A Million Faces
Adrenaline and determination come together in a ruthless collision, driving electricity into Sanada's bones and sending immeasurable speed to the arc of his arm as he draws his racquet from an invisible scabbard.
Fuu goes out—stronger and sharper than ever before; those 4am practises in the dojo are paying off in ways even Sanada hadn't imagined. Fuu obliterates the ball for a split second, that valuable instant when his opponent thinks it has disappeared altogether and swings futilely into empty air.
Sanada is an elemental in this moment, using nothing but primitive focus to pinpoint every flinch and twitch of muscle across the net, to calculate when each sweat drop will fall and glitter in the light, trying to distract him. Then comes the neon green of a ball in mid-spin streaking through the sky, surrounded by a halo of yellow light. The high sun glints dully off a racquet's edge. The crowd, a hundred—no, a thousand—no, a million faces indistinct and distorted, like a lake's surface after a stone skim, all around. Every pair of eyes is watching his movements, waiting for that final strike.
Jack Purcell provides shade for Sanada's tightly creased forehead while sweat dribbles down the bridge of his nose in searing wet pathways. All those faces, a million faces, an impenetrable wall of skin and open mouths and wide eyes—they press in.
Then Sanada leaps, sends Ka a half a foot shy of his opponent's right ankle. There's a reflexive yelp that lifts over the gasps of the audience.
In that heartbeat moment, one face rises out of the confusing patchwork of colour around him; one clear, pure image that sears into his mind. It's pale, serious, and the most perfect thing Sanada's ever seen.
Yukimura's mouth twitches, just once.
Sanada pumps his fist in the air as the umpire calls, “Game and set, Rikkai Dai Fuzoku, Sanada, six games to two.”
Path You Wander
On the surface it was an easy choice to make. Responsibility. Family. The two go hand-in-hand, each a given and a stable part of Sanada's upbringing. Though sometimes Sanada wonders if he really did make that choice, or if other forces had more of an influence than he was aware of at the time.
There's a lot to live up to in the Sanada household.
Skin rasps over sleek black cotton wrap as Sanada clenches his fist around the hilt of his katana. Some decisions become set, stone statues marking the road ahead and leading the way. It's been three months since he held a racquet, three months that could be three years or an entire lifetime—he tries not to think about it if he can help it, tries not to count the days.
Inevitably he grows more and more aware of time's passage, and in not thinking about things, the old images flood his mind. Junior high feels like a dream, a surreal memory of someone else's life. High school is very real, his studies are real, his daily routine—real. The faces around him don't really change; they just become more distant.
“Tennis is fine when you're young, Genichirou, but it's time to accept your path as an adult. That sport will not carry the dojo or your grades. The family business needs you now. Your studies need you now.”
Turning ninety degrees to the right, Sanada digs his heel into the floor and lifts his elbow, bringing his katana parallel to his body. The images keep coming in flickers, in starts and stops.
Bright, immaculate court, the last high school circuit tournament he participated in. Yukimura's sharp eyes tracking him. Yanagi's pen dancing across his notebook pages. Niou and Yagyuu standing with their arms folded, like twin hawks following the path of the ball. The pop of bright pink bubblegum and Marui's wide eyes. Jackal, stoic and solid, at the back. The space Akaya used to fill, empty when they moved up to high school and left him behind as captain of the junior team, but there was always a sense of him standing there grinning like a loon.
Flicker, and it's gone. Sanada stands alone in the cool, quiet dojo, the shadows stretching across the back of his neck and shoulders, wrapping him in duty and responsibility and tradition. Comforting and disquieting at the same time, a contradiction he can't seem to tip either way.
When he swallows, it's with a bitter tang, ferric and timeless like he imagines an old 10 yen coin to taste. Sliding one sandalled foot across the floor, Sanada prepares to leap. At that moment something colossal, heady, and dark clambers up his throat.
The roar that fills the room pounds like thunder, shakes the foundations, swarms and vibrates through his body. It's like everything he is explodes out of him and he pushes, pushes it as hard as he can if only to empty himself of feeling for a while—a minute, or a second will do. Winding himself down with one leg, then springing up off the floor, Sanada twists in mid-air, his mouth open wide and that cry never-ending.
