The room was dark and the only illumination came from the 52" plasma TV on one side of the room. On the screen, Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany were engaged in a heated argument about something I wasn't quite sure of. Personally, I only paid attention to the screen whenever the tennis match scenes were on2.

Nestled snugly beside Yuushi, I leaned up to whisper in his ear, "I swear, you pick the sappiest chick flicks you can find just to annoy me!"

He gave a low chuckle that sent delicious shivers down my spine. That took me by surprise—that was not the reaction I usually got when Yuushi chuckled like that. But over the last couple of days, things had been changing. I kept noticing little things about Yuushi that I had never really paid attention to before. I wasn't entirely sure I liked where my little observations and reactions were taking me. This was a ploy to get people off my back about Yuushi, damn it! I shouldn't be getting caught up in it!

"Are you feeling cold?" Yuushi asked me softly.

I shook my head to answer in the negative. "Why do you ask?"

Yuushi gave a small shrug. "I thought I felt you shiver."

I was thankful for the dark that hid the burning I felt on my cheeks. "Nah, it was just the overwhelming sap in this movie."

I could hear the restless rustling and fidgeting from the others in the room. Just like me, the only reasons they were tolerating this movie was (1) because Yuushi chose it and they didn't want to hurt his feelings by expressing outright distaste for his movie pick (besides, when Atobe put Yuushi in charge of movie night, everyone more or less expected that the movie would be something like this) and (2) because the Wimbledon scenes made it bearable.

Desperately trying to stave off the boredom, I tugged at Yuushi's shirt. "Ne, are the others looking at us?"

He gave me that low chuckle again. "Can't you feel their eyes practically boring holes into our sides? I swear they've been watching us more than they have the movie."

I snickered at the thought of them trying to see what Yuushi and I were up to in the dark. I'm pretty sure that the back and forth whispering we were doing looked absolutely suspicious to them.

"Want to do something to freak them out?" Yuushi whispered conspiratorially to me.

I just looked at him in question.

His smile looked positively wicked as he tilted my chin up with a finger and leaned in close to me. My eyes shot wide open, my breath got stuck in my throat, and my mouth dried up so damned fast that I thought my tongue had just glued itself permanently to the roof of my mouth. But instead of the kiss that I thought was coming, he tilted my head at a certain angle and the corner of his mouth touched the corner of mine.

"Relax," he whispered to me, his voice a damned silken thing, "we're only pretending, remember?" And with that, he pulled back and let my head rest against his shoulder.

We both silently laughed when we heard Atobe's hissed, "Damn it, Shishido! I told you to move your head! I didn't get to see!"

Tiny beads of perspiration were starting to roll down Yuushi's back and his breath was beginning to come out in little pants. Despite the unkempt look that he was currently sporting because of the hair plastered to his face by sweat, I still thought Yuushi was the most gorgeous-looking creature I had ever seen in my life. The rhythmic sway of his hips had me hypnotized. But I snapped out of my daze in a hurry when I heard Shishido snickering beside me.

"Tongue back in your mouth, Gakuto," he said in an annoyingly sing-song voice.

Sitting in an overstuffed chair to my right, I heard Hiyoshi muttering things under his breath about "shouldn't be ogling his boyfriend in public" and "could see that all the time when they're alone, anyway".

I was saved from having to lash out at Shishido and the stupid mushroom by the song ending and Yuushi walking over to me. For the last day of our "training camp", Atobe regally declared that we were to have a DDR tournament. Honestly! The things that went on in Atobe's head…

I threw a small towel at Yuushi with a scowl. "You seriously need more stamina training if five songs in a row on DDR could wind you like that."

He looked a bit puzzled by the slight venom in my tone but he only shrugged it off and mildly defended himself with, "Five songs in a row on Maniac level."

"Whatever!"

"Yo, mop-top, if you think you could do better, why don't you give it a go?" Shishido jeered at me.

"You're on!" I accepted the challenge.

"But we get to pick the song," Shishido stipulated. I lost a teensy bit of my confidence at that, but I nodded my acceptance, anyway.

