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Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis isn't mine.

Melting [Into] You

I left the locker room and I was just smirking all the way through class. Even Syusuke couldn't hide his reactions from me because this time, whenever I looked at him, he would intentionally look away from me. He would even stare out the window and watch whatever was happening.

I never expected for him to act this way, but it was fun, to say the least.

And it was great for a whole day. I, for once, wasn't the one who was cringing in his seat thinking, "I wonder what he's thinking?"
I was the one instigating things and I smirked to myself slightly.

But there was one moment in which, while leaning his chin on his palm and looking out the window, he lifted up one eyebrow to compliment on my actions. About to open his mouth to lip sync something to me, he instead closed it again while looking at me with eyes that always put me in the corner. Even if it was just inside of my head.

I never could understand his innocence and sadism.

So, it went without saying, just because I kissed him didn't mean we immediately reached an understanding and we got together. No, actually, we spent our days as if nothing had happened between us. He would still bug me from across the classroom and I would still be slightly pissed from his childish antics.

I had risen that day, but I had gone back five steps in the next few days. It was quite frustrating.
And no matter how many times I played the situation in my head, what I had done was finished. The only thing I could figure out was how to deal with the situation without it getting too out of hand.

I didn't give him the pleasure of myself flirting back at him. I _knew_ that would get to him, but it wasn't done intentionally.

I was still trying to work my way through myself first.

Tennis practices weren't any better, though.
Playing against him was just as awful as being pinned to the locker. If I thought that his jokes were bad, they got even worse because he knew that he could have gotten away with so much more.
I just ignored it. Or so it seemed on the outside.

"Where do we go from here?" I thought to myself while changing out of my uniform.

I stayed behind everyone to go out and practice again.
Plus, it was a way of venting out all these lingering feelings.

After changing, I sat on the bench. It was an unusual thing for me, considering how time-oriented I was. Everything was written down until the last minute before I went to sleep.
That's how meticulous I was.

But here I was closing my eyes because I was already so tired. Classes were okay, but the amount of homework was increasing. Practices were becoming harder and longer due to the upcoming tournament.
They were just things that needed to be dealt with, but Syusuke was straining my head. I wouldn't have thought of him so much if it weren't for the fact that I thought all his time and effort spent on teasing me was somewhat endearing. In some peculiar way, he made life quite interesting.

There was quite a difference between busy and interesting, I was soon to find out.

Click.

I didn't even turn on the lights because the moonlight was shining through the windows and so I blinked my eyes while turning my head. There was Syusuke stepping into the locker room.
He still held his wide grin, but there was something off. Or maybe it was just my imagination.

I closed my eyes indifferently and ignored him.

He took a few steps towards his locker and changed. By now, I knew that much because I had heard and seen him change a million times.
I just never felt threatened until now.

It wasn't that he was aggressive, but the fact that I was unclear where things were between us. I kissed him, but I stepped back to evaluate everything with that step.

"Do you have a twin?" His voice was making a joke of this question, knowing full well what the answer was.

"Of course not," I answered, still with my eyes closed.

"Then why does it seem that I always see two different Tezukas with the same face?"

I opened my eyes at the moment, he put his hands on the bench and leaned forward to look at me in the face. I blinked at him.

"You like to see and hear what you want to, Fuji-san,"
I told him with a straight face.

He sighed as he shook his head with his signature smile. "Then tell me why is one pursuing me and the other was is pushing me away?"

I just looked at him, not wanting to answer.

"Give them both a message. The one pushing me away should push me away and the one pursuing me should keep on going at it." With a wink, he finished, "I prefer the one that gives me the most challenges."

"And here are both of their responses," I told him, "the one pushing you back says that you shouldn't be so pushy. And the one pursuing is asking what do you want from him."

Putting an index finger to my lips, he said, "Until you figure out which one is coming and going out to play on the court, I will not answer anything more."

At that moment, he took the back of my head, and whispered into my ear, "What's wrong with us, Tezuka? What is so wrong if there is an `us'?"
When he was about to lean forward to kiss me, I turned my head away and his lips kissed my cheek instead. In the next moment, his hands grabbed my shoulders as he kissed my neck. Then, he let go.

