Ryoma never has trouble sleeping, but waking is a different matter. His first day at Seigaku High, he surfaces slowly and unwillingly from dreams he can't quite remember, stumbling through the usual morning routine as though sleepwalking. He almost topples off Momo-senpai's bike at a stop light, too absorbed in blurry, sleep-fogged memory to pay much attention to his surroundings. Even the scolding Momoshiro gives him doesn't really seem to wake him up.
Ryoma wanders through the school day wrapped up in vague and hazy recollections of dream. Phantom fingers thread through his hair, and the ghost of a smile haunts his mind, wrapped in hazel eyes gilded by the sheen of sunlight over glass. Stepping onto the tennis courts after lessons feels like the double kick of sugar and caffeine entering his bloodstream, sudden awareness running through his system like a shock. All his senpai are grinning, and Tezuka-buchou looks satisfied as he nods.
"Welcome back, Echizen."
Ryoma looks up at him, and his eyes widen despite himself as he realises that there are only five or six inches between them, now. He has grown tall enough that he would only need to tiptoe to�
The dream crashes back to him then, and Ryoma can feel the betraying blush heating his cheekbones. It's just luck that most of his senpai seem to take it as a sign that he is glad to be back with the team, or embarrassed about his new height. He doesn't know how Tezuka-buchou interprets it, because he hides his face beneath the brim of his cap for the rest of the practice, refusing to look up.
That night, he dreams that Inui-senpai is chasing him around the National Stadium with a crate of milk bottles, shouting that Ryoma must become a giant so that he will have a 98% chance of taking the Grand Slam as well. The milk bottles all carry labels showing pictures of Tezuka-buchou's face, and Ryoma wakes gasping for breath when Inui-senpai backs him into the service box on-court.
The second day, he finds himself zoning out repeatedly, not just in English class but at practice as well. Tezuka-buchou frowns at him when he misses the target cone twice in a row, and orders laps for inattention; Ryoma can feel his skin heating as their eyes meet, a thousand spots of prickling warmth devouring him from within. He runs willingly, pushing his legs faster, stronger, and gets so lost in the rhythms of his own body that Inui-senpai's voice from the other side of the fence makes him misstep and almost careen into the clubhouse wall.
After club, Ryoma belatedly remembers the can of Ponta that's been sitting in his racquet bag since lunch; it's unpleasantly warm now, and doesn't taste of much besides sugar, but it fizzes all the way down his throat and he gulps it thirstily. He's licking the last of the sweetness from his lips when Tezuka-buchou walks past on the way to the showers; the sudden tugging feeling in his stomach makes him wonder whether there are Zones that don't need racquets.
His dreams that night are so filled with sensation that he retains only a few jumbled images, but Ryoma knows whose mouth is on his, demanding, whose body is warm and heavy over his, pressing him down into softness and gasps. Familiar hands move over his skin in unfamiliar patterns; he clutches greedily at shoulders and back, tangles fingers in hair and opens his mouth to let himself drown.
In the morning, Ryoma is entirely unsurprised to discover that he needs to change the sheets again, and thinks more about concealing that fact from his father's teasing than about the dream. It comes back with a rush when he steps into the clubroom for morning practice and meets Tezuka-buchou's eyes over an outstretched racquet.
"Play better today, Echizen," is all he says, but his eyes are intense enough that Ryoma feels the blush starting again, like Ponta bubbles under his skin. The words to answer that stick in his throat, and so he expends his energy in fierce concentration, driving balls at one spot on the clubhouse wall until Ryuzaki-sensei comes out of the office and yells at him for interrupting her work.
Somewhere in the middle of a convoluted English-class explanation of grammar rules long since ingrained into reflex, Ryoma nods off into a comfortable doze, catnapping in a patch of spring sunlight refracted into rainbows by a crooked windowpane. He wakes with a start as the bell rings, sharp and shrill and clear, and tries to cling onto fragments of dream that drain away before he can grasp them. All he's left with is a single image, soft and edge-blurred, of a smile that no one else can see.
That afternoon at club, Ryoma marches across the court to Tezuka-buchou and gazes up across the narrowing gap between them for a moment before nodding decisively.
"Play a match with me, buchou."