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rhodochrosite) wrote2021-01-01 09:20 pm
rhodochrosite) wrote2021-01-01 09:20 pm
[fic] so far away from you lately
so far away from you lately
fandom: prince of tennis
ship: shiraishi&/yukimura, yukimura/kirihara
rating: general
word count: 1.4k
post-u17 but pre-graduation jasp schedule in which shiraishi visits the rikkai rooftop garden and discusses kirihara with yukimura... i imagine this is the first jasp schedule after the world cup but maybe not the first one overall? the part that involves sending kirihara over to osaka hasn't started yet though
--
“Need some help?”
Crouched down in front of the tulips, Yukimura glances up, shielding his eyes against the light. Shiraishi, in his Shitenhoji school uniform, grins at him from a few paces away. The tips of his hair pick up gold from the deepening sun.
“Shiraishi!” Yukimura exclaims, straightening up to pull Shiraishi into a brief one-armed embrace. As always Shiraishi smells clean and vegetal and familiar, unravelling sense impressions of an airy dorm room, Fuji’s low and quiet laughter, light catching on a gold gauntlet. “I’d appreciate another pair of hands. There's a second pair of secateurs next to the watering can, Fuji left them here last time he visited.”
“The hydrangeas are looking good,” Shiraishi says, kneeling down beside Yukimura with Fuji's secateurs in hand. He brushes a finger over the pale blue globe of a petal cluster.
“Indeed,” Yukimura agrees. “The first-years took care of the garden for me while we were away, I’m very grateful for their hard work. Though they may have been a little overzealous with the watering… No Tooyama-kun today?”
“I dropped Kin-chan off at Seigaku first,” Shiraishi says. “He was just starting a match with Echizen-kun when I left, so they’ll be at it for a while.”
Yukimura chuckles. “Hopefully Seigaku will still have at least one tennis court left intact by the time they’re done,” he says.
“But I’m sure Kin-chan would love another match with you afterwards, if you’re free,” Shiraishi adds, as if anxious to reassure Yukimura that he isn't unwanted. It's a considerate gesture, though Yukimura doesn't begrudge the playing of favourites; he does the same, and everyone has their eyes on Echizen Ryoma, after all.
“I always have time for that boy,” Yukimura says. “Akaya will be glad to see you, too. He misses you constantly. What brings you to this side of the country?”
“Ah, we had a half day at school, so Kin-chan said he wanted to see Echizen-kun, and Kenya said he wanted to see his cousin, and Chitose said he'd tag along even though he's supposedly quit the club, and Zaizen said something about updating his blog, so by that point it was pretty much already a team field trip.” Shiraishi rubs the back of his neck with his bandaged hand, sheepish. “Sorry for not calling ahead, it kinda slipped my mind between, you know. Trying to make sure we all got here mostly in one piece and without too much property damage. But I wanted to drop by to see you!"
“You know you’re always welcome here,” Yukimura says.
For a while they work in companionable silence, punctuated only by the snick of blades and the rustle of leaves, the two of them pruning dead stems and blooms past their prime with brisk snips. Then Shiraishi comments, "Weird seeing you out of a jersey."
“I’m on Beautification Committee duty,” Yukimura says, waving his secateurs. “Besides, Akaya needs some experience leading practice. I don’t remember if I ever thanked you for taking care of him at camp, I've even seen him meditating in the locker room recently. Well, trying to meditate, at least.”
Shiraishi laughs. “It’s no problem at all. He’s a good kid.”
“I think he’s quite different with you than he is with us,” Yukimura says.
“Really? Akaya-kun is always Akaya-kun.”
“I wonder,” Yukimura murmurs. He pushes the heel of his palm into the soft soil.
“Hmm?”
“Akaya is too much like me,” Yukimura says. “It’s why I could make him understand, back then at the World Cup. But if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have needed to.”
“I think he would have liked to hear it from you anyway,” Shiraishi says.
“Do you think so?” Yukimura sets the secateurs down, scrubs a wristband over his forehead. “Ahh, Yanagi is always better at knowing what to say. So are you.”
Shiraishi flashes him a rueful smile. “Once it took me more than a year to say something important to someone I cared about, so I don’t know if I actually have you beat there."
