Rating: PG
Disclaimer: not mine, cool? cool.
"Kirihara refused to talk to the rest of us. Yanagi and Yukimura also decided not to say anything." Yagyuu brushed a strand of hair away from Niou's face. He was sitting on the chair in Niou's room. Niou lay on his bed, holding a bag of ice wrapped in a towel against his lip. The bleeding had stopped, but it still ached when not numbed by the ice.
"The twisted punk. I'm going to get him for that. Did Yukimura at least assign him laps?" Niou draped his other arm over his eyes. He had a minor headache from the hit to the side of his head, but was certain it'd go away if he just took a nap.
"Yea, fifty every day for a week. He also scolded Kirihara in front of everyone, about disrespecting senpai and hurting other club members." Yagyuu moved to sit on Niou's bed. "Masaharu, can you remember saying anything that might have set him off?"
"No; we barely talked at all. He was being all pissy and stuff, so we didn't even talk about the game." Niou could feel Yagyuu bending down over him and didn't resist when Yagyuu pushed his hands away and pressed a kiss to his lips. His lip stung, but it didn't matter, not when Yagyuu was just barely pressing his tongue inside his mouth.
"Do you have any idea how worried I was?" Yagyuu muttered when they broke apart, touching their foreheads together. "When I saw you lying on the ground. For once, it felt like I couldn't run fast enough."
Niou opened his eyes and looked straight into Yagyuu's warm, worried gaze over his glasses. He couldn't focus since Yagyuu was too close, and let his eyes fall shut again to keep from getting dizzy. "I'm sorry." He wrapped his arms around Yagyuu's neck, bag of ice forgotten by his pillow.
"Don't be. Just never be in that position again." Yagyuu pulled Niou to a sitting position and hugged him, hard.
"I'm OK. You don't have to worry so much; it's just a cut."
"I know, but it just reminded me so much of Yukimura last year." Yagyuu's arms loosened and he helped Niou lie back down slowly. Niou imagined how he must've looked to the rest of them, and realized suddenly why Yagyuu had been so freaked out. When Yukimura collapsed, they had all been so scared. That first time they sat in the waiting room at the hospital was one of the worst experiences of his life, and he sincerely hoped to never go through it again.
"I'm sorry. Next time, I won't fall." Niou grinned, ignoring how the stretch stung his lip, and Yagyuu couldn't help but smile back at him.
"I'm sorry, Niou-senpai. It won't ever happen again." Kirihara bowed.
"Don't worry about it, kid. Just go do your laps." Aside from a fat lip and a lump mostly hidden by his hair, Niou looked none the worse for wear. When Kirihara headed off to his laps, Niou turned to Yukimura and Yanagi. "So, what happened?"
"You don't want to know. It doesn't concern you."
"What do you mean it doesn't concern me? I think I deserve to know why he attacked me." The lump on his head was starting to throb lightly. He took a deep breath to calm down.
"That's Yukimura's way of telling you he doesn't think you should know." Marui spoke the very words Niou was thinking.
"Yanagi." Niou stared at Yanagi unflinchingly. "Does this have anything to do with you?" Yanagi exchanged a glance with Yukimura before nodding once. Niou growled, frustrated. "This kind of distrust isn't good for the team, you know. We can't win Nationals if the rest of us think that Kirihara's a bomb waiting for a trigger."
Yanagi exchanged another series of glances with Yukimura. Niou had no idea how they conversed like that - he knew Yagyuu pretty well and he still had to use words with Yagyuu. "He thinks it's unfair that you get both Yanagi and Yagyuu." As always, Yukimura's explanation was blunt and concise.
"Oh." Niou thought back to when he had received the text message from Yanagi. He had just assumed that Yanagi turned him down out of lack of interest. Was it possible that Yanagi turned down Kirihara because of something else? He shook his head. It didn't matter anymore - he was with Yagyuu now, even if Yukimura did use the present tense.
That weekend, after they utterly destroyed Kabuto in straight sets, they checked the scoreboards and noted that Nagoya Seitoku and Shitenhouji had also swept their matches. Only the Hyoutei-Seigaku match was still undecided, so they headed in the direction of the loud cheers. Seigaku's first year genius had just finished winning singles two - Niou sneaked a peak at Yanagi's response to having missed Inui's match. Yanagi didn't show any outward reaction though. The next match was Shishido-Ohtori versus Kikumaru-Oishi.
"Finally - second and third doubles one teams battle it out." Niou propped an elbow on Yagyuu's shoulder and leaned on it. "Let's see if the Golden Pair can keep their spot."
