Psidai - Crossed Signals
Jun. 13th, 2005 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoTitle: Crossed Signals
Series: Psidai AU, part 8 of the InuKai sequence.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2923
Pairings: Inui/Kaidoh, Golden Pair
Timeline: Inui's a second year and Kaidoh's a first year at Seigaku high school. This is probably some time early in the school year, possibly before the district tournament or between the district and prefectural tournaments.
Summary: The Golden Pair decides to meddle. Confessions are finally made.
Crossed Signals
“Ooiiiishiii!”
The Seigaku High second year in question halted in his process of leaving the tennis clubhouse at the end of afternoon practice and turned just as a redheaded ballistic missile slammed into him. Neither was aware of the sudden exodus of all the other tennis club members around them. Given a year to their own devices, the aptly named ‘Golden Aura’ of the duo had progressed from cavity inducing to coma inducing, and no one who had experienced it once ever wanted to be in the vicinity of the two lovebirds ever again.
“Maa, maa, what’s wrong Eiji?” cooed the taller boy to the human limpet attached to him, immediately sensing the other’s mood despite not being the empath of the two. (Inui once speculated, perhaps half-jokingly, that Oishi had some form of special esper ability that was dedicated to Kikumaru Eiji. A day later, rumors were being cautiously whispered behind the Golden Pair’s back about an “Eiji-dar”.)
Eiji pouted up at his boyfriend and tennis partner. “Nya! Oishi! You have to do something!”
“About what?” Oishi hoped his partner wasn’t trying to get him to help prevent Fuji from trying to assassinate their current tennis club buchou so that Tezuka could take over the club. For that matter, he hoped that Eiji wasn’t going to ask him to help the tensai.
“About Kaidoh!” Eiji explained impatiently, “he’s driving me insane!”
Oishi blinked as he considered the first year that had been part of their championship tennis team in junior high. His brow furrowed in puzzlement. “...I don’t understand,” he finally admitted. “I haven’t noticed anything different about him since two years ago. How’s he driving you mad?”
Eiji looked around and then leaned in conspiratorially, as if conferring a great secret. “I think he likes someone,” he whispered.
“Anou...” Oishi blushed slightly, looking rather uncomfortable with the topic of someone else’s private life.
“...But he’s not with whoever he’s thinking about all the time,” Eiji went on confidently. “So he gets all frustrated, and then he starts brooding.” The hyper acrobat made a face at that. “And then Hiko-sensei keeps making me do singles practice against him, and then I get all frustrated and broody.” Eiji looked up at Oishi with an outraged look that demanded the other boy to do something about the problem.
Oishi sighed. “Well, I suppose he’s about the right age to get crushes...” he speculated, having no personal experience in the area himself, “but what can I do about it?”
“We’ll have to get them together!” Eiji immediately announced, revealing what he had in mind when he came to Oishi to begin with.
“Eiji, you don’t even know who he likes,” Oishi pointed out reasonably, attempting to stop his partner’s latest crazy scheme.
Eiji shrugged as if that was a minor detail. “Nya! So we’ll just have to get him to confess to the guy first!” he declared. Then he paused. “Or the girl, I guess. And then we’ll matchmake!”
Oishi shook his head at his ebullient partner ruefully. But he recognized the glint in those eyes and knew that there was no deterring Eiji from his new mission.
“So what did you want me to do, specifically?” he asked ruefully.
“You have to talk to him!” Eiji declared. “I already tried, but he keeps avoiding me now.” The redhead pouted at that.
“Anou... I don’t think he’s going to listen to me,” Oishi said thoughtfully. “I’m not his fukubuchou anymore, after all. Besides, he’s really closer to Momoshiro and Inui than--”
“I know!” Eiji suddenly interrupted, perking up again. “We’ll talk to Inui! He’s always looking after Kaoru-chan the most. He’ll know what to do!”
“That might be the best thing to do,” Oishi said with a sigh of relief. At least that meant Eiji wasn’t going to haring off and embarrassing the poor first year. “We should be able to catch him before he leaves to go train with Kaidoh-kun.”
