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The pain only starts in the second half of the quarter, six minutes in, when he takes a mis-step and finds himself staring at the court floor with red, curved lines blurring in his vision.

It takes a while for him to refocus, the lines and the glare of stadium lights glancing off the polished wood, and Kagami stumbles to a knee, bones aching and hearing a faint yell across the court and the screech of a whistle.

“Captain!”

There are shadows around him and the resounding sound of the ball thumps to a stop.

The stadium becomes quiet as both sides part their ways for a timeout. He feels hands grappling his arms and pulling him from the floor, wrapping around his torso as support. Kuroko and Fukuda helps him to the bench, there’s a hand on his back and Kagami winces at the smarting bone in his spine.

“They got better—and worse,” Kagami grumbles as he wipes the sweat beading on his forehead with a towel. He inhales, ignoring the shake in his legs, and glances at his team, visibly exhausted with blotches of bright red on their skin. “Are you guys all right?”

“More or less,” Kuroko answers. There’s hidden anger in the way he speaks, words trembling with weight. It’s been a while since he’s seen Kuroko livid, almost hateful. “You should be more concerned about yourself, Kagami-kun.”

“How bad is it,” Riko interrupts before Kagami can offer a reply. Her eyes are quick at scanning and assessing the damage among his teammates. She doesn’t try to hide the grimace when she looks down at Kagami’s legs and then back up to his arms.

“We’re all right, but they’re focusing on the ace now,” Kawahara tells her after collapsing onto the seat next to him, and rubs at a sore on his chest. Riko shoots Kagami a doubtful look.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Kagami says with a wave, but even that strains the ligaments in his arm. “We only have a few minutes left and we’re behind on a few points.”

“Let’s see…”

He feels a hand on his knee touch at the ugly, purple bruise just hidden right where the hem of his basketball shorts ended. The other team made sure to crash into his knees and ankles with carefully hidden screens and breaks, most likely to limit the amount of times he’d be able to jump on court.

“This isn’t going to do,” Riko mutters as she layers an ice bag on the searing heat in his legs. Kagami jolts but swallows the yelp, clenching his fists against the bench. She turns to their second year just standing off to the side. “Hiruki, thank you for your work.”

The shooting guard acknowledges her with a small nod and cushions his arm with a wince. There’s probably a bruise already there, left when they tried to screen his three-pointer.

“Furihata-kun, you’re back in.”

“Yes, coach,” he says, from the other side of the bench, lost in the crowd of their second string. Kagami had almost forgotten he was there because of his silence and lack of input during their time-outs and quarter in-betweens. Kagami can’t blame him though. Furihata had been caught in the same situation that Izuki was in a few years back, and with the way the spider wove, he had fallen deeper with his frustration.

Furihata isn’t bad, he’s the careful point guard that Seirin needed after Izuki’s graduation, but it also made him the most vulnerable; his hesitant pace had his movements easily read, his passes just as easily stolen. Riko had benched him earlier, swapping him out for Kuroko, and he was left steaming during the second and third quarter, fists curled in, angered.

“And our course of action?” Kuroko cuts into his train of thought. He’s adjusting the well-worn wristbands and tucking away a purple splotch underneath the cloth.

“We’ll keep at it,” Riko says. “Disrupt their momentum and we’ll take the game back with a 3 pointer. Kuroko-kun—act independently like before. Furihata-kun, keep yourself level-headed, their trick is—”

She talks about the game and the counter measures, glancing between the five third-years huddled together around her. Aside from Kuroko and Kagami, the other three had mostly sat on the bench for the majority of the last two years. What they’ve seen on the bench two years ago are completely different from what they’re playing now; it’s already stretching them thin, in both stamina and patience.

(It shouldn’t be that different, the game now and back then, but it’s probably the change of people with the same dirty, underhanded tactics that caused them to lose their cool. But if anything, Kagami is beginning to relate to how Kiyoshi felt just a bit, over-protective of his teammates.)

“Kagami-kun.” She levels a hard stare with him, and he knows he’s not going to like what she’s going to say— “I’m putting Mori-kun in—”

“No, you’re not,” Kagami snaps, the near shout surprises his teammates and the second string on the bench. He lowers his voice into a hiss, and he gives a glance at Mori, who’s nervously watching from the side. “I’m not letting him mark Yamato.”

“Kagami-kun—” Riko says, exasperated.

“Don’t forget,” Kagami ignores her and says loudly to his team, standing up and feeling his bones snap at the joints. He doesn’t stumble though, only grins through the pain. (The bravado he has can’t last much longer though. Just fifteen more minutes of this, he tells himself.)

“Tomorrow’s games are what matters. This one is nothing.”

“Spoken like a true idiotic basketball captain,” Kuroko says within earshot as they spread out onto the court once more. Kagami scoffs loudly, and thwacks Kuroko upside the head—or tried to if he hadn’t dodged.

“Shut up, we have five points to make up.”

“Yes,” Kuroko agrees; Kagami laughs at that and manages to clap him on the back.

The buzzer rings throughout the stadium; the third quarter resumes.

End Third-Quarter
96-101
Seirin vs. Kirisaki Daichi
Preliminary Finals

—

The preliminary match against Seihou—Aomine doesn’t know how to begin describing it.

They have yet another ancient martial arts tactic added to their reservoir of hidden tricks that make them unconventionally harder to predict.

For one, Seihou still had their same arm going with the same leg thing, something that Seirin had overcome in the previous years’ Inter-High preliminary matches. (Something called nimba, namba? Nanba? Hell, if Aomine could accurately remember.) And while every team knows about this so-called secret of theirs in theory, it’s much more difficult to adjust to it while on court.

As for the second trick, well. Everyone and their grandma already knows about their toes pointing the direction they’d run, which actually became something of a downfall because now they are mixing in fakes with the footwork, and if that isn’t irritating, Aomine doesn’t know what else is.

For Touou who never had a lick of experience in matching against Seihou in the last few tournaments where understanding theory doesn’t always come out during the actual practice—the match so far is…annoying.

Aomine had heard about some of the members (Kagami warned him especially about this bald guy, Tsugawa) who would purposely run into the path of the ace. And within the last half of the game, Aomine had the misfortune to rack up a fair amount of fouls just because he’d be too focused in passing the ball and a gray-jersey’d guy would be right there when he’s not paying attention—

“Aomine-san!” Sakurai’s yell catches him off guard.

Aomine blinks and something orange and round slams into his hands, the surface sticky with sweat and his palm feels the familiar sting. To his right, Yoshitake is being blocked by two hefty guys, there’s no opening. On his left, Endo is clear, but barely, the gap is closing. And Sakurai is running towards the center with someone tailing close behind—

Aomine has no choice but to break and with a minute left on the clock and Touou leading by six points, it’d be an easy win if Aomine just defended the ball or made another basket himself.

Actually, Aomine could’ve won the entire game by himself a quarter ago with a number difference in the tens, if given the chance to do so.

