Quite frankly, this fic scares me--because, well, it's a new pairing, I don't actually know all that much about them, and it's STILL monstrously long as well as being unbetaed... so please, do be kind, neh? This is roughly set in the same little universe as "Me wo Tojite," "Neta(mi)," and "Simple," but only actually refers, and very quickly, to events in "Simple." Furthermore, it lacks smut. Beware. ^_^

Warnings: like I said, this is a pairing I'm not all that familiar with and haven't written before, so my characterisation in this genuinely terrifies me. Caveat lector, or something like that.

Sasowareru (Be Invited)
by Monnie

Part 1

Ootori was giving him that wounded look again.

Actually, no, Ootori was still giving him that wounded look.

He had, in fact, been giving him that look since that absolutely meaningless conversation in the locker room after practice. All through the exchange gift. And it was dinnertime, now.

It wasn't as if Shishido had really said anything that was bad--all he'd done was agree with Atobe when the buchou had said something about the stupid holiday season--one of the rare times he actually agreed with their hard-headed, perfectionist I-Am-Perfect-sama team captain--and then...

It was really starting to unnerve him. Whenever Ootori was mad at him, it generally lasted minutes. And then he gave that little smile, blinked those big, brown eyes, and said, "Don't do it again, okay, Shishido-san?"

It was probably the only time anyone could have ever talked to Shishido Ryou like a child, still used honorifics, and gotten him to mean it when he said he wouldn't do it again. It wasn't that he was soft, or anything like that. Nothing like that. It was just--well, he just didn't like it when Choutarou looked at him like... like... well, like he'd hurt him, somehow. It made him feel a little--a lot--like he'd kicked a cute, tall puppy with big, liquid brown eyes and silver hair--uh, fur. Or something.

It was probably a good thing that the look never lasted very long. Not hours. Most definitely not all the way until dinnertime. And while Ootori wasn't saying anything about it--no doubt 'cause Shishido was His Senpai and Ootori Knew His Place (he really hated it when Choutarou did that; it would have been just so much easier without the distance that the '-san' put between them, though easier for what he couldn't quite have said)--it was slowly growing more obvious that the look just wasn't going away.

And Ootori was picking at his food, and not looking at him, and it was going to just plain make him crazy if he didn't do something about it.

"Aww, c'mon, Choutarou," he finally exclaimed, putting down his chopsticks. This was ridiculous. It would have been okay--well, okay, it wasn't okay--if he'd just been mad at him, Shishido could have dealt with that, but that Ootori wasn't eating... "You know I didn't mean it like that." Well, okay, he had meant it, but he hadn't meant to put that look into Ootori's eyes. "And I said I was sorry."

That, he'd meant. Whole-heartedly.

He saw Ootori's eyes lift from his plate, soft mahogany, and almost sighed in relief. "It's... it's okay, Shishido-san," there was a faint smile on his lips, a little like forgiveness, and Shishido felt the little stone that had been caught, sharp, in his throat drain into something like relief. "It's... it's just that... I don't know, it's the kind of thing that doesn't surprise me so much out of Atobe-buchou, but... I guess I didn't expect it out of you. That's all."

Ootori must have been upset, to actually have said something even just a little accusative against Atobe. Shishido squirmed, just a little, inside--he didn't like putting that upset, disappointed look in Ootori's warm eyes, but at the same time... he wasn't going to hide what he felt... "Don't you think it's even a little irritating, though? I mean... all the shopping, and everyone's always so stressed out. Seems kind of... well, pointless, sometimes, don't you think?"

Ootori looked... appalled. "Shishido-san!"

He winced, but he wasn't going to lie about it. "I mean, c'mon. It's just an excuse for people to have to buy gifts, and go shopping. The stores love it, right? There's... I mean, it's like Valentine's, or White Day."

