FRUITY TRINITY
It is supposed to be an apple.
Kaidou has studied his mythology and is thus well aware that it's apples that fit in with snakes and temptation to form some kind of unholy trinity. There's no room for a fucking peach in any of this.
Really, Kaidou has little place for anything in his life, and the rivalry already takes up a considerable part of it.
In the slow, detached way that comes with slow, detached interaction with society he has grown to realize that his family is very traditional. Hence, as the Heir though there is truly not all that much to inherit, Kaidou is supposed to be acing kendo and economical politics, not run around in Western wear chasing after a little boll with a frankly ridiculous contraption that also costs a ludicrous amount.
If he is to do it, though, Father told him with that stern gentleness he has, the kindness that cuts too swiftly for blood, then he had better do it well, is that understood? We will be lenient, so long as you at least live up to our expectations of your being the best, even if you insist on straining our benevolence by choosing such an unsightly profession. Is that clear, Kaoru? Good. Dismissed.
After everything, he loves tennis, and he can't quit. It's there somewhere along with Mother's calm, comely smile and a memory of sweet plums from a festival long years ago and Grandfather's ruffling his hair and Father saying that once that he was proud of him. Things he can't stop caring about, that even times of distance cannot erase from the core of his yearning. It's just… they are all elusive, and grabbing for one will mean losing the other, and what could he pick but tennis, that which he shapes himself, that which he lets shape him, when he's tried for so long for the rest and been only disappointing and disappointed?
Being never perfect, he could only ever have an echo of Mother's smile and Grandfather's hands and Father's pride, yet the lingering shadow of that echo sharpens the melancholy rush of triumph of winning in tennis and the bitter self-disgust brought by losing.
Into that, into endless mornings and noons and evenings of likewise endless training, straining, of practicing 'till he threw up, into that went suddenly Momoshiro a bright autumn day, and he has remained despite all Kaidou's attempts to erase his unsightly presence from Kaidou's life.
Rivalry should be beneath him, at least when it's tied to a specific individual, an individual at that who isn't even the very best. To chase a recognized prodigy along the lines of Fuji or Ryoma would be acceptable, save for the deceptively simple and never fully realized fact that Kaidou could never catch them. Hard work isn't the same as genius, it can keep up but it can never even hope to do more than equal, can't ever truly threaten, much less defeat. On the other hand he's making Momoshiro a worthy rival by reacting to him as though he were, he knows it and yet he can't stop.
Because, for some stupid reason, that inevitable knowledge that no miracle gift has been granted him riles him less than Momoshiro's stupid smirk and dumber grin. After all, Kaidou doesn't think he'd want progress in the form of some sort of gift, something someone else has given him.
He's a snake and should be tempted by apples (or was it tempting with? He was never too clear on the Christian stuff), possibly by Eve, which means there is absolutely no explanation as to why he's frozen outside the tennis court, staring at Momoshiro practicing shirtless.
He's not sure when he started looking, but he watches and he sees everything. Like the fact that Momoshiro is everything he isn't, has everything he hasn't. A loving, modern family who fully support his interests. The sociable nature to make and deserve and keep friends, even loner Ryoma.
A lean, tallish build, easily tanned skin stretched taut and sweat-glimmering, curving tightly along the sharp arc of his spine and the tops of his hipbones.
Tennis is one thing, it's not esteemed but it's passable; even a dirty rivalry with the equivalent of a nouveau rich like Momoshiro can be grudgingly accepted. His standing here, too transfixed by Momoshiro's neck to move even as he registers the other turning, undone by his own flushed features, cannot be forgiven.
But the revelation having hit him is mercifully blurry and obtuse. Sufficiently so, even, to let him hastily, and however temporarily, convince himself that the adrenaline making him almost dizzy is just an effect of his usual intense rivalry, heated competition, impersonal as nothing connected to Momoshiro can ever be.
