Title: Insecurity

By: ExquisitelyInked

Summary: Because not crying is always worse than crying. Atobe's insecurity destroys Ryoma. Fuji gets protective of Ryoma, Tezuka puts aside his morals, and it's left to Atobe to clean up his mess.

Rated: T

Disclaimer: I don't own it, really, believe me. (I know you do.)

A/N: I'm sorry, Atobe's a jerk in this one. But happy ending banzai? (hopeful)

A/N pt 2: Forgive this angst! Listen to "Miserable At Best" by Mayday Parade while reading this and sob into your hand (or not). The emotions showing through in this fic (jealousy, cruelty, pain) are hopefully actually showing through. Please review if you felt that this fic was worth your time.

Atobe has never been really good at being cruel. But he is, in the last fight he and Ryoma have. Ryoma has always put up a good show of not giving a damn about anybody. But he does in the last fight he and Atobe have.

"You know," Atobe says to Ryoma after the waiter takes their orders and floats away, "if you just wanted to fuck a national-level all-rounder you could've gone to your Buchou." He takes the rose out from the small vase on the table and starts playing with it. Ryoma stiffens. "If you wanted to bring me to a high-class restaurant to tell me that, Keigo, I'd have told you not to waste the money."

"Oh, of course. Your captain is an average middle-class boy. I'm rich royalty. I suppose that's one of the the factors you pretended to fall in love with me, ahn?"

Ryoma doesn't bother replying, used to it. Used to the taunts and jibes and doubting and the all-pervading jealousy.

"Do you even love me?"

"What do you think, Keigo?" Ryoma meets Keigo's stare with an icy gaze, refusing to back down, because that ice is all that's left, all that's remaining as a barrier between Atobe and the brokenness that he was inside. "I think you don't. I'm just a replacement for your Buchou. How's he doing?"

"You can very well ask him yourself, I don't give a damn anymore."

"Oh, so that's why you say his name in your sleep."

Ryoma knows for a fact he doesn't say anything in his sleep, because he doesn't sleep anymore. He doesn't bother telling Keigo that.

"Okay, that was a lie," Keigo admits, pulling a petal off the rose. "Loves me?"

"Loves me not," Ryoma said, as Keigo pulls off another.

"You love me."

"You don't."

"I'm not the one who should be doubted in this relationship, Ryoma." Atobe smiles at the waiter who comes to replace the rose with another.

"Why am I, then?" Frankly, Ryoma's just tired of dealing with this mentally abusive crap every day. But until that night, until the food comes, not once did he think of getting away. Atobe steals a glance at him-"Glad to see you can look away from the rose," Ryoma says bitterly-and replies, "You kissed him."

Ryoma says, "I wanted to see if you could do something about it."

"What the hell?"

"I cheated because you didn't care."

Atobe falls back in shock. "When the fuck did I stop caring?"

"The day before I kissed Buchou."

"You're fucking stupid."

"You're no less." Ryoma accepts the plate of-he doesn't know what, it's something Italian, anyway-from the waiter and starts eating. Atobe does the same. They eat in silence for a while.

"In the year we've been together, you never told me you love me," Keigo ventures. Ryoma looks up from the food. "I thought you were that secure."

"Obviously not," Atobe says, pushing the food around on his plate. "Manners," Ryoma says sarcastically, wanting Atobe to rise to the bait, because no matter how much he was tired, messed up, broken because of the insecurity of his lover, he called him lover for a reason.

"Sorry," Atobe sighs, and gets up. "I paid for it already, okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"We're over, Ryoma," Atobe says. "I can't handle all this jealousy, and I can't be with you anymore, I'm not going to force you to be with me anymore. I'm done with you. I'll get going, now. There's a limo waiting outside for when you want to go home. Goodbye."

Ryoma doesn't say anything. It's like all his strength drained out of him with every word Atobe said, and all the ice in him melted and Ryoma's gone, just gone-

Atobe walks away. Ryoma waits five minutes before leaving the restaurant as well.