Ootori was looking at him with something closely akin to shock, or maybe hurt, clutching at the chain of his cross hard enough to break it, and Shishido found that any vestiges of an appetite he might have had were gone. This really wasn't right at all--hurting Ootori really was like kicking something small and helpless, even if Shishido knew very well that his doubles partner was hardly small (no-one who topped Shishido by almost fifteen centimetres could be considered 'small') and no-one who could shoot off tennis balls at almost two hundred kilometres per hour was likely to be 'helpless'... but there really was something about the silver-haired junior that gave him the most painfully bizarre urge to just, well, shelter him, somehow.

Ootori didn't need protecting--but Shishido wanted to protect him. He was so easily embarrassed, just so plain innocent, a really good boy--and when he tangled his fingers in the chain at his throat, it was sometimes all Shishido could do to keep from leaning forwards and kissing that hand until it loosened, a little...

Wait--Ootori's cross. The one he never took off, even in the shower.

Not that Shishido had looked. He was very careful not to look, especially in the locker room's communal shower. But when Ootori came out of their bathroom towelling his hair, the cross gleamed, sometimes, bright and wet against the damp skin of his slim chest... it was just too hard not to see. (Living with Ootori had gotten him very, very used to cold showers, too, no matter what the weather.)

That wasn't the point, though.

The point was that Ootori never took off his cross.

Aw, shit.

"Oh, man, Choutarou. I totally forgot you were Christian." It was as close to an apology as he could manage through the lump in his throat. He'd screwed up. Again. Gods, the only reason Ootori put up with him was that the junior was just so damned good at heart... "Christmas is a big thing with you, isn't it?"

Ootori's mouth opened--but his eyes softened, a little, from that wide, brittle brightness, and to Shishido's relief, his fingers loosened from his chain. It was with something approaching irony, he thought, that Ootori murmured, low, "Something like that," and to Shishido's relief, picked up his chopsticks again, brought a small piece of fish to his mouth. "I'm sorry, Shishido-san--I guess I forget not everyone celebrates it... don't worry about it."

Shishido had just insulted his religion (or at least he thought he had; he really didn't know anything about Christianity other than that it involved someone dying and coming back from the dead, or at least that was what the kooks handing out flyers said) and Ootori was apologising?!

He really did have the most amazing number of ways of making Shishido feel like the world's biggest ass, and every one of them was unintentional. Shishido knew that he wasn't the world's nicest person--because, Hell, how were you supposed to get anywhere just being nice when no-one gave a damn? You just ended up having people stomping all over you--but Ootori was the only one who made him feel so... so... guilty about it. And maybe there was something to being nice, because damn it, no-one was nicer than Ootori, and Shishido had the sneaking suspicion that Ootori was always going to have the upper hand on him.

Shishido frowned, and shook his head. "Hell, Choutarou, it's not okay. Um... hey." He was going to regret this. He just knew he was going to regret this. "I mean... you know why I don't like it," or, well, he did now, courtesy of his big mouth, "but I don't know anything about... um... why you think Christmas is... you know, special."

Ootori blinked up at him--and smiled--just a little one, just the littlest flirt of motion around those smooth, soft lips and high on that brow. Ootori did have very kissable lips, Shishido had noticed, more than once. Gently, he just shook his head. "It's really not important, Shishido-san. I just think that Christmas is beautiful, that's all."

That gentleness was going to be the death of Shishido Ryou. It really, really was. The look that was in Ootori's eyes always made him want to squirm and reach over and run his thumb just underneath them to see if the look changed at all. "I... get that."

He did--he understood that Ootori liked all the funny Christmas trappings, even. He'd put up with the little strings of lights, as long as none of them snuck into his bedroom, and he'd admit they were sort of pretty when they twinkled when he came home late at night and Ootori had left them on, but he'd most definitely drawn the line at the cardboard reindeer thing with the big flashy nose that his roomie and partner had wanted to put on the door.

