cashew (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} cashew) wrote,@ 2007-03-07 00:27:00 |
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PoT fic: A Resolution Seldom Framed Part 2
Title: A Resolution Seldom Framed
Author: Me
Fandom: TAT
Status: WIP
Rating: G
Summary: The road to happiness is not without thorns. Or thorny roses.
Notes: How many people reading this? Raise of hands please. *cricket chirp*
===
American schools were greatly different from Japanese schools, Tezuka mused as Victor something or other was chattering away during lunch period, sitting across him on the grassy green field with a sandwich in one hand a juice in another. There was mention of a game of “football”, which Tezuka was learning was nothing like the “football” he was taught. But there were greater differences other than using an English dialect that Tezuka had never heard.
One of the oddest characteristics about American schools, Tezuka continued to contemplate, is not really a trait of American schools as much as a trait of Americans. And that was the lack of propriety.
Girls would often undo the ties in their uniforms, freeing the buttons until it looks as if their chests were going to spill out of the tight cloth. When they sit, their legs were often crossed just provocatively enough that it would have been better if they didn’t cross their legs at all. But most distressing was the way they seem to fail to notice the existence of personal space, leaning in too close when spoken too, so much that Tezuka often found himself backing up just to avoid the cloying waft of perfume, too strong by far.
“Victor, Kunimitsu. What’s up?” A pair of green eyes twinkled as the new arrival plopped herself between Tezuka and his friend, crossing her legs at the ankles and Tezuka wondered how she managed to keep from falling over.
Mentally, he amended that the most distressing perhaps was not the lack of personal space as much as the abuse of given names. Cultural habit may it be, Tezuka found himself still startling whenever someone called him by his given name, the image of his mother holding a soup spoon and fuming coming unbidden to his mind. After a month of failed attempts to convince his fellow classmates to use his family name, Tezuka resigned himself to the familiar address and the minor heart attacks that came with it.
“Nothing’s up, Emy,” Victor rolled his eyes in greeting followed by a definitive bite into his sandwich. Then, with his mouth full, he continued, “That is, unless you’re talking about 16-year-old boys, hormones, and certain things…”
“Shut up, Victor,” Emily “Call me Emy and I kill you dead” Patterson replied with a slap on Victor’s back that caused the boy to nearly choke on his mouthful. “Didn’t your mother tell you not to talk with your mouth full?”
“Well,” Victor opened his mouth, half chewed sandwich almost falling out, about to come back with another smart ass remark before he thought better and closed his mouth.
“So, Kunimitsu,” Emily twirled her head to look at Tezuka, a smile on her face, which Tezuka doubted was the same expression she sent poor Victor, as currently Victor was giving him the throat cutting gesture, complete with strangled to death look. “Since Victor is obviously as reliable a punctured condom, let’s hear what you have to say.”
Victor made a dying noise and Tezuka stared back blankly.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Tezuka answered, feeling as though he’d missed out on a very important joke. Either that, or Americans are just as susceptible to insanity as the Japanese and he was clearly a vector for this epidemic. Victor did mention that the girls weren’t quite so pushy before his arrival.
“Just asking what you guys were talking about,” Emily commented just as sweetly as before, if not sweeter, the smile turning up a few notches brighter on her face. While Tezuka may still be suffering from a language barrier, this body language was something he wasn’t blind to and dutifully scooted himself a little farther away from where Emily sat as obtrusively as possible.
“I believe we were talking about football, Emily,” said Tezuka, the natural “-san” swallowed forcibly before it could escape. He didn’t understand why this would cause the girl to giggle, like he’d just told a good joke.
“Oh, of course you were,” Emily agreed amiably, flipping a lock of golden hair over her shoulder.
And Tezuka had watched enough foreign films to recognize that gesture.
Standing up more abruptly than was called for, Tezuka bid his goodbye and rushed off towards the school building, giving Victor a silent apology for abandoning him to Emily’s mercies. Sometimes Tezuka wondered if maybe Ryuzaki-sensei had instilled in him a permanent fear of aggressive women.
