When Everything Falls Apart

Midorino Mizu

Disclaimer: Tennis no Ohjisama is the property of Konomi Takeshi.

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One day, Sanada Genichirou noticed that he’d stopped calling.

It hadn’t been a sudden thing, he realized when he looked back. Keigo hadn’t abruptly stopped talking to him; it had been slow, and Sanada hadn’t been able to recognize it for what it really was.

He hadn’t realized that Atobe Keigo was stepping back, stepping away from him.

He’d noticed, of course, that Keigo had started to get quieter, and he’d stopped coming by quite as much, but he’d thought – maybe – that Keigo had just been busy. He’d been busy, after all, and distracted.

Renji had been injured and in the hospital, and Yukimura had been unable to concentrate on anything else…and it had been easy to fall into old habits, taking care of Yukimura, treating him like a fragile object that needed to be treated gently.

In retrospect, it had been terrifyingly easy to focus everything on Renji and Yukimura, to take care of things all over again, just like in junior high. And everything else had fallen by the wayside. The most important thing was getting through the worry and the panic, and then he could concern himself with other things.

When he finally let himself notice the world beyond the hospital and his two best friends, Keigo had managed to almost completely disappear from his life.

One day, Sanada Genichirou realized it had been two weeks since he had last seen Atobe Keigo’s name flash across the caller id of his cell phone.

He couldn’t remember the last time he heard his boyfriend laugh.

He scowled as he punched in the familiar numbers, as he dialed Keigo’s cell phone. Keigo should have known, he thought; he should have known that he didn’t mean anything by it, that he had been distracted.

“Genichirou.” Atobe Keigo’s voice was cool and even when he answered. “This is…unexpected. Shouldn’t you be at the hospital now?”

Sanada’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t need to be there, Keigo.”

“And yet you always are.” Keigo’s voice was very soft, and nearly expressionless. “You’ve made it obvious what is more important.”

“Keigo, I couldn’t…they needed me to be there…”

“Yukimura needed you,” Keigo corrected him.

“Keigo…” Sanada started again. He closed his eyes, and wished, for a moment, that he’d gone to Tokyo, gone to see Keigo, instead of just calling him.

Keigo was slipping away from him, and Sanada desperately wanted to pull him close, hold on.

“Sanada,” Keigo said, and the Rikkaidai player stiffened at the use of a name that had been missing from their conversations for months.

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

“Kei…” Sanada said, his hand clenching around the plastic case of his cell phone.

“Don’t call me again.”

Then a click, and silence. Sanada stared down at the phone.

He was just beginning to realize that he had lost someone important – someone who he had never thought he would ever lose.

“I’m sorry, Keigo,” he murmured to no one. “I didn’t mean…” he trailed off. It didn’t matter now.

He knew Atobe Keigo well, and Keigo…wouldn’t come back. No matter how much he might want that.

So he wouldn’t call the other boy, and he wouldn’t see him. And maybe the deliberate distance would make it better.

Sanada wondered, as he pocketed his phone and walked aimlessly away from the park where he had made his call, if he’d actually be able to make himself believe that.

***

He managed to avoid his former boyfriend for two weeks, and managed to make almost everyone of his acquaintance miserable. His temper flared more easily, he brooded silently for most of his days.

Sanada Genichirou was exactly the way he had always been, only worse.

At the beginning of the third week, Renji finally asked him where Keigo had gone, and when Sanada told him what had happened, his best friend’s eyes popped open.

Sanada didn’t think he had ever seen Yanagi Renji so angry.

“He didn’t call you for two weeks, and you didn’t think that there was something wrong?”

Sanada shrugged defensively. “Well…you were in the hospital, and Yukimura was practically panicking. I had to take care of things.” He paused. “And besides, why was it just me who was in the wrong?”

Renji closed his eyes, taking a few deep breaths. “Genichirou,” he finally said. “Yukimura – Seiichi – is stronger than you think he is. He isn’t going to shatter into a million pieces if he’s put under undue stress.