Inui listened to the rather confused presentation from the Golden Pair with a sinking heart. It was almost inconceivable to him that despite the vast quantities of data he’d obsessively gathered on his kouhai, he had not caught even the hint that Kaidoh had a crush on someone. He hadn’t even thought the younger boy could hide strong feelings from anyone.
“Nya! Nya! Inui! Are you even listening?!”
However, Kikumaru’s abilities as an empath could not be denied. Inui could feel the uneasy jealousy rising up within him.
“Nya! Oishi! Make Inui listen to me!”
“Inui, Eiji has a good point. Since Kaidoh is your kouhai, it’s your duty as his senpai to help him through his confusing and difficult stage of his life and to help him find happiness.”
Of course, the familiar feelings of jealousy also brought to Inui’s mind certain events of the previous year, and the rather conflicted data they generated.
“Aa... I’ll talk to him,” Inui finally said absently, more to hold off the distracting sermon coming from the Golden Pair. “If you’ll excuse me...” he left quickly before he was told anything else that he didn’t quite want to hear.
By the time Inui arrived at the park that intersected Kaidoh’s usual afternoon run, he’d been able to bring some order to his jumbled thoughts and was already beginning to plan several scenarios in confronting the younger boy when he arrived. The priority, he decided, was to find out who the mysterious person was that Kaidoh had a crush on.
He calculated a 25.99% chance that it was Momoshiro (in which case he immediately foresaw an excellent opportunity for his newest versions of Inui Juice to blackmail the other first-year with), a 4.20% chance that it was a case of hero worship on Tezuka (in which case he had little to worry about, since no one in their right mind tried to compete with both Fuji and Atobe), a tentative 3.14% that it was himself (with a 3% margin of error since he recognized that this particular calculation could easily be affected by his own wishful thinking), a 15.05% chance it was someone outside of Seigaku, and a depressing 54.76% chance that it was a girl from Kaidoh’s grade or class.
Inui was already deep into his plans for spying on the female population of class 1-7 when Kaidoh rounded a corner in the park and came to an abrupt stop when he recognized his senpai sitting at one of the benches before him.
“Inui-senpai?” the younger boy asked in a slightly breathy voice. “Is something wrong? You’re... early.” The two of them had a strict though technically unofficial training routine together in the early evenings.
Inui glanced up and took in his kouhai’s sweaty and naively confused look. When Kaidoh carelessly wiped at his brow with his ever-present towel, Inui’s intense gaze followed the motion from behind his thick glasses. ‘Mine’ came the errant thought into his mind.
Aloud, he only patted the bench next to him. “Sit with me for a moment, Kaidoh,” he said with a carefully steady voice. “I need to... talk to you about something.”
Kaidoh gave his senpai a wary look. But since Inui did not appear to be carrying any bottles of vile concoctions on him, he decided that the talk didn’t have anything to do with him playing guinea pig again, and sat down next to his senpai. He kept his eyes nervously to the ground, however, glad that his skin was already flushed from exercise, thus masking his reaction to Inui’s close proximity.
Inui cleared his throat. There was no delaying the inevitable, he supposed. “Kaidoh, do you have a crush on someone?” he asked bluntly.
Kaidoh’s head jerked up in shock, his face immediately turning an unnatural shade of red that could not possibly be mistaken for being caused by physical exertion. Instinctively, the younger boy tried to jump to his feet and flee. However, his attempt was thwarted by Inui’s longer legs casually entangling his, causing him to trip face-first into his senpai’s lap.
“Really, Kaidoh,” Inui chastised as he righted the now nearly catatonic boy back into the seat next to him, hoping that the other hadn’t noticed the slight wavering of his own voice due to the multitude of pleasant images that popped into his mind from their previous position. “Obviously, this topic is causing you emotional distress. It might even negatively affect your tennis by as much as 31% until it is resolved. I’m only concerned for your well-being as your senpai.”
Well, actually the last part of his speech wasn’t quite accurate. But Inui didn’t think Kaidoh needed to know that.