It’s not a victory unless you win it with your team, he remembers Kagami telling him off the day before, when Aomine complained about passing(ugh) and teamwork (even more ugh.) But the thought makes Aomine pause, step back, and dribble, nice and slow.

He’s biding his time and the other team is visibly impatient, chewing on their lips and fidgeting. Just two 3-point baskets is all they’d need to tie the game, driving it into over-time, and it’d be fairly easy to do since their shooting guard is on par with Sakurai.

(The number difference between their scores is a far cry to the days when Touou rose as a tyrant and slaughtered everyone, tripling their score; it’d be almost laughable if Aomine wasn’t actually taking Kagami’s words seriously.)

Twenty seconds left.

Aomine fakes to the left and ducks away from the third-year marking him. He has about half a court to dribble through and his team is starting to lose their marks now that Seihou had seen him as the immediate threat on court. (Aomine has the ball and can easily make a basket on his own without needing to pass to his teammates, and it looks like Seihou has had that figured out.)

In a last ditch effort, he has three players running towards him in an effort to block him.

While he twists around players and ducks away from their hands, Aomine spots Endo standing right near the three-point line, unguarded. The first year hasn’t the faintest clue on how to dunk yet (Aomine didn’t bother to teach him at all) but Aomine flicks the ball right into his hands and prays that maybe, maybe, the buzzer would sound before Seihou steals the ball from him.

(Endo does gets it into the basket, after a millisecond of something short of a fumbling ball, but the sad excuse of a dunk he made was worth two points and Aomine never felt so relieved in his entire life.)

End Score
129-121
Touou vs. Seihou
Inter-High Preliminary Finals

—

“And I’m done,” she says, clapping twice to chase off whatever weird smell the ointment had left on her hands. Kagami is twitching, chest heaving as he breathes in the mothball smell from the cotton pillow he’s buried his face into. Everything on his body is screaming, but he can’t deny that his muscles and joints feel looser than they had been.“Ice those bruises and get a lot of rest.”

“…yes, ma’am,” Kagami mumbles, shifting his head to the side. The locker room benches don’t make a comfortable bed but that’s what they had to make do with since the infirmary is littered with people injured from previous Kirisaki Daichi matches. Hanamiya (a nightmare walking on  two feet) had long graduated the year before, but his protege, Yamato, is spitting image of the sadist, harboring the same bitterness and pleasure in seeing others suffer.

(Kagami is surprised that the officials hadn’t connected the dots between Kirisaki Daichi and the injuries; and even if they were even reported, there’s no team that would provide proof to their foul play.)

“Your legs,” Riko says as he pulls himself off the bench and grabs for his shirt slung carelessly in a heap nearby. She’s not looking at him but carefully packing together her first aid kit, fitting medicine bottles and ointments neatly near her gauzes. “Half a game, that’s all you can manage if you go all out—”

“Coach—”

“A full game if you’re careful enough,” she continues, pulling a light cardigan over her tank top and then grabs for her bag. “Whatever happens tomorrow, we need to win two games.”

Two games to advance to the Inter-High tournament; there’s not much difficulty in that, but given the condition his knees are in. Just two, Kagami thinks just as Riko pulls the door open.

“Are you coming with? Everyone’s already on their way there,” she says, glancing down at her phone and checking some messages. Kagami inhales again, feeling the cold air nip at his throat and the chill of the air conditioning relieving the heat in his body. He quirks a crooked grin at her.

“I’ll pass, I have plans.”

“Of course you do,” she huffs and rolls her eyes. He doesn’t deign to answer and he lets the door slam shut. Kagami gathers his belongings left splayed on the floor: open Seirin, duffle bag with his jersey, changes of clothes, and towel lying in it like a mess, empty water bottles, his blue air Jordans tied together by the strings of their laces—

His cellphone pings again from just underneath his clothes, a reminder that he has an unread message.

—

From: Aomine
game won, 129-121, hbu?
I’m outside at the staircase, dinner your place?

—

From: Eyebrows
same here, 120-118
Ok, I’m coming

—

Aomine closes his flip phone and tosses it back into his duffle bag, stretching slowly against the concrete under his back.

Summer evenings always had something about them that made him feel sluggishly tired. The nagging humidity and the windless season just drain the energy from his bones, so he spreads himself back onto the floor near the staircase, staring up sleepily at the quickly dimming sky.

He’s long ditched his team on their way to an Okonomiyaki restaurant, sneaking away from both Satsuki, Ryo, and their Coach (a big feat) when they weren’t looking. The rest of Touou was too preoccupied in relaying the Seihou game and their “hard-earned victory” to notice that he disappeared from the back. (Which really makes Aomine laugh, because these guys didn’t even play.)

Seihou’s match wasn’t even close to begin with, having maintained a steady eight point difference from the first half; Touou always prided themselves for assuring victory at the barest margin. But Seirin—120 to 118.

That’s less points than a usual game, Aomine muses as he watches birds flock in a triangle against the red clouds. Seirin should share at least the same point-difference with Touou. They are, after all, for the last three years, rivals going neck to neck in equal strength. Throw Shutoku into the mix and there’s a three-way power war going on in the Tokyo prefecture.

Which is somewhat of a shame that the game against Seihou was at held at the same time as Seirin’s, so Aomine wasn’t able to catch a glimpse of who the lucky opponent was. But whoever it was, the score was probably the result of the regulars sitting out in an effort to conserve energy for the important qualifying matches the next day.

Yeah. That’s probably it.

It’ll be an all out war starting tomorrow, a battle to see which three teams would advance to the Inter-High.

Three Tokyo schools, all having some kind of trophy to their legacy, will be there facing one another after half-a-year of ruthless training. He can’t wait. Aomine huffs, quirking a smile when he hears footsteps nearing his head.

“Hey, don’t tell me you fell asleep.”

“I would have. You’re too slow,” Aomine feigns a yawn and rolls onto his side. He sits up and nabs his scattered bag and jacket from the floor. Kagami has a heavy bag slung over his shoulder and those dumb (cute) eyebrows are dipped with a frown to match. “What took you so long?”

“Eh, some pep talk about the game tomorrow,” Kagami says and turns towards the main street, waiting for Aomine to follow. There’s an air of maturity (almost elegance) in the casual way Kagami holds himself now, and it’s been interesting, in some good ways and bad, watching how he’s changed since his jersey number had been swapped.

(Aomine has to admit that he was jealous when Kagami was given the captain’s jersey.

For Touou, it had been Sakurai Ryo, Ryo: the apologizing mushroom head that was made captain instead, chosen over the other players because he had judgment and experience. But the jealousy died soon enough after seeing how dead Kagami’s become after being the constant test subject of the coach’s new and improved training menus (food menus included.) Not to mention all the responsibilities, ugh.)