Momoshiro is staring back at him now, and Kaidou thinks with confusion and distanced terror that the years with his exceedingly gay-friendly female cousin must have finally broken him.
"Viper?" his not-exactly-rival calls. "Hell are you doing here? Trying to copy some of my superior moves? Well, good luck, you gonna need it!"
Yeah, Kaidou thinks, seething at his own agreement. Looks like I am. For his feet, so often prone to freezing in place, are moving forward without his consent. With a calm that he might have recognized as born of hysteria, had he not so clearly been hysterical, he wonders where they're planning to take him.
Silly question, of course. Where else would they leave him but right in front of Momoshiro, sneakers planted firmly on the ground, body blatantly invading the other player's personal space? Kaidou has spent the majority of his time exercising for far too long to be disturbed by the smell of sweat, especially fresh sweat which is actually pleasant compared to the rank stench of the dried variety, but the sheer simple heat washing off Momoshiro's body throws him.
The taller youth is quiet for once, has bent his head ever so slightly downwards to be able to meet Kaidou's usual silent-intent dark stare. Never before has it stricken Kaidou that the two of them standing like this, very close and with their faces tilted towards each other, concentrating on and staring at one another with absolutely exclusive focus, well, that it might make for a somewhat suggestive image.
There's something to be said for the doctrine that there are in fact things which one is happier off not knowing or thinking about.
Chest heaving with post-training panting, Momoshiro breathes on him, inadvertently and probably unconsciously bathing Kaidou's face in air warm from his lungs and mouth. It smells like something Kaidou can't identify but considers vaguely disgusting, something like mint and egg and something sweet all mixed together.
Dear gods, Kaidou thinks. I don't want to hit him.
Actually he wants to back the hell off and away, but that would mean admitting defeat in their stand-up contest of will. Kaidou isn't on good terms with defeat, and he's not exactly planning to make an effort to get better acquainted.
Which train of though, however commendable and unstoppable, does not provide him with any kind of plan to get himself out of this horrible pinch that is to still be staring at Momoshiro's face but realizing that he wants to drop his gaze lower, just to see, out of simple scientific curiosity, how the other's torso looks up close – the dunk smash seems to necessitate a slightly bulky build, at odds with Momoshiro's slender frame.
And then he thinks he must have suddenly gone quite dramatically and quite irreversibly insane, for these thoughts cannot very well be described as anything but lunatic. He has to get out of there, but he can't just leave, has to do something, stun Momoshiro, surprise him, one-up him, and the lower regions of his mind come up with a course of action that his superego condemns violently even as his id feats on it, and he has the sudden tactile mental flash of the idea, deceptively simple, of Momoshiro's hands on his body, bony callused fingers on sweet-slick skin, of Momoshiro bare and …No, he wouldn't be vulnerable in his nudity, he'd be tough and insufferable and probably very hot and, and where the hell is Kaidou's deranged and undoubtedly disturbed brain getting all these images?
"Oh, fuck," he mutters, for he has to escape himself as much as Momoshiro and his reptile brain appears to have taken over. He can't fight back because he doesn't know what he'd do instead, in place of getting on his tip-toes and trapping his arms around Momoshiro's neck, fingers catching in that ridiculous spiky hair and against the hard line of his collar-bone. His movements are quite fast, and he's pressing his mouth with clumsy haste to Momoshiro's startled half-open one before the other has reacted with more than a muffled yelp.
Okay, so this is a bit gross. All lukewarm and slimy and his open mouth sliding without finesse and much too hard over Momoshiro's, catching at the corner of it. It's really rather terrible, and then Momoshiro roughly fists his hips and of course he knows what he's doing, and the unfocused kiss suddenly gains a sharpness it lacked before. The shoulders and upper back under his hands are, well, nice, and Momoshiro pressed up close with his hands on Kaidou's spine and hips aren't bad, and Kaidou still can't get over how damn large a tongue is.
