[fic] keep the life that i've got
Mar. 20th, 2021 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhodochrositekeep the life that i've got
fandom: prince of tennis
--
After the cruise operation capsizes, literally, Ryoga finds himself at somewhat of a loss as to what to do with his life. Funds aren't a problem; he’d insisted on payment upfront from old man Sakurafubuki and he might've also been siphoning a small cut of the profits off the ship accounts while the charade was still underway. Ryoga’s long mastered the art of building failsafes and contingencies into everything he does without evincing a single sliver of a plan. He enjoys the rush of a high-stakes gamble as much as the next guy, but there’s something to be said about the security of a foregone conclusion. Fixed matches, uneven odds, stacked lineups; he likes dealing in guarantees. Luck and fate and the fluid boundary separating the two, always in flux.
He'd told Ryoma he was going to search for his grand dream. But Ryoga's sleep is largely dreamless, and when he does dream it's always the same one—the orange tree, and Ryoma. Maybe a change of scenery will do him some good. So he calls in a few favours, dials up the charm, and winds up in Macau, working the blackjack table at one of the glittering establishments lining the Cotai Strip frequented by Ryoga’s favourite kind of clientele: clueless rich people heavy on the money and light on the smarts.
He hangs around the local street courts during his free time, but there isn't anyone good enough to play seriously against, let alone eat, so most of the time it's him versus his good old rival the wall. His hunger shifts restlessly inside him, a dense emptiness straining outwards from some point between his ribs. He can't, after all, consume himself. The days blur into a busy schedule of tennis, scamming the wealthy out of their wealth, sleep, more tennis, more sleep, more tennis.
Japan’s middle school tennis circuit is not something that receives international attention, so Ryoga isn’t too sure what Ryoma’s up to these days. Some team tournament or other. Ryoga couldn’t have cared less about Seigaku’s continuing grasp on the state of aliveness except that Ryoma did, so Ryoga did too. He had been captain of Sakurafubuki’s team but he didn’t even know some of their names. Certainly he wouldn’t have felt the desire to intervene in a familial matter involving one of his members that was none of his business, which was no doubt why Ryoma’s gaze fixed with unreadable intensity on his severe-faced captain and not his own brother. Teamwork isn’t an Echizen trait. And yet there’s Ryoma, who loves his team even if he won’t show it, who receives that love back eightfold.
But Ryoga can never hold onto envy for too long before the feeling rises again, helpless, overwhelming, inexorable as gravity inverted. The same instinct that had surged over him as soon as he’d seen Ryoma for the first time, the shy kid half-hidden behind their father’s legs, brim of his overlarge cap slipping down his forehead, eyes like stars. A love like drowning. Lying on the cracked court as the ship agonised through its dying throes he’d been so desperately, obliteratingly happy he might have let himself go under alongside the wreckage if Ryoma hadn’t been there. Big brotherly duty to protect or whatever, so he’d hauled himself up, hauled Ryoma up, and delivered him back into the waiting hands of his team.
Still, he thinks Ryoma had been happy, too. Playing him. At least towards the end, when there had been only each other, no teams or messy loyalties to muddy the waters, the ship emptied of everything except for him and Ryoma and the tennis they shared. Surely the recognition was reciprocated. Surely Ryoma saw in Ryoga, too, some part of himself, something he could point to and say I know you, I remember you, we were each other's before we were anything else.
Unlike Ryoga, Macau never sleeps. A week in he decides to scope out a few of the nearby clubs on a night off work, orient himself properly in the nightlife scene. Always good to get a finger on the pulse of his environment before it all starts falling apart. Also he’s getting bored without any challenges on the tennis front, so he might as well enjoy himself in other ways.
Ryoga’s aware of the kind of attention he draws and is plenty comfortable with leveraging it. A well-placed smile and a few compliments can snare him anyone he wants, and his pick of the night is a dark-haired boy who looks pretty under the strobing lights and exceptionally pretty when he’s crying under Ryoga in his bed.
