Falling
by Alexis (Lexarose)

Pairing: Oishi/Eiji
Rating: PG
Warnings: sap, angst
Summary: Oishi wakes up to an empty bed and goes off to find his husband. Eiji proceeds to tell him about the dream he had.
Disclaimer: If I owned Prince of Tennis, all the boys would be paired with each other, so that’s why I write fanfiction.
Notes: Yet another story based off of the GP from [info]college_pot. Takes place 6 years after the RP starts. Wrote this about a month or so ago for the “dream” challenge in [info]tenipuri500, but never posted it. Thanks go out, as always, to mah luffly sis [info]arithion, for beta-ing and thinking up the title. Crossposted to [info]golden_pair, [info]tenipuri_yaoi, and my fic comm, [info]dabbleindrabble.



When he awoke to an empty bed, Oishi didn’t get scared and jump up, although he was surprised. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and probably wouldn’t be the last, although it hadn’t occurred in a while. He blamed it on the season, blamed it on what they had done the previous day, bringing back memories best left alone.

Quietly, he slipped from the bed they had shared for the past two years, ever since getting their Bachelors degrees and deciding to get a place of their own. They had gotten a small apartment together down in the Village, close enough to school that it wasn’t a hassle to get to, but far enough to get away from the stresses of their graduate studies, he in medical school, and Eiji in the veterinary program.

Slipping on his robe and belting it, Oishi made his way to the living room, padding along silently on bare feet. There, exactly where he knew he’d be, was Eiji. He was sitting on the window seat, legs drawn up to his chest, staring blankly at the Manhattan streets, still busy even at three in the morning. 

As he drew closer, he could see the slight trembling that Eiji was trying to hold back, the dried tears on his cheeks, and Oishi knew that this time was much worse than any of the other nightmares he had been witness to over the years. It hadn’t been wise for him to let Eiji talk him into going to see the gymnastics competition live, but he couldn’t say no when those blue eyes were turned towards him.

When they found out the 2012 Summer Olympics were going to be in New York, he had seriously debated taking Eiji back to Japan for the duration, and now he was certain that that was what he should have done.

Standing beside his husband, Oishi only needed to place a light hand on Eiji’s shoulder before he scooted forward, allowing Oishi to settle himself behind the redhead, pulling him into his arms. “Talk to me?”

The trembling in Eiji’s frame got worse and Oishi held him tighter, knowing that Eiji needed the reassurance that this was real, that he was here. Pressing light kisses against silky red hair, he waited for the other man to be ready to speak, no matter how long it took.

Finally the words came, barely a whisper at first, and then gaining volume and strength. He spoke of how much he missed gymnastics, missed the feel of swinging on the bar, feeling as though he could just let go and spread his wings and just fly away, never to touch the ground.

He also spoke of his fear of flying; that a bird with a broken wing could only fall. He knew what the ground felt like after falling, that the fall hurts in more ways than one. He spoke of things that had been common knowledge, and of things that even after all these years had been unspoken, taboo. 

He said that when he had his accident, he had bitten through his tongue, and that there was so much blood they couldn’t tell whether or not he was still breathing at first. The next words out of his mouth had Oishi clinging tightly to his husband, and the trembling became his own. They said that had the angle of the fall been different, had Eiji landed in a slightly different way – a fraction of an inch – it was most likely that he would be dead, or at the very least paralyzed.

The fall had resulted in a large tear in the rotator cuff of his right shoulder, along with damage to the other tendons and ligaments in his shoulder and arm. There had been a concussion, fairly bad, though he had only had the one to go by. There were bruised ribs and a whole laundry list of other small things wrong, though he had been lucky. His career was over, but his life wasn’t.

Somewhere in this speech Eiji had turned so that he faced Oishi, arms wrapped around his husband’s waist, face buried in the crook of the taller man’s neck. One hand combed through straight red hair, unflipped and still tousled from sleep, in a soothing gesture. 

Taking a deep breath, Oishi broke his silence. “So you dreamt of your fall? I’m sorry; we shouldn’t have gone yesterday. I should have known this – ” He cut himself off because Eiji had sat up and was shaking his head rather vehemently.

“No, I didn’t dream that I fell...I dreamt that I didn’t fall. I dreamt that I kept going, that I medaled that year, and that I went on with my training, went on competing. I dreamt that I never came to New York, that I never met you, that I never learned how to be happy, what it was like to be loved.”

Crystalline tears clung to Eiji’s lashes, and the trembling in his limbs began anew. Oishi, who had been shocked by his words, immediately drew him close again. He had never thought about what things would have been like had Eiji not been hurt, because Eiji was the one who taught him to not dwell on the things that couldn’t be changed, to appreciate his own uniqueness.

They sat there, each lost in their own whirlwind of thoughts, until Eiji finally broke the silence. “You know, I never thought I’d be able to say this, but I’m glad I fell. Life without gymnastics was hard at first, but a life without you...I don’t even want to think about.”