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chineseinkTitle: Victory Road
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: FujiRyo
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Aozu in leather, Ryoma on stage, Fuji in the sky--a love story of sorts in a world of glitter and rain.
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
efio_47 because I said I would. And now she owns it all, except the part that Konomi-sensei owns and the drugged-up part, which is all mine. XD (Though it's really all her fault.)
Victory Road
bymeitachi
V
There’s also a slight chance of rain on Thursday, but Ryoma doesn’t mind because he misses the cooler weather and the color of Fuji’s eyes. If you touch me, 254 meters west, I might break, but if you breathe on me I might cry and fall seventeen feet towards the sky and be lost among the clouds.
Ryoma sings lyrics his mind doesn’t understand but words his heart has beaten to in the lonely mornings on the fifteenth balcony of the thirty-fourth floor in the sixth hotel he’s been in this month.
Precious things, he thinks, are things he is afraid to hold because they might not last, might crumble into eternity, and he’d rather have a lifetime than a moment. Fuji’s smiles are fleeting and ever-present, and his voice sells a good quarter-million of their three million CDs and now they’ve gone triple platinum and Ryoma just wants to watch the sky fall, rain and tears and sweat and hard work beading on his forehead and sliding into his eyes. He can’t see with his bangs in his eyes and he tosses his head when he dances and the fans scream because it’s sexy and his managers nod because it sells and Fuji eyes him with a hungry look and Ryoma can’t breathe and still can’t see. So he closes his eyes and sings words he knows by heart, ringing through the arena so big it feels like a separate world, crowded with people he knows only for a night, and it’s like water dropping into puddles, rippling, splashing, as his music falls into the sky, and he falls into Fuji, and drowns and laughs and sings.
I
The next day Fuji has a bracelet of daisies, chained together, and it is perfect and beautiful because they are bound to each other even while they are free. Ryoma looks down at his wrist where the flowers lay and then further down to where their hands are linked together, bound, and he sighs and smiles and takes it off. The cameras are around; prying eyes, public eyes, everywhere they are being watched, stalked, followed, loved; prices to pay for their fame, for their pedestal, and Ryoma almost wishes they could topple off but Fuji holds him there with this daisy chain and a smile and a look in those upside-down-sky eyes that promises more than forever. Tezuka doesn’t like the way they touch, because their managers are clever, and Tezuka hates them for being used, like toys, props, puppets whose strings are pulled to cater to the public. But that’s what stars are, Fuji points out, nothing more than slaves to their audience, otherwise they would be simply masses of floating gas out in the dark, dark world. Let us brighten what we can, and Tezuka still hates it, knowing Fuji is right, but the look in his eyes when he watches Fuji and Ryoma is darker than bottomless wells and obsidian glass; Ryoma thinks he’s jealous and almost laughs but instead falls into Fuji and kisses him as the rain pours down on them, soaking them to the skin, so that their clothes outline their bodies, and the cameras click click click like miniature stars flashing.
C
Oishi is gentle, like spring breezes are kind, and his smiles are not knife-edged like Fuji’s, Fuji who seems to want to cut and shatter those camera lenses on them, living like butterflies under glass, in a house that is transparent. Oishi thinks they are sweet and he has always been a romantic, a believer in fairy-tale-endings and wishes and dreams-come-true even though he had to leave his own dream, crying and alone, back where the light of the photographers cannot fall on him. Oishi hurts and behind his smiles is something breakable, like a slide show playing backwards, filled with sunny laughter and red hair, bright blue eyes and a piece of the world that fit in its proper place. Now things are different, there are too many colors, and Oishi falls into the kaleidoscope willingly but his regrets are deeper than Tezuka’s voice when he whispers huskily into the microphone and all the girls swoon; his regrets cradle him in soft, hurt voices, of phone calls never made, and letters never answered, a voice he will never hear again; Oishi forges forward, bass in hand, and his smile is close to breaking. Like Fuji, he is tired of their cage, because he’s grown wings he never expected to have and now he doesn’t want to fly in circles but in a straight path of the shortest distance to the past and the future somewhere not here, not now.