He kind of just lies there stunned and limp and flushed afterwards, a few tears still caught in his lashes. Well, it’s not like it’s the first time. “You had fun, right?” Ryoga asks, pressing a hand to the boy’s damp cheek to get his attention. The boy heaves in a shuddering breath and stares glassy-eyed at him and eventually nods. Ryoga laughs. “Want an orange?”
The first time Ryoga ate another person he’d been eight or so, a one-set match with another boy on some street tennis court Nanjiro had dropped him off at; he doesn't remember much about it anymore except that it’d been a chilly day and Ryoga was anxious to get moving and warm up. The other boy was a pretty mediocre player overall, but partway through the third game he unleashed a flat shot backed by force that took Ryoga by surprise. Without thinking he returned it at full power and he felt it rushing into him, a mouthful of cool water, the exact delineation of the movement that made up the technique.
Ryoga adjusted his grip on his racquet, arm animated by somebody else’s expertise. Then he fired the same shot right back at the other boy. Ryoga could tell the boy was trying to set up the flat again, but he kept faltering on the follow-through, the ball arcing overhead and out, or thumping weakly into the net, even as Ryoga hit the flat to him shot after shot, sent him scrambling across the court. Ryoga wondered if he recognised his own technique from the outside. He probably wasn’t good enough for that. The rest of the boy’s play deteriorated rapidly afterwards, as if Ryoga had taken more than just the flat from him. Maybe he had. Maybe Ryoga had punctured the artery, knocked out the pivotal brick and the whole dam had come gushing out through the gap, draining him dry. Only a few minutes later the score stood at 6-0. Game, set, match, my win! Ryoga crowed, coming up to the net.
The racquet slipped out of the other boy’s shaking fingers. He took one look at Ryoga and promptly started bawling. Stymied, Ryoga lowered his hand. Ryoga was not used to people sobbing at him after losing. Ryoma might go watery-eyed, but he always set his jaw and demanded another match, and he was just a baby. What excuse did this guy have?
A hand came down on Ryoga’s shoulder. That kid might never play tennis again, Nanjiro said.
Oh, Ryoga said. Okay. He couldn’t parse the tone behind Nanjiro’s words, approval or dismay. Nanjiro didn’t speak to him the whole drive back to the house, but he ruffled Ryoga’s hair absently after Ryoga got out of the car, which left him no less disconcerted. Then Ryoma came running out of the front door to greet him and it didn’t even matter anymore. As Ryoma’s tiny fingers latched around his forearm Ryoga got it, though. Why Nanjiro had made him promise. Ryoga didn’t want to break Ryoma either, not yet.
That flat is still inside him, somewhere. Nobody he eats ever leaves him. His body would remember, if he wanted to call it up, but it’s long been superseded by better shots and he has no reason to use this one in particular. He didn’t even have any reason to use it when he’d taken it; it wasn’t a shot he couldn’t overcome on his own. He’d only done it because he was stronger, and because he was hungry, and because he could.
You’re the worst, Ryoma had said to him during their match on the ship, startling in his cold fury, which was probably warranted considering Ryoga had just indirectly threatened his team’s lives, and all Ryoga could think was, you don’t even know the start of it.
An unfortunate side effect of Ryoga’s ability is the way his presence in any kind of organisational structure corrodes it from the inside out. He doesn’t usually mind, because staying in one place gets boring after a while, but it’ll be a pain to figure out where to go next. The casino management team has already begun to fray at the edges, old tensions flaring up, new tensions seeping in. Ryoga gives them another month, max, before the entire hierarchy collapses under its own weight, its foundations eaten clean through.
Knowing he won’t be here or indeed anywhere for long gives him a pretty blasé attitude towards most things. When he’s at work he’s an equal opportunity flirt, but he isn't above favouritism. He's very much underneath favouritism, in fact. One of the newer regulars at his table, some sort of heiress afflicted with the twin weights of existential boredom and unlimited platinum credit cards, is particularly forward about her interest, so after a few exchanges of increasingly blatant propositions Ryoga lets her take him back to her apartment once his shift at the casino ends. She’d actually managed to beat him in a proper round of blackjack, which makes her exciting enough, even if she isn’t a tennis player. Probably there’s some kind of ethical guideline around not hooking up with your clients, not that Ryoga cares. What is the casino going to do, fire their best dealer?