“We were reviewing over the results of the games today,” Kagami continues casually. Aomine watches him brush a strand of too long hair away from his eyes and cough into his jacket sleeve. The word beautiful crosses his mind when Kagami snaps his gaze, eyes bright and red, at him. “And are you coming or not?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Aomine drawls and trails after him just a step behind, far enough to discreetly watch the captain as he subconsciously sneaks a hand to the nape of his neck.

—

It’s not like Kagami is trying to keep them a secret, but it’s a secret.

Aside from his classmates and coach (and already graduated upperclassmen,) no one else in Seirin is aware of the regular meet ups between the captain and ace of different (rival) schools.

He hadn’t really meant to keep it a secret, but Kagami figures that it’s better this way since someway along the years, his little underclassmen had got it into their brains that Touou is the enemy, a cat to their dog personality. (Even though Kagami vehemently disagrees with the analogy.)

There were a few times when Aomine had crashed in during practice; and for all those times, his team had gone quiet, with owlish, judging looks in their eyes as they watched Aomine obviously flirt with Kagami, sneak a hand where it’s not supposed to be and whisper things, secretive and seductive, into his ear.

Of course, the regulars never mention it (they brushed away any questions the first and second years had or redirected them back to Kagami,) but there’s always the presence of a hushed gossip between the rest of his team until one day, Kagami had enough of that and grabbed Aomine, shoved him outside the gym, punched and kissed him equally hard, somewhere private and away from leering eyes and questioning gazes. (The red bloom on Aomine’s cheek seemed to reassure the underclassmen; the cocky grin on his face however, proved to confuse them even more.)

Touou shares the same feelings apparently, is what Aomine tells him (not like Aomine really cares what his team thinks.) Touou is wary of Seirin—constantly yapping about what Seirin’s captain is doing with some underclassman—specifically jersey #9, Mori—which further explains the times when Aomine ups and barges in during Seirin’s practices and distracts Kagami from his “captainly duties” until Riko decides to punt him out.

It’s all of a headache, really.

Needing to keep something of a secret just because. He’s never really been someone to uphold what people think of him, but it’s just easier, safer this way. Because if word ever gets out—how would his underclassmen look at him then? They’ve all been idolizing him and seeing him as Seirin’s pillar of strength (along with Kuroko, let’s not forget.) But—

“Oi, are you listening?” Kagami feels an elbow nudge into his arm, and he snaps his head up from gazing at the road. They are on a familiar neighborhood street, deserted save for the lonely lamp posts studding along the path. Aomine stares at him, expecting an answer—what was he talking about again? Something about Seihou—nanba and some other things.

“Ah, sorry, just tired,” Kagami decides to say sheepishly, reaching up to scratch at the back of his head. It still very tender from having a Kirisaki Daichi player knock into him with their elbow.

“You’re getting old,” Aomine complains loudly after a long pause. “And it’s so fucking hot, what’s up with that?”

He glances at Kagami, up and down, eyes pointing at the jacket he’s wearing.

Kagami flinches, and suddenly panics, wondering if Aomine can see the purple clots on his skin (underneath his clothes.)

“Um, because—” He remembers the herbal medicine Riko’s rubbed on his arms, and how he was instructed to keep it on until he was able to ice it, but if he mentioned that, Aomine would be sure to ask why. “…it’s not good to get chilled after a game, you know?”

Which makes no sense at all, but Aomine lets it slide and shrugs, dropping the subject entirely.

—

Aomine wanted to have curry because curry is the type of food that takes a while to prepare—cutting vegetables, making cubes out of meat, etc. etc— and also because he was trying to find every excuse to stay in Kagami’s kitchen just a minute longer, absorb the homey, domestic atmosphere of just watching Kagami slice through ingredients with that sleek, huge-ass knife of his.

Unsurprisingly enough, Kagami shot down his idea right away and fished out large packets of steak from the fridge, still frozen stiff and un-thawed, and laid them on the counter.

“You can’t seriously be thinking of eating four of those,” Aomine mutters, staring down at the pink, marinating steak in the metal oven trays, with a mess of pepper and other spices coating the surface. Kagami only gives him a pointed stare while scooping out five—no, six cups of rice. (That’s twice the normal amount of what they usually eat for dinner.)

“Well, there’s a big game tomorrow, so best to eat well,” he simply answers before swearing when the end of his sweater sleeve gets soaked in the water used to wash the rice. Aomine stares at him as he pours out the milky water from the bowl and into the sink, water spiraling and the drain making weird glugging noises.

Something’s odd about the picture but Aomine can’t put a finger on it.

So he just leans back against the counter and watches Kagami press the button on the rice cooker before he fetches a frying pan from the cupboard overhead.

—

It feels as bad as it looks, Kagami thinks with a grimace and touches a blotch of red smearing near his ribs.

Yamato didn’t run much during this game, maybe dart around half-court, but he commandeered everything, signaling to his teammates with something that isn’t as obvious as a snap of a finger. Before Kagami could react to anything at all, he was being knocked about while trying to retrieve the rebound. At some point in the game, nails clawed into his forearm in an effort to tip the ball from his hands.

He needs to ice his injuries but there’s only so much he can do before Aomine stumbles out of the shower, a sopping wet mess he always is, and sees Kagami’s body brutally battered and in no shape or form to play in the finals.

Even if Kagami had reached an agreement with coach, there’s nothing he could say to convince Aomine. Even though the both of them had been looking forward to it for the entire half-year, Aomine would quickly deny him the game, and Kagami can’t have that. A match up in an official game doesn’t come every single weekend.

Over the years, Kagami has come to know Aomine as a worry-wart, caring deeply for his friends but having the emotional maturity of showing it in the crudest and sometimes cruelest way. There are stories that Kuroko had told him, about an awkward middle schooler who always said the worst things to people because feelings and articulating them was something he’s never learned how to work with. (It got progressively worse when Aomine withdrew into himself and enrolled into Touou, and thank god, Kagami was able to slap sense into him in that Winter Cup game.)

Kagami’s been into countless fights with the guy to know exactly what Kuroko means.

Kagami sighs and pulls on another black-sleeved shirt. After the finals for the Tokyo block, there is a week break between the actual Inter-High tournament. Sitting out during practices is a small price to pay to recuperate enough to play in the tournament, and given how these are just bruises, they’ll disappear after a few days if he doesn’t stupidly knock his knee into the hard angle of a table or something.

Kagami hears the bathroom door open and the heavy weight of Aomine shuffling closer to his bedroom. He hears him yawn and knock against the door frame with lazy taps, “Hey, where’s the laundry bag?”

He motions to the floor, where the basket is and grits his teeth a bit when his arms prick. “Ah, you can just leave it over t here, the jerseys are being washed right now.”

—

“By the way, I passed the ball to Endo in the last ten seconds. I don’t know if I told you that,” Aomine says as he daintily slices himself a piece of steak and tosses it into his mouth, chewing it for a few times before swallowing. He’s still on his first slab of meat, fork in one hand and knife in the other, while Kagami had already blown through two.