Bailing on Victor did not prove profitable when he found himself alone and surrounded by other female students in the cafeteria. He’d thought most students would take lunch as a chance to get out of the stuff school building, leaving the cafeteria the logically empty place to escape to in avoidance of unwanted attentions. However, he’d walked into a gaggle of chattering girls and suddenly found himself at their center, each one trying to out talk the other and asking him something that he couldn’t catch through the cacophony.
“I’m sorry, I don’t…” Tezuka began but stopped when he heard the distinct uttering of “Atobe”. Tezuka paused and wondered at his hearing, or loss there of, but then he heard the name again and he was certain that he hadn’t heard wrong.
“Atobe?” Tezuka asked, blatantly ignoring the other questions, his attention completely focused on the mention of this familiar name.
“Yeah, Keigo Atobe,” one of the girls, Nancy Andrews, Tezuka’s mind provided, answered. “He’s a new transfer student and shares my homeroom. Cute guy, but a little messed up in the head.”
“Are you kidding?” chimed in a girl Tezuka didn’t know, only briefly remembered as someone who sat in the back of his American History class. “The guy’s absolutely beautiful. Why does Japan get all the pretty boys and we get stuck with people like…” she trailed off to make a gesture in the general direction of the boy’s gym.
“Stop being shallow Jenny,” yet another girl who Tezuka didn’t know interrupted. “You’re giving us a bad name.” Then turning to Tezuka, she added, “Don’t mind her, Kunimitsu. She’s a bit of an oddball.”
Tezuka would have been concerned by the sheer number of people who knew him that he did not know, but his attention was still focused on what Andrews just said, so he asked, “Does he, uh, refer to himself as –”
“Ore-sama? Yeah, and what the hell does that mean anyway?” Andrews asked. Tezuka couldn’t think of an appropriate translation and simply shrugged. He was both amused and disturbed that Atobe’s habit had made an impression even amongst American students.
The girl’s chattering suddenly hushed when a too familiar voice called out, “What is the meaning of this racket? Can’t a person eat in peace, ah~n?”
The girls parted to reveal a frowning Atobe who was, unbelievably enough, balancing his own lunch tray in one hand. Tezuka was already composing an email to Inui in his head, the letter running along the lines of “I saw Atobe holding a lunch tray and I believe the world has come to an end.”
“Atobe,” Tezuka greeted out of sheer habit and Atobe nodded in greeting.
Then, whether due to his dramatic tendencies or simply because Atobe was Atobe, he added, “Do you have any idea how hard it was to track you down, Tezuka?”
There was a sudden rise of hushed whispers, quiet squeals, and, from the corner of his eye, Tezuka could see the girl called Jenny fainting. The thud of body hitting floor was barely audible over the not-so-discreet conversations. From the mess of sounds, Tezuka was able to catch phrases that sounded something like “jilted lover”, “how romantic”, and even “yaoi”, which Tezuka thought was a little much when he wasn’t even in Japan.
Ignoring the crowd and the scene Atobe was making, Tezuka urged, “Let’s get out of here.”
“But, Tezuka, I’ve just arrived,” Atobe protested. Tezuka ignored him in favor of forcibly dragging him out of the cafeteria to someplace less crowded. It hadn’t been his intention to end up in the boy’s restroom, but it was the only place where the girls hadn’t been able to follow.
Letting out a breath in relief now that he wasn’t being tailed by people who seemed determined to know the exact nature of his relationship with Atobe, Tezuka asked, “Atobe, what are you doing here?”
“Well, Tezuka,” Atobe began and Tezuka didn’t miss the almost sardonic stress he placed on his name, “I sent an invitation to Seigaku for a graduation celebration for the third year regulars, but received notice that their buchou had already left them. So of course I had to find out just where their pillar decided to go. It wasn’t easy, most of my sources seemed reluctant to give any information, but I finally prevailed, and here I am.
“But more importantly,” Atobe went on, not giving Tezuka a chance to interrupt and point out that Tezuka had announced a few months in advance of his leaving thanks to Atobe’s insistent prodding, “what are you doing here. I thought you’d be in the pros by now.”
“Compulsory education is until high school in America.”
“And?” Atobe’s tone suggested that laws were not so much meant to be followed as much as changed to fit one’s needs. This, Tezuka was familiar with.
