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PoT Fic (old): A Thank You In The Fingertips (Fujicest)
Title: A Thank You In The Fingertips
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: A Fujicest fic for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vanillafire.
A Thank You In The Fingertips
An ache growls in Yuuta's left shoulder as he reaches for the shot; just dips it over the net, right where Shuusuke wanted it. The problem with playing tennis with his brother is that it's like doing anything with his brother. You're always the prey to his predator – and you never quite work out why he wants what he wants, until it's too late. In this instance, Yuuta doesn't realise that a low return is what Shuusuke wants; until Shuusuke serves a low shot right back. Yuuta considers leaping for it, but weighs up the feeling of court grit in his elbows, and concedes the point.
“I once thought I'd get better than you,” he retorts.
“The dreams of children are precious and fragile.” Shuusuke replies simply. “I didn't give up practising, after we left school.”
“That'll be it,” Yuuta mutters, going to retrieve the ball. “Although I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd kept getting better without any practice at all. The mysterious ways of Fuji Shuusuke.”
“Now, Yuuta, that's just silly.” The corner of his lip turns up. “Unless you're trying to say that I have super powers, in which case, it isn't.”
“Who do you practice with?” Yuuta doesn't think any of his brother's friends went on to play professionally after graduation. Tezuka spends his days neck-high in books and Taka's training for the day he owns his own restaurant. Eiji plays only for fun, now. It's important to Yuuta, to know if Shuusuke's met anyone new to play tennis with. Some part of Yuuta wants to know who is harbouring his brother's seemingly endless talent. He wonders whether he really is the only person with whom Shuusuke plays seriously, these days.
“Tezuka,” Shuusuke says, lightly. “Stubborn. Still trying to figure out the third triple counter.”
“Man. Give it up already.” Tezuka is fine, though. Tezuka isn't someone new; isn't competition.
“Mm, I don't know, Yuuta. How many have you worked out?” Shuusuke is definitely smirking now.
“That's beside the point,” Yuuta says, because it is. “I play you for a different reason.”
“Oh? Do tell me your secret, Yuuta.”
“Teach me one of the counters and I'll tell you.” It's childish, but Yuuta can't help sticking his tongue out.
“I think you'll have to offer me more than that, for such a reward.” Shuusuke reflects. He is slightly possessive over his triple counters; they are, after all, his signature. Tezuka doesn't use them when he plays others, he wouldn't use another person's style in his game. But Yuuta would, probably, because he has a natural flair for showing off. Also, Shuusuke doesn't like it when people win too easily. He's never given over a counter; he's taken pride in the number of years it's taken Tezuka to wrangle the first two from him. It might be one of those things that he just won't do for Yuuta – because their relationship is different now. He is less a brother than a lover; but more devoted than before. The barriers of giving are different, though; for a proper relationship, Shuusuke has given up his impulse to be a brother to Yuuta, to give him everything he wants. He has learned to keep something of himself, to induce mystery and teasing. He has learnt to hold himself back. He has learnt to find himself, where previously there was only Yuuta. Yuuta, and the fear that Yuuta might leave. Shuusuke no longer minds saying 'no'. He no longer minds because it always makes Yuuta say a more determined 'yes'.
“Teach me one of your counters and I'll...” Yuuta can't think of what to say, initially, but then he leaves the sentence hanging and wriggles an eyebrow. Shuusuke gets the point.
“If you can learn one.” He says, mildly. He knows just how long it'll take Yuuta to pick it up; it isn't physical, isn't about movement and physics. It is like everything Shuusuke does; theoretical, all in the mind. Yuuta sees how it's done, but he won't be able to replicate it. Not until he can see it in his mind, and let it flow from there. Yuuta is a physical player, Shuusuke a mental one. Oishi said so, once, and Eiji had misunderstood; laughed so hard that he nearly fell over. Shuusuke had not been particularly amused, that day.
“Are you saying that I can't?”
“Certainly not. Merely questioning it. Too much arrogance makes you less sexy, you know.”
Yuuta scowls, but makes an effort to look more humble, nonetheless. “I can learn one.”
“Do show.” Shuusuke says. “I'd like to see how it's done. Which are you going to pick?” The sun blazing down on the court means that the Hakugei is immediately ruled out. Shuusuke wouldn't put it past Yuuta to pick the Tsubame Gaeshi, because it's the one with the most flair to it. Yuuta's always wanted a move that has a signature pose. Shuusuke can remember him loving Superman reruns, when they were younger.
“Er.” Yuuta says. Thinking about it, probability catches up with him. There is more chance of the world suddenly falling off its axis than of him learning a triple counter in one afternoon and making it to bed with Shuusuke by the end of the night. But Yuuta has coped with adversity before, and he is nothing if not stubbornly, stupidly determined. “Tsubame Gaeshi?”
“Excellent. What a nice view I'll have.” Shuusuke looks out at the park deliberately, here, but Yuuta still knows what he means.