They compromised on the little white plastic tree thing. Shishido let Ootori have it in their common room--it was little, no taller than a tennis racquet was long--and even helped him make little paper garlands for it--well, okay, he'd gotten a little hug and a grin that had made him warm all over for that, so it hadn't exactly been altruism. And Ootori didn't say anything when they had guests over and Shishido hid it behind something. It worked. Ootori liked Christmas, Shishido didn't, and they didn't try and convince the other otherwise.

Or, well, it had worked, at least in Shishido's head, until stupid Atobe-buchou had opened his mouth and stupider Shishido had agreed with him. He'd honestly thought Ootori knew he didn't like the whole damned holiday altogether, but...

But now it wasn't just a holiday that Ootori liked, it was one that was important to him.

Shishido screwed his eyes closed for a moment, opened them again, and asked.

"Um... so... um, what is it about Christmas, anyway? That's... uh, beautiful." Because he knew that the answer wasn't going to be lights, or funny little plastic trees, or green-and-red spiky plants hanging over doorways that stupid people actually thought they were supposed to kiss under, or...

Well, okay, he wouldn't have actually minded being stuck under mistletoe with Ootori--Hell, it would've made him believe that someone out there was granting him some kind of huge karmic favour--but that would have just freaked the poor kid out. As it was, his partner always turned the colour of a new umeboshi every time Mukahi and Oshitari started making out. (Like at the end of every doubles match that the Princess and the Prick won. It sure gave Shishido an especially damned good reason to want to beat them.)

It was so damned cute when Ootori blushed--though Shishido would have whacked anyone who even intimated that he thought that--but Hell, if the sight of two boys kissing made him turn that red, there wasn't any way he'd even consider doing it.

Not to mention that Mukahi and Oshitari making out was just plain gross.

If that was his only exposure to guys kissing, Shishido couldn't blame Ootori if he never, ever even wanted to try it.

He was just going to have to stop thinking about kissing Ootori. Especially when he'd just asked Ootori something about Christmas. Oh, right. "Choutarou?"

Ootori looked like he was thinking thoughts he liked thinking, his head cocked a little to the side, a little like he did when he was writing something for his music class late at night when Shishido walked in and saw the tiny, neat little musical notes scattered over a page. "Well, it's a little..." his smile was sheepish, a little, maybe just a bit dreamy. "I guess it's a little hard to explain. You won't make fun of me, will you?"

I'll kill anyone who tries.

But all Shishido replied was, "Nah."

It was probably going to be a long story--he walked to their little mini-fridge and pulled out two ice candies, lemon for Ootori, cherry for him--but he didn't mind, really. Shishido knew he didn't have much patience with people, but... well, Ootori'd stayed up, night after night, hitting serves at him until his shoulder was stiff and he fell asleep in class and got reprimanded by his teachers. All to get one stupid, careless singles player who wasn't anywhere near as nice as he deserved to him, back onto the Hyotei Regular team. Shishido could damned well listen to one explanation, no matter how long it was.

"Well... it's kind of complicated," Choutarou nibbled thoughtfully on the Popsicle. Shishido knew Choutarou didn't mean anything sexual by it whatsoever when he nibbled on a piece of ice candy like that, no teeth, just moving his lips on it, which really was the only reason Shishido could watch him eat it without constantly having to fight the urge to cringe or jump him across the table or squirm in his seat or something, but... damned if he was ever going to hand him one of those things if they ever had company around. "Um, you know how Christians believe that Jesus Christ died and was resurrected on the third day, right? And how we consider Jesus Christ the Saviour?"

Well, sort of. Dead man getting up and walking. Saviour. Right. He could keep that straight. "Kinda." He chewed on a bit of ice, leaning his chair backwards. "Did that happen on Christmas? Wait, isn't that Easter, or something like that?"

The big, sweet smile Ootori gave him almost made him topple backwards onto the floor, and he set the front legs of his chair back where they were supposed to be with a 'thunk.' Okay. No tipping his chair back if there was any chance that Ootori was going to give him one of those big 'Wow, Shishido-san!' fifty-thousand watt smiles.

