Work Text:
6-21-15
Prompt: The Selfie Game
Pairing: n/a
Rating:
It started out innocently enough. Ai was out of town for a week, visiting his grandparents in Hokkaido, and he had left Minami in charge of the swim team’s website.
“Don’t do anything fancy,” he had warned. “I’m not going to be gone long, so all you have to do is monitor the comment board. Make sure no one’s posting anything with profanity or explicit content, or the school will shut us down. If anyone has any questions, either answer them or ask Rin-senpai. And whatever you do,” here he had adopted the stern Captain Face he had inherited from both Rin and Captain Mikoshiba, “do not make any changes to the layout. It took me three months to fix it after Kenji-senpai mucked it up last year.” Minami had sent him off with a salute and enough ‘don’t worry’s to placate him, and life in the Samezuka dorms had gone on its merry way.
That is, until the first selfie appeared.
There was an unspoken rule among the swimmers of Samezuka that what happened on Snapchat stayed on Snapchat. It was well known that everyone had dirt on someone, and that Ai had dirt on everyone. So when the slideshow on the swim team homepage flashed up on of Rin’s legendary ugly sobbing selfies, all hell broke loose.
“Ai, I want you to destroy them,” was all Rin said when Ai got back from his trip. It wasn’t until Sousuke showed him the page later in explanation that Ai even knew who he was meant to destroy. He gave a thoughtful hum and meandered out of Sousuke’s dorm, down the hall to room 215, and into Minami and Uozumi’s.
“Uh,” Uozumi said intelligently when he looked up to see the tiny captain standing in his doorway, “it was Minami.” Ai smiled sweetly at him, and he bolted. Minami turned slowly in his desk chair to face the door.
“Listen, Buchou-“
“I just hope you understand what you’ve started,” Ai cooed. Minami’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Ai let out a light chuckle and flounced out the door.
Two weeks later there were few survivors. Minami was the first victim, earning his own page on the website for 36 hours, filled with action shots of him eating, sneezing, and two of him slipping in the locker room. When Uozumi retaliated with a candid photo of Ai and Momo, snoring and drooling in a tangled heap on the floor of the library, Ai took him out with a screenshot of their conversation about Uozumi’s crush on Yamada-sensei, emailed to the entire team.
By then, everyone wanted in on the action. Anonymous posters were leaving images in the comment forum, or else they were emailing them to Ai for publication.
“Duckling, this needs to stop,” Sousuke said one day as he thumbed through the team’s group chat. Ai looked up at him, his big blue eyes filled with boredom.
“If I could actually stop it, I would have by now,” he grumbled, holding up his phone. There was a stream of pictures on it, all of Momo in increasingly ridiculous poses. “He’s sending me these himself,” he groaned. Sousuke winced in empathy. “The only one who no one’s managed to take down is you, Yamazaki-senpai,” he said.
“And they never will,” Sousuke agreed. “I’ve known Rin all my life. I had to learn early on to be careful when there’s a camera around. Ai grunted in acknowledgement and turned back to his phone.
“You know,” he said slowly, “if someone were to find a bad picture of you, it would probably put this whole thing to rest.”
“I don’t like that face,” Sousuke said, leaning away from Ai’s suddenly intent expression.
CAPTAIN DUCK: [yamazaki-senpais_first_crush.jpg]
YMZK: [how could you]
YMZK: [we agreed never to speak of this]
YMZK: [why do you even have that picture]
SHARK-BUCHOU: [ Oh my god, Ai, where did you FIND that?!]
OTTERLY INSANE: [Aisenpai thats so funny!!1!!!]
CAPTAIN DUCK: [My lips are sealed.]
MINAMIIIIIIIIIIIIIII: [Alright, buchou. You win.]
YMZK: [I hate you Ai.]
Ai leaned back on his bed, his arms crossed behind his head. The team’s antics could be fun, but it was always good to remind them who was really in charge here.