Not crying is always worse than crying.

Momoshiro, for all of the dumbass that he shows himself to be, can be very observant and kind when he wants to be. Ryoma doesn't talk to anybody even when he's normal, but throughout practice, it's like Ryoma's just spaced out. The same tennis, the same services, the same shots, but Momo, for the love of him, can't see the heart in them.

"Is there something wrong, kouhai?"

"Nah," Ryoma says. "Broke up with Atobe yesterday, 'sall."

"You don't look too... 'broken up' about it," Momo jokes, hoping Ryoma really isn't, but he knows innately that he's wrong. Ryoma looks up at Momo and gives him the cocky smirk he wants. "True, that, ne," he says, and walks over to the locker rooms to change.

Momo's not too happy about it, because that cocky grin is Ryoma's personal fanservice.

Tezuka enters the locker rooms and heads to his locker, turning the dial on the lock. He thinks practice was satisfactory today. Being the last one to come in to the locker room, he thinks he's all alone because everyone else has gone until a pair of very wet arms wrap around him, soaking his tennis shirt more than it already is, and a dripping head rests itself against his back. "Buchou," someone whispers, and Tezuka realizes it's Ryoma who came out from the shower.

"Buchou," Ryoma repeats, and Tezuka turns around after Ryoma loosens his arms.

"What's wrong? You shouldn't touch your captain like this, Echizen-kun," Tezuka says gently.

"Keigo broke up with me," Echizen breathes, and Tezuka stills, pushing back all the reproaches he had prepared about Echizen's inappropriate behavior. "Why?" he asks.

"He knew we kissed." Echizen's arms tighten again, and now his wet head is resting against Tezuka's chest. Tezuka realizes there's only a towel to cover Ryoma waist-downwards. He looks toward the glass windows-they're closed, but the curtains are open. Anybody could see them like this. "Didn't you tell him why you kissed me?" Tezuka hadn't kissed back. We kissed was the wrong thing to say.

"He thought I didn't love him. He said it before I did."

"But you do. Didn't you tell him?" Tezuka steers Ryoma into the showers, where talking was more private, away from any eyes that could've seen the compromising position captain and teammate were in.

"I tried, but he left before I could get up," Ryoma says, and Tezuka understands what Ryoma means by get up.

"You should really release me from your grasp right now, Echizen," Tezuka says, trying to unhook Ryoma's arms from around his waist.

Ryoma lets go-only to push Tezuka up against the wall and then pull him down using his shirt collar and kiss him. Tezuka isn't prepared for this. He's completely useless in times like these, where his first and second kisses have been taken by a broken boy who loves someone who doesn't believe he loves him.

"Buchou," Ryoma gasps, pulling away. "Be mine, Buchou." He starts to kiss Tezuka again, and Tezuka decides to stop fighting, just because he believes Ryoma would heal because of this. He kisses back, and in a bold move, pulls off Ryoma's towel and lets Ryoma take off his shirt and shorts and glasses and just submits in the hope that Ryoma heals.

He doesn't, because Tezuka can distinctly hear Keigo Keigo Keigo as he holds the boy close to him and tries to kiss his wounds closed. He waits for Ryoma's tears to come, waits for him to cry, but Ryoma doesn't, and Tezuka doesn't like the look in Ryoma's eyes, the blank, empty one where Ryoma isn't aware of what he's doing anymore.

Atobe knows he's an idiot.

Fuji Syuusuke of Seigaku deigns to tell him thrice more. "What sort of inhuman asshole are you fucking aspiring to be?" he says evenly, and you know, it's the first time Atobe's seen him with his eyes open. They're blue. Cerulean. His mother also has blue eyes. Atobe doesn't call a spade a spade, he calls it a shovel, and mostly beats about the bush before somebody drives to the point.

