Archive of Our Own

Echizen arrives at Seigaku, fifteen and almost undefeated.

The second-years do not like him. They try pranks on the first-years, tell them to knock over a can filled with stones and laugh when they cannot. Echizen knocks over the can in one go and a boy under no obligation to help them appears slightly too late to tell the other second years to stop bullying the underclassmen.

Echizen plays Momoshiro with his right hand because he can see the sprain in his ankle and they are drawing and he thinks, for the first time in a while, that maybe there will be someone here who he can play properly against. Momo (as he insists upon being called) is just a second-year after all. Perhaps there will be a third-year that is stronger than him.

The remaining regulars return the next day. Their aura is different to that of the rest of the team; it is sharper and harder and more experienced. They do not seem like nasty people, and they are clearly very strong.

Echizen watches them move around the court that has been set aside of them and wonders when first-years are allowed to play against the regulars. The captain and the vice-captain have disappeared, but the rest have started training. Momo has gone with them, winking and waving a hand at the first-years as he had. He had fallen into step with another second-year wearing a bandanna, and the two had begun yelling at each other almost at once.

He stops staring at them and turns to find that his rackets have been stolen and anger flares up inside him, brief and hot and he turns to the second-years responsible and they dare him to play with a broken racket. He does. He wins. He beats the second year with a broken racket and thinks that maybe he was wrong about how strong this team was.

Some of the regulars had gathered to watch their match. Echizen doesn't notice them, not until the person who had been introduced as vice-captain came out of the building to give everyone laps by order of the captain.

Tezuka had watched their play from the window of Ryuzaki's office and seen a boy that looked too young to be in high school beat a second year easily, despite the handicap. There is promise.

“It seems you're starting to like Echizen Ryoma.” Ryuzaki’s words bother him. He has never talked to Echizen Ryoma. From accounts from Fuji and Oishi it sounds like Echizen is rude and bratty and childish and arrogant, all traits that he despises.

Echizen's skills speak for themself though. There are gossips and whispers through the club’s second and third years and Tezuka cannot help but empathise.

The ranking matches start and Echizen does not get to see as many matches as he would like because he was entered to play. He was not supposed to have been entered. Tradition and logic demanded that he wasn't. But he was to play; the two regulars he will face are Inui and Kaidoh. Both are strong, strong enough that his doubts are dispelled.

He wins. The only undefeated player in the block. He doesn't think he’s yet had a conversation with their team’s captain. It seems odd, considering how carefully he was singled out to play.

The only freshman.

The match against Fudomine comes and Echizen is losing and then he is hurt, hurt badly from the look of the blood dripping down the side of his face. Tezuka doesn't want to let this reckless brat play but he seems so convinced he can do it, can win the game he had been losing, in ten minutes with one eye closed and so he holds out the racket and tells him to win.

Their fingers do not touch, and somehow this is more significant than if they had.

Tezuka starts the timer and Echizen starts to play again, only this time using alternating hands and one eye. Tezuka does not think he is often this excited while watching a match. Maybe when watching Fuji play seriously, but that is somehow different to watching Echizen.

Echizen and Momo fall asleep on each other on the bus home, and Tezuka watches Echizen in the reflection in the window. He looks less angry asleep, less sulky and more relaxed.

Kikumaru takes a picture and Fuji laughs quietly at his antics. Oishi tries to get Kikumaru to quiet down, but Kikumaru is drunk on victory and giggles at his shushing.

Tezuka continues to watch Echizen sleep, and Fuji notices.

Tezuka stops him outside the school and throws a ball at him and it smacks into his palm almost painfully. He orders him to play a match at a place he thinks most of their team won't have heard of at a time they should be busy with practice. There is no explanation as to why.

It will be suspicious if they both disappear for a session but that’s not his problem. He feels sick with nerves and he's not sure if it's anticipation or fear. He never stops to wonder why he'd be afraid. The ball does not leave his side for the three days.

He doesn't think he's ever lost to someone who was playing full-strength against him. It's strangely exhilarating but his cheeks are stinging with humiliation and his eyes are on the verge of watering. He had not scored a single point.

Tezuka stares down at the boy on his knees in front of him and prays that what he's seeing is what he needs to find.

It is cold rain that falls when Echizen plays Fuji, cold and somehow sticky and he can feel his muscles beginning to tighten when they are shouted at by Ryuzaki.

Echizen leaves as soon as he can, frustrated and irritable and Fuji waits for Tezuka, because he wants to know.

“Was it like that when you played him?” He asks, and Tezuka stiffens without turning around.

“You knew.” He says, and he seems resigned to it.

“Somehow.” Fuji doesn't think he’ll get a straight answer out of Tezuka about Echizen. “Was it?”

No. Tezuka doesn't say. No, I don't think it was.

“Why did you not truly play to win?” He asks, and that conversation is over and then Fuji knows.

The ranking competition happens again and Echizen wins against Oishi, though he loses the only three games he's dropped in the entire thing. He supposes he'd be a little worried if Oishi wasn't even good enough to manage that, but he's still annoyed.

Echizen watches Tezuka play Inui and wonders if Tezuka is ever planning on playing seriously. He has lost three games and it is so out of the ordinary that Echizen feels slightly sick.

Tezuka starts to play seriously and Echizen wonders how the Tezuka-zone even came about, how did one even begin to design something so bizarrely complicated and unlikely. He watches Tezuka deliver hit after hit and isn't sure what he wants but knows that he does.

Hyoutei are strong – as strong as them, maybe. Fuji's match has finished (and Echizen is reminded of how terrifying Fuji can be, when he wants, and it makes him want to play even more) and Tezuka tells him to help him warm up.

It isn't a match, but it's against Tezuka and so he feels less like sulking. It's very unbecoming of a fifteen year old to sulk anyway.

