Archive of Our Own

The day Kinjou finds out that Imaizumi will be coming to Yonan in the spring, Arakita has to sit through an entire practice and study session while Kinjou recounts Imaizumi’s progress as a cyclist and his extremely verbose eagerness in being able to race with his old ace assist again. Machimiya starts puttering around on his phone after the first ten minutes once he realizes Kinjou isn’t about to be dissuaded from verbally going over the entirety of Imaizumi’s race stats from the past three years, and Arakita would do the same except he really needs to get these chemistry notes sorted before the quiz tomorrow morning, and Kinjou was supposed to be helping.

But every time he cuts in to gently remind him that Imaizumi wasn’t going to come until April, but this quiz worth 10% of his grade was at 9 AM, less than twelve hours away, Kinjou nods, works on a problem for five minutes, and inevitably ends up reminiscing about his Sohoku days for another ten to fifteen.

Arakita gives up around midnight and goes back to his own place to study in peace and quiet. When did Kinjou become such a dad? He was honestly expecting him to whip out a wallet with a fold-out section of yearbook photos of his first-year kids and all their team shots and Inter-High-related newspaper clippings with how much he had been gushing about them, like they’d been the ones racing with him and getting him to the goal line and first place finishes these past couple of years in university.

He gets a text from Shinkai at some absurd hour of the morning when he’s about to give up for the night. So I hear Imaizumi will be attending Yonan? The team will have another reliable all-rounder in its rotation, then. Better stay on your toes, Yasutomo!

He squints at the bright white of the screen in the darkness of his room and mashes out with one hand, go bqn urself shinkai and throws his phone somewhere in the vicinity of his unmade bed. He promptly falls asleep at his desk and gets woken the next morning by very sharp, crisp raps on his door.

“Arakita, it’s 8:30, we’re going to be late for the quiz,” comes Kinjou’s voice from the other side. Arakita gets up, joints cracking the entire way as he slaps some water on his face, changes his shirt, and stumbles out the door with a hideous scowl that Kinjou doesn’t so much as blink at.

“Why are you even here,” Arakita groans, hissing at the sunlight as he struggles to just get on his bike without falling over.

Kinjou reaches out to steady it for him and replies very matter-of-factly, “I called you several times, but you didn’t answer. I figured you hadn’t charged your phone again, so I came over to make sure you woke up—”

“Ugh,” snarls Arakita, because it is before 9 AM and he doesn’t have the capacity in him even during normal operating hours to handle these feelings of unrelenting friendship and camaraderie.

Kinjou takes it all in stride like usual, and as they’re weaving through the streets to campus, he says, “I hope you got enough studying in.”

Arakita wants to punch him, but his shoulder aches from how he had been slumped over, so he settles for a very emphatic tch. “No thanks to you,” he mutters, and Kinjou chuckles, as good-natured and disgustingly cheerful as ever.

Perhaps through sheer force of will, Arakita doesn’t totally bomb that quiz—also perhaps because their captain’s threat of replacing him if he failed another class could actually be enforced, what with Imaizumi’s impending admittance to the club in the next season. “It’s fucking Imaizumi this, Imaizumi that,” Arakita whines to Machimiya later over lunch. Kinjou is in lab, and for once they’re free of the overbearing presence of Sohoku at their table. “He’s gonna be a first year! They’re never gonna let him on the starting team, not when we weren’t allowed to join the regular rotation until this year!”

Machimiya very nonchalantly steals a piece of fried chicken from Arakita’s plate and pops it in his mouth before Arakita can so much as raise a hand to grab it back from him. “There are a bunch of fourth years leaving after this year, though,” he says, chewing thoughtfully. “Sohoku’s a big name nowadays, and Hakogaku isn’t sending anybody really special our way next year, now are they?”

Arakita wants to bristle at that, but he knows it’s true. Manami and Doubashi were the major standouts of their year, but an airhead like Manami would never have made it through Yonan’s tests to begin with even if he’d wanted to take them, and Doubashi had gotten snapped up right away by Meisou’s scouts. “They could’ve at least sent Onoda-chan while they were at it,” he grumbles, sliding his tray closer to himself before Machimiya got any more grabby with his food. “We could use another dedicated climber. We have enough all-rounders as it is.”

“Is there such a thing as having too many all-rounders?” Machimiya drawls, slanting an unsettlingly knowing grin in his direction, and before Arakita registers the movement, his Bepsi has been swiped as well. After taking a deep swig of soda, Machimiya pauses to burp before asking, “Are you that worried Kinjou’s going to go back to working with Imaizumi, like he did in high school?”

“Give me that, you freeloader,” Arakita hisses, snatching his drink back from Machimiya’s grubby mitts. “And no, I’m not worried or anything. It’ll be what, two years at least since they’ve teamed up? And I’ve been Kinjou’s usual partner in the meanwhile. A first year’s not going to just waltz in and change everything, no matter how good he is.”

Arakita says that and firmly believes it and raises hell every time Kinjou so much as breathes Imaizumi’s name in the weeks afterward, but with celebrating their seniors’ graduation a couple of months later and the stretch of spring vacation before the start of the next school year, he entirely forgets about their new addition until the first day back to club practice the following April.

He takes one step into the clubroom, accidentally catches Imaizumi’s eye from where he stands off towards a corner of the room, and reels backward into Kinjou and Machimiya. “You,” he nearly yells, stabbing a finger accusingly in his direction while Kinjou pats his head consolingly and Machimiya grabs him around the shoulders, as if anticipating a potential catfight.