“And an education is important for one’s future.”
Atobe snorted at the explanation.
“I also may be considering a different career from professional tennis,” Tezuka added then watched with concern as the haughty look on Atobe’s face changed into something resembling fury.
The corner of Atobe’s eyes twitched, but he seemed to have regained composure when he said, “Bullshit.”
Or maybe not completely in control of himself, yet.
“Atobe, calm down,” Tezuka implored, but to no avail as the twitch grew in frequency and Atobe looked as he did after Hyoutei’s second loss of the year.
“Calm down? Tezuka, you’re throwing away a brilliant career for…I don’t even know for what!” Atobe raged, his eyes glittering with a seething anger that Tezuka had never witness before. Then, without warning, concern seeped through the anger and Atobe continued in a softer voice, “What is it?”
Tezuka was utterly lost at this point, despite being used to Atobe’s drastic mood swings, and could only offer, “I’m sorry?”
“The reason for quitting tennis. Is it your shoulder?”
Atobe’s ill-masked guilt rested uneasily against Tezuka’s conscience, but then Atobe ruined the effect by adding, “Is it cancer?”
Now all Tezuka could manage was a blank blink, feeling too lost to even summon up a response.
“Cancer, Tezuka,” Atobe continued, his voice in a hushed urgency, “the reason why people give up their dreams when they have so much promise. The reason for all this secrecy about coming to America, where they have the most advanced cancer treatments. I’ve seen it in those Korean dramas, it’s always ‘Cancer’, the silent killer, the undefeatable beast. But you can’t give up! No, you must fight this disease! Don’t you understand? If you give up now, then you’d have lost before you even tried. That’s not the Tezuka I know. It’s too early to throw in the towel, what do you say?”
“I would say you’ve watched too many Korean dramas,” Tezuka answered calmly. The urge to pat Atobe’s head was suddenly overwhelming and, despite his pride on his self control, Tezuka gave in to the impulse and ruffled Atobe’s hair. Atobe made a noise of indignation and he explained, “I don’t have some crippling disease.”
“Is it my parents?” Atobe continued after shaking off Tezuka’s petting. “Have they found out about our relationship –”
“There is no relationship,” Tezuka protested, but Atobe plowed on.
“– and objected. That’s why they forced you to come to America, so they can remove your influence.”
“This has nothing to do with your parents.” Tezuka was beginning to lose his patience, yet, curiously, the urge to pat Atobe was still there. It wasn’t everyday one had the chance to see Atobe acting, for the lack of a better word, spastic. He looked like a furious kitten, upset and vulnerable, and some deep recess of Tezuka’s subconscious that sounded suspiciously like Inui offered “warm milk is a good relaxant.” Tezuka tried to shake the voice from his mind.
“Then what is the reason?” demanded Atobe, who was resembling the kitten analogy more with every passing second.
Tezuka shook himself physically to get rid of the disturbing image and answered, “I can’t say. It’s a matter of national security.”
Atobe looked unconvinced.
“Honestly,” Tezuka added into the silence that greeted his explanation, “it has something to do with my father’s career. That’s as much as I know.”
There was no dent in Atobe’s skeptic look, but his defensive stance softened as he said, “Fine. Whatever it is, I’ll find out and then you’ll have much to answer for.”
“I didn’t realize I was responsible for my father’s career choice,” Tezuka responded blandly, but nonetheless reassured by Atobe’s renewed arrogance.
“Did I say you were?”
Tezuka didn’t bother to answer the rhetorical question and Atobe’s attention was already elsewhere, as he was eyeing the restroom door with a look of contemplation.
“Those girls are still out there trying to listen in, aren’t they?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.”
“Well,” Atobe combed his finger through his hair, the strands falling obediently into place after the gesture, “I guess it’s not surprising that ore-sama has fans even in a foreign school.”
Then, with his usual air of overconfidence, Atobe walked toward the restroom exit, tossing out over his shoulder, “Be prepared to watch as I dazzle the American students with my mystic oriental charm.
“Ore-sama no bigi ni…”
Tezuka rolled his eyes at the familiar phrase, feeling relaxed for the first time since his arrival in America.
