A/N: Words spoken in Sign Language will be written in bold letters!

Disclaimer: Do not own anything.

~~ Time For A Sleepover ~~

~~ 8. March, Early Night ~~

Nobody spoke while Fuji led them across the street and inside his house.

How would it be... at a pajama party?

What would they do?

Ryoma felt excitement rush through his veins, though, he wouldn't ever admit it. It was simply something he had always wanted to do, to experience but he hadn't had enough friends back then in the States, so he had always slept with Karupin alone in his room. It was one of two reasons why he had silently agreed to it, besides knowing the possible consequences. The tensai wouldn't make it easy for him, probably asking stupid questions and pushing him in every possible corner to make him yield. He was certain about it and with Tsukiko being glued at his side later on would make it even harder for him to stop his team mates from bad mouthing, gossiping or in the worst case asking questions about him.

Nonetheless, there was still a chance that Tsukiko wouldn't cling too much on him when they had an audience and weren't alone in a room. It was the other reason why he had agreed to it. Ryoma had noticed the change in Tsukiko as she had cried in his arms just a couple of minutes ago. She had gotten more clingy, even more than usual and back then had been already nearly too much. Or was it only his imagination?

However, this pajama party couldn't get worse than the meeting with Kirihara and his senpais in Yukimura's bedroom, could it? He worried, though, if his cat would be able to sleep tonight without him. Hopefully, he could sleep without Karupin's soft purrs, snores and his warmth.

The itching feeling on his face and neck pulled him out of his inner discussion. Blue eyes watched him from over a shoulder. "My parents and Yuuta are gone. My older sister is still there but will stay in her room most of the time and leave us alone, so we can have a good long talk." The tensai had no shame, didn't look away, instead continued to stare at him with those pure blue eyes which had never lost on intensity. The guy was planning something and he was sure it wasn't something he would like to find out.

"Your family is funny, Ryoma." Called teen was confused about the sudden change of subject in their one-sided conversation. How should he reply to such a weird statement? He simply shrugged with his shoulders, not knowing if he should feel offend by the spoken truth, and ignored Fuji till he felt a strong grip slowly but firmly circling around his right wrist and the incoming pull with it to push him beside the smaller brunette. "You and your cousin are pretty close, ne?"

"Syusuke!"

"I'm merely asking him, Mitsu. You have seen her, too." Ryoma tried to get free from the grip but, even as he knew it already, it was useless. Fuji had quite the tight grip around him. "I would be happy if Yuuta would act like this from time to time. Sadly, he doesn't and never wants to cuddle with me." The brunette paused and seemed to think about something very eagerly. "Maybe I should cling to Yuuta more often. What do you think, Mitsu?"

Tezuka ignored Fuji's last words to Ryoma's surprise and continued to walk while speaking. "We shouldn't be late. The others are already there. You can ask him about it later on."

And it was something which made Ryoma scared. People asking questions. It was new in his life and he actually already knew and understood how he felt about people trying to break into his life. He felt terrified, flustered, frightened, nervous and overanxious because he didn't know how much he was allowed to say, to reveal from himself without hurting anybody with it - without hurting Tsukiko. Other people wouldn't understand his way of thinking and why he did what he did.

Then something else on his captain's spoken words caught his attention.

What others?

Who else would be there?

Fuji opened the front door of his house and pushed Ryoma inside, following him with his boyfriend in tow. The mute nearly stumbled over the small ridge of the genkan* where a couple of shoes stood if Tezuka hadn't grabbed him right in time. He nodded in thanks to the brunette who nodded in respond. Tezuka's way of saying "You're welcome."

He was in a small hallway with a staircase on the right side, leading upwards were voices and other noises echoed out of a room. Someone was laughing, another one talking loudly. Ryoma took a couple of steps forward, finding the entrance to the kitchen behind the staircase and the entrance to a living room with a dining table in one half of the room to his left side. The toilette was, as the sign on the door showed it, right in front of him.

Tezuka slipped out of his shoes and put them neatly to a pair of black leather shoes, then walked inside and said something like "Ojama shimasu*". Whatever that meant, Ryoma nodded as if trying to say that he meant the same and also slipped out of his shoes, putting them next to his captain's. One thing he knew from the second day on: Tezuka was loved by older people and knew all the strange manners and antics with it. Copying his moves had sometimes saved Ryoma a lot of problems with his teachers in the last few days.

