Assimilation [Marui, Rikkai, part 2/2]
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almondinflowerAssimilation, part 2/2
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis? Totally not mine
Characters: Marui, Yukimura, Jackal
wordcount: 2800
Summary As mentioned before, the obligatory Rikkai D2 backstory fic. Contradicts known 40.5 canon due to part I of this being written back in 2006. You do not need to explain to me how phail this is. Also, thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ashesto and giving_ground for the hand-holding!
Part I here.
It's a recurring dream, but doesn't always happen in the same way each time; this is the version Bunta remembers, pieced together from several variations:
He's hurtling down a waterfall, headfirst; it's taller than Niagara and Tokyo Tower and any other comparison his dream-brain can immediately supply. Drifting mist shrouds any possible view of the bottom, but the general impression is that there's a long, long way to go. And he's still accelerating. Hitting terminal velocity is a distinct possibility.
He never actually experiences it in the dream, but he knows exactly how he got here; there was, he remembers, a cliff involved. The seven of them, and Yukimura telling them to jump. Bunta said how high, Akaya had already thrown himself off the edge, and Sanada and Renji stood there with arms folded across their respective chests, steady-posed, ready to fall together, but not until Yukimura himself did.
Bunta never sees the end of that particular drama – the three and their eternal deadlock, although he'd be placing bets on Sanada to break it – he's not the first to leap but not last either, competing with Hiroshi for second place. Niou delays obedience merely on principle, but even then he's not far behind. If Bunta twists his neck to look up he can see the silver hair and over-thin limbs speeding downwards also, bare metres above himself. It's a shared activity but strangely lonely, this communal falling. Somewhat like playing team tennis. In the end you fall and you die, you lose, on your own.
He always manages to wake up before he crashes, deeply regretting the last packet of chocolate biscuits consumed before bedtime. If there is a crash coming. He's never seen any evidence of it. Maybe it's just an eternal falling, this game of tennis and victory and Rikkai that Yukimura has asked them to play.
Maybe life itself is an eternal falling. He fixes himself a midnight snack before he can damage his own mind by getting too philosophical.
#
Yukimura to all appearances, is a better older brother than Bunta is without having to expend half the effort that Bunta does. It's partly attributable, perhaps, to little sisters being easier to handle than little brothers, or possibly just everyone being easier to handle for Yukimura.
Whatever the reason is, it takes Yukimura a scant five minutes to assure his sister of his brotherly support and enduring affection, leaving the eight of them with the rest of the morning and school fair coupons worth thousands of yen to kill. Akaya is looking bored already.
Niou tweezes a strand of curly hair with his thumb and index finger, making Akaya squawk. “Come on chibi, I'll take you to the shooting game.”
“No, you won't.” Sanada scowls. “I'll take him.”
There's some accusation and mistrust in his tone, the implication that the combination of Niou and Akaya set loose in an elementary school fair is liable to bring teachers, property damage, and the wrath of judicial authorities down in torrents; but maybe the real message behind this is Sanada's need to be needed. Niou shrugs as if to say, what difference will it make? Yukimura directs a Look at them, and then a sidelong glance at Jackal.
“I think you should take Akaya,” he says.
Akaya stares at Jackal with xenophobic mistrust and a touch of curiosity. Jackal smiles and holds out a hand.
They disappear into a moving throng of young parents and candy-munching schoolchildren and Bunta tries to figure out why Yukimura just got rid of their two newcomers, without much success.
Well, in truth he's not trying very hard to analyse the situation, since within about fifteen seconds he spots food.
Takoyaki, to be precise; sold at a lone colourful stall that is inexplicably customerless despite giving off the most amazing wafting fragrance Bunta has had the privilege of smelling in weeks – seafood, green onion, oil.
He takes five steps in the direction of the stall before he remembers that he is completely penniless and couponless.
“Erm,” he says, stopping and turning around. “Yukimura.”
Three minutes later he's got his mouth open wide and Yukimura is finger-feeding him him balls of grease and batter from a white paper bag. Bunta's tongue and teeth are a slick mess of mayonaise and salt-sweet-flavourful pleasure. He chews, swallows, makes various approving sounds.