They play to three games and Echizen is mesmerised; Tezuka's form is perfect and hypnotic and his eyes are so furiously intense that it sends shivers through him.

Tezuka lets him sit as bench coach and the match is almost painful to watch. He is closer than his team (he hears the two of them compared and scowls slightly) and so has a better view. Tezuka's arm is slightly off – not enough to disadvantage him against Atobe, but enough to be noticeable to someone who was looking for it.

Echizen wasn't. Atobe was.

Tezuka doesn't forfeit, refuses to bow or break and plays until the end and Echizen watches in awe. He doesn't try and offer advice as the bench coach. He just hands Tezuka bottles of water and watches him play.

For his own match Tezuka stays as bench coach and Echizen thinks he should go to hospital because Ryuzaki is back but he doesn't want him to. He wants Tezuka to watch him and be, what? Proud? Amazed? In the end he shows just a hint at both.

For the first time in seven years Echizen drops his ball when Tezuka announces he's leaving for Germany.

Another match between them and this time Echizen manages three games, three wins to six losses and Tezuka is really, properly smiling at him for the first time ever. Echizen wants to shake hands over the net but Oishi starts applauding and they start away from each other, and then it is too late and too weird to do so.

Tezuka goes and there is a slightly hollow space in their practices now, but they work to fill it and it doesn't seem so bad.

Rokkaku's captain is exhausting and the two are so evenly matched that it feels like their game will go on forever. Instead it is postponed.

Echizen wakes up stupidly early the next morning and plays Rokkaku's captain for hours before their match even begins and eventually the two of them pass out beneath a giant tree, shaded by its branches.

When they are found asleep Fuji takes a picture and sends it to Tezuka. Tezuka doesn't respond.

Echizen is soft and delicate in the picture, sprawled across the grass with his mouth open and his eyes shut. His hat has fallen off and his hair is splayed out around his head and the slivers of light that have pierced through the branches are illuminating spots on his face.

Why did you send me this, Fuji? Tezuka thinks, but he knows.

Their match against Rikkaidai is postponed for a week because of the rain and Echizen is wound up enough that he wanders off from the rest of his team.

He plays Sanada, Rikkaidai's vice-captain and this is the second time he's lost this embarrassingly to someone playing full-strength against him. He remembers kneeling on the floor in front of Tezuka when he is in the same position with Sanada and vows to himself never again.

Training camp is exhausting and Echizen has never felt quite this motivated to do anything. He meets the Seigaku captain from when the third-years were first-years and wonders why Tezuka admired him so, and when he leaves he finds himself admiring him too.

It is early in the morning when Atobe receives a call from Tezuka. Tezuka has apparently not told his team he would be phoning. He supposes it doesn't matter.

Tezuka is asking Atobe to agree to a practice match between their teams. Being owed a favour from Tezuka is probably a good place to be, Atobe thinks, and so he agrees. A hesitant second after he says yes Tezuka asks Atobe to make sure he plays Echizen. “You're very interested in that brat.” Atobe tells him, and Tezuka takes a fraction of a second too long to answer.

Atobe wants to break Echizen now, because anyone worth this much of Tezuka's attention is worth breaking.

Tezuka gets a call at four o'clock in the morning and it is Atobe, too agitated to put on airs. “You've found a monster.” He tells him, and Tezuka smiles, relieved, though he doesn't let it show in his voice. “His wrist was on the verge of breaking.” Atobe tells him, and Tezuka does not like this, doesn't like how interested Atobe sounds in Echizen. He cannot fault him for it though.

Echizen is placed in Singles One because Fuji wanted Singles Two, wanted Kirihara, and although no one says it, it is because no one is sure who is better anymore.

Two losses and two wins later and Sanada spends the whole match yelling about how he cannot lose, because he promised his captain, and Echizen never quite yells back that his captain was hurt too, he had made a promise too. He thinks it as he smashes the final ball, and feels eyes on him coming from all directions.

We'll crush you they say, and bring it on Echizen thinks.

Tezuka watches the video of Echizen playing Sanada and there is something wrong with his head because his mouth is dry and his palms are sweating. Echizen's playing is like nothing he's ever seen, nothing he's ever managed and he aches to return home to his team.

They visit him instead and he watches Echizen play his doctor, and although Echizen is not playing like he had in the video it is still incredible.

Tezuka is worried.

Seigaku leave for Japan, for the training camp back home and Echizen tells him we'll see you soon and Tezuka hopes he can hold him to that.

Tezuka stares at the wall in Germany the day the Junior Invitational Camp starts and refuses to acknowledge the furious jealousy that is eating at him. Days later he gets a call from Ryuzaki asking him to return as a coach and so he does.

Echizen seems even more lost and Tezuka can't quite put his finger on what's wrong but Echizen is wrong. He isn't playing enough.

He asks Tezuka to play him as soon as he's healed. He isn't the first person to challenge him like this but if there wasn't something so off in how he'd asked Tezuka thinks he would have accepted gratefully.

They hear the rumours about the blond American roaming the Kantou area, hunting for Echizen Ryoma and hurting those he plays. Kevin Smith is clearly obsessed with Echizen and Echizen doesn't seem to care. Tezuka overhears him dismissing Smith, casual arrogance and an uncharacteristic uncertainty screamingly obvious to Tezuka at least, and his stomach sinks.

He puts Echizen as the reserve for the Goodwill Games and doesn't tell him. Hanamura and Sakkaki stare at him a little oddly and agree, and Tezuka wonders if he's overreacting.

Echizen hasn't looked up from the floor since the names were announced and Tezuka knows this because he's been watching Echizen, waiting for some kind of reaction but nothing is coming and the sense of foreboding he's been feeling since he saw Echizen after his match with Sanada is heightening and sharpening. Maybe his plan has had the opposite effect to what he'd hoped.