The slice of a blade through the past, shredding memories and letting them tangle with the hovering dust motes, shuddering, before they dissipate altogether.
The nano-second before he lands he knows he's made a mistake, his angle just slightly off. Pain lances down his right side, and Sanada thinks his body has ripped at the seams and turned him inside-out. As his leg gives, he half-expects it to snap clean in half, waits for that crack of bone and the descent. There's no crack, but perhaps only because he's still screaming—no longer with frustration; this is a much rawer, desperate thunder—and it cannot be heard below the din.
For ten minutes he lies still on the cool boards and lets the agony slink back and the numbness seep through his lower half.
When he hears his father's voice booming out to him, Sanada can't help but wonder not whether he'll ever strike with his katana again, but with his racquet.
Dreams Still Linger
“I heard you were dating a girl called Fuuko over the holidays.” Yanagi's hair is much longer than it was in junior high, fine brown strands falling over his brow and partially covering his narrow eyes. Sanada doesn't need to see clearly to know Yanagi's amused. It's in his voice and in the tilt of his mouth.
Niou is creased in half between Yanagi and Yagyuu, his shoulders hitching repeatedly like he's having convulsions. There's no point glaring at him because Niou is too busy laughing to notice, and Sanada's sure it wouldn't stop him even if he could see.
“The kanji is different.” Sanada keeps his tone measured and his hands folded on the tabletop. Even if Yukimura and Jackal are better at hiding their curiosity, out the corner of Sanada's eye he can see them surreptitiously glancing at him.
“But still,” Niou says, his ponytail sliding across polished wood as he lifts his head and flashes his clean, white teeth at Sanada, “you've got to appreciate the beauty of it. Fuuko. Wasn't that your favourite shot?”
“Eh, shut up, Niou-senpai,” drawls a voice to Sanada's right, a voice that's rougher and edgier than usual.
The moment Akaya wandered into the restaurant—late because of an intensive training session that ran overtime, apparently—Sanada looked up and saw the haphazard black curls, the smooth face and sharp features, and his throat ran sandpaper dry. The room seemed to creep inward, pressing close, and for three thundering heartbeats he sat frozen, staring at an Akaya who looked so familiar and yet so distant at the same time, like a tracing of the original where the artist had gone out of the lines and filled his frame with a definition that hadn't been there before. The others cheered the arrival of Rikkai's up-and-coming pro while Sanada nodded his own non-committal greeting, still silent because his mouth was so damn parched and he couldn't push his voice up through it.
“Listen to Mr Big-shot.” Marui waggles his eyebrows at Akaya and pops a crab roll into his mouth, his bright pink tongue flashing out. “Aren't you curious, Akaya?”
“No.” There's just a hint of the old petulance.
“I'm extremely curious,” Yanagi says, and is that a small notebook he's got concealed in his hand? “I'd like to hear more.”
“Yeah, me too.” Leaning his elbows on the table, Niou sits forward and stares intently at Sanada as if attempting to chisel at his serious countenance with those keen eyes. “Was she hot? Did she let you touch her tits?”
Sanada knows even the most fleeting facial muscle twitch will give Niou triumph and he'll never hear the end of it, so he executes his many years of practise and schools his expression to flat neutral, holding it there with his steely determination.
Rumours travel fast in high school, and he really shouldn't be so surprised people have found out about Fuuko. There's one inevitability he can at least rely on: Yanagi's always the first to gather information on the comings and goings of everyone else.
The things is, it wasn't even a damn date! Well, not one Sanada agreed to, and it definitely didn't result in—or look like it was heading in the general direction of—the sort of sordid affair these buffoons are eager to hear about. Preposterous!
No, the afternoon in question slid in at a glorious #1 on Sanada's list of Awkward Days from Hell Never to Repeat. Whoever said girls are interesting or easy to get along with?
It was probably a girl who started that misleading tidbit in the first place.
Beside him, a thick, buzzing heat radiates off Akaya, a raw energy that pushes a wave of prickles along the back of Sanada's neck.
“Just drop it,” he says, using his That's Final tone.