T
Ryoma’s voice sells the best so the managers tie him to the microphone the most, with sweet words and false smiles but when he sings, he doesn’t do it for them and their greedy eyes. He sings because the beat flows through his blood and he falls willingly into the heat that rises, hips swinging, eyes lidded, and screams and bass echoing through his head. All he needs to hear though, what he listens for, is only something as mundane as the sound of his own breathing, and that’s enough to know, to remind him, that his breaths are not yet ragged enough and he will rectify that as soon as he can after the show, lost in Fuji’s poignant touches and kisses and heat and adrenaline.
He doesn’t sing to the faceless crowd any more than he sings to the music playing behind him; his song is in his head and in his blood and in his breath as he breathes in and out and in and he closes his eyes and sees Fuji’s skin, pale and glistening with sweat, showcased in slick black leather. Tezuka never says anything to them after a show because throughout their time on stage, Ryoma is teasing, taunting, flaunting and playing the tune of their managers, flirting with the public and the cameras and the audience, touching Oishi’s shoulder and sliding a hand along Tezuka’s arm and leaning in to breathe in Fuji’s ear—he sells them, shining bright with another three hundred forty thousand CDs in the next five months. Tezuka hates it and Ryoma smirks, turning his face toward Fuji’s, closer, like inevitability, and Oishi sees it and feels a pain in his heart, remembering, and then there are fireworks that burst in their veins: live electricity as the song crescendos.
O
The two of them climb over and atop and under and around each other after the show, gasping, ragged, labored breaths that sound like they should echo and bounce off the walls to surround them, and sometimes they don’t make it back to the hotel but the greenroom suffices; there is a couch and Ryoma’s bent back over it, upside-down word spinning like he’s on a Ferris wheel at night in a city, and he almost is. They touch and kiss and bite and drown in each other and Tezuka looks away because he wants to see something different and as long as he looks somewhere else, he can see it, perfect like a captured moment in a photograph. Oishi only stretches, heaves a relaxed breath, exhaling pent-up energy and fear and joy and pain into the smoke-stained room, and closes the door gently behind him as he searches for a private place to make a phone call that won’t ever go through.
R
There’s something magical about Ryoma and Fuji and it’s something they find together, in each other, holding each other, breathless and unsatisfied. Sixteen days until the tour is over and nineteen and four fifths hours until their next show, new city, old stage, different crowd, same routine. Tezuka leaves, door slamming shut behind him, and Ryoma glances over and laughs and hides his face in Fuji’s chest and arms go around him and they smile together, comfortable in their awkwardness, in Tezuka’s stiff blue-sky-green-grass-rainbow-bass-all-shattered world, and anonymous footsteps patter up and down the hall, heedless of the precious things inside.
Y
Dressed, later, they stumble down and out, herded like stampeding cattle to a long, long limo with black, black windows and another burst of fireworks that click and flash and capture their straggling hair for tomorrow’s headlines. The rain falls still, from the forty-second floor of their hotel to the ground beneath the tires that squeal as they’re shipped off from the arena without so much as a postage stamp. Home, they go, a temporary home that will be uprooted the following morning, but it is enough for now, because everything glitters in the rain and hazy lights. Oishi’s eyes are downcast, hiding the forever that leaves only him, but he is still soft, gentle, and his smile is growing bitter like Fuji’s, but Fuji is laughing now, too caught up in the feel of Ryoma sprawled in his lap to be cynical about the broken glass, not half-full or half-empty. Tezuka stares out those tinted windows, dark night, dark eyes, dark thoughts, but he smiles as well, half-smiles that should be hidden behind coquettish fans, but are instead full of things that aren’t but could have been. He glances momentarily at Fuji and Ryoma, leaning against each other leaning against the seat and dripping rain like they are clouds in the sky, or free-flowing waterfalls. He sees their contentedness and he sees Oishi reflected against them and then he breaks the mirror and looks out the window again.
road
They are caught up in a rush of traffic, headlong towards the so-distant sky, caught in a glass cage under a rainstorm in a glittering world of heat and stars and music and unbreakable chains. Ryoma breathes in the world and exhales simplicity, turns his head into Fuji’s shoulder, and smiles.