“The small forward?” Kagami asks, adjusting his black sleeves before spearing another thick piece and heaping it into his mouth. There’s a mountain of compressed rice in his bowl, and Aomine’s sure that no matter how much Kagami eats, the mountain isn’t getting smaller. He’s barely audible with his mouth stuffed to the brim with food. “Aomfghghhgh?”

Aomine laughs and throws a crumpled napkin into Kagami’s face. It hits him square in the nose and drops onto his lap. Kagami glares at him before picking it up to dot at his mouth. “Yeah, he can’t dunk, but he got the points anyways. Nearly gave me a heart attack though, he almost fumbled.”

Kagami swallows, and points a fork his way. “It wouldn’t have mattered though, Touou was six points ahead. It would’ve been too late for Seihou to counter.”

“Yeah,” Aomine says, with half a shrug. Even if the ball made it to the shooting guard’s hands, it’d be a miracle for them to reclaim the ball after the basket. “I thought I’d give the guy a chance to make it. I need to consider teaching him how to properly dunk. The guy only knows how to do layups.”

There’s a soft crinkle under Kagami’s eyes as he laughs, breath shallow. Tired. Kagami has always been kind of winded lately, hasn’t he?

“Well, I look forward to the layups tomorrow.”

—

“Not tonight,” Kagami says firmly and plants a hand right into Aomine’s face when he tries to lean in for a kiss below his jaw. He hears a whine behind his palm, something like a muffled–“But I want to.”—as he wrestles himself out from Aomine’s death grip around his waist (which iscrushing his already bruised ribs.)

Aomine’s hands are like glue, sticking incessantly to Kagami’s sides and fondling the (purple-blue) skin underneath his shirt, and even though Kagami leans into the suggestive touches and wants to indulge a little, just as much as Aomine probably does— Kagami pries Aomine’s fingers away from tearing at his shirt. “We have a game tomorrow, dumbass.”

“It’s been weeks almost a month,” Aomine grumbles when Kagami brushes past him, arms full with folded jerseys and school sweaters. He carries it to his bed where the Seirin and Touou duffle bags are split open with towels, bottles, and such lined up and organized neatly inside.

“Busy,” Kagami sighs loudly and tucks the uniforms next to the shoes. He smiles fondly at Aomine’s pair, black and red with white stripes along the sides, but frowns immediately after when he notices a tear at the rubber soles. “—Coach has been training us like crazy since we lost to Shutoku in the last practice match. And I’m not going to play tomorrow with a limp.”

(Though, truthfully, Kagami is already half-limping since his legs are just as worn down as the rest of his body. He’ll need to ice it sometime over the night while Aomine is sleeping; another secret added to his burden.)

“Once you take out Midorima and that hawk-eye guy, Shutoku is nothing,” Aomine says and throws himself onto Kagami’s bed, bouncing at the recoil. He very nearly rolls on top of the duffle bags if Kagami didn’t glare at him to stop. “Besides, you weren’t there to see it, but Seirin lost to Touou plenty of times too—”

“You mean they lost to you,” Kagami interrupts with a resigned sigh and grabs his phone. There are messages, mostly reminders from his worried teammates for him to get a good rest and take care of himself. Kagami breezes through them quickly before setting his alarm for two in the morning. “While I was off training Mori, you trampled on my team. No wonder they hate you.”

“It was boring and they’re all weak,” Aomine says, grabbing at the nearest pillow and reeling it into a crushing embrace. Kagami ignores the way Aomine curls up on it, like a cat (or an overgrown baby) knees drawn up and feet tucked in neatly behind the other. “And the fuck did you do with that guy in the mountains—”

“Beach. We were training—” Aomine quirks a doubtful brow at him. “Don’t look at me like that; we went over this before. Mori is not trying to get into my pants, all right?”

“Yeah, spending more time with Kagami Jr. says that perfectly.” Aomine rolls until he’s facing the wall; a cold shoulder. So fucking childish, Kagami thinks as he zips their bags closed and drops them near the foot of the bed. “We didn’t even get to do it over the summer—”

“We did. In the bathrooms,” Kagami mumbles, switching off the bed light with a click. He crawls under the sheets, nudging Aomine away and off the rest of the covers so he could nestle comfortably.

“That…doesn’t count.”

There are arms seeking and pulling at his waist, reeling him closer. It’s hot and too uncomfortably warm like this, especially when Kagami’s wearing long-sleeved clothes, but he doesn’t say anything and nuzzles into Aomine’s hair, the spikes soft and smelling like orange. Aomine hums against his neck after a slow (and sleepy) breath. “You were too busy thinking about waking up the kids.”

“The walls were thin. Kuroko heard us.”

“Well, let him hear, not that he doesn’t know already,” Aomine slurs, barely a whisper.

“He told people,” Kagami scoffs, the memory making his face heat up. There should be another retort somewhere after that but a silence envelopes them, settling comfortably around them, and for all the talk of other things Aomine had earlier, he actually dozed off pretty quickly.

“Idiot,” Kagami says softly. Aomine’s breathing slows after a shallow sigh and Kagami kisses the top of his head before he drops off into a dreamless sleep.

—

It’s sometime past midnight when Aomine wakes up to some annoying pinging from a phone with his tank top sticking to his back from the humidity.

Summer is annoyingly hot. Even with the windows wide open, nothing is blowing in, and the cicadas outside are just begging to be shot for making so much noise. He grumpily collects the sheets and pushes it to the foot of the bed, and glares in the dark when he finds that it does nothing to dispel the heat.

Another ping gets his attention and he finds Kagami’s phone blinking repeatedly on the small bedside table.

Who the fuck messages at two a.m?

“Hey, Kagami, your phone—” He touches around the bed, hand sweeping over the warm sheets before he finds Kagami’s shoulder, clothed and warm. There’s an inaudible groan into a pillow and Aomine blinks several times, vision clearing.

It’s so fucking hot, why the hell is Kagami dressed like it’s winter.

“Hey, Kagami—” Another mumble and Kagami turns away from him, eyebrows scrunching, but not waking up. With a deep sigh, Aomine reaches over him and grabs at the black flip phone, blinded for a moment as he squints at the white letters sliding across the screen.

An alarm clock?

Must be some mistake, Aomine thinks and he turns it off before flicking it back onto the table and collapsing into bed.

—

Ask anyone and they’ll say Aomine has changed in the last two years.

Sure, he still drags his feet around and complains that everyone sucks, skips practices sometimes and selfishly barges in where he’s unwanted (Seirin, mostly,) but there’s definitely the absence of bitterness from the first time Kagami’s met him.

He’s become something more of a child again, easily giving grins and smiles (albeit cocky, shit-eating ones,) laughing loudly and jokingly, and it’s not so painful anymore watching him play during a game, because now he’s somewhat stopped thinking about himself (and how everyone sucks) and started to focus on practicing Touou’s budding team play.

