Archive: NO.
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Satisfaction
Chapter 5
By Miki
Yuuta yawned as he woke up. Still sleepy, he blinked a few times before he realised he was staring at Mizuki's face.
Mizuki was holding his alarm clock.
Yuuta blinked some more and then realised that his alarm clock looked broken.
Things were usually broken when they looked like they'd been trampled upon.
"Mizuki… what did you do to my alarm clock?" he asked, trying to shrink back into his pillow when Mizuki leaned forwards.
"I didn't do anything, Yuuta."
"Oh, then… Then why is it broken?"
Mizuki twirled a strand of hair and closed his eyes, looking annoyed.
"I don't know, but if it wasn't broken when you went to bed last night and it's broken now, then perhaps you should ask yourself."
"Oh… But I-" Yuuta began, only to be interrupted by Mizuki.
"Yuuta, you're going to be late for practise, and if you think I'm going to be nice to you just because you broke your own alarm clock, then I'm not." He opened his eyes and got off the bed.
It was then that Yuuta sat up and rubbed his eyes, looking at Mizuki properly. Strange, his shirt seemed kind of pink in patches.
"Mizuki."
"Yes, Yuuta?"
"Why does your shirt look pink?"
Mizuki tensed. "Because it is pink, Yuuta. Doesn't pink look good on yours truly?"
"But-"
"Hurry up Yuuta, I didn't come in and wake you up so you could waste more time," Mizuki snapped, walking to the door, opening it and then leaving.
Yuuta cursed for a moment, looking around for another clock in the room. There wasn't one.
He only realised when he reached the courts that actually he wasn't late at all.
Mizuki smiled almost sinisterly at him from the bench.
"Yuuta, come here."
(S)
"What sort of cheese are we talking about again?"
"Supermarket cheddar, does it really matter?" Atobe replied, raising an eyebrow at Jirou.
"I guess not… But you don't really like supermarket cheddar, do you?"
Atobe sighed a little, flicking his pen, lips pursed.
"So… the other plan didn't work?" Jirou asked hesitantly.
"What do you mean the other plan didn't work? I'm still on the other plan," Atobe replied quickly, irked.
"Oh… You mean you're still trying to catch the cheese because the mouse won't pay you any attention."
"Yes, but you see, Jirou, the cheese is equally oblivious to Ore-sama's talents."
"So now to get the mouse to notice you, you have to get the cheese to notice you first," Jirou smiled, sitting back against the tree.
Atobe put his fingers to his temple.
"Atobe, you know some weird sorts of cheeses."
(S)
Atobe felt decidedly nervous.
It wasn't a feeling he was used to, and it annoyed him.
Obviously there wasn't any real reason Ore-sama should have been nervous – ceteris paribus, all other things being equal, there was no way he'd ever be turned down under these circumstances – except that all other things were not equal, because he'd decided that Fuji Yuuta bordered on the abnormal. Like his brother.
Commoners really were a defective breed of people, he thought in annoyance.
(S)
The man at the front office gave him a long look and Atobe had to repeat his question twice before the idiot actually moved and picked up the phone.
"Hello Mizuki-kun… Yes… No, I'm afraid it's not… Yes… Could you please ask Yuuta to come down to the office? He has a visitor… I don't know, I think he said his name was Adobe."
"It's Atobe," Atobe interrupted, fingers twitching on the counter top.
"Atobe… apparently," the man corrected.
"And tell him to wear nice clothes," Atobe demanded, crossing his arms.
The man on the phone gave Atobe a look of annoyance, but passed on the message with a raised eyebrow.
Atobe really hated having to talk to people like this. Communicating was such a chore; he'd have rather left it to Kabaji.
Except that he didn't really want Kabaji to know about this – 'this' meaning the fact that he was at St Rudolph's boys dormitory and the fact that he wasn't here by accident or by appointment. 'This' was also the fact that he'd condescended so low as to bother chasing after someone like Fuji Yuuta and the fact that he was feeling horribly nervous and odd and oh, people were staring at him strangely.
They weren't stares of reverence. He'd have recognised those.
They were more similar to the stares Shishido had given Choutarou's lunch the other day.
Something along the lines of "do you really eat that stuff?"
Except that Ore-sama obviously wasn't meant to be eaten.
(S)
It was almost five minutes before Yuuta appeared.
He walked around the doorway from the stairwell, and tramped into the office, hands in his pockets, a kind of blank look on his face like he wasn't sure what to think.
Mizuki followed a moment later.
Atobe noted Mizuki was wearing a pink shirt – it looked like his uniform shirt had been thrown in with someone's red underpants in the wash – and he supposed he should have been glad Yuuta appeared to be wearing something half-decent, which wasn't pink.
He unconsciously smoothed down his own shirt – also pink, but deliberately pink, not accidentally.
It wouldn't do to be wearing matching colours after all. People might think they'd phoned each other up beforehand to ask what the other was wearing.
"Yuuta," he began, staring at the boy evenly. "What was so important that you kept Ore-sama waiting for so long?"
Yuuta stared back.
Mizuki didn't look happy.
Atobe, conscious of the looks he was getting, flicked his hair. "Well anyway, hurry up. We need to go," he said quickly, restraining from clicking his fingers.
"Go where?" Mizuki and Yuuta asked in unison.
"Dinner," Atobe responded quickly, wanting to make sure he was understood and obeyed.