“I always used to think surely there were things that didn't need to be said to be understood. You and Fuji showed me differently. I only wish that I could have—for the people I care about—" The sun is in his eyes. He grasps for a lexicon that he knows Shiraishi shares. “When I came back from the hospital everything was out of order,” Yukimura says, sweeping a hand over the rows of flowers. “I’m sure my team tried, but—we are the tennis club, after all, and not the gardening club. It took a long time to get it back to how it was before.”
Those first few days after his return. The ugly fury he could barely choke down, such a small thing like a garden but even this, it turned out, he could not entrust to another. He’d doubled the regulars’ training menu, tripled his own, brushed off Yanagi’s apprehensive Seiichi… and obliterated him six games to love on the centre court. And it still hadn’t been enough. He has seen, by now, the end of himself reflected with pristine clarity in three sets of irises scintillating with fearless joy, that insurmountable, terrifying height he already knew that first time with Echizen that he would never be able to scale.
But it always comes back to him. Slowly and bitterly, but unfailingly. What Sanada had given him years and years ago, that surety, that faith. Did he love so lightly, to concede defeat so soon? All those trembling sweating hours in the rehabilitation centre, pain so total it could have cleaved him in half, slicing the weakness, the dead growth out of himself inch by inch, so he could stand on the court again. So he could stand on this rooftop, here with Shiraishi. Sun over their hands, wind in their hair. What an inheritance. What a weight of love.
“Your garden is beautiful, Yukimura-kun,” Shiraishi says gently.
“Plants are easy,” Yukimura says. “You care for them, you watch them grow. When there’s wilt, you water. When there’s rot, you cut it out at the base. But…”
During the semifinals against Nagoya Seitoku Yukimura had been sloshing around in painkillers up to his ears and all he could muster was a distant cottony numbness, watching Kirihara bleed out messily on the court, waiting for the moment Kirihara would prove himself capable of bearing the weight of the entirety of the shared dream. All the tightly-furled potential Yukimura had glimpsed in him the first time Kirihara challenged him to a match exploding out of him at last, as Yukimura had known it would; he’d staked everything on it. He had believed, then, that it was worth it. He still does. That’s what he’s tried to give Kirihara, over and over again, on the Rikkaidai courts in the spring of his second year, at Nationals as Kirihara dragged his mangled body back to its feet, at the World Cup facing Tezuka luminescent with the Pinnacle of Perfection on the other side of the net. I have opened the gates for you. Now all you have to do is step through.
Two years of caring for Kirihara, watching him grow. Yukimura has been careful about cultivating the distance, even as Kirihara’s eyes burned the back of his neck with desperate and badly-concealed longing, to make sure Kirihara will never stop pushing himself, reaching forward. He does not fear the possibility of being overtaken, but he almost wishes he did. He is waiting, as ever, for Kirihara to surprise him.
“It’s difficult to tell,” Yukimura finishes lightly. He prods at a browned petal on a withered daisy with the tip of his finger. “When it comes to—other things. Whether or not you did well.”
Shiraishi picks up the secateurs, lying in the dirt. He holds them out to Yukimura, grip first. Gaze steady, clear, warm. “When they don’t need you anymore,” he says. “That’s how you know you did well.”
fandom: prince of tennis
ship: shiraishi&/yukimura, yukimura/kirihara
rating: general
word count: 1.4k
post-u17 but pre-graduation jasp schedule in which shiraishi visits the rikkai rooftop garden and discusses kirihara with yukimura... i imagine this is the first jasp schedule after the world cup but maybe not the first one overall? the part that involves sending kirihara over to osaka hasn't started yet though
--
“Need some help?”
Crouched down in front of the tulips, Yukimura glances up, shielding his eyes against the light. Shiraishi, in his Shitenhoji school uniform, grins at him from a few paces away. The tips of his hair pick up gold from the deepening sun.
“Shiraishi!” Yukimura exclaims, straightening up to pull Shiraishi into a brief one-armed embrace. As always Shiraishi smells clean and vegetal and familiar, unravelling sense impressions of an airy dorm room, Fuji’s low and quiet laughter, light catching on a gold gauntlet. “I’d appreciate another pair of hands. There's a second pair of secateurs next to the watering can, Fuji left them here last time he visited.”
