A/N: A big huge thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the first chapter! I was really surprised, actually, that how Eiji was feeling made sense to so many people. (I can only hope that that will continue during this next chapter!) There is a character in this chapter that I added... I considered for a long time it being someone from the series, but…no one fit the role, in the end. (I usually don't add characters, so I hope its ok.) :)

Chapter Two

It had been almost two months since Oishi left, and Eiji was still a complete mess.

It was something so mundane and commonplace, but it was still so hard for Eiji to comprehend. That he could be with Oishi, that they could maintain their relationship even if they weren't physically together. It was beginning to seem completely impossible, because to Eiji, all he knew was that Oishi was gone. He could have been dead, for as far away as he felt. And everything just felt different. Eiji felt completely alone, all the time, and this was something he just couldn't get used to, no matter how hard he tried.

Sometimes, Eiji really couldn't get past the fact that Oishi's voice sounded different on the phone, almost like he was a different person. Eiji knew it was silly, that Oishi's voice wasn't any different than it had always been, but it bothered him anyway. Oishi just seemed so far away, and sometimes Eiji really couldn't convince himself that he had ever been there next to him. Eiji wasn't sure if he remembered what it felt like anymore, if he remembered Oishi's touch, or what his smile looked like, or how Oishi's eyes when he told him he loved him were warm and clear and just the perfect color of green that Eiji could get lost in. All of these things were just gone, and it seemed like they had been gone for a really long time.

Oishi would ask Eiji to tell him about his day, or his classes, or his new tennis team, but Eiji found that he couldn't remember anything. Not one single thing that had happened - nothing. The only thing he could think of was how horrible he felt, and after several failed attempts of trying to explain this to Oishi, Eiji wondered if he should just give up. Oishi didn't understand, but that wasn't his fault. Eiji really didn't expect him to.

Eiji wanted to tell him that he was miserable, that people asked him about Oishi all the time, or about the Golden Pair, and that he couldn't stand it because it always made him so upset and no one understood why. He wanted to tell Oishi that every day they were apart was harder than the last, not easier, like everyone said it would be. Eiji wanted to tell Oishi that he was going crazy because he needed to feel Oishi's touch, that he was starting to think that he couldn't feel anything anymore, and that if he didn't feel something soon, he wouldn't be able to feel anything even if Oishi did come back. But Eiji was sure that Oishi didn't want to hear about any of these things. Besides, it was embarrassing. Eiji really didn't want to say any of this out loud, even to Oishi. So he just stopped trying.

Eiji knew he was making Oishi angry, and that maybe he was even hurting Oishi's feelings, but he just couldn't force himself to string together the words and sentences that Oishi needed to hear anymore. Oishi told him over and over again that he really wanted to know what Eiji was doing, how he was spending his time at his new school, that Eiji never told him any details about anything. But the problem was that it didn't feel like there were any details. He was just alone, in a new place, without Oishi, without anyone. There was just nothing.

Despite these non-conversations, which usually ended in a frustrated Oishi reluctantly ending the call, Eiji always felt a rush of panic, as soon as he hung up the phone. Sometimes he wouldn't be able to fight the urge to call Oishi right back, just to make sure he was still there, which he knew just confused Oishi, since Oishi always thought Eiji didn't want to talk to him anyway.

There was no way that Oishi could understand that his voice alone brought all of Eiji's emotions to the surface, and that then, when Oishi would be gone again, to Eiji it felt like he had abandoned him all over again. Eiji hated this feeling more than anything. Sometimes it was so overpowering that Eiji wouldn't be able to move again for hours, and he wondered if he was honestly going insane. Because there was no reason why this should hurt so much. Their love was supposed to be stronger than anything, but instead, it suddenly seemed incredibly weak.

It was completely absurd to Eiji that this thing that he had always thought was the strongest and most unshakeable thing in the world, would in the end be as weak as his most irrational thought. That all of his feelings, and all of his love could be reduced to this completely irrational loneliness was something that Eiji really hadn't thought would be possible. Because Eiji loved Oishi. Oishi was the most important thing. Oishi had always been the most important thing.

But as the days and weeks passed, Eiji realized that it just didn't matter. He was weak. His love was weak. And because of that, he was acting weird, and hurting Oishi, and ruining everything, Eiji really had no idea why this was happening, or what he could do to stop it, and it was driving him crazy.

Eiji knew that Oishi was really trying, and somehow this almost made everything worse. Because nothing that Oishi said reached him. Even when Eiji tried to take comfort in Oishi's words, it didn't matter. If anything, he felt worse. Because Oishi's words, however true, however filled with honest emotion, seemed to hit a wall inside of Eiji. And this wall that Eiji had built up around him without even realizing it was impenetrable. Even though he was starving for any kind of attention from Oishi, for anything at all, when it was in front of him, Eiji would freeze and go cold, and he knew that Oishi didn't understand this at all.

It really wasn't supposed to be this way. There was a fantasy that Eiji had that the next time he picked up the phone and heard Oishi's voice, everything would be fine again. Eiji truly believed that just Oishi's voice could do that, could cure everything. But it never happened that way. Oishi would call and Eiji would hear his voice, and the only thing he would feel was hurt.