Niou's rolling his eyes. “Get a room.”
But Yukimura's eyes are gleaming as if he's having fun and Bunta definitely is, so clearly all Niou-statements are peripheral and to be ignored in favour of takoyaki-bliss. Actually, the rest of the world is quite peripheral at the moment.
At least until seven octopus balls in, when Yukimura asks, “Would you like to play doubles with Jackal?”
The food freezes in his mouth, mid-chew.
He's suddenly conscious of everyone around them: Renji's there, and Sanada's watching them with that considering look he uses at tournaments, and Hiroshi and Niou are two metres away and talking about mathematics class but probably they're paying attention anyway. Niou definitely is, the bastard.
Bunta tries to talk with his mouth full, but what comes out is a, “Mmmmpfh – waunngh,” and Yukimura grins.
“Am I allowed to take that as a yes?”
#
By the time they're back at after-school practice on Monday Akaya and Jackal are apparently the best of friends, having a built a relationship based on tennis, disenfranchisement, and Akaya borrowing Jackal's money. Bunta has words to say about that, mostly along the lines of how impolite brats need to find their own financial suppliers and not co-opt Bunta's.
He watches the pre-regulars as they do their warm-ups, Akaya using one arm to hold the other behind his neck in a long stretch and chattering to Jackal simultaneously. Probably outlining his Master Plan to be the World's Best Tennis Player. Jackal actually looks interested.
Later all the club members get together for ball drills and Bunta finds himself standing on the sidelines with with kouhai on one side, New Foreign Friend on the other. Renji's serving on Court A, Niou is returning, and the only thing preventing the entire club from watching them is the presence of Nishiki-sempai on Court C.
Renji serves classically, precise and very fast. Niou dashes forward three steps, and unleashes the Kamaitachi.
By the end of five balls and a conspicuous succession of special techniques (Laser Beam, Utsusemi, some horrible imitation of Tsunawatari that is nothing like the way Bunta does it) Renji's face has that unnatural control that suggests that he is a little bit (or very) annoyed. Akaya snickers, and Jackal's expression wobbles, as if he isn't quite sure whether to be impressed or unimpressed.
“Does he ever play seriously?” he asks.
Despite Yukimura's continual lessoning, Bunta has never quite understood this important divide between playing seriously and not. Perhaps one is just born with it, like Akaya or Sanada, and no amount of trying can ever get you there. Bunta has long settled for simply being able to win. Yukimura has never complained.
Due to some strange tangential path his thoughts are currently taking, he's moved to catch Jackal's attention and tell him about the time in first year when Yukimura made Niou run three hundred laps around the courts in the dead of winter. Yukimura wasn't captain or vice-captain then (still isn't, although even the third-years have trouble remembering this), and Niou was trying to quit the club, never mind trying to make the regulars or supporting Yukimura's three-year-plan. The mechanisms by which Yukimura succeeded in making Niou listen to him are a mystery to even Hiroshi, but there's a consensus that it involved four hours of running for Niou while Yukimura stood there, jacket across his shoulders, and watched. At sunset a torrential rain came down on the both of them and changed nothing except the aftermath: Yukimura came down with influenza, Niou was fine.
Jackal listens patiently and then frowns, as if he's trying to work out what it all means. Bunta can't even begin to answer that. What does Rikkai mean, what does Yukimura mean, anyway? If Niou knew the answer he probably wouldn't be here.
Bunta has never met anyone like Yukimura. (Admittedly, he's never met anyone like Sanada or Niou either, but their contributions to his existence have been somewhat less life-changing.) If there's one thought he carries from these two years, though, it's that tennis for him is not going to stretch on forever and ever, the way he imagined as a kid; back in the days when he really did think he was a genius, before he learnt what genius was, and its insanity.
It's a thought that still hurts sometimes, when he realises he'll never be really good at tennis ever again.
A looming figure steps in front of them. Sanada, frowning from beneath his baseball cap. Jackal blanches; probably because to him Sanada's expression still looks disapproving, even though Bunta's told him repeatedly that it's just Sanada's normal expression.
