Prince Of Tennis Fan Fiction ❯ Reflections of Myself - Rikkaidai AU - Niouyagyuu ❯ Chapter 6

"Reflections of Myself" Chapter 6

A Prince of Tennis Rikkaidai AU Fic

By Andrea Readwolf [andrea_readwolf @hotmail.com]

 

Miss something? Take a look at the <a href=" http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=readwolflair&keyword =%22Reflections+of+Myself%22&filter=all">Previous Chapters</a>

 

 

Date Started: May 2005

Word Count: 3298

 

 

 

"Reflections of Myself" Chapter 6

 

Hiroshi texted him shortly before five--he was there already; whenever Masaharu was ready.

 

Just like him to show up early, Masaharu thought, trudging down the steps towards the ticket counter bank like a man walking into his verdict hearing. He pressed up against one of the support pillars--the second column on the right, right across from the third ticket machine, like always--and was really proud of his voice for sounding so calm and normal when he spoke.

 

"So, where we going?" he asked nonchalantly, pulling a pack of cool mint gum out of his back pocket and tapping out two sticks.

 

"Tokyo," Hiroshi answered, reaching back for the stick of gum as he continued to lean against the opposite side of the column.

 

Masaharu let the wrapper drop as he started chewing. "Any place particular?"

 

"Shibuya? Harujuku? Ueno?" He didn't have to see it to know Hiroshi shrugged. "It doesn't really matter, does it?"

 

"As long as it's away from here?" Masaharu hazard.

 

They stepped away from the pillar together, heading towards the gates. They didn't have long to wait for the next train into Tokyo. Masaharu tried to look at Hiroshi surreptitiously from the corner of his eyes, but the other teen looked no different than usual. They'd met here, made this trip together over a hundred times before.

 

Kilometers raced away beneath the track wheels. They were lucky enough to score seats. People got on; People got off. Hiroshi didn't say anything; neither did Masaharu. They switched trains after reaching Shibuya; Masaharu left Hiroshi to lead. They did it all without talking.

 

Apparently Shinjuku was their tentative destination, because three stops away from Shibuya, they got off. Shinjuku wasn't a bad place to hang--normally not as crowded as Shibuya or Harajuku, but it still had a rep.

 

Hiroshi stopped outside the station in one of the parks that broke up the high rise hotel and office buildings. It was empty of even the occasional bum. Masaharu didn't care really, but he did kind of wonder why the Hiroshi was taking them so far away from others. Unless he didn't want to be surrounded by any possible acquaintances.

 

Was Hiroshi going to beat him up? Masaharu decided he would let him. If Hiroshi wanted to hit him or kick him, he'd let him. After all, this was a pretty big secret he'd kept from his partner and supposed best friend.

 

Then again, he'd really had hoped he could play this game without the truth ever coming out. Maybe that was stupid and naive of him, but he really had hoped...

 

It figured that his father would mess things up for him. Masaharu didn't much care what his father thought or wanted, but Hiroshi was another matter. Hiroshi was his friend and partner. Masaharu didn't want to lose that because of who his father was. He wouldn't have to be worrying about it if the man hadn't gone and tried to bully his way today. If he'd just continued to leave Masaharu and his mom alone...

 

Did Hiroshi hate him now? Would he want Masaharu to leave Rikkaidai? Hiroshi had been there first, but Masaharu had friends there, too, now.

 

Gods, there was no way Hiroshi would still want to play tennis with him after this, Masaharu was convinced. He'd probably want nothing to do with Masaharu. He'd really screwed up big time this time, hadn't he?

 

He blinked, surprised out of his self-pitying thoughts by a rather large file folder Hiroshi was holding out to him. After a moment, he took it, surprised by the weight of it. It was even heavier than it looked.

 

"What's this?"

 

"Yanagi gave this to Yukimura and myself at the beginning of this school year, along with the yearly projected reports," Hiroshi answered calmly, adjusting his glasses. "You can be assured that both Yukimura and Yanagi have read all of it."

 

Masaharu opened the cover curiously.

 

After a moment in which Masaharu read the first page in silence, Hiroshi added, "I haven't."

 

Startled ice blue eyes flew up to meet golden brown. Masaharu was suddenly more confused than he'd been moments before.

 

"I don't understand, 'Roshi." The folder closed and fell to his side as he looked at the other teen helplessly. "What do you want me to do? Say?"