After a moment more of stunned silence, Kaidoh suddenly broke into a sputtering fit. “Who... I’m not... I don’t... You... You... How did...” Finally, he took a deep breath and managed to squeak out something semi-intelligible. “W-What makes you think I...” Kaidoh blushed and went silent again. His hands had a white-knuckled death grip on the edge of the bench.
“I have very reliable sources for my data,” Inui replied blandly, though he was not very happy about the validity of Kikumaru’s claims. “Besides, your own reaction to my question is sufficient to quell the 21% uncertainty I had of it.”
Kaidoh visibly cringed at that, and Inui forced himself to soften his voice in an attempt to coax further communication from his mortified kouhai.
“Crushes are a natural part of development for a normal boy of your age, Kaidoh. It’s all right to admit it. It’s the stress of keeping such feelings bottled up that may become detrimental to your health.”
“But...” Kaidoh fidgeted uncomfortably, his eyes studiously avoiding Inui’s. “But... what if... what if... the person... doesn’t return...” He trailed off again, looking fearful and dejected all at once.
At least he wasn’t trying to deny the fact, Inui noticed. He was feeling somewhat dejected himself, as well as uneasy in his sudden unfamiliar role as a source of comfort and non-tennis-related advice. Thus preoccupied, he missed the shy surreptitious looks Kaidoh was now shooting him.
Inui cleared his throat again. “Well, on the other hand, Kaidoh, there is also the chance that... the person... does return your feelings.” Again, Inui somehow missed the thoughtful look his kouhai shot him, immersed as he was into choosing his words. “The first step to resolving the uncertainty of not knowing is to talk...”
Inui paused when Kaidoh furtively inched closer to him, frowning as his mind tried to switch tracks. He nearly jumped when a warm, slightly sweaty hand tentatively found his.
“S-senpai,” Kaidoh mumbled in a nearly inaudible voice. “Anou... I-I like...” The first-year blushed a deep red again, his gaze dropping quickly to the ground before shyly sliding up to Inui’s face again. He wasn’t able to complete the sentence, but gently squeezed his senpai’s hand to get the message across.
Inui, on the other hand, had stiffened where he sat, his mind seeming to be reminiscent of an old PC stuck on a abort-retry-fail loop given the new entirely unforeseen data presented to him.
Unfortunately, Kaidoh drew the wrong conclusion from the other’s shocked silence. The younger boy’s shy look had grown more and more uncertain until he suddenly let go of Inui’s hand with a look of numb horror.
“I--gomen nasai, senpai,” he whispered hoarsely before suddenly jumping to his feet and dashing away from the bench and the park.
“W-wait!” Inui finally had gathered up his wits to call out. Unfortunately he was too late, or perhaps Kaidoh was too immersed in his misery to hear him, and Inui could only helplessly watch as his kouhai quickly disappeared from view.
He was then immediately beamed on the head with a well-aimed tennis ball.
“INUI! HOW COULD YOU?!”
The bespectacled boy suddenly found himself seized by the collar and shaken until his teeth rattled. A familiar redheaded acrobat was perched precariously on the back of the bench so that he could loom over Inui indignantly. His other half stood behind him, ready to catch his partner if need be and also looking disapprovingly at Inui.
Eiji shook Inui’s collar again to punctuate his loud berating of the other’s unforgivable behavior. “Look what you did! I could FEEL poor Kaoru-chan’s heart BREAKING all the way over there! How can you be so INSENSITIVE! You were supposed to HELP him, not make him feel worse! You could’ve TRIED to care a LITTLE bit about his feelings!” The words came out in one long breath, and Eiji had to then pause to take a deep breath.
Uneasily, Inui looked to Oishi to be the more reasonable presence between the Golden Pair. However, his hopes were dashed when he saw the usual voice of sanity among the Seigaku tennis team nodding in full agreement with his more easily excited partner.
“Really, Inui,” Oishi admonished in a calmer, but still as guilt inducing voice. “It’s a senpai’s responsibility to take care of his kouhai, not send him away in tears. Even if you didn’t return Kaidoh’s feelings, the least you could have done would be to let him down gently instead of just outright rejecting him like that.”