“Oh, shut up, Shuusuke.” Yuuta retorts, and Shuusuke feels a small thrill, somewhere in his stomach.
---
Underneath the table, Shuusuke nudges Yuuta's foot with his own. It earns him a grunt, and he finds this so entertaining that he does it again. It's been a common routine since they were old enough to do homework, but now the sole of Shuusuke's foot curves over Yuuta's ankle, and dark grey eyes meet his own over the tabletop. He pauses writing, puts his pen down. Sports Science can wait another moment.
“Shuusuke,” he says, pleased. His brother's eyes soften. Yuuta offers up his ankle for further attention, moving his toes with idle pleasure.
“What were you thinking about?” Shuusuke asks, resting his chin on his palm and nudging his portfolio to the side. “You had that look in your eyes, like you were thinking about Britney Spears dressed in leather.”
“Hmm?” Yuuta seems momentarily distracted by the image, and Shuusuke nudges his big toe into his ankle bone. “Oh. Er, no. I was thinking about the time we...er. You tried to. Or I tried to,”
“Are you sure Japanese is your first language?”
“Shut up. I meant; I was thinking about the time I tried to learn the Tsubame Gaeshi. In the park; on the courts, that day.”
“Mmmm. I liked that day. Ah, no, I liked that night...”
“It was humiliating.”
“The night?”
“No, the day. Idiot.”
“Maa, my Icarus. It's for tensais only, don't you know.”
“Who the hell is Icarus?”
“Don't you worry about that.”
Shuusuke's foot slips under the hem of Yuuta's jeans, and he shivers. He doesn't, indeed, worry about it any more.
---
There is something interesting, Yuuta thinks, about watching Shuusuke be a real teacher. It's gone seven, and they've been on the courts four hours since Yuuta first took up the gauntlet. For the first time, Yuuta has seen real frustration in his brother. Shuusuke plays tennis as he plays life; he observes, entertained by social data. He never pushes or forces people to do strange things – they always seem to happen around him, perhaps provoked by an idle comment, a sly joke. Shuusuke alters the world around him like a chemist, and treats the reaction like a precious discovery. The joy of the unexpected, Yuuta thinks, is what his brother lives for. Only now, there is no space for neutral ground. Shuusuke is not watching Yuuta with indifferent observation, as he tries to master the art of an impossible technique. There is something in it for him. The longer Yuuta takes, the more delayed any possible reward becomes and Shuusuke has longer given up feeling protective about his counters. In the first two hours, he developed a sort of pride in watching Yuuta learn; there was flattery in his dedication. This shortly led to his willing him on, despite the hopelessness of it, and then he had remembered what would happen if Yuuta did succeed.
He'd had to go for a drink, then and, swigging the water down his throat, he'd forced all of the indecent images through his brain so that Yuuta wouldn't see them lingering on his face when he returned. Over the years, Shuusuke has been unravelled by Yuuta. His precision has been worn away by Yuuta's rugged looseness; his charismatic, boyish, open-mouthed kissing. Yuuta is not neat-limbed, does not have philosophical sex. Yuuta has the kind of sex when his hands fumble and his lips roughen skin. He has the kind of sex that feels and breathes on his own. Sometimes Shuusuke gets his own way, and he teases, dominates, submits; winds him around a maze, husky and dark. But Yuuta likes to chase pleasure the way he chases everything, and the sex always ends up with both of them racing each other down a hill, like they did when they were children; only now it's very different.
Shuusuke sits, watches Yuuta scrutinise the court, and thinks about him leaning over him; the long lines of his shoulders pushing weight down. He thinks about a Yuuta euphoric; raining his lips down on his neck and his fingers down on his stomach, waist, beyond. He thinks about Yuuta above him; black-eyed and tongue-between-lips, gasping for breath and gasping with the fight to keep going. And then Shuusuke stops thinking at all, because it's irritating him and Shuusuke hates to be irritated more than he hates to be cold. Yuuta looks across at him, from the court. There's an ounce of defeat in his eyes; a little smudge of it, bleak and bright.
“Why did you have to make this so hard?”
“Aha. It wouldn't have been too impressive, had it been easy. I have a reputation, after all.”
Yuuta looks at him, and his very blood curls to fists inside him. He has no idea, none, how he can be so calm. Not knowing what's at stake. Not understanding that as every minute ticks by, they're delaying what both of them want for a pointless exercise. It's maddening for Yuuta; maddening that no matter what he does, he can't succeed. It's maddening that he has to keep going, because to back down would be weak, and Shuusuke would probably insist on his keeping up his end of the bargain. Shuusuke is just as mean with his own pleasure as Yuuta is stubborn, and perhaps this night will never end. Perhaps Yuuta will never win. But it's a thought too hideous to imagine, so Yuuta screws up his face and thinks only about the court, about the ball, about the whoosh of the air as the serve slices through it. The ball hits the net, and he audibly groans.