I was standing at the ready on the dance pad when I saw the song that Shishido picked for me. "Fascination –eternal love mix-3?" I shrieked out at him. "You've gotta be effing kidding me! That thing has a 10-footer difficulty rating!"

"Admitting defeat so soon, ahn?" Atobe smirked at me.

"Like hell I am! Bring it!" I shouted at the gloating jerk.

… I was barely into the third line of the song and I was already in danger of failing. I could hear the smug snickering around me.

"Aw, c'mon, Gakuto! What happened to all that dexterity and sharp reflexes that you're so proud of?" Shishido taunted me.

"Shut up, freak!" I snapped back even as I was frantically jumping around the dance pad. "I said I was acrobatic, I never claimed to be an octopus! With all these arrows all over the place and the irregular beats, how am I supposed to get all of them? Besides," I sniped, "I don't think I've seen any of you guys attempt to do this song before."

And then I almost jumped out of my skin when I felt Yuushi's body flush against my back. I almost fell over in my surprise and my voice came out sounding two octaves higher when I squawked at him in flustered alarm, "Yuushi! What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

He splayed a large hand on my stomach to help me keep my balance but that also kept my backside in constant contact with the front of his hips. God, this can NOT be a good thing.

"Relax," Yuushi whispered into my ear. "We can finish this song together; I'll help you."

And so he did. Part of what makes us such an effective doubles pair is that Yuushi has always been good at reading me. We didn't even need to talk about who was going to get which arrows, he just knew which ones I was going to go for and so he got those that I couldn't. As we were on that dance pad, sinfully mooshed together in places I wouldn't even tell my mother about, everything fell away. There was nothing else but me and Yuushi and the beat that flowed in us, through us, around us.

If I thought earlier that the sight of Yuushi's hips were hypnotizing, then that had nothing on this feeling of our hips bumping, grinding, and swaying together. I was in a trance where it seemed as though all my senses have been heightened, but they were all geared towards sensing only Yuushi. I felt him, felt all the places where he touched me, felt the heat that his body was radiating. I saw him, saw how that hand of his splayed on my stomach seemed to be screaming of possession. I heard him, heard the slightly accelerated tempo of his heart, heard the heavy puffs of breath he blew out… that sound made my own even breathing turn ragged. I could smell him and hell! If I could bottle that smell and sell it as an aphrodisiac, I'd be a freaking millionaire! And dear God, we were so close that I could almost taste him…

And then the song ended.

I blinked owlishly as though waking up from a dream. I looked around to find everyone looking at me and Yuushi as though we just did the dirty right in front of them… and when I thought about it, we might as well have. My face burned up and I didn't know what to say. I certainly wasn't up to looking at Yuushi just then, or I just might have treated my friends to a first-hand viewing of spontaneous human combustion.

I stepped away from Yuushi, mumbled some lame excuse about needing to get something from my room and beat a hasty retreat.

I ran back to the room I shared with Yuushi in a panic. The weird churning in my stomach, the wild pounding in my chest, the breath getting stuck in my throat… Those weren't part of the plan. They weren't supposed to happen. The fact that they were happening was throwing me for a loop! It was hurting my brain.

I went to stand by the window and breathed in deeply of the salt-tinged air to calm myself, but the lean, muscled arms that encircled me from behind immediately had my heart racing again.

"Ne, Yuushi, you don't have to do this," I said in a tightly controlled voice. "Nobody's here to see anyway."

Yuushi's arms tightened around me even more. "I'm not doing this for them; I'm doing this for you," his voice always sounded so danged silky and sexy when he whispered into my hair like that. How come I never noticed that before? Yuushi likes whispering into my hair whenever I'm upset—it calms me down more effectively than anything else can. "You looked distressed when you left the room. Is everything alright?"

"Yeah," I answered softly. Yuushi snorted into my hair.

I frowned. "You better not have gotten snot into my hair, Yuushi!"

He chuckled.

Sexily.

Damn! I am so screwed!

