesn't know how to make the first move," Atobe said softly.

Fuji's deep blue eyes snapped open and studied Atobe studying Tezuka. He opened his mouth to say something, but then, swallowed those words. Then, pushing away his own personal views on the matter, said, while forcing on the smiling mask, "Maybe I can help you."

Experience doesn't always make things easier. In the case of setting up Tezuka and Atobe, it only made things harder. Tezuka was a bit too dense to get it at first, why he encountered Atobe almost everywhere and why I (who he usually started out with) disappeared right after he met up with Atobe. Eventually, he finally got it and by that time, I had fully mastered the art of spur-of-the-moment disappearance. I was surprised that he didn't immediately rush towards me with sharp objects…

…in fact, he seemed to accept it.

He and Atobe clicked, strangely enough. I guess opposites really do attract and those two are like two polar magnets.

I still had to set up those damn dates though. I guess Tezuka wasn't exactly ready to announce to the world that he was out of the damn closet. But I really didn't like how this whole Atobe-Tezuka set up was effecting me.

It fucking hurt. I'm a sadist, not a masochist. Every time I saw them together, every time Atobe snaked an arm around him or touched his hand or brushed his lips against him, it cut deep. Everytime Tezuka responded with a small smile or accepted Atobe's little gestures or was actually the one to start the conversation, something inside of me began to snap.

I wasn't ready for this. It hurt way more than those times Yuuta had gotten angry at me.

I didn't show it of course. Maybe I was shitting myself but I actually believed that if I had shown Tezuka my true colors, I would have effected him negatively.

I tried to convince myself, while watching Tezuka walk away from me in Atobe's arms, that if Tezuka was happy, that I could be happy too. If I did something good to him, that it would automatically reflect back to me.

I wanted to feel the intensity of Tezuka's love.

I caught Tezuka staring at me a couple of times. For the first few, I thought, with my heart pounding, that he was actually reconsidering his relationship with Atobe for me. That was all crap, of course. I didn't even enjoy that feeling of excitement and much less, the disappointment that followed. In a way, I realized that all along, ever since my offer to Atobe, I had wanted Tezuka to directly stimulate me instead of me indirectly stimulating myself through him.

Tezuka revealed just why he was throwing looks my way a few days later he and Atobe became an official couple.

Fuji turned around. "Ne, Tezuka, why do you keep on doing that?" he asked, tilting his head, still smiling. "Is there something wrong with my clothes?"

Tezuka shook his head. Standing up from the bench, he walked over to where Fuji stood on the court, not caring if the rest of the team stopped to watch the two. "Why did you do it?"

"Eh?"

"Set up me and Atobe." Blunt as always.

Fuji's smile wavered. "I… Well, you liked it, didn't you?"

Tezuka nodded. Obviously, he liked it.

Fuji shrugged, blaring that completely fake, innocent smile of his. "Then, that's all that matters."

Yeah.

Keep smiling Syuusuke.

That all that matters.