“You're putting too much frustration into it,” Shuusuke says, voice wavering a touch. “It's not about power, or speed. It's much softer. You're manipulating your opponent's spin; you're...turning their move against them. It's about provocation, not reaction, or reply. Don't force the ball.”
Of course, Yuuta thinks. The moves are all about Shuusuke; all about his way of living. None of them are aggressive or vengeful. They are more a dance – flirtatious, cunning. They are more Shuusuke than they are Yuuta, and he knows without a doubt, then, that he's never going to be able to do this. Not without being much better than he is. But there are many ways of learning, he knows. And many ways of displaying knowledge.
He turns on Shuusuke, with a definitive look in his eyes.
---
“You were a very bad boy.” Shuusuke says, without a hint of irony. Yuuta, eyes closed, is more conscious of his brother's foot in his lap than anything he's saying. He hears the words 'bad boy', and his ears prick up.
“I was a very bad boy.” He replies, obediently. This, it seems, is not what Shuusuke wants.
“Yuuta.”
“Sorry. Just getting into it.”
“I rather liked you that way, however,” Shuusuke continues. “It was...”
“Manly?”
“Hmm...”
“Seductive?”
“Not seductive, no.”
“Knee-meltingly good?”
“I'm not sure that's quite what I meant.”
“The best you've ever had?”
“Yuuta.”
“Sorry.”
---
“Let's face facts,” Yuuta says. “I'm not going to learn this any time soon, and both of us want what comes afterwards. So it makes logical sense to skip the learning part, and get onto the afterwards part.”
Shuusuke studies him and his fingers tighten their hold on the wire fence around them.
“I know it's against your principles of waiting and joking and making everything a really good show,” Yuuta continues, his knuckles curving over his brother's neck. “But sometimes impulsivity is good, too. Sometimes it's nice to do things my way. Aniki.”
Shuusuke doesn't know what to say to this; or to the 'aniki', so he says nothing. His eyes are very bright, even in the dusky light, and when Yuuta leans in to kiss him they slip only half-closed. A small noise leaves his mouth, pools like fire on Yuuta's lips. Rough fingers scrape the back of his neck and he shivers instinctively; suddenly feeling the cold, as if it weren't there before. But it's okay, because it's Yuuta – and things just are okay with Yuuta, so he remains quiet, remains kissed.
“If you don't want this, then...” Yuuta begins, and his hand creeps towards Shuusuke's waist. “...it's cool, because...you know.” He hopes Shuusuke does because he doesn't, quite. Only that this is something they probably shouldn't ever do; another thing they shouldn't ever do, another thing that just happens to be public and dangerous and more than a bit kinky. “It's okay. We don't have to.”
It gives Shuusuke a strange thrill that Yuuta's words and his actions don't match up. Yuuta is saying 'we don't have to' and his hand is warm underneath Shuusuke's trousers. Yuuta is asking for permission as his fingers curl around Shuusuke's cock, coaxing a reaction with small strokes. It's not the dominance he's exerting; it's the deliciousness of a situation that's jarring, puzzling, a little out of sync. Shuusuke takes delight in the essence of strange things. He takes delight in the curves of Yuuta's lips; saying things that his hand doesn't really agree with. He nods, once. “I want to. I...you know I do. We've talked...you remembered.”
“Yes,” Yuuta says, and goes onto his knees, holding his brother's gaze. “I remembered. I found it, er, a bit difficult to forget.”
“Your childhood view of your innocent brother, forever tarnished.”
Yuuta merely works Shuusuke's trousers open in response, his eyes glittering grey.
“Not yet.”
---
“It was different.” Shuusuke eventually says, and by this point, Yuuta's pushing his heel into his groin rather shamelessly, because it feels nice. He catches his older brother's eyes across the table.
“Different?”
“Mmm. Quite a feat, no? Considering that, aha, it's not an uncommon activity.”
“I'd like to think that commonly it doesn't happen between brothers in a local park.” Yuuta points out. “Just for the sake of my sanity.”
“You'd be surprised.” Shuusuke replies, with a teasing look that Yuuta can't quite work out, so he figures that aniki's just messing with his head, and rolls his eyes.
“It was different because you let go,” he replies simply. “It was your fantasy. Not mine. You were selfish for once. It's a good thing. I'm always selfish.” A grin spreads across his face.
“You're not always,” Shuusuke concedes. “You were better, after the time I refused to do you to 'Hit Me Baby, One More Time'.”
“I still think that it would have been hot.”
“That, little brother, will be your eventual and tragic downfall.”
---
It takes around one minute for Shuusuke to relax enough to concentrate on Yuuta's mouth. It takes another two for him to close his eyes; an irony that'll interest him later on. After three minutes of gentle tongue-flicks, he's in a position to trust that they're truly alone; and that Yuuta can take care of any unlucky passers by. It's turning dark, now, and all around is quiet and still. He can see his breath as much as he can hear it; hard puffs of need, of fearful fantasy. He wants this too much and he knows it – his legs know it, knocking against Yuuta's shoulders. His own struggle to keep him upright against the fence, so when his hands bury into Yuuta's hair it's not to encourage or force but to stabilize. Yuuta grunts anyway, the way he does when his hair is pulled; and sucks Shuusuke hard into his mouth. The fence is very cold on his neck, as Shuusuke pushes back suddenly against it. The air around him is warmer, hot with fast panting.
