The lurch as the bus stopped woke Akaya from a half dozing dream that promptly escaped him. All he remembered was that it had involved cutting a tall chain-link fence. And that Fuji had been mixed up in the project. There were really days Akaya wished his subconscious could just send him a memo. Stumbling off the bus, rubbing his eyes, Akaya glanced up at the sky; clouds were piling up, though it wasn’t getting any cooler. They might have rain soon. Time to be heading home.<\/p>\n
He didn’t move, though, as the rest of the team scattered towards their own homes. Instead he stood still and tried to put the day’s events in some kind of order in his head.<\/p>\n
“Akaya?” Yukimura-san’s voice asked beside him, soft enough not to startle. Yukimura-san smiled a little when Akaya blinked at him. “Worn out?”<\/p>\n
“Not really,” Akaya shook his head. He was a little tired, certainly, but not worn out<\/em>. He was in better training than that.<\/p>\n Yukimura-san’s eyes sharpened. “Confused?” he guessed.<\/p>\n Akaya bit his lip. That would be it, yes.<\/p>\n “Tezuka-san,” he started, “it was… and when you played Echizen…” Why, he wondered, couldn’t he put this coherently?<\/p>\n “What, worried I want to replace you?” Yukimura-san asked, lightly.<\/p>\n Akaya winced. Oh, yes, that was right; because it sounded so stupid when he did. Yukimura-san patted his shoulder.<\/p>\n “I shouldn’t tease you,” he sighed. “It can be confusing. Good rivals are as close as your teammates; closer, sometimes.”<\/p>\n That, Akaya decided, was exactly what was making him uncomfortable. He looked aside.<\/p>\n “Akaya.” Yukimura-san’s hand turned Akaya’s face back toward him. “You are one of mine. Don’t forget that. Even if you defeat me, you will still be one of mine.”<\/p>\n Akaya wanted to let that reassurance comfort him, to let that hint of wildness glowing in Yukimura-san’s eyes wrap around him, but he remembered seeing it earlier today. While his captain was playing Echizen. He found himself nibbling on his lip again.<\/p>\n Yukimura-san’s expression turned considering. His hand cupped Akaya’s cheek.<\/p>\n “If I asked you to come home with me tonight, what would you say?” he murmured.<\/p>\n Akaya felt his eyes widen. He had really tried to stop hoping that Yukimura-san would ever say something like that to him. And when they both let go, on the court, let the brilliance take them, it was enough for him.<\/p>\n Except…<\/p>\n Except that that was the problem right now, wasn’t it? He had watched Yukimura-san share that with someone else, today—and found out, himself, that he<\/em> could share it with someone besides Yukimura-san. He found himself longing for some connection that he knew wouldn’t be shared outside the team, like that.<\/p>\n And Yukimura-san was offering it.<\/p>\n “Yes,” Akaya whispered, shakily.<\/p>\n Yukimura-san smiled, and leaned forward to brush a light kiss across his lips. “Come, then.”<\/p>\n Akaya spent the walk in a bit of a daze.<\/p>\n They reached Yukimura-san’s home just as clouds overran the sky, and the wind started to pick up. It still wasn’t cooling off, Akaya noticed, eyeing the sky. The wind was warm and heavy with the touch of water, and a flash of heat lightning showed the edges of the clouds for an instant. A soft sound beside him made Akaya look around to see Yukimura-san also watching the sky.<\/p>\n “We’re in for a storm, it looks like.”<\/p>\n Watching the wind lift and twine through his hair, seeing the dark sky reflected in his eyes, Akaya was struck by the whimsy that if this particular weather had human form it would be Yukimura-san. He looked so at ease, not even swaying with the gusts.<\/p>\n And then Yukimura-san looked at him, and held out a hand, and matters of more immediate concern returned with a rush. He let Yukimura-san lead him inside, trying to calm his heart rate.<\/p>\n Though he was a bit startled when Yukimura-san immediately threw open both the windows over his bed. Yukimura-san noticed his look, and one corner of his mouth tugged up.<\/p>\n “Most of the windows at the hospital didn’t open very far; it didn’t take long to get fed up with it.”<\/p>\n Akaya shivered and nodded, subdued. Yukimura-san came and took Akaya’s face between his hands, turning it up.<\/p>\n “That won’t do,” he murmured, and bent his head to kiss Akaya’s lips apart.<\/p>\n Akaya barely noticed Yukimura-san undressing him until he realized that he was leaning against his captain’s body without a thread of clothing between them, and released a breathless moan into Yukimura-san’s mouth. Slim, strong hands traveled down his back, settled on his hips, moved him the few steps to the bed.<\/p>\n Scooting back on the sheets, momentarily without Yukimura-san’s touch to distract him, Akaya felt suddenly shy, and cursed his quick blush once again for giving him away. He looked up at Yukimura-san through his lashes to see a gentle smile and eyes bright with amusement. His captain pressed him down and stroked his hair back, soothing.<\/p>\n “So shy, Akaya? After the way I’ve seen you tease Genichirou, I’m surprised.”<\/p>\n Akaya turned his head away to press a hot cheek against the cool cotton under him. “That was Sanada-san,” he mumbled, “that’s different.”