[shinjo/sekikawa] tissue
Dec. 22nd, 2011 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
songbirdspeaksTitle: Tissue
Fandom: Rookies (drama)
Characters: Nikogaku Baseball Team + Yagi and several small-time OCs
Pairings: Sekikawa+Shinjo, Mikoshiba+Aniya, implied Wakana/Hiyama/Wakana and Okada/Yufune/Okada
Rating: G
Word count: ~1700
Summary: Sekikawa is a nice person. Momentarily. :D
Notes: An addendum to Sometimes I think Odysseus had the right idea, written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
rookiesfans 2008 Christmas challenge and never actually re-published.
Sekikawa doesn’t, as a rule, celebrate Christmas. It’s a holiday for lovers and children, and Sekikawa is neither. So, when December 20th arrives, cold and windy without hide nor hair of the sun, and Sekikawa has yet to spend a single cent on any of his friends (though he did pick up something for his mother and his younger sister, to avoid the ribbing), he is perfectly cheerful and doesn’t feel the least bit bad for it.
That is, until he walks into the clubroom and is promptly accosted by Yagi handing him a bag full of what is probably cookies. He is completely blindsided by the gift, but he manages to take it awkwardly and thank her before going to drop it off in his locker. Yagi, her Christmas duty as the team manager done, escapes afterwards, carrying a bucket full of baseballs and yelling for them to hurry up.
Sekikawa, pulling off his uniform shirt, glances discreetly around, and is once again struck by the amount of not-so-couply-couples there are in the Nikogaku baseball club. He sighs, a tad bit disgusted, as he sees Mikoshiba and Aniya doing their best to ignore each other as much as possible (while still sneaking glances at one another out of the corner of their eyes). Yufune is holding hairclips so colorful they must have been picked out by Okada (who is, himself, wearing ones that match). Sekikawa almost laughs when he turns around, though he manages to keep his lips from doing more than quirk. The bruise across Hiyama’s jaw must mean that Wakana has already wished him a ‘happy holidays’. Hiratsuka suddenly strikes up a ballad about 'Touko-chan', and Imaoka manages to wrestle the taller boy down from the bench upon which he is standing.
This leaves Sekikawa and Shinjo outside the loop by themselves.
Not that Sekikawa really minds—if only Shinjo wasn’t so damn shy. Sekikawa has been fighting his hormones for months already, and it takes everything he has not to just jump the taller boy some days.
All of this helps explain why Sekikawa is following Shinjo home after practice. Despite their odd rapport, Sekikawa and Shinjo do have varying tastes: Sekikawa just doesn’t know what those different tastes actually are. So, Shinjo, wearing a black coat over his school uniform and a heavy maroon scarf, is taking the long way home on the 20th of December, and Sekikawa, shivering in not one but two sweatshirts, is a block back, watching him with interest.
Shinjo stops at, of all places, a bookstore, and stares longingly at a box set of books in the window before moving on. Sekikawa, already making a face, makes sure he has turned the corner before ducking in himself. When he does, he almost sneezes: the little store even smells likes old leather and pages. Sekikawa and books don’t usually get along. They hadn’t ever, really, ever since an infant Sekikawa had chewed on the pages of his mother’s anatomy textbook and been sick for hours afterwards.
The man sitting at the desk along the back is watching him with quiet interest. He should raise Sekikawa’s hackles, but the look in those eyes is more curious than judging. Sekikawa feels a bit more at ease despite himself. Sekikawa gulps, suddenly a bit nervous (he has never been good with men like this, who aren’t judging or angry and against whom Sekikawa has no angry defense) and says, in the most polite Japanese he can manage, “can I see the two-book box set you have in the window, please? I want to buy it for Shi—a friend, for Christmas, I think.”
The man lays a long, slim bookmark and slips it into the book to keep his page and snaps the book closed so sharply Sekikawa jumps. He stands without a word and retrieves the set from the case, handling it with care. Then, he hands it to Sekikawa. “This set is what drew Shinjo-kun to my store for a little over two months,” the man says quietly, “while he worked his way through them. I know that he wants to own them, but I can’t afford to give him yet another book—I’d have no stock if every book I owned that he wanted went to him!” The man laughs a bit.
Sekikawa handles the set with care. Sekikawa is always more careful with other people’s things than his own, and especially so when that person is someone he cares about. (It explains why his sister’s porcelain tea set is unbroken, despite how annoyed Sekikawa gets at being forced to wear a dress and drink badly made tea.) It is a double-set of a translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Sekikawa dimly recalls the titles from somewhere, but he always makes it a habit to sleep through his literature classes so he can’t be sure. He looks up. “I’ll take this, please,” he says.