Obviously he can't move away because that would mean Momoshiro's won.
"Okay," Momoshiro says at length, composure effortlessly recovered, arms still in a loose embrace around Kaidou's lower back. "What's this about? Inui trying to gather data? Look, tell him he could have just asked me – not like I'm ashamed of being gay. Simply hasn't seemed reason or opportunity to bring it up."
Communication, especially with words, has never been Kaidou's forth or preference: snakes don't like people, people don't like snakes, vocalizing doesn't figure into it.
Unfortunately this entire day has carried on in a retarded manner that does not at all agree with Kaidou's sanity, and now is apparently no time for it to stop, for Kaidou hears what has to be his own voice saying, before he can stop it: "It was supposed to be a bloody apple."
For once he feels that the What The Fuck expression on Momoshiro's face is actually justified.
Well, it's been a day of many firsts.
To his considerable dismay that dry thought brings up a whole bunch of concepts that Kaidou is none too keen on contemplating, much less dealing with, now or ever – such as first kiss, first time staring at shirtless guy, first time molesting Momoshiro.
Repression is a fine thing. He feels he has never properly appreciated it before.
"What? Kaidou? Hello, earth to Kaidou? What the heck?"
There's an excuse he can give Momoshiro that makes perfect sense. He hasn't managed to come up with it, but there has to be one, the universe would be too unbearably cruel otherwise.
Really, he's not being unreasonable – coming up with a workable explanation or getting immediately and completely swallowed by the ground, he'd be happy with either.
If he could at least lie and let Momoshiro think it was Inui's doing things would be so much simpler. Still embarrassing, still awkward, still humiliating on a level only slightly below that which induces ritual suicide to preserve any stray stand of honor he might have left, but it would be simpler. And of course no one would believe Inui if he denied it, because it is exactly the kind of thing that he would do, that Kaidou himself would never come up with.
Having been brought up in circumstances that had not branded the knowledge into him that One Does Not Lie would have come in exceptionally handy right about now.
"Um," he says, isn't even ashamed to be momentarily inarticulate. "Inui isn't. Involved in this."
Momoshiro's facial muscles must be even more impressive than his abdominal ones for his eyebrows to rise that high up his fronthead. Given the amount of admiration Kaidou feels that those abdominal muscles deserve, how he envies having to train for them himself while Momoshiro seems to be perpetually amusing himself, that is a very impressive feat.
"So basically you just, ah, walked up and kissed me on a whim? That's… Uh, that's actually sorta nuts, even for you."
And that doesn't hurt.
"It wasn't a whim," Kaidou argues. He does not, after all, have whims. The concept simply isn't compatible with him. "It's just that it was supposed to be an apple but it wasn't and I needed to see if you taste like a peach!"
The next few moments are dominated by a voice in Kaidou's head that goes from raging to resigned as it accuses him of having actually said that.
Struggling valiantly not to regress into a gibbering mess, Kaidou shrugs and takes a deep breath and thinks he really should remove himself from the embrace he's still sharing with Momoshiro and mentally comments his own latest reply to the effect that that makes one for sentences more convoluted, incoherent and pathetic than the crap Momoshiro usually sprouts.
After all, it is a victory of sorts, and not an easily won one, to triumph over Momoshiro in the art of mangling language. And dignity, let's not forget about dignity, regardless of how completely and, he fears, permanently it appears to have deserted him.
Needless to say, this is all Momoshiro's fault. Still, Kaidou can't quite summon the energy to be angry with him right now.
"Well," Momoshiro says with a smile that almost sparkles over into laughter after what feels like a very long time of Kaidou arguing fruitlessly with himself, "did I? Taste like a peach."
Yes, all his higher brain functions have very obviously evacuated the premises, for it is only now that Kaidou recalls that, "I've never actually eaten one."
Momoshiro does laugh now, a bright sound that is for some obscure reason not at all as grating as Kaidou remembers it, leaning closer and more heavily on him as he voices his mirth.
