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He’s witnessed it twice already, how Coach Takeuchi transformed every year during the week of the basketball club's informal graduation ceremony to emerge for those days reflective, genial, a new man - but it was a different thing to see it and to stand before it. The underclassmen are before him and his yearmates behind, and Kasamatsu does his level best to meet all of their eyes as the other third-years say their parts.
He is the last up. Kasamatsu steps forward, straightens his back. "Third years, we've done well - let us graduate with pride! To the those who will succeed us, do not falter. It has been an honor to play for Kaijou."
So the changing of the guard went - Hayakawa succeeds him with tearfully and there are shouts in the applause - thank you, good job, we’ll make you proud. Something in the loudness shakes Kasamatsu. The weight of captaincy is gone, and without it he for a second feels the noise as a gust of wind.
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Moriyama sighs with Moriyamian despondency at his phone. Kobori, ever-concerned, spares him a glance from his papers. “Bad ending?”
“Even in dating simulations the complexities of relationships escape me. Tsukimi-chan suffered a vehicle accident this time."
"That's terrible." Kobori grunts, making an honest effort to sound interested.
Kasamatsu listens with only half an ear, doodling a basketball in the margins of his homework and imagining one in his hands.
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“I’m going to go check on them.” Kasamatsu says to his bag at the school gates.
You don’t have to. You’re not their captain anymore, his bag replies.
“I can still care.” He answers, and squares his shoulders. “What the hell am I nervous for?”
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It takes about three seconds to spot Kise sitting along the south wall, unfocused; four seconds to walk over, block his view, and thwack him on the shoulder with a bookbag.
“Explain yourself,” He scowls over Kise’s yelp of senpai. They’re drawing a few eyes - a lot, actually, maybe all - but he can’t care less. Kise starts guiltily.
“I’m not allowed to practice until my leg gets better - ”
“No, not that. I told you that. I’m talking about the ending ceremony. Were you modeling?”
Kise glances aside, and something of the shame in the action reopens that ache again, familiar and jolting to Kasamatsu. “No.”
He hesitates before kicking gently at Kise’s shoe. “Right. Go walk a few laps.”
“Eh?”
“I don’t know why you skipped something that big but I won’t push your idiocy. Go on. Might as well try to clear your head.”
He tilts his head at the door impatiently as Kise stares at him a moment longer before clambering up. Kasamatsu watches him go. He hasn’t had much occasion to scowl this hard the past week and the edges of his mouth are starting to hurt.
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The next month passes quickly. He may not have any more real business with the club but he had nothing better to do with his free time anyway. The members welcome him and Hayakawa could still use a bit of brushing up with maintaining order instead of disturbing it, so Kasamatsu doesn’t have to exactly hang around the sidelines gazing wistfully at the courts. That much at least is simple.
Kasamatsu thinks he’s been doing an admirable job of reining in his temper so far. Kise is refusing to be simple. He doesn’t know this subdued stranger who made none of his usual garbled noises at being hit, who took a second longer to push himself back up, who no longer approached him freely - who looked at him apprehensively, of all things.
After three kicks to the ground in as many days, he concedes that this wasn't the best way to go about treating strangers.
"Up."
"What?"
"You're a mess. Up, get changed, you're no use at all." Kasamatsu reaches for Kise’s arm as he passes by, catching him for a moment. "I mean it. Meet me outside."
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It doesn’t happen often, but Kasamatsu is at a loss for what to do. He shifts around in the snow, debating the merits of all the locations he knew for get-it-together talks when the other exits the gym.
“Let’s get something to eat,” is all he can think to say - nothing remarkable except the way it makes Kise freeze.
He doesn't move at all until Kise relaxes and stifles a smile. “You haven’t thought this far?”
Kasamatsu tries not to look embarrassed. “If you know a good place, I’ll pay.”
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The coffeeshop is fashionably cozy, wood floor polished to a shine and pastry displays artfully arranged. There’s a pretty college girl manning the counter and Kasamatsu nudges Kise in her direction as he scouts a table out of sight of the register. The next hour needed his absolute concentration-
- which proved to be absolutely useless against another loaded silence.
“You haven’t thought this far, either?” Kise is still. His tone is playful enough but it’s in too exact an amount and his teeth don't show in his smile.
Kasamatsu only lets out a long breath, deciding against the words brewing under his tongue. “Let’s just talk. You start.”
Next meeting will be a better time.
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Next meeting becomes another next meeting, and another, and another. In retrospect Kasamatsu doesn’t understand why he couldn’t see this happening.
"That's kind of tacky." Kise wrinkles his nose delicately at the birthday card in Kasamatsu's hands.