“Yuuta,” he gasps, opening his eyes a bare sliver so that he can watch something unlikely to ever reoccur, “Yuuta, this is...this is...”
Yuuta makes a comment in his throat, which helps neither the conversation nor Shuusuke's building arousal. The feel of the purr hits him, warm and ticklish, and greedily he reaches for him. Yuuta's fingers are there, then; curling where his mouth can't reach, and there's such a sense of completion that Shuusuke can't think anymore. Any anxiety he felt about the exhibitionism has turned to territorial enjoyment. It's indecent, it's wrong and without a doubt it's illegal, but although the colours of it are too bright for Shuusuke and the taste all too potent, it feels right. It feels right in the way that Yuuta feels right, despite the fact that they are completely opposite people. They share their genes but not characters; and Shuusuke feels that he has the genes for an act like this, if not the personality. He is not brash like Yuuta, nor is he quite so rough – but he is daring, seductive, wicked. He is territorial. He is needy and possessive. He is taking as much enjoyment out of being marked by Yuuta as Yuuta is marking him; of laying down the spot as theirs, brothers, brothers and more than. His hands clasp Yuuta's hair and his hips tilt forwards; not pushing but a whisper of a request. Criss-crossed wires have claimed strands of hair that tug painfully as his head moves back; his shoulders ache with responsibility. It's worth it, though, to have his body centred on the heat of Yuuta's mouth.
“This is crazy,” he chokes out, and it's altogether a disconcerting thing to be the one saying that, but then there's nothing about this situation that's at all normal. Yuuta's eyes glint up at him, a boyish excitement of 'yeah, isn't it!', and Shuusuke smiles before a surge of heat tears his mouth into angles.
“I want you, Yuuta. I want this – this, harder, this...Yuuta, please.”
---
“What will be your tragic downfall?” Yuuta asks, as if he's genuinely curious. Shuusuke can't help thinking about the time he was taught about Macbeth in an English lesson and wonders if he should say something regal and grand. Unfortunately, the only answer he can think of to the question doesn't sound at all like that; and he doubts that he'll ever make his name by killing a King Duncan.
“Never being serious,” he answers with slight flippancy.
“You're serious with me.”
“Then perhaps I'm saved. You hero, you.”
“You are serious with me, aren't you?”
“Yes. Except when I'm not.”
“When you're teasing me about Britney Spears.”
“Yes. It's too good to resist.”
“That's what Akazawa used to say.”
“I always said that he was a wise man...but, aha, no, no I didn't.”
“It was the first time I'd seen you seriously want me.”
“I always seriously want you, Yuuta.”
“But you're good at veiling it, because you don't like instant gratification.”
“Yes. Quite true.”
“You liked it then, though.”
“I did. That's perhaps why it was different.”
“Not because it was the best you've ever had...?”
“Yuuta.”
“Sorry.”
---
Yuuta blinks up at him, genuinely shocked by the frankness; the wild blue of Shuusuke's eyes, the hoarse desire in his voice. Bare honesty. No verbal foreplay, no succulent teasing. Pure, heartbeat, velvet need. His hands clutch narrow hipbones as his eyes hold Shuusuke's face; determined not to look away. It's like looking at an eclipse, waiting for the moment that all turns black. Yuuta shivers and his throat rumbles with it, Shuusuke groans – and the world splits, falls off its axis just as Yuuta had been sure it wouldn't, tonight. It's the least right thing in the whole universe but it's also the most right and Yuuta can't hold the glance anymore. He closes his eyes as Shuusuke comes and takes the electricity blind; feels it buzzing through his mind and his body, spikes of sheer contact all over his skin. Shuusuke yells and for a moment it worries Yuuta, because anyone could hear – but then it catches up with him that, more importantly, Shuusuke never yells, and he feels like he's tapped into this lost reservoir of something that his brother has always held back from him. Opening his eyes, he drinks in the image of the flawless Fuji Shuusuke, askew and trembling, shrouded in the dark, in the quiet veil of night. Yuuta has never, ever been so pleased about silence. Everything shakes with breath but they are alone, thank God; nobody has heard, nobody is coming. They are the only two people left, perhaps, and that's enough for Yuuta just now.
He lets Shuusuke go, then; mouth loose and soaked, and leans his forehead against his stomach. One of his brother's hands curves around his neck; and there's a thank you in the fingertips.
---
“My tragic downfall will be you,” Shuusuke says, eventually. “You know too much.”
“And now you have to kill me?” Yuuta says, amused; Shuusuke's foot static against his hipbone.
“Exactly.”
“That sounds more like my tragic downfall than yours.”
“Maa...I'd miss you.”