“Imaizumi, good to see you,” Kinjou greets warmly, stepping out from behind Arakita and striding confidently over toward his former teammate, and the way Imaizumi unfurls like a flower in sunlight is honestly kind of gag-worthy. He straightens up with a ready smile and even blushes faintly as he takes the hand Kinjou extends in his direction, stumbling over formal language in his obvious excitement in seeing his old captain again.

“Y’know, the way he looks at Kinjou kinda reminds me of someone,” Machimiya says with a snicker as he forcibly seats Arakita on the other side of the room. He sits down next to him and nudges Arakita with one of his unpleasant grins. “It’s how you’d look at Fukutomi when you were his assist at Hakogaku, eh?”

Arakita physically swivels around in his chair to glare balefully at him. “I did not have such an obvious boner for Fuku-chan.”

Machimiya raises an eyebrow and tries to suppress his smile, but he’s not trying all that hard for Arakita’s sake. “But you’re admitting that you did have some amount of boner for him?”

With a loud sigh, Arakita yanks the strap of his messenger bag over his head and gets up to dump it in his locker. “I’m never talking to you again, Machimiya,” he announces flatly, certainly not for the first time that week, and he doesn’t look Kinjou and Imaizumi’s way once while he grabs his things and changes into his cycling kit.

As per the instructions of their new captain, the upperclassmen spend the first day testing the mettle of the club’s new hopefuls, and Arakita and Kinjou lead the group of first-year all-rounders around their usual circuit of the campus. Kinjou stays near the back to keep an eye on stragglers, while Arakita guides them around sharp corners and steep downhills curves with only the occasional direction barked over his shoulder.

He’s not terribly surprised or particularly elated to find Imaizumi constantly close by, oftentimes getting as close to lining up with him before Arakita accelerates yet again to shake him off. Imaizumi’s cornering has improved remarkably, allowing him to ride about as close as Arakita does to the guardrails, and his gear-shifting is about on par with Toudou’s for efficiency, but something about the conservative way he rides is bugging Arakita, and it’s not until he announces the home stretch that he understands why.

“So I can go all out?” Imaizumi asks, not even breathing hard as he pulls up less than half a tire’s width behind him.

Arakita raises his chin and smiles humorlessly at him. “What, you’ve been holding back this whole time like the goody two-shoes you are?”

Imaizumi’s eyes narrow a little at the reference to the nickname Arakita had given him in their first and only Inter-High racing against each other, but his teeth glint as he gives his pedals another burst of speed and lines up next to him. “Obviously, since I didn’t know the course. But if this is the last straightaway, then it shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

And then he takes off, swaying gracefully over his handlebars as he dances over the asphalt. Arakita spares himself a second to watch Imaizumi’s enviably perfect form while he races at his fullest, and then he kicks off as well, catching up with him easily. He jeers at him, “This better not be all you got, kid!”

The face Imaizumi makes at him tears an ugly laugh from Arakita’s chest, and he throws himself into his pedaling, determined to leave him in the dust—but Imaizumi is nothing if not persistent, eyes fierce as he goes neck-and-neck with Arakita for the finish line.

Arakita’s been in worse pinches before while in less-than-peak physical condition, though, and he doesn’t have to dig nearly as deep for the final push that takes him sailing over the goal first. In the aftermath, however, he goes completely ignored while the new seniors chat up Imaizumi with exceedingly pleased expressions, and when Kinjou arrives after several more minutes, he goes straight over to Imaizumi as well.

Machimiya sidles up to him with a grin on his face, and Arakita decides then and there that this is going to be a rough year for him. “Well? Still think you’re safe, Arakita?”

“Fuck off, Miya,” Arakita grumbles peevishly as he pushes a towel over his face, “didn’t I say I’m never talking to you again?”

Wheezy laughter and animated chatter follow him all the way back to the Bepsi vending machine.

The good thing is that Imaizumi is still a first year in a club with plenty of able third- and fourth-year riders, so there’s virtually zero chance that he’ll make the starting team this year unless half the club gets simultaneously taken out by the stomach flu. On the other hand, though, their captain’s beady eye know talent when it sees it, and from the second week on Imaizumi gets put into training groups with the upperclassmen, including Kinjou and Arakita. Kinjou is elated and all too enthusiastic in taking it personally upon himself to begin grooming Imaizumi to be another ace and ace assist, while Arakita gets reprimanded every other practice for bullying Imaizumi excessively.

It wasn’t bullying at all in Arakita’s opinion—he was just making sure Imaizumi didn’t get too full of himself just because he was one of a select few allowed to train with the third and fourth years, but his captain constantly has to remind him that inciting impromptu races and incessant jeering wasn’t really helping to develop Imaizumi as a first string hopeful.

Imaizumi is good, he’ll give him that, but high school and college are worlds apart. Arakita had emerged from the Hakogaku tradition of only producing kings, but even he had quickly learned that silly nicknames and Inter-High reputations meant little on the college circuit, where riders rode with silent fortitude and finesse rather than constantly screaming or monologuing about pride and teamwork and fuzzy bullshit feelings. Having acted as the captain his last year at Sohoku, Imaizumi walks around with confidence that Arakita thinks verges on self-importance, and whenever their eyes cross paths, he senses the faintest hint of condescension coming from him, and it never fails to make his hackles rise.

