"The nerve!" Atobe Keigo blustered, waving his hands around. Fortunately his racket was being restrung and thus not in his hand, eliminating the threat of anyone else in the locker room getting nailed with it.

Not that there was anybody else left in the locker room, aside from Shishido Ryou. Shishido was packing his things away in his tennis bag, and doing his best to ignore Atobe entirely.

"The sheer nerve!" Atobe raised his voice since he wasn't getting any response out of his audience. "What on earth would possess that badly-manicured, new money, plebian pinhead to presume that he could tell me what to do?"

"He's the captain?" Shishido offered mildly.

"Which explains quite a bit about this team!" Atobe continued without missing a beat. "Things will be very different when I'm captain, I can promise you that!"

"Different than winning the regional preliminaries in straight sets three years running?" Shishido inquired. "I'll mark it on my calendar. For two years from now. Because you're a first-year, Keigo."

"I fail to see what bearing that has on the situation," Atobe answered stiffly, crossing his arms. "If these morons can't appreciate talent, I'll just…I'll just…"

"You'll just what?" Shishido finally looked up, not bothering to hide his smirk at all.

"I'll quit!" Atobe announced.

In a heartbeat, Shishido was off the bench, smirk gone and jabbing Atobe's chest with a finger.

"Don't you even think about it, you self-serving bastard," he snarled. "You may be harboring delusions of grandeur, but I'm more than a little surprised to be a regular on the high school team, and if I have to be your doubles partner to keep my spot, then that's that!"

Atobe cocked his head, eyeing Shishido carefully. "You used to be quite proud of your singles spot, Ryou. When did you turn into such a poster boy for compromise and cooperation?"

"Maybe you should learn a little something from your kouhai once in a while," Shishido gave Atobe a smug little smile and jabbed him in the chest again. Atobe caught his wrist and squeezed until Shishido's jaw tightened.

"Ah, and how is Ohtori-kun these days? Enjoying life as a third-year?" Atobe asked, all innocence. "Oh, I forgot, you wouldn't know, would you? On a break, aren't you? Pity, but you know, those long-distance relationships…"

"Shut up," Shishido growled, yanking his hand out of Atobe's grip and bending down to grab his bag. "Since all your hot air has dried my hair quite nicely, I'll just be going. See you tomorrow, doubles-kun."

"Nicely is a bit of an overstatement, don't you think?" Atobe called after him, but the only answer Shishido gave was the slam of the door.

Atobe drew his foot back to kick his locker, then thought better of it and turned to kick Shishido's instead.

*****

"Good of you to show," Atobe said mildly the next day at practice as Shishido rushed onto the courts five minutes into warm-ups, earning a glare from the captain.

"Somebody did me the favor of jamming my locker by kicking the door in," Shishido growled back under his breath.

"I'm sure whoever it was is an individual of worth and merit," Atobe continued in the same reasonable tone. "Driven to the end of their rope by the idiotic misuse of his considerable talents and the tyrannical control of misguided and poorly-dressed senpai…"

"That'll be twenty laps then, won't it?" the captain barked from right behind them, and Shishido was well into his second lap before he stopped laughing.

He wasn't laughing near as hard by halfway through their first practice game as a doubles pair.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Shishido snapped as the third ball in a row slammed onto their court and back into the fence behind them.

"That was on your side," Atobe commented, nonchalant, sauntering back to the baseline for his serve.

"That's not how doubles works!" Shishido growled, hunkering down to get ready for the return. "And your service game sucks!"

"Your ass looks like an overripe peach from back here," Atobe shot back, and the other pair scored another easy point while Shishido occupied his dash specialist talents trying to make Atobe eat his racket.

"Do you two want to play tennis or don't you?" the captain growled at them after it was all over. Everyone else was gathered around to witness their humiliation, their stares making the back of Shishido's neck hot. Well, the parts of his neck that weren't already brush-burned from Atobe's designer wristband.

"Yes, captain," they both answered. Beside Shishido, Atobe was practically vibrating with indignation, and Shishido reflected that Atobe's injured pride could almost make anything worth it.

"Tomorrow you're playing doubles one," the captain informed them. "If you lose, you're off the regulars. Clear?"

Shishido swallowed his knee-jerk protest that the doubles one pair had married each other on the playground in the third grade, and given another sharp "Yes, captain!" along with Atobe.

"Well," Atobe said once they were again alone in the locker room, their last batch of laps taking them until it was nearly dark to complete. "What's your genius plan, doubles-kun?"

"Let's get married," Shishido grumbled to the floor as he finished tying his sneaker, and then when Atobe demanded he repeat himself, said that it was nothing.

He straightened up, and they stared at each other for several breaths, long enough that Shishido saw underneath Atobe's scowl that he was finally ready to be serious. Took him long enough.

"Well," Shishido ran fingers through the still-damp spikes of his hair, "there's no way we can learn formations by tomorrow. I think the best we can do is to plan a few tricks, and hope that our lack of practice means that they can't predict what we'll do in any given situation."

Atobe grunted a reluctant agreement. "I've played both of them in singles, so I have some idea of their style."

"I've played them both in doubles," Shishido nodded, "but not as a pair, with other partners. It won't be very helpful."