“The hydrangeas are looking good,” Shiraishi says, kneeling down beside Yukimura with Fuji's secateurs in hand. He brushes a finger over the pale blue globe of a petal cluster.
“Indeed,” Yukimura agrees. “The first-years took care of the garden for me while we were away, I’m very grateful for their hard work. Though they may have been a little overzealous with the watering… No Tooyama-kun today?”
“I dropped Kin-chan off at Seigaku first,” Shiraishi says. “He was just starting a match with Echizen-kun when I left, so they’ll be at it for a while.”
Yukimura chuckles. “Hopefully Seigaku will still have at least one tennis court left intact by the time they’re done,” he says.
“But I’m sure Kin-chan would love another match with you afterwards, if you’re free,” Shiraishi adds, as if anxious to reassure Yukimura that he isn't unwanted. It's a considerate gesture, though Yukimura doesn't begrudge the playing of favourites; he does the same, and everyone has their eyes on Echizen Ryoma, after all.
“I always have time for that boy,” Yukimura says. “Akaya will be glad to see you, too. He misses you constantly. What brings you to this side of the country?”
“Ah, we had a half day at school, so Kin-chan said he wanted to see Echizen-kun, and Kenya said he wanted to see his cousin, and Chitose said he'd tag along even though he's supposedly quit the club, and Zaizen said something about updating his blog, so by that point it was pretty much already a team field trip.” Shiraishi rubs the back of his neck with his bandaged hand, sheepish. “Sorry for not calling ahead, it kinda slipped my mind between, you know. Trying to make sure we all got here mostly in one piece and without too much property damage. But I wanted to drop by to see you!"
“You know you’re always welcome here,” Yukimura says.
For a while they work in companionable silence, punctuated only by the snick of blades and the rustle of leaves, the two of them pruning dead stems and blooms past their prime with brisk snips. Then Shiraishi comments, "Weird seeing you out of a jersey."
“I’m on Beautification Committee duty,” Yukimura says, waving his secateurs. “Besides, Akaya needs some experience leading practice. I don’t remember if I ever thanked you for taking care of him at camp, I've even seen him meditating in the locker room recently. Well, trying to meditate, at least.”
Shiraishi laughs. “It’s no problem at all. He’s a good kid.”
“I think he’s quite different with you than he is with us,” Yukimura says.
“Really? Akaya-kun is always Akaya-kun.”
“I wonder,” Yukimura murmurs. He pushes the heel of his palm into the soft soil.
“Hmm?”
“Akaya is too much like me,” Yukimura says. “It’s why I could make him understand, back then at the World Cup. But if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have needed to.”
“I think he would have liked to hear it from you anyway,” Shiraishi says.
“Do you think so?” Yukimura sets the secateurs down, scrubs a wristband over his forehead. “Ahh, Yanagi is always better at knowing what to say. So are you.”
Shiraishi flashes him a rueful smile. “Once it took me more than a year to say something important to someone I cared about, so I don’t know if I actually have you beat there."
“I always used to think surely there were things that didn't need to be said to be understood. You and Fuji showed me differently. I only wish that I could have—for the people I care about—" The sun is in his eyes. He grasps for a lexicon that he knows Shiraishi shares. “When I came back from the hospital everything was out of order,” Yukimura says, sweeping a hand over the rows of flowers. “I’m sure my team tried, but—we are the tennis club, after all, and not the gardening club. It took a long time to get it back to how it was before.”
Those first few days after his return. The ugly fury he could barely choke down, such a small thing like a garden but even this, it turned out, he could not entrust to another. He’d doubled the regulars’ training menu, tripled his own, brushed off Yanagi’s apprehensive Seiichi… and obliterated him six games to love on the centre court. And it still hadn’t been enough. He has seen, by now, the end of himself reflected with pristine clarity in three sets of irises scintillating with fearless joy, that insurmountable, terrifying height he already knew that first time with Echizen that he would never be able to scale.
But it always comes back to him. Slowly and bitterly, but unfailingly. What Sanada had given him years and years ago, that surety, that faith. Did he love so lightly, to concede defeat so soon? All those trembling sweating hours in the rehabilitation centre, pain so total it could have cleaved him in half, slicing the weakness, the dead growth out of himself inch by inch, so he could stand on the court again. So he could stand on this rooftop, here with Shiraishi. Sun over their hands, wind in their hair. What an inheritance. What a weight of love.