Arakita wasn’t Hakogaku now any more than Imaizumi was still Sohoku, but it’s hard to accept him as a teammate when the brat is constantly getting on his nerves like this, and it leads to constant friction between them, especially when multiple people start mistaking the two of them for each other (much to Machimiya’s endless amusement). When Kinjou starts doing it, Arakita has a fit and threatens to run him over, while Imaizumi is gloomier than usual for the rest of the day.

By the time several weeks have passed in their first semester back, Arakita has resigned himself to just never getting along with Imaizumi. It’s not like he gets along with a lot of people anyway, and the chances of him ever working in tandem with Imaizumi are pretty low, so he doesn’t give much of a shit. Kinjou, on the other hand...

“You’re doing too much work too soon, Kin-chan,” Arakita says dryly as Kinjou scribbles furiously in a notebook during a lunch break one day. “We’re being put into the rotation for the next race, so you should be focused on that, not on making up a personalized practice schedule for Mr. Goody Two-Shoes.”

Kinjou takes a moment to frown with fatherly disapproval at him. “Mr. Goody Two-Shoes?” he repeats.

Arakita downs the rest of his Bepsi and replies around a hiccup, “I mean your little tagalong, Imaizumi.” He sets the bottle aside to toss into the recycling later and leans his elbows on the table, narrowing his eyes at him. “Are you ever gonna race with him again?”

Pushing his glasses back up his nose, Kinjou sighs and returns to his writing. “Arakita, I have no plans of abandoning you as my partner. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Arakita opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and then stabs a finger in Kinjou’s direction. “That is not what I was asking! Don’t go putting words in my mouth, baldy!” he snaps, growing only increasingly incensed at how he feels himself heating up around his neck.

With a snort, Kinjou informs him very drolly, “Trust me, Imaizumi must feel at least as threatened of you as you are of him, if not more. But if anything,” Kinjou pauses, his glasses glinting almost ominously in the sunlight, “he looks up to you.”

He looks aghast at Kinjou for a long moment and then starts gathering up his things with a huff. “He looks up to me? Yeah, I really doubt that one, Kinjou. I’m just competition to him.”

“Competition can be healthy!” Kinjou calls after him encouragingly as he hustles off to class. “And be nice to your underclassmen, Arakita!”

Yeah, yeah, as if, Arakita snorts as he pushes his way through the afternoon crowd to get to his classroom. His fingers start twitching for the handles of his bike not halfway through contemporary world literature, but today is a rest day, with practice resuming tomorrow.

He’s not about to let the lingering soreness from yesterday’s interval training stop him though, and after class he zips over to the clubroom, changes into his cycling gear, and pedals out into the hills. He could have texted some of the others to see if any of them were interested in riding with him, but his head buzzes and he feels tetchier than usual. Being alone on the roads suits him just fine for now.

At least until he clears the last downhill bend and spots another lone figure on the flat ahead of him. He can’t quite make out who it is from here, but he has a bad feeling in his gut as he accelerates to catch up to them, and the moment he glimpses sharp gray eyes turning his way, his irritation peaks.

“So it is you,” Arakita practically spits as he draws even with Imaizumi, who seems just as annoyed to find him here next to him on the road. “You trying to get in extra practice before tomorrow to impress Kinjou, like the good boy you are?”

Imaizumi gives him a long, unimpressed look and then returns his eyes to the front. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?” he replies flippantly, sounding bored.

Arakita tries not to bristle, but Imaizumi just has to be so difficult all of the goddamn time. Plus he’s still overflowing with pent-up frustration, so it’s too easy to knock his shoulder hard into Imaizumi’s and lift himself off his saddle and into his sprint stance. “Come on! I just climbed a mountain, but I can still wipe this road with your ass!”

He takes off, feet pummeling the pedals, but Imaizumi doesn’t follow—at least not until he adds, “You better not disappoint me like you disappoint Kinjou all the time!”

All you ever had to do to get Imaizumi flustered and potentially upset was to mention his chin or his idol Kinjou, and Arakita cackles as Imaizumi rockets past him in silent fury. His thighs are only just starting to burn once he catches up to him a few dozen meters down the road, but he hardly feels the sting of exertion when Imaizumi shoots him a glare. It’s only when they’re competing like this that he feels he can understand Imaizumi on some basic level, because if there was one foolproof method of communication between all cyclists, it was going all-out on their bikes.

Their sights are set on the city limit sign about two hundred meters down, the usual goal marker when the team ran sprints on this particular stretch of road. Arakita thinks he has plenty still left in him to make good on his promise, but either he’s more exhausted than he thought or Imaizumi is just that angry, because he has to reach back farther and farther into his reserves of strength just to keep up. His breath is coming out shorter and faster and the sweat pours down his face in rivulets, blinding him with every other blink as he kicks with everything he has at his pedals. Next to him, Imaizumi, taciturn save for the set of his eyebrows, seems to fly over the asphalt, and it is with graceful ease that he edges out Arakita in the last few meters.

Imaizumi takes a few steadying deep breaths after they have blown past the roadside sign, and without so much as a look back at him, he takes off again, settling back down onto his saddle as he rounds a bend in the road that leads to some low hills around the south side of the city.

When the whir of Imaizumi’s treads fades into silence, Arakita yells out in frustration and smashes a fist into his handlebars. Swearing viciously under his breath, he turns around and pedals back the way he came, intent on punishing himself with more climbing.

Nearly another hour has passed when his thighs and calves hit their limit, and reluctantly he turns back in the direction of the university. Arakita spots a lone blue Scott parked in one of the racks outside the clubroom and half-heartedly glowers at it as he slots his bike in at an adjacent rack. Steeling himself for some more of the usual close-quarter passive-aggressiveness, he tries not to hobble on in, fully expecting Imaizumi to start sassing him as soon as he got a foot in the door, but the changing area is empty, though a locker door is half-open and an unzipped duffel sits on the edge of one of the benches nearby.

