[fic] the future is mine

[rhodochrosite]

the future is mine

fandom: prince of tennis

ship: ootori/shishido

rating: g

word count: 1.7k

ootori lotus eater dream / time loop pocket universe set sometime ambiguously after nats ^__^ very very light tori<-hiyo if you're looking

--

I wanted to win Nationals with him. One more time… fighting alongside Choutarou—
— Shishido Ryou, Game of Future Prequel Story Chapter 5

Constructed to maximise the inflow of natural light, the clubroom is always beautifully bright and airy, so Ootori tends to find himself lingering there even outside of practice schedules. As far as Atobe’s installations go, it’s relatively subdued. Gleaming steel fixtures, honey-toned wooden furnishings, plush upholstery in muted shades of blue. Huge rectangles of glass recessed into the walls to let in the sun. Also a rather ostentatious stone fountain in the middle of the room, but at least the steady sound of running water is soothing. It’s a good place for Ootori to take a breath and clear his mind.


All of the regulars-only facilities are sparsely frequented since there’s only eight of them in the first string. Usually the clubroom is empty when Ootori enters and empty when Ootori leaves. The pristineness of an untouched space, though every now and again the others will leave their marks, a novel on the windowsill, the chairs slightly askew, half-filled water bottles forgotten on a table. Other times it’s so quiet it’s as if he might be the only person left in the world. But that isn’t true. Ootori’s certainty is iron. He is never alone. He has always been, will always be a doubles player, and he is never alone.









“Hey.” A gentle nudge to Ootori’s side. “Choutarou. Your ice-cream’s melting.”


“Ah!” Hastily, Ootori inverts his ice-cream, allowing gravity to push the drip back down the wooden stick before it reaches his hand, or worse, his tennis bag. “Sorry, Shishido-san.”


Shishido laughs. “Why are you sorry? Nothing to apologise for.”


“Well, it was your treat…”


“I’m not gonna be mad at you just ‘cause you let my treat melt. That’s super lame.”


Ootori smiles, helpless. The footpath narrows. Now they’re walking so closely together their forearms are almost touching with every step, and each moment of missed contact is keen as a knife. Ootori's skin prickles, shirred with longing. The leftover heat of the day blooms over the back of his neck.


“It’s not like you to be so distracted, though,” Shishido says. He peers up at Ootori, open and bright. “What’s on your mind?”


Ootori takes a bite of the ice-cream and winces. It's difficult for him to make out the flavour, past the chill. He swallows. “I'm not sure. I feel like I had a dream last night,” Ootori says. “But I can’t remember what it was about.”


“Eh, it’s just a dream,” Shishido says. “Don’t worry about it.”


Their shadows merge on the pavement in front of them. Impossible to discern the definite points of overlap. Again the awareness of lack. Instead of closing the near-negligible gap between their bodies, Ootori adjusts the strap of his tennis bag where it lies flat against his shoulder.


“I think it was something important, though,” Ootori says. His mouth burns cold.


“Well, if it doesn’t come back to you,” Shishido says, “then you’ll just have to dream up something new.”









Twenty minutes into their weekly homework study session in the lounge space attached to the regulars’ clubroom, Hiyoshi says, “I want you to be my vice-captain.”


Ootori’s pen slips in his fingers, smudging the line of his quadratic factorisation beyond legibility. He rights his grip, crosses the offending equation out, and rewrites it. Only then does he look up at Hiyoshi. “I—sorry?”


“Once the senpais graduate,” Hiyoshi clarifies. A slight crease between his brows. “I know Atobe-san doesn’t have one, but I’m going to be different. Better. So—”


“We don’t have to think about it yet!” It bursts out of Ootori with more vehemence than he’d intended. Startled, Hiyoshi rears back a little into his chair. “I mean—thank you. I don’t know if I would be the best person for the role, but—”


“It’s good to be prepared,” Hiyoshi says. An indecipherable note enters his voice. “And I wouldn’t want anyone else as my vice-captain other than you.” His eyes dart to the corner of the table.


“It’s still a long way away,” Ootori insists. Heart suddenly lodged in his throat. “We have time.”


Hiyoshi slides him a glance sideways from narrowed eyes. “Okay,” he says slowly. “We can talk about it later.”


Ootori frowns and turns his attention back to his geography homework. The contour map swims in and out of focus. He can’t remember what he’d been writing before, and his eyes skip shallowly over the surface of the numbers, unable to find purchase. An ache simmering behind his left temple like a note just slightly out of tune. His gaze strays. The hands on the clock over the door aren’t moving; Ootori hadn’t noticed it before. It’s not like Atobe to let any part of the club facilities fall into disrepair. He’ll have to mention it to Atobe at morning practice, or maybe see if he can procure some batteries to fix it himself.


“It’s been a long day, hasn’t it, Hiyoshi?” Ootori says. He digs the heel of his palm into his left eye, willing the tension to subside.


“Yes," Hiyoshi says. The shadow cast by his pen guillotines his textbook in half. "Very long."









The Neo Scud Serve is perfect, but not necessarily complete. As a musician as well as an athlete, Ootori is exceptionally aware that proficiency is something that takes work to maintain. Often it's easier to learn a piece anew than it is to keep it at performance standard for an extended period of time, and after some time he generally finds himself inexplicably slipping up in parts he'd taken his mastery of for granted. Familiarity makes him careless. Even something he has memorised by heart—the trajectory of a shot, the sequence of a sonata—might go blurry on him without warning. So it's imperative that Ootori corrects any errors before they petrify into bad habits, and nobody has a sharper eye than Shishido when it comes to Ootori's form.


Shishido stands just behind the service line on the other side of the court. Today Ootori is working on placement, alternating between corners of the service box. Ootori still has something of an instinctive aversion to serving in Shishido’s direction when Shishido isn’t even holding a racquet, despite the countless grim hours they’d spent doing exactly that after Tokyo Prefecturals; that bitter, harrowing week in Ootori’s memory has the unreal sheen of a hallucination or a mirage now. But Shishido’d dismissed the concern when Ootori raised it. You won’t hit me, he’d said. Your control’s too good for that.


“Again, Choutarou!” Shishido calls.


Ootori curls his fingers around the ball. Tosses it up. Briefly it disappears from view at the apex of its flight, obscured by the sun, but Ootori doesn’t need to see it to guess precisely where it will fall. His soul knows. Faith drives his racquet forward. Swing, strike.


The ball rockets off the inner corner of the service box and crashes into the fence. Shishido whoops, throwing his hands in the air. “Perfect! One more before we take a break?”


“Yes!” Ootori says. He picks up another ball. “One more. Here I go, Shishido-san!”









Lying flat on his back on the court, winded, incandescent with exhaustion, Ootori shuts his eyes. He isn't sure when he stopped maintaining an upright position but his muscles protest movement in the satisfying measure of effort poured in. He doesn’t shy away from work because diligence is the core of Hyotei second-year regular Ootori Choutarou. Fastest serve on the middle school circuit. Half of Hyotei’s strongest doubles pair. Defined in those terms he understands exactly who he is and what he is doing. After club practice today he will finish his homework with Hiyoshi, then special practice with Shishido. Shishido will walk him home, and they'll stop at a convenience store for ice-cream on the way. And tomorrow everything will repeat. The same notes in the same key. Again and again with metronomic steadiness in the pursuit of proficiency. He will make a habit out of joy and he will hold on.


He recognises the distinctive tenors of Oshitari’s low and amused drawl, Jirou’s enthusiastic rapidfire, drifting over from the direction of the clubhouse, though he can’t quite make out the words of their conversation. But as a confirmation of their presence it’s enough. He can sketch in the remaining details, the canvas of Hyotei's tennis courts unfolding in his mind's eye: Atobe on Court C supervising the Hiyoshi vs Kabaji practice match, Gakuto somersaulting on the trampoline in the regulars’ gym area. And Shishido somewhere nearby, an internal compass alignment like his body's recognition of an exact pitch.


He opens his eyes again. Overhead the sky is a perfect unending slate of blue, something about it calling up the delicacy of a cobweb, some structure of impermanence that has no place in the Hyotei that Ootori knows. As though it could be punctured with a fingertip. He stretches his arm up, a precise perpendicular towards the sun. It’s so bright all the depth seems to leach out of the world, the sky flattening out, the ground rushing upwards to meet it, an impending crush with himself caught in the middle—


Shishido’s shadow falls over him, before his face appears in Ootori’s field of vision. Ootori blinks the sunbursts away, sense of vertigo flaring up, receding again. Distance restores itself. Separation and spaces between every single thing. He lets his arm fall back to his side.


“You alright, Choutarou?” Shishido’s racquet head rests against his shoulder. He sticks out his spare hand.


Ootori hesitates. For a moment he’s struck by a strange and frantic terror, the pure note of it singing out from his core, that his fingers will close on empty air. Then he grasps Shishido’s hand, allows Shishido to pull him to his feet. Shishido’s fingers are warm and solid against his own. All my soul, Ootori thinks.


“It’s nothing, Shishido-san,” Ootori says. “I must have just fallen asleep for a moment.”

Comments

[leeseokmin]

ummmmm after having experienced widow's club today this seriously.... OOTORI CHOUTAROU.... YOU ARE OOTORI CHOUTAROU...
as always your prose is so beautiful... so delighted to be able to consume sp at the hands of ash <3

[rhodochrosite]

^___^ thank u for eating!!! when your fear of doubles widowism is so strong you trap your whole tennis team in a mini time loop :') why does sps impending 1 year of separation feel so terrifying...