Prince of Tennis (Tezuka/Fuji) [week 3 - prompt 4] Title: Habitual Author:ketchupblood Rating: PG Warnings: Slash, fluff, CHEESE Word Count: ~2,500 Summary: A day in their lives. Author's Notes: I made a fluff! I'm very proud of me.
3-4. On the continent of your skin, wandering, wandering, I could spend my life traveling the length of your body each night.
-x-
Normally, Tezuka got up before Fuji and would have showered and eaten by the time Fuji woke up. Sometimes he even resented Fuji for being able to snuggle into the warm covers when he was rushing to get his clothes and into the shower in the frigid morning air but much more often, he would delay his morning routine to sit and watch Fuji sleep, because Tezuka had found that Fuji was most expressive when he slept, smiling and grinning and frowning and wincing and smirking like he never did while awake. It was endearing, Tezuka thought, to see Fuji without his defenses. Those days, they didn't spend much time together in the mornings—Tezuka always left soon after breakfast and Fuji only ever got up around then.
Other times, though, Fuji woke up before Tezuka and he would turn Tezuka's alarm clock off, because he was fully aware that Tezuka got up far too early for his own good; it was unhealthy to get up at such an ungodly hour, after all. Fuji, personally, suffered it for Tezuka's sake. Then he would get up, enjoying the rush of cold air that always jolted him awake, and find his way to the bathroom for a quick shower and then to the kitchen and, depending on what they had available, make breakfast of eggs and sausage or rice and miso soup. By the time he finished, the sun would be up or, if it were late in winter, nearly up and he would go and wake Tezuka up with breakfast on a small tray.
The first few times he had done that, Tezuka had been confused and panicked at the time, thinking that he would be late to work or something equally silly. Later, though, Tezuka seemed to have accepted it and even smiled when Fuji came into the room, fully awake and actually willing to wait until Fuji came to get out of bed. Sometimes Fuji would try to feed Tezuka; he would get one or two spoonfuls of food into Tezuka's mouth before Tezuka tired of it and took the spoon away. Sometimes Tezuka fed Fuji; he normally managed to feed Fuji the whole meal before Fuji would pull him up and they would go to the kitchen and Fuji would sit down, legs on the seat and drawn to his chest, while Tezuka got more food for himself.
They would talk a little on those days, about what they planned to do that day or what they had done the day before. Tezuka mostly just liked listening to the musical lilt of Fuji when he talked and Fuji just liked knowing that Tezuka talked more to him than to anyone else and if he didn't talk more, then Fuji was the only one who got to hear the trivial and unimportant details of Tezuka's day. Everyone knew about the big things—the head lawyer of Japan's largest company couldn't go entirely without scrutiny or with much privacy—but Tezuka only ever bothered telling Fuji everything.
Then Tezuka would leave for work and no matter what type of day it was, he would always give Fuji a quick farewell kiss before leaving. It would always be a little easier on the days that Fuji hadn't gotten out of bed when he left. Then all Tezuka has to do is go to the bedroom and bend over the bed and murmur a soft 'goodbye.' When Fuji was up and awake, though, he liked holding on and not letting go for a good ten minutes or leading Tezuka on a game of tag through their carefully cleaned home, laughing and childish and free.
Still, Tezuka always made it to work on time, partly because he always left an hour early anyways and mostly because 'work' really started when Tezuka got there, so it was impossible for him to be late. His secretaries would greet him politely, both of them middle aged women who had shown themselves more than capable of doing their job and only their job. He would then go into his office and read over the files that had been left there before going around and talking to the people who worked under him to ensure that they were, indeed, doing what they were paid to do.
Sometimes it annoyed him that he wasn't so much a lawyer as he was a manager now, but mostly he just accepted it as a fact of life. He hadn't particularly liked being a lawyer as it was—it was just a job that he kept because Fuji didn't like keeping regular jobs and Tezuka wouldn't have known what to do with himself otherwise.