There’s a hint of thickness to the air, though, and distantly he can faintly hear the running of the shower. So Imaizumi was washing up—and unless he planned on rubbing his first place finish in Arakita’s face from inside one of the stalls while shampooing his hair or something, Arakita had plenty of opportunity to just grab his things and get out of there before any sort of confrontation took place at all.

Frowning at his own locker on the opposite wall, Arakita considers the option, even though it felt a little cowardly to him. If he had some kind of verbal exchange with Imaizumi again, no doubt the goody-goody would tattle on him to Kinjou, and he’d get a fatherly lecture about being a good role model and all that hogwash from him later for it, so ducking out in as graceful a fashion as he could was probably in his better interests. Pretend nothing happened and grind Imaizumi’s face into the dirt during their next practice—he could do that. He could be an adult about his stupid Imaizumi brand of insecurity for once.

Nodding to himself, he heads on over to his locker to collect his backpack and clothes and hightail it on out when the water squeaks shut in the showers. He’s trying to hurriedly gather up his things without looking like he was actually hurrying when a voice behind him says, “Arakita-san.”

Shit. Arakita has his messenger bag’s strap in his mouth and is trying to keep a textbook from ejecting itself from his locker when he begrudgingly looks over his shoulder. Imaizumi stands in the doorway, pink-skinned with a thin, barely thigh-skirting towel tucked around the sharp jut of his hips. His wet hair has been pushed back from his face, and Arakita is definitely quietly livid that he looks so effortlessly and unreasonably attractive, like he’d just walked off the set of a commercial for men’s body wash.

Smothering down a sigh, Arakita shoves his bag and book back into his locker and slams it shut, swiveling around on the balls of his feet to sidle up to Imaizumi with confidence he wasn’t totally sure he had. “Imaizumi-chan,” he returns, the corner of his eye possibly twitching a little with his forced grin, and he makes sure to completely ignore the rules of personal space by striding all the way up to him until Imaizumi is forced to take a step back.

But Imaizumi sniffs—he fucking sniffs!—and walks around him toward his locker. “Is there something you want?” he asks flatly, uncapping a bottle of water and bringing it to his lips with a challenging arch to his eyebrows.

Eyes narrowing with the scent of a challenge, Arakita stalks over to him and leans in dangerously close to his face. “You got a problem with me, Imaizumi?” he demands, not hesitating to bare his teeth at him.

Imaizumi barely reacts, only sighing and setting his water down. “If anyone here has a problem with someone, you’re the one who has a problem with me—”

It had already been pissing him off that Imaizumi was walking around with his holier-than-thou airs all the time, but now that he wasn’t even rising to the bait, Arakita feels the last few threads of his already worn patience snapping. He grabs him by the shoulder and shoves him hard into the lockers, the sharp rattle of the metal piercingly loud in the empty room along with the deliciously startled inhale Imaizumi takes.

“You have a lot of nerve, you little goody two-shoes, thinking you’re as good as the rest of us,” Arakita snarls as he crowds in close, making sure the only thing Imaizumi can see in his field of vision is him. “But you’re nothing here, you got that? If you ever want to make the starting team, you’re going to have to practice day and night for the next two years straight. You’ll never get to be Kinjou’s assist again, not at Yonan.”

Imaizumi swallows, squares his chin, and levels an infuriatingly cool and collected stare at Arakita. “I’m at least as good as you are, Arakita-san,” he replies coldly, “or did you choose to forget about that already?”

He attempts to sidestep out from under him, but Arakita slams one hand into the lockers to trap him and takes another step closer, bracing his other forearm tight across the arches of Imaizumi’s collarbones and the base of his throat. “You’ll never be as good as me, you fucking brat,” he sneers, dialing up the pressure enough that he feels the erratic flutter of Imaizumi’s pulse prickling on his skin, his nose filling with the scent of caught prey. “You might beat me in a sprint every once in a while, but when it comes down to it, the only one—”

With a low hiss, Imaizumi bucks under the bar of his arm and reaches out, his fingers catching in the partially unzipped front of Arakita’s jersey, knuckles indenting the skin of his sweat-damp chest. “All you are—” Imaizumi says hotly, trying not to choke, but his hands are trembling and his eyes are as intense as they are in the midst of a battle on the roads, telegraphing fear and fury in spades into all of Arakita’s wide-open senses that are all too eager to lap it all up.

“Don’t try me, Imaizumi,” Arakita roars, his blood singing in his veins with the excitement of an impending fight, and without thinking he reels one arm back, fist clenched to strike Imaizumi across the face.

Then Imaizumi suddenly flushes, and in the next instant, something about his scent completely changes, freezing Arakita’s body in place and making every hair on his arms stand on end.

Imaizumi cringes, oddly shame-faced, and shuffles awkwardly on his feet, hands falling away from Arakita’s chest and creeping back towards his body. Arakita glances downward. Imaizumi is visibly hardening under his towel, tenting it awkwardly outward, and his breathing has gone completely ragged, as if he’d just gotten off his bike rather that out of the shower. He’s fucking aroused.

The rage peters out of Arakita, now replaced with bewildered amusement. He laughs disbelievingly and takes a half-step back to take in Imaizumi’s glowing shame and the way he tries to cover himself up over his scandalously short towel. “Now look at you, Mr. Prim and Proper, getting turned on by something like this? Just what are you into, huh?”