~*tsuzuku*~
Now for something totally unrelated...
I have issues. I realize this is.
Title: A Resolution Seldom Framed
Author: Me
Fandom: TAT
Status: WIP
Rating: G
Summary: The road to happiness is not without thorns. Or thorny roses.
Notes: How many people reading this? Raise of hands please. *cricket chirp*
===
American schools were greatly different from Japanese schools, Tezuka mused as Victor something or other was chattering away during lunch period, sitting across him on the grassy green field with a sandwich in one hand a juice in another. There was mention of a game of “football”, which Tezuka was learning was nothing like the “football” he was taught. But there were greater differences other than using an English dialect that Tezuka had never heard.
One of the oddest characteristics about American schools, Tezuka continued to contemplate, is not really a trait of American schools as much as a trait of Americans. And that was the lack of propriety.
Girls would often undo the ties in their uniforms, freeing the buttons until it looks as if their chests were going to spill out of the tight cloth. When they sit, their legs were often crossed just provocatively enough that it would have been better if they didn’t cross their legs at all. But most distressing was the way they seem to fail to notice the existence of personal space, leaning in too close when spoken too, so much that Tezuka often found himself backing up just to avoid the cloying waft of perfume, too strong by far.
“Victor, Kunimitsu. What’s up?” A pair of green eyes twinkled as the new arrival plopped herself between Tezuka and his friend, crossing her legs at the ankles and Tezuka wondered how she managed to keep from falling over.
Mentally, he amended that the most distressing perhaps was not the lack of personal space as much as the abuse of given names. Cultural habit may it be, Tezuka found himself still startling whenever someone called him by his given name, the image of his mother holding a soup spoon and fuming coming unbidden to his mind. After a month of failed attempts to convince his fellow classmates to use his family name, Tezuka resigned himself to the familiar address and the minor heart attacks that came with it.
“Nothing’s up, Emy,” Victor rolled his eyes in greeting followed by a definitive bite into his sandwich. Then, with his mouth full, he continued, “That is, unless you’re talking about 16-year-old boys, hormones, and certain things…”
“Shut up, Victor,” Emily “Call me Emy and I kill you dead” Patterson replied with a slap on Victor’s back that caused the boy to nearly choke on his mouthful. “Didn’t your mother tell you not to talk with your mouth full?”
“Well,” Victor opened his mouth, half chewed sandwich almost falling out, about to come back with another smart ass remark before he thought better and closed his mouth.
“So, Kunimitsu,” Emily twirled her head to look at Tezuka, a smile on her face, which Tezuka doubted was the same expression she sent poor Victor, as currently Victor was giving him the throat cutting gesture, complete with strangled to death look. “Since Victor is obviously as reliable a punctured condom, let’s hear what you have to say.”
Victor made a dying noise and Tezuka stared back blankly.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Tezuka answered, feeling as though he’d missed out on a very important joke. Either that, or Americans are just as susceptible to insanity as the Japanese and he was clearly a vector for this epidemic. Victor did mention that the girls weren’t quite so pushy before his arrival.
“Just asking what you guys were talking about,” Emily commented just as sweetly as before, if not sweeter, the smile turning up a few notches brighter on her face. While Tezuka may still be suffering from a language barrier, this body language was something he wasn’t blind to and dutifully scooted himself a little farther away from where Emily sat as obtrusively as possible.
“I believe we were talking about football, Emily,” said Tezuka, the natural “-san” swallowed forcibly before it could escape. He didn’t understand why this would cause the girl to giggle, like he’d just told a good joke.
“Oh, of course you were,” Emily agreed amiably, flipping a lock of golden hair over her shoulder.
And Tezuka had watched enough foreign films to recognize that gesture.
Standing up more abruptly than was called for, Tezuka bid his goodbye and rushed off towards the school building, giving Victor a silent apology for abandoning him to Emily’s mercies. Sometimes Tezuka wondered if maybe Ryuzaki-sensei had instilled in him a permanent fear of aggressive women.