“YEAH!” Eiji continued to rant. “It’s going to be ALL YOUR FAULT if something happens to Kaoru-chan because of this! What if he can’t think things through? What if he decides to transfer to St. Rudolph? What if he decides to kill himself? Like... like drowning himself in that river he trains at! Or, or throwing himself off the Tokyo Tower!” It was clear that the acrobat was only warming up in his speculations. Worse yet, Oishi was still nodding in acknowledgment, or possibly agreement, with his partner. “...And it’s ALL because you didn’t return his feelings--”
“But I do return them,” Inui finally blurted out, frazzled and guilt-tripped beyond his ability to think straight. “I... I like him too...” he sputtered uncharacteristically.
“BAKA INUI!” Eiji promptly beamed him again with his book bag. “Then you should have TOLD him that! In fact, you should go to him on your knees RIGHT NOW and confess yourself!”
For once, Oishi reached out and kept his partner from further abusing Inui with random objects. “Inui,” he said sternly, “I think you should hurry after Kaidoh and explain yourself before he does anything... rash.”
Remembering Oishi’s precognitive powers, Inui blanched. In the next moment he was frantically zooming out of the park as well.
Meanwhile, Kaidoh was still blindly running from the scene in the park, his feet having automatically carried him onto the path next to a familiar river. Unfortunately in his preoccupation with determinedly keeping the tears from building in his eyes, Kaidoh was unprepared when his feet suddenly tripped over something in the path, sending him plummeting into the water below.
The freezing cold water sent a shock to his body that jolted the boy out of the emotional turmoil that he’d been immersed in. The fast current washed over his head and sent him instinctively struggling for the surface. Eventually, he dragged himself back onto the riverbank, shivering and coughing from his unexpected dip.
He scarcely had a moment to regain his mental bearings again before he was interrupted by an unwelcome voice yelling “Kaidoh! Don’t do it!” and he was suddenly seized by the waist in a firm bear hug.
The momentum of Inui’s leap and grab for his kouhai - after arriving at the scene of what was clearly Kaidoh’s suicide by drowning attempt - carried both boys down to the ground and rolling along the bank. Kaidoh struggled vainly against the hold, his senpai the last person he wanted to see at the moment, and not really hearing the older boy’s gibbering about how he mustn’t do anything rash.
Finally, Inui succeeded in wrestling the younger boy beneath him and getting his full attention by leaning down and pressing an insistent kiss on the other’s mouth. Kaidoh immediately froze in shock, not even reacting when Inui’s tongue dipped momentarily into his slightly gaping mouth. Reluctantly, Inui pulled his face back and took the other’s stunned silence to quietly apologize.
“I-I’m sorry, Kaidoh. I was simply... surprised. My calculations of the possibility of your feelings for me was minuscule...” Inui blushed uncharacteristically before he quirked a grin at the bewildered boy beneath him, looking more like his old self. “I can assure you now that the person you like does return your feelings, 100%.”
Kaidoh gaped at his senpai a while longer, before blushing red again himself. “S-senpai...” he barely murmured, before tilting his head up just as Inui lowered his face again for another deeper kiss.
Back at the park, Eiji stopped in his frenetic pacing and muttering of imprecations against a certain blind, thickheaded baka to look over at his much calmer partner.
“Ne, Oishi, do you really think it’s okay to let Inui go off like that alone?” he demanded of the other boy. “What if he messes up again?”
Oishi smiled and pulled his unresisting partner into his arms, soothing the other’s frustrations with his mere presence.
“I think they’ll be fine now,” he assured Eiji with a dreamy look. “Besides, now it’s really all up to them to make things work.”
Eiji huffed a bit at that. “Why do people have to make these things so difficult anyway?” he complained without much heat.
Oishi laughed. “Not every relationship can go as smooth as ours,” he chided.
“Nya! That’s why we’re the Golden Pair!”
“Aa.”
~ owari ~
Disclaimer: Konomi's, not mine. Except for maybe the Psidai stuff.