The price makes him wince—and glad that he has brought everything he saved up over the past few months. He exits the store, the books heavy in the bag in his hand and his wallet significantly lighter, and whistles all the way home.
He is silently cursing the gods of Christmas while he fights with wrapping paper, until his mother leans into the kitchen to toss out some trash. Then she introduces him to the wonders of gift bags. His sister, curious about the contents, tries to snoop through his stuff, but Sekikawa locks her out, feeling embarrassed.
Mikoshiba lives ten minutes from Sekikawa; they don’t usually meet up to walk to school, but as it so happens Sekikawa needs the help of the captain to make all of this work. So Sekikawa wakes up half an hour early and goes to the corner where their paths cross. Then he waits. Mikoshiba appears at the end of the block exactly on time, and Sekikawa runs up and down the block in the time it takes him to reach the corner. Looking the slightest bit out of breath, he slams his body playfully into Mikoshiba’s side, his nimble fingers finding the keys stashed in Mikoshiba’s pant pocket. Mikoshiba, blissfully unaware, pushes him off and asks him about the bag in his hands and is dismissed with something about Sekikawa’s mother nominating Yagi for sainthood and baking her cookies.
Sekikawa pretends his phone has vibrated, and pulls it out to look at an invisible text message. He curses and takes off running, yelling back at Mikoshiba that his younger sister needs lunch money and his older sister has no change. He cuts a side street and arrives at school five minutes earlier than everyone else; then he unlocks the clubhouse and breaks into Shinjo locker to leave the blue bag filled with tissue paper and Homer on the lower shelf of Shinjo’s locker. Then he slides back out, goes around the back of the school, and flicks the back of Mikoshiba’s head to distract him while he slips the keys back into his pocket. Mikoshiba suspects nothing.
The team starts to trickle in, complaining of the cold and the hour, as always. Shinjo arrives second to last, looking as apathetic as always. Then he opens his locker, and that apathy falls away. “What the hell is that?” he asks, reaching down and pulling the bag up by the handle.
Wakana snorts, “pretty obvious what that is,” he answers, “it’s a Christmas present. People get those around, uh, Christmas time, you know.”
Shinjo glares at him, and reaches into the bag. He pulls the set of books part of the way out before he drops it back into the bag, his eyes wide. Slowly, he pushes the tissue awkwardly into place and puts the bag back into his locker with some care. Sekikawa scratches his nose and smiles. For Shinjo, that response is perfect.
The other members of the team don’t know Shinjo as well as Sekikawa and Aniya, who both know Shinjo is quietly ecstatic. They crowd around the tall third baseman, trying to get a peek at the bag. Then, Mikoshiba’s voice cracks out like the sound of a ball on a bat, and practice begins.
Shinjo is confounded by the identity of this gift-giver. The people who know his tastes in books are very few. At school, that list is even shorter, limited to Aniya and Aniya alone. Shinjo had glanced at him after practice, but Aniya’s face had said enough. He knows Shinjo’s tastes: that doesn’t mean he would buy Shinjo a Christmas present. (Aniya liked to buy gifts, but only for people who’d put out for him. Which explains why Mikoshiba hadn’t received any present from him.)
There is a note in the bottom of the bag. The handwriting makes him think: the messy katakana is something he recognizes, but he can’t quite place it.
So, he goes to Yagi.
“Yagi-chan,” he says. She is with a group of her friends, and they titter when Yagi follows him out of the classroom. Shinjo hands her the note. “Do you…recognize this handwriting?” he asks.
Yagi looks it over for a minute. “This is…Sekikawa’s handwriting, isn’t it?” she says after a moment.
Shinjo’s eyes widen. Of course. Of all the people on the team to give him a Christmas present, Sekikawa does seem the most likely. How had he known what to get him, though? Shinjo wants to know but he can put that aside for now.
“I see,” he says to Yagi, his mind going over recent advertisements for video games he remembers seeing recently. If Sekikawa can buy him this beautiful set of books, then he can shell out of for the new… “Thank you, Yagi-chan.”
Sekikawa nearly trips over the bag the Monday after. He squawks in surprise and manages to hop over it, staring at the brightly colored, striped bag sitting on his doorstep. Then he leans down to pick it up. On the tag are the kanji for his name, so he tears the tissue away and gaps. This was—the newest—there is a card below the game. He opens it.