Bailing on Victor did not prove profitable when he found himself alone and surrounded by other female students in the cafeteria. He’d thought most students would take lunch as a chance to get out of the stuff school building, leaving the cafeteria the logically empty place to escape to in avoidance of unwanted attentions. However, he’d walked into a gaggle of chattering girls and suddenly found himself at their center, each one trying to out talk the other and asking him something that he couldn’t catch through the cacophony.
“I’m sorry, I don’t…” Tezuka began but stopped when he heard the distinct uttering of “Atobe”. Tezuka paused and wondered at his hearing, or loss there of, but then he heard the name again and he was certain that he hadn’t heard wrong.
“Atobe?” Tezuka asked, blatantly ignoring the other questions, his attention completely focused on the mention of this familiar name.
“Yeah, Keigo Atobe,” one of the girls, Nancy Andrews, Tezuka’s mind provided, answered. “He’s a new transfer student and shares my homeroom. Cute guy, but a little messed up in the head.”
“Are you kidding?” chimed in a girl Tezuka didn’t know, only briefly remembered as someone who sat in the back of his American History class. “The guy’s absolutely beautiful. Why does Japan get all the pretty boys and we get stuck with people like…” she trailed off to make a gesture in the general direction of the boy’s gym.
“Stop being shallow Jenny,” yet another girl who Tezuka didn’t know interrupted. “You’re giving us a bad name.” Then turning to Tezuka, she added, “Don’t mind her, Kunimitsu. She’s a bit of an oddball.”
Tezuka would have been concerned by the sheer number of people who knew him that he did not know, but his attention was still focused on what Andrews just said, so he asked, “Does he, uh, refer to himself as –”
“Ore-sama? Yeah, and what the hell does that mean anyway?” Andrews asked. Tezuka couldn’t think of an appropriate translation and simply shrugged. He was both amused and disturbed that Atobe’s habit had made an impression even amongst American students.
The girl’s chattering suddenly hushed when a too familiar voice called out, “What is the meaning of this racket? Can’t a person eat in peace, ah~n?”
The girls parted to reveal a frowning Atobe who was, unbelievably enough, balancing his own lunch tray in one hand. Tezuka was already composing an email to Inui in his head, the letter running along the lines of “I saw Atobe holding a lunch tray and I believe the world has come to an end.”
“Atobe,” Tezuka greeted out of sheer habit and Atobe nodded in greeting.
Then, whether due to his dramatic tendencies or simply because Atobe was Atobe, he added, “Do you have any idea how hard it was to track you down, Tezuka?”
There was a sudden rise of hushed whispers, quiet squeals, and, from the corner of his eye, Tezuka could see the girl called Jenny fainting. The thud of body hitting floor was barely audible over the not-so-discreet conversations. From the mess of sounds, Tezuka was able to catch phrases that sounded something like “jilted lover”, “how romantic”, and even “yaoi”, which Tezuka thought was a little much when he wasn’t even in Japan.
Ignoring the crowd and the scene Atobe was making, Tezuka urged, “Let’s get out of here.”
“But, Tezuka, I’ve just arrived,” Atobe protested. Tezuka ignored him in favor of forcibly dragging him out of the cafeteria to someplace less crowded. It hadn’t been his intention to end up in the boy’s restroom, but it was the only place where the girls hadn’t been able to follow.
Letting out a breath in relief now that he wasn’t being tailed by people who seemed determined to know the exact nature of his relationship with Atobe, Tezuka asked, “Atobe, what are you doing here?”
“Well, Tezuka,” Atobe began and Tezuka didn’t miss the almost sardonic stress he placed on his name, “I sent an invitation to Seigaku for a graduation celebration for the third year regulars, but received notice that their buchou had already left them. So of course I had to find out just where their pillar decided to go. It wasn’t easy, most of my sources seemed reluctant to give any information, but I finally prevailed, and here I am.
“But more importantly,” Atobe went on, not giving Tezuka a chance to interrupt and point out that Tezuka had announced a few months in advance of his leaving thanks to Atobe’s insistent prodding, “what are you doing here. I thought you’d be in the pros by now.”
“Compulsory education is until high school in America.”
“And?” Atobe’s tone suggested that laws were not so much meant to be followed as much as changed to fit one’s needs. This, Tezuka was familiar with.
“And an education is important for one’s future.”