“Because I'm the best you ever had!”
“Yuuta.”
“Sorry.”
---
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: A Fujicest fic for
vanillafire. A Thank You In The Fingertips
An ache growls in Yuuta's left shoulder as he reaches for the shot; just dips it over the net, right where Shuusuke wanted it. The problem with playing tennis with his brother is that it's like doing anything with his brother. You're always the prey to his predator – and you never quite work out why he wants what he wants, until it's too late. In this instance, Yuuta doesn't realise that a low return is what Shuusuke wants; until Shuusuke serves a low shot right back. Yuuta considers leaping for it, but weighs up the feeling of court grit in his elbows, and concedes the point.
“I once thought I'd get better than you,” he retorts.
“The dreams of children are precious and fragile.” Shuusuke replies simply. “I didn't give up practising, after we left school.”
“That'll be it,” Yuuta mutters, going to retrieve the ball. “Although I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd kept getting better without any practice at all. The mysterious ways of Fuji Shuusuke.”
“Now, Yuuta, that's just silly.” The corner of his lip turns up. “Unless you're trying to say that I have super powers, in which case, it isn't.”
“Who do you practice with?” Yuuta doesn't think any of his brother's friends went on to play professionally after graduation. Tezuka spends his days neck-high in books and Taka's training for the day he owns his own restaurant. Eiji plays only for fun, now. It's important to Yuuta, to know if Shuusuke's met anyone new to play tennis with. Some part of Yuuta wants to know who is harbouring his brother's seemingly endless talent. He wonders whether he really is the only person with whom Shuusuke plays seriously, these days.
“Tezuka,” Shuusuke says, lightly. “Stubborn. Still trying to figure out the third triple counter.”
“Man. Give it up already.” Tezuka is fine, though. Tezuka isn't someone new; isn't competition.
“Mm, I don't know, Yuuta. How many have you worked out?” Shuusuke is definitely smirking now.
“That's beside the point,” Yuuta says, because it is. “I play you for a different reason.”
“Oh? Do tell me your secret, Yuuta.”
“Teach me one of the counters and I'll tell you.” It's childish, but Yuuta can't help sticking his tongue out.
“I think you'll have to offer me more than that, for such a reward.” Shuusuke reflects. He is slightly possessive over his triple counters; they are, after all, his signature. Tezuka doesn't use them when he plays others, he wouldn't use another person's style in his game. But Yuuta would, probably, because he has a natural flair for showing off. Also, Shuusuke doesn't like it when people win too easily. He's never given over a counter; he's taken pride in the number of years it's taken Tezuka to wrangle the first two from him. It might be one of those things that he just won't do for Yuuta – because their relationship is different now. He is less a brother than a lover; but more devoted than before. The barriers of giving are different, though; for a proper relationship, Shuusuke has given up his impulse to be a brother to Yuuta, to give him everything he wants. He has learned to keep something of himself, to induce mystery and teasing. He has learnt to hold himself back. He has learnt to find himself, where previously there was only Yuuta. Yuuta, and the fear that Yuuta might leave. Shuusuke no longer minds saying 'no'. He no longer minds because it always makes Yuuta say a more determined 'yes'.
“Teach me one of your counters and I'll...” Yuuta can't think of what to say, initially, but then he leaves the sentence hanging and wriggles an eyebrow. Shuusuke gets the point.
“If you can learn one.” He says, mildly. He knows just how long it'll take Yuuta to pick it up; it isn't physical, isn't about movement and physics. It is like everything Shuusuke does; theoretical, all in the mind. Yuuta sees how it's done, but he won't be able to replicate it. Not until he can see it in his mind, and let it flow from there. Yuuta is a physical player, Shuusuke a mental one. Oishi said so, once, and Eiji had misunderstood; laughed so hard that he nearly fell over. Shuusuke had not been particularly amused, that day.
“Are you saying that I can't?”
“Certainly not. Merely questioning it. Too much arrogance makes you less sexy, you know.”
Yuuta scowls, but makes an effort to look more humble, nonetheless. “I can learn one.”
“Do show.” Shuusuke says. “I'd like to see how it's done. Which are you going to pick?” The sun blazing down on the court means that the Hakugei is immediately ruled out. Shuusuke wouldn't put it past Yuuta to pick the Tsubame Gaeshi, because it's the one with the most flair to it. Yuuta's always wanted a move that has a signature pose. Shuusuke can remember him loving Superman reruns, when they were younger.
“Er.” Yuuta says. Thinking about it, probability catches up with him. There is more chance of the world suddenly falling off its axis than of him learning a triple counter in one afternoon and making it to bed with Shuusuke by the end of the night. But Yuuta has coped with adversity before, and he is nothing if not stubbornly, stupidly determined. “Tsubame Gaeshi?”
“Excellent. What a nice view I'll have.” Shuusuke looks out at the park deliberately, here, but Yuuta still knows what he means.
“Oh, shut up, Shuusuke.” Yuuta retorts, and Shuusuke feels a small thrill, somewhere in his stomach.