"And that's gaudy. Next shop." Kasamatsu sighs.
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They had the talk a cold night after dinner not long before spring, the important one Kasamatsu had been stalling on, trying to figure out how many parts of Kise then were thick skin and how much of him was still thin ice.
“Why are you doing this?” Kise had asked.
He hadn't been expecting that. For a moment words escaped Kasamatsu and instead imprinted themselves as the city smoke and the wet asphalt gray in his nose, the warmth in his stomach persisting through the clip of the air, his scarf holding the heat of his exhale. Kise’s profile was outlined by the street’s lights, colors softening against his skin to glint brighter in his eyes.
"You've seen the best of me,” Kise pressed. “And it still wasn’t good enough. Why-”
“Don’t be stupid.” The break that followed his interruption weighed briefly and heavily, but that kind of thing had never really stopped him.
“Kise, I don’t know how many times I’ve told you, tried to tell you. You owe me nothing except your confidence, your drive - for the team, yes, they’ll need that. But those things are important to you too, those are who you are. I'll admit you can even be charming sometimes. It's something I never expected to miss, yet..." - he takes a deep breath, almost wavering - "...if you’ll allow me to be selfish, I do.”
Kise had leveled him with a thoughtful look. It was the kind of look that Kasamatsu savored on every rare occasion, but the grin that followed it - that’s what he had missed. “Ah, you’re doing it.”
“What?”
“That thing with your chin. You lift it like this,” Kise explained, mimicking him, “It’s different from the way you have to look up to see me, you know?”
“Brat,” Kasamatsu said, with probably too much affection.
“But that’s how I know you mean what you’re saying. Ah,” There wasn't much warning before Kasamatsu found half his face buried in the cool fabric of Kise’s coat. “Right. I’m home.”
Kasamatsu had to grab at Kise's back to stop them both from falling over. “What?”
“I don’t know.” Kise let out a huffing laugh by his ear. “I’ve let you down, I’ve made you cry and I don’t want to do that again. I won’t. I was being stupid that week after the Winter Cup but I’m better now. I have a lot more things I want to say to you but those were the most important.” And perhaps for nervousness he added, “Your ears are getting really red.”
“You’re one to talk right now.” There had been no way he couldn’t know, with the way Kise’s ears were heating up next to his cheek. “Do you even realize how embarrassing you sound?"
“I have an idea, yeah.”
Neither moved until a passing car sloshed up meltwater high enough to break them apart, Kasamatsu sputtering madly and Kise laughing fully, their breaths forming clouds too warm to last long.
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Now the sun is strong enough to prickle at his skin but it's cool under the tree by the gym. He's seen Moriyama and Kobori off already, both wheedling a promise out of him to meet up during the weekend for a proper celebration of their graduation.
The basketball club was one of the few still meeting on the last day of school. It feels right to stand there even for a moment at the doors of the gym, to be in a place so charged with purpose.
Kasamatsu doesn’t allow himself more than a moment - any longer and he would be invariably drawn in - but Kise must have developed a sixth sense for him because Kasamatsu is meters away from the gates when he hears Kise calling him, drawing out the last syllable.
“Kasamatsu-senpai!” The school yard is wide so even with his long strides Kise is breathless by the time they meet halfway. “Kasamatsu-senpai, I just wanted to tell you -” If the words shake just a little at the very end neither of them comment. He takes Kasamatsu’s hands to lean down, brave enough in his movements.
The two seconds of his kiss are clumsy and resolute. Kasamatsu pulls back sharply to see Kise beaming, their palms warm in each other's. He blames it on dizziness, that the next words fall out so horrifyingly easily.
“I might actually miss you.”
“I like you. Sorry.”
It’s kind of painful, how nervous the both of them are. "Uh, all this time, have we been...”
"I guess it kind of was like dating, if you wanna look at it one way."
“Huh.” It comes as no great revelation, and that's probably the most shocking thing about this whole deal.
“Me too, honestly.” Kise leans to touch foreheads. “How about it? Keep in touch?”
"Sure." Damnit, he wasn't far gone enough to stutter but he still sounded like an idiot. Kise leads him by the hand into the gym and sweeps him to the center court to challenge him to a one-on-one Kasamatsu is only too happy to accept.
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He looks back only once, to remember as best as he can Kise smiling wide by the gates of Kaijou - throwing a mock salute, squinting through the sun setting in his eyes. He hardly makes a dignified picture yelling goodbye like that, but the light is in his voice too, and Kasamatsu had never thought a farewell could move him to such fierce hope.
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Kise dreams for the first time in a long time.
I love this team, the words shape again unbidden, amber pooling in his throat. I’ve found happiness here.