As it turns out she has great core strength, attributed unselfconsciously to childhood dressage lessons. He ends up staying over at her place so often he essentially moves in; he’s hardly going to say no to a free lunch. She’s a freakishly early riser, and she wrinkles her nose when he picks up one of the oranges from the overflowing fruit display on her marble kitchen counter and bites into it unpeeled, so obviously things aren’t going to last. Still, she’s a fun distraction in the meantime.
In her king-sized bed Ryoga palms the luxuriously plush Egyptian cotton sheets; Ryoga will miss these when he leaves. Her chandelier earrings chime as she shifts onto her side. She taps the metal pendant lying just above his collarbones with her index finger. “You’re always wearing that necklace,” she notes.
"It's from my little brother," Ryoga lies cheerfully. He doesn’t remember where he’d picked the necklace up from. Must’ve been sometime after he left the Echizens.
“Really? That's sweet,” she says. “What's he like?”
Small. Breathtakingly arrogant. Stubborn as hell. He even forgot me, but I guess that’s fair, because I forgot him too, for a while. Though I remembered everything before he did, which is fair too, because I came into the world first. The orange tree, the grass court, the moon from the bottom of the well. If I stay with him for too long I’m afraid it’ll destroy us, so I will also always be the one who leaves first. I think he might never have forgiven me for it, if he hadn’t forgotten.
“Cutest kid in the world,” Ryoga says. “I mean, he’s my brother!”
Ryoga doesn't dream, but he does sometimes think about what it might be like, a match against Ryoma. A real one, nothing held back, the entirety of his power released to test the limits of Ryoma's. He'd almost slipped up and forgotten his promise to their father, back on the sinking ship, half-delirious with the exultation of facing Ryoma across the net after so long. Water breaching the hull of the ship and the hunger had torn through him the same way. But Ryoma's still got a long way to go to the top and Ryoga wants to see him reach the pinnacle first, so he'd hauled the halves of himself shut, taken the temporary defeat.
In his head the setting of the long-awaited match is always shifting, unsettled and out of focus. A nondescript street court, or maybe some grand world stage like Wimbledon, but mostly whenever Ryoga imagines it it's the court in the garden behind their old house, under the orange trees, the glowing sky. So he'll win, and he'll eat his brother. He'll swallow Ryoma whole, all his monstrous strength and incandescent potential. Ryoma's tennis will burn so bright it'll light Ryoga up from the inside and then everyone will see what they are to each other. Everything that makes up Echizen Ryoma ensconced safely inside Ryoga and he'll keep him so close nothing could ever sever them from one another again, not even themselves.
Or maybe it'll be the other way around. Maybe it will be Ryoga brought to his knees, emptied clean out, racquet clattering to the ground. Ryoma's teeth coming down hard on his heart. He wouldn't even mind, if things were to end like that. It's not like Ryoma hasn't been keeping his heart in ungraceful custody since the day they met, anyway.
It's only a matter of time. All rivers run to the sea. By luck or by fate they’ll find their way back to each other. The world's a big place, chibisuke. Is your dream powerful enough to last in it? I think mine might be.
When Ryoga gets to the street tennis court in the evening, two boys in red and white jerseys are already hitting casually to one another in his usual spot, a cluster of similarly attired boys warming up at the bench behind them. Well, first come first served. Ryoga drops his bag one bench down and tilts his head. They're good, in the way that Ryoga is good, that Ryoma is good. Even in what’s clearly just a warm-up rally Ryoga can sense the rapids of power thundering underneath the surface, blood in the water. His mouth goes wet.
The sound of Japanese tugs Ryoga’s attention to the spectators. “—at the middle-school Nationals,” someone with a voice like the screech of tires on wet concrete is saying. Ryoga’s focus clicks into high definition. “Fucking losers. If I were you I’d tear them limb from limb—”
"That is not Mori’s concern," says the creepily tall one with the untrimmed bangs.