They return to Seigaku and Dan Taichi crashes into Echizen, knocks him down (Tezuka flinches when he sees how out of it Echizen is) and drags him to see Smith and Akutsu play. Echizen didn't know it was possible for Akutsu to lose so badly and humiliatingly but he does, the ball smashed into his face the final blow to his ego. He owes Akutsu. He doesn't like Akutsu but he owes him.

The weird hollowness in his gut is twisting and coiling and he drops his bag on the floor and walks into the middle of the court and faces Smith for the first time. Smith looks at him like he knows everything about him and Echizen hates that, hates the leering gleam in his eyes and so rises to Smith's bait and agrees to a match.

Tezuka is beside the court and Kawamura is kneeling besides Akutsu, fussing over him. “Stop, Echizen.” Tezuka snaps, and when Akutsu tells him he should let Echizen play he shoots him the coldest glare he can. “Echizen. We're leaving.”

“Don't want to.” Is Echizen’s reply and Tezuka freezes.

Echizen is bratty and rude and doesn't speak to his seniors the way he ought to but he's never quite gone this far. He repeats it again: “Echizen, we're leaving.” And Echizen ignores him again, pulling his racket out of his bag and reaching for a ball.

Tezuka grabs his arm and repeats his words for a third time, and Echizen wants to turn around and scream in his face. This is no different to Smith challenging Seigaku or Fudomine or any of the other people he's beaten into the dust because Echizen isn't on the international team. He's just another member of a high school tennis club and whether he plays Smith has nothing to do with Tezuka, nothing to do with anyone but himself.

“Let go.” He says, quietly, instead of voicing this. His voice is strangely dead; there is a dull roar in his head that is drowning everything he is feeling. He wants to play tennis now.

Tezuka slaps him.

Echizen has never been slapped and Tezuka has never slapped anyone and both of them think at exactly the same time that this is the first time they've touched the other.

Echizen is already on the floor before he has realised he is falling. He touches his cheek. It feels hot.

Tezuka is strong but not so strong that he should have fallen on the floor. Echizen eventually realises, because his brain seems to be working at half-speed, that his legs gave out from underneath him in shock. He doesn't think he can remember how to stand up.

He can hear Smith cursing out Tezuka behind him and Kawamura's nervous admonishments, but none of it is registering in his brain.

Tezuka hit me he thinks. Why.

He knows why. He thinks Tezuka was probably right to do so.

He tries standing up and manages to do so without falling down again and Kawamura wraps an arm around him and leads him away from the court. He pulls away as soon as he can and doesn't speak to Tezuka. He doesn't speak at all.

He's sick to his stomach, too nauseous to eat and too nervous to sleep and he wonders if Tezuka hates him now.

The next day he goes from street court to street court and Kevin Smith is nowhere but Atobe Keigo is. He is standing at the top of the stairs, without his royal entourage for once, looking almost too smugly amused like he is hiding something uncomfortable.

“I'm not allowed to settle it officially or unofficially. What am I supposed to do?” He says, keeping as little emotion in his voice as possible.

“Grow up. Go beg Tezuka on your knees. I don't care. Run home, little boy.” Atobe says. “You lost.”

Atobe turns to go and the smirk drops from his face, because he’s not really sure why Echizen wasn't picked. Echizen is, unofficially at least, the best player currently competing in their age group. He won against Sanada and drew against Atobe and beat everyone else on the international team that he's played. It probably has to do with Tezuka's borderline obsession with him, Atobe knows.

Go beg Tezuka on your knees Atobe's words fly around his head as he walks past yet another court but he doesn't look into this one, or the next. As much as he hates to admit it Atobe was right. He lost. Pride is of very little use to him now.

Echizen knows where Tezuka's house is because Fuji told him the address one day, because he thought it'd be funny. It is the second time he's heard Tezuka be addressed as Kunimitsu, and the word is so alien to him.

He isn't wearing his hat. He feels exposed, like everything he's ever thought or felt will be on display for Tezuka to pick at and pull through and dissect and tear to pieces and his palms sweat at the thought. This is important.

Tezuka's house is clean and tidy and traditional, and Echizen's nerves get worse as he climbs the stairs. He isn't sure what he wants to say. I'm sorry he thinks, and please let me play. The words blur in his head and he knows that he has mere seconds to arrange the thoughts in his head into something he can say to get Tezuka to forgive him.

He stands in the doorway and Tezuka looks slightly surprised and Echizen wonders if he's expecting someone else.

“I'm sorry.” He blurts out. He doesn't quite know which thing he's apologising for but he knows there is more than one. He doesn't want to spell them out though, and Tezuka won't make him. “I'm sorry.” He says again, and Tezuka inclines his head slightly.

Echizen kneels on the floor in front of Tezuka (never again he'd sworn, but that doesn't seem to matter) and says “Please let me play.”

Echizen is knelt in front of him, asking forgiveness and a favour and Tezuka's stomach is twisting because of how unsure he'd been of this outcome. At least Echizen had learnt.

Echizen. Who is staring up at him with huge gold eyes in an absurdly pretty face and is vulnerable for once.

“We have a reserve player.” Tezuka tells him, and the words don't seem to sink into Echizen for a moment. When they do Echizen stares up at him and although he's barely smiling Tezuka doesn't think he’s ever seen Echizen look so happy. He feels sick at how Echizen staring up at him makes him feel.

Atobe phones him. “Did he come?” He asks, and Tezuka ignores the entendre.

“You saw him.” Tezuka is for once grateful that Atobe is so eager to meddle. “He asked to be allowed to play.” Tezuka is not lying. Atobe knows too much to be fooled, though he’s not sure why Atobe knows so much.

“You had Echizen Ryoma begging you on his knees and you did nothing?” Atobe says, and Tezuka snaps at him.

“He's fifteen.” And Atobe laughs, because frustration is an amusing look on Tezuka.