Fuji was the last to slip out of his shoes and with one quick movement, Ryoma found himself once again in the smaller brunette's tight grip. "My room is upstairs. We'll sleep there too, I have already put out the futons. Your futon is right next to mine, Ryoma, as my dear guest had asked me earlier if he could use my bed. Saa, but I think he will want to switch anew when he sees whom I'm sleeping next to." The brunette chuckled over his own words, opened the first door on the right side and was greeted with cheerful greetings and laughers. Ryoma got dragged along behind him and saw seconds later three people sitting somewhere around the room.

"There they are. We've been waiting for you all. Really have." Momoshiro was the first person who came into Ryoma's view, the second one was a sleeping boy in the bed, snoring lightly and mumbling in his sleep. Ryoma's eyes wandered around to find the third person and wanted to smack his hand against his forehead instantly.

"Ah, you made Ore-sama wait, Kunimitsu, Syusuke." Last named brunette got interrupted out of his thoughts and a smile, a real smile - Ryoma couldn't believe something like this even existed by the tricky tensai - radiated over Fuji's face.

"Keigo. It's great that you could come." Fuji walked over to the diva, releasing Ryoma out of the iron grip and kissed Monkey King on his mouth, his tongue licking over Monkey King's bottom lip. Ryoma felt the heat rising in his cheeks. Not good. The tensai released his affair out of the kiss and sat next to the diva, his arms sneaking around the neck and stroking Monkey King's hair gently. The sight confused Ryoma, made him unable to look away or move. "And I also see that he couldn't jump over his cold feet and join us."

"No, Ore-sama had tried to convince him but Yukimura asked him to stay with him as he wanted to discuss something about some inofficial match. Never mind, Ore-sama can see that you brought the brat over and it's all the more surprising that he is actually sleeping somewhere else than at his own bed when he had only a few hours ago a sweet and charming woman in his arms. You said it was your cousin, right?"

"Oh, right. You have seen her too. Don't you think they were kinda close to each other?" Fuji's orbs wandered from Monkey King to him and Ryoma felt the heat rising up his ears and neck faster than before.

He wanted to snap at them but got distracted again when his captain walked past him and in front of the sitting diva on the bed, kissing him on the mouth sweetly, innocently, only to join his boyfriends on the bed.

Monkey King rose an eyebrow at him, still waiting for his answer. Thankfully his captain saved him out of his misery, he was still too confused about the open display of affection between those three. This was certainly not a normal relationship between them. "His cousin will join us in nearly an hour. She will sleep here but as we don't have enough futons, one of us needs to share his bed with another person."

"I won't sleep with him in one bed, will not." Momoshiro said loudly and pointed at Atobe who huffed and flicked a stray of hair back.

"Don't worry. The great Ore-sama will only share his bed with his boyfriends and not with a second class tennis player who hasn't even the guts to tell the girl he finds attractive a compliment without stuttering or blushing."

"T-t-that was just... It wasn't like that, not at all!"

"It was. Ann told me herself about it."

"She wouldn't! She isn't such kinda girl and-"

"I'll share the bed with Tsukiko." Ryoma snipped with his fingers twice to get their attention and repeated his words. All eyes were directed at him and every one of them seemed confused and clueless about what he had just said.

"Keigo, you understand Sign Language, so what had he just said?"

"Ore-sama understands only a very little bit of it, Syu. However, Ore-sama believes that he probably wants to share his bed with her, aah?"

Ryoma nodded and couldn't continue any further with his way of conversation, which made him quite happy on the one hand because everybody would stop to look at him so stupidly, as Fuji gripped the opportunity to speak once more. "Saa, how about we play a g-"

"No."

"Mitsu, I-"

"No. Whatever game you want to play. I say no because we all know how it ends up." There was a tense quietness between those two and for a short moment Ryoma believed to see some sort of telepathic conversation between Tezuka and Fuji.

"Fine, then how about a movie? We could watch something funny till the last guest arrives?"

"Fuji-senpai, what do you mean with last guest? Where is the rest of us?"

The brunette seemed confused at first by Momoshiro's questions, nevertheless, he controlled his features soon enough, followed by the well-known smile. "Eiji and Oishi wanted to have some time alone, Kaidoh is with Inui as they had found a new training program and Taka is busy helping his father with the sushi shop. We'll meet them and the regulars from Hyotei tomorrow at the training camp. We'll take the train and meet up there with Ryuzaki-sensei who is already there, preparing everything for us."

"S-so I'm alone with you guys tonight? Ahahaha..."

"Is there something wrong, Momo?" The bitter sweet smile of Fuji's brought even Ryoma a shiver over his spine and it was truly not a good one. He could understand his senpai's distress. He was slowly but surely scared about the process of this sleepover.