(Though, Aomine still sucks at passing and gives up easily like an impatient five year old when all his attempts have been stopped.)

So, it’s rather refreshing and rather strange, being on the opposite of the court, in the official stadium, watching Aomine as he helps a first year stretch (by sitting on him,) and watching some Touou players flock around him, chatting with that familiarity he’d never be caught with had he been the same Aomine two years ago.

Kagami very nearly forgets to breathe when blue eyes meet his and there’s a wiggle of fingers in his direction, a semblance of a friendly wave.

He flashes Aomine a small grin just as he feels something bump into his arm—

“Kagami-kun, did you rest well last night?’

He tenses for two seconds, holds his breath and resists yelling.

(Kagami has gotten better at not freaking out at these jump scares since Kuroko makes a point to do it all the time whenever he possibly can, but he still has a weak heart and there’s no way he’ll ever be used to Kuroko’s misdirection.)

Kagami exhales slowly and glances down at Kuroko who is wearing the red, white and black jacket over his jersey, zipped up, neat and proper.

“Slept all right,” Kagami answers carefully and rolls his shoulders. It makes a loud (uncomfortable) crack despite the fact that he’s been stretching for the last half hour. (All right is an understatement for the sticky, uncomfortable heat that kept him from having a deep sleep.)

Kuroko considers him for a long while, eyes roving about his face, before he shakes his head and sighs, “I hope you two—”

Kagami flushes. “We didn’t.”

“…Does Aomine-kun—”

“No. And I’m not going to let him know,” Kagami says. “We were looking forward to this, I’m not going to let it ruin the game.”

“…if you say so,” Kuroko murmurs, not looking entirely convinced as he glances down at Kagami’s feet, at the black leg sleeveshe’s wearing.

It was a last-minute thing, but Kagami borrowed the idea of wearing them from Kaijou’s previous captain; it supposedly does wonders to support his muscles and add padding to the dips under his feet; but Kagami’s using it mostly to hide away the more than obvious bruises peeking out from underneath his basketball shorts.

Kagami would’ve opted for arm sleeves as well, but the marks along his arms are faint and can’t be seen unless someone actually decides to stare. Besides, he’s not going to let a couple of smarting bruises get in the way of their game, not when both teams had been anticipating this match for so long.

The whistle sears through the air and the announcer’s voice boom over the speakers, asking for the players to line up at the center of the court. The announcement fades in with the loud cheers from the large crowd–-almost so close, so close to the Inter-High—as both teams toss their shirts and jackets onto the bench.

Kagami’s stomach does a few back flips and he can’t help the stupid grin spreading on his face when Aomine purposely walks right up to him, a cocky, amused smile on his lips.

Aomine isn’t being discreet at all. He’s checking him out, tongue sweeping over his lips and eyebrows lifting just a little at the leg sleeves, with probably a million inappropriate thoughts running through his head. Kagami would’ve kneed him in the stomach if he wasn’t feeling giddy from the thought of finally standing on an official court with Aomine as an opponent. (He’s waited so long; it’s always so rare to have a match up with Touou, practice games not counting.)

“You look like an idiot with those on,” Aomine says with a sneer, propping his hands onto his waist and looking down at his socks. He laughs with a suggesting wiggle of his brows, “Take them off so I can see those pretty legs.”

“Sure you don’t want to see the underside of my sneakers instead?” Kagami snorts, crossing his arms and sizing Aomine up. (Kagami is nearly as tall as he is—he’s always lost to Aomine in height, that stubborn inch gap not closing—though it’s mostly because the shoes gave him a tiny boost.)

Another amused laugh, and Aomine mirrors his stance, arms crossing and eyes narrowing. “Nah, I think I’ll just stare at your ass, thank you—”

“Do that and we’ll steal the ball right under your nose, fucker.”

“As if you could, asshole,” Aomine lightly fires back before a brown-head bobs pushes its way next to him and ducks, bowing down and hiding a flush from having to interrupt them.

“Um, excuse me, Kagami-san—” Sakurai puts out a hand and only then does Kagami realize that the rest of Aomine’s team had listened in on their conversation, and currently staring down at the floor, confused and more confused. (Well, crap. Kagami forgot that Aomine’s underclassmen aren’t used to this at all.)

Kagami blinks and clears his throat. (He can hear the rest of the regulars snort to the side.) “Oh right, Sakurai-san, nice to see you again. We look forward to your teamplay.” He ignores the short, spiting laugh from Aomine and grins at the Touou captain.

“Yes, let’s have a good game,” Sakurai says with a polite smile and the handshake is firm and confident.

Many practice matches ago, Sakurai always had trouble meeting his gaze or even speaking clearly with him, from captain to captain, but there’s assurance and determination in those brown eyes now and Kagami can’t say that he’s not impressed. (This is it, the game where they can finally test the fruits of their training.)

The whistle signals them to get into starting position and Kagami buckles his knees, eyes on the basketball held in the palm of the referee’s hand. Aomine is across him, muscles loose and arms swinging in front of him. He whispers just low enough for Kagami to hear, “Those socks are coming off first thing after this.”

“Fuck off,” Kagami laughs as the buzzer vibrates through the stadium—he jumps.

(When he lands, there’s pain shooting up the muscles in his legs and a shake in his knees, but the socks compress the ache, and the screams from the crowd and stampede of shoes against the floor makes him forget about it as he shoots the ball from his hand and into Furihata’s.)

—

This is the regular line-up for Seirin’s team.

Third years:
Kagami: Captain, Ace, Power Forward
Fukuda: Center
Kawahara: Small Forward
Kuroko: Small Forward (interchangeable; usually plays in last 3 quarters)
Furihata: Point guard

Second years:
Hiruki: Shooting Guard (seemingly inherited Hyuuga’s clutch time skills)

First years:
Mori: Power Forward (reserve player)

—

The regular line-up for Touou is as follows.

Third years:
Sakurai: Captain, Shooting Guard
Aomine: Power Forward, Ace
Yoshitake: Point Guard

Second years:
Isagawa: Center

First years:
Endo: Small Forward

—

Something’s not right, Aomine thinks as he takes an even breath through his nose and dribbles the ball deliberately in his hands. He gauges Kagami’s reaction, watching his muscles twitching minutely, body tilting to one side.

The game itself isn’t anything different from the every day practice matches during the summer camp. But presence of a massive audience as well as the desperation to form a point gap has stressed the players in his and Seirin’s team into stiffness for the first five minutes.

(Honestly and logistically speaking, this match doesn’t really matter at all. Touou could lose, Touou could win. Either way, it’s a given that Senshikan, the weakest of the four schools, would be eliminated from the league at the end.)

Aomine is pleased to see that Kagami is flawless and composed, not caring about the roar of the crowds around him, and keeping his stance relaxed. Aomine didn’t expect any less from him.