Making sure to maintain steady eye contact, Arakita leans back in again until their noses are nearly brushing, prompting Imaizumi to shrink back against the lockers. He grins pointily as he reaches down and abruptly grips Imaizumi with an ungentle hand, and whatever protest might have been trying to make its way out of those pouty lips gets swallowed up with a choked-off wheeze. “A-Arakita-san,” Imaizumi stammers angrily, but his voice is already waning, and his hands flutter upward, passing uselessly over Arakita’s shoulders and alternating between squeezing and pushing weakly at him as Arakita roughly palms him through the coarseness of the towel.

When Imaizumi turns his head away, eyes snapped shut and blush coloring his cheeks, Arakita dives in headlong, pressing his nose into the curve of Imaizumi’s neck and inhaling deeply. He smells clean and fresh and also blisteringly hot, and Arakita growls into reddened skin, the rasp of his chapped lips over pale, unmarred skin sending a trill of goosebumps flying over Imaizumi’s body.

“Arakita-san,” Imaizumi breathes right into his ear, his voice shaking as his hips stutter forward shamefully into Arakita’s hand, and whatever remaining fragments of Arakita’s sense snap completely. The sound he makes when Arakita’s teeth sink into his skin make his blood boil and curl, and with every whimper that escapes Imaizumi’s throat, the tighter the cling of his shorts feel around his crotch.

He jerks Imaizumi’s cock one last time and then quickly draws away, tugging him along to the bench next to the lockers, where Arakita sits down heavily and shoves Imaizumi to the ground in front of him. Gripping the back of it, he extends one foot slightly, just enough that it teasingly grazes the front of Imaizumi’s bulge. Imaizumi gasps softly and grabs at Arakita’s leg, holding it in place as if he’s uncertain whether he wants Arakita to stop or to continue.

“See what being a goody-goody does for you, Imaizumi-chan?” Arakita scoffs, circling the rounded toe of his cleat over the tip of Imaizumi’s trembling cock, and he laughs at the way Imaizumi glares up at him as he bites his lower lip. “Maybe if you weren’t so—”

Imaizumi’s hands dart upward and hook into the waistband of Arakita’s shorts, and he’s tugged them down far enough to expose a little bit beyond the jut of Arakita’s hipbones before Arakita manages to grab him by the wrists. “Let me,” Imaizumi demands shakily, sliding one hand down to cup the hot bulge of Arakita’s dick still trapped underneath the spandex. He raises himself up onto his knees, and his breath rushes over the bare skin of Arakita’s stomach as he begins slowly, “I want to...”

Arakita’s shorts continue to inch downwards, and when Imaizumi’s prying fingers reveal the very top of the naked curve of a cock, Imaizumi swallows audibly. Arakita huffs and licks his lips in anticipation, nudging the bend of Imaizumi’s dick with the point of his cleat. “You want to what, huh?”

Imaizumi glances sharply at him from under his lashes, his mouth closer to a pout than a frown as he pulls insistently at Arakita’s shorts until his dick slips free and springs towards his belly. Keeping one hand steady on the inside of Arakita’s thigh, he brings the other to the base of his member, skating his fingertips tentatively over the skin. Arakita watches with narrowed eyes as Imaizumi sucks his lower lip under the edge of his teeth, reddening his mouth prettily before he brings it dangerously close to the tip of Arakita’s cock. “I want,” he says firmly, the heat of his words sending a jolt through Arakita’s body, “to suck you off.”

It takes a moment for Arakita to ensure that he retains some semblance of composure before he replies with only a hint of his previous smugness and the faintest edge of shakiness, “Well, get to it then like a good boy.”

The scowl Imaizumi gives him would have made him laugh had he not immediately proceeded to slot Arakita’s dick between his lips, giving the head a good long suck with the flat of his tongue before he eases more of his length into his mouth. Imaizumi moves carefully, being mindful of his teeth as he takes in Arakita’s cock until it hits the top of his throat, and the first slow, deliberate swallow around its girth makes Arakita bite back a soft moan. Shit, Arakita thinks, this must not be his first time doing something like this, and he has to struggle to keep his breathing even and deliberate while Imaizumi’s tongue meanders down the length of him along the thickness of the vein.

As Imaizumi draws off, letting the reddened tip of Arakita’s cock slip back out from between the press of his lips, his darkened eyes trail upwards and settle on Arakita’s face, but they seem faraway, hazy and unseeing as he drags his mouth along the underside and down to the crease of his balls. He licks his way back up, squeezing firmly around the base while he flutters the tip of his tongue over the ridge of skin right below and around the head, teasing precome out of the tip until Arakita growls lowly in frustration and tries to rock his hips toward his face.

Steadying the lower half of Arakita’s dick with one hand, Imaizumi opens his mouth wide to take him in again, lips forming a taut ring around its girth as he eases himself down slowly in increments, suctioning firmly with his tongue all the while. The slight, subtle movements he makes with his head seem—and feel—too practiced for that of a total novice, and as Arakita watches Imaizumi moan faintly and reach down to touch himself through his towel, he begins to wonder just how often Imaizumi got up to things like giving other guys spontaneous blowjobs (and if Sohoku was a hotbed for such activity).

When Imaizumi levers himself up a little in order to properly deepthroat him, Arakita chuckles from behind clenched teeth. “You should see yourself,” he pants, threading his fingers through Imaizumi’s damp hair as his mouth descends down the length of his cock. “You look like you’re so into sucking dick, Imaizumi-chan. This is some kind of—guilty little pleasure of yours, isn’t it?”