They both looked grim; finally Atobe sighed.

"Tell your mother you're spending the night at my house," he said, and when Shishido raised his eyebrow, snapped, "Unless you'd rather hang around street courts until midnight?"

Scowling, Shishido pulled out his phone.

*****

"Okay, that's it," Shishido said, holding out a hand. He was bent nearly double, elbows resting on his knees as he gasped for breath, sweat dripping off his face onto the perfectly-even surface of the Atobe family private court.

"Some dash specialist you are," Atobe said, but there was more exhaustion than heat in Atobe's voice, and Shishido saw the tremble in Atobe's muscles as he walked over to Shishido.

"I'll be a nap specialist tomorrow if we don't get some rest." Shishido stood straight, drawing in a slow breath to clear away the touch of dizziness, and stretching his arms up over his head, groaning as his back popped. "It's not getting any better anyway."

He jumped when fingers skimmed over the strip of skin his T-shirt had pulled up to bare.

"We could always try that other thing you suggested," Atobe suggest, and Shishido found Atobe smirking at him. Shishido swallowed as Atobe put the two fingertips that had just stroked Shishido's stomach up to his lips, the tip of his tongue grazing over the salt on his fingers.

The didn't exactly race to Atobe's bedroom, because that wasn't the sort of thing a person did in the Atobe household and there were always servants around to catch you at it, but Shishido's heart was pounding as if they had by the time they stumbled through the door, and then Atobe kicked the door shut and shoved Shishido against it.

Shishido growled and grabbed the front of Atobe's shirt, taking great pleasure in wrinkling it as he yanked Atobe close for a kiss that was all pressure and sharp teeth. He soon let go of the shirt in favor of getting hands on Atobe's ass and pulling his hips forward so that Shishido could grind against his thigh.

In return, Atobe got a hand up to yank Shishido's hair, forcing him into a more convenient position for the kiss. Shishido pulled away, breathing hard, when Atobe's other hand suddenly was between them, curled around Shishido's cock through his exercise shorts.

"Wait, wait," Shishido gasped, shoving Atobe back a couple inches and squeezing his eyes shut. "I need a second."

"Quick as always," Atobe said, squeezing again, and Shishido got hands around his shoulders to dig his thumbs hard into Atobe's collarbones.

"Dash specialist," Shishido reminded, smirking at Atobe's grunt of discomfort, and then pushing him backwards towards the bed. "And your service game still sucks."

"You're just too plebian to appreciate the finer points of my style." Atobe's retort was followed by a yelp of surprise when Shishido hooked his ankle around Atobe's and tripped him over onto the bed.

"I'm seeing your fine point all right," Shishido said, eyeing up the tent in Atobe's practice shorts as he stripped off his T-shirt and dropped it on the ground. He climbed up into Atobe's lap, digging his knees down into Atobe's obscenely expensive comforter so that he could grind down against Atobe's erection. "Any further comments about the shape of my ass?"

"It's proving better than its appearance would suggest," Atobe managed, laughing breathlessly as Shishido gave another snarl and ground down harder. "Any chance we could dispense with the banter and move on?"

"Do let's." Shishido slid back just far enough to push Atobe's shorts out of the way and pulled out his cock, getting a good grip and lightening up his weight so that Atobe was doing most of the work.

In turn, Atobe drew Shishido's cock out of his shorts, but in Shishido's opinion, did not apply himself to the task with as much dedication as the situation warranted.

"God, squeeze harder, you son of a bitch," he growled, making Atobe laugh again.

"It seems to me that you were the one who was worried about coming too early." Atobe's reply got another growl from Shishido.

"Your complete lack of teamwork is the problem, you know," he said, and then knocked Atobe's hand out of the way so that he could wrap his own hand around both of their cocks, stroking them together and getting a strangled groan from Atobe.

Their skin was still overheated from practice and slick with sweat, and it only took Shishido half a dozen strokes done right to get Atobe shuddering under him, fingers digging into Shishido's thighs and for once moving in perfect rhythm with Shishido.

"That's what I'm talking about," Shishido grinned fiercely, then closed his eyes and concentrated on coming himself, bracing himself with a hand twisted in Atobe's T-shirt.

He flopped down next to Atobe afterwards, keeping his eyes shut and taking deep breaths until the room seemed to stop spinning.

Shishido opened his eyes to find Atobe watching him, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "What?"

"Maybe there's something to this doubles-kun thing after all," Atobe admitted, dropping his gaze away to stretch out his limbs.

"Well, that's what I've been saying," Shishido nodded, then took advantage of Atobe's inattention to wipe his hand off on the comforter.

*****

The aching limbs Shishido woke up with the next morning were more than worth the sour look on the captain's face when the Shishido-Atobe pair scraped out a 7-6 win.

"Okay, maybe the fact that the D1 pair had a screaming catfight during morning practice had just a little to do with it," Shishido admitted, but his grin stayed firmly on his face as Atobe slapped an arm around his shoulders and drew him close enough to whisper in his ear.

"I'm sure I have no idea who slipped that scented love note into Minoru-kun's locker this morning," he murmured, getting a bray of laughter out of his brand-new, regulars doubles partner.