"You know, he finally got down to fucking the national-level all-rounder captain of ours, like you wanted so dearly," Fuji says, in that same balanced tone of voice. Atobe freezes. Ryoma? "Oh, and he said your name throughout all of it," Fuji sneers. "Is that what you wanted to break him down to, Atobe? Congratulations, you did a pretty good job of it."

Atobe can't move. He doesn't know what to make of this. Fuji, who knows he hit a sore spot, goes for it again. "He loved you."

"He didn't," Atobe whispers. "He never loved me." Fuji really wants to punch this guy into the ground. The denseness of this guy makes him want to fucking-

"Do you love beating yourself up that much? Do you love being miserable like this? Calling yourself a victim of love? Are you a fucking masochist?" Fuji snarls, and Atobe can see Seigaku's resident tensai is currently furious. "I am not going to tell you exactly just how much he loved you, Atobe, because if you didn't already know after one year with him that you were all he wanted in life, you don't really deserve to know after all. You know, he isn't even crying about it," Fuji says, in a final, concluding, all-ending voice.

As he walks away from a mute Atobe, he says to himself, "You'd better make things right again."

Ryoma's phone rings. Ryoma accepts the call and hangs up immediately. Shuts the phone down.

A knock on his door. "Brat, come out and play tennis with me." His father. Ryoma grabs a racket and says, "Coming, old man," and ignores the swearing he gets in return.

He plays a good match. But Nanjiroh is about a thousand times as observant as Momoshiro and before the first game goes to either of them he jumps over the net and grabs his son in a tight hug. "What's wrong, brat?" he asks. Ryoma's shaking in his arms, but Nanjiroh can't feel the wetness, and he pulls away a little to see his son's face. He doesn't see tears but the look in Ryoma's eyes will haunt him for a long time.

Atobe rings the bell of the Echizen household. He hears the rough voice of Ryoma's father call out, "Oi, brat, go answer the door!"

"Shut up, old man, I'm going," Ryoma's voice, which he hasn't heard in two months. He closes his eyes as the pain of being away from Ryoma washes over him. Contrary to Fuji's words, he wasn't actually a masochist. Maybe an inhuman asshole, but not a masochist.

The door opens. Ryoma takes one look at the visitor and slams the door shut. Atobe stands there, not knowing what to do, when the door opens again. "What do you want?" Ryoma asks, in the same even tone which Fuji had used a while back.

"I know I'm insecure, and can go to any length to find out if you really are mine, and I keep doubting you and suffocating you and not believing in you, but all the same, I love you," Atobe says.

"What makes you think I give a damn anymore?" Ryoma's eyes are curiously blank.

"You opened the door again," Atobe says.

Ryoma doesn't say anything, except, "I fucked Buchou." Atobe replies, "I practically goaded you into it."

"But you have a problem with me just kissing him."

"I had simply thought there was a meaning to that kiss, not realizing it was merely to make me jealous."

"What the hell makes you think there wasn't any meaning to me giving myself up to Buchou?" Ryoma isn't angry, but he's a very good actor when he wants to be.

"You said my name," Atobe whispers. All the tension in the air disappears as Ryoma takes a step toward Atobe, and then another, and then another. "You said my name." As their eyes meet, Atobe notices the emptiness in Ryoma's eyes fade away to... agony. Ryoma puts his arms around Atobe.

"Keigo," Ryoma says, and finally lets the tears fall.

Atobe finally understands the true gravity of his actions. Ryoma had never undergone emotional pain of the sort Atobe had forced upon him. He should have cried, he should have wept, but he didn't.

Ryoma had just been in pure and complete shock this whole time.

The guilt wracked Atobe as he held Ryoma. He would make it up to him.

"Don't leave me again," Ryoma said. "I won't be able to handle it if you left again."

Atobe just holds him closer and promises never to. He lets Ryoma cry, and, ironically, feels like everything is finally right in his world.