Imaizumi is unable to answer him directly, but the whimper that vibrates it way down his dick speaks volumes. Arakita’s head tilts back for a second as he tries to catch his breath and tamp down on the warning spike of oncoming orgasm that it lights up in him, and then he continues with more huskiness than before, “God, you’re such a slut—it makes me want to bend you, ah, over my desk, fuck you so hard you’ll feel it for days after...”

He swallows almost instinctually when he catches sight of Imaizumi’s throat clenching with a gulp around his cock, and a muffled sound verging on pain escapes him when Imaizumi sucks at him with even more fervor than before, the velvety smooth heat of his mouth pumping up and down his length in a fast, hard rhythm. “Fuck,” Arakita groans, his voice cracking, “I’ll—Christ—I’ll fill your ass with my come, make you, ngh, leak while you’re—”

When Imaizumi pulls off abruptly, leaving him so close to the edge that the sudden lack of sensation nearly does him in anyway, he almost screams, toes curling tight inside his shoes as his cock strains futilely toward release. Not a second later, though, Imaizumi’s hand wraps around him again, tugging at him quickly while he swipes his tongue across the head, lips hovering just off the reddened tip. Arakita breathes in sharply, groaning gutturally as the heat builds up again, and with only a few more pulls his hips are lifting off the bench, stuttering towards the tantalizing slickness of Imaizumi’s mouth, which opens wider in telling anticipation.

“You want me to come in your mouth, don’t you,” Arakita rasps, nails scratching across Imaizumi’s scalp as he yanks him forward to bridge the last bit of space still between them and holds him down over his cock. Imaizumi’s fingertips sink a little deeper into Arakita’s thighs, but he doesn’t fight him, instead smoothly taking him in and bobbing up and down on his dick as much as he can. Arakita can feel how far back Imaizumi has him, knows the head of his prick is grinding into the curve of his throat, and laughs breathlessly when Imaizumi glances up at him with lidded, watery eyes. He tells him, “You’re gonna be a good boy and swallow my entire load down, Imaizumi-chan,” and Imaizumi shudders and moans as much as he is able around the cock taking up his entire mouth.

Tugging hard one last time at Imaizumi’s hair, he jerks hard against the smooth heat of his mouth as his orgasm finally crests, a wordless noise escaping him as his cock throbs painfully in the tight slickness of the throat dutifully gulping down his release. Imaizumi makes soft, muffled sounds around him that verge on fretful by the time Arakita finally releases his hold on him, and he sits back with a loud inhale, red-faced and gasping for air. The tears that had been beading at the corners of his eyes are now sliding down his face, and his chin and lips are coated with spit that Imaizumi ruefully wipes away with the back of his hand, but there isn’t a drop of come anywhere to be seen.

Not bad, Arakita thinks, breathing hard over the pounding of his heart.

“Come on,” Arakita pants roughly, reaching down to haul Imaizumi up onto his lap, yanking away the flimsy barrier of the towel as he fumbles his way over the juts of Arakita’s sharp knees. Imaizumi whimpers softly when fingers wrap tight around his prick, and Arakita grins toothily, taking a breath and leaning in close to drag his tongue over the curve of a collarbone. “How much more have you got left in you?” he asks hoarsely, sliding his other hand around Imaizumi’s hip to squeeze at his ass.

Imaizumi’s expression is half pain and half arousal as he squirms over Arakita’s thighs, his bare white skin catching on the material of his racing shorts. “A-Arakita-san,” he gasps, trying to lift his hips up into the clench of the gloved hand around his leaking cock, but he only comes dangerously close to tipping over and has to hook his arms around Arakita’s shoulders for balance. He trembles violently and nearly chokes when Arakita grinds the pad of his thumb into the slippery pink head. “Ah, please—”

“You can say please like a nice boy all you want,” Arakita croons, letting Imaizumi arch prettily away from him so he can sink his teeth next into the soft point of a nipple, which makes Imaizumi writhe violently. He feels nails clawing over the back of his jersey and snickers, taking his time in dragging it over the length of his tongue before biting down hard on it again, and this time he can feel the faintest sting of pain where Imaizumi’s hands tear at the muscle of his shoulders. He drawls chidingly into the bud of flesh, “But if you want something, you should just take it.”

Above him, Imaizumi sucks in a loud breath. Arakita’s still grinning around his mouthful of skin when Imaizumi tugs at his hair, and he’s about to snap at him for getting handsy when Imaizumi’s mouth falls gracelessly on his. Their teeth click at first, and Arakita hisses, trying to tilt himself away, but Imaizumi chases him doggedly. The second time he’s more careful, and Arakita grudgingly opens his mouth and allows Imaizumi’s tongue to slide in slickly against his.

The taste of his own dick in his mouth becomes a little more tolerable when Imaizumi whines at what Arakita does with his hand, dragging it up and down his shaft and over the dripping slit before dropping lower to squeeze his balls. Imaizumi’s lips begin to slow, and more and more soft moans escape him as Arakita uses the slipperiness of his precome to pull and tug at him faster and harder from root to tip.

The fingers knotted up in his hair loosen, and soon they’re resting on the nape of his neck while Imaizumi’s lips migrate upwards, pressing themselves into the hair at Arakita’s temple. Imaizumi’s thighs shift on the bench on either side of Arakita’s, tensing with contraction to raise himself up slightly onto his knees, and once he secures his balance he starts to rock his hips forward and up, jutting his cock awkwardly out of time with Arakita’s hand.