The fresh-faced redhead beside him folds his hands behind his neck. “Yeah, Tsuki-san’s right, that wasn’t even me! We won when I was on the team.”
A bespectacled boy clicks his tongue. “My, my, Ochi-kun, you really must stop spoiling Mori-kun. If I may ask, which was the school that won?”
"Seigaku,” growls the blond with the scraggly beard on the court, slinging a shot down the line. And if that isn’t a name Ryoga knows!
Ryoga takes his racquet out of his bag, bends down to pick up a stray tennis ball. He gauges the distance. Tosses the ball in the air and serves it towards the court. It torpedoes through the air and smashes into the ball currently in play with a sharp thwack, sending it veering into the fence so forcefully it dents the mesh. The blond lifts a hand and catches the other ball. Impressive; there should have been enough momentum behind that one to blow through racquet gut.
Now everyone’s staring at him, mixture of shock and anger and amusement playing out over ten faces. Ryoga loves predictability, just as he loves coincidences. He grins. “Hey,” he calls. "One of you guys up for a game?"
fandom: prince of tennis
ship: gen, ryoga & ryoma
rating: t
word count: 2.7k
this fic is about what ryoga did between the end of cruise and his appearance in shinteni aka think about his ryoma complex. cw ryogas megachad ways and also g10, both of which kinda physically pained me to write
this fic is about what ryoga did between the end of cruise and his appearance in shinteni aka think about his ryoma complex. cw ryogas megachad ways and also g10, both of which kinda physically pained me to write
--
After the cruise operation capsizes, literally, Ryoga finds himself at somewhat of a loss as to what to do with his life. Funds aren't a problem; he’d insisted on payment upfront from old man Sakurafubuki and he might've also been siphoning a small cut of the profits off the ship accounts while the charade was still underway. Ryoga’s long mastered the art of building failsafes and contingencies into everything he does without evincing a single sliver of a plan. He enjoys the rush of a high-stakes gamble as much as the next guy, but there’s something to be said about the security of a foregone conclusion. Fixed matches, uneven odds, stacked lineups; he likes dealing in guarantees. Luck and fate and the fluid boundary separating the two, always in flux.
He'd told Ryoma he was going to search for his grand dream. But Ryoga's sleep is largely dreamless, and when he does dream it's always the same one—the orange tree, and Ryoma. Maybe a change of scenery will do him some good. So he calls in a few favours, dials up the charm, and winds up in Macau, working the blackjack table at one of the glittering establishments lining the Cotai Strip frequented by Ryoga’s favourite kind of clientele: clueless rich people heavy on the money and light on the smarts.
He hangs around the local street courts during his free time, but there isn't anyone good enough to play seriously against, let alone eat, so most of the time it's him versus his good old rival the wall. His hunger shifts restlessly inside him, a dense emptiness straining outwards from some point between his ribs. He can't, after all, consume himself. The days blur into a busy schedule of tennis, scamming the wealthy out of their wealth, sleep, more tennis, more sleep, more tennis.
Japan’s middle school tennis circuit is not something that receives international attention, so Ryoga isn’t too sure what Ryoma’s up to these days. Some team tournament or other. Ryoga couldn’t have cared less about Seigaku’s continuing grasp on the state of aliveness except that Ryoma did, so Ryoga did too. He had been captain of Sakurafubuki’s team but he didn’t even know some of their names. Certainly he wouldn’t have felt the desire to intervene in a familial matter involving one of his members that was none of his business, which was no doubt why Ryoma’s gaze fixed with unreadable intensity on his severe-faced captain and not his own brother. Teamwork isn’t an Echizen trait. And yet there’s Ryoma, who loves his team even if he won’t show it, who receives that love back eightfold.