“Your garden is beautiful, Yukimura-kun,” Shiraishi says gently.
“Plants are easy,” Yukimura says. “You care for them, you watch them grow. When there’s wilt, you water. When there’s rot, you cut it out at the base. But…”
During the semifinals against Nagoya Seitoku Yukimura had been sloshing around in painkillers up to his ears and all he could muster was a distant cottony numbness, watching Kirihara bleed out messily on the court, waiting for the moment Kirihara would prove himself capable of bearing the weight of the entirety of the shared dream. All the tightly-furled potential Yukimura had glimpsed in him the first time Kirihara challenged him to a match exploding out of him at last, as Yukimura had known it would; he’d staked everything on it. He had believed, then, that it was worth it. He still does. That’s what he’s tried to give Kirihara, over and over again, on the Rikkaidai courts in the spring of his second year, at Nationals as Kirihara dragged his mangled body back to its feet, at the World Cup facing Tezuka luminescent with the Pinnacle of Perfection on the other side of the net. I have opened the gates for you. Now all you have to do is step through.
Two years of caring for Kirihara, watching him grow. Yukimura has been careful about cultivating the distance, even as Kirihara’s eyes burned the back of his neck with desperate and badly-concealed longing, to make sure Kirihara will never stop pushing himself, reaching forward. He does not fear the possibility of being overtaken, but he almost wishes he did. He is waiting, as ever, for Kirihara to surprise him.
“It’s difficult to tell,” Yukimura finishes lightly. He prods at a browned petal on a withered daisy with the tip of his finger. “When it comes to—other things. Whether or not you did well.”
Shiraishi picks up the secateurs, lying in the dirt. He holds them out to Yukimura, grip first. Gaze steady, clear, warm. “When they don’t need you anymore,” he says. “That’s how you know you did well.”
no subject
HELP GIRL I CAPSIZED. HELP GIRL I DRIFTED OUT TO SEA. HELP GIRL I DIED.
first of all the ynak fo today but i will expand on that later THE SURPRISE KURAKEN MENTION I ATE OKURRRRRRRRRRRNTTTTT TT_________TT im so sorry for shitening on this rikkai 201 fic but forreal shiraishi coming off so levelheaded and capable as a captain that even YUKI is admitting a weakness to an outsider here (thank you 201 complex free zone) but in actuality its a reflection of being unable to communicate whats most important to the people you care about the most....for shiraishi as is for yuki....
hunh ok i am truly typing this as i read so i was not expecting that to be literally the next part ewnwebn
GENUINELY IF YOU COULD SEE THE EXPRESSION ON MY FXXXXXKING FACE RN....:PAINED SMILE: :PAINED SMILE: :PAINED SMILE: :PAINED SMILE: RIKKAI CONSTANTLY TRYING TO DO ANYTHING THEY CAN TO MAKE YUKI HAPPY BUT IN THE END THEY ARE ONLY HUMANS SERVING THE CHILD OF GOD AND THEY CONTINUE TO FAIL AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN....they failed to win for him at kanto where they were most confident so how could they have been expected to succeed at gardening after all they are the tennis club not the gardening club but they tried they tried so hard and that should count for something but...
SORRY FOR QUOTING THE ENTIRE THING BUT UMMMMM *IS BURNED ALIVE ON THE CROSS* WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK 8FACES THE TERROR* *FACES THE TERROR* *FACES THE TERROR* FUCK OF LIFE....they try so hard for him and its not their fault and it shouldnt be their fault but it is because ultimately they all betrayed him not just once but in every possible way.......I CANNOT EXPERIENCE THE EXTENT TO WHICH YOU ARE LITERALLY MAKING ME RELIVE THE ENTIRETY OF RIKKAI KANTO ---> NATS TERROR IN LIKE 3 PARAGRAPHS YOU ARE SO SICK YOU ARE TWISTED YOU ARE UNBELIEVABLY FUCKED UP...
