[fic] don't look the other way

[rhodochrosite]

don't look the other way
fandom: prince of tennis

ship: yukimura/marui, super vague background sanada/yukimura

rating: g

word count: 1.8k


marui visits yukimura in the hospital. set pre-kanto

--

"Ah, you just missed Sanada. Did you see him on your way in?”


“Nope,” Marui says, setting his tennis bag down by the wall. “Didn’t even know he was coming to see you today.” Though Yukimura is smiling, there’s a certain tightness to his eyes, the kind of infinitesimal tension that indicates he’s upset but determined to hold the feeling in. Clearly the visit from Sanada hadn’t gone so well. “Lovers’ quarrel?”


Shifting aside, Yukimura lifts the covers and pats the mattress beside him in invitation. Marui kicks off his shoes and climbs into the cot, careful not to jostle the IV drip nestled in the crook of Yukimura’s inner elbow. He snakes an arm around Yukimura’s waist, breathing him in. These days Yukimura has the thinly clean smell of generic soap. It isn’t unpleasant, in the way that nothing about Yukimura could be unpleasant, but it lacks recognisability. Everything about Yukimura’s presence is supposed to be distinctive, overwhelming. Even squashed shoulder-to-hip beside Marui he should take up more space than he does. Marui knows Yukimura on instinct, but the blade of the reflex is dulled. Yukimura’s memory swallows up Yukimura himself. This is, by now, an old sadness.


“You know what Sanada’s like,” Yukimura says lightly. “Let’s not talk about depressing things, though.”


At least this is something Marui is capable of alleviating. “I brought snacks,” Marui says. “Calbee chocolate chips and strawberry pocky, d’you want some?”


“Yes, please. But I don’t want you to let go.” Yukimura sighs. “You’re so warm.”


“You’re too cold.” Obligingly, Marui presses closer, tangling their legs together. “But they’re in my bag. Can’t get the goods without getting out of bed.”


“You should try developing telekinesis for your next genius-like ability,” Yukimura says.


“Aye, aye, captain,” Marui says. Honestly it really can’t be that hard to reverse-engineer the spin techniques Tezuka uses to create his Tezuka Zone and manipulate the trajectory of the ball in a more specific way. “But before that you’re gonna have to make the call.”


“Food. But be quick.”


Marui scrambles into action, returning with the slightly-crumpled box of pocky dangling from his fingers. While Marui hoists himself back into the bed, Yukimura tears open the box and attacks the foil packet inside with unexpected vigour. “Damn, are they not feeding you enough in here? Who do I need to have words with?” Marui says, hoping it sounds sufficiently close to a joke.


“For some reason I’m just always hungry,” Yukimura says. “Who knew how much energy lying in bed all day apparently consumes?” He slides a stick of pocky neatly into Marui’s parted mouth. Marui bites down. The artificial sweetness dissolves behind his teeth, leaving a metallic aftertaste behind. “So tell me, what has everyone been getting up to this past week? Other than tennis. I know all about your tennis. Yanagi makes me feel like I’m really there.”


"Mm, let me think…" With some dismay, Marui realises it's rather difficult to sieve out the parts of his life that aren’t involved with tennis in some way. Not that it especially matters to him at the moment, but Yukimura did specify. "Well, I'm designing a desserts menu for Jackal's restaurant. Probably can't do the finishing touches until we're done with Kanto, though. Akaya got his Geography test back yesterday. Passed by literally half a mark. Uh… Niou also triggered a school-wide evacuation on Tuesday—”


"Why on earth… well, it is Niou, I suppose."


"True, really true. But this time it was ‘cause he was Illusioned into Sanada and Sanada caught him and made him do like two hundred extra laps so Niou blew up the chem lab during sixth period, I think that’s when 3A have history class? To get back at him. Though I kinda feel like maybe that wasn’t actually Niou at all who did it, if you get what I’m saying.” Yukimura laughs, lifting a hand to his mouth. “But anyway, how are you?”


“Better,” Yukimura says. “I always feel better when you’re here.” And he does look better than he did when Marui came in, a little more colour in his cheeks, a brighter gleam to his eyes, the slight rise and fall of his chest less strained. Marui did that for him. Marui gave that to Yukimura. Not Sanada, not anyone else. If I have lessened your burden. If I have given you a space to forget the hurt. If I have made you happy for just one moment—


“Then I’ll just have to be here all the time,” Marui says breezily. “Sorry I can’t come to class anymore, I’m busy being totally instrumental to Yukimura Seiichi’s recovery, I’m sure you understand the dire consequences on the standing and reputation of Shiritsu Rikkai Dai Fuzoku if you guys don’t let me.” Marui pauses. “Y’know, I actually think that might work. I mean, the teachers all love you.”


“And when are you planning to fit tennis practice into your schedule?” Yukimura sticks his elbow into Marui’s ribs. “You can’t gossip and eat snacks with me in my bed forever. You have matches to win.”


“Hey, so do you.”