Underneath the table, Shuusuke nudges Yuuta's foot with his own. It earns him a grunt, and he finds this so entertaining that he does it again. It's been a common routine since they were old enough to do homework, but now the sole of Shuusuke's foot curves over Yuuta's ankle, and dark grey eyes meet his own over the tabletop. He pauses writing, puts his pen down. Sports Science can wait another moment.
“Shuusuke,” he says, pleased. His brother's eyes soften. Yuuta offers up his ankle for further attention, moving his toes with idle pleasure.
“What were you thinking about?” Shuusuke asks, resting his chin on his palm and nudging his portfolio to the side. “You had that look in your eyes, like you were thinking about Britney Spears dressed in leather.”
“Hmm?” Yuuta seems momentarily distracted by the image, and Shuusuke nudges his big toe into his ankle bone. “Oh. Er, no. I was thinking about the time we...er. You tried to. Or I tried to,”
“Are you sure Japanese is your first language?”
“Shut up. I meant; I was thinking about the time I tried to learn the Tsubame Gaeshi. In the park; on the courts, that day.”
“Mmmm. I liked that day. Ah, no, I liked that night...”
“It was humiliating.”
“The night?”
“No, the day. Idiot.”
“Maa, my Icarus. It's for tensais only, don't you know.”
“Who the hell is Icarus?”
“Don't you worry about that.”
Shuusuke's foot slips under the hem of Yuuta's jeans, and he shivers. He doesn't, indeed, worry about it any more.
There is something interesting, Yuuta thinks, about watching Shuusuke be a real teacher. It's gone seven, and they've been on the courts four hours since Yuuta first took up the gauntlet. For the first time, Yuuta has seen real frustration in his brother. Shuusuke plays tennis as he plays life; he observes, entertained by social data. He never pushes or forces people to do strange things – they always seem to happen around him, perhaps provoked by an idle comment, a sly joke. Shuusuke alters the world around him like a chemist, and treats the reaction like a precious discovery. The joy of the unexpected, Yuuta thinks, is what his brother lives for. Only now, there is no space for neutral ground. Shuusuke is not watching Yuuta with indifferent observation, as he tries to master the art of an impossible technique. There is something in it for him. The longer Yuuta takes, the more delayed any possible reward becomes and Shuusuke has longer given up feeling protective about his counters. In the first two hours, he developed a sort of pride in watching Yuuta learn; there was flattery in his dedication. This shortly led to his willing him on, despite the hopelessness of it, and then he had remembered what would happen if Yuuta did succeed.
He'd had to go for a drink, then and, swigging the water down his throat, he'd forced all of the indecent images through his brain so that Yuuta wouldn't see them lingering on his face when he returned. Over the years, Shuusuke has been unravelled by Yuuta. His precision has been worn away by Yuuta's rugged looseness; his charismatic, boyish, open-mouthed kissing. Yuuta is not neat-limbed, does not have philosophical sex. Yuuta has the kind of sex when his hands fumble and his lips roughen skin. He has the kind of sex that feels and breathes on his own. Sometimes Shuusuke gets his own way, and he teases, dominates, submits; winds him around a maze, husky and dark. But Yuuta likes to chase pleasure the way he chases everything, and the sex always ends up with both of them racing each other down a hill, like they did when they were children; only now it's very different.
Shuusuke sits, watches Yuuta scrutinise the court, and thinks about him leaning over him; the long lines of his shoulders pushing weight down. He thinks about a Yuuta euphoric; raining his lips down on his neck and his fingers down on his stomach, waist, beyond. He thinks about Yuuta above him; black-eyed and tongue-between-lips, gasping for breath and gasping with the fight to keep going. And then Shuusuke stops thinking at all, because it's irritating him and Shuusuke hates to be irritated more than he hates to be cold. Yuuta looks across at him, from the court. There's an ounce of defeat in his eyes; a little smudge of it, bleak and bright.
“Why did you have to make this so hard?”
“Aha. It wouldn't have been too impressive, had it been easy. I have a reputation, after all.”
Yuuta looks at him, and his very blood curls to fists inside him. He has no idea, none, how he can be so calm. Not knowing what's at stake. Not understanding that as every minute ticks by, they're delaying what both of them want for a pointless exercise. It's maddening for Yuuta; maddening that no matter what he does, he can't succeed. It's maddening that he has to keep going, because to back down would be weak, and Shuusuke would probably insist on his keeping up his end of the bargain. Shuusuke is just as mean with his own pleasure as Yuuta is stubborn, and perhaps this night will never end. Perhaps Yuuta will never win. But it's a thought too hideous to imagine, so Yuuta screws up his face and thinks only about the court, about the ball, about the whoosh of the air as the serve slices through it. The ball hits the net, and he audibly groans.
“You're putting too much frustration into it,” Shuusuke says, voice wavering a touch. “It's not about power, or speed. It's much softer. You're manipulating your opponent's spin; you're...turning their move against them. It's about provocation, not reaction, or reply. Don't force the ball.”