“Are you telling us as a schoolmate to drop it?” Yagyuu's mask of polite indifference is in place—at least he makes an effort not to be blatantly intrusive. “Or as fukubuchou?”
Okay, it's not as if tennis talk was unexpected. In fact, Sanada's been gearing himself up for this dinner for the past week. Sure, he sees Yukimura every day for classes and at the weekends for their theatre visits, and he runs into Yagyuu, Niou, Marui, and Jackal at least a handful of times every week. But not in these surroundings or with the expectations that drift back and forth over the table, not with the weight of reunion settled all around. All that mental preparation wasn't enough, and the force of Yagyuu's question hits him like a Knuckle Serve to the gut.
“I'm not your fukubuchou any more.” Hopefully his voice doesn't sound as ragged to them as it does in his own ears. “But you'll nevertheless drop the subject.”
Yagyuu bows his head. Niou clicks his tongue in disappointment. Marui leans back, resigned. The little notebook is transferred from Yanagi's hand to up his sleeve, the sneaky bastard.
Akaya moves restlessly next to him, and there's a minute shift in the air temperature, the crackle of tension lifting, drifting up and away.
“Oh well, I guess we'll just have to rib Pro Boy instead,” Marui says, smirking at Akaya.
“Yeah, Akaya, tell us about your training regimen.” Yukimura plucks an egg roll off the platter at the centre of the table and nibbles on one end. Sanada throws him a grateful look and is served back a soft, understanding smile. No doubt Yukimura will chase him down at school on Monday for information the others are unable to hook out of him, but for now Sanada is spared the embarrassment.
“Eh, it's pretty tough, but nothing I can't handle.” As Akaya settles into tennis banter, that self-confident guy Sanada remembers appears in his full, talkative glory. Sanada didn't realise just how long it's been since he found out Akaya was aiming for the pros and had been accepted onto a training programme in Tokyo. The topic is another unavoidable subject Sanada knew would come up—there's no way it couldn't—and seeing Akaya so focused and enthusiastic sends a lurch to his stomach.
The company is as rich and colourful as he recalls, but underlying it is a strong sense of the fragmentation of the group. Sanada wonders if the others feel it, too—that dislocation, the fact that they're not a single unit any more, that every movement they individually make no longer reflects on them as a whole.
Sanada pours himself more green tea and tells himself he's just being maudlin, then resolves to quit over-thinking and just enjoy them, even if the tennis talk skirts a little too close to something raw and aching inside.
When they begin to depart—Niou and Yagyuu leaving first, soon followed by Yukimura (who makes a point of saying he'll catch up with Sanada on Monday), then finally Yanagi, Marui, and Jackal—it's like pieces of the same jigsaw breaking away, going off to form new, different puzzles.
Not that Sanada isn't willing to accept a lot of the responsibility as the only one of the group who's no longer actively involved in tennis, not even as a hobby.
“Hey, fukubuchou. What's up with that Fuuko girl, anyway?” Akaya drums his fingertips on the tabletop as the restaurant door slides shut. “You can tell me, now they're gone.”
“I said drop it.” Sanada snatches up his bowl and takes a sip of tea. It's lukewarm, a little bitter on his tongue. “And I also said I'm not your fukubuchou any more. You're going for pro now, Akaya. It's time to snap out of those childish things.”
The scowl is there; even if Sanada doesn't look directly at it, he can picture Akaya's brows drawing down, picture the way his lower lip puffs out. Something about the knowledge is comforting, bordering on amusing; some things never change.
Ignoring Akaya's pout, Sanada shuffles his legs out from beneath him and stretches them under the table. An echo of his injury earlier this year gives a little cry, just a short, sharp reminder. Sanada's father once told him the aches and pains were in his head. Sometimes Sanada thinks he could be right, but he refuses to accept such a weakness. It's just the teaching at the dojo that prevents a full recuperation, that's all.
“You don't have to be such a—”
“Such a what?” Sanada sets down his bowl with a little wooden dok.
“Such a royal bastard.” Akaya frowns at him and doesn't deflate a bit, not even when Sanada glares. “I haven't seen you in forever.”
“It's only been six months.”