AN: As usual, the GP stole the scene. Still, I finally have Inui and Kaidoh together, officially. Yay! ^_^ It only took me, like, forever. :p
Series: Psidai AU, part 8 of the InuKai sequence.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2923
Pairings: Inui/Kaidoh, Golden Pair
Timeline: Inui's a second year and Kaidoh's a first year at Seigaku high school. This is probably some time early in the school year, possibly before the district tournament or between the district and prefectural tournaments.
Summary: The Golden Pair decides to meddle. Confessions are finally made.
“Ooiiiishiii!”
The Seigaku High second year in question halted in his process of leaving the tennis clubhouse at the end of afternoon practice and turned just as a redheaded ballistic missile slammed into him. Neither was aware of the sudden exodus of all the other tennis club members around them. Given a year to their own devices, the aptly named ‘Golden Aura’ of the duo had progressed from cavity inducing to coma inducing, and no one who had experienced it once ever wanted to be in the vicinity of the two lovebirds ever again.
“Maa, maa, what’s wrong Eiji?” cooed the taller boy to the human limpet attached to him, immediately sensing the other’s mood despite not being the empath of the two. (Inui once speculated, perhaps half-jokingly, that Oishi had some form of special esper ability that was dedicated to Kikumaru Eiji. A day later, rumors were being cautiously whispered behind the Golden Pair’s back about an “Eiji-dar”.)
Eiji pouted up at his boyfriend and tennis partner. “Nya! Oishi! You have to do something!”
“About what?” Oishi hoped his partner wasn’t trying to get him to help prevent Fuji from trying to assassinate their current tennis club buchou so that Tezuka could take over the club. For that matter, he hoped that Eiji wasn’t going to ask him to help the tensai.
“About Kaidoh!” Eiji explained impatiently, “he’s driving me insane!”
Oishi blinked as he considered the first year that had been part of their championship tennis team in junior high. His brow furrowed in puzzlement. “...I don’t understand,” he finally admitted. “I haven’t noticed anything different about him since two years ago. How’s he driving you mad?”
Eiji looked around and then leaned in conspiratorially, as if conferring a great secret. “I think he likes someone,” he whispered.
“Anou...” Oishi blushed slightly, looking rather uncomfortable with the topic of someone else’s private life.
“...But he’s not with whoever he’s thinking about all the time,” Eiji went on confidently. “So he gets all frustrated, and then he starts brooding.” The hyper acrobat made a face at that. “And then Hiko-sensei keeps making me do singles practice against him, and then I get all frustrated and broody.” Eiji looked up at Oishi with an outraged look that demanded the other boy to do something about the problem.
Oishi sighed. “Well, I suppose he’s about the right age to get crushes...” he speculated, having no personal experience in the area himself, “but what can I do about it?”
“We’ll have to get them together!” Eiji immediately announced, revealing what he had in mind when he came to Oishi to begin with.
“Eiji, you don’t even know who he likes,” Oishi pointed out reasonably, attempting to stop his partner’s latest crazy scheme.
Eiji shrugged as if that was a minor detail. “Nya! So we’ll just have to get him to confess to the guy first!” he declared. Then he paused. “Or the girl, I guess. And then we’ll matchmake!”
Oishi shook his head at his ebullient partner ruefully. But he recognized the glint in those eyes and knew that there was no deterring Eiji from his new mission.
“So what did you want me to do, specifically?” he asked ruefully.
“You have to talk to him!” Eiji declared. “I already tried, but he keeps avoiding me now.” The redhead pouted at that.
“Anou... I don’t think he’s going to listen to me,” Oishi said thoughtfully. “I’m not his fukubuchou anymore, after all. Besides, he’s really closer to Momoshiro and Inui than--”
“I know!” Eiji suddenly interrupted, perking up again. “We’ll talk to Inui! He’s always looking after Kaoru-chan the most. He’ll know what to do!”
“That might be the best thing to do,” Oishi said with a sigh of relief. At least that meant Eiji wasn’t going to haring off and embarrassing the poor first year. “We should be able to catch him before he leaves to go train with Kaidoh-kun.”