<\/p>\n Yukimura-san’s fingers closed on his chin and turned his head back. “Does that mean I can stop worrying about you teasing me<\/em>?” he asked, lips just brushing Akaya’s.<\/p>\n Akaya’s breath caught on a faint whimper. “Yes, Yukimura-san,” he husked.<\/p>\n Yukimura-san’s lips covered his, softly, fingers smoothing over Akaya’s ribs, down his hips, feather light on the insides of his thighs. Akaya arched up, shivering, and then sank back, open and yearning under those hands. With his eyes closed, Akaya found it hard to tell, sometimes, what was Yukimura-san’s delicate, inciting touch and what was the brush of that heavy wind blowing over them. It only got more so when Yukimura-san drew him up onto his knees and into the path of the air curling through the room.<\/p>\n His captain’s fingers brushing his entrance was one touch he couldn’t mistake, though, and another low sound escaped him. Yukimura-san held Akaya close against his body and touched him slowly, coaxing and teasing and gentle. Akaya stretched against him, wanting, asking silently for more than this soft stroking. When Yukimura-san’s tongue traced down Akaya’s neck and over his shoulder, Akaya tossed his head, bowing back over the arm that held him with a gasp, because it was suddenly too much for nerves brushed to hypersensitivity.<\/p>\n “Yukimura-san,” he choked, “please…”<\/p>\n He broke off with a breathless moan as Yukimura-san’s fingers finally slid into him, a presence spreading him open around itself. Yukimura-san leaned over him, a familiar electric edge in his dark eyes, and the wind stroked his hair across Akaya’s skin as his mouth moved over Akaya’s chest. The gentle touches left Akaya limp in his hold, breathing in faint sighs as his captain’s strength wrapped around him. Silent flickers of lightning painted red across his closed eyes.<\/p>\n When Yukimura-san drew him back up and turned him to face the window, Akaya found that he had to lean back against the support of Yukimura-san’s body behind him to keep from collapsing in a heap. That support was as familiar as the demand in the kiss that Yukimura-san turned Akaya’s head back to meet, and the compelling pressure that opened him slowly, steadily. Familiar in a new form. Akaya’s small, desperate sound, as Yukimura-san slid all the way into him, was caught by his captain’s mouth on his before Yukimura-san’s lips curved.<\/p>\n “Akaya,” that soft voice stroked against his ear, sounding pleased and reflective, both, “you give yourself to me so easily.”<\/p>\n Akaya rested his head back on Yukimura-san’s shoulder, shivering as his captain took the opportunity to press his mouth to Akaya’s exposed throat. “You take me so completely,” he whispered, both an explanation and a plea.<\/p>\n True lightning etched the fast moving sky in front of them, and the thunder that followed it drowned out any reply Yukimura-san might have made. Akaya didn’t care, because Yukimura-san was moving, now, slow and hard, holding Akaya tight against him. The stretch and slide of it burned through Akaya, started sweat on his skin that only made the glide of Yukimura-san’s hands sleeker. The increasing power of the wind washing across them did nothing to cool Akaya; it was still warm, almost skin-warm, and played between his spread legs as lightly as Yukimura-san’s fingertips.<\/p>\n Akaya’s senses slid into each other. The rhythm of Yukimura-san moving in him matched itself with the rhythm of the increasing thunder, a breathless pause before the echoing shock of each thrust. The hot, tense pleasure licking at his nerves felt like the bright, soundless bursts of heat lightning, flickering from cloud to cloud, building and never grounding. Akaya wanted it to ground, to strike down, to find some bridge of release, and found his voice long enough to call his captain’s name, needing, asking. Yukimura-san shifted, harder, deeper, and he spoke into Akaya’s ear, voice low and clear.<\/p>\n “Come with me, Akaya. Let yourself go.”<\/p>\n Fingers stroked down his length and drew Akaya’s pulse and breath with them, wringing out of him like the desperate gasps that wrung free from his throat with each spasm, leaving him lax and panting in Yukimura-san’s arms. He felt very much like purring. Yukimura-san laughed, softly, and laid him down, leaning beside him and smoothing damp strands of hair away from his eyes. Akaya smiled and turned his face into Yukimura-san’s hand, laying a shy kiss in the palm. Yukimura-san was breathing deeply, the same indefinable glow hovering around him as did after a serious game. He bent down and caught Akaya’s mouth with his, somehow both wild and soothing.<\/p>\n “Feeling less confused?” he asked on a teasing note.<\/p>\n Akaya looked up through his lashes with a wicked grin. “As long as you aren’t planning on taking Echizen to bed.”<\/p>\n Yukimura-san’s laughter was bright and rich. “Definitely not,” he assured Akaya, chuckling.<\/p>\n Akaya curled contentedly against his captain’s side and listened as it began to rain.<\/p>\n End<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Immediately following “The Continuation of War”, Kirihara finds himself somewhat disturbed by the day’s experiences, and Yukimura offers him reassurance.