 

Hiroshi chose one of the empty benches and sat. "I decided the night Yanagi gave me that folder that I wanted to learn about Masaharu from Masaharu. My decision remains. I believed---I believe," he corrected, his head tilting to the side in a mocking nod as his lips twitched, "anything important you will tell me."

 

"Hiroshi--"

 

"So I'm giving this to you." Hiroshi gestured to the folder Masaharu still held. "You read it, and you can tell me if there's anything in there worth knowing or that you think I might find interesting."

 

Masaharu stared at him for another long moment, as if trying to gauge whether or not the other teen was serious, but Hiroshi was. With an exhausted, put-upon exhale, he sat at the end of the same bench as Hiroshi and opened the folder in his lap. He wondered what it was Hiroshi really wanted to know.... besides about... today.

 

He skimmed the first several pages quickly. It was really just a brief bio and some of his medical records. And then there was his school file. He wondered absently how long it must have taken Yanagi to print off his entire record since elementary school. There must have been over a hundred pages.

 

"I live with my mom in an apartment big enough for the two of us, and that's about it," he started, because he needed to start somewhere. "I started playing tennis in junior high as a first year. In elementary school I usually played baseball or dodgeball, but when my junior high's baseball team sucked, and besides, everyone plays baseball. Our tennis team sucked, too, come to think about it, but one of my classmates dared me to hit some cans off a wall with a tennis racket and ball. There were ten cans, twenty balls. I only managed to hit one and that was only a grace shot, didn't even knock the fucker off."

 

He grinned ruefully at the memory of his pathetic skills. "Well, you can imagine how that pissed me off, so that weekend, I went and bought this cheap ass racket and a couple of balls and tried to hit those damn cans. A week later I went back and challenged that kid. Managed to hit seven of the ten cans, but you know me. Wasn't satisfied until I was able to hit off all ten cans using only ten balls. When I could do that, I had to make it harder still, so I moved the cans around to different places and practiced until I could hit that damn can anywhere it was.

 

"'Course there's a hell of a lot more to tennis that being able to hit a can." He grinned again and shot Hiroshi a look to see if he was bored yet, but the other teen was smiling openly, and Masaharu took it as a good sign. "So Daisuke and I--that was the kid who originally challenged me?--we practiced, and eventually we became pretty good."

 

"Pretty good?" Hiroshi queried.

 

"Well, I became pretty damn awesome," Masaharu informed his partner modestly, "But Daisuke was a mediocre player, not great, but not bad either. I could kick his ass without breaking a sweat in a singles game, but we were practically unbeatable as a doubles team." He shrugged. "I like playing doubles, so I didn't mind. It's more fun to beat two rivals instead of just one, right?"

 

Hiroshi nodded, still smiling.

 

"Anyway, I managed to get a ticket to watch the Nationals last year. Well," Masaharu shrugged and grinned lopsidedly at Hiroshi. "You know how that went. I decided right than and there that I wanted to go to Rikkai High School and be in our tennis team, so I worked my fricking ass off and made sure I passed the entrance exams to get it. And, yeah, here I am, I guess."

 

He looked down at the fold in his lap. "Most of this is just records of the shit I got accused of doing. And a list of punishments I had to serve." Seeing Hiroshi's look he rushed to add, "I didn't actually do all of it; I've just been accused of it."

 

"But I'm sure there are other things you did do that aren't listed there," Hiroshi put in calmly.

 

"Of course," Masaharu snorted. "I wouldn't be any good if there weren't. Ah, but, I guess you could say I'd already kinda gotten a name for myself before I got to junior high. Trickster, fox, coyote. This one chick even tried to call me 'Loki', but it didn't stick." He browsed through the folder again. "Most of it's all good, harmless fun, like the one year our Health Ed teacher was getting married so me and a couple other guys all chipped in to cover her car with ballooned condoms before Winter Break. And, uh... oh, yeah. There was this one time when the baseball team was being a bunch of jerks 'cause they managed to score one win--it was actually a miracle, honestly, and they were lording it over the rest of the sports clubs. So I helped them show their true school spirit."

 

"What did you do?" Hiroshi asked obligingly.

 

Masaharu grinned. "I laced their shower heads with food coloring. The rest of the week, there were blue, green, and orange students walking the hallways."

 

One event quickly led into another and eventually Masaharu forgot to even look at the folder that rested in his lap as he turned to regale Hiroshi eagerly with some of his better tricks over the years. It was over an hour later, the evening sky purpling into a bruised color of night when Hiroshi stood and took the folder from him.