With every day that passed Eiji felt that he was becoming less and less of himself. He wasn't even sure what role it was that he was playing, only that it wasn't him, and Oishi didn't seem to be himself either and that it hurt. Everything just hurt, and Eiji really just wished it would stop. Something had to change, or Eiji knew he wouldn't be able to stand it anymore.

Eiji tried to tell Oishi all of this, but it never came out sounding right.

And then something happened. And things did start to change.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Practice had run late, and Eiji was the last person left in the locker room. It was the off -season, but the weather was still cooperating, and practices lately had been fairly intense, since everyone knew that there were only a few weeks left until they would be off for the winter.

Eiji was exhausted, not so much because of practice, but because he hadn't been sleeping much at all lately. When he was feeling this tired, it was almost impossible for him not to get lost in his thoughts.

Eiji had no idea anymore if it had been a mistake to tell Oishi that he thought maybe he should stop calling so much. Eiji had honestly thought he would feel better if he didn't hear Oishi's voice every single day on the phone, and he had tried to tell Oishi that, but it had come out all wrong, and knew he had hurt Oishi's feelings. Now that Oishi didn't call as much, Eiji realized that he felt even farther away and that Eiji missed him even more.

Eiji wondered if his letter had been a mistake too. Eiji never wrote letters. He didn't really have any experience writing at all, so he was sure this particular attempt had not been very good. The letter was supposed to make Oishi understand how he felt, and explain all the things that Eiji couldn't say out loud.

He couldn't even remember half of what he had written now, he had been so upset at the time. But Eiji was sure his letter had just made him seem really selfish and immature, and that he probably hadn't been very fair to Oishi. Eiji knew that Oishi wasn't making him feel this way on purpose. He wondered if Oishi hated him now.

Tears were stinging the inside of his eyelids and as the room began to feel like it was closing in around him, Eiji realized he had stopped breathing. He wondered absently as he opened his mouth and gasped for breath what would happen if he let that feeling overtake him, how it would feel. He'd heard about people holding their breath until they passed out, but only in movies or stories. It didn't really seem possible in real life. In real life Eiji was sure it wouldn't be that easy.

The grey-ness of the room came back into focus as the air filled his lungs, and Eiji coughed. He was soaking wet, and this surprised him for a second, until he remembered that he was in the shower in the locker room, that he had come here after tennis practice. A thought flashed through his mind that he really should pull himself together, at least when he was here, but Eiji felt his knees start to wobble and he sank to the floor of the shower. Everyone had left anyway, he reassured himself. Practice had been over for a while now.

Eiji stayed there for a long time, on his knees, crouching forward with his palms flat on the wet tile, as if he planned to get up any second. But he wasn't moving, and he had no idea when his legs would feel steady enough for him to stand again. Maybe he would never move from this spot. Maybe this was the very end of everything, and he would melt into the floor, dissolving into nothing. In the back of his mind was still the thought though that if there was a place and time where he would dissolve into nothing Eiji wanted it to be somewhere where there was at least something good to hold onto. Not here. Not anywhere that Oishi wasn't.

When he thought Oishi's name again Eiji heard himself whimper out loud.

Then he shivered, because the water had been slowly approaching freezing for a while now.

As he reached to fumble for the handle to turn the water off, he heard the door to the locker room open. Then suddenly the lights switched off and the room was plunged into darkness.

Eiji froze, as the metal on metal of the door clanging shut echoed through the empty room, over the noise of the shower, which was still running. He thought for a second that he had been locked in, until he realized that that didn't make sense, because whoever would be locking the door would also be able to hear the shower, and would see his bag and things outside, so…

Eiji wondered if he should maybe be scared, but mostly he was just relieved. That something had stopped his thoughts from where they were headed, because he knew he wouldn't have been able to stop them on his own.

Eiji knew that he would have sat there forever, thinking about Oishi and how much it hurt that he wasn't here and how his heart felt so empty being away from Oishi that it seemed entirely plausible that it would simply stop beating. But Eiji knew by now that nothing ever stopped when he wanted it to.

The water was freezing now, but Eiji had stopped noticing. He waited in the darkness, wondering what was going to happen next, as his eyes adjusted to a small patch of white light that snuck through a corner of one of the windows.

It took Eiji several seconds to realize that a hand had clamped down on his wet shoulder.

And then Eiji was shocked because he could feel it. He could feel the fingers clenched around his shoulder as they crept closer to his neck. He could feel the warmth of the flesh and the presence of the person the hand belonged to. His first irrational thought was Oishi, just because he couldn't remember the last time he had actually felt someone else's presence since Oishi had left. It was as if people had stopped existing a while ago, or maybe that he had stopped existing.

But Eiji could feel this now. And he knew instinctively that this was not Oishi. This was nothing at all like Oishi. The fingers were digging into his neck and he could feel nails pressing into his throat, cutting of the air as he tried to breathe.