Arakita peers up at him through his lashes and whistles lowly as he adjusts his hand to accommodate Imaizumi’s new angle. “Well, look at you, you little goody-goody, taking some initiative for once.”

It appears difficult for Imaizumi to glare for more than a few seconds at a time, and Arakita snorts at him. Imaizumi curls forward to brace his forearms on Arakita’s shoulders, which inadvertently puts Arakita close to his neck—so Arakita takes the opportunity that has presented itself to him and nips him once around the hollow of his throat. Imaizumi’s breath and body both stutter at that, so he does it again, more firmly, and this time Imaizumi practically mewls for it. He bites into the pale skin without holding back, scraping the edge of his teeth roughly along the surface and sucking deep enough to bruise, and along with the steady piston of his hand around Imaizumi’s dick, he flicks a teasing fingertip with his other hand around the rim of his hole. It quivers at the touch, and Imaizumi shakes all over, jumbled pleas falling from his lips with increasing volume and desperation.

He can feel Imaizumi winding up like a spring against him and squeezes his cock tighter as Imaizumi’s hips snap faster and faster, the wet, vulgar slap of their skin growing ever louder in the silence of the room. Imaizumi throws his head back and sobs out over the rhythmic squeak of the bench, “I’m—gonna—”

He buries himself into Arakita’s fist one last time before his body goes rigid, abdominal muscles rippling as the first pulse of orgasm crashes over him. With the first jolt of come he teeters backward, hands and arms crashing noisily into the lockers behind him, and Arakita only barely manages to hang onto him while still pumping hard and fast at his cock while it spills in impressively thick bursts over his hand and stomach. Imaizumi comes messily with a loud, warbling cry, and by the time he is reduced to weak trembling and shivering pants once the last of it has passed, there are long streaks of white all over both of them as high as their chests.

Arakita surveys the damage done and frowns grimly at Imaizumi, who remains contorted awkwardly against the lockers with one arm bent over his face. “When was the last time you jerked off? Like a month ago?”

Imaizumi makes a pained sound and slowly straightens himself back up, but not a second later he crumples back down heavily onto Arakita’s shoulder with a hiss and a swear. “Just... Just yesterday, actually,” he admits at length, breathing hard into the shell of Arakita’s ear.

“Christ,” Arakita mutters, rubbing his come-coated fingertips together with a grimace. “Just what do they put in the water over in Sohoku?” His fried brain tiredly offers up the mental image of Kinjou whacking it with one hand and keeping a detailed observation log with the other, and with a scowl he heaves both of them up onto their feet, tucking an arm around Imaizumi to keep him from sagging down onto the floor. “Back into the showers we go,” he announces, dragging them away without giving Imaizumi any chance to protest.

He washes up quickly, because now that this has sufficiently worked itself out of his system, he has to return to real life, which involves essays and lab notes due the next day, and he leaves the clubroom before Imaizumi does. Upon return to his apartment, he gets pounced on by Machimiya, who demands his help in completing their literature assignment, which only leads to them whining together about the humanities for the better part of the afternoon until Kinjou swoops in to make them do actual work.

If Kinjou notices that Arakita can’t quite look him in the eye (because he fucked the kid who used to and probably still kisses the ground he walks on in their locker room only a few hours ago), he’s decent enough to not mention it in front of Miya.

The following day brings practice as usual, and he takes care not to let his gaze linger on Imaizumi, who wears an out-of-season jersey with a high funnel neck as he speaks demurely with Kinjou and the other upperclassmen. Arakita banters back and forth with his teammates as normal, but he refrains from picking on Imaizumi as much as he would on any other given day. It’s easy enough to behave like nothing has happened, at least until he finds his eyes and mind wandering during the post-practice meeting to the bench on the right side of the changing area, where just the day before (not 24 hours ago), his dick had been down Imaizumi’s throat and he’d had Imaizumi naked and begging on his lap to let him come.

He swallows the lump down in his throat and forces himself to turn away before Imaizumi catches him staring. It was already bad enough that that had to happen here of all places, but he didn’t need the memory coming back to him when his teammates were all around him.

In a corner of the room, Kinjou, Imaizumi, and some of the others are chatting and discussing evening plans, and he takes the opportunity to get the hell out of there before things got any more stiflingly hot under the collar for him. Machimiya catches him at the door. “Not going out to dinner with the others tonight?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at Arakita’s flush.

“I’m broke as shit until you pay me back from the last time, Miya,” Arakita retorts, glaring half-heartedly at him as he swings his leg over his bike. “Besides, I still have reading for chemistry to do. I’m just gonna grab dinner from the conbini.”

“Since when did you read ahead for chemistry?” Machimiya calls after him, sounding disgruntled and unbelieving, but he lets Arakita go.

Arakita gets a bento box from the convenience store, holes himself up in his apartment with his chemistry book open but untouched, and tries not to jerk off. He lasts, somehow, until midnight, at which point he tosses away his textbook and pants and masturbates angrily while imagining with perfect clarity the tight circle of Imaizumi’s lips wrapped around his dick and the noises he made while he sucked marks into his skin.

He falls asleep afterwards, pants and dignity both cast aside, and he’s awoken far too early in the morning by the blare of his phone’s ringtone. “Wh’ the fuck,” he half-growls, half-whimpers into it without even checking who the caller was, grabbing at the blankets to cover the chill of his ass.