When it is announced that Echizen is not playing at all in the goodwill games he leaves as quietly as he can. Hits a ball against a wall again and again and again and curses that he wasn't driven enough from the start. He'd messed up this opportunity. Kirihara really did deserve to play singles one, he supposes.

Tezuka is standing behind him all of a sudden. Echizen hadn't heard him approach because of the rain.

“It seems you are not sulking.” Tezuka's voice is deep behind him and Echizen tells himself his heart is only racing because he’d been surprised by Tezuka's presence.

“Did we win?” Echizen asks. He hasn't noticed that he said we, but Tezuka has.

“It's your turn.” Tezuka tells him. Echizen stiffens and tries not to feel elated because Kirihara did not deserve that but he's wanted to play Kevin Smith since he saw him play. When they get inside Tezuka gives him a towel. They are both soaked but Echizen has been outside for five games and so the water has thoroughly saturated him, dripping from his hair and clothes and racket. He considers asking for a change of clothes but doesn't care enough to wait. Tezuka does not look at Echizen and Echizen notices.

They pass Kirihara and Echizen tells him to heal and there is some sort of silent understanding passed between them that no one present quite understands.

He passes by the rest of the international team who look at him with varying expressions. Atobe is as amused as ever and Kikumaru is beaming and Fuji – Fuji's expression is even harder to read than normal. Echizen will waste brainpower trying to understand him later. He does not have time to think now.

Tezuka is bench coach and Echizen drinks in his encouragements, as sparing as they are. Tezuka does not waste words.

Game after game is lost and won and then they are at a tie-break and both Echizen and Kevin have passed the limit of what a fifteen, sixteen year old can do but they still do it, serving ace after ace and the game is won by a hair's breadth.

Kevin and Echizen shake hands over the net and Kevin lifts their hands to the crowd and suddenly it feels like a replay of Atobe and Tezuka. He holds his hand up and doesn't look at Tezuka, though he doesn't think he could see anything but Tezuka right then.

Echizen pants as he thinks that he is where Tezuka was when he played that disastrous match. He wonders if he feels now how Tezuka did then, but he isn't quite sure how he feels.

Tezuka is his rival, but he is his captain first.

Clapping sounds from metres away and Echizen finally turns, to see Tezuka applauding him, smiling as widely as he's ever seen and Echizen cannot stop his face from glowing somewhat.

“He won't smile because he won the goodwill games, but he will for Tezuka's applauding.” Fuji comments quietly, and Atobe smiles beside him.

“Seems very in character, doesn't it?” He says. They both wonder how long it will be now.

Tezuka returns to their team by interrupting everyone's plans and showing them all up at tennis, which is so painfully fitting that no one is quite sure how to process it, and Echizen doesn't think he has ever smiled this widely in public before because Tezuka is back, Tezuka is here and they can win nationals now, they'll definitely win nationals.

“I promise I'll focus on these matches and on Nationals.” Echizen tells Tezuka, standing at the top of the staircase. “But before you graduate I want to play you again.” He bows his head. “I beg of you.” He adds.

“I promise.” Tezuka says, and he thinks he is promising more than a match.

Echizen does not smile often and when he does it is rarely more than a mocking twist of the lips. Tezuka thinks he has seen Echizen smile like he is now twice before, and Echizen is shockingly beautiful when he does. He turns to find Ryuzaki before he can do something stupid, like comment on it.

And so their team comes together just in time for everything to fall apart.

Echizen hears it first from journalists, the two journalists that hang around their school too much and never seem to report on anywhere else and he suddenly hates them because now there is a decision he never, ever thought he'd have to make. The US Opens. In America.

Tezuka is beside him, all of a sudden, and his presence, usually so comforting, suddenly feels awful. Echizen feels he has betrayed him and he hasn't even said anything yet.

“I need to go. I don't understand.” He begins.

Tezuka stops him. “Play your match first.” Echizen bows his head and agrees.

“I'm not going to America.” He tells his team, and Momo and Kikumaru believe him but no one else does.

I want to go Echizen thinks, and then I made promises.

More than one promise. The promise to be Seigaku's pillar of support. The promise to focus on Nationals. The promise that had gone unspoken, that he didn't quite know what it entailed but he'd made it, and leaving for America would break it.

He has made his promises to Tezuka and his team and he feels like if he breaks them, he'll break.

It's an embarrassment, his match with Momo, and he forfeits by the fifth game and the shame that he feels is horrendous. He wants to be sick. Instead he stands on the roof and stares at nothing in particular until he hears Tezuka’s voice behind him.

“That was a disgraceful match.” Tezuka tells him, as though it were possible for him to feel any worse. He didn't think he could but he hears it from Tezuka in such cold words and somehow he does.

“I'm sorry.” He says, and all he ever seems to say to Tezuka are those words. “I'm falling short of your expectations.”

“Expectations?” Tezuka asks, but he knows. The courts under the overpass that he hasn't played at since flicker into his mind and he looks at Echizen on his knees for a moment before seeing him as he is here.

The weight of the tennis club's future is not a burden he should have placed on a child, but Echizen is stronger than he was at fifteen, is probably stronger than he is now, and if Echizen doesn't take this responsibility then there will be no one that he can entrust it to. Seigaku will crumble without a pillar.

You're not disappointing me he wants to say, but Echizen doesn't need to hear that right now. “Forgive me.” Tezuka knows exactly what he has to say, though the words are thick and bitter in his mouth. “I did not mean those words as a restriction on your future.” Tezuka does not shut his eyes, staring straight at Echizen.

“Go to America.” Tezuka tells him. He tells himself that they will play before he graduates.