They’ve paired off a million of times before, in practice matches and one-on-ones in street courts. So, it isn’t surprising when Kagami can shuck off all that pressure and just focus, body naturally reaction to every small movement of his and fingers itching to counter.

(Aomine and Kagami, they’re pretty much equal in every way. Well, except for the universal fact that Aomine is a tad bit more flexible and faster. Stronger, and awesomer too.)

Aomine shifts again and observes the intent gaze Kagami has in his eyes and the way he breathes slowly through his nose. It’d be a sight (and added challenge) if Kagami was to go into zone on him right now, and Aomine entertains the thought with an amused smile on his face, but the thought vanishes as another one crosses his mind.

Something’s definitely not right.

He picks up the pace with his dribble, eyes widening just a fraction, before he darts to the left—Kagami reacts, taking a side step to block him and that’s it.

That’s what’s weird, Aomine thinks before he sees a flash of black to his right and launches the ball to Endo during the last second. He doesn’t miss the way Kagami crumples over after that, breathing in relief even while the game is still on, (even more so when the ball is still in Touou’s hands,) arm brought up to wipe at the (excessive) sweat collecting on his forehead.

Kagami doesn’t spare him a glance but runs to join his teammates in defending the basket. It’s obvious now, the slow-fast-slow steps in his jog, and Aomine stares hard at his back, at the bold, black 4 as there is a distant cheer when Seirin’s center slaps Sakurai’s ball away from the hoop.

What the hell is with that?

The buzzer marks the end of the first quarter and Aomine numbly watches Seirin flock back to the benches, Kagami being the tallest among them. The glaring number on the back of his jersey makes Aomine frown.

End 1st Quarter
22-23
Seirin vs. Touou

—

Eight minutes into the second quarter and Furihata guides all the passes to Hiruki who makes three pointers one after another, which sparks some all-out-war with Touou’s captain as they also proceed to make 3-point baskets, leaving no chance for the ball to come hurdling Kagami’s or Aomine’s way.

(Well, even if they did, Aomine faked him out too many times with a strange look in his eyes, before he effortlessly broke past Kagami and passed it off to one of his teammates. Kagami would’ve called it teamwork if he didn’t get the niggling feeling that Aomine just wasn’t interested in making any baskets that quarter.)

Sakurai makes a perfect shot and it dives straight into the hoop, barely swishing the net. It’s like dejavu all over again, like their vengeance match in the Winter Cup preliminaries. Kagami breathlessly watches the ball weave from player to player and right to Hiruki’s waiting palms, as he takes a step back and tosses the ball, perfect form, into the swaying net.

Another basket is made and Kagami readies himself to dash to the other side of the court as the ball returns back into Touou’s possession—

“Kagami!” Fukuda yells at him and—too late—Kagami whips around to see the ball in Aomine’s palms and a hush falls throughout the stadium. Everyone’s waiting for a play between the aces.

Half of him expects Aomine to run past Kagami with ease and then pass it to a nearby teammate but Aomine takes the time to dribble the ball instead, disrupting the fast break. Adeptly controlling the rhythm, he bounces once, twice, and the speed increases—

One-on-one, Aomine’s narrowing eyes seem to say, and whatever smile that was on Aomine’s face in the last quarter is now gone and his lips are drawn tight into a frown.

Kagami can’t register what’s happening before Aomine disappears in a blur of red and black, moving too quickly for him to follow. The ball leaves Aomine’s hand, jetting away toward the left as he dips towards the right—one of Aomine’s unconventional street ball moves, unnecessarily flashy and irritating to work with. Kagami recognizes it as a bad habit from two years ago, a play that usually emerges when Aomine is bored and toying with weak opponents—weak?

Kagami doesn’t dwell on the thought and takes a few hurried steps back to catch up with the accelerating rhythm—(pain, pain, pain)—arms spread wide to snatch the ball mid-air.

His fingers nearly graze the rough surface, before Aomine curls a hand around the ball and snaps it away. He twists around him, agile and flexible, giving Kagami a sharp glare before he glances away. (He’s not smiling, Aomine always smiles during their games.)

Aomine spins the ball straight towards no one in particular with a quick flick of his wrist, and Kagami feels a sudden flood of air rush into his lungs as he struggles to breathe.

Aomine runs toward Seirin’s basket after catching his own ball in mid-flight, easily breaking through Seirin’s screens like he did with Kagami and ignores his own team mates, darting in between both Seirin and Touou like too-easy obstacles.

Kagami attempts to follow him, sprinting across the court in hopes that in a few quick strides, he can cover the distance to the basket before Aomine makes the shot—

He can’t.

His legs nearly buckle as the buzzer screams around him—Aomine has already flung the ball carelessly above three Seirin players. Kagami watches it slide down the net and roll to the side, a frustrated growl in his throat and fists clenching at the hem of his shorts because stupid legs, stupid, stupid, stupid—

End 2nd Quarter
50-55
Seirin vs. Touou
End of 1st half.

—

“Is it me or is Seirin weaker than normal?” Someone laughs amidst the slamming and shutting of the metal locker doors.

“Did you see how the captain almost fell down, what’s up with that–?”

“Aomine-senpai is obviously much better than him, we’re going to win this easily—”

“—shut up,” Aomine suddenly yells, voice bouncing around the walls and sounding foreign to him, as he slams his duffle bag against the wall of lockers. It makes a resounding clatter, water bottles and towels spilling onto the floor, and his team quickly silences, mouths sliding shut at the outburst, eyes wide and wary. “Shut the fuck up, don’t you fucking say anything about—“

(This is the first time—first time Touou has ever seen Aomine vocally frustrated over anything, and to think he’d lose his temper at idiots who don’t know a thing.

There’s a deeply rooted anger at Kagami and his pathetic attempt to hide it from him—Kagami isn’t weak, he’s more than that. But there are splotches on his arm, and then the limp, an obvious injury from god knows where, and for fucking idiots to laugh—)

Aomine catches himself, covering his eyes with the base of his palm and inhaling. He counts—breathe in for four, hold for three, exhale in five—he feels a hand tentatively slide over his arm. Satsuki. “Aomine-kun, are you all right?”

“I…” Aomine mumbles, feeling a bit lost and dazed. He glares at the floor, eyebrows wrinkling and lips turned down in disgust. He hardens his voice. “Don’t look down on our opponents just because they’re a few points behind. That kind of thinking will make us lose, got it?”

Aomine huffs after glaring everyone down and storms out of the locker rooms, hands stuffed deep into his pockets with a towel slung over his head.

The door closes behind him with a slam, abruptly cutting off Satsuki’s apologies and explanations into an eerie silence.

—

Start of 2nd Half

There’s a difference between the third quarter and the last two. Kagami has only noticed it when Aomine began to keep the ball instead of passing it, confusing both his team members and Seirin.