Of course, Yuuta thinks. The moves are all about Shuusuke; all about his way of living. None of them are aggressive or vengeful. They are more a dance – flirtatious, cunning. They are more Shuusuke than they are Yuuta, and he knows without a doubt, then, that he's never going to be able to do this. Not without being much better than he is. But there are many ways of learning, he knows. And many ways of displaying knowledge.
He turns on Shuusuke, with a definitive look in his eyes.
“You were a very bad boy.” Shuusuke says, without a hint of irony. Yuuta, eyes closed, is more conscious of his brother's foot in his lap than anything he's saying. He hears the words 'bad boy', and his ears prick up.
“I was a very bad boy.” He replies, obediently. This, it seems, is not what Shuusuke wants.
“Yuuta.”
“Sorry. Just getting into it.”
“I rather liked you that way, however,” Shuusuke continues. “It was...”
“Manly?”
“Hmm...”
“Seductive?”
“Not seductive, no.”
“Knee-meltingly good?”
“I'm not sure that's quite what I meant.”
“The best you've ever had?”
“Yuuta.”
“Sorry.”
“Let's face facts,” Yuuta says. “I'm not going to learn this any time soon, and both of us want what comes afterwards. So it makes logical sense to skip the learning part, and get onto the afterwards part.”
Shuusuke studies him and his fingers tighten their hold on the wire fence around them.
“I know it's against your principles of waiting and joking and making everything a really good show,” Yuuta continues, his knuckles curving over his brother's neck. “But sometimes impulsivity is good, too. Sometimes it's nice to do things my way. Aniki.”
Shuusuke doesn't know what to say to this; or to the 'aniki', so he says nothing. His eyes are very bright, even in the dusky light, and when Yuuta leans in to kiss him they slip only half-closed. A small noise leaves his mouth, pools like fire on Yuuta's lips. Rough fingers scrape the back of his neck and he shivers instinctively; suddenly feeling the cold, as if it weren't there before. But it's okay, because it's Yuuta – and things just are okay with Yuuta, so he remains quiet, remains kissed.
“If you don't want this, then...” Yuuta begins, and his hand creeps towards Shuusuke's waist. “...it's cool, because...you know.” He hopes Shuusuke does because he doesn't, quite. Only that this is something they probably shouldn't ever do; another thing they shouldn't ever do, another thing that just happens to be public and dangerous and more than a bit kinky. “It's okay. We don't have to.”
It gives Shuusuke a strange thrill that Yuuta's words and his actions don't match up. Yuuta is saying 'we don't have to' and his hand is warm underneath Shuusuke's trousers. Yuuta is asking for permission as his fingers curl around Shuusuke's cock, coaxing a reaction with small strokes. It's not the dominance he's exerting; it's the deliciousness of a situation that's jarring, puzzling, a little out of sync. Shuusuke takes delight in the essence of strange things. He takes delight in the curves of Yuuta's lips; saying things that his hand doesn't really agree with. He nods, once. “I want to. I...you know I do. We've talked...you remembered.”
“Yes,” Yuuta says, and goes onto his knees, holding his brother's gaze. “I remembered. I found it, er, a bit difficult to forget.”
“Your childhood view of your innocent brother, forever tarnished.”
Yuuta merely works Shuusuke's trousers open in response, his eyes glittering grey.
“Not yet.”
“It was different.” Shuusuke eventually says, and by this point, Yuuta's pushing his heel into his groin rather shamelessly, because it feels nice. He catches his older brother's eyes across the table.
“Different?”
“Mmm. Quite a feat, no? Considering that, aha, it's not an uncommon activity.”
“I'd like to think that commonly it doesn't happen between brothers in a local park.” Yuuta points out. “Just for the sake of my sanity.”
“You'd be surprised.” Shuusuke replies, with a teasing look that Yuuta can't quite work out, so he figures that aniki's just messing with his head, and rolls his eyes.
“It was different because you let go,” he replies simply. “It was your fantasy. Not mine. You were selfish for once. It's a good thing. I'm always selfish.” A grin spreads across his face.
“You're not always,” Shuusuke concedes. “You were better, after the time I refused to do you to 'Hit Me Baby, One More Time'.”
“I still think that it would have been hot.”
“That, little brother, will be your eventual and tragic downfall.”
It takes around one minute for Shuusuke to relax enough to concentrate on Yuuta's mouth. It takes another two for him to close his eyes; an irony that'll interest him later on. After three minutes of gentle tongue-flicks, he's in a position to trust that they're truly alone; and that Yuuta can take care of any unlucky passers by. It's turning dark, now, and all around is quiet and still. He can see his breath as much as he can hear it; hard puffs of need, of fearful fantasy. He wants this too much and he knows it – his legs know it, knocking against Yuuta's shoulders. His own struggle to keep him upright against the fence, so when his hands bury into Yuuta's hair it's not to encourage or force but to stabilize. Yuuta grunts anyway, the way he does when his hair is pulled; and sucks Shuusuke hard into his mouth. The fence is very cold on his neck, as Shuusuke pushes back suddenly against it. The air around him is warmer, hot with fast panting.