"Second and third? Aren't you forgetting Shitenhouji and Nagoya Seitoku?" Yagyuu placed an arm around Niou's waist. While Niou was fine with ignoring the concept of personal space, he wasn't very big on the whole pubic display of affection bit. He pulled away slightly and Yagyuu immediately got the hint, letting his errant arm drop back to his side before fixing his glasses and folding his arms in front of his chest.
"Well, Shitenhouji, perhaps. Definitely not Nagoya Seitoku though." As they watched, the two teams played themselves into a tiebreak, eventually won by Hyoutei. "Huh. I wonder how they ever got considered golden. We beat them, Hyoutei beat them, and I heard they lost some match in the prefecturals, too."
"Whatever Masaharu. As long as we're platinum, it really doesn't matter, right?" Yagyuu smiled down at him, acknowledging the moniker of platinum pair for the first time. Niou learned the meaning of the phrase "warm and fuzzy feeling" - it was just this. Yagyuu smiling at him with the sun warming their skin, both of them knowing that they wouldn't lose when together.
Singles one was going to be interesting. Atobe had a new move that could supposedly beat Sanada, and Tezuka was fully healed. Atobe went through his pre-match antics again, causing Sanada to roll his eyes and Yukimura to smile. "Atobe will never change, will he." The rematch was powerful from the start, both players jumping immediately to full power, neither willing to back an inch.
Several minutes later, Niou pointed out, "Yukimura, that Ice World thing isn't all that strong..." Yukimura didn't reply, eyes glued to the match, lips pressed tightly together.
A long heartbeat after that, Kirihara breathed. "Wow."
When the match was over, Niou's lips felt chapped. He took a drink of water. "Huh. Where did Tezuka learn how to do that?" No one answered him.
Later that evening, Yukimura called Niou and Yagyuu while they were having a quiet dinner, interrupting their silent musings over the Atobe-Tezuka match. "Come to the courts. We need to talk." When they arrived, all the Regulars except Kirihara were already there. "You all saw Tezuka today. Seigaku will doubtlessly make it past Shitenhouji into the finals - even Chitose can't stop Tezuka now. We need to be prepared for them."
Yanagi stepped in. "We need Akaya to awaken before the finals. His demon mode could go farther; he just hasn't been pushed to the degree where he needs to yet. It's too risky to do it against Seigaku, but the semifinals are a distinct possibility. Nagoya Seitoku is just about the right strength. We thought about putting him in singles two and throwing the first two matches. Akaya will end up winning six-four, and we'll be able to clean up doubles and singles one pretty easily after that."
"What lineup are you proposing then?" Marui looked concerned. Niou looked around - everyone's face held a similar concern, and he was certain his own did as well. Tezuka was strong, stronger than Sanada, for sure. If Yukimura hadn't been taken out for the entire season, he probably could beat Tezuka, but as it was, it'd take a miracle for Yukimura to be that recovered by the finals.
"Yagyuu in singles three, Jackal-Marui in doubles two, Akaya in singles two, Niou and myself in doubles one, and Genichirou in singles one."
"Wait, Yanagi, why am I in singles?" Generally, people didn't complain about being put in singles. Yagyuu, apparently, did. Niou was also surprised - why would Yanagi put himself with Niou? It would've made sense back when Niou couldn't even look at Yagyuu, but that wasn't the case anymore. If anything, his and Yagyuu's combination had only gotten stronger.
"You and Niou play with your opponents too much. We agreed that we need to simply destroy them in the last two matches to prove that the first two losses were in fact planned and to not show Seigaku too much."
"We could do that too," Niou jumped in. "I mean, when we get serious, Hiro and I are pretty unstoppable."
"We know this. They do not. Save it for the finals." For the first time that day, Sanada spoke. He'd been less involved in line-ups and practice since Yukimura's return, and had been more focused on Yukimura's health and his own practice instead. "We'll need your entire strength there." Niou wondered if Sanada was worried about having to play Tezuka. It shouldn't matter, because Tezuka played singles one and really, he was the only player from Seigaku that held any threat at all.
"Fine, fine. As long as Yagyuu and I play together in the finals." He wasn't so sure about the playing with Yanagi bit. It was going to be awkward, but for the sake of the team, he could handle it. He would handle it.
"Of course, Niou. You two will be the top doubles team at Nationals." Yanagi nodded at him, and it was settled.
At some point, this switched from just a romance story to my rewriting Nationals... my opinion on how the Nationals should've gone can be found on FET forums - I'm using some of those lineups instead, just because I can. .>
Oh well. We'll return to the drama soon. I mean, Niou-Yanagi doubles? That's just asking for it.