Inui listened to the rather confused presentation from the Golden Pair with a sinking heart. It was almost inconceivable to him that despite the vast quantities of data he’d obsessively gathered on his kouhai, he had not caught even the hint that Kaidoh had a crush on someone. He hadn’t even thought the younger boy could hide strong feelings from anyone.
“Nya! Nya! Inui! Are you even listening?!”
However, Kikumaru’s abilities as an empath could not be denied. Inui could feel the uneasy jealousy rising up within him.
“Nya! Oishi! Make Inui listen to me!”
“Inui, Eiji has a good point. Since Kaidoh is your kouhai, it’s your duty as his senpai to help him through his confusing and difficult stage of his life and to help him find happiness.”
Of course, the familiar feelings of jealousy also brought to Inui’s mind certain events of the previous year, and the rather conflicted data they generated.
“Aa... I’ll talk to him,” Inui finally said absently, more to hold off the distracting sermon coming from the Golden Pair. “If you’ll excuse me...” he left quickly before he was told anything else that he didn’t quite want to hear.
By the time Inui arrived at the park that intersected Kaidoh’s usual afternoon run, he’d been able to bring some order to his jumbled thoughts and was already beginning to plan several scenarios in confronting the younger boy when he arrived. The priority, he decided, was to find out who the mysterious person was that Kaidoh had a crush on.
He calculated a 25.99% chance that it was Momoshiro (in which case he immediately foresaw an excellent opportunity for his newest versions of Inui Juice to blackmail the other first-year with), a 4.20% chance that it was a case of hero worship on Tezuka (in which case he had little to worry about, since no one in their right mind tried to compete with both Fuji and Atobe), a tentative 3.14% that it was himself (with a 3% margin of error since he recognized that this particular calculation could easily be affected by his own wishful thinking), a 15.05% chance it was someone outside of Seigaku, and a depressing 54.76% chance that it was a girl from Kaidoh’s grade or class.
Inui was already deep into his plans for spying on the female population of class 1-7 when Kaidoh rounded a corner in the park and came to an abrupt stop when he recognized his senpai sitting at one of the benches before him.
“Inui-senpai?” the younger boy asked in a slightly breathy voice. “Is something wrong? You’re... early.” The two of them had a strict though technically unofficial training routine together in the early evenings.
Inui glanced up and took in his kouhai’s sweaty and naively confused look. When Kaidoh carelessly wiped at his brow with his ever-present towel, Inui’s intense gaze followed the motion from behind his thick glasses. ‘Mine’ came the errant thought into his mind.
Aloud, he only patted the bench next to him. “Sit with me for a moment, Kaidoh,” he said with a carefully steady voice. “I need to... talk to you about something.”
Kaidoh gave his senpai a wary look. But since Inui did not appear to be carrying any bottles of vile concoctions on him, he decided that the talk didn’t have anything to do with him playing guinea pig again, and sat down next to his senpai. He kept his eyes nervously to the ground, however, glad that his skin was already flushed from exercise, thus masking his reaction to Inui’s close proximity.
Inui cleared his throat. There was no delaying the inevitable, he supposed. “Kaidoh, do you have a crush on someone?” he asked bluntly.
Kaidoh’s head jerked up in shock, his face immediately turning an unnatural shade of red that could not possibly be mistaken for being caused by physical exertion. Instinctively, the younger boy tried to jump to his feet and flee. However, his attempt was thwarted by Inui’s longer legs casually entangling his, causing him to trip face-first into his senpai’s lap.
“Really, Kaidoh,” Inui chastised as he righted the now nearly catatonic boy back into the seat next to him, hoping that the other hadn’t noticed the slight wavering of his own voice due to the multitude of pleasant images that popped into his mind from their previous position. “Obviously, this topic is causing you emotional distress. It might even negatively affect your tennis by as much as 31% until it is resolved. I’m only concerned for your well-being as your senpai.”
Well, actually the last part of his speech wasn’t quite accurate. But Inui didn’t think Kaidoh needed to know that.