 

"What are you doing?" Masaharu asked when the other teen stood and carried the folder over to one of the metal rubbish bins.

 

"I don't need this folder," Hiroshi replied calmly, reaching into his pocket for a lighter Masaharu didn't even know the other owned. He held the flame to a corner and watched as the paper caught. Then he held the smoldering folder over the bin. "It can only tell me unimportant facts, cold and lifeless details."

 

He watched the fire consume the paper until his fingers burned from the heat, and he dropped the still burning folder into the bin.

 

Masaharu came up beside him and stared down at the charred remains. "That was a stupid thing to do."

 

Hiroshi didn't reply.

 

"A waste of perfectly good scratch paper."

 

"Tell me about your father," he asked calmly and Masaharu flinched.

 

"Hiroshi--"

 

Masaharu sighed and shrugged. "There's not much to tell. I mean, I already told you how my dad doesn't live with us. My mom and him met up when she was still in school and all. When she told him she was pregnant, he told her he was married. And that's that. I usually only see him once or twice a year."

 

Yagyuu continued to stare at him and Niou's breath exploded roughly. "What do you want me to say, Hiroshi?"

 

"My father died before I was born."

 

Masaharu started. "What?"

 

Hiroshi turned and went back to the bench. "The man who raised my sisters and I is actually my father's cousin. My grandfather decided that the connections to my mother's family could not be lost simply because my father had the audacity to die, and so they arranged the marriage between my mother and my father's cousin."

 

"How... I mean, damn, Hiroshi... how'd you find out?"

 

"My older sister was old enough to remember our birth father when he died. One day I over heard her and our 'father' arguing." He shrugged. "Momoko is actually my half-sister." He stopped and waited, looking at Niou.

 

"Masaharu... you said you came to Rikkaidai because of tennis... or was it because of me?"

 

"Both," he answered, not looking at Hiroshi.

 

"You wanted to play tennis?"

 

"With you."

 

"Why me, Masaharu?" Hiroshi asked, standing up again and going to where Masaharu stood. "Why was it so important to play with me?"

 

Masaharu reached out and tentatively brushed his fingers along side Yagyuu's cheek. "Because Hiroshi is the best..."

 

"You thought you knew." Hiroshi's eyes dropped to his lips before quickly darting back up to stare back into Masaharu's ice blue eyes. "That's why didn't want me to kiss you."

 

"Yeah."

 

Hiroshi took another step forward, entering Masaharu's personal space and waiting for the other boy to pull away like he always did. "Would it disgust you to know that knowing the truth, I still want to kiss you?"

 

Masaharu didn't back away, though. Nervously, he licked his dry lips and swallowed. "Does it disgust you to know that despite knowing why we shouldn't, I really want you to, too?"

 

Yagyuu moved swiftly, slashing his mouth across Masaharu's and thrusting his tongue past surprised lips before any protest could come.

 

Masaharu didn't try to stop him.

 

~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~

 

 

"I'm home," Masaharu called out tentatively poking his head into the apartment. "Mom?"

 

"I'm here, baby," the elder Niou called from the back of the apartment. "Welcome... home," Satomi continued and faltered, exiting the bedroom and seeing the two boys standing rather sheepishly in the doorway.

 

"Haru, close the door," she reminded her son absently, staring bald facedly at the younger Yagyuu.

 

"Is it okay, mom?" Masaharu asked, shifting nervously.

 

"What?"

 

"If Hiroshi stays the night."

 

"Does his--" Masaharu's mom started and stopped herself immediately with a growling frown. "No, I doubt you called your father to get permission." She snorted and shook her head before grinning. "Yes, of course it's alright with me. Come on in, Hiroshi-kun. Is it all right if I call you 'Hiroshi-kun'? 'Yagyuu-kun' would be too... Well, anyway. Come on in. It's not much, but it's decent. Can I get you something to drink? Have you boys eaten yet?"

 

"I got it, Mom," Masaharu grinned and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. "It's okay. I wasn't sure if you'd be home yet or not."

 

"It's late already, or were you two too busy to check the time?"

 

"Yeah, sorry," Masaharu blustered, heading for the kitchen and returning with drinks for everyone as they settled around the coffee table. "We were in Shinjuku for a while before hopping over to Harajuku, and I guess we lost track of time."

 

Masaharu settled on a spot on the floor between the chair Hiroshi had claimed and the couch where his mom sat and wagged her finger at him. "You're lucky you don't have class tomorrow, or I'd be after your hide with a wooden spoon."