Eiji was aware that he was being pulled into a standing position because he could feel his feet searching for a footing on the slippery tiles. His mind was having a hard time keeping up with what was happening. His heart was racing and Eiji felt a surge of pain as he was shoved hard against the wall. Two hands were around his neck now, holding him up, and the room was spinning, and turning fuzzy.

And then the hands suddenly released him, and Eiji slumped to the floor, barely catching himself with one hand, as he gasped, his heart pounding. A voice very close to his ear was whispering, and suddenly Eiji was aware of who the presence next to him was, and he blinked in disbelief as he stared at the person who was now crouched next to him.

"You really have to stop this, Kikumaru."

Eiji was confused, and the thoughts were spinning around in his head as he tried to make sense of what was happening. He couldn't figure out why on earth the captain of the university tennis team would be here right now, with him, talking to him like this.

Eiji had barely spoken to the captain before, and there hadn't been any indication until now that the captain had even known his name. It was a large team, and Eiji had mostly kept to himself since arriving. Eiji waited for an explanation, aware of the extreme strangeness of the situation, but not being able to come up with any way to address this right now.

The captain studied the boy in front of him, his eyes searching every corner of his body, which glistened in the darkness. Something flashed in his eyes, and in that instant Hideaki Akuji decided that he had been right. This kid was worth it, was worth his…attention. He was perfect, the captain thought, smiling to himself.

Hideaki leveled his glance at Eiji before he spoke, ignoring the fact that Eiji was naked, and soaking wet, and that they were in the shower, which was still running, and that he was fully clothed. He did have a purpose here, after all, and these small physical details paled in light of the importance of this first meeting and…proposition of sorts.

"I've been watching you," he said simply.

The captain then paused, smiling to himself, before he continued nonchalantly. "You know, you have a good chance of making regulars in the spring."

He paused again, waiting for Eiji to take his bait. When Eiji didn't make any move to say anything, he added, slightly annoyed, "You know that, right?"

Eiji just stared at the captain in disbelief. He really hadn't thought much about ranking matches, nor did he really care where he placed, or if he ever made regulars. Somehow though, hearing this from his captain seemed to revive some of the competitiveness he had buried inside of him, and Eiji found himself suddenly paying close attention, waiting for what the captain would say next.

Hideaki was pleased that Eiji at least seemed interested now. "But if you want that to happen, some things will have to change. I know my line up isn't much, not compared to what you're used to anyway, but you will have to take things a little more seriously. And you'll have to stop this."

The captain then looked at Eiji with a look of almost complete disgust, and Eiji found that despite his better judgment, which was telling him that this whole situation was really weird, he was suddenly embarrassed. And a little scared.

But before Eiji had a chance to decide exactly how he felt, the captain was speaking again, and his tone had changed. His voice has softened, and he sounded almost sympathetic.

"I can help you."

Eiji wasn't really sure what the captain meant, and expected him to say something else. When he didn't, Eiji was about to reply the only way that seemed appropriate, was about to thank him, when Hideaki abruptly moved to leave, briskly crossing the room.

"You will forget about him," Hideaki added, turning around at just the right second, and catching the tail end of Eiji's reaction. The captain smiled at the look of complete shock on Eiji's face, marveling for a second at how easy this was, and hoping that this was a foreshadowing of how easy things would continue to be.

"Oishi Syuichiroh, right?"

Eiji felt his face burning, and his heart was pounding again. He blinked away a few tears of anger, realizing that more than anything, he didn't ever wanted to hear this person say Oishi's name again.

And then the captain laughed lightly, jarring Eiji out of his thoughts.

"See you at practice tomorrow, Kikumaru."

It wasn't until several minutes later, that Eiji realized the captain had left, and that he was alone again.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

As Eiji walked home, his mind was in a sort of fog. Everything just seemed so completely wrong all of the sudden. Eiji recognized this, but oddly still felt like there was nothing he could do to change anything. Absently, his hands moved to his neck. The skin felt tender there, and he wondered if he would have a bruise tomorrow.

All of the sudden, Eiji just felt like he couldn't keep up. With anything. Every decision he made seemed to be wrong, and he really didn't know what to do anymore. Eiji was sure he should have said something, anything, to the captain back there.

Because something in the back of his mind was telling him that what just happened was somehow dangerous, but he pushed that thought away.

Then Eiji rememberedhow that person had said Oishi's name and when Eiji thought of that voice saying those words, a dull ache filled his body.

Eiji reminded himself again, as he always did when he thought of just quitting everything and going home, that the course had been set, for him to achieve something here, for him and Oishi to be apart but together, for each of them to pursue their goals and dreams. There were expectations, and Eiji really wanted to be able to live up to them, though he wondered why no one else seemed to understand how hard this was.

Eiji knew that it would be entirely his fault if their course were altered. Somehow though, Eiji knew that he could already feel it being altered, and he wondered if he had ever had any control over anything in the first place.

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A/N: (It seems appropriate for me to mention now that all my fics do end happily. I promise!) ;) So yes, I admit I am a little anxious about how this chapter comes off, so please, please, tell me what you think! Thanks again for reading, and Chapter 3 is coming soon… (As long as someone doesn't kill me for making Eiji so sad.) :)