“Arakita,” Kinjou answers very calmly, “Did you forget that we have early morning practice today?”

Arakita sucks in a deep breath. “Fuck,” he says very emphatically, and he hangs up on Kinjou telling him that he’ll be waiting at the clubroom with the others.

A few of the other guys are also bleary-eyed when he rolls in ten minutes late, his gear all completely askew and his helmet sitting a little farther back on his head than it should be, but Machimiya bursts out into loud, rattling laughter at the sight of him. “Holy shit, Arakita, did you pull an all-nighter over chemistry?”

He attempts to dismount gracefully but bumps his shoulder into the wall, and he flips Machimiya the bird when his laughing only gets more boisterous. Kinjou approaches him to lend him a hand, not that Arakita will stoop to accepting it when his ass still feels numb and cold from hanging out all of last night, and he’s muttering under his breath about how stupid early morning practices were when Kinjou informs him, “Imaizumi told me you’d probably forget. He said you seemed distracted during yesterday’s team meeting.”

His head swings up a little faster than it should have, and his vision goes momentarily wobbly along with his balance, which totally undermines his reflexive angry sneer. “What’s he being all nice for?” he barks out, and Kinjou shrugs and points a thumb behind him.

Imaizumi sits perched on his bike at the edges of the crowd, earbuds in and neck gaiter pulled high over his chin. He looks unfairly fresh-faced despite the early hour, and the all-black arm and leg sleeves of their team jersey suit him and accentuate all the long, lean lines of his body like they were made with him in mind.

Arakita can only imagine what kind of sour face he’s making when Imaizumi glances up and physically recoils when their eyes meet. Then he frowns primly, pulls the gaiter up even higher over his nose, and stiffly turns away.

“Tch,” Arakita spits, and he’s only too happy when his captain makes him do extra laps for being late. All the better to get all this hot-blooded, pulsing, pounding energy out of him before his day even got started.

Afterwards, he only has time to bike back to his apartment to change and grab his books before he has to rush off to class again, and his day brings about even more bad news in the form of pop quizzes and the return of past assignments, many of which come marked with a sea of red pen.

By the time he drags himself home late in the afternoon, he just wants to lay in his bed and forget everything, perhaps especially what he and Imaizumi did a couple of days ago, because clearly if there were one reason for his entire day being so shitty, it was because of that. If only he hadn’t decided to jump Imaizumi’s bones for being a snotty little brat, even if that had been a pretty damn amazing blowjob that would definitely get him through some lonely nights in the future...

Somebody knocks on his door. Arakita groans and squints at the light coming in through the window; it’s definitely more orangey-purple outside than he remembers it being, and when he glances at his bedside clock he sees it’s already well past seven in the evening. Heaving himself up with the sigh of a much older man, he drags himself to his front door and throws it open with unnecessary force.

Standing there is Imaizumi, dressed in street clothes and his neck gaiter replaced with a linen scarf wound perhaps a few too many times around his neck. “Good evening,” Imaizumi greets him coolly, trying not to appear too taken aback at how violently Arakita treated the door.

Arakita squints at him for a moment and then rubs his face. “Why the hell are you here,” he demands in a groan as he slumps against the doorframe. “‘cause I’ve had a really shitty day, so—”

“I was,” Imaizumi interrupts sharply, and when Arakita glares at him he hesitates before continuing, “thinking about... what you said the other day.”

Rolling his eyes, Arakita makes a weak attempt to stifle a yawn and shrugs one shoulder limply. “What, when I said you need way more practice if you want to even think about making the team in your third year?”

Imaizumi’s eyes narrow, and his lips part, forming the beginnings of something sharp for a brief moment before he catches himself. He shakes his head. “No, I meant... When you said you...”

He pauses, and Arakita notices that he’s steadily getting red from the neck up all the way to his ears, and his hands are starting to get fidgety, alternating from being in his pockets to being crossed over his chest. He raises an eyebrow and waits for Imaizumi to get himself together.

“Wanted to...” Imaizumi’s voice is getting smaller and more stilted with every syllable, and his knuckles are practically white against the sleeves of his shirt. “...bend me over your desk... and fuck me.”

Arakita stares blankly. He’s not sure he heard right. Imaizumi refuses to look away, even though he’s glowing enough of a bright red to light up a lantern in front of a cheap pub and probably wants to pitch himself over the third story railing after voicing that kind of dirty confession out loud and in the open.

“Okay,” Arakita says, blinking and hardly moving from his lean against the doorframe, “sure. But you’re buying me dinner first.”

Imaizumi relaxes only fractionally. “Dinner?”

“Yeah, and I don’t mean metaphorically. I’m starving,” Arakita replies while already turning around to gather up his phone, wallet, and keys from his desk. “If you really want me to fuck you over my desk or whatever, I’m going to need to get some energy in me first.”

He feels moderately better with some hot food in his stomach and watching Imaizumi descend into deeper levels of fluttery embarrassment with every passing minute, and he nearly gives the kid a heart attack when he veers off the street and into a pharmacy on the walk back to his apartment. Arakita straightens up from the condom section and shouts very loudly and clearly to Imaizumi, still hovering nervously at the entrance, “What, you want to bareback on the first time?”

The way Imaizumi goes at least three different colors all at once is both mesmerizing as well as heinously amusing, and Arakita cackles all the way back and all through getting the both of them undressed, only stopping when Imaizumi, respectable young man that he is, goes down on him again with the sole intent of shutting him up.

And for the record, they do use a condom (or a few), because good boys practice safe sex and all that.