But Ryoga can never hold onto envy for too long before the feeling rises again, helpless, overwhelming, inexorable as gravity inverted. The same instinct that had surged over him as soon as he’d seen Ryoma for the first time, the shy kid half-hidden behind their father’s legs, brim of his overlarge cap slipping down his forehead, eyes like stars. A love like drowning. Lying on the cracked court as the ship agonised through its dying throes he’d been so desperately, obliteratingly happy he might have let himself go under alongside the wreckage if Ryoma hadn’t been there. Big brotherly duty to protect or whatever, so he’d hauled himself up, hauled Ryoma up, and delivered him back into the waiting hands of his team.
Still, he thinks Ryoma had been happy, too. Playing him. At least towards the end, when there had been only each other, no teams or messy loyalties to muddy the waters, the ship emptied of everything except for him and Ryoma and the tennis they shared. Surely the recognition was reciprocated. Surely Ryoma saw in Ryoga, too, some part of himself, something he could point to and say I know you, I remember you, we were each other's before we were anything else.
Unlike Ryoga, Macau never sleeps. A week in he decides to scope out a few of the nearby clubs on a night off work, orient himself properly in the nightlife scene. Always good to get a finger on the pulse of his environment before it all starts falling apart. Also he’s getting bored without any challenges on the tennis front, so he might as well enjoy himself in other ways.
Ryoga’s aware of the kind of attention he draws and is plenty comfortable with leveraging it. A well-placed smile and a few compliments can snare him anyone he wants, and his pick of the night is a dark-haired boy who looks pretty under the strobing lights and exceptionally pretty when he’s crying under Ryoga in his bed.
He kind of just lies there stunned and limp and flushed afterwards, a few tears still caught in his lashes. Well, it’s not like it’s the first time. “You had fun, right?” Ryoga asks, pressing a hand to the boy’s damp cheek to get his attention. The boy heaves in a shuddering breath and stares glassy-eyed at him and eventually nods. Ryoga laughs. “Want an orange?”
The first time Ryoga ate another person he’d been eight or so, a one-set match with another boy on some street tennis court Nanjiro had dropped him off at; he doesn't remember much about it anymore except that it’d been a chilly day and Ryoga was anxious to get moving and warm up. The other boy was a pretty mediocre player overall, but partway through the third game he unleashed a flat shot backed by force that took Ryoga by surprise. Without thinking he returned it at full power and he felt it rushing into him, a mouthful of cool water, the exact delineation of the movement that made up the technique.
Ryoga adjusted his grip on his racquet, arm animated by somebody else’s expertise. Then he fired the same shot right back at the other boy. Ryoga could tell the boy was trying to set up the flat again, but he kept faltering on the follow-through, the ball arcing overhead and out, or thumping weakly into the net, even as Ryoga hit the flat to him shot after shot, sent him scrambling across the court. Ryoga wondered if he recognised his own technique from the outside. He probably wasn’t good enough for that. The rest of the boy’s play deteriorated rapidly afterwards, as if Ryoga had taken more than just the flat from him. Maybe he had. Maybe Ryoga had punctured the artery, knocked out the pivotal brick and the whole dam had come gushing out through the gap, draining him dry. Only a few minutes later the score stood at 6-0. Game, set, match, my win! Ryoga crowed, coming up to the net.
The racquet slipped out of the other boy’s shaking fingers. He took one look at Ryoga and promptly started bawling. Stymied, Ryoga lowered his hand. Ryoga was not used to people sobbing at him after losing. Ryoma might go watery-eyed, but he always set his jaw and demanded another match, and he was just a baby. What excuse did this guy have?
A hand came down on Ryoga’s shoulder. That kid might never play tennis again, Nanjiro said.
Oh, Ryoga said. Okay. He couldn’t parse the tone behind Nanjiro’s words, approval or dismay. Nanjiro didn’t speak to him the whole drive back to the house, but he ruffled Ryoga’s hair absently after Ryoga got out of the car, which left him no less disconcerted. Then Ryoma came running out of the front door to greet him and it didn’t even matter anymore. As Ryoma’s tiny fingers latched around his forearm Ryoga got it, though. Why Nanjiro had made him promise. Ryoga didn’t want to break Ryoma either, not yet.