“So? That's forever.” Stabbing at the dregs in his ramen bowl with a chopstick, Akaya nudges him in the arm and adds, “You gonna see her again?”
“Akaya.”
“Well, are you?” Even though the words are dressed up as teasing, there's clear demand strung between them. Sanada hears it, feels it fizzle in the silence.
“No,” he finally says, hating the weight of the pause. “I didn't arrange the outing in the first place. My family decided it'd be a goodwill gesture toward her family if I escorted her into the city.”
Akaya blinks slowly, the shadows of his lashes these long, inky spines flickering above his cheekbones. “Escorted? What are you, like fifty or something?”
Sanada stares at him and is suddenly hit by how close they're sitting, close enough to see that Akaya's lips are a little chapped and his curls just lick the skin of his cheeks. When the urge to lean back strikes, it's virtually impossible not to, even though he doesn't want his discomfort to become obvious.
A laugh bursts out of Akaya. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, waving his chopstick in Sanada's face and not sounding sorry at all. “It's just you still talk like you always did.”
“Your point is?”
Akaya only laughs harder, his face flushing a warm red, until Sanada's patience snaps and he smacks him none-too-gently around the back of the head with the palm of his hand. For his effort he gets a kiss of soft, unruly hair skimming through his fingers, and Akaya sobers, staring up at him with a smirk tilting his mouth. Humour spins and spirals in his eyes, but they're darker than usual and the heat of his body—is it getting stronger? Why is he still too damn close for comfort?
Glancing around the room, Sanada notices for the first time just how empty the restaurant is. A quick check of his wristwatch reports it's nine-thirty. It feels much later.
“You okay, fukubuchou?”
“I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah, you're not fukubuchou any more. Except when you are,” Akaya adds. Before Sanada can retort he continues, more seriously, “Why'd you quit tennis? I always figured you'd stick around.”
“I had other obligations.”
“But I thought you loved tennis.”
“It was just a hobby.”
Akaya snorts. “I don't buy that for a second.”
“Buy what you want. It's time to go home, Akaya.” Ignoring the crick in his knee, Sanada rises and busies himself with paying for his share of the bill. Part of him wants to head outside and get away from Akaya and his persistent questions, but he waits until Akaya has dropped his slice of the bill on the table and joins him.
The Yokohama streets are ablaze with neon window signs and lit restaurant billboards, lights skimming across the paving stones like multi-coloured ripples. As they make their way toward the bus station Akaya widens his stride to stand on each one, his sneakers flashing green, then ice blue, then hot pink, then crisp yellow.
“Why're you pretending you don't give a shit about tennis any more?”
Sanada should've been on guard for this ever since the restaurant. Tension pulls across the back of his shoulders, as if a chord running under his skin has been tugged, drawing him up. He keeps his eyes on the road ahead, tries to ignore how Akaya's elbow knocks into him every few strides.
“I never said I didn't care about it,” Sanada says, when the silence stretches too long and Akaya starts making impatient clicks of his tongue and stares pointedly up at him. “I said I had other things to focus on.”
“Why can't you do both?”
“What makes you think I want to juggle tennis and studying and the dojo?”
“Duh, because you still love it.”
Sanada feels a hand on his sleeve, but before he can tell Akaya to lay off, he finds himself yanked hard to an abrupt halt. Spinning on his heel, he glares down at Akaya and silently dares him to pull another stunt like that. His arm twitches reflexively, and the urge to strike Akaya rises. Sanada holds it down. This isn't why he came out tonight.
“Jeez, I never thought you of all people would seal off your tennis. Lame, fukubuchou.” There's no childish petulance in Akaya's hard expression, and Sanada thinks even if he did strike him, it would end up hurting him more than Akaya. “Are you scared you'll miss it too much if you actually admit you want to pick up a racquet again? Is that it?”
“I'm warning you.” Perhaps he should have re-thought the fukubuchou thing; at least under its title Sanada held more sway than he does now.
“Are you just gonna listen to your dad all your life and never do what makes you happy?” Akaya goes on, unrelenting and unrepentant; he's on a roll, and Sanada knows nothing he says will shut him up. “Has Sanada-san got you that whipped?”