The first-years ask him to write Echizen a message and for a moment he freezes. Everyone has found a gift for Echizen and Tezuka has no idea what to give him and so resolves not to. The first-years are making banners and writing cards and the regulars have all bought him presents – like they will never see him again – and Tezuka does not want to think that Echizen is going away for long enough to warrant a gift, although the longer he is gone for the further he can go.

He writes Fly.

Tezuka plays Fuji and they are so very, very closely matched but in the end he takes the last point. He doesn't think it will go that way next time but he also doesn't think he will lose the match after that. They are too closely matched.

Fuji has always been there, he thinks, and he wonders if they had been different – Fuji less superficial and him less obsessive – would things between them have gone differently? He doesn't know. He very rarely knows with Fuji.

Echizen has a dream in America. The first time he has it he wakes up yelling wordlessly in fright, because he's failed them, he's failed them all.

He has it again, shadowy figures becoming clearer. People he's played. People he's beaten. There are other figures, hidden in shadow, but slowly they all become clearer bar one. At first he cannot see who it is but then it is very clearly Tezuka, Tezuka standing staring across at him as though accusing him of failing them and he realises he has. Number one in Japan but he can't even beat his own captain. He has never beat his own captain.

Tezuka's eyes stare at him across the distance in his mind, heated and challenging and violently alive.

He wakes up, hot and uncomfortable and guilty, half an hour before his alarm blares.

“The tall guy with the glasses and the scary look?” Kevin asks, and Echizen supposes Tezuka can look scary sometimes. He does not think about how Tezuka looks.

He calls Tezuka and flies back and they play, and somehow the rest of their family arrive so that by the time the last point is called everyone is here, everyone knows that Echizen has finally beaten Tezuka.

Tezuka looks down at the boy on his knees in front of him for the third time and doesn't feel so very guilty this time at how he feels when Echizen smiles up at him. He holds out his hand to pull Echizen up and Echizen takes it, his small hand burning hot in Tezuka's and Tezuka does not want to let go, would be perfectly content to stand opposite Echizen and hold onto his too-small hand for another hour. It is the second time they have touched and neither want to let go.

Echizen's fingers relax and Tezuka's grip slackens and although Echizen is crying a little bit he is not crying sadly.

Thank you, everyone he says, for the tenth time, and no one there is not crying a little bit.

Practice without Echizen feels somewhat empty. There is nothing obvious there; no strange silences linger, no imposing presence has gone. There is just something slightly sad and slightly off.

Or maybe that's just Tezuka.

America comes. America goes. Or rather, Echizen comes and goes.

He announces his return in the most dramatic way possible, because this is Echizen, and he cannot do otherwise. His height is enough to disqualify him as a player in most people's minds, and the low-pulled cap and baggy jumper hides him from people he's already played. He swans straight past Hyoutei and tries not to snicker as Atobe ignores him.

He finds Seigaku, and when he's ordered to pass the ball back by a player with a horrible look about him he picks it up and serves it as hard as he can, lets it whizz past by mere centimetres from the boy's face.

It is less than a second before he is surrounded, Kikumaru and Momo competing to hug him more and the rest of their team standing slightly closer than they would have before he left.

Thankfully, no one mentions the obvious reason why he is back.

Echizen plays and his opponent's shots are more powerful than Kawamura's, more powerful than Sanada's or Tezuka's and he can’t possibly hit them back with his slight frame and so he lets the racket clatter out of his hands over and over until the final, crucial moment.

He scores the last point and leaves the court with the disturbing atmosphere that the whole opposing team have and again is surrounded with a flood of smiles and looks up to see-

Tezuka nods down at him and Echizen smiles even brighter. He wonders if Tezuka can hear his heart pounding even faster than it had been before, during the midst of play. It is impossible – if nothing else, Kikumaru's hoots would drown it out – but Tezuka has always seemed a little superhuman to him.

“What the heck is that aura around the captain?” He asks Oishi, and somehow it doesn't surprise him that Tezuka has surpassed him again, proven to both of them and the rest of the world that Tezuka stands an entire realm above everyone else and Echizen is even more excited now, because it's Tezuka, Tezuka who has gone almost entirely undefeated in the whole time that anyone has known him and yet he still had so much sealed away.

“I'll take it from you.” He tells Tezuka later. “I'll take the pillar of support from you.”

Fuji looks amused in the background as Tezuka and Echizen stare at each other. They even have a setting sun behind them; it honestly amazes him how clueless they are.

Tezuka turns away first and although there is but a minute twitch under his eye Fuji sees it as though he screamed it. Tezuka is not as clueless as he pretends to be, at least not about his own feelings. They are hurting him, but there is so much pride there too.

I'll take it from you Echizen tells him and Tezuka knows, as he knew the first time he saw Echizen on the floor before him, that Echizen is going to be a far better pillar than he ever was. His shoulders relax slightly as he leaves the courts for the day.

Tezuka plays Kabaji. The game is dragged out for longer than he would have liked but he wins, and when he does his team are waiting for him. They do not jump on him but they are there, and when he turns to look at Echizen he is looking straight at him, pride and amusement in his eyes but calculations as well and Tezuka wonders what he's trying to think up next.

Echizen cannot think in words other than Captain but he is thinking. That night he sleeps awfully, too agitated and excited to do more than toss and turn and he wakes up the next morning damp and sticky.

Atobe and Echizen stare each other down from their sides of the net and laugh, deranged enough that both teams are slightly terrified. No one there has ever seen either boy, both so cold and so proud, act so undignified and without pride constricting them and no one is quite sure who is going to win.

Atobe wins game after game until Echizen is desperate and then Echizen plays as every person he's ever faced without even knowing who he's copying and Echizen wins game after game and Tezuka watches in shock without letting it show because Echizen's rate of growth is astonishing.

“The downfall of Seigaku is that you gave the pillar to this first-year!” Atobe yells at him as he hits the ball at Echizen as hard as he can.