"That's right," Ootori exclaimed, happily. "Ah, no--we believe Jesus was born on Christmas, actually. It was... eh, tax season, and so even though Mary--that's Jesus' mother--was pregnant, they had to go to Bethlehem to be taxed. But she went into labour, and there weren't any inns free--so she had to give birth in a stable, with all of the animals around her and everything. And she put him in a manger full of hay, since there wasn't a crib."

"Oh." Yeah, it was starting to look like Christmas really was a big thing for his roommate, for a lot of reasons. "That's... that sounds rough."

Ootori nodded at him, and smiled, a little. "And that's why we celebrate Christmas. Because it's Jesus' birthday. People give gifts because of that, too--because the shepherds, and the wise men--the Magi--came afterwards, to pay their respects, and to bring him gifts, because the Saviour had been born, and new hope had come into the world. Isn't that beautiful?"

Well, now that made him feel especially of an ass, considering he'd called the gifting thing stupid, too. He'd bought gifts for the Hyotei exchange, but that was because, well, that was a team thing. Tradition. But was it really any less tradition that Ootori wanted to put up lights, or hang little paper snowflakes on a little tree? Maybe he wouldn't hide it the next time someone came over--even if Ootori wasn't going to be around over Christmas break. "But..." Shishido dropped the wooden stick of his ice candy into his empty rice bowl. "So what's that got to do with reindeer, though?"

He liked it when Ootori laughed, too. "Nothing--that's got to do with Santa, and... well, I believed in Santa until I was almost eight, so..." he grinned, sheepishly, through those long, curly silvery lashes, darker than his hair.

Ah, Hell. One embarrassing statement deserved another. "Me, too," Shishido confessed, more than a little self-conscious. He hadn't always disliked Christmas. It was just when, well... when his dad had remarried, she'd always tried to make such a big deal about it... "But if you tell anyone that, I'll--" there really wasn't anything in this world he was actually willing to threaten his partner with. And he had the feeling that if Ootori ever really wanted to beat him up, he probably could, anyway--not that gentle Ootori would want to. "I'll--throw our next game!"

He wouldn't, of course. Not after he and Ootori had worked so hard to get him back on the team--and Shishido wasn't blind enough that he thought it had only been for his sake that Atobe had talked to their Kantoku. But the thought made Ootori laugh a little, and protest, "Shishido-san! Okay, I won't tell."

And it gave them a little secret--even if it was a silly one--and somehow, he liked that.

He got up to pick up the plates--it was his turn to do them, because he knew that if he just left them a little longer, Ootori would get to work on them, and they'd agreed to share chores when they'd become roommates at the beginning of the year--and reached for the sponge. He hated doing dishes. He really hated it. But it was better than knowing that his roommate was doing them every day and not even complaining about it, which was what he was pretty sure Ootori had done with Hiyoshi, the last guy he'd lived with.

"Shishido-san," Choutarou looked a little troubled as he brought over his own dishes and picked up a dishtowel. Shishido almost stopped him--Ootori wasn't very good with putting things away when he was a little worried, he tended to drop things--but then sighed. They could always get more plates. "You haven't packed any of your stuff. Aren't you leaving after the exchange gift tonight? Your family doesn't celebrate Christmas?"

Shishido was pretty sure they probably did, or at least his mom still did, but... he'd felt like such an outsider the last time, around her husband's kids, and they had two of their own by now. He just hadn't been home for the Christmas season since he'd started living in a dorm in fifth grade. "Nah," he smiled. He didn't much miss it, really. It wasn't so bad, being alone. "I just hang around here. Practice some tennis. It's nice and quiet." Being at the courts at night nowadays always reminded him of the way the yellow floodlights had made Ootori's hair almost bronze, too. They didn't do night-practices anymore, but... honestly, Shishido kind of missed them. Not being hit by a Scud Serve, but... well, that'd been their time.