Atobe snorted at the explanation.
“I also may be considering a different career from professional tennis,” Tezuka added then watched with concern as the haughty look on Atobe’s face changed into something resembling fury.
The corner of Atobe’s eyes twitched, but he seemed to have regained composure when he said, “Bullshit.”
Or maybe not completely in control of himself, yet.
“Atobe, calm down,” Tezuka implored, but to no avail as the twitch grew in frequency and Atobe looked as he did after Hyoutei’s second loss of the year.
“Calm down? Tezuka, you’re throwing away a brilliant career for…I don’t even know for what!” Atobe raged, his eyes glittering with a seething anger that Tezuka had never witness before. Then, without warning, concern seeped through the anger and Atobe continued in a softer voice, “What is it?”
Tezuka was utterly lost at this point, despite being used to Atobe’s drastic mood swings, and could only offer, “I’m sorry?”
“The reason for quitting tennis. Is it your shoulder?”
Atobe’s ill-masked guilt rested uneasily against Tezuka’s conscience, but then Atobe ruined the effect by adding, “Is it cancer?”
Now all Tezuka could manage was a blank blink, feeling too lost to even summon up a response.
“Cancer, Tezuka,” Atobe continued, his voice in a hushed urgency, “the reason why people give up their dreams when they have so much promise. The reason for all this secrecy about coming to America, where they have the most advanced cancer treatments. I’ve seen it in those Korean dramas, it’s always ‘Cancer’, the silent killer, the undefeatable beast. But you can’t give up! No, you must fight this disease! Don’t you understand? If you give up now, then you’d have lost before you even tried. That’s not the Tezuka I know. It’s too early to throw in the towel, what do you say?”
“I would say you’ve watched too many Korean dramas,” Tezuka answered calmly. The urge to pat Atobe’s head was suddenly overwhelming and, despite his pride on his self control, Tezuka gave in to the impulse and ruffled Atobe’s hair. Atobe made a noise of indignation and he explained, “I don’t have some crippling disease.”
“Is it my parents?” Atobe continued after shaking off Tezuka’s petting. “Have they found out about our relationship –”
“There is no relationship,” Tezuka protested, but Atobe plowed on.
“– and objected. That’s why they forced you to come to America, so they can remove your influence.”
“This has nothing to do with your parents.” Tezuka was beginning to lose his patience, yet, curiously, the urge to pat Atobe was still there. It wasn’t everyday one had the chance to see Atobe acting, for the lack of a better word, spastic. He looked like a furious kitten, upset and vulnerable, and some deep recess of Tezuka’s subconscious that sounded suspiciously like Inui offered “warm milk is a good relaxant.” Tezuka tried to shake the voice from his mind.
“Then what is the reason?” demanded Atobe, who was resembling the kitten analogy more with every passing second.
Tezuka shook himself physically to get rid of the disturbing image and answered, “I can’t say. It’s a matter of national security.”
Atobe looked unconvinced.
“Honestly,” Tezuka added into the silence that greeted his explanation, “it has something to do with my father’s career. That’s as much as I know.”
There was no dent in Atobe’s skeptic look, but his defensive stance softened as he said, “Fine. Whatever it is, I’ll find out and then you’ll have much to answer for.”
“I didn’t realize I was responsible for my father’s career choice,” Tezuka responded blandly, but nonetheless reassured by Atobe’s renewed arrogance.
“Did I say you were?”
Tezuka didn’t bother to answer the rhetorical question and Atobe’s attention was already elsewhere, as he was eyeing the restroom door with a look of contemplation.
“Those girls are still out there trying to listen in, aren’t they?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.”
“Well,” Atobe combed his finger through his hair, the strands falling obediently into place after the gesture, “I guess it’s not surprising that ore-sama has fans even in a foreign school.”
Then, with his usual air of overconfidence, Atobe walked toward the restroom exit, tossing out over his shoulder, “Be prepared to watch as I dazzle the American students with my mystic oriental charm.
“Ore-sama no bigi ni…”
Tezuka rolled his eyes at the familiar phrase, feeling relaxed for the first time since his arrival in America.
Now for something totally unrelated...
I have issues. I realize this is.