Shedding Skin
(Sequel to Outside, Looking In)

Disclaimer: Jeez. I had forgotten how annoying these were. I don't own them.

Pairings: FujiTezu, Fujicest

Warnings: Slightly limey (sour?) for this part. vv;

Btw, thanks for all the reviews! :D

I. Part Two

"Did you hear?" Momo whispered in Echizen's ear.

Ryoma twitched, rubbing his ear. "Momo-sempai," he began, irritated. "Your whisper is loud enough to hear across the courts."

"Nya, ochibi is right," Eiji commented with a heart, bouncing over. "What's up, Momo?"

Momo would not give up on "whispering." "I heard that Atobe is cheating on our buchou."

SILENCE. Ryoma sighed. Eiji's jaw scraped the ground. Oishi turned a scarlet red. Inui began writing very, very rapidly. Kaidoh fell over. Fuji's…uh, stayed smiling and handed Taka his racket. Taka grabbed the racket and started to scream, "BURNING! I WILL BURN ATOBE!!" and chased around the freshman. Everyone else turned to stare at Tezuka.

Tezuka twitched. "Momo. Fifty laps around the court. NOW."

"Tezuka, is it true?" Fuji asked softly after practice that day.

Tezuka shrugged. "I trust Atobe."

The tensai faced the ground, carefully composing his next words. "I don't want to see my work go to waste."

Tezuka's frown deepened. He stopped what he was doing and turned his full attention to the tensai. "Fuji, is there something wrong?"

Startled at this out-of-Tezuka-character question, Fuji could only answer with an automatic, "Maybe."

The sudden urge to slap Fuji out of irritation swept over the buchou. "I don't have time for games, Fuji," Tezuka grumbled out, standing up and swinging his bag's strap over his shoulder.

With his lightning like reflexes, Fuji grabbed Tezuka by the leg. "Wait! What if Atobe is cheating on you?"

"Let go Fuji."

"Come on Tezuka. Answer me."

"Let go Fuji," Tezuka repeated more firmly, still not looking down on the tensai.

Hesitating, Fuji obeyed.

Seigaku's buchou sighed. "What reaction would make you happy?"

"…what?" Tezuka was just full of surprises today.

"You heard me the first time."

"Tezuka," Fuji asked with a slightly mysterious smile. "Why are you so bent on making me happy?"

"To return the favor," Tezuka replied without hesitation.

Something seemed to pass over Fuji's face. "…favor?"

"You gave me happiness when you set me up with Atobe," Tezuka explained softly. "I want to do something in return."

"…oh," Fuji replied just as quietly. He looked around the courts, at the sky, at the ground, anywhere but at Tezuka and…and… Well, and then just…laughed.

"What?" Tezuka asked monotonously, twitching. Although, inside, he let out a sigh of relief. Fuji really did have him worried for a while because lately, he just hadn't been acting like himself.

"Ne, Tezuka," Fuji began, staring into his buchou's eyes with his own shimmering blue orbs. "I just had an idea." Standing up, he leaned against Tezuka so that his mouth was under his buchou's left ear lobe. "Say we go back to the locker rooms and play around a bit? That'd make me real happy," the tensai purred.

Without hesitation, Tezuka turned right around and walked away quickly. (Chibified, if you're a graphic-oriented person.)

Fuji broke down laughing so hard that tears streamed down his face. Some time during the middle however, and Fuji was no quite sure when, his tears turned into anything but tears of happiness.

There was a faint hiss as steam rolled out of the bathroom when Yuuta opened the door. He crept out in light steps, hoping that no one would see or hear him. See, he had forgotten his change of clothes and putting back on his dirty ones would completely ruin the point of the shower.

Unfortunately, he was spotted by the last person he wanted to see (besides Mizuki). Syuusuke hands swung over Yuuta's chest as he pressed himself onto his younger brother's damp back.

"HEY, GET OFF—"

"Ne, Yuuta," he asked cheerfully to his tomato red brother, "Want to go shopping?"

"—OF ME!"

Yumiko passed by, sighing. "Really. It's a shame that you two are related."

"ONEESAN!!" screeched Yuuta.

"Yeah, it's a shame," Fuji mumbled into Yuuta shoulder as he pressed his mouth against the warm flesh.

"WHA—ANIKI! WHAT ARE—never mind…" Yuuta drooped his head. He might as well give up now.