“Can you come an hour early to practice tomorrow?” He directs the question at Jackal, but his gaze at both of them, and when Bunta calculates the time he wants to sputter. One hour early, that's a quarter to six AM, which entails waking up at a time so early Bunta's brain can barely compute it, and--
-- Jackal nods readily, which all in all is quite predictable really.
“Whatever for?” demands Bunta. If his highly valuable sleep is to be interrupted he wants there to be a reason for it, although if Sanada's involved it's unlikely to be a good reason.
Sanada gives him a patented deliberate imperturbable Sanada expression. “For a match.”
#
Jackal is on his second bottle of mineral water and doesn't seem anywhere close to replenishing the sweat that's coming off his head and neck and dampened skin. He's not breathing hard at all, a feat that would be awe-inspiring were it not for the fact that Sanada is duplicating it, on the opposite side of the court. (Still is awe-inspiring, actually. It's not as if Sanada counts as human.)
“I've never,” Bunta says, and then closes his mouth before trying again: “That is the longest single set I've ever seen played on school grounds.”
A hundred and five minutes, to be exact, long enough to completely disrupt morning practice. Yukimura actually looked irritated about that.
Jackal attempts a grin, but his mouth doesn't quite make it there. Fair enough. He has just lost to the Zan, after all.
Akaya, the only person in known history to individually lose to each of the Three in a single day, comes over and makes some tangled statement about Jackal's defensive play that is the backhanded Akaya way of both commiserating and giving a compliment. Despite Akaya's obvious inability to communicate clearly, Jackal seems to get the message; his eyes light up, his face softens into a small smile. Funny how people always manage to hear what Akaya means and not just what he says.
Bunta clicks his tongue and remembers first-year, September (playing Yukimura after the Newcomer tournament, losing losing losing so bad it was like a lesson in the meaning of the word despair); first-year, October (Sanada, Hiroshi; a twenty-minute match); first-year, December (nobody outside the Three knows how long it took, or how Renji defeated Niou, but only that it happened). And then April of second-year, of course, but no one will ever forget that.
“So, what did you think of your initiation?” he asks, when Akaya finally gets bored and pisses off. It's a bit of an abrupt question, but Jackal, he thinks, is beginning to get it now.
Jackal stares at him, a gradually dawning realisation settling on his face, and then he does grin.
#
After that the only real question is that of Bunta's cooperation, which he feels compelled to withhold for several weeks just on principle. Renji offered him a choice, after all – although who truly believes in free will, when Yukimura's involved?
He's always thought of himself as a singles player, right from the start. An entire tournament season of doubles, unrelenting doubles, and the knowledge that third-year will be the same has scarcely done anything to change that. What kind of person instinctively thinks of himself as a doubles player, anyway? (Renji, his mind supplies, but Renji's weird.)
And then, doubles with Jackal--
-- could work, actually; he concedes this point to the Three, as well as their impeccable collective eye for spotting tennis ability. He tests it out by dragging Jackal, Niou, and Hiroshi to a local tennis club one Saturday morning.
The other two win the first four games before Bunta gets used to not having to watch for Renji's gamemaking.
Once this point is established, he and Jackal draw it out to a 4-6 loss.
Niou shakes his head. “Just give in already.” There's mockery in his tone, the usual cultivated disdain that colours his expressions everytime he refers to what he describes as Bunta's inevitable habit of rolling over and baring his throat, where Yukimura is involved; Bunta merely shrugs. It's not as if Niou has a leg to stand on as far as that's concerned.
Jackal clears his throat and Hiroshi politely looks at him, the rest following suit. “I think that went well.”
After that it feels like a betrayal of Jackal to keep being stubborn, especially when playing doubles with him is this fun (might even be more fun than singles, he thinks momentarily, and then clamps down on that idea, horrified.), so instead of outright refusal he takes up procrastination for another two, three weeks. He'll talk to Renji after Kantou, he decides, or maybe – when Regionals end without anything changing in his cultivated apathy – when summer vacation comes. It's such a Niou thing, to delay cooperation for the sake of delay; Bunta knows he can't keep it up forever. He can't even keep it up for very long.