“And your first responsibility is not to him, and it’s not to me. It’s to you, and it should have been to Atobe. You have no excuse for letting your relationship slide the way you did, none at all. He had more of an excuse, because you never pay attention to the things you would rather avoid.”

Sanada narrowed his eyes. “That’s not fair, Renji.”

“But it’s true.”

Sanada glared at his best friend for a moment, and then sighed. “I know. I miss him, Renji.”

“I know you do,” Renji said. “You’ve made that obvious for the past two weeks.”

He watched as Sanada stared out his window before he spoke again. “There’s a party in Tokyo that Hyoutei will be going to tonight, you know. Keigo will probably be there.”

Sanada sighed. “But he doesn’t want to see me.”

“Go anyway,” Renji advised. “You need to see him, one way or the other.”

Sanada leaned his head back, closing his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll go, but I don’t think it’s as good an idea as you think.”

Sanada was right, for once.

***

The party Renji had mentioned was in a private club, and Sanada only managed to get in by slipping past the bouncers. It was late, and the club was full of dancing teenagers. Mostly male, he noted, as he looked around.

Keigo was at the center of it all, of course; Atobe Keigo was usually the center of everything.

He was dancing, the way he used to dance with Sanada – close to his partner, caressing and shifting against him as he moved, his head tipped back, and a small, knowing smile on his face.

It was a look that had always made Sanada Genichirou want to grab him and take him somewhere else, where he could wipe that smile off his face, make him gasp and moan. He couldn’t do that anymore, and it killed him; it killed him that he no longer had that right, and that Oshitari Yuushi did.

Sanada flinched as he saw Oshitari’s hand slide under Keigo’s loose black shirt, up the skin he knew was perfectly soft, before it slipped back out again, sliding over the curve of Keigo’s ass, and slipping between Keigo’s thighs.

Sanada could see his former boyfriend arch at the touch; he could practically hear him gasp.

Atobe Keigo was wearing those pants, skin-tight black leather that left nothing to imagination, that were cut too low to wear anything with. Sanada had always told him that he was asking for trouble, wearing those.

He remembered that Keigo had laughed, and told him that was the point. That it was more fun that way. Sanada had always assumed that he would be the only one to give Atobe Keigo that kind of trouble.

He was close enough that he could hear Keigo’s soft laugh as Oshitari pulled him closer, hear the other boy’s answering chuckle as they started to shift their hips to the slow, insidious beat of the music pounding through the club’s speakers.

He was going to leave, he thought, he couldn’t face watching this anymore. Watching Keigo. But then he froze, pinned in place by a pair of beautiful blue eyes.

Keigo stared at him for a long moment, his lips parted, and his face paling slightly; Sanada thought that – maybe – Keigo would push Oshitari away, and come back to him.

But then he saw Keigo’s eyes shift, saw them change to a deeper shade of blue as the Hyoutei captain reached up and pulled Oshitari closer to him. Sanada drew in a breath as he watched Keigo’s lips meet his tensai’s in a heated kiss.

Keigo wasn’t going to come back to him, Sanada realized again. He turned away, and slowly walked away from the smoky club. For once, he’d been right, and Renji had been wrong. Keigo was too proud, and probably too hurt. He wouldn’t return.

That meant Sanada had lost him forever, the Rikkaidai player thought as he finally returned home, walked into his room.

His eyes fell on the framed photo he still had on his desk, and he strode across the room, picking it up. They’d had that picture taken one day the summer before, when Keigo had abruptly ended their tennis match and told Sanada that they needed to go do something else. That tennis wasn’t the only thing that was fun.

Sanada wasn’t sure how they had ended up in one of those photo booths, or why Keigo had started kissing him there.

His hands clenched convulsively around the frame, and his hand drew back, flinging the picture against the wall.

He didn’t entirely realize what he’d done until he heard the crash, saw the glass shatter into a thousand pieces.

Sanada stepped forward, kneeling in front of the mess of wood and glass and paper, and reached down to pick up the photograph. He stared at it for a moment, tracing his finger over Keigo’s cheek.

“I miss you,” he murmured to himself. “I miss you so much.”