Fuji almost laughs. Atobe is going to lose. From the first moment that he stepped onto the court he had let Echizen know that he'd rather be playing Tezuka. To actually talk to Tezuka during their match is an insult that Echizen will refuse to take.

There is a horrifying screech above them and one of the floodlights hanging high above their court, above Echizen's side of the court, is slipping and Echizen hits the ball only to have Atobe hit is back.

“I haven't given it to him yet.” Tezuka replies as Echizen hits the ball straight at the falling floodlight. It can't possibly go through, but it curves impossibly around the shifting steel and doesn't touch it once.

“I'm going to take it from you.” Echizen tells them both as he scores the point.

Their eyes meet across the pitch, and then Echizen turns back to Atobe.

“Come on, Monkey King.”

Echizen can hear the calls of him team, but he's so very, very tired. Momo and Kaidoh and Kikumaru's voices blur in his head; Kawamura and Oishi and Inui and Fuji are all yelling at him, shouting his name, begging him to wake up.

“Echizen.” He doesn't hear Tezuka. “Echizen.” Does Tezuka think he's already lost? “Echizen.”

No, that can't be it.

“Echizen.” He hears again and again. “Echizen.”

Tezuka He thinks. Captain.

He drags his body off the court and stands, serves at Atobe despite the ache that has gripped his whole being. He's so very tired.

Atobe is not conscious. His eyes are open and glazed and twitching wildly and Echizen does not want this fact to register in his brain because that would mean a whole new level of respect for the Monkey King but it does, and as Echizen drops his racket he stares at Atobe, who has not moved from where he is standing.

This newfound respect does not make him stop Atobe from shaving his head, and Tezuka shakes his head slightly at him when he passes him.

Echizen stops, for just a moment, to look at Tezuka, and even after all these months he can barely read the expression on his face. It's somewhat disheartening, but at the same time it is a somewhat comforting familiarity.

“He's proud of you.” Fuji tells him, when Tezuka is long gone. “He's very proud.”

Echizen does not have butterflies at the indirect praise.

“The one closest to the third door is not your Echizen Ryoma. It is Shintenhouji's super rookie.” Shintenhouji’s captain is talking to him and Tezuka is inclined to believe him. It doesn't matter.

Our team is more than Echizen should be his first thought, but instead his first thought is that won't matter to Echizen.

Echizen has surpassed beyond what anyone thought possible in such a short space of time and has never lost an official match and will not be defeated by anyone, not when it matters to their team.

Tezuka doesn't give an answer past a hmm, but it's enough to convey his thoughts on how likely Echizen's loss is.

In the end, they don't make it to singles one. Tezuka's game is the last, and the laughter that rings from the Seigaku team fills the whole stadium.

“Nice game, Captain Tezuka.” Echizen tells him, the mocking twist of his lips a poor disguise for his awe. Tezuka smiles back, exhausted, and the rest of their team look away, somewhat embarrassed.

“I wanna play him!” The small boy with purple hair is wailing and in the end Echizen gives in, because he really does want to play. Oishi is disapproving, but Tezuka and Ryuzaki don't try and stop him, and it is only to one point.

The rally is endless and Oishi is worrying and Kawamura has phoned them from the hospital to tell them he's okay before the rally is even half done.

Forty minutes later and Echizen's final return splits the ball in two.

The dust settles. Fuji and Tezuka are standing unaffected among the rubble, as are Echizen and Kintarou.

“No way.” Fuji breathes and Tezuka swears his eyes are vibrating. “Is that the opening of the third door?”

Fuji has never looked this excited before. Not when playing Tezuka, not when losing to Shintenhouji. Tezuka has never seen this much expression on Fuji’s face; he doesn’t think Fuji has ever even felt this much before. It’s almost terrifying.

There is something dark and hot twisting in his stomach aimed at Fuji and he ignores it because acknowledging it would mean acknowledging he is possessive.

Echizen shifts his gaze to where the rest of the team are still crouched on the floor around Fuji and Tezuka, and then to meet Tezuka's eyes. It feels like a punch to Tezuka's gut but he tries to school his face to indifference, and nods.

Echizen turns back to Kintarou and they shake hands. Tezuka buries the strange awe behind an icy mask and turns to leave.

At this point, even Kikumaru gets it.

“Hey, captain. Why doesn't Tezuka-zone just make the balls go out?” Echizen is pulling on his shirt when he asks this. Everyone else has gone home, and so the changing rooms are quiet and still but for their shadows on the walls.

“It's impossible.” Tezuka tells him. He tries explaining it, unsure if Echizen will keep up.

Echizen already knows how Tezuka-zone works, and so just listens to Tezuka's voice.

“So it isn't impossible.” Echizen tells him. He hasn't buttoned up his shirt yet. It's very distracting.

“I suppose.” Tezuka agrees. It would be so easy to push Echizen into the wall behind him and kiss him. He's smirking up at Tezuka with his shirt undone, his huge eyes dark and his tongue runs over his lower lip, just for a moment-

Tezuka slings his bag over his shoulder. “Hurry up.” He says. They need to leave soon.

Echizen is not there.

Echizen is not there at all during Tezuka's last match as a high-school student. Neither is Momoshiro. They had received a call from Echizen's father telling them that they were on the side of a mountain, without giving an explanation as to why, and that they couldn't get down.

Tezuka does not ask why Atobe has agreed to lend them a helicopter, but he has, and by the time his game is over – potentially ruining his arm again – Echizen and Momoshiro have returned.

Echizen does not remember anything or anyone.

He gazes up at Tezuka with wide, confused eyes that scream of innocence and helplessness. Who are you he seems to be saying. Who am I?

Echizen is acting wrong. He is quiet and polite and apologetic and he looks up at Tezuka like he's begging for help. The childishness in his eyes is disconcerting.

Tezuka stares at Echizen out of the corner of his eye and hopes with a fervour that something will be enough to make him remember.