"What?" Fuji asked innocently as he stared back at Yuuta's glare. The two currently occupied an outdoor table at a small coffee shop. This was after Fuji dragged Yuuta literally through twenty-three shops buying absolutely nothing.

"What is this all about?" Glare.

"I wanted to go shopping." Infuriating smile.

"You're a bad liar." Twitch.

"Because I'm not lying." Infuriating smile.

"You're lying," Yuuta snapped. "We've been through about twenty stores. You haven't bought a thing. What are you—"

"Eh? Yuuta? Is there something wrong with your drink?"

Yuuta didn't quite hear his aniki because his eyes were trained upon two people who were walking down the street together. Two people who were walking very close to one another. In fact, they were walking in a way his aniki often tried to walk with him.

One was Atobe. The other was not Tezuka.

Suddenly, his aniki's ulterior motives for going shopping became very clear.

"Well, at least we don't need to do any more searching," Yuuta grumbled.

Fuji arched a thin eyebrow and turned around. His shimmering blue eyes snapped open and his smile immediately wiped itself off. "Maybe Momo wasn't hallucinating," he murmured to himself.

"Can we go home now?" Yuuta asked.

"No," Fuji replied without pausing.

"WHAT? Why not? You got your answer."

Fuji pouted at his younger brother, who turned blue from nauseation on the spot. "I want to go shopping."

"But—that—" Yuuta jabbed a finger frantically in the direction of Atobe and his new boytoy. "That IS your shopping!"

"Yuuta," Fuji began in a teasing voice. "How could you think so lowly of your aniki? I wanted to go shopping. Not stalk Atobe."

"………………" Yuuta's eyebrow twitched violently. Really. What a HORRIBLE liar.

"Lets go Yuuta. We still have another street."

The sun was just touching the horizon. Atobe paused before turning the street corner and glanced over his shoulder. "Come out, ore-sama knows you're tailing him," he announced with a highly amused voice.

"I saw you this afternoon with…"

Atobe blinked. Well. What do you know… "I saw you with your brother at the café. Where's your brother?"

"He went home," Fuji replied coolly.

"What do you want with ore-sama?"

"A talk, that's all. I trust that you have some time?" His tone indicated that it was not a 'yes' or 'no' question.

Atobe smirked. He didn't have to be a fortuneteller to guess what this was going to be about. "Come to my house. We can talk there."

Fuji placed down his glass of water and got straight to the point. "What happened between you and Tezuka?"

Atobe took a small sip from his glass. "Nothing."

Deep blue eyes flashed. "Then why—"

"Fuji, listen to ore-sama." Then, setting his glass down, Atobe stared at Fuji and repeated himself as if he was talking to a mentally retarded individual. "Nothing. Happened."

Fuji did not break the gaze. He had already surrendered too many times in this game. There was a pause before he finally whispered, "I get it now."

"Exactly." Atobe broke eye contact smoothly (no regrets) and began to trace the edge of his glass with a finger. "You're pretty selfish, Fuji."

A thin eyebrow arched. Fuji forced on a tight smile. "Really."

"Yes, really. You're not the only one who wants to play with Tezuka, to use Tezuka." He stood up. Placing both hands on the table palms down, he leaned forward, getting close and personal with the blue-eyed tensai. "Ore-sama can have any girl or guy he wants," Atobe whispered. "Ore-sama chose Tezuka because—"

"—he'd be a challenge," Fuji finished. "He would keep you amused, keep you guessing. You were bored before. You wanted some one to push you so that you felt the most extreme of emotions."

"Huh," Atobe smirked, tucking a strand of stray hair behind his ear as he stood up. "Something like that. It was amusing for ore-sama to watch you kill yourself over your selfish feelings for Tezuka. Not that ore-sama derived pleasure out of that, but more like, derived entertainment out of the fact that you thought you were the only person in the world with those motives."

"You admit that you are human then?" Fuji asked before he could restrain himself.

Sparkles. "Ore-sama may possess godly charm, skill, and beauty, but his emotions…" His eyes suddenly lowered, becoming serious. "Ore-sama is only close to perfection."

The tensai twitched, silently kicking himself for his previous question.

"Tezuka was the only one who ever had made ore-sama feel anything intense. It was real, for a while. It was like a present, ore-sama wanted to open it quickly and explore inside. But… Stop thinking so hard, Fuji. Tezuka isn't that deep. He's a normal guy. The only reason why ore-sama, you, and the rest of the world can't figure him out is because we're all thinking too hard."