legitimately why is every word of this kind of spun gold....wizard of darkness and evil and light and power...i literally had to get up and do a few laps around my house to walk it off just now 😟 umm i dont even know what to say other than once again you are literally making me relive nats rn....none of what they did was enough but what rikkai has is strong and steady and constant, built on devotion which is a type of love isnt it....the years that sanada and then yanagi and then rikkai have given to yuki may have failed this time but it wont run out so easily and even if nothing can be exactly as it was again they can still try again because rikkai are still with him and even when they all leave theyll still be with him...
i honestly dont even know what to say or really what to make of the second half of this i dont think i have a huged enough mind but....yuki rehab imagery kills me so dead i died i really fucking dieddddd honestly you are sooooooo(*******&&&* for making this a 二学期 fic in the first place it really feels like yuki's saying goodbye to rikkai and walking out the other side with 201 which is kind of almost undeniably much better and healthier for him but its tragic all the same....nothing will ever be like it was in middle school ever again.......
THE YUKIAKA..............CAT THAT ATE LEMON DOT JPG
first of all i seriously cannot emphasize enough how much yuki rhab imagery is seriously putting me through so much anguish fuckkkkkkk having to actually think about what yuki mustve been going through at nationals fresh out of grueling fast track physical therapy...and the numbed parallel between kiri's physical pain (for rikkai) and yuki's (for rikkai, but also for himself because HE is rikkai) but anyway > starting to think that yukiaka might be my favorite mentorship actually T_T...i love DISTANCE yuki being the most impersonal with kiri out of troika but also being the one who first saw something in him, the one who supported him from the start and the distance being almost necessary because theyre just too similar but yuki has arguably done the most for him despite it....hes given him the greatest gift he could, a way forward...
i know it doesnt really have to be said but the sanakiri mentorship parallels re: british i TT i really just TT....
WHEN YOU TWEETED THIS YESTERDAY I THOUGHT U WERE LITERALLY QUOTING LIKE L GLUCK POETRY OR SMTG.........NOW MY MIND IS OPEN........YOUR GOD?
im ok. its ok
no subject
its soooo fucked up how rikkai try so so hard and yuki KNOWS they are trying but its not good enough bc the onlyyy thing yuki ever commanded of them was victory and they could not give him this so he had to do it himself and then HE could not give himself this either. its not their fault and it shouldnt be their fault but it is because ultimately they all betrayed him not just once but in every possible way YEAH... YEAH.....😂 its really like. It wasnt enough but it was enough but it wasnt but it was..... U know? yuki as yuki, yuki as the garden, yuki as rikkai
the years that sanada and then yanagi and then rikkai have given to yuki may have failed this time but it wont run out so easily and even if nothing can be exactly as it was again they can still try again because rikkai are still with him and even when they all leave theyll still be with him... this litr killed me dead instantly i have nothing to respond with. yuki is so not done with rikkai yet tho they still have a nats to win in high school!! TO me.
ik canon basically handwaves the speed of yukis recovery processes but i srsly cannot begin to imagine how much pain he must have undergone going from at least half a yr w/o practising (let alone recovering from an operation for an illness that literally destroyed his nerves) to nationals standard in such a short span of time... the muscular atrophy and the technique degradation he would have had to overcome TTT___TTT my personal hc is that he isnt fully recovered by nats and thats why he seems to be only benchcoaching/not on the lineup for the earlier rounds. the numbed parallel between kiri's physical pain (for rikkai) and yuki's (for rikkai, but also for himself because HE is rikkai) YES thank u for picking up on this one its like the fucked up replication of what yuki goes thru in kirihara... the way it is for kirihara but also for rikkai. but yuki is rikkai but kirihara WILL BE rikkai it is all like connected. this like incredible incredible act of love given in such a brutal way. which is how rikkai are! im glad u see the ykak vision my belovedest 2pickkk TTTTTTTTTT kirihara dies for the sin of his own weakness and then yuki dies for the sin of kiriharas weakness and so on. troika x kirihara... 😣😣😣😣😣😣😣 sanakiri british doubles yet another beloved example of epic gesture of care and mentorship and belief that simply is not communicated to kirihara at all...
STOP IM SO FLATTERED OMFG <33333 it is my favourite set of lines from this fic but icb u thought it was worthy of like ms gluck herself.... 😣😣 thank u most kindly for this extremely generous comment i am really TTTTT ILY.... THANK U FOR SEEING MY TENNIS VISIONS <3