A few hours after he got to work, right around ten in the morning, Tezuka would always receive a text message from Fuji, telling him that Fuji had decided to stay home that day or go take pictures in the park or play tennis in some sports club or even actually go to work. What Fuji did for work used to constantly changed, though, and Tezuka sometimes found that he had a hard time keeping up. He knew that Fuji had been a bartender only a while ago, but that he had taken a position as a journalist for a sports magazine recently and was almost certainly still coaching the same high school tennis team that he had been a part of nearly ten years ago while Tezuka took on the world of pro tennis. Additionally, there had been a brief stint where Fuji had worked as a cartoonist and an author—Fuji's books had actually sold very well and his one time publisher had been disappointed when Fuji had decided to try his luck as a bus driver—and a clothing designer and a secretary.
And a student, that one time. Fuji had decided to return to school. Tezuka hadn't known if Fuji still went to school for the greater part of time that Fuji had; he'd never asked and Fuji hadn't told him. He could look at their finances to see, of course, but he looked at enough numbers at work and was more than content to just let Fuji deal with them as he felt fit, which meant that more often than not Fuji turned them over to Inui, who had emailed Tezuka once to tell him that if they were going to use a hotel room ten nights every month, they'd be better just rent an apartment.
Tezuka had told him that he didn't remember going to any hotel that month and Inui had said "Oh" and had hurriedly moved on to tell Tezuka about the tenth year reunion their high school was going to have. Tezuka didn't remind Inui that they had gone to different high schools; he was nervous enough right then, there was no reason to make it worse.
He did mention it to Fuji later, though, and Fuji had laughed and curled up closer to Tezuka. Did Tezuka, Fuji asked, think that he was being cheated on?
Tezuka had pressed his lips to the crown of Fuji's head and taken a deep breath, letting the smell of Fuji's shampoo surround him. Not at all, he had said, and he had meant it. As far as he knew, it would have been very difficult for Fuji to sneak out every night when he always went to bed before Tezuka and got up after.
Fuji had tilted his head back to catch Tezuka's lips. What if, he asked, he had lied about what he was doing while Tezuka was at work?
Well then, Tezuka had said as he started to unbutton Fuji's shirt, he would just have to show this mysterious person that his Fuji was seeing that Fuji was his and would Fuji please tell Yuuta that if he really needed his privacy to choose cheaper hotels.
Fuji had pouted, because Fuji had no common sense when it came to Yuuta and had thought, no doubt, that the hotels were perfectly suited for his brother's needs. Tezuka was sure that if Fuji had let Yuuta choose the hotels on his own, they wouldn't have had to have that conversation, not that he had really minded, personally, but it would be a bit inconvenient if they were to fall into debt, which Inui told him that, with Fuji's spending habits, had a 52.3% chance of happening.
Which, Tezuka reminded himself constantly on days when his subordinates were being hard to deal with, was the entire reason he was here. He just had to keep them in line and working for long enough to finish whatever it was that they had to finish and then they could all go home. Some of them blamed him for the impossible hours, they said. He shrugged it off. He had been fine with it, when he had been working those hours.
The one time he had complained to Fuji, Fuji had looked him in the eye and told him, quite seriously, that maybe Tezuka had been okay with it but Fuji hadn't liked it very much. Tezuka's eyes had widened a little and he had pulled Fuji closer into his embrace.
The rest of his company had been pleasantly surprised the next day when Tezuka announced they were going to cut down on hours, though some people in management had complained a bit. Tezuka had shrugged it off and would have reasoned with them, but it was noon and Fuji always called at noon and so Tezuka hadn't bothered. Sure enough, Fuji had called and he had wanted to know if Tezuka would be home in time for them to go out for dinner. Tezuka almost wished that he could just surprise Fuji by showing up later without telling him, but Fuji didn't like surprises and it would probably have just put him into a bad mood, so Tezuka had told him that it would be fine.
Fuji actually chose that day to tell him that he was going to graduate medical school in about a week and had actually already been hired as a doctor. Tezuka had stared at him, a little shocked but not really—Fuji had told him about half of his new jobs and exploits the same way—and, once the thought finally took root in his brain and comprehension came, gave his congratulations. Fuji beamed at him and Tezuka couldn't help but smile and tell Fuji that he really couldn't complain about Tezuka's hours at work anymore.
