Credit to betas burping goddess and hakuryu for their input.

This fic is a little different from my usual brand of crack humor – thought I'd try something new for a bit. Also, Kaidoh needs more love.

6 Times

I

The first time Kaidoh Kaoru realized that Momoshiro Takeshi was his friend, he had indigestion.

The two were at the same table in the school cafeteria, Momo opposite him and waving a sandwich in his face, trying to get his point across and spilling bits of lettuce all over Kaidoh's lunch tray in the process.

Irritably picking out pieces of lettuce that had fluttered into his beef bowl, Kaidoh arranged his face into a scowl as he tried to remember when it had started. As far as he could remember, the Seigaku tennis team never had lunch together, unless it was lunch training, which was another matter entirely (wherein Inui doled out homebrews of his infamous "calorie replacement" diet lunches that soon had the Regulars scattering to their assortment of hiding places whenever he so much as breathed in their general direction. Kaidoh had taken quite well to having his lunch regularly in the broom closet, all things considered).

Fortunately, the graduation of the third-years meant that Kaidoh no longer had to live out his lunch breaks squashed in the broom closet, much to his relief. It was a novel experience, at first, eating lunch so freely in the open without a dustpan handle poking him in uncomfortable places. One thing hadn't changed though – the solitude. Schoolmates tended to avoid him either way (the threatening glares might've been a factor, he reckoned), so there was usually a notable radius of empty seats wherever he was situated in the cafeteria. It was as if he had a "radioactive" sign stamped on his forehead.

All this changed one day when vice-captain Momoshiro Takeshi none-too-graciously plopped down on the seat opposite him with a tray of his own. Kaidoh's death glare didn't seem to faze him in the least.

"'Sup, Mamushi?" he asked through a mouthful of spaghetti.

"You're at my table, asshole," Kaidoh hissed in reply.

Momoshiro brandished a tomato-smeared fork at him, which had Kaidoh reflexively flinching back to avoid being flecked with Bolognese. "Really? I must've missed that. Your name written on it or something?"

Kaidoh was vaguely aware of the sudden flurry of whispering activity around them. "No," he grit out. "But I've been sitting here long enough. Get your own table."

Momoshiro snorted. "What the hell for? Besides, you looked lonely. And it's abnormal to eat lunch alone, you know. It's what future serial killers do."

Kaidoh's mind reeled with possible responses, ranging from lonely my ass to who the hell're you calling abnormal, pineapple head to fuck off and die. "Grugh," was all he managed to articulate.

Taking that as the last word on the matter, the lanky vice-captain proceeded to ignore Kaidoh's enraged sputtering and speared a meatball with his fork. "'Sides," he said, as an afterthought, "I'm not used to eating lunch in the open, you know?" He shot Kaidoh a nervous look, before glancing sideways surreptitiously, as if he expected a certain bespectacled Data Tennis user to pop out of one of the dustbins, pitcher of Special Remix in hand.

That stopped Kaidoh's ire in his tracks. He did know. He understood completely. "So… where have you been having lunch?"

The fork paused in midair as Momoshiro contemplated the question. "I've been eating with Motomiya and her friends."

"Who?"

"The cleaning-lady."

A lengthy pause.

"The cleaning-lady?"

"Why not? She's real nice. She and her pals have their own lunch area in the basement. "

Kaidoh struggled with this information. "So what you're saying is that you've been having lunch secretly in a basement with a bunch of defenseless old women up till now?"

Momoshiro choked on his meatball. "Y- You don't have to put it like that!!"

"…Like what?"

"Like – like I'm sort of fucked up sexual predator with an old lady fetish!"

"You said it, not me."

"It's not like tha – argh! Just… argh!!"

And from then on, Kaidoh Kaoru and Momoshiro Takeshi had lunch together.

Kaidoh was jerked back into the present by the spray of breadcrumbs across his face as Momoshiro tore into his fourth sandwich.

"… that asshole Kamio, trying to win her over with that stupid dog of his…"

It was going to be a long lunch.

II

The second time Kaidoh Kaoru discovered that he and Momoshiro Takeshi were friends (just maybe), it was the third consecutive weekend they were hanging out together.