It gets harder and harder for Kagami to mark him, with Aomine’s ever-changing direction and speed, he finds himself stumbling over his own feet more often than not, and Aomine just breezes past him with ease, making numerous baskets with one-man alley-oops, formless shots—the kind of basketball that just abandons any semblance of teamwork and screams past-Aomine.

It makes Kagami feel sick in the stomach because the look Aomine gives him during their man-to-man defense is unfamiliar and cold—bored—and why the fuck is that?

It’s the eleventh basket Aomine’s made and Kagami swears under his breath, arriving too late but just in time to watch Furihata make a half-court pass to Hiruki at the other end, to make a three pointer just to close the increasing gap—

“Oi, Kagami,” Aomine says loudly just as Kagami starts to jog pass him. He comes to a slow stop, throwing a curious glance back at him. “How long are you going to keep up the act.”

Kagami scrunches his eyebrows and wipes away a bead of sweat, ignoring the sting in his eye when one slipped past his fingers. From the corner of his eyes, he sees the three pointer being blocked, but the ball falls back into Furihata’s hands; they really don’t have the leisure to stand on Seirin’s side of the court to chat.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He steps forward, jerking when there’s a stab of hot pain at his knee; Kagami nearly stumbles. Aomine grabs him by the arm (squeezing tightly at the still tender muscles) and yank him back onto his feet, grip not relinquishing.

“That. I’m talking about that,” Aomine hisses through his teeth, blue eyes livid. He’s angry. Aomine noticed when Kagami thought he didn’t—fuck.

“When the hell did you get injured—”

“It’s nothing. Let go,” Kagami grumbles, trying to shrug Aomine’s grip off. It doesn’t loosen up and he swallows hard—Kagami suddenly feels winded, a gaping hole in his chest as he mutters, voice attempting to sound stern. “Seriously, Aomine, we’re in the middle of a game—”

“Is that why you wore the socks? To hide it?” Aomine laughs, spiting and heavy. Kagami inhales a sharp breathe and glares—he doesn’t need this, not now. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? You can barely keep up with me. Pathetic—”

(Because Aomine has a way with saying things in that condescending way that just feels like a stab to the gut, that’s twisting deeper.)

Kagami feels sick, so sick as Aomine’s knuckles turn white as he grips his arm, “Fucking let go—” he growls, voice weak and frayed at the edges.

And Aomine does, throwing Kagami back just a little as he steps away, with a disappointed sigh and scowl on his face. “Just get off the court before you make the game even more sad than it really is. We don’t need injured players limping around—”

Something snaps, like a dam being broken—and how dare he not take the match seriously; see Kagami as a joke;  look down on him and his team—how dare he.

“I said it’s nothing, you bastard!” Kagami yells, shoving back at Aomine’s chest hard. (He can’t hear himself now, there’s a deafening loud silence in his ears, and his voice—a watery echo somewhere distant. His hands tremble, there’s a heat in his palms, his chest hurts and air scalds down throat as he swallows down the bile.)

“Don’t fuck with me,” he hears Aomine hiss distantly.

Over the throbbing pressure in his head, Kagami faintly hears the furious tweets from the referee’s whistle, the shout calling a foul, and a confused hush murmuring through the audience—the game had paused sometime ago, Kagami’s not sure when, but everyone’s staring at them now, it’s eerily quiet and—

Everyone is watching—

Kagami jerks when a hand snatches the collar of his jersey, reels him close before throwing him back, full-force without any hesitation—

“Shut up and get the fuck off the court!”

He can’t catch himself, and he collapse, wincing at the burn spiking through his back and his side. Kagami is blinded by the glaring stadium lights and the searing heat surges between his eye; Aomine becomes a dark, black watery blur. “Do your team a favor and sit your fucking ass on the bench, you can’t do shit for anyone with your legs like that—”

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you— Kagami wants to say as he struggles to sit up, but his throat is clenching tight and everything decides to fucking hurt, all at once, pain consuming and he can’t see anything but blinding, blurry white.

There is a rush of voices and quick steps charging towards him, the loudest being the blaring whistle accompanied by the words screaming foul, foul, foul just as Aomine grabs his arm again, fingers digging into his fore arm. There is a fist grappling the cloth around his neck, his jersey is being pulled—

Kagami lashes out in red anger, fists curled and heavy before he feels arms wrap around his torso, hands holding back his fists. He trips and there are hands on him, pulling him back. He hears a chorus of worried “Captain!” and “Kagami—” melding together into an unintelligible white noise as the whistle screeches for a timeout.

“Kagami-kun,” he hears Kuroko’s calm voice amidst everyone elses’ when he’s led to the bench. Everything becomes dark as a wet towel drapes over his head, an attempt to calm him down. The water drips from the edges of the towel and into his hair, running into his eyes and mixing with the tears already dribbling down his cheek. (Kagami rarely cries out of frustration but this stupid leg, fucking Kirisaki Daichi, Aomine that fucking asshole—)

Everything is drowned out like it’s underwater, and after picking at his hands, at the red palms still searing with a sting, he hears—

“—three minutes left. Kuroko-kun, you’re in. We need to counter attack.”

Timeout in the middle of 3rd Quarter
74-85
Seirin vs. Touou

—

It’s deadly quiet on Touou’s side of the bench because their victory had already been assured with an eleven point difference. Keep at it, maintain the score—the regulars already know all that needs to be said, leaving nothing more for the coach to advise them on.

Even if there was something to say about the foul Aomine received, coach doesn’t say anything since it was obvious provocation on Aomine’s part, and something personal that needs to be attended to off-courts. Aomine was, after all, the first to grab the Seirin captain, push him down, and if Kagami had punched him, he’d probably punch back too, equally hard or perhaps harder.

Aomine is still bristling on the bench with residual anger pulsing like hot bullets through his veins. Throat aflamed and aching, he can’t control the shake in his fingers. He curls them in, fingernails digging sharply into his palms.

It’s unsettling, being so angry. Aomine isn’t the most eloquent when it comes to words, and he knows, knows that when his judgment is blurred, he’ll say things—all the wrong things—that he can’t remember afterwards.

But his anger, it’s justified isn’t it? Kagami’s movements were becoming strained as the match continued, the pain in his expressions becoming more obvious the longer he was on court and if Aomine didn’t stop him then—

From across the court, Aomine watches the benched Seirin underclassman dart around, holding towels and handing water bottles to the exhausted regulars crashed on the bench. The female coach is kneeling in front of them, talking about something—about the game, probably—and he watches Tetsu put a towel on Kagami’s head and a comforting hand on his shoulder.

It makes Aomine feel angry all over again.

Apparently, everyone on Seirin’s team knew about it, but no one tried hard enough—or cared enough—to convince the stubborn bastard to just sit out from the start.

“I can’t believe they’re benching the captain,” he overhears someone snickering from behind him—there’s always those sort of people in his team, the ones that poke fun at the other team and laugh, ignorant and pretentious, and if Aomine could, he’d order them to run ten laps around the building.