’Sekikawa—thanks. Merry Christmas. Shinjo.’
Fandom: Rookies (drama)
Characters: Nikogaku Baseball Team + Yagi and several small-time OCs
Pairings: Sekikawa+Shinjo, Mikoshiba+Aniya, implied Wakana/Hiyama/Wakana and Okada/Yufune/Okada
Rating: G
Word count: ~1700
Summary: Sekikawa is a nice person. Momentarily. :D
Notes: An addendum to Sometimes I think Odysseus had the right idea, written for the
rookiesfans 2008 Christmas challenge and never actually re-published.Sekikawa doesn’t, as a rule, celebrate Christmas. It’s a holiday for lovers and children, and Sekikawa is neither. So, when December 20th arrives, cold and windy without hide nor hair of the sun, and Sekikawa has yet to spend a single cent on any of his friends (though he did pick up something for his mother and his younger sister, to avoid the ribbing), he is perfectly cheerful and doesn’t feel the least bit bad for it.
That is, until he walks into the clubroom and is promptly accosted by Yagi handing him a bag full of what is probably cookies. He is completely blindsided by the gift, but he manages to take it awkwardly and thank her before going to drop it off in his locker. Yagi, her Christmas duty as the team manager done, escapes afterwards, carrying a bucket full of baseballs and yelling for them to hurry up.
Sekikawa, pulling off his uniform shirt, glances discreetly around, and is once again struck by the amount of not-so-couply-couples there are in the Nikogaku baseball club. He sighs, a tad bit disgusted, as he sees Mikoshiba and Aniya doing their best to ignore each other as much as possible (while still sneaking glances at one another out of the corner of their eyes). Yufune is holding hairclips so colorful they must have been picked out by Okada (who is, himself, wearing ones that match). Sekikawa almost laughs when he turns around, though he manages to keep his lips from doing more than quirk. The bruise across Hiyama’s jaw must mean that Wakana has already wished him a ‘happy holidays’. Hiratsuka suddenly strikes up a ballad about 'Touko-chan', and Imaoka manages to wrestle the taller boy down from the bench upon which he is standing.
This leaves Sekikawa and Shinjo outside the loop by themselves.
Not that Sekikawa really minds—if only Shinjo wasn’t so damn shy. Sekikawa has been fighting his hormones for months already, and it takes everything he has not to just jump the taller boy some days.
All of this helps explain why Sekikawa is following Shinjo home after practice. Despite their odd rapport, Sekikawa and Shinjo do have varying tastes: Sekikawa just doesn’t know what those different tastes actually are. So, Shinjo, wearing a black coat over his school uniform and a heavy maroon scarf, is taking the long way home on the 20th of December, and Sekikawa, shivering in not one but two sweatshirts, is a block back, watching him with interest.
Shinjo stops at, of all places, a bookstore, and stares longingly at a box set of books in the window before moving on. Sekikawa, already making a face, makes sure he has turned the corner before ducking in himself. When he does, he almost sneezes: the little store even smells likes old leather and pages. Sekikawa and books don’t usually get along. They hadn’t ever, really, ever since an infant Sekikawa had chewed on the pages of his mother’s anatomy textbook and been sick for hours afterwards.
The man sitting at the desk along the back is watching him with quiet interest. He should raise Sekikawa’s hackles, but the look in those eyes is more curious than judging. Sekikawa feels a bit more at ease despite himself. Sekikawa gulps, suddenly a bit nervous (he has never been good with men like this, who aren’t judging or angry and against whom Sekikawa has no angry defense) and says, in the most polite Japanese he can manage, “can I see the two-book box set you have in the window, please? I want to buy it for Shi—a friend, for Christmas, I think.”
The man lays a long, slim bookmark and slips it into the book to keep his page and snaps the book closed so sharply Sekikawa jumps. He stands without a word and retrieves the set from the case, handling it with care. Then, he hands it to Sekikawa. “This set is what drew Shinjo-kun to my store for a little over two months,” the man says quietly, “while he worked his way through them. I know that he wants to own them, but I can’t afford to give him yet another book—I’d have no stock if every book I owned that he wanted went to him!” The man laughs a bit.
Sekikawa handles the set with care. Sekikawa is always more careful with other people’s things than his own, and especially so when that person is someone he cares about. (It explains why his sister’s porcelain tea set is unbroken, despite how annoyed Sekikawa gets at being forced to wear a dress and drink badly made tea.) It is a double-set of a translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Sekikawa dimly recalls the titles from somewhere, but he always makes it a habit to sleep through his literature classes so he can’t be sure. He looks up. “I’ll take this, please,” he says.