Yukimura hums. “I wonder.” Without warning he throws his weight over Marui, heedless of the IV, hands bearing down hard against Marui’s arms and knees knocking against Marui’s hips, in a display of strength Marui’d thought beyond Yukimura now. All the breath expels itself from Marui’s lungs in a strangled yelp. Reflexively he tenses up under Yukimura, but Yukimura’s pinning him down so securely Marui isn’t sure he’d be able to throw him off if he tried. Flash of the old swift and brutal grace.


“Yukimura-kun!”


“Yips,” Yukimura says cheerfully. His grin takes up the entirety of Marui’s field of vision. “Now you can’t move.”


The tips of Yukimura’s hair tickle at Marui’s jaw. Looking up at him, Marui’s heart stutters in fear, in hope. Longing that could cleave his chest in half. “You’re really getting better?”


“I think so,” Yukimura says. “Maybe I’ll even be back in time for Kanto.” But already his grip on Marui’s upper arms is beginning to falter, and when Yukimura rolls off Marui again a few beats later his fingers are trembling. Marui carefully does not look.


Softly: “Does it hurt?”


Leaning back against the pillow, Yukimura shakes his head. “There’s a slight numbness, sometimes. But mostly I don’t notice until I try to—move my leg, or hold a pencil, or—and then I find that I can’t.” Razor underneath the measured words. “It’s hard to describe an absence.”


Absence, Marui understands. The seven of them locked in tense orbit around the blank of a missing body. But even with its heart sliced out Rikkaidai will not fold. They’ve made sure of that. They have the drawstrings of one another clutched in their hands like a game of cat’s cradle, the kind Marui would play with his brothers; the more violently they push and pull at each other the more intricately they tangle together.


“Marui,” Yukimura says. Eyes shuttering. “You know how much you mean to me, don’t you?”


Marui’s throat constricts. He swallows. “Yukimura-kun—”


Yukimura’s voice is level as a sword. “I’ve made you bear more weight than nearly anyone else on the team. Akaya tells me—well, not directly, but I can see all the ways you’ve kept them together. Niou tells me a lot, too. I’m sorry to burden you like this.”


“You didn’t make me do anything,” Marui says. “I wanted to. I always want to. Anything you need, anything at all, you just tell me, okay? I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about me.”


“You’re too good at this,” Yukimura says. “You haven’t left me anything to do except worry.”


Marui gestures helplessly at the cot, the IV stand, the cluster of monitors at the head of Yukimura’s bed. Yukimura’s hospital ward may be flooded with flowers and well-wishes and sunlight whenever Marui visits, but it’s still a hospital ward. “I wish I could do all this for you, too,” Marui says. “Take it off you, or something.”


“I wouldn’t want you to,” Yukimura says, sharp. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”


“Yeah, I know.” Marui averts his gaze. “I just miss you. We all miss you. It’s not the same without you.”


Yukimura is quiet for a moment. “Will you be honest with me, Marui?”


“Always,” Marui promises.


“I'm asking this as your captain, not as your friend. If I can’t return in time for Kanto, do you believe the team is still capable of winning?”


Marui bites down the automatic denial of Yukimura’s premise, considers the question. “We’re a better team than we’ve ever been before,” he says. “We would be better again with you there, but we don’t even need Sanada to make us stop slacking off, everyone’s training so hard. I mean, not that it’s stopping Sanada from saying it anyway. Jackal and me, we've kicked it up a notch, we're good. But even Niou, you know? That guy’s pretending not to give a fuck, but I know he’s doing secret extra-extra practice with Yagyuu too.”


A serve-and-volley player is constantly crossing the widest possible distance in tennis, baseline to net, so Marui has always parsed observation through its tiered gradations, the broadest strokes all the way down to the minutiae of finest detail, the view from afar and up close synthesised into a single image. He watches the others at varying distances. Sanada alone in the clubroom with his head buried in his hands. Pages and pages of Yanagi’s precise handwriting in an unlabelled notebook summarising a range of neurological disorders and their avenues of treatment, left open in a gesture of uncharacteristic carelessness on a library table. Kirihara in tearful prayer in front of the shrine a few blocks away from school, and later the relentless machine-gun clatter of a tennis ball hitting a wall over and over again even after the end of practice as Marui walks home, another kind of prayer. They won’t destroy themselves, because they have to win. Marui just isn’t sure what will be left of them after they do.


“Rikkaidai’s third consecutive championship has no blind spots,” Marui finishes. It pulls a smile from Yukimura, a little more weary than before, but a smile nonetheless. “Are you tired? I should probably let you rest,” Marui says.


“See, now you sound like Sanada,” Yukimura complains.


“Well, Sanada isn’t bringing you delicious sweets and fun gossip,” Marui says.


“That’s true,” Yukimura allows.


Another fierce upswell of longing, or grief, Marui can't quite discern the difference. Only a choking desire for something he understands to be beyond his grasp. Blindly Marui reaches between their bodies for Yukimura's hand, braiding their fingers together. “Just come back to us soon,” Marui says. “Everything will be okay once you’re back.”


Yukimura tilts his head forward and kisses Marui’s cheek. The gentle brush of his mouth against Marui’s skin cold as steel. “I don’t plan on breaking my promise.”