After a moment more of stunned silence, Kaidoh suddenly broke into a sputtering fit. “Who... I’m not... I don’t... You... You... How did...” Finally, he took a deep breath and managed to squeak out something semi-intelligible. “W-What makes you think I...” Kaidoh blushed and went silent again. His hands had a white-knuckled death grip on the edge of the bench.
“I have very reliable sources for my data,” Inui replied blandly, though he was not very happy about the validity of Kikumaru’s claims. “Besides, your own reaction to my question is sufficient to quell the 21% uncertainty I had of it.”
Kaidoh visibly cringed at that, and Inui forced himself to soften his voice in an attempt to coax further communication from his mortified kouhai.
“Crushes are a natural part of development for a normal boy of your age, Kaidoh. It’s all right to admit it. It’s the stress of keeping such feelings bottled up that may become detrimental to your health.”
“But...” Kaidoh fidgeted uncomfortably, his eyes studiously avoiding Inui’s. “But... what if... what if... the person... doesn’t return...” He trailed off again, looking fearful and dejected all at once.
At least he wasn’t trying to deny the fact, Inui noticed. He was feeling somewhat dejected himself, as well as uneasy in his sudden unfamiliar role as a source of comfort and non-tennis-related advice. Thus preoccupied, he missed the shy surreptitious looks Kaidoh was now shooting him.
Inui cleared his throat again. “Well, on the other hand, Kaidoh, there is also the chance that... the person... does return your feelings.” Again, Inui somehow missed the thoughtful look his kouhai shot him, immersed as he was into choosing his words. “The first step to resolving the uncertainty of not knowing is to talk...”
Inui paused when Kaidoh furtively inched closer to him, frowning as his mind tried to switch tracks. He nearly jumped when a warm, slightly sweaty hand tentatively found his.
“S-senpai,” Kaidoh mumbled in a nearly inaudible voice. “Anou... I-I like...” The first-year blushed a deep red again, his gaze dropping quickly to the ground before shyly sliding up to Inui’s face again. He wasn’t able to complete the sentence, but gently squeezed his senpai’s hand to get the message across.
Inui, on the other hand, had stiffened where he sat, his mind seeming to be reminiscent of an old PC stuck on a abort-retry-fail loop given the new entirely unforeseen data presented to him.
Unfortunately, Kaidoh drew the wrong conclusion from the other’s shocked silence. The younger boy’s shy look had grown more and more uncertain until he suddenly let go of Inui’s hand with a look of numb horror.
“I--gomen nasai, senpai,” he whispered hoarsely before suddenly jumping to his feet and dashing away from the bench and the park.
“W-wait!” Inui finally had gathered up his wits to call out. Unfortunately he was too late, or perhaps Kaidoh was too immersed in his misery to hear him, and Inui could only helplessly watch as his kouhai quickly disappeared from view.
He was then immediately beamed on the head with a well-aimed tennis ball.
“INUI! HOW COULD YOU?!”
The bespectacled boy suddenly found himself seized by the collar and shaken until his teeth rattled. A familiar redheaded acrobat was perched precariously on the back of the bench so that he could loom over Inui indignantly. His other half stood behind him, ready to catch his partner if need be and also looking disapprovingly at Inui.
Eiji shook Inui’s collar again to punctuate his loud berating of the other’s unforgivable behavior. “Look what you did! I could FEEL poor Kaoru-chan’s heart BREAKING all the way over there! How can you be so INSENSITIVE! You were supposed to HELP him, not make him feel worse! You could’ve TRIED to care a LITTLE bit about his feelings!” The words came out in one long breath, and Eiji had to then pause to take a deep breath.
Uneasily, Inui looked to Oishi to be the more reasonable presence between the Golden Pair. However, his hopes were dashed when he saw the usual voice of sanity among the Seigaku tennis team nodding in full agreement with his more easily excited partner.
“Really, Inui,” Oishi admonished in a calmer, but still as guilt inducing voice. “It’s a senpai’s responsibility to take care of his kouhai, not send him away in tears. Even if you didn’t return Kaidoh’s feelings, the least you could have done would be to let him down gently instead of just outright rejecting him like that.”