In the end Yukimura beats him to it, as usual, with a special Friday afternoon round of doubles matches between the second and third years (completely unprecedented and justified only by Yukimura's irresistible persuasion directed at the coach). First up, Yagyuu-Kuwahara versus Sugiyama-Mochizuki.
After the first three points, Bunta is twitching. By the end of the first game, he and Niou are exchanging overt looks of pain as well as telepathic thoughts about wasted strength, stupid pride (or possibly just aggressiveness, in the case of Hiroshi), and inability to think of a sneaky strategy to win.
“I mean,” Bunta snaps his gum, “is that not the most utterly pathetic waste of superior ability you've ever seen in your entire life? Except maybe for that Hyoutei captain during the Kantou finals, that was pretty disastrous.”
“Mmhmm.” Niou nods. “They're going to lose. Yukimura won't be pleased.”
The gum falls out of Bunta's mouth. He stares at Niou with an oh-crap-he'd forgotten-Yukimura's-complex-about-good-players-playing-bad-tennis kind of feeling. “Eh, Jackal's not really ready for that kind of scolding as yet.”
“Of course he isn't. So don't just stand there, do something about it.” Niou affects a bored expression. “It's high time we moved on to something else. Our strategist hasn't talked about anything interesting in weeks.”
Bunta spends the next ten minutes trying to think of witty and horrible things to say to Niou before he gives up at 0-3 and stalks onto the court, muttering under his breath.
Hiroshi raises an eyebrow. Bunta says, “Oh just let me take over,” and gets into position without waiting for an answer.
Hiroshi leaves the court without saying anything else, he's going to be pissy about it for days but Bunta doesn't care about that.
On the coach's bench, Yukimura's probably smiling that smile which on any other person would be a self-satisfied smirk but Bunta doesn't care about that either.
#
He has to pair up with Renji to win Nationals, but with the knowledge that he'll never have to do it again resting on his mind, it's actually quite a pleasant experience.
#
“It's a good place to play tennis,” Jackal says, two months later when they're both regulars and playing doubles on an almost-daily basis. (before the winter. Oh, before the winter. But they don't know that yet.)
He means Rikkai. Bunta doesn't really have to think about it before he agrees yes, it is, it's always been.
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis? Totally not mine
Characters: Marui, Yukimura, Jackal
wordcount: 2800
Summary As mentioned before, the obligatory Rikkai D2 backstory fic. Contradicts known 40.5 canon due to part I of this being written back in 2006. You do not need to explain to me how phail this is. Also, thanks to
ashesto and giving_ground for the hand-holding!Part I here.
It's a recurring dream, but doesn't always happen in the same way each time; this is the version Bunta remembers, pieced together from several variations:
He's hurtling down a waterfall, headfirst; it's taller than Niagara and Tokyo Tower and any other comparison his dream-brain can immediately supply. Drifting mist shrouds any possible view of the bottom, but the general impression is that there's a long, long way to go. And he's still accelerating. Hitting terminal velocity is a distinct possibility.
He never actually experiences it in the dream, but he knows exactly how he got here; there was, he remembers, a cliff involved. The seven of them, and Yukimura telling them to jump. Bunta said how high, Akaya had already thrown himself off the edge, and Sanada and Renji stood there with arms folded across their respective chests, steady-posed, ready to fall together, but not until Yukimura himself did.
Bunta never sees the end of that particular drama – the three and their eternal deadlock, although he'd be placing bets on Sanada to break it – he's not the first to leap but not last either, competing with Hiroshi for second place. Niou delays obedience merely on principle, but even then he's not far behind. If Bunta twists his neck to look up he can see the silver hair and over-thin limbs speeding downwards also, bare metres above himself. It's a shared activity but strangely lonely, this communal falling. Somewhat like playing team tennis. In the end you fall and you die, you lose, on your own.
He always manages to wake up before he crashes, deeply regretting the last packet of chocolate biscuits consumed before bedtime. If there is a crash coming. He's never seen any evidence of it. Maybe it's just an eternal falling, this game of tennis and victory and Rikkai that Yukimura has asked them to play.
Maybe life itself is an eternal falling. He fixes himself a midnight snack before he can damage his own mind by getting too philosophical.
