Mizuki reflects on their defeat and has an epiphany.
Hajime leaned back in his seat on the bus, staring into the vanishing point of space, deaf to the murmurs of the St. Rudolph team around him.
They had lost.
Hearts and Spades
Mizuki and Yuuta both find a way to go on after the defeat at Prefecturals, Yuuta as a new captain and Mizuki as a different player. Manga continuity, mild manga spoilers throughout. Mizuki/Yuuta/Mizuki.
Yuuta takes over the tennis club; he and Kaneda talk about club politics and their senpai.
This captain thing wasn’t nearly as easy as Akazawa-senpai had made it look.
Mizuki studies the opposition, looking for the things he missed last time.
He was starting to think that it wasn’t his facts that had been wrong, exactly. They just hadn’t been enough, and he’d been missing some pieces.
Especially some of those strange pieces that changed every time he looked at them.
Mizuki comes across Yuuta practicing and they have words; and a match; and maybe another epiphany.
Using a shot that wore so hard on his body, Yuuta would never last three more years at this rate! What was the boy thinking? How was Hajime supposed to draw Yuuta back, year after next, if he went on like this?
Yuuta tries to decide how it’s going to be between he and Mizuki from now on.
This was the feeling he remembered, the feeling of driving right up to the edge of his strength and endurance and staring the limit down. The feeling of advancing.
After watching Regional finals, Yuuta and Mizuki both have a new range on their goals.
Hajime smiled; observing the tournaments seemed to be doing good things for Yuuta’s awareness of the mental game. That would be useful.
Yuuta plays some with Fuji and they wind up discussing Mizuki.
And Mizuki-san looked at him differently, too, which Yuuta wasn’t going to say because he didn’t know how to describe the difference. At least not so that Aniki wouldn’t have a heart attack.
After watching the National semifinals, Mizuki wrestles with his ambitions and fears—at least until Yuuta gives him a push.
Hajime’s mouth quirked. What a spot to put himself in, a sensible, logical person agreeing to go forward alongside this firebrand and push both of them to the edge and beyond.
Yuuta puts some work into repairing Mizuki’s reputation among the St. Rudolph tennis club.
“I didn’t do that with any special skill or talent,” he said, flatly. “I could do it because I’ve been working my ass off, according to a training schedule Mizuki-san made.” He paused to let that sink in, and to catch his breath. “Now. Do you want to be able to do that?”
Yuuta and Mizuki train with each other over the winter and find their way toward an understanding.
Hajime’s hands were cold.
He didn’t bother telling himself it was because they were playing outside in the dead of winter. He knew better, and he did try not to lie to himself, at least.
It’s graduation, and Mizuki’s intentions are finally unmistakable.
Yuuta supposed it was all sorts of good omens and stuff like that for the third years to graduate just as the sakura were blooming, but this year he felt just a little lost, watching the petals fall over everyone’s carefully pressed uniforms.
Yuuta lets himself be a little distracted by new things; his team notices; maybe Yuuta doesn’t care.
“Kaneda,” Yuuta growled, knowing he was more flushed than exercise could excuse, “they are betting on my personal life.”
Yuuta wants Kaneda to explain some facts of life to him.
“No.” Yuuta kicked the door shut behind him, because he really didn’t want the whole dorm hearing this. “I just… well I wondered… what it’s like. I mean what happens. When you… um.”
Mizuki and Yuuta have some pillow-talk about the ongoing tournaments and more about names.
Once he made up his mind to something, Yuuta had no self-consciousness Hajime had been able to discover, and he seemed perfectly content to lie in bed naked and discuss tennis while Hajime’s hands wandered over him.
Mizuki comes to see Yuuta play; so does Fuji; a little silent competition ensues.
He’d never really taught Yuuta anything about managing people; he’d never had to.
Yuuta and Mizuki enjoy some intimacy and experiment a little in bed.
Hajime-san laughed, the soft, throaty sound that he only ever made in bed, the one that made Yuuta hard just hearing it
Yuuta is down, after Nationals, and Mizuki prods him out of his end-of-the-world gloom.
Yuuta stopped short, looking out over St. Christopher’s courts, which they had come out at the back of. “Oh,” he said, very quietly, eyes wide.
A year and a half later, Mizuki and Yuuta have some more hot sex for very good reasons.
“So, I’m evil?” Hajime-san murmured against Yuuta’s shoulder, after a moment.
Yuuta laughed. “Yep. I like it that you are.” He tangled his fingers with Hajime-san’s and pulled his hand close to kiss the knuckles. “It’s fun.”