--
Started/Finished: 06/15/05
Edited: 06/19/05
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: FujiRyo
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Aozu in leather, Ryoma on stage, Fuji in the sky--a love story of sorts in a world of glitter and rain.
For
efio_47 because I said I would. And now she owns it all, except the part that Konomi-sensei owns and the drugged-up part, which is all mine. XD (Though it's really all her fault.) Victory Road
by
meitachiV
There’s also a slight chance of rain on Thursday, but Ryoma doesn’t mind because he misses the cooler weather and the color of Fuji’s eyes. If you touch me, 254 meters west, I might break, but if you breathe on me I might cry and fall seventeen feet towards the sky and be lost among the clouds.
Ryoma sings lyrics his mind doesn’t understand but words his heart has beaten to in the lonely mornings on the fifteenth balcony of the thirty-fourth floor in the sixth hotel he’s been in this month.
Precious things, he thinks, are things he is afraid to hold because they might not last, might crumble into eternity, and he’d rather have a lifetime than a moment. Fuji’s smiles are fleeting and ever-present, and his voice sells a good quarter-million of their three million CDs and now they’ve gone triple platinum and Ryoma just wants to watch the sky fall, rain and tears and sweat and hard work beading on his forehead and sliding into his eyes. He can’t see with his bangs in his eyes and he tosses his head when he dances and the fans scream because it’s sexy and his managers nod because it sells and Fuji eyes him with a hungry look and Ryoma can’t breathe and still can’t see. So he closes his eyes and sings words he knows by heart, ringing through the arena so big it feels like a separate world, crowded with people he knows only for a night, and it’s like water dropping into puddles, rippling, splashing, as his music falls into the sky, and he falls into Fuji, and drowns and laughs and sings.
I
The next day Fuji has a bracelet of daisies, chained together, and it is perfect and beautiful because they are bound to each other even while they are free. Ryoma looks down at his wrist where the flowers lay and then further down to where their hands are linked together, bound, and he sighs and smiles and takes it off. The cameras are around; prying eyes, public eyes, everywhere they are being watched, stalked, followed, loved; prices to pay for their fame, for their pedestal, and Ryoma almost wishes they could topple off but Fuji holds him there with this daisy chain and a smile and a look in those upside-down-sky eyes that promises more than forever. Tezuka doesn’t like the way they touch, because their managers are clever, and Tezuka hates them for being used, like toys, props, puppets whose strings are pulled to cater to the public. But that’s what stars are, Fuji points out, nothing more than slaves to their audience, otherwise they would be simply masses of floating gas out in the dark, dark world. Let us brighten what we can, and Tezuka still hates it, knowing Fuji is right, but the look in his eyes when he watches Fuji and Ryoma is darker than bottomless wells and obsidian glass; Ryoma thinks he’s jealous and almost laughs but instead falls into Fuji and kisses him as the rain pours down on them, soaking them to the skin, so that their clothes outline their bodies, and the cameras click click click like miniature stars flashing.
C
Oishi is gentle, like spring breezes are kind, and his smiles are not knife-edged like Fuji’s, Fuji who seems to want to cut and shatter those camera lenses on them, living like butterflies under glass, in a house that is transparent. Oishi thinks they are sweet and he has always been a romantic, a believer in fairy-tale-endings and wishes and dreams-come-true even though he had to leave his own dream, crying and alone, back where the light of the photographers cannot fall on him. Oishi hurts and behind his smiles is something breakable, like a slide show playing backwards, filled with sunny laughter and red hair, bright blue eyes and a piece of the world that fit in its proper place. Now things are different, there are too many colors, and Oishi falls into the kaleidoscope willingly but his regrets are deeper than Tezuka’s voice when he whispers huskily into the microphone and all the girls swoon; his regrets cradle him in soft, hurt voices, of phone calls never made, and letters never answered, a voice he will never hear again; Oishi forges forward, bass in hand, and his smile is close to breaking. Like Fuji, he is tired of their cage, because he’s grown wings he never expected to have and now he doesn’t want to fly in circles but in a straight path of the shortest distance to the past and the future somewhere not here, not now.