Then determination lit in those deep brown eyes--their colour against the bright platinum of that hair always surprised Shishido, a little, no matter how long they'd been living together--even though the determination no longer did. It was dangerous--so dangerous--when Ootori looked at him like that...

Mostly because Shishido had the sinking feeling that when Choutarou looked at him like that, his partner could have been asking him to stand and be target practice for that serve of his, wearing a frilly pink apron with a bull's-eye painted on it, and Shishido would just nod a couple of times and ask where Choutarou wanted him to stand.

There was nothing that pissed him off faster than knowing how vulnerable he was to Choutarou, especially when he had that determined look on his face that made Shishido's insides do the weirdest little squish thing, and just how little he could do to actually stop it.

"You can't be alone then!" Never mind that he'd been alone 'then' for quite a few years, but Shishido appreciated the thought. "Do you want to come to Christmas Eve at my house, Shishido-san? You can come to six o'clock mass with us--just so you can see what it's like, you don't have to believe in it or anything," Ootori added, a little hastily, "and then have dinner, and sleep over. We open presents in the morning."

Christmas eve at Choutarou's house. A big religion holiday thing. With the possibility of being a world-class jerk in front of Choutarou's parents, and the sister he talked about all the time, and--this was a really bad idea but damn it, he looked so hopeful...

"Sure." Shishido was aware that his smile must have been vaguely sickly, but... he wanted to do this for his partner. He wanted to at least try, because Ootori was always trying so hard, and Shishido couldn't be a bastard all the time, could he, right? "Why not."

Ootori's eyes widened, and there was just a moment of panic when Shishido wondered if it might have just been tatemae--something he'd said to be polite, because, well, wasn't it polite to invite over your senpai for Christmas dinner? "Really? You'll really come?" and then, suddenly, there was the smile--yep, fifty-thousand watts--that always made Shishido feel like he'd done something really good, except he hadn't, not really. Being around Ootori was seriously going to give him a head as big as Atobe's, one of these days. "That's great! Mama will be so excited, I've told her so much about you, and--you like roast chicken, right? I think we're having chicken, or maybe it's turkey--"

He held up his hands against the barrage, laughing, and wanting to just hug him so badly it was almost a physical ache deep in his chest. But Shishido Ryou just didn't hug people. "Whatever's fine, Choutarou. Seriously. You mind if I ask one question, though?"

"What's that?" Ootori tiptoed to put the mug onto the top shelf--then blinked at it a little and pushed the ones on the second-highest shelf backwards so that it could fit there, instead. Trust him to remember that Shishido wasn't as tall as he was, too--how the Hell had the boy gotten to be so damned considerate?

"The mass thing--it's not in Latin, or something, is it? It's in Japanese?" He adored Ootori. He really did. He was even willing to admit it to himself. But Ootori was going to seriously owe him if he had to sit through however long a 'mass' was in a language he didn't understand. "I mean, I saw it once on TV, and there were these guys in funny hats lying flat on the ground, and no-one was saying anything I could understand, or if they were, it was in a damned funny accent..."

Ootori looked blank for a second, before he grinned. "That's High Mass. I think they only do that in the Vatican, and I think only special occasions. I don't get it either, really."

Oh. Well, that made him feel a little better. Sort of. "Hey, you need to get to bed, Choutarou. You're taking the train early tomorrow, aren't you? I'm gonna be up awhile yet." He'd always slept late, even when they had classes, so it hadn't been any hardship for him to stay up longer and practice on the empty, lit courts, but... it was different for Ootori, who liked to be up at what seemed to Shishido to be just a little after dawn. And it already was kind of late, especially since the gift-giving had gone on pretty long after Atobe had dragged Jirou outside and come back--they'd been too busy trying to listen at windows and doors to what was going on out there that no-one had really thought of opening more presents until Atobe had come in and given them that patented Buchou kind of look that said that they were being all idiots.