“YEAH!” Eiji continued to rant. “It’s going to be ALL YOUR FAULT if something happens to Kaoru-chan because of this! What if he can’t think things through? What if he decides to transfer to St. Rudolph? What if he decides to kill himself? Like... like drowning himself in that river he trains at! Or, or throwing himself off the Tokyo Tower!” It was clear that the acrobat was only warming up in his speculations. Worse yet, Oishi was still nodding in acknowledgment, or possibly agreement, with his partner. “...And it’s ALL because you didn’t return his feelings--”
“But I do return them,” Inui finally blurted out, frazzled and guilt-tripped beyond his ability to think straight. “I... I like him too...” he sputtered uncharacteristically.
“BAKA INUI!” Eiji promptly beamed him again with his book bag. “Then you should have TOLD him that! In fact, you should go to him on your knees RIGHT NOW and confess yourself!”
For once, Oishi reached out and kept his partner from further abusing Inui with random objects. “Inui,” he said sternly, “I think you should hurry after Kaidoh and explain yourself before he does anything... rash.”
Remembering Oishi’s precognitive powers, Inui blanched. In the next moment he was frantically zooming out of the park as well.
Meanwhile, Kaidoh was still blindly running from the scene in the park, his feet having automatically carried him onto the path next to a familiar river. Unfortunately in his preoccupation with determinedly keeping the tears from building in his eyes, Kaidoh was unprepared when his feet suddenly tripped over something in the path, sending him plummeting into the water below.
The freezing cold water sent a shock to his body that jolted the boy out of the emotional turmoil that he’d been immersed in. The fast current washed over his head and sent him instinctively struggling for the surface. Eventually, he dragged himself back onto the riverbank, shivering and coughing from his unexpected dip.
He scarcely had a moment to regain his mental bearings again before he was interrupted by an unwelcome voice yelling “Kaidoh! Don’t do it!” and he was suddenly seized by the waist in a firm bear hug.
The momentum of Inui’s leap and grab for his kouhai - after arriving at the scene of what was clearly Kaidoh’s suicide by drowning attempt - carried both boys down to the ground and rolling along the bank. Kaidoh struggled vainly against the hold, his senpai the last person he wanted to see at the moment, and not really hearing the older boy’s gibbering about how he mustn’t do anything rash.
Finally, Inui succeeded in wrestling the younger boy beneath him and getting his full attention by leaning down and pressing an insistent kiss on the other’s mouth. Kaidoh immediately froze in shock, not even reacting when Inui’s tongue dipped momentarily into his slightly gaping mouth. Reluctantly, Inui pulled his face back and took the other’s stunned silence to quietly apologize.
“I-I’m sorry, Kaidoh. I was simply... surprised. My calculations of the possibility of your feelings for me was minuscule...” Inui blushed uncharacteristically before he quirked a grin at the bewildered boy beneath him, looking more like his old self. “I can assure you now that the person you like does return your feelings, 100%.”
Kaidoh gaped at his senpai a while longer, before blushing red again himself. “S-senpai...” he barely murmured, before tilting his head up just as Inui lowered his face again for another deeper kiss.
Back at the park, Eiji stopped in his frenetic pacing and muttering of imprecations against a certain blind, thickheaded baka to look over at his much calmer partner.
“Ne, Oishi, do you really think it’s okay to let Inui go off like that alone?” he demanded of the other boy. “What if he messes up again?”
Oishi smiled and pulled his unresisting partner into his arms, soothing the other’s frustrations with his mere presence.
“I think they’ll be fine now,” he assured Eiji with a dreamy look. “Besides, now it’s really all up to them to make things work.”
Eiji huffed a bit at that. “Why do people have to make these things so difficult anyway?” he complained without much heat.
Oishi laughed. “Not every relationship can go as smooth as ours,” he chided.
“Nya! That’s why we’re the Golden Pair!”
“Aa.”
Disclaimer: Konomi's, not mine. Except for maybe the Psidai stuff.
AN: As usual, the GP stole the scene. Still, I finally have Inui and Kaidoh together, officially. Yay! ^_^ It only took me, like, forever. :p
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Date: 2010-09-16 09:25 am (UTC)