That flat is still inside him, somewhere. Nobody he eats ever leaves him. His body would remember, if he wanted to call it up, but it’s long been superseded by better shots and he has no reason to use this one in particular. He didn’t even have any reason to use it when he’d taken it; it wasn’t a shot he couldn’t overcome on his own. He’d only done it because he was stronger, and because he was hungry, and because he could.
You’re the worst, Ryoma had said to him during their match on the ship, startling in his cold fury, which was probably warranted considering Ryoga had just indirectly threatened his team’s lives, and all Ryoga could think was, you don’t even know the start of it.
An unfortunate side effect of Ryoga’s ability is the way his presence in any kind of organisational structure corrodes it from the inside out. He doesn’t usually mind, because staying in one place gets boring after a while, but it’ll be a pain to figure out where to go next. The casino management team has already begun to fray at the edges, old tensions flaring up, new tensions seeping in. Ryoga gives them another month, max, before the entire hierarchy collapses under its own weight, its foundations eaten clean through.
Knowing he won’t be here or indeed anywhere for long gives him a pretty blasé attitude towards most things. When he’s at work he’s an equal opportunity flirt, but he isn't above favouritism. He's very much underneath favouritism, in fact. One of the newer regulars at his table, some sort of heiress afflicted with the twin weights of existential boredom and unlimited platinum credit cards, is particularly forward about her interest, so after a few exchanges of increasingly blatant propositions Ryoga lets her take him back to her apartment once his shift at the casino ends. She’d actually managed to beat him in a proper round of blackjack, which makes her exciting enough, even if she isn’t a tennis player. Probably there’s some kind of ethical guideline around not hooking up with your clients, not that Ryoga cares. What is the casino going to do, fire their best dealer?
As it turns out she has great core strength, attributed unselfconsciously to childhood dressage lessons. He ends up staying over at her place so often he essentially moves in; he’s hardly going to say no to a free lunch. She’s a freakishly early riser, and she wrinkles her nose when he picks up one of the oranges from the overflowing fruit display on her marble kitchen counter and bites into it unpeeled, so obviously things aren’t going to last. Still, she’s a fun distraction in the meantime.
In her king-sized bed Ryoga palms the luxuriously plush Egyptian cotton sheets; Ryoga will miss these when he leaves. Her chandelier earrings chime as she shifts onto her side. She taps the metal pendant lying just above his collarbones with her index finger. “You’re always wearing that necklace,” she notes.
"It's from my little brother," Ryoga lies cheerfully. He doesn’t remember where he’d picked the necklace up from. Must’ve been sometime after he left the Echizens.
“Really? That's sweet,” she says. “What's he like?”
Small. Breathtakingly arrogant. Stubborn as hell. He even forgot me, but I guess that’s fair, because I forgot him too, for a while. Though I remembered everything before he did, which is fair too, because I came into the world first. The orange tree, the grass court, the moon from the bottom of the well. If I stay with him for too long I’m afraid it’ll destroy us, so I will also always be the one who leaves first. I think he might never have forgiven me for it, if he hadn’t forgotten.
“Cutest kid in the world,” Ryoga says. “I mean, he’s my brother!”
Ryoga doesn't dream, but he does sometimes think about what it might be like, a match against Ryoma. A real one, nothing held back, the entirety of his power released to test the limits of Ryoma's. He'd almost slipped up and forgotten his promise to their father, back on the sinking ship, half-delirious with the exultation of facing Ryoma across the net after so long. Water breaching the hull of the ship and the hunger had torn through him the same way. But Ryoma's still got a long way to go to the top and Ryoga wants to see him reach the pinnacle first, so he'd hauled the halves of himself shut, taken the temporary defeat.
In his head the setting of the long-awaited match is always shifting, unsettled and out of focus. A nondescript street court, or maybe some grand world stage like Wimbledon, but mostly whenever Ryoga imagines it it's the court in the garden behind their old house, under the orange trees, the glowing sky. So he'll win, and he'll eat his brother. He'll swallow Ryoma whole, all his monstrous strength and incandescent potential. Ryoma's tennis will burn so bright it'll light Ryoga up from the inside and then everyone will see what they are to each other. Everything that makes up Echizen Ryoma ensconced safely inside Ryoga and he'll keep him so close nothing could ever sever them from one another again, not even themselves.