Though Jirou'd looked happy. Really happy, actually. He'd been a big, surprisingly snuggly ball of bounce the rest of the night--Shishido had had to push him off his lap, and then off of Ootori's, until finally he'd settled on Atobe's and Atobe had just rolled his eyes; Jirou didn't ever really respect anyone's personal space, buchou or not.

Ootori looked at the rest of the dishes, and Shishido just scoffed. "Aw, c'mon. Don't think I can do a couple of dishes? Go to bed, Choutarou."

"Well... if you're sure, but..." Ootori gave him one more dubious look, before smiling a little, and to Shishido's surprise his hand was in his hair, stroking gently. "Thank you, okay, Shishido-san?"

He suspected that the fact that Choutarou occasionally ran his fingers through his ragged, growing hair was because his short hair reminded Ootori of a puppy, especially just after he'd had it long, but he'd decided that if that was so, he really just didn't want to know about it. It felt good, and the one time he'd laughed, and purred, and playfully pressed into Ootori's hand, it had made him laugh, too.

"Nah, it's nothing," he grinned, and nudged him away--he couldn't even pretend to be grouchy about Ootori petting him. "Go to sleep. You'll see your family sooner if you sleep now."

And he'd leave Shishido sooner, but... well, he was pretty used to people leaving him.

It was just the way things were.

*_*_*_*

He'd meant to see Ootori off, give him a hand with his bags if he needed it, but he overslept, and when he woke up with a start--to the sound of an alarm clock he'd completely forgotten to turn off, now that Christmas break had started--his roommate was gone.

He'd left something, though--an envelope, perched on the branches of the little white tree, "Shishido-san" in messy script outside it. It always amused him just how bad Ootori's handwriting was when he wasn't really concentrating, considering that those little music notes he drew were always so neat...

But his roommate had actually left him a Christmas card. One with no words, or any of those weird slogans--just a print-out colour picture on the front of a pert little puppy, kind of like one of those snow dogs, curled into a ball on a pile of wrapping paper, its nose tangled in a big red bow. He knew what it was from description--he'd heard Ootori talking to his mom about the new puppy that his aunt had gotten for her family--and, well, he had to confess: it really was a cute little bundle. He wasn't much into those tiny, yappy little dogs that looked like someone had made them to be ankle warmers or something like that, but huskies weren't bad.

Dogs liked Shishido. It was probably a good thing he liked them, too. He didn't know how Choutarou had found that out when he'd gotten him that cute little wolf plushie for the Hyotei exchange gift. The only one who hadn't known who the plushies were from was Hiyoshi, and that was because Hiyoshi was dense as a brick when it came to people.

Hey, he was only fourteen. Plushies were still sort of okay, if they were gifts.

And inside... yeah. Of course Ootori had left him directions and a phone number, written on the inside of the card--how to get to his place by train. It was kind of far--four hours ride, almost, he warned, but Ootori's family would be there to pick him up at the train station when he got out, if he texted Ootori's cellphone ahead to say what train he was taking. He'd talked to his mom, the note said, and she'd said that if taking the train was too much trouble, the whole family could drive back to Hyotei on the twenty-third, and pick him up.

Er, no. Confined spaces--or rather, being confined in a very small space for four hours with people he really, really didn't want to offend--made him very nervous.

"Mama said anything for the senpai who takes care of me. Text, okay? We'd really love to have you for longer, even," he'd scribbled, happily, and Shishido blinked a little, more touched than he dared admit. He didn't take particularly good care of Ootori--well, he tried, but the truth was, nowadays, all he could really do was give him a boost on the tennis court when his spirits started to dip a little, and share in chores that he was supposed to be doing anyway, and chivvy him into doing his homework for a class where Shishido suspected, though Ootori never complained, that the teacher picked on him. (He'd thought, more than once, of gritting his teeth and asking Atobe to see if he could do anything about that bastard, because Atobe's mother was on the school board, but Ootori would never have been happy with being dragged into the spotlight like that.) For the most part, Ootori was pretty damned self-sufficient: a pretty good student, responsible as anything, and if anything, he took care of Shishido. A long look from him when Shishido was sitting at the sofa playing video games could get him scrambling for his books pretty quick, and he found himself glancing in his partner's direction sometimes before he opened his big mouth, finding those eyes on him, and deciding he really didn't want to say what he'd been about to.