"Of course not, let's just watch a movie." His spiky-haired senpai turned around and pulled randomly a movie out of Fuji's shelf, holding it up. "That seems to be a good one. Let's watch it!" Momoshiro reached for the DVD player and put the disk in it with quivering hands, sitting back hurriedly while pulling Ryoma, who had stood near the door all the time, with him onto the ground and pushed his bag to the others under the desk where nobody would fall over them.

His senpai seemed to know what would happen by a sleepover at the tensai's house because Ryoma was pushed, as if he was a barrier, between Fuji and Momoshiro. The spiky-haired teen sat on the ground with him and not on the bed like Fuji, Tezuka, Monkey King and the still unknown, lightly snoring teen.

"Great choice, Momo. It's actually one of my favorite movies." The deep chuckle sent another shiver over Ryoma's skin. What was going to happen? They all made themselves comfortable and Ryoma felt a sudden heat coming from his backside. Someone was sitting right behind him where a few seconds ago had been nobody. Turning around now and glaring at the person would be too direct, right?

Well... he would feel bad about glaring at Tezuka as he hadn't done anything to him... but the other two would have earned it.

The television jumped on and displayed two half naked guys in front of some buildings with people standing behind them, looking not really pleased about something. Fuji pressed play before anybody could ask questions and it was the moment which the sleeping guy on the bed assumed would be good to wake up. He blinked twice and yawned loudly, looking at the TV and blurting out the first words that came to his mind. "Ne, Keigo... Isn't it the ga-"

"Jiroh, sleep."

"Okay, Keigo, but I need to pee."

"Then go."

The other teen named Jiroh stood up and stumbled out of the room as if it was totally normal to obey someone like a slave. Strange, definitely strange. The movie went on and Ryoma couldn't quite help as to focus on the heat behind him instead of the film playing in front of him. The person behind him began to play with his hair. Petting, stroking and circling it around his finger.

He leaned forward, tried to dodge the touch and escape the heat a little bit. Useless as it seemed a second later. The person moved with him and the hand was immediately in his hair again, stroking and playing with it. The teen took a deep breath and groaned mentally. He stood still and rolled with his eyes, reaching with his left hand behind himself and slapping the other hand away.

Fuji chuckled and the mute was already turning around to tell his mind off but the sudden and loud scream coming from beside him, followed by a blushing and forward stumbling Momoshiro interrupted and stopped him. "Fuji-senpai! That's an adult gay movie!" Without another word, the spiky-haired teen rushed out.

Adult...

...Gay...

...Movie...

Ryoma blinked a couple of times before he directed his eyes to the movie playing on the television. Two guys were half naked and wildly, passionately kissing each other in an alley. The blush crept up in his cheeks, unstoppable. He didn't know what was worse - looking at the three guys behind him in their eyes or continuing to watch this embarrassing and confusing film.

Luckily for him, he didn't even need think about the answer as the door got opened soundly and Jiroh returned from the bathroom, sleep walking back inside and lying down onto one of the furthest futons. However, it didn't stop the tensai from teasing him. "So, Ryoma, you still haven't answered my first question. You and your cousin are quite close, aren't you?!"

The mute hadn't even decided where or what he should focus on with his eyes, so how could he answer such a question now? The movie was a horrible idea as the sounds alone gave him a fluttery feeling in his stomach and looking at the three guys lounging on the bed behind him was an even worse case as he didn't know what the tricky tensai would do if he merely glanced in those blue eyes. Looking at Jiroh made him tired and sleepy.

He had always been able to dodge such situations easily years ago but now he didn't know how to handle them.

"Syu..." Monkey King spoke up, rising from the bed and standing next to Ryoma. "...you shouldn't torture him so much if you want him to speak up...I mean in his language... as none of us speaks it fluently anyway." There was no sign of what the diva felt or why he was helping him, nonetheless, Ryoma was thankful for the surprising help. "You said, his cousin will be here soon, why not ask her instead?"

The mute felt all color drain from his face, replaced by paleness and cold sweat.

He really hoped his cousin wouldn't give them too many answer to their questions, wouldn't speak too much.

Sleepovers weren't his thing, Ryoma decided and watched as Atobe walked out of the room at the same time as the doorbell rang.

*Genkan is the entrance hall of a Japanese house where you leave your outdoor shoes.

*Ojama shimasu is said by entering someone's home and means along the lines "I'm going to get in your way." or "I will disturb you."