"…so…" Fuji glanced down at the glass before him. It was still half full. "You're just…breaking it off with Tezuka? Like that? My work was for…"

"Your work was killing you," Atobe cut in, walking to a window. "Ore-sama's insight is not just limited to the courts. Ore-sama was rather surprised that you agreed and you went along."

"But what about him?" Fuji asked, his eyes blazing with anger. "What about Tezuka? Don't you care about what he feels?"

Hyotei's buchou stared at the window and shrugged.

"Bastard," Fuji snarled. He stood up abruptly, nearly knocking over the chair, and stalked out of the house.

Atobe's arrogant mask slipped over quietly as he leaned his face against the cold glass of the window. Yeah, he had done a pretty good job of lying back there.

It wasn't completely false. The reason he wanted Tezuka in the first place was because Tezuka had been the first human being to push him to the edge. Then, when he finally got Tezuka, Atobe had expected…well, something. He expected to feel some sort of…triumph or something.

Instead, he felt disappointment. The more he pried into Tezuka's life, the more he discovered, to his dismay, that Tezuka didn't have that many layers of skin. Not to say that Seigaku's buchou was shallow. Atobe soon discovered that Tezuka was a normal human being whom everyone else just thought was a demi-god because he played such a mean game of tennis with the face of a rock.

So, Atobe's interest slipped.

What he had lied about, though, was that he did care what Tezuka thought.

Atobe closed his eyes, feeling the coldness sweep into his head. He asked himself just why he hadn't officially broken it off with Tezuka. It wasn't that he was scared of Tezuka's face…right? Or maybe, it was because… Maybe it was because he felt that if he was going to break up, he would have to explain why and that would spill out just why he got together with Tezuka and… Atobe raised his hands to his face and stared at the palms.

He wasn't ashamed of his human emotions, right?

Storm clouds had gathered overhead for the night. Fuji glanced up, frowning. He had always thought of rain as a bad sign. His mother had always insisted that he should change his pessimistic view and see rain as a cleansing, but that perspective was hard to keep for Fuji.

Ignoring the lightning and the steadily worsening drizzle, he stalked to Tezuka's house.

So you can't blame Tezuka's mother (Tezuka Ayana) for nearly having a heart attack when she opened the door that evening at seven o' clock. There stood Fuji, soaked and silhouetted, with the glare from streaks of lighting flashing off of his shimmering blue orbs.

Ayana placed a hand over her heart to steady it. "Fuji Syuusuke, isn't it?" Ayana asked with a strained smile. "You scared me. Please come in."

Fuji did just that, giving Tezuka's mother a polite smile. He stood as close to the door as possible because he didn't want to get anything wet. "I'm sorry for coming in this weather. Is Tezuka home?"

Ayana replied, "Kunimitsu is upstairs. I'll go call for…do you want a change of clothes?"

"Uh, no, that's fine."

Eh, it was useless anyway. "I'll go tell Kunimitsu to lend you some of his clothes."

"No really, it's fine…" Fuji sweatdropped as he watched Tezuka's mother walk away from him and upstairs.

"It would have been really annoying if you caught a cold," Tezuka grumbled as Fuji walked into his room fully clothed in Tezuka's clothes.

Fuji smiled. "Your clothes are very comfortable."

"If you're here to joke, I don't have time for it."

The tensai's smile stayed on. "Fine, I'll stop wasting your time. You and Atobe are breaking up, correct?"

Tezuka's eyes blinked. "What?"

"Stop playing dumb. You know that Atobe lost interest in you."

A shrug.

The smile disappeared. "Don't you care?" he asked softly, feeling his anger building up inside.

"It was bound to end some time," Tezuka replied stoically, sitting down on a chair while facing Fuji who was located on his bed. "Better now than later."

"So you were the one wasting my time?"

Lightning outside. Raindrops fell harder.

"Fuji, the only reason I went along was because Atobe intrigued me."

"Is that it?" Fuji asked, his voice cracking. He restrained his sudden need to scream and strangle Tezuka. "I asked Atobe… Is that all love is to you two? A selfish motive? A spur-of-the-moment interest?"

Thunder.

"Are you disappointed at how simple it is?" Tezuka asked. He sighed when he received no answer, just a stony stare from the usually smiling tensai. "No, Fuji, that's not what love is but Atobe and I had no love between us. It was pure lust."