Which was why Shishido... well, yeah.

He'd resigned himself to his feelings what seemed like a long time ago.

He knew what Atobe thought about the two of them, but that was because Atobe had a dirty mind, and saying that that just wasn't the way they were would have just amused the buchou a little too much. And... he wasn't going to say that being with Ootori, really with him, like the way Mukahi and Oshitari were together (except less nasty) was something he hadn't thought about, because, oh, yeah, he had. Hell, he'd dreamed about it, and woken up with a smile on his face so stupid it made him glad that he and Ootori had separate bedrooms.

But Shishido wasn't much given to pipe dreaming. And he knew he'd never scare his kouhai like that, because, well, they were roommates, partners, friends... and he really didn't want that to stop because he'd opened his big mouth and let all the stupid feelings out. He didn't know about whether Choutarou liked guys--'cause really, how did that come up in a talk with one's roommate?--but honestly, how many gay boys could there be on the Hyotei tennis team, anyway? He didn't know about Hiyoshi, and didn't want to know about Kabaji, but he was pretty sure that Jirou, at least, was harbouring a raging crush for their buchou; much as he hated listening to locker-room talk sometimes, too, he had to admit that Atobe took care of Jirou just a little too well for him to be doing it for the team's sake. And anyone who couldn't see what the other doubles pair was up to needed a new pair of eyeballs. Statistically, it just didn't work to think that Ootori was gay.

Not that Shishido was gay. Hell, no. Ootori was just, well, special, that was all. Maybe he'd have liked Ootori if he'd been a girl, too. Even though the thought was just weird, because he liked looking at his partner's body, too, and he just couldn't imagine him with, well, curves, or breasts, or something like that--part of the reason he was so nice to look at was because he had a great tennis body, not an inch of squash on his long torso, those little muscle-lines smooth down his arms and his calves, shoulders surprisingly broad, and you just didn't get that with girls.

Shishido scowled at himself and picked up his Playstation 2 controller as he flopped onto the couch, dropping the letter beside him. Beating up Ivy a couple of times in Soul Calibur 2 always made him feel better, almost as good as winning a tennis game--but of course, he wasn't going to be winning any more games until January, because everyone was gone, and he could practice by himself, and he would, or go down to the street courts, but that wasn't the same.

But... he'd see Ootori again in six days, not three weeks like he'd thought before.

He'd gotten him a present--given it to him at the exchange gift; boring stuff, a new wristband and better strings that he'd ordered from a pro catalogue, because that Scud Serve meant that Ootori went through cheaper strings like at a set a week. And, well, he wanted to get him something personal--but not too personal, but... oh, no, if he was visiting, didn't that mean that he needed to get something for Ootori's family, too...? He'd never done this visiting thing, and he wanted to be polite, but would it be weird if he brought too many gifts? But wouldn't it be even weirder if he brought too few?

He was seriously in over his head, wasn't he?

Shit. Shishido dropped the controller back to the sofa and let Ivy's whip toss Nightmare screaming over the edge of the platform. He hated to admit it, but he needed help here.

Still, it was with something like trepidation that he fumbled for his wallet and pulled out a much-folded sheet of paper--he hadn't touched it in years, but everything got rumpled around in his wallet, especially when he was trying to keep from tossing things out of it--and picked up the cordless phone.

"Moshi moshi, Yasuda desu..." a cheerful, familiar female voice chirruped, and in the background, Shishido heard someone--a little girl?--singing English Christmas carols in a very off-key voice.

Oh, right. She didn't use their name anymore.

He'd hated that, for a long time.

"'Kaasan...? It's Ryou..."

End of Part 1

On to Part 2

Back to Hyotei Roommates Arc index page