Yukimura to all appearances, is a better older brother than Bunta is without having to expend half the effort that Bunta does. It's partly attributable, perhaps, to little sisters being easier to handle than little brothers, or possibly just everyone being easier to handle for Yukimura.
Whatever the reason is, it takes Yukimura a scant five minutes to assure his sister of his brotherly support and enduring affection, leaving the eight of them with the rest of the morning and school fair coupons worth thousands of yen to kill. Akaya is looking bored already.
Niou tweezes a strand of curly hair with his thumb and index finger, making Akaya squawk. “Come on chibi, I'll take you to the shooting game.”
“No, you won't.” Sanada scowls. “I'll take him.”
There's some accusation and mistrust in his tone, the implication that the combination of Niou and Akaya set loose in an elementary school fair is liable to bring teachers, property damage, and the wrath of judicial authorities down in torrents; but maybe the real message behind this is Sanada's need to be needed. Niou shrugs as if to say, what difference will it make? Yukimura directs a Look at them, and then a sidelong glance at Jackal.
“I think you should take Akaya,” he says.
Akaya stares at Jackal with xenophobic mistrust and a touch of curiosity. Jackal smiles and holds out a hand.
They disappear into a moving throng of young parents and candy-munching schoolchildren and Bunta tries to figure out why Yukimura just got rid of their two newcomers, without much success.
Well, in truth he's not trying very hard to analyse the situation, since within about fifteen seconds he spots food.
Takoyaki, to be precise; sold at a lone colourful stall that is inexplicably customerless despite giving off the most amazing wafting fragrance Bunta has had the privilege of smelling in weeks – seafood, green onion, oil.
He takes five steps in the direction of the stall before he remembers that he is completely penniless and couponless.
“Erm,” he says, stopping and turning around. “Yukimura.”
Three minutes later he's got his mouth open wide and Yukimura is finger-feeding him him balls of grease and batter from a white paper bag. Bunta's tongue and teeth are a slick mess of mayonaise and salt-sweet-flavourful pleasure. He chews, swallows, makes various approving sounds.
Niou's rolling his eyes. “Get a room.”
But Yukimura's eyes are gleaming as if he's having fun and Bunta definitely is, so clearly all Niou-statements are peripheral and to be ignored in favour of takoyaki-bliss. Actually, the rest of the world is quite peripheral at the moment.
At least until seven octopus balls in, when Yukimura asks, “Would you like to play doubles with Jackal?”
The food freezes in his mouth, mid-chew.
He's suddenly conscious of everyone around them: Renji's there, and Sanada's watching them with that considering look he uses at tournaments, and Hiroshi and Niou are two metres away and talking about mathematics class but probably they're paying attention anyway. Niou definitely is, the bastard.
Bunta tries to talk with his mouth full, but what comes out is a, “Mmmmpfh – waunngh,” and Yukimura grins.
“Am I allowed to take that as a yes?”
By the time they're back at after-school practice on Monday Akaya and Jackal are apparently the best of friends, having a built a relationship based on tennis, disenfranchisement, and Akaya borrowing Jackal's money. Bunta has words to say about that, mostly along the lines of how impolite brats need to find their own financial suppliers and not co-opt Bunta's.
He watches the pre-regulars as they do their warm-ups, Akaya using one arm to hold the other behind his neck in a long stretch and chattering to Jackal simultaneously. Probably outlining his Master Plan to be the World's Best Tennis Player. Jackal actually looks interested.
Later all the club members get together for ball drills and Bunta finds himself standing on the sidelines with with kouhai on one side, New Foreign Friend on the other. Renji's serving on Court A, Niou is returning, and the only thing preventing the entire club from watching them is the presence of Nishiki-sempai on Court C.
Renji serves classically, precise and very fast. Niou dashes forward three steps, and unleashes the Kamaitachi.
By the end of five balls and a conspicuous succession of special techniques (Laser Beam, Utsusemi, some horrible imitation of Tsunawatari that is nothing like the way Bunta does it) Renji's face has that unnatural control that suggests that he is a little bit (or very) annoyed. Akaya snickers, and Jackal's expression wobbles, as if he isn't quite sure whether to be impressed or unimpressed.