Fuji wins his game and Tezuka holds out a hand for him to take and Fuji does. They clasp hands and Echizen watches, brow furrowed as though this reminds him of something. He looks at Fuji, and Fuji looks back with both eyes wide open as though desperately willing Echizen to remember. They have just the length of Oishi and Kikumaru’s game to make him remember every single thing that has ever happened to him.

“I'll take him outside to play!” Momoshiro is talking too loudly and has dropped too many honorifics but Tezuka doesn't have time to care because Echizen still has not remembered anything. He is gazing up at everyone with a confused smile on his face that is unnervingly pure and sweet and helpless and the urge to protect Echizen is not so unfamiliar to Tezuka, but this Echizen is not the one that they know.

Tezuka glances down at him and tells Momoshiro to go.

There is a boy called Momo crying in front of him and Echizen doesn't quite know why.

He has forgotten something, he knows. He has forgotten a lot of things, if what the boy is screaming is true. Mostly he is just afraid though. There are tennis balls flying around his head at speeds that could kill someone, and he doesn't know how to hit them back.

Or maybe he can’t remember. He doesn't know.

Momo stops crying when Echizen asks him to teach him how to play. He's better at it than he thinks he should be, but he's nowhere near as good as Momo is.

He remembers this person, if nothing else, because Momo has been there since the start and because his techniques are so familiar that they cannot help but trigger something.

A boy with a bandana appears, and with him is a boy with bandages all over his face. They are both wearing the same jacket that he and Momo are, and Momo greets them like he’s never been happier to see anyone and then runs off, shouting about telling their captain. And then there are more, people who are familiar to him and yet so alien.

Someone with blue hair who complains too much. A boy that looks like Fuji, the older boy from inside who had been wearing the same jacket that he and Momo and the two that came before have on now, only this boy has a brown jacket on and also seems desperate to play him. Echizen wonders if he's played many of these people before. They all look strong, stronger than he feels. He is so much smaller than anyone there. A boy whose grey hair looks like a wig comes with a boy with a yellow cap. They have the auras of adults, of people older and wiser; it is a similar feeling to the person inside, the person who had seemed too familiar to be a stranger and had stared at him when he thought he wasn't looking.

There are more still, though he doesn't recognise any of them even slightly. Perhaps he has not played them.

These people are cruel, hitting balls at strange angles as fast and hard as they can. First he cannot even see the shots but then they become clearer, his eyes growing used to the bright yellow-green flying across the courts. He cannot catch up to them though; their shots are too fast and too hard to hit back.

“Come on, little boy.” The boy with the grey hair mocks from the coach’s bench. “Is that all you've got?”

“Shut up, monkey king.” Echizen is shocked at the rude words that fall from his lips but Monkey King looks delighted, like that was how Echizen was supposed to address him.

He hits one of the balls back.

Then another. Over and over and with each point he scores everything becomes clearer and clearer. That was Ibu, and Yuuta, and Atobe and Sanada.

Kaidoh and Inui look relieved as he scores against everyone there and he remembers. Seigaku. Momo and Kikumaru and Oishi and Kawamura and Fuji are all waiting in the courts for him.

So is Tezuka.

He smashes the last ball into the other court as hard as anyone there has ever seen it and lands, cocky grin firmly in place.

“Thank you, everyone.” He bows. “There is someone that I must defeat.”

Oishi and Kikumaru are down 5-2, and if they lose this match everything will end. The atmosphere in the stands from the rest of the tennis club is grim and nervous with this knowledge. Tezuka stands stoic, though he doesn't know why Kikumaru and Oishi are having so much trouble.

“Use your prided synchro.” Jackal is contemptuous and the Rikkaidai regulars appear to have already embraced their victory.

“I don’t blame you guys for not noticing,” Oishi's voice is far too calm for someone whose opposition is at match game; he is calm and too cheerful to be at all worried.

“-but it's been going on for some time now. The other kind of synchro, that is.” Kikumaru can always finish Oishi's sentences, and the apparent joy he does it with is enough to unsettle Rikkaidai somewhat.

“Captain!” Momoshiro yells as he hurtles down the stairs and stops, panting in front of him. Echizen is not with him.

“How is Echizen?” Tezuka asks, too eager, and Momo looks up.

“Somehow his memories are gradually returning.” Momoshiro gasps, and the other team look up, shocked.

So Echizen really did lose his memory someone from Rikkaidai mutters, and Tezuka ignores them.

“Come to think of it, everyone has been able to resolve their troubles because Ryoma constantly created chances for resolution.” Ryuzaki smiles at Oishi and Kikumaru, and Tezuka is not worried about them anymore. Of course, the best thing for them to do would be to drag the game out for as long as possible so Echizen has time for his memories to return.

“Before we realised it, he grew to be an essential player.” Tezuka's throat is tight, and he can hear Fuji and Kawamura in the background agreeing with him, agreeing on Echizen's importance.

After this tournament Tezuka promises himself. After the tournament I’ll so something. It is a relief to finally admit he wants to.

Oishi and Kikumaru do not drop another point.

Echizen announces his return in the most obnoxious way possible, and Seigaku are relieved that his memories have clearly come back.

The game starts and for the first time since anyone has seen him out of hospital Yukimura's jacket falls off his shoulders. His eyes narrow as Echizen proclaims his victory in that game.

"He's planning something." Fuji murmurs beside him. This does not bode well.

First Echizen misses a clear shot, and then he hits another out, and then the net. His hand flexes around the racket's grip and he stares at it as though he isn't sure it's there.

Tezuka can do nothing but watch, horrified, as Yukimura steals Echizen's senses; touch and sight are taken first, and Echizen still plays though his eyes have no focal point. Yukimura has something of an expression now, frustration and awe perhaps. Echizen often inspires those feelings.