“Yuuta,” he gasps, opening his eyes a bare sliver so that he can watch something unlikely to ever reoccur, “Yuuta, this is...this is...”
Yuuta makes a comment in his throat, which helps neither the conversation nor Shuusuke's building arousal. The feel of the purr hits him, warm and ticklish, and greedily he reaches for him. Yuuta's fingers are there, then; curling where his mouth can't reach, and there's such a sense of completion that Shuusuke can't think anymore. Any anxiety he felt about the exhibitionism has turned to territorial enjoyment. It's indecent, it's wrong and without a doubt it's illegal, but although the colours of it are too bright for Shuusuke and the taste all too potent, it feels right. It feels right in the way that Yuuta feels right, despite the fact that they are completely opposite people. They share their genes but not characters; and Shuusuke feels that he has the genes for an act like this, if not the personality. He is not brash like Yuuta, nor is he quite so rough – but he is daring, seductive, wicked. He is territorial. He is needy and possessive. He is taking as much enjoyment out of being marked by Yuuta as Yuuta is marking him; of laying down the spot as theirs, brothers, brothers and more than. His hands clasp Yuuta's hair and his hips tilt forwards; not pushing but a whisper of a request. Criss-crossed wires have claimed strands of hair that tug painfully as his head moves back; his shoulders ache with responsibility. It's worth it, though, to have his body centred on the heat of Yuuta's mouth.
“This is crazy,” he chokes out, and it's altogether a disconcerting thing to be the one saying that, but then there's nothing about this situation that's at all normal. Yuuta's eyes glint up at him, a boyish excitement of 'yeah, isn't it!', and Shuusuke smiles before a surge of heat tears his mouth into angles.
“I want you, Yuuta. I want this – this, harder, this...Yuuta, please.”
“What will be your tragic downfall?” Yuuta asks, as if he's genuinely curious. Shuusuke can't help thinking about the time he was taught about Macbeth in an English lesson and wonders if he should say something regal and grand. Unfortunately, the only answer he can think of to the question doesn't sound at all like that; and he doubts that he'll ever make his name by killing a King Duncan.
“Never being serious,” he answers with slight flippancy.
“You're serious with me.”
“Then perhaps I'm saved. You hero, you.”
“You are serious with me, aren't you?”
“Yes. Except when I'm not.”
“When you're teasing me about Britney Spears.”
“Yes. It's too good to resist.”
“That's what Akazawa used to say.”
“I always said that he was a wise man...but, aha, no, no I didn't.”
“It was the first time I'd seen you seriously want me.”
“I always seriously want you, Yuuta.”
“But you're good at veiling it, because you don't like instant gratification.”
“Yes. Quite true.”
“You liked it then, though.”
“I did. That's perhaps why it was different.”
“Not because it was the best you've ever had...?”
“Yuuta.”
“Sorry.”
Yuuta blinks up at him, genuinely shocked by the frankness; the wild blue of Shuusuke's eyes, the hoarse desire in his voice. Bare honesty. No verbal foreplay, no succulent teasing. Pure, heartbeat, velvet need. His hands clutch narrow hipbones as his eyes hold Shuusuke's face; determined not to look away. It's like looking at an eclipse, waiting for the moment that all turns black. Yuuta shivers and his throat rumbles with it, Shuusuke groans – and the world splits, falls off its axis just as Yuuta had been sure it wouldn't, tonight. It's the least right thing in the whole universe but it's also the most right and Yuuta can't hold the glance anymore. He closes his eyes as Shuusuke comes and takes the electricity blind; feels it buzzing through his mind and his body, spikes of sheer contact all over his skin. Shuusuke yells and for a moment it worries Yuuta, because anyone could hear – but then it catches up with him that, more importantly, Shuusuke never yells, and he feels like he's tapped into this lost reservoir of something that his brother has always held back from him. Opening his eyes, he drinks in the image of the flawless Fuji Shuusuke, askew and trembling, shrouded in the dark, in the quiet veil of night. Yuuta has never, ever been so pleased about silence. Everything shakes with breath but they are alone, thank God; nobody has heard, nobody is coming. They are the only two people left, perhaps, and that's enough for Yuuta just now.
He lets Shuusuke go, then; mouth loose and soaked, and leans his forehead against his stomach. One of his brother's hands curves around his neck; and there's a thank you in the fingertips.
“My tragic downfall will be you,” Shuusuke says, eventually. “You know too much.”
“And now you have to kill me?” Yuuta says, amused; Shuusuke's foot static against his hipbone.
“Exactly.”
“That sounds more like my tragic downfall than yours.”
“Maa...I'd miss you.”
“Because I'm the best you ever had!”
“Yuuta.”
“Sorry.”