"I can't give you a sufficient answer right now," I told him.

His forehead touched my shoulder and his hair tickled my neck.
He wouldn't show me a defeated face.

He was always competitive that way.

"That's the one thing I've always hated about you. You always have to have an answer. You have to give one or take a reasonable one."

Getting up, he carefully lifted up his head. Smiling at me with a little kid charm, he lifted up the bottom of his jacket. It had _my_ name on it!

It was MINE!

Fuji began to laugh as he slipped away from me. "I'll give this to the twin that you present to me. Until that time, you'll have to wear my jacket, Tezuka-san."

"Fuji!!!!" I shouted without any respect to the `-san' at the end of it and with a tone filled with annoyance.

"Ah, if only you were screaming for a different reason." Walking out of the locker room, he winked at me saying, "By the way, if you do scream my name, remember next time to say, `Syusuke'."

As soon as he left, in my frustration at the situation, him, and myself, I threw his jacket at the door. But then, after a few seconds, I lifted it up from the ground. I held it in my arms and looked at it.

My competitive nature didn't want to lose to him, but I knew something deeper was losing already.

I dusted it off and looked at the name of "Fuji" on it.

"What's wrong with us?" I asked aloud while looking at the jacket in my hands.

It complicated so many things, Syusuke… Where did I want to begin?

I got a cold that same night.

I could handle situations and calculate them in my head. I observed everything to learn and to teach about whatever I needed, or at least help someone out.
But no matter how healthy I was by eating the right food, exercising regularly, doing schoolwork on time, and such, my whole body and my psyche couldn't handle the impact of Fuji Syusuke.

So, I ended up missing school for a few days.

On the phone, I was as calm as ever in giving my reasons to the coach and asking classmates for notes. But inside, I was going through my list of things to do in my mind. I shook my head and became a bit frustrated as I sat up in my bed feeling as sick as ever with a fever. I took the necessary medication, but it didn't matter what I did physically right now.

I knew I had to face what I had done by kissing him and not answering him at the same time. And it wasn't that I didn't know the results. It was just that I didn't think it would affect me in such a way.

Telling someone you like them versus someone telling you they like you were totally different concepts. I was used to being on the other side of the spectrum and not in my current situation.

I folded my arms and sat up in my bed while coughing and drinking water.

"This wasn't a show or a comic book," I repeated to myself aloud. "What we do from here will affect everything that touches us, especially tennis."

It was more than a disease or a virus. This feeling deep within me was rotting me from the inside.

In books, on the tv, and in society, it told you that you could separate yourself and various situations and people. That was wrong though. They're interconnected no matter how hard you tryied to keep them apart.

You could close your heart and mind from other people, but that didn't mean you could impose that on another person. This infatuation of looking at him, even though it was his fault in the first place, wasn't just affecting me anymore.
It would start to affect him as well.

And I knew that I didn't know how to handle that yet.
There was nothing to help me in this situation.

It was like quicksand. I was falling in deeper and deeper, but I had no way of getting out.

Again, I held the jacket out in front of me. "I don't have an answer yet, Fuji."

Then, I began to cough and let go of the jacket. It dropped to my lap, but the arm sleeves touched my waist and the name was flipped out once more.

I read it aloud, "Fuji."

Even his jacket was clinging onto me.

I held onto one arm sleeve tightly in between my fingers.

I kept on holding on, but did I have any right to? Was it wrong to like someone so much but never tell them anything back to the extent of how you truly felt? The more you fell into them, the more you couldn't show it?

I was choking and coughing at the thought while taking medicine again.

I knew it hurt you to see me restrain myself.
But it was just as painful seeing you give everything while thinking you're fighting a hopeless battle…

Doubt filled my mind as I remembered him saying once to me, "Ah, but I love to see people suffer. It's fun."

…or was it the other way around, Syusuke?

Tsuzuku… -- author's note: Aiya, Tezuka is having so much trouble coming to terms with himself. I wish we could switch positions for a day and then maybe, even in a manga story…it would happen…but it won't. I'm just thinking too hard and relating my frustrations out on Tezuka.

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