“Does he ever play seriously?” he asks.
Despite Yukimura's continual lessoning, Bunta has never quite understood this important divide between playing seriously and not. Perhaps one is just born with it, like Akaya or Sanada, and no amount of trying can ever get you there. Bunta has long settled for simply being able to win. Yukimura has never complained.
Due to some strange tangential path his thoughts are currently taking, he's moved to catch Jackal's attention and tell him about the time in first year when Yukimura made Niou run three hundred laps around the courts in the dead of winter. Yukimura wasn't captain or vice-captain then (still isn't, although even the third-years have trouble remembering this), and Niou was trying to quit the club, never mind trying to make the regulars or supporting Yukimura's three-year-plan. The mechanisms by which Yukimura succeeded in making Niou listen to him are a mystery to even Hiroshi, but there's a consensus that it involved four hours of running for Niou while Yukimura stood there, jacket across his shoulders, and watched. At sunset a torrential rain came down on the both of them and changed nothing except the aftermath: Yukimura came down with influenza, Niou was fine.
Jackal listens patiently and then frowns, as if he's trying to work out what it all means. Bunta can't even begin to answer that. What does Rikkai mean, what does Yukimura mean, anyway? If Niou knew the answer he probably wouldn't be here.
Bunta has never met anyone like Yukimura. (Admittedly, he's never met anyone like Sanada or Niou either, but their contributions to his existence have been somewhat less life-changing.) If there's one thought he carries from these two years, though, it's that tennis for him is not going to stretch on forever and ever, the way he imagined as a kid; back in the days when he really did think he was a genius, before he learnt what genius was, and its insanity.
It's a thought that still hurts sometimes, when he realises he'll never be really good at tennis ever again.
A looming figure steps in front of them. Sanada, frowning from beneath his baseball cap. Jackal blanches; probably because to him Sanada's expression still looks disapproving, even though Bunta's told him repeatedly that it's just Sanada's normal expression.
“Can you come an hour early to practice tomorrow?” He directs the question at Jackal, but his gaze at both of them, and when Bunta calculates the time he wants to sputter. One hour early, that's a quarter to six AM, which entails waking up at a time so early Bunta's brain can barely compute it, and--
-- Jackal nods readily, which all in all is quite predictable really.
“Whatever for?” demands Bunta. If his highly valuable sleep is to be interrupted he wants there to be a reason for it, although if Sanada's involved it's unlikely to be a good reason.
Sanada gives him a patented deliberate imperturbable Sanada expression. “For a match.”
Jackal is on his second bottle of mineral water and doesn't seem anywhere close to replenishing the sweat that's coming off his head and neck and dampened skin. He's not breathing hard at all, a feat that would be awe-inspiring were it not for the fact that Sanada is duplicating it, on the opposite side of the court. (Still is awe-inspiring, actually. It's not as if Sanada counts as human.)
“I've never,” Bunta says, and then closes his mouth before trying again: “That is the longest single set I've ever seen played on school grounds.”
A hundred and five minutes, to be exact, long enough to completely disrupt morning practice. Yukimura actually looked irritated about that.
Jackal attempts a grin, but his mouth doesn't quite make it there. Fair enough. He has just lost to the Zan, after all.
Akaya, the only person in known history to individually lose to each of the Three in a single day, comes over and makes some tangled statement about Jackal's defensive play that is the backhanded Akaya way of both commiserating and giving a compliment. Despite Akaya's obvious inability to communicate clearly, Jackal seems to get the message; his eyes light up, his face softens into a small smile. Funny how people always manage to hear what Akaya means and not just what he says.
Bunta clicks his tongue and remembers first-year, September (playing Yukimura after the Newcomer tournament, losing losing losing so bad it was like a lesson in the meaning of the word despair); first-year, October (Sanada, Hiroshi; a twenty-minute match); first-year, December (nobody outside the Three knows how long it took, or how Renji defeated Niou, but only that it happened). And then April of second-year, of course, but no one will ever forget that.
“So, what did you think of your initiation?” he asks, when Akaya finally gets bored and pisses off. It's a bit of an abrupt question, but Jackal, he thinks, is beginning to get it now.