Raindrops against the window Heavy breathing. Fuji listened to the air being sucked in and forced out. Heart beats. Heart…beat…

Tezuka blinked in alarm, lightning sizzled, reflecting off of his glasses, as Fuji suddenly began to laugh. In fact, the tensai was cracking up so much that he was nearly falling off of Tezuka's bed. The buchou's eyebrow twitched. Had Fuji finally lost it?

Fuji wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes, choking on his own chuckles while the sky choked with thunder. "Are you telling me that… All that time when I was killing myself for feeling those…that… You and Atobe were doing the exact same thing?" He clutched onto his stomach and doubled over again, falling down on Tezuka's bed and burying his face into the covers. "You two…are unbelievable… I can't believe that I…" He just continued to crack up.

Eyebrow twitching, Tezuka stood up, walked over to his bed, and sat down on the edge. "Fuji."

Nothing. Just muffled laughter and rain.

"Stop crying right now."

Nothing. Fuji slowly turned over.

Tezuka sighed, adjusting his glasses. He reached down and wiped a tear as it rolled down the side of Fuji's face. "I had guessed this was why you were acting out of character for the past two months. You should've confirmed it earlier." He brushed some of Fuji's hair out of his eyes. "Atobe once told me that you're very selfish. Now I see why." Tezuka leaned down, taking Fuji's hands into his hands so that he pressed the tensai into his bed. "You can't be ashamed for being human Fuji. Even a genius like you has flaws."

The blue-eyed tensai swallowed. He could feel Tezuka's breath against his mouth…he was so…

Tezuka pulled away and walked back to his chair.

Fuji wanted to throw something at his buchou. WHAT. THE. HELL. Was Tezuka PLAYING with him?! Twitching, the tensai jumped to his feet and before Tezuka could even process what was happening, Fuji grabbed him by his face and planted a hard, long-waited for, much-tongue-involved kiss on his buchou's mouth.

When Tezuka was finally allowed to breath, Fuji spoke in a voice bordering passion, anger, and extreme seme-ness. "Fine. I'll stop restraining myself." He smiled, tilting and lowering his head so that he kissed Tezuka lightly on the smooth flesh of his neck while he climbed on top of his buchou. The chair creaked under their combined weight.

"But I won't stop being selfish," Fuji whispered into his ear. "You're mine now Tezuka. All mine. I laid eyes on you first, I claimed you first, and the only reason you were with Atobe was because I let him have you."

Tezuka glanced at Fuji at the corners of his eyes, ignoring the lightning that nearly blinded him. The change from the timid Fuji of before to the predator now was a little unsettling, but not at all unwelcome. In fact…

Fuji traced hot, wet kisses up Tezuka's neck and felt the taller boy stir beneath him while sliding his finger in and out of Tezuka's mouth. He then lifted his head, his tongue taking over from where his right index finger left off. Their two tongues played a wild game as Fuji's hands undid the buttons of Tezuka's shirt and trailed up and down against his muscular chest.

Thunder.

And goddamnit, the chair broke.

Ayana knocked on her son's door. "Is something wrong?" she asked worriedly.

"No, we're fine," Tezuka replied.

"Uh, okay. Do you boys need anything?"

Tezuka stared at Fuji, who was lying on his floor next to where he was sitting. The tensai was trying to muffle his laughter into the pillow that he had miraculously grabbed when the chair broke.

"No, Okaasan, we're fine."

"Okay. Please tell Fuji that if he'd like, he can stay over for the night. It's raining very hard out."

Tezuka's eyebrow twitched. "Okay, Okaasan."

"Thank you," Fuji called out sweetly, hoping that he didn't sound TOO pleased. He turned to the Tezuka, grinning deviously. "Ne, Tezuka, I think I'll accept your mom's offer."

"Huh."

"Ne, Tezuka, you fell on your ass. Does it hurt?"

"…" Tezuka arched an eyebrow. He was pretty sure where this conversation was going.

"How about I kiss it to make it better?"

"…"

"In fact, can think of a lot of things I'd like to do to that ass."

"…"

Fuji laughed and laughed, rolling over and over on Tezuka's floor.

Slightly blushing, Tezuka turned away, leaning against his wall and stared up, through a window, at the raining sky. Hm… Rain was a sort of cleansing, wasn't it?