I'll make you gape in awe he'd told Yukimura, but this isn't that. Yukimura looks at Echizen as though he is a particularly interesting bug that is still flying, even with one wing torn off.

And then Echizen does not even swing for the ball as it flies past him, a shot that anyone could have returned and there is a hollow weight in everyone's gut as they realise that Echizen's hearing has gone. Echizen looks terrified, and even more lost than when he'd lost all of his memories. He stands on the ball, trips and falls and doesn't get up. He lies there as though unconscious and Tezuka hears Yukimura telling Echizen that he should just give up.

Tezuka is on the verge of jumping over the fence and shaking Echizen awake but Fuji’s hand is on his arm and he knows there is nothing he can do. He feels like screaming.

“Just give up.” Yukimura tells him, and for some reason it is those words that penetrate deep enough into his mind that he hears them.

I can't give up he thinks. He can't remember what it is he can't give up on.

Everything is white. Everything is cold. Everything is silent.

Is tennis fun? His father asks. He sees himself as a child.

Momo appears in front of him, laughing, and Echizen's hand twitches at his side. Kikumaru joins him, and the two of them stand close enough to him to touch and yet he cannot move. Fuji flickers into existence. Inui. Kaidoh. Oishi Kawamura Atobe Sanada Kevin Kintarou. People he has played and people he has yet to play are gathering in front of him, too many to name but he knows each one so very well, none out of reach if only he could move his limbs. And last of all he sees Tezuka, standing above him and holding out a hand to take.

There is a racket lying on the floor, in front of him to the left, by Tezuka's foot. Tezuka's hand is reaching out for him, and Echizen looks up to meet his eyes.

He grabs his racket and reaches up, and then he can see again.

Yukimura had assumed he match was over. Echizen's blind stumbling had been pitiful and Yukimura had watched with remorse as he fell to the floor and lay still. Had Echizen not been good enough to push him this far he would not have had to have experienced such humiliation, but Echizen had been better than anyone he's faced so far. He can see Tezuka's hands with white knuckles gripping onto the fence of the stands, held back by Fuji's slim hand and nothing else, as Echizen lies face-down on the floor, his racket discarded in front of him.

Yukimura turns away, somewhat relieved at the match's end. Echizen had been tiring.

He hears movement behind him, and turns back to see Echizen on his feet, eyes clear and focused and bouncing the ball against the floor. He throws the ball up, and hits it, and Yukimura stands there, paralysed, as the ball bounces past him at a speed that must have broken the sound barrier.

Echizen is glowing; he is grinning as he plays. He can feel his face stretched into a smile and his limbs feel light and weightless and he can hear his team cheering, yelling his name as loudly as they can. He wants to laugh.

This is fun. This is more fun than he has had in ages.

Yukimura cannot score another point. He can barely touch the ball. Echizen can see his father explaining his state to his team, this feeling, and although his father is not doing it justice he is not wrong.

“Echizen!” He hears everyone’s shouts. Tezuka’s shout. “Echizen.”

“Become Seigaku's pillar of support,” he hears. “Take it now.”

“Yes!” He shouts back. And then there is nothing left to say.

He wins.

He wins, 6-4, and he has barely managed to shake hands with Yukimura and promise him another match before he is jumped on by Momo and Kikumaru, and then he is hoisted into the air and by the time they have thrown him up into the air for the third time he is laughing, loud and open and overjoyed. We did it, he thinks.

“We won.” They let him down, and Momo stands him carefully on two feet only to grab him around the shoulders and shake him. “We did it.” He adds.

Fuji and Tezuka have barely left the stands. Tezuka is looking at Echizen.

“Oh? So even you can look like that.” Fuji says, and Tezuka coughs.

“Pretend you didn't see that, Fuji.” As stiff as ever.

“Completely lovestruck.” Fuji continues as though he was never interrupted. “Smitten. Head over heels.”

Tezuka resolves to ignore him. It is rather difficult.

Echizen stares at him with hopeful, overjoyed eyes and when Tezuka smiles back Echizen falters slightly, and then smiles even more.

Fuji catches Atobe's eye, who promptly rolls them in disgust at their obviousness and waves a single lazy hand. He cannot help but laugh.

We won.

“Where are you going after this?” Echizen asks him. They are once again alone in the changing rooms of Seigaku Tennis Club, for what is likely the last time.

“Germany.” Tezuka says. “Where are you going?”

“America.” They fall silent, pulling off sticky practise shirts and shoes. The weight of the ocean that will soon be between them is heavy on their shoulders, and Tezuka remembers the promise he had made to himself earlier that afternoon.

“There will be opportunities to play one another at tournaments.” Tezuka starts, and Echizen interrupts.

“Shut up.” He says flatly, and kisses him.

He’s grabbed hold of Tezuka's open shirt and has pulled him down using that and Tezuka puts a hand on Echizen's shoulder and steps back, pulling him with him until he can sit on the bench and Echizen straddles him immediately, chest pressed against Tezuka's.

Echizen tilts his head back and kisses him more deeply and Tezuka winds one hand into Echizen's hair and puts the other one on his waist and pulls him in closer, as close as they can get. Tezuka's shirt is falling off and Echizen doesn't have one on, and neither care as they kiss each other again and again. Echizen opens his mouth slightly and licks at Tezuka's lower lip and Tezuka gasps, scrapes at Echizen's lip with his teeth and Echizen whines, low in his throat. They should stop. They really ought to stop.

Echizen whimpers when Tezuka opens his mouth properly and he abandons that idea.

When they finally pull back Echizen uses his slight frame to his advantage and curls up small enough that he can fit perfectly in Tezuka's lap and buries his face in Tezuka's neck.

“You'd better be in those tournaments.” He mumbles, and Tezuka strokes his hair.

“I promise.” He says, and this time he knows exactly what he's promising.