The city spins around him, all crazy colours and too-loud sounds—the flicker of a striplight, the rough honk of a car horn, a woman laughing nearby—a freakish merry-go-round that Sanada can't get off, and it's too much, it's too damn much, and he feels rage for the first time in as long as he can remember. His arm comes up, drawn from that invisible scabbard always at his hip, his fist balled tight like a stone. When it crashes into Akaya's jaw, it makes a sick crunching sound. Akaya reels backward a few stumbling paces and strikes a lamppost, a dull clang ringing out as his head connects with the metal pole. A grin splits his face.
“Don't talk to me like you know how it is!” Sanada yells, drawing back his arm as if to hit him again, only Akaya is too far away to reach, so Sanada punches thin air instead.
Maybe it's a trick of the light from a nearby shop doorway that makes Akaya's eyes gleam a reddish-brown. Sanada doesn't care if they're bloodshot in a second—that junior high devil bullshit never worked on him then, and he's not about to let it work on him now.
When Akaya shoves himself away from the lamppost and charges, Sanada braces himself. The leap happens from two paces away, Akaya's face a pale flash of drawn-back lips and teeth, like one feral cat attacking another. Grabbing a fistful of Akaya's coat, Sanada finds himself at a loss for what to do: whether to hold him at bay or drag him that last step closer. Energy buzzes at his fingertips, Akaya a live wire thrumming in his grasp, getting closer, closer.
“I know how it is,” Akaya growls, his lips moving against the corner of Sanada's mouth. Their pulses pound, pound, pound, like their hearts are rallying against their ribcages. The heat of Akaya's body hits Sanada again, furnace hot, winding all around and sucking him into its whirlwind. Even on the night-time street where shadows warp and dip around them as cars crawl slowly past on the road, Akaya tastes like long, hot summer days and the rubber of grip tape, like the synthetic astroturf of courts and the fresh, anticipatory sweat before a match.
The flavour sinks into Sanada's tongue and zings his tastebuds, then shoots to every corner of him like an electrical current passing from one conductor to another. It's only then that he realises just what's happening—that he and Akaya are connected everywhere (or so it feels), everywhere warm and hard and wet.
It feels like all of Sanada's innards go plummeting to the lower half of his body when Akaya unceremoniously pushes his tongue into his mouth and licks once, a brash, experimental swipe.
How the hell did Sanada's hands find their way to the back of Akaya's jacket? Back where the material is soft and cool and the body beneath is hot and alive, muscles jumping and reacting to every point he touches. No breath, no clue what he's doing, just holding on and trying to sift through the whirring sound in his ears that might be—that probably is—his blood pumping through is veins. Sanada can't comprehend why Akaya isn't halfway across the sidewalk right now on his ass, or why he's parting his lips and actually liking the fact that Akaya's spit is in his mouth and so is Akaya's tongue, and oh god, oh hell, no amount of mental preparation earlier got him ready for this.
The tranquil, stillness of the dojo feels a million miles away.
A billion.
“Hnn...” It's breathed against Sanada's cheek, a fire-breath noise that flushes over his skin and twists him up inside, that stokes the fire building, pushing at his groin. Fingers skitter over the back of his neck and up into his hair, stopping at the line of his cap. The fist still tangled in the front of his coat feels like a knot between them, digging right at the centre of Sanada's chest.
A tooth grazes a stinging line across Sanada's lower lip. Their noses knock together.
“Mph,” Sanada chokes out. Exhaust-fume air whooshes between them, their mouths making this weird smacking, wet noise as he breaks away.
Oddly, the urge to fight has left him, drained from his body and leaving him with nothing but a flush of shivers that aren't exactly unpleasant. For the second time this evening, Sanada's throat is dry and he clears it, hears his own voice rough and rasping.
“I always wanted to measure up to you guys,” Akaya says, drawing back far enough to look at him but not letting go. “Just to let you know I was strong, too. But you were the one I wanted to be really proud of me.”
Sanada hears the words, but they take a moment to register. Slowly he lets his arms slide from around Akaya's back, and he realises he has to say something.
“Idiot. I was proud.” It's amazing how easy it is to admit, even if his voice isn't as steady as he'd like.