He had never "hung out" with others on weekends before – he ran laps and did crunches on the park bench and occasionally rescued cats from trees and such – and when he bluntly told Momoshiro that no, I can't go for karaoke with the team because I have 10 kilometers to run he hadn't expected the lanky teen to burst an artery laughing his ass off.

"What?" he had demanded.

"It's just –" another burst of uproarious laughter, followed by a hiccup, "- dude, your life's all about training this, conditioning that. Don't you know how to have fun?"

Kaidoh was greatly offended by this. "Training is fun. And I'd like to see you win in the next Inter-high without proper conditioning -"

Momoshiro wiped a tear from his eye. "I meant non-training-related fun stuff. You know…" he bobbed his head at Kaidoh expectantly, as if waiting for him to climb aboard the wagon and finish the sentence on his own. When it became apparent that no such answer was forthcoming (if the viper's blank stare was any indication) he hastily continued. "Social stuff. Usually with two or more people involved?"

It was insulting, being treated like a five year old child by someone with the mentality of… well, a five year old. "I know how to have fun," he snapped.

Momoshiro snorted. "You think training is fun." He grinned. "If you don't get out more, you'll really be on the path of becoming a serial killer – haven't you seen all those crime investigation shows on TV? You're practically one of those crazy loner guys that kidnaps young girls and hacks them up with a chainsaw afterwards…"

The group of tittering girls that had been walking a few feet ahead of them froze in their tracks and openly turned around to gape. Kaidoh was mortified. "I am not," he hissed in agitation, "a crazy chainsaw guy." His rebuttal must not have been very assuring; the girls picked up so much speed around the corner that they practically left scorch marks on the pavement.

"And that's the reaction you're going to get for the rest of your life –" Momoshiro swiftly sidestepped a punch to the arm "- if you keep locking yourself up at home every weekend. I'm just trying to help, man."

"… outdoors," Kaidoh muttered.

"What was that?"

"I said," Kaidoh spat sourly, "I don't lock myself up at home. I train outdoors."

Momoshiro rolled his eyes. "Just turn up, asshole."

&

Which was how Kaidoh Kaoru ended up wedged between an excitable Horio and an even more excitable Arai in what was becoming an increasingly claustrophobic karaoke booth. Kaidoh didn't know how many people a single booth would fit – the notion of being squashed in with no possible route of escape made his palms break out into a cold sweat.

You can do this, he thought to himself as he suppressed a twitch. Pretend you're in the broom closet.

At this point, Kikumaru Eiji made a very dramatic entrance by bursting through the door, toppling a startled Katsuo in the process as he pitched headfirst into the tray of peanut appetizers. Kaidoh made a mental note not to eat any as the rest of the old Regulars (with the exception of Tezuka and Inui) filed into the tiny room.

"Thought we'd crash the party, nya!" Kikumaru exclaimed, beaming cheerfully. "Did we surprise you?"

"I think we might need a bigger room," Oishi said, scratching the back of his head. "It's kind of… cramped in here."

"Nonsense, nya!" Kikumaru said. He then proceeded to prove Oishi right by determinedly stuffing himself into the sliver of space he spied between Momoshiro and the armrest, making the spiky-haired boy yelp and flail his arms in alarm. This caused an interesting sort of domino effect as the rest of the seated people were forcibly (and painfully) displaced sideways to accommodate the Kikumaru's extra girth.

"I'll go ask if we can switch rooms," said Fuji, clearly amused.

Kaidoh, who was valiantly blocking out all of this and mentally filing the experience away under Things I Will Never Agree To Do Ever Again, Even If I Do Become A Serial Killer, noticed Arai giving him an odd look. "What?"

"Nothing," Arai said, in a tone entirely too casual for someone with an elbow lodged in Kaidoh's kidney. "It's just that you've been chanting 'broom closet' under your breath for the last five minutes."

&

They did manage to switch to a bigger room, at no extra cost (thanks largely to Fuji, who had the female manager swooning with a well-timed smile) and things did pick up from there. Eventually.

Momoshiro and Echizen weren't half bad as singers, Kaidoh decided – though at the end of it all, he still wasn't quite sure what a flying bicycle had to do with anything.

"Wasn't that bad, right?" Momoshiro gave him a sideways grin as the team finally bid their goodbyes and dispersed into the chilly night.