Or maybe it'll be the other way around. Maybe it will be Ryoga brought to his knees, emptied clean out, racquet clattering to the ground. Ryoma's teeth coming down hard on his heart. He wouldn't even mind, if things were to end like that. It's not like Ryoma hasn't been keeping his heart in ungraceful custody since the day they met, anyway.
It's only a matter of time. All rivers run to the sea. By luck or by fate they’ll find their way back to each other. The world's a big place, chibisuke. Is your dream powerful enough to last in it? I think mine might be.
When Ryoga gets to the street tennis court in the evening, two boys in red and white jerseys are already hitting casually to one another in his usual spot, a cluster of similarly attired boys warming up at the bench behind them. Well, first come first served. Ryoga drops his bag one bench down and tilts his head. They're good, in the way that Ryoga is good, that Ryoma is good. Even in what’s clearly just a warm-up rally Ryoga can sense the rapids of power thundering underneath the surface, blood in the water. His mouth goes wet.
The sound of Japanese tugs Ryoga’s attention to the spectators. “—at the middle-school Nationals,” someone with a voice like the screech of tires on wet concrete is saying. Ryoga’s focus clicks into high definition. “Fucking losers. If I were you I’d tear them limb from limb—”
"That is not Mori’s concern," says the creepily tall one with the untrimmed bangs.
The fresh-faced redhead beside him folds his hands behind his neck. “Yeah, Tsuki-san’s right, that wasn’t even me! We won when I was on the team.”
A bespectacled boy clicks his tongue. “My, my, Ochi-kun, you really must stop spoiling Mori-kun. If I may ask, which was the school that won?”
"Seigaku,” growls the blond with the scraggly beard on the court, slinging a shot down the line. And if that isn’t a name Ryoga knows!
Ryoga takes his racquet out of his bag, bends down to pick up a stray tennis ball. He gauges the distance. Tosses the ball in the air and serves it towards the court. It torpedoes through the air and smashes into the ball currently in play with a sharp thwack, sending it veering into the fence so forcefully it dents the mesh. The blond lifts a hand and catches the other ball. Impressive; there should have been enough momentum behind that one to blow through racquet gut.
Now everyone’s staring at him, mixture of shock and anger and amusement playing out over ten faces. Ryoga loves predictability, just as he loves coincidences. He grins. “Hey,” he calls. "One of you guys up for a game?"
no subject
Date: 2021-03-20 03:36 pm (UTC)godddddd all ryoga wanted was to play a match against ryom, and all he got to do was push him away for his own sake... how many times has ryoga had to break ryom's heart, and by extension his own...
sorry for ummm caring about nanjiro, but for as bad a dad as he is, like... what else are you supposed to do when your kid is a monster... i think that's kind of why the echizen family dynamix is so terror-inducing bc nanjiro obviously wanted ryoga to be in ryom's life or else he'd never have let ryoga live with them at all, just not at the cost of, you know, the whole tennis thing. kind of sweeter and more touching handling of ryoga by nanjiro here than i've ever seen you express on twitter. sorry tails if i unironically sound like the "why do people bash deadbeat dads" tweet to the audience rn sdkhfksjglsd
yeah... TTTTTTTT
i can't believe i'm saying this but i kind of.................... l*ke the high schoolers now even though i still don't know who half of them are. or at the very least i'm kind of compelled by how much of their society ryoga destabilized in his short time traveling with them LOL although they were already pretty dysfunctional without him already. ofc i would never ask you to put yourself thru that, i'm just thinking out loud here..
no subject
Date: 2021-03-20 11:53 pm (UTC)i may be a nanjiro hater but i try not to let my personal feelings interfere with an accurate portrayal of dynamix ksjfghsdkfjg echizens are um... Fucked up as hell. nanjiro obviously wanted ryoga to be in ryom's life or else he'd never have let ryoga live with them at all, just not at the cost of, you know, the whole tennis thing it reallyyyy is like this T__T its just the like, Very very clear and continuous favouritism of ryoma over ryoga, directly to ryogas face, which is such a fucked up thing to do to a kid, ryoga has always been the accessory / the tool to prop ryom up which is funny(?) because his powers are so inherently destructive... im always wondering how much ryoga understood this growing up / how much he resented ryoma for it despite or because of how much he loved ryoma. and i guess nanjiro did get what he wanted out of ryoga in the end which was someone who would love and guide and look after ryoma lmfaoo
i feel like i may actually be the most highschooler stan aligned person on tennistl because i legitimately care a bunch of them lol but my preferred highschoolers are not the ones ryoga tends to interact with <//3 thank you for eating and generously responding!!!! 😚😚😚
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Date: 2021-03-21 09:32 am (UTC)ryoga really doesn't seem to have any resentment towards ryoma at all, or even towards nanjiro for that matter, despite like... EVERYTHING LOL which i think (combined w/ the power imbalance of ryoga knowing/remembering their childhood while ryoma doesn't) is what makes the echizen bros dynamix so gut punching. esp when they were on team usa together when it was sooooo clear that ryoga was enjoying the chance to be around ryom but the ambiguity was also so palpable... the more straightforward rivalry setup rn just doesn't hit the same. that's also prob because resolving complexes in any direction seems kind of out of character for ryom lmao
unfortch i am developing ummm some kind of non-negative emotion about b****** and i am aware that some crimes can't be forgiven so.... thanks for letting me unintentionally destabilize your society time and time again skjdfksdj i'll try to keep it to a minimum. what high schoolers do you like other than 910?
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Date: 2021-03-21 10:05 am (UTC)man id be so mad if i were ryoga but ig hes just built different... if there was any resentment it must have been extinguished a long time ago i do think its wild hes not even that mad at nanjiro for being such a terrible dad to him tho. literally he does just hinge his whole life on ryom, i have a feeling finals will be spain v japan and echizen bros showdown might be the final boss battle tho i also feel like by***** will get involved in some way. kinda half hoping for more canon ryoga interiority highlighting the disparity btwn ryom shifting ryoga into enemy rival categorisation in his head while ryoga is like clearly still fully gripped by brother complex but also half being like actually the version i constructed in my head is probably better
LOL you are allowed to do anything u like!!! i just hate to see or think about ugly highschoolers so if theyre deuglified and dedisgustingfied and are contributing in some way to middleschooler character narratives and/or growth then i have no objections... umm i like TANEGASHIMA tokugawa and irie other than 910! im also kiiinda partial to hara bc hes moris ex teammate/friend even tho hes sort of flop as fuck and also a terrible senpai to the shitens lol
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Date: 2021-03-21 01:06 pm (UTC)yuki as a foil for ryog is interesting though since yuki is more like the gravitational center of rikkai that forces them all to converge on him rather than the other way around
i was also predicting the echizen bros showdown unless nanjiro successfully intervenes, but yeah byodoin has basically done fuck all through the entirety of worlds so far so i guess he will probably play a match as well but maybe it'll be s2 or something? skdjfksjdg putting echizen bros in s1 seems so wack though, but it would equally be wack to have their soul shattering canon implicating match in like s3 and then have 10 more chapters of highschooler on highschooler bullshit 🙄 not that i'd put it past konomi to do the latter 🙄
we prob will get ryoga interiority if echizen bros match happens, for better or for worse lol... i'm hoping at least some of the memory fuckery stuff gets cleared up though because idek how much ryom is supposed to have remembered at this point vs just going with the flow as ryom is wont to do. either way, your version is almost definitely better but maybe we'll get some fun new dots to connect
omg yeah hara is interesting in theory esp. due to minor kuraken adjacent terror, but i really can't find it in me to care... LMAO so basically by***** is going to be our major point of contention, idrc the other highschoolers you haven't mentioned. maybe i'll deuglify t***/k****** if i ever want to go darksided arranged marriage to admiration, but you don't have to worry about that any time soon i think