Akaya blinks at him. “You were?”
“Of course.” Easier and easier. Sanada's sure the weight that was hovering above them is rising up into the darkness, vanishing behind the stars. Part of him is tempted to glance up, but he can't look away from Akaya's face—he finds he doesn't want to.
“Oh, man, why didn't you say anything?!” Akaya frowns at him. “Oh, right, this is you we're talking about. Honestly, fukubuchou, you're so difficult.”
“You're a fine one to talk.” Sanada's head feels loose and unclear, like his brain is swimming on a soft current inside his skull and won't sit still. Blinking back the surreal sensation, he adds, “If you're too dense to even notice it, then you don't deserve my respect.”
“Feh, nah, I'll take it.” Akaya turns a grin up at him, a carefree, beaming grin that obliterates some of the fuzziness in Sanada's mind. The city-sounds weave back into his consciousness and suddenly they're not the only two people standing on the street. Heat flushes Sanada's face, but Akaya appears totally unperturbed and grabs his arm again, this time to tug him along the road toward the station.
They make it just as the forty-two bus comes rumbling along, tossing out a plume of dark smoke as the driver grinds it up against the curb. The fingers wrapped around his forearm hold tighter than they probably need to; Sanada feels each digit through his coat sleeve, is aware of the fine details of Akaya's contact, the edges of his nails and the pressure of his grip.
“Hey, d'ya wanna come see M-Flo with me next weekend? They're playing at the Nissan Stadium. I've got tickets.”
“No.” If M-Flo is what Sanada thinks it is, he'd rather gouge his own eardrums out with his katana. Akaya's taste in music is something he's never been able to understand or share.
“C'mon, it'll be your chance to prove you're not really an old geezer.”
“Akaya.” But the teasing doesn't bother him, not really, if only because it helps lighten the mood after that... that thing that just happened.
“Haha, okay. Well, I'm gonna see them, so if you change your mind...”
Their shoes make a shuffling noise on the concrete as they stop beside the idling bus, filling the silence that's not as awkward as Sanada thinks it should be. The automatic doors hiss open to allow passengers on board, and Sanada pulls out of Akaya's grasp. Maybe a little quicker than he intends to, but it's too late to take it back.
Words fail him, not that he knows what to say or what's appropriate for times like these. At least when he was fukubuchou there was a well of choice orders and instructions at his disposal for any given moment.
Silently, Sanada climbs aboard.
“Hey, Sanada-kun.”
Pausing on the first step, Sanada looks over his shoulder.
“Why don't you make yourself proud? Y'know?” Akaya plants his hands against the doors to keep them from closing too soon. His mouth looks soft, damp.
Dragging his gaze away from the distracting glisten of Akaya's lower lip, Sanada hears the engine rev, the bus thrumming under his feet—clearly, the driver is making a point for his benefit. The doors give another hiss, a little impatient shout that they're about to close, and Akaya is forced to let go.
“Hey, Akaya.” Sanada stares at him hard, but he knows it'll be ineffective; Akaya doesn't look in the slightest bit surprised or intimidated. “Don't slack off.”
Another grin splits Akaya's face, this one genuinely pleased. “You too, fukubuchou—”
Click.
The engine purrs, rumbles, roars into life. As the bus shudders away from the curb, Sanada walks to the back and watches Akaya grow tiny through the dust-and-smog grey window.
Once the station is out of sight, he tugs the brim of his cap down over his eyes and sinks onto a seat, letting the shade wrap around him as he thinks about Akaya's mouth, the dry warmth of the summer, and the neon green of a ball mid-spin.
The Warm Winds
Bright, breezy, immaculate court, the first university circuit tournament. Yukimura's sharp eyes tracking him. Yanagi's pen dancing across his notebook pages. Niou and Yagyuu standing with their arms folded, like twin hawks following the path of the ball. The pop of bright pink bubblegum and Marui's wide eyes. Jackal, stoic and solid, at the back.
The space Akaya used to fill—well, it's lucky Akaya got some time off and was able to make it. Sanada can see him out the corner of his eye, grinning like a loon, watching Sanada's every movement, waiting.
Waiting for that final strike.
~Fin~
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