Instead, Aomine’s grip on his towel tightens, and he tries to ignore them. From the side, the referee signals that time-out has ended, and he slides the towel away from his neck.

“But he can’t help it, right? I heard they had trouble with the Kirisaki Daichi game yesterday.”

That catches his attention and Aomine suddenly can’t—breathe; there’s a heat flaring back under his skin, crawling up his veins like a needles.

They matched against Kirisaki Daichi, the underhanded sleazebags that target aces.

Kagami, as the captain and Ace, was hit by the brunt their attack.

His stomach wrenches from the realization. It isn’t fair.

The bravado, the front Kagami had put up, pretending that he’s fine, all for a meaningless title and stupid number printed on his back. For the sake of his team, he had pushed himself to play with an already injured leg and god knows where else on his body. (And Aomine is pretty damned sure Kagami wore a sleeved shirt the night before, because there are other marks all over him, ugly and deep, that he didn’t want Aomine to see.)

How is any of that even fair?

There are many people he suddenly wants to fling his fists at—firstly, himself for not noticing earlier because sometimes, he can be so stupidly oblivious and secondly, Kagami, because he can be a fucking idiot and keep those things to himself for no damn reason.

It’s annoying, Aomine growls, feeling the sting from Kagami’s shove, still painful, on his chest.

“Fuck this already,” Aomine growls, standing from the bench. He grabs his jacket and turns to leave.“Coach, sub someone else in, I’m leaving—”

“Dai-chan, you can’t leave now, they’re putting Tetsu-kun into the game—” Satsuki snags him by his jersey, and usually he’d consider, becauseTetsu-kun is a threat and Aomine knows him long enough to predict his actions, but he brushes her off with a slap of a hand.

“It’s fine, isn’t it?” Aomine finally says. There’s a pressure against his chest along with the aching sting, and he swallows thickly, turning his eyes away. “We just need to win two games anyways.”

—

Kagami isn’t trying to hide it anymore, the searing pain in his leg, as he makes his sluggish way back to the locker rooms.

Coach assured him that his leg is just over-strained, and if he sits out the next game with Senshikan, he’d be able to play a full match against Shutoku. Seirin needs him the most if they were to stop Midorima and his unbelievable full-court shots.

Before she sent him off, Riko patted him on the back trying to make him feel better, and had said with a cheerful grin, “It’s a good thing Aomine-kun stopped you. If you had kept going at that pace trying to keep up with him then—” and Kagami stopped listening to her after that because there’s no good thing when Aomine figuratively spat on him and looked down on his team.

He’s been wandering down this hall for the past some minutes, dragging himself with much difficulty. Anger has given its way to exhaustion and with the adrenaline winding down, his body hurts, in so many ways.

There’s a pressure weighing on his chest, crushing his lungs that all he can manage is something shallow, his knees are buckling with odd clicks and as for his legs— like a dull knife cutting into his nerves repeatedly, over and over, annoying and incessant but nothing alarmingly problematic that he’d be sent to rehab for it.

Then there’s that deep-rooted nausea in the pit of his stomach making its way into his throat whenever he thinks back on what just happened, the scene replaying in his head like a broken record, showing him the anger in Aomine’s eyes and the contempt in his voice.

(Kagami’s nose would sting, chest tighten, and wet anger would shoot straight from the clench in his chest and to his eyes—)

“Kagami-kun, I’m sure Aomine-kun didn’t mean it,” Kuroko had said quietly to him before he left. “He’s just worried.”

As much as Kagami doesn’t want to admit it, he knows that.

He doesn’t need to be told twice that it’s because Aomine cared that he shoved him off the court.

Being able to play as long as possible in the tournaments is what every third year aims for before graduation, and Aomine knows that if Kagami was to jeopardize the rest of his tournaments (and possibly, his future basketball career) by overusing his legs the same way Kiyoshi did a year ago, then—

But it still hurts.

“—Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? You can barely keep up with me. Pathetic—”

The words still hurt.

Kagami lets out a rattling breath and wipes his eyes with the edge of his sleeve just as he hears the echoing taps of someone walking towards him from the opposite direction.

This is so fucking stupid. This isn’t how a captain should act.

He still has some kind of integrity to maintain, an image to keep. The last thing he’d need after being publicly humiliated in front of everyone is for someone to see him crying over something he knows that isn’t his fault.

For now, there’s nothing else Kagami can do besides retreat into the locker rooms and hope that Kuroko can change the pace of the game in the last quarter. But with Aomine on the other team and continuing with his solo plays, there really isn’t a chance of Seirin winning without Kagami on their side—

The footsteps stop just down the hall for the briefest moment. Kagami finishes rubbing his eyes, and blinks up just as footsteps break into a hurried walk towards him—

“Kagami—”

He freezes, heart jumping right to his throat, and seeing the very last person he ever wanted to see, walking from the end of the hall, towards him.

Aomine—what the fuck is he doing here? Isn’t there a match outside? What the fuck, what the fuck—?

Kagami doesn’t even have to think before a fight or flight reaction takes place. It’s impossible for him to win if he even tries to fight or even coherently argue in the state of mess he’s in, so.

Flight, it is.

—

Aomine has no idea where Kagami is headed to but there’s only one hallway (a very long one) and for the last ten or so seconds that he’s been tailing him and trying to get his attention, he’s pretty sure Kagami’s trying to run away from him—well.

Limp away.

It only adds to his growing irritation—about stupid Kagami, stupid martyring Kagami, damn captain shit—because for all the years, Aomine has known him for, Kagami’s never been the type of coward to run. (He’d bite back, maybe punch him a bit, but run? Never—)

“Hey. Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Aomine demands, grabbing his shoulder. Kagami flinches under his touch, shoulders scrunching in pain and that surprises him, enough to make him want to snap his hand back, with whatever irritation he had felt earlier long forgotten.

Kagami doesn’t turn to face him but instead, reaches a hand to rub at his face. There’s the unmistakable, wet sniff and sulking cat silence, and Aomine feels his throat dry up as a thought dawns on him.

—No fucking way. Did he make him—

“Hey—” Aomine mutters, voice dropping into a softer whisper just as he loosens his grip. He takes several steps forward, keeping a careful hold on Kagami’s shoulders, and tries to look at him. “Kagami…?”

He blatantly refuses to face and has bitten down his lips, glaring at the floor with eyes so obviously red. The clench in Aomine’s chest tightens as he swallows, feeling guilt ebb at him and eating him up from inside.

Kagami’s never reacted this way before and if he did, well, maybe Aomine just wasn’t there to see it or, well—fuck if any of that matters now, because he fucking made him—

Aomine had to open his fat mouth and say things. 

He’s awful at apologies (they both are, actually) and now that Aomine thinks about it, it’s barely been twenty minutes since what happened on the court. And Kagami’s not generous enough to turn around so quickly and forgive him for his fucking stupidity.

It