Like pulling teeth. "Never again."

Momoshiro cracked up. "Alright, how 'bout next week we play some basketball? We'd totally kick Kamio's ass -"

"…I have nothing against Kamio."

"Well, you're coming anyway. You can be my backup."

"What the… no. Be your damn backup. "

"You're coming. Or I'm getting you that chainsaw."

III

The third time Kaidoh Kaoru realized he was actually sort-of-grateful to Momoshiro Takeshi, he was at a singles party.

Surprisingly, it hadn't been Momoshiro who had suggested it this time. He was currently in his post-breakup phase with Tachibana An, and Kaidoh was, quite frankly, tired of seeing him wallow in misery.

(That, and the fact that a heartbroken Momoshiro was a poor arguing partner. Who on earth was Kaidoh supposed to fight with if his own vice-captain wasn't up to the task?)

"I don't wanna go," Momoshiro whined. "I wanna stay at homeeeee."

A vein twitched in Kaidoh's forehead. "You're going." Fixing Momoshiro with a glare, he despaired at the state of his vice-captain's room. Clothes were strewn everywhere. There were leftover snack wrappers scattered around the bed. And he was pretty sure there was a mouse hiding in one of the rubbish piles.

To Kaidoh Kaoru, who made his bed right after he got up and cleaned his bedroom with a meticulous sort of tenacity, Momoshiro Takeshi's room was a disaster zone. When he first set foot in it, he'd seriously considered doubling back for a hazmat suit. It had taken a while to unearth Momoshiro, too. The lanky teen was buried lifelessly under a pile of his own filth and an assortment of woolly blankets.

"I don't wanna go," Momoshiro said again, more petulantly this time.

Something in Kaidoh snapped. "You're going, asshole – and you're going to enjoy yourself, or I'm going to kick you in the nuts."

"Nuts," Momoshiro said sadly. "An used to like nuts."

Kaidoh resisted the urge to slap some sense into him. This intervention was going to be more painful than he originally planned. "Shower and get changed," he gritted out. When Momoshiro failed to take heed and gave him a blank sort of look, Kaidoh lost it.

"In. The. Shower," he hissed.

Momoshiro blinked at him owlishly, finally acquiescing and rising from the bed, snail-slow. Bits of detritus fell off his blanket-swathed form as he made his sluggish shuffle in the direction of the bathroom.

This was going to take a while.

&

Three hours later, they were on their way. Momoshiro had expended so much energy travelling to the shower that he wasn't able to put up much resistance when Kaidoh chucked a fresh set of clothes in his face and told him to get changed.

"Bye, Mom," he said morosely, as the two made it across his front yard.

Kaidoh poked him mid-back. "Keep moving." He'd almost missed the grateful smile Momoshiro's mother directed at him, and it made his cheeks burn. "My duty as captain," he grunted, and navigated a stumbling Momoshiro out the gate and onto the street.

It took forever to get him through the train turnstiles and onto the train itself. It took even longer to convince him to get off at the right station – apparently the Kanji letters for the station a few stops down looked like Tachibana (it couldn't have been further from it, but the prospect of convincing Momoshiro otherwise was a disheartening task). By the time Kaidoh managed to drag Momoshiro's ass to the restaurant where the goukon was taking place, he has sweating profusely and cursing a blue streak under his breath.

"Sit," he commanded, directing him to a table half-occupied by members he recognized from the Seigaku basketball team. He managed to snag a corner seat for himself and sank into it gratefully.

"Didn't think you guys would actually show up," a guy he recognized as Yamada from 3-D said, raising an eyebrow at Momoshiro, whose head was lolling about at the oddest angle as he took everything in. "We were getting ready to call in reinforcements."

Kaidoh hated eyebrow-raisers. He gave a disgruntled wheeze in reply – there wasn't much else his lungs would let him do – and tried to blend into the background as he spied a gaggle of girls entering the restaurant. Broom closet. Broom closet.

The introductions began. Kaidoh had never been to a singles party in his life, so he wasn't exactly familiar with the protocol involved. The girls sat opposite the row of guys – five girls to five guys - and they were supposed to talk and make nice over dinner. Kaidoh fervently hoped that one of the girls would drop out sick so he could have an excuse not to say anything. Such was not the case.