The price makes him wince—and glad that he has brought everything he saved up over the past few months. He exits the store, the books heavy in the bag in his hand and his wallet significantly lighter, and whistles all the way home.
He is silently cursing the gods of Christmas while he fights with wrapping paper, until his mother leans into the kitchen to toss out some trash. Then she introduces him to the wonders of gift bags. His sister, curious about the contents, tries to snoop through his stuff, but Sekikawa locks her out, feeling embarrassed.
Mikoshiba lives ten minutes from Sekikawa; they don’t usually meet up to walk to school, but as it so happens Sekikawa needs the help of the captain to make all of this work. So Sekikawa wakes up half an hour early and goes to the corner where their paths cross. Then he waits. Mikoshiba appears at the end of the block exactly on time, and Sekikawa runs up and down the block in the time it takes him to reach the corner. Looking the slightest bit out of breath, he slams his body playfully into Mikoshiba’s side, his nimble fingers finding the keys stashed in Mikoshiba’s pant pocket. Mikoshiba, blissfully unaware, pushes him off and asks him about the bag in his hands and is dismissed with something about Sekikawa’s mother nominating Yagi for sainthood and baking her cookies.
Sekikawa pretends his phone has vibrated, and pulls it out to look at an invisible text message. He curses and takes off running, yelling back at Mikoshiba that his younger sister needs lunch money and his older sister has no change. He cuts a side street and arrives at school five minutes earlier than everyone else; then he unlocks the clubhouse and breaks into Shinjo locker to leave the blue bag filled with tissue paper and Homer on the lower shelf of Shinjo’s locker. Then he slides back out, goes around the back of the school, and flicks the back of Mikoshiba’s head to distract him while he slips the keys back into his pocket. Mikoshiba suspects nothing.
The team starts to trickle in, complaining of the cold and the hour, as always. Shinjo arrives second to last, looking as apathetic as always. Then he opens his locker, and that apathy falls away. “What the hell is that?” he asks, reaching down and pulling the bag up by the handle.
Wakana snorts, “pretty obvious what that is,” he answers, “it’s a Christmas present. People get those around, uh, Christmas time, you know.”
Shinjo glares at him, and reaches into the bag. He pulls the set of books part of the way out before he drops it back into the bag, his eyes wide. Slowly, he pushes the tissue awkwardly into place and puts the bag back into his locker with some care. Sekikawa scratches his nose and smiles. For Shinjo, that response is perfect.
The other members of the team don’t know Shinjo as well as Sekikawa and Aniya, who both know Shinjo is quietly ecstatic. They crowd around the tall third baseman, trying to get a peek at the bag. Then, Mikoshiba’s voice cracks out like the sound of a ball on a bat, and practice begins.
Shinjo is confounded by the identity of this gift-giver. The people who know his tastes in books are very few. At school, that list is even shorter, limited to Aniya and Aniya alone. Shinjo had glanced at him after practice, but Aniya’s face had said enough. He knows Shinjo’s tastes: that doesn’t mean he would buy Shinjo a Christmas present. (Aniya liked to buy gifts, but only for people who’d put out for him. Which explains why Mikoshiba hadn’t received any present from him.)
There is a note in the bottom of the bag. The handwriting makes him think: the messy katakana is something he recognizes, but he can’t quite place it.
So, he goes to Yagi.
“Yagi-chan,” he says. She is with a group of her friends, and they titter when Yagi follows him out of the classroom. Shinjo hands her the note. “Do you…recognize this handwriting?” he asks.
Yagi looks it over for a minute. “This is…Sekikawa’s handwriting, isn’t it?” she says after a moment.
Shinjo’s eyes widen. Of course. Of all the people on the team to give him a Christmas present, Sekikawa does seem the most likely. How had he known what to get him, though? Shinjo wants to know but he can put that aside for now.
“I see,” he says to Yagi, his mind going over recent advertisements for video games he remembers seeing recently. If Sekikawa can buy him this beautiful set of books, then he can shell out of for the new… “Thank you, Yagi-chan.”
Sekikawa nearly trips over the bag the Monday after. He squawks in surprise and manages to hop over it, staring at the brightly colored, striped bag sitting on his doorstep. Then he leans down to pick it up. On the tag are the kanji for his name, so he tears the tissue away and gaps. This was—the newest—there is a card below the game. He opens it.
’Sekikawa—thanks. Merry Christmas. Shinjo.’