Jackal stares at him, a gradually dawning realisation settling on his face, and then he does grin.
After that the only real question is that of Bunta's cooperation, which he feels compelled to withhold for several weeks just on principle. Renji offered him a choice, after all – although who truly believes in free will, when Yukimura's involved?
He's always thought of himself as a singles player, right from the start. An entire tournament season of doubles, unrelenting doubles, and the knowledge that third-year will be the same has scarcely done anything to change that. What kind of person instinctively thinks of himself as a doubles player, anyway? (Renji, his mind supplies, but Renji's weird.)
And then, doubles with Jackal--
-- could work, actually; he concedes this point to the Three, as well as their impeccable collective eye for spotting tennis ability. He tests it out by dragging Jackal, Niou, and Hiroshi to a local tennis club one Saturday morning.
The other two win the first four games before Bunta gets used to not having to watch for Renji's gamemaking.
Once this point is established, he and Jackal draw it out to a 4-6 loss.
Niou shakes his head. “Just give in already.” There's mockery in his tone, the usual cultivated disdain that colours his expressions everytime he refers to what he describes as Bunta's inevitable habit of rolling over and baring his throat, where Yukimura is involved; Bunta merely shrugs. It's not as if Niou has a leg to stand on as far as that's concerned.
Jackal clears his throat and Hiroshi politely looks at him, the rest following suit. “I think that went well.”
After that it feels like a betrayal of Jackal to keep being stubborn, especially when playing doubles with him is this fun (might even be more fun than singles, he thinks momentarily, and then clamps down on that idea, horrified.), so instead of outright refusal he takes up procrastination for another two, three weeks. He'll talk to Renji after Kantou, he decides, or maybe – when Regionals end without anything changing in his cultivated apathy – when summer vacation comes. It's such a Niou thing, to delay cooperation for the sake of delay; Bunta knows he can't keep it up forever. He can't even keep it up for very long.
In the end Yukimura beats him to it, as usual, with a special Friday afternoon round of doubles matches between the second and third years (completely unprecedented and justified only by Yukimura's irresistible persuasion directed at the coach). First up, Yagyuu-Kuwahara versus Sugiyama-Mochizuki.
After the first three points, Bunta is twitching. By the end of the first game, he and Niou are exchanging overt looks of pain as well as telepathic thoughts about wasted strength, stupid pride (or possibly just aggressiveness, in the case of Hiroshi), and inability to think of a sneaky strategy to win.
“I mean,” Bunta snaps his gum, “is that not the most utterly pathetic waste of superior ability you've ever seen in your entire life? Except maybe for that Hyoutei captain during the Kantou finals, that was pretty disastrous.”
“Mmhmm.” Niou nods. “They're going to lose. Yukimura won't be pleased.”
The gum falls out of Bunta's mouth. He stares at Niou with an oh-crap-he'd forgotten-Yukimura's-complex-about-good-players-playing-bad-tennis kind of feeling. “Eh, Jackal's not really ready for that kind of scolding as yet.”
“Of course he isn't. So don't just stand there, do something about it.” Niou affects a bored expression. “It's high time we moved on to something else. Our strategist hasn't talked about anything interesting in weeks.”
Bunta spends the next ten minutes trying to think of witty and horrible things to say to Niou before he gives up at 0-3 and stalks onto the court, muttering under his breath.
Hiroshi raises an eyebrow. Bunta says, “Oh just let me take over,” and gets into position without waiting for an answer.
Hiroshi leaves the court without saying anything else, he's going to be pissy about it for days but Bunta doesn't care about that.
On the coach's bench, Yukimura's probably smiling that smile which on any other person would be a self-satisfied smirk but Bunta doesn't care about that either.
He has to pair up with Renji to win Nationals, but with the knowledge that he'll never have to do it again resting on his mind, it's actually quite a pleasant experience.
“It's a good place to play tennis,” Jackal says, two months later when they're both regulars and playing doubles on an almost-daily basis. (before the winter. Oh, before the winter. But they don't know that yet.)
He means Rikkai. Bunta doesn't really have to think about it before he agrees yes, it is, it's always been.