 

"A wooden spoon?" Hiroshi asked, lips twitching with amusement. "Does that work?"

 

Niou Satomi shared an amused look with Hiroshi. "It didn't keep him out of trouble, but the threat of it sure as hell made sure he was home before curfew."

 

"Really?" Hiroshi shot a teasing look towards his partner. "You had a curfew?"

 

"What do you mean 'had'?" Masaharu grumbled. "This slave driver still has me on one. Why do you think I don't offer to hang out longer with you guys?"

 

"Who are you called a 'slave driver', huh?" Satomi grabbed her son up around the neck and swiftly scuffed up his hair.

 

"Ow! Mom! Not the hair!" Masaharu shouted plaintifully, darting for sanctuary behind Hiroshi's legs.

 

She released him and turned flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes back to Hiroshi. "Don't tell me your mother doesn't have you on a curfew, too, Hiroshi-kun?"

 

"No. I've never had a curfew," he answered solemnly. "As long as I'm still alive somewhere--and don't get caught up in any trouble-- my family doesn't care where I am."

 

"Yeah, but what he's not telling you, mom," Masaharu put in, tipping his head back to grin up at Hiroshi before looking back at his mother, "is that he's Mr. Student government, class rep, model student with damn near perfect grades, and a record that's most horrifying mark is from when he skipped class one day in grade school. Besides, Yukimura usually makes him call home whenever we do something, and Momoko knows we were meeting up tonight."

 

"Momoko?"

 

"Hiro's," he began when Hiroshi cleared his throat pointedly and Masaharu colored slightly. "*Our* little sister."

 

"Half-sister," Hiroshi specified. "She's our half-sister."

 

"She's..." Satomi began hesitantly, nervously, looking from one boy to the other. "Your half-sister?"

 

"Yes," Hiroshi answered when it seemed apparently Masaharu was unwilling or unable to. "Momoko and I have the same mother, but different biological fathers." He nodded to Masaharu.

 

"I'm sorry if I seem a bit confused, and I know it's not really my business to pry--"

 

"Not at all. I just told Masaharu tonight." Hiroshi set his glass down on the coffee table. "Really, there aren't many people outside the main family who know, and it's rarely discussed within the family."

 

He knew why Masaharu didn't want to tell it, and it was doubtful that his father would tell the woman the truth after all these years, but it was important information for Niou Satomi to know if Hiroshi and Masaharu planned to carryon a more than platonic relationship. And Hiroshi definitely planned to.

 

"Simply put, the marriage between my mother and Yagyuu Shingure was an arrangement dictated by the family shortly after my real father, my mother's first husband and Shingure's cousin, died."

 

"Yeah. We're, like, cousins. Can you believe it?" Masaharu said with forced gaiety.

 

"Several steps removed," Hiroshi added.

 

"That's---remarkable," Niou-san said weakly, shaking her head a little as if to clear it, and then her focus fell upon her son. "Haru, I'm afraid to ask, but... are you going to leave your hair like that?" she asked, reaching out and fingering a darkened strand.

 

"What? Oh, no," he shook his head like a wet dog and ruffled his hair. "I just haven't had a chance to wash the dye out yet. Why? Don't like me as much as a brunette?"

 

"No, course I do. I just miss my little white hedgehog," she teased.

 

"'M not little anymore, Mom," he returned, grinning.

 

"You'll always be little to me, baby," she returned seriously. "No matter how high you grow."

 

"Hn. Whatever." And just like that it was over.

 

Masaharu stood and gave his hair another messing. "Hey, I think I'm gonna take that shower now. Hiro?" he shot over his shoulder. "Wanna come?"

 

"That sounds like a good idea," his mom interrupted before Hiroshi could accept or decline. "And while you boys are at it, I'll pull out the extra futon for you, Hiroshi-kun. You should be able to fit into most of Masaharu's clothes, so that shouldn't be a problem either," she continued, heading into one of the bedrooms.

 

"Thank you for your hospitality," Hiroshi called after her.

 

"This is nothing," she scoffed. "Really, Hiroshi-kun. You're welcome here anytime. I've never see Masaharu as happy as he's been this school year, and I'm willing to bet good yen that's your influence."

 

"I have nothing to compare, but I'd hate to see you lose money because of me," he returned, but she just shooed him off towards the other bedroom.

 

"Go on, get ready for bed. It's been ages since Haru's had a friend over for the night. You'll probably be up all night talking and playing video games...."

 

 

~~~****~~~

 

 

TBC