Fuji had thought about it a little and shrugged. They would just have to work the same hours then, he'd said.
Tezuka had agreed and they had eaten dinner as usual in one of their favorite restaurants, a little Chinese diner that looked a little shabbier on the outside than on the inside and had the nastiest bathrooms but the best dumplings.
Not much changed after that, not that Tezuka had expected it to. Fuji had never let his schedule control him and Tezuka wasn't surprised to find that Fuji still showed up in his office at one in the afternoon every other day with food—sometimes takeout, sometimes homemade, sometimes just bought from a bento store. They would sit and eat and talk and, when they finished, Fuji would get up and kiss Tezuka goodbye and leave to go back to the hospital where he was already the rising star. Tezuka would clean up, because Fuji had brought the food so it was only fair that Tezuka clean up, and his coworkers sometimes joked about his loving wife while Tezuka ignored them. That actually ended one day when it happened that Fuji hadn't quite left when the joking started.
Tezuka would go through the rest of the day in a sort of a daze, because he could do his job without much effort, and with a bit of anticipation, because it was an unspoken agreement that before lunch, there would be some semblance of 'normal' and some sort of pattern, because Tezuka disliked mornings while Fuji liked them, and after lunch Fuji could do whatever he wanted, because Tezuka would be more receptive to it then.
Sometimes Fuji called him, sometimes he sent texts, once he even taped himself going through a checkup and emailed it to Tezuka. Tezuka had replied two minutes later, saying that he wasn't quite sure it was legal to film a patient's checkup without consent. Fuji had replied in an hour and sixteen minutes. He had gotten consent.
It used to be that Fuji would decide what they had for dinner and either he would cook it or would tell Tezuka and Tezuka would make it or they would make it together or, if they were both too unmotivated to bother with cooking, they would go out. After Fuji had taken an actual job, though, he had been too tired to do that and Tezuka had found himself in charge of making dinner, which meant that he often got home before Fuji did, though it was still far from being early. He would go home, put his work away, and search through the refrigerator and take out what he needed to make whatever he had decided to make or, if there were not enough in there, go out and buy whatever he needed.
Fuji normally got home between the time that Tezuka was cooking and the time when Tezuka had already eaten and the food had already cooled, untouched because Tezuka wouldn't eat without Fuji. He would always go first to Tezuka and give him a kiss and then to collapse on the couch or at the table. Tezuka always worried that Fuji wasn't cut out for the stress of being a doctor, but he knew better than to say anything, so he would just finish preparing the food or reheating it and put it on the table.
Since Tezuka had never been much of a cook, the meals were simpler and often not quite as good as they had been before, but Fuji didn't complain and Tezuka did improve, eventually. After they finished eating, often without saying anything at all to each other, Tezuka would pull Fuji up and to bed, where he would mostly just massage Fuji's back or shoulders until he was satisfied that Fuji had relaxed. Sometimes he did do much more than just massage him, but rarely, because Tezuka felt that Fuji was in no shape to deal with too much, no matter how much Fuji might disagree.
Then they would lie there, sometimes with Fuji in Tezuka's arms, sometimes with Tezuka in Fuji's, and they might talk or kiss or do nothing at all for a while, before Tezuka or Fuji remembered something important that had to be done right away.
Then they would separate for a moment while one or the other or both went to get their laptops and then they would meet on the bed again and sprawl out and work on whatever it was that needed to be worked on before someone, normally Tezuka, noticed the time and forcibly removed the other, normally Fuji, from work and then they would get ready for bed.
And before they slept, they always managed to get tangled up together, Tezuka's arms around Fuji's and Fuji's arms around Tezuka and Tezuka's head at Fuji's chest and his eyes pressed shut against the warmth of Fuji's favorite T-shirt. They never shared a good night kiss, because they would inevitably dream about each other anyways.