"Who's going?" Yuuta asked, and Atobe could swear he was trying to be stupid.
"You, who else?" Atobe said impatiently, feeling silly standing here in the middle of the lobby of the dormitory, with all these silly St Rudolph boys pottering around in their house slippers.
He realised suddenly that neither Yuuta nor Mizuki was wearing house slippers, and panicked for a moment, wondering if they were already going out somewhere else.
Somewhere else would mean that Yuuta wasn't actually free to go out to dinner.
Which would mean Atobe would be rejected.
Which was something which hadn't yet happened.
And something he wasn't quite prepared for.
"Why?" Yuuta asked finally.
Atobe sighed. "Why what?" he asked back, trying to hide his nervousness with a look of well-practised exasperation.
"Why are you asking me out to dinner?"
"Look, it's five fifty-four and I'm hungry. That's why."
Yuuta turned to Mizuki, and Atobe found himself annoyed at the gesture.
There were a few mumbles he couldn't quite catch, and Mizuki twirling his hair and looking generally annoyed – that made two of them – and then Yuuta walked up to the man at the counter and gave him a pleading look and there was more discussion not involving Atobe, and then Yuuta finally turned around and looked at him and said:
"Okay."
Atobe blinked.
All that discussion and only a one word answer?
"Well, hurry up then," he ordered, walking out of the building to wait for Yuuta.
It was childish, he knew, but he couldn't help but feel a sense of relief; triumph even.
Of course Yuuta would never have thought to turn him down.
Nervousness was unbecoming on Ore-sama, he reminded himself, and gave Yuuta a disapproving look as he walked slowly out of the building.
Someone had to remind him who was in charge here.
(S)
"Where are we actually going?" Yuuta asked as he squirmed uncomfortably in the backseat of the limousine.
Atobe watched him with interest. "Dinner; I said so before. Is there something wrong with eating dinner at this time?"
Yuuta shook his head and continued looking uncomfortable. The condensation from his bottle of Coca Cola was making his hand wet, and Atobe noted he hadn't actually drunk any of it at all.
In fact, Yuuta looked almost as uncomfortable as if Atobe had ordered him to sit on a cactus.
He wondered if it was because Yuuta was just now beginning to understand the brilliance of his companion and felt inadequate by comparison.
Well, no matter. Most people felt inadequate standing in his shadow, or anywhere near him at that.
"So, Yuuta, how was your day?" Atobe asked. He'd asked Jirou about the sorts of small talk commoners liked to engage in, and Jirou had stated the obvious first; the mundane.
Apparently Yuuta thought it was a relatively normal question, because he answered without hesitation.
"Okay… I mean, tennis practise was normal and everything. School was okay."
Atobe nodded and took a sip of his drink, noting that no one had ever told Yuuta to construct his answers in a logical manner before he spoke them. It was a skill his parents had instilled in him at a young age, and one which he kept.
"Your manager is Mizuki Hajime, correct?"
Yuuta nodded. "Mizuki-san… Why?"
Atobe shrugged. "I heard rumours about him and I must say, I'm not sure he lives up to them."
"Mizuki is a good manager," Yuuta said quickly, and Atobe smirked.
"Well, good enough for a school like St Rudolph anyway."
Yuuta scowled. "Mizuki-san's been really good to me. He's the only person who never saw me as Fuji Syuusuke's little brother. You shouldn't badmouth Mizuki-san without knowing anything."
"You seem to like Mizuki a lot," Atobe observed, lips curling. "Well, that's good I suppose. You can make up for everyone else then."
He turned his head to look out the window as the limousine came to a stop at a set of lights.
Looking in the window, he watched Yuuta's reflection for a moment, regarding the head of short brown hair, the wide grey eyes and the scar near his temple.
He could perhaps be more aesthetically pleasing, although it wasn't as though he was entirely unattractive to the naked eye as he was…
He was frowning a little at the moment, and Atobe smiled a little in amusement. He'd noticed Yuuta did that a lot.
Where Fuji Syuusuke would smile, Yuuta would frown.
Then Atobe felt the limousine slow and he focused his attention on the scene beyond Yuuta's reflection.
"We're here," he announced, waiting as the driver ran around to open the back door.
Jirou had suggested that western cutlery sometimes intimidated commoners. He'd said the less forks and knives, the better.
Atobe had pondered Jirou's advice and decided that it was worth a try.
He wasn't sure how accurate it could be coming from a boy who was still asking him why he'd want to take cheese to dinner.
Atobe had told him that there was no such thing as a bring-your-own-cheese restaurant and to hurry up and finish his match with Oshitari.
At any rate, Atobe had immediately ruled out Japanese food. No, something European would be far better, he'd thought.
In the end, he'd chosen a French restaurant, and he'd even had to bother making the reservation himself. (These sorts of restaurants were often full unless your name was Atobe, and Kabaji could be rather rough in communicating over the telephone.)
"After you," Atobe drawled, amused as Yuuta stepped out of the vehicle and stalled, staring up at the building.
"Is this it?" Yuuta asked quietly, fidgeting.
"No, we just parked in front of this restaurant so we could walk another five blocks to McDonalds," Atobe replied with a roll of his eyes.
It took Yuuta a moment to recognise the sarcastic tone in Atobe's voice, and when he did, he gave Atobe a half-smile as he followed him inside.
Luckily for Atobe, there was a doorman standing by to open the door for them or he might just have walked straight into it.
.tbc.