T
Ryoma’s voice sells the best so the managers tie him to the microphone the most, with sweet words and false smiles but when he sings, he doesn’t do it for them and their greedy eyes. He sings because the beat flows through his blood and he falls willingly into the heat that rises, hips swinging, eyes lidded, and screams and bass echoing through his head. All he needs to hear though, what he listens for, is only something as mundane as the sound of his own breathing, and that’s enough to know, to remind him, that his breaths are not yet ragged enough and he will rectify that as soon as he can after the show, lost in Fuji’s poignant touches and kisses and heat and adrenaline.
He doesn’t sing to the faceless crowd any more than he sings to the music playing behind him; his song is in his head and in his blood and in his breath as he breathes in and out and in and he closes his eyes and sees Fuji’s skin, pale and glistening with sweat, showcased in slick black leather. Tezuka never says anything to them after a show because throughout their time on stage, Ryoma is teasing, taunting, flaunting and playing the tune of their managers, flirting with the public and the cameras and the audience, touching Oishi’s shoulder and sliding a hand along Tezuka’s arm and leaning in to breathe in Fuji’s ear—he sells them, shining bright with another three hundred forty thousand CDs in the next five months. Tezuka hates it and Ryoma smirks, turning his face toward Fuji’s, closer, like inevitability, and Oishi sees it and feels a pain in his heart, remembering, and then there are fireworks that burst in their veins: live electricity as the song crescendos.
O
The two of them climb over and atop and under and around each other after the show, gasping, ragged, labored breaths that sound like they should echo and bounce off the walls to surround them, and sometimes they don’t make it back to the hotel but the greenroom suffices; there is a couch and Ryoma’s bent back over it, upside-down word spinning like he’s on a Ferris wheel at night in a city, and he almost is. They touch and kiss and bite and drown in each other and Tezuka looks away because he wants to see something different and as long as he looks somewhere else, he can see it, perfect like a captured moment in a photograph. Oishi only stretches, heaves a relaxed breath, exhaling pent-up energy and fear and joy and pain into the smoke-stained room, and closes the door gently behind him as he searches for a private place to make a phone call that won’t ever go through.
R
There’s something magical about Ryoma and Fuji and it’s something they find together, in each other, holding each other, breathless and unsatisfied. Sixteen days until the tour is over and nineteen and four fifths hours until their next show, new city, old stage, different crowd, same routine. Tezuka leaves, door slamming shut behind him, and Ryoma glances over and laughs and hides his face in Fuji’s chest and arms go around him and they smile together, comfortable in their awkwardness, in Tezuka’s stiff blue-sky-green-grass-rainbow-bass-all-shattered world, and anonymous footsteps patter up and down the hall, heedless of the precious things inside.
Y
Dressed, later, they stumble down and out, herded like stampeding cattle to a long, long limo with black, black windows and another burst of fireworks that click and flash and capture their straggling hair for tomorrow’s headlines. The rain falls still, from the forty-second floor of their hotel to the ground beneath the tires that squeal as they’re shipped off from the arena without so much as a postage stamp. Home, they go, a temporary home that will be uprooted the following morning, but it is enough for now, because everything glitters in the rain and hazy lights. Oishi’s eyes are downcast, hiding the forever that leaves only him, but he is still soft, gentle, and his smile is growing bitter like Fuji’s, but Fuji is laughing now, too caught up in the feel of Ryoma sprawled in his lap to be cynical about the broken glass, not half-full or half-empty. Tezuka stares out those tinted windows, dark night, dark eyes, dark thoughts, but he smiles as well, half-smiles that should be hidden behind coquettish fans, but are instead full of things that aren’t but could have been. He glances momentarily at Fuji and Ryoma, leaning against each other leaning against the seat and dripping rain like they are clouds in the sky, or free-flowing waterfalls. He sees their contentedness and he sees Oishi reflected against them and then he breaks the mirror and looks out the window again.
road
They are caught up in a rush of traffic, headlong towards the so-distant sky, caught in a glass cage under a rainstorm in a glittering world of heat and stars and music and unbreakable chains. Ryoma breathes in the world and exhales simplicity, turns his head into Fuji’s shoulder, and smiles.
--
Started/Finished: 06/15/05
Edited: 06/19/05
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