"Come," he says when the fit has passed, disentangling from their mutual hold which has really dragged on ridiculously long. Kaidou's arms and hips feel the freedom as a cold fluttering, like something bereft. It's just his luck that horrified distraction over this unfortunate and unfathomable fact stops him from seizing the opportunity to run as all hell while Momoshiro briefly turns around and fishes his previously discarded teeshirt from the ground.
On a purely esthetical level he's really a more pleasing sight without it, but the stretching and wringing that getting into the damp, rather tight teeshirt entails are not to be frowned upon.
Kaidou is also very carefully not thinking any of this. Neither does he notice Momoshiro's nipple through the fabric.
Decent again, Momoshiro startles him by grabbing his left hand securely in his own. Shocked as Kaidou is at this development (and also shocked that he can master more shock when he's already kissed his rival) he finds that it's not actually too unpleasant to have the firm, long-fingered hand holding his own.
"Where are we going?" he asks belatedly, having hurried along behind Momoshiro into the town proper.
Additionally he realizes, equally belatedly, that a good deal of people is staring at them. He usually doesn't care, since normally they're staring because he's running so hard he sees stars, or with weights, most definitely not because he's walking hand-in-hand with another guy. His blush is violent as Momoshiro's fingers are gentle around his.
"You'll see. Oh, here we are."
Giving their surroundings a brief once-over Kaidou concludes that 'here' equals 'among the fruit stands on the market square' and contemplates demanding to know what the hell they're doing in this place. Freeing his hand presents itself as another prudent course of action.
Then again, doing either will probably attract Momoshiro's attention, and that's something Kaidou would rather enjoy avoiding until he's managed to fully repress certain earlier events. And the fact they're still holding hands, and how his cheeks are still pinkish because of it, and, and damn it, he'd like to rid himself off the memory of this entire horrible day.
He suspects, however, that it has already firmly inserted itself among his other important memories, among Mother's smile and Grandfather's hands and Father's pride is now Momoshiro's mouth, lips that weren't meant to be parted that way but tasted… interesting.
It could have been worse. The quiet certainty of this conviction stuns him, especially since he can't actually fathom any scenarios that would constitute a more complete humiliation than that of today, yet it remains, that certainty, persistent and unshakable.
Finally he takes a deep breath and decides to go with it. When all's said and done this is about Momoshiro, and Kaidou doesn't give up when such is the case. He tries until he gets where he wants, what he wants, simple as that.
He has never figured Momoshiro's smile or kind hands into this, but it doesn't change the fundamental equation.
With horrible frivolity he realizes first that his family is going to be absolutely furious, then that he has already failed them so much and so often that it's more important not to fail when it comes to Momoshiro.
Charming that this discovery should come about just when he thought this day couldn't get any worse or any more confusing.
"A peach, please," Momoshiro says beside him to the benevolently smiling vendor, making Kaidou aware of how little time has passed in the real world during his bout of introspection. "Thanks a bunch, mister!"
The fruit rests comfortably in his hand, ripe and colored a soft, dirty reddish hue. Momoshiro's first greedy bite leaves a trail of peach-juice trickling down his chin. As always he eats with large bites and overdone, audible chewing, and in no time at all he drops the pip, lets it clatter away on the ground.
"Now then," he says, and his smile is the smile he wears on the tennis court, the grin he flashes at both partner and opponent just before he performs a dunk smash. Wide and devious and not really something Kaidou should have so securely memorized.
Having so spoken, Momoshiro quite unceremoniously shakes his hand loose from Kaidou's to place it and its sibling around Kaidou's face, and lift it and kiss its mouth with wet hungry lips and a tongue much stealthier than Kaidou's own was.
Without the remaining taste of it cloying his mouth, Momoshiro doesn't taste like peaches at all, so maybe there's a place for him in Kaidou's world after all.
xxxxx