The girl opposite him looked none too happy to be there either. There was an awkward sort of silence in the air as they glared at each other, as if daring the other to initiate conversation.

Kaidoh broke their impromptu death glare match by surreptitiously glancing sideways at Momoshiro, who seemed to be mumbling into his juice. Thankfully, the girl opposite him was too engrossed in talking about herself to notice.

"You're the Seigaku tennis captain."

The girl's voice made his head snap back towards her – now that he thought about it, she did look a little familiar. He couldn't quite put a name to the face, though.

She gave him an irritated look. "I'm on the girls' tennis team."

"Oh. Right." So that was why she was so familiar. He vaguely recalled a younger version of her cheering on the court sidelines at the last regionals. Tomo-something.

Taking in the constipated expression on his face, Tomo-something rolled her eyes. "Osakada," she said. When Kaidoh said nothing, she intensified her glare. "Osakada Tomoka. I'm the vice-captain of the girls' team."

"… I knew that."

She snorted, and it was so unladylike that it startled him. She leaned back and looked at him speculatively. "You're that Boomerang Snake guy."

Well, anything was better than 'crazy chainsaw guy'. "Yeah, so?"

"Your serve needs work."

"My serve is fine," he snapped.

"And your backhand needs work, too."

Kaidoh struggled with this – he was a little out-of-practice at the whole trading insults thing, considering that Momoshiro had been out of commission for the last couple of weeks. Then again, he hadn't come to a goukon expecting to have his tennis skills criticized so openly, either. By a girl, no less. He narrowed his eyes. "Well, maybe if yours was better, the girls' team would've made it to the regionals this year."

She choked on her drink. "What did you say?"

"You heard me." He folded his arms and gave her a smug look.

By the time the food arrived, she was looking murderous. Kaidoh's hackles were raised so high that he was pretty sure he was seeping adrenaline onto the carpet. They argued all through dinner, oblivious to the stares they were getting from the rest of the table. Kaidoh was only vaguely aware of Momoshiro warily edging his chair as far away from him as he could.

When the singles party finally came to an end, the two of them were left seething at the entrance – everyone else was giving them a wide berth as they said their goodbyes and traded numbers. To Kaidoh's relief, Momoshiro seemed to have improved somewhat; he was upright and functioning on his own, which was always a good thing. He was also giving Kaidoh a speculative sort of Look, which never bode well.

He was pulled back from his musings by a derisive sniff from Tomoka. "Don't screw up at regionals, snake boy."

He was about to retort to this with a sneer of his own when some drunken asshole actually had the gall to drape himself over his date – wait, date? No, not date. She wasn't his date. No. She was a girl, and an annoying one at that. Not that he'd noticed she was a girl, no -

Somewhere in the midst of this inner monologue his brain short-circuited, and he belatedly reached out a hand to pull the chump off her and toss him onto the pavement. It turned out he didn't have to. Tomoka kneed the guy in the groin swiftly in a practiced motion, before casually stomping on his midsection in a move that looked like it could have broken ribs.

"Do that again," she hissed, "and I'll rip off and your hands and shove them so far down your throat you'll have to type out of your ass for a week." A final dusting of her palms, a quick nod in the awestruck group's general direction, and she was off.

Kaidoh stared after her.

Momoshiro clapped him on his back. "That," he grinned, and Kaidoh suddenly realized that he sounded… well, normal again, "must've been the absolute BEST foreplay you've ever had, Mamushi!"

Kill, or not to kill? Kaidoh toyed with the idea in his head. The muscles on his arm twitched in anticipation.

An obnoxious laugh. "Wait till I tell the team!!"

KILL. KILLKILLKILLKILLKILL

Next up: Momoshiro offers terrible love advice, fisticuffs are exchanged, and the fic reaches its conclusion. Stay tuned!

This was originally going to be called "6 times Kaidoh Kaoru realized that Momoshiro Takeshi was his super awesome best friend ever!!one" but I swapped it for the more succinct version since it was too much of a mouthful (Also because ffdotnet has a character limit on fic titles.)

Who else forgot who Tomoka was? I know I did. I actually had to google her to get her full name!

Comments appreciated (: