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A/N: Isn't it wonderful when the site won't let you upload anything at times?
Nothing in Tennis
"Love means nothing in tennis, but in life, it is everything."
- Anonymous
Chapter 7
Protectiveness
Watching the tendrils of cigarette smoke reaching up towards the ceiling of his room, Akutsu thought of everything Sengoku had said. The redhead was right, he supposed. Not even he was stupid enough not to have seen the boy's obvious adoration for him. Perhaps he should have acted earlier if he wanted to have Dan. He could really blame only himself.
Then again, he had never been in the habit of doing so.
Now, that was not true. There had been a time when he'd held himself responsible for several things, both ones that were his fault and ones that weren't. However, he'd long since outgrown that. He knew all too well just when he was responsible for something and when he wasn't, and even when the case was the former, it was usually all too easy to blame others nevertheless. So, obviously, it wasn't his fault that Dan hadn't realized not strangling the brat when he was particularly annoying was as good as an "I love you" when coming from Akutsu.
Blaming yourself meant you were also responsible for creating a solution. And Akutsu very much doubted his solutions to problems would have gained social acceptance, given that they tended to be rather violent most of the time. Hell, not even most of the time. He couldn't recall when he'd last solved a problem without violence or threats thereof.
The issue of Dan, after all, was very much unsolved, yet.
Even if he couldn't have Dan to himself, though, he wanted to protect the kid. This was completely uncharacteristic of him; usually he wouldn't have bothered himself with the problems of others if they didn't concern him directly. And, as not only had Dan picked Sengoku over him but was actually refusing to have any interaction with him, not even the simple "Hello" he gave to everyone he knew even remotely, this clearly did not concern Akutsu in any way.
Except that the thought of Dan suffering at the hands of such a bastard rubbed him in every wrong way possible.
He didn't know what was so special about the brat, really. He was just another little kid who played tennis too well and thought far too much of the stupid sport. At least he didn't have the big mouth of Echizen's, but that wasn't much of a plus. Before, Akutsu had been able to explain away his interest for the kid with the excuse of Dan not being afraid of him – this was, after all, a very rare occurrence. However, he'd seen Dan being afraid of him, now. And even if it was only because the bastard had stripped him of some of his naïve trust, it still destroyed that excuse. The other excuse, that of Dan always hanging around him, was void now, too. There was no way he should be interested in Dan or his well-being.
If he'd asked Kawamura, Akutsu was sure, the other boy would have told him some crap about love and caring and whatnot. Which was exactly why he wasn't asking Kawamura. The idiot already thought he was softer than he actually was. See if he was ever going to save the idiot from cracking his skull open on the stands again.
Whatever the reasons, the fact remained that he wanted to protect Dan. And while this may have been quite an admirable goal otherwise, Akutsu was far too aware that his usual methods of protection would hardly be acceptable in Dan's mind.
After all, however much the boy may have hated his father right now, Akutsu suspected he would still have been upset to see the bastard killed.
It was somewhat twisted, wasn't it, that Akutsu only knew the way of violence as far as it came to protection. And that the last time he had ever bothered to protect anyone but himself he had ended up taking the most violent way possible.
It had been quiet that night, he remembered. Quiet, and cold, too. The floor had been freezing under his tiny feet as he padded over to where he heard the man's snoring.
His mother was not in the bed, he knew that much. She'd fallen down in kitchen and not gotten up. He wasn't sure whether she would get up; much though he hated to admit it, he was too scared to go and check. And if she never got up, he'd be left alone with the man.
If he were alone with the man, little Jin knew, he'd eventually fall and not get up, too. The man was like that. Nothing could last for long around him.
He stood by the bed, now, clad only in his pyjamas that only barely concealed his bruises, looking at the man as he slept. The snoring was loud, far too loud, like he was trying to fill the whole little apartment with his presence even when he wasn't awake. Was he truly that desperate to control all of their lives?
His mother didn't snore. She was too nice for that. The man snored and sometimes woke his mother up, but his mother never dared to say a thing because she knew he would get mad at her. Jin thought she was better off quiet; the man didn't need any more reasons to be angry.
Mostly it was him, he knew. He always did something wrong and made the man angry. One day he'd make the man too angry and that'd be the end for him.
Unless the end came for the man, first.
Padding over the freezing floor to the other side of the bed, little Jin then climbed up to the Western-style bed, quietly crawling over the sheets. The sheets on this side of the bed smelled of his mother, and for a moment he was tempted to curl up in them and forget it all. But the man would eventually get up, and he wasn't sure if his mother would, and he really didn't have that much time. He had to act now.
It was a bad thing to use his mother's pillow for something like this, Jin knew, but it wasn't like he had any others. The only other pillow in sight was under the man's head and he couldn't get it from there without risking waking him up. Therefore, it was his mother's pillow that he clutched in his hands, creeping slowly towards the man.
The man slept like a log, thankfully, and didn't wake even as Jin reached forward to place the pillow over his face. Leaning over the pillow, Jin used his whole weight to hold the pillow over the man's face. The snores faded behind the pillow, until they stopped altogether. Jin didn't dare let go yet, though. He had to be sure it would be the man who didn't wake up again and not him.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he dared to let go of the pillow. Taking it off the man's face, he listened for a moment. There were no breaths, no snores. There was nothing.
He placed the pillow on the bed beside him. Still nothing.
More daring now, Jin grasped on the man's arm and started pulling. Nobody would believe a pillow had just flown onto his face, that much even little Jin knew. Getting more and more bold as the man still showed no signs of waking up, he strained himself until he managed to roll the man over. It wasn't easy, not with the man being so heavy, but Jin was strong for his age and had plenty of adrenaline to make up for what strength he may have lacked. Finally, the man was lying on his stomach with his face pressed into the pillow.
Good. Very good.
Slipping down to the floor, Jin shivered as the cold again crept into the soles of his little feet. Quietly getting around the bed again, he headed for the kitchen to get the phone.
Despite his age, Jin knew the emergency number by heart. He'd had to use it one time too many. This time, however, he was almost glad to dial it.
"Hello?" he said quietly as he heard someone on the other end of the line. "Please help me, my mum and dad won't wake up no matter what I do…"
His father had gone away, he had told everyone afterwards, and if he'd been somewhat glad to announce this he had hid it well. Nobody ever asked him to elaborate, or if they did he never complied, and eventually everyone just accepted this as the truth. They probably concluded his father had run away, which was just as well; that certainly wasn't any worse than some of the rumours already circulating about their family. The family that now, thankfully, only consisted of himself and his mother.
He suspected his mother knew the truth, though, even as the official statement was the man had been drunk and unfortunate enough to smother himself on his pillow in his sleep. What else could they have concluded, really, when the only other people in the apartment except for the man were a little kid and a woman he had beaten unconscious before going to bed? His mother looked at him, though, and there was sadness in her eyes that couldn't be there because of the man.
Jin didn't understand it, really. Wasn't it better that the man went away than the two of them? The man had never done anyone any good. He knew it wasn't right to do so, not in theory, but he was sure he hadn't done anything wrong in ending the man's life. The bastard had been uncaring, cold, abusive, everything most people despised. Everything Jin himself had grown up to be.
Despite their similarities, Jin did not feel regret. He was fairly certain that even though he had taken after his father, more so than he would have liked to, he was still nowhere as bad as the bastard. And to this day, as he lay in his bed and watched the smoke curling up towards the ceiling, he couldn't recall ever feeling a single bit of remorse for that deed.
Perhaps it was the bastard's genes that had made him as violent as he was, he mused. That or the example he'd got as a kid – or perhaps both. It certainly appealed to his somewhat warped sense of justice to think that the man had died because he had caused his son to become a person who could kill someone without an ounce of regret. Sure, he had never killed anyone else, or even seriously considered it, but he knew he was certainly capable of such a thing and had been ever since he was a child.
Now, thinking of Dan's frightened eyes and bruises on the pale skin, he found himself idly wondering whether he'd be willing to take the risk of getting caught doing so again.
There was no one else he would have done it for, certainly. While he was all too fond of senseless violence, murder was something that was a lot harder to get out of without serious repercussions. He was too selfish to get into that much trouble for anyone but himself. Or anyone but himself or Dan, as the case seemed to be. Peculiar, indeed.
Biting down on his cigarette, Akutsu raised his hands before his eyes, looking at them. They weren't pretty hands, by any means, pale and large and calloused. They'd shed blood more times than he could count – and yes, they had killed. His hands were just as impure as the rest of him, heart and soul, if he did indeed possess such things.
To think of using such hands to help something so very pure was practically blasphemy. Yet, he couldn't help but yearn to do so.
Clearly, he was damned.