I turned around in Yuushi's arms (since he was obviously unwilling to relinquish his hold on me), and I looked up at him to find him studying the top of my head. I called his name so he'd look at me. The second his eyes met mine, I almost wished he'd go back to staring at the top of my head.

"Ne, maybe we could stop pretending now," I said thoughtfully. "The others guys aren't quite as annoying anymore, so I guess I can live with some of their teasing every now and then."

Yuushi laughed at me. "Gakuto, you have never taken teasing of any sort nicely. I doubt you ever will; not even if your life depended on it."

I stuck my tongue out at him like the mature individual that I was. "Well, gee! Thanks for the vote of confidence," I snapped out sarcastically.

He made soothing little circles with his hands on my back to placate me. "Maa, I just know you too well."

"At any rate, I still think that I could handle the guys on my own now," I said stubbornly. "You don't have to pretend to like me anymore."

Yuushi arched a brow at me. "Who said I was pretending?"

I rolled my eyes at him and pushed against his chest. "You are such an ass!" My heart was starting to pound so hard that I was almost sure Yuushi could hear it.

"And this," Yuushi breathed out in that low, velvety voice of his as he pulled me against his chest, "is why people think you're such an airhead."

He leaned down close until I could feel his moist breath against my lips. His eyes were studying mine and I'm sure mine reflected the conflicting emotions and the reeling confusion I had swirling in my gut. "God, you are so clueless!" Yuushi muttered before he claimed my lips in a possessive kiss.

And all the gut-wrenching confusion was calmed; all the voices inside my head were silenced. Yes. Just… yes. This is what I have been wanting. Yuushi's arms tightened around me in a bone-crushing embrace even as he deepened the kiss. I was so caught up in it that I had no choice but to respond to Yuushi's passion. It wasn't until I whimpered from lack of air that Yuushi broke the kiss.

"You are an ass," I accused Yuushi.

He raised a silent, questioning brow at me.

"You knew all the time, didn't you?" I looked at him suspiciously. "You knew it was going to end up like this."

"Pretty much, yes." Yuushi answered smugly. "You always were slow on the uptake like that. You didn't even realize how much I wanted you. It was only a matter of time before I got you, you know."

"Ass!" I said again. He just gave me his customary smirk-smile and was just about to lean down to kiss me again, when we heard the hectic whispering and arguing just outside the door—which was, incidentally, opened just a crack.

"Pay up, Shishido! I told you it was just an act!"

"Shut up! I ain't paying you a cent, Atobe. They're not acting now, are they?"

"But the bet was about the past 3 days, not for what's happening now."

"Ssshhh! Atobe-buchou, Shishido-san, they're gonna hear you…"

"Too late for that now," Yuushi informed the spies by the door. "Could you settle your accounts elsewhere? And close the door properly, please. I'd like to make out with my boyfriend. In private, if you don't mind."

Scrambling noises were heard on the other side of the door before we heard the lock click into place.

"Now where were we…?"

Omake:

We were all sluggishly making our way down from the bus and going out into the bright sunlight. The "training camp" had been eventful in more ways than any of us could have ever imagined… and it wasn't over just yet.

"Isn't everyone out already?" Atobe asked, stamping his feet impatiently. "You'd think that after four straight hours cooped up in a bus, you'd be more than eager to get out of it when you reach your destination."

Yuushi pushed up his glasses and looked at the shuttle bus. "I believe that Hiyoshi-kun and Taki are still--"

"Whaaaaat?!" We all heard Hiyoshi shriek from inside the bus. "But I thought Mukahi-senpai was only kidding about that!"

There was the sound of pattering feet and then we saw Hiyoshi shooting out of the bus and running off like a bat out of hell. Taki emerged from the bus only a little later.

"What the hell was that about?" Shishido asked.

Taki scratched his head in puzzlement. "I just confessed to him… I thought it would be alright." And then he turned to look at me, "Ne, Mukahi, what exactly did you tell Hiyoshi?"

owari
La Fuego
07/10/2008

That's it! Done! I hope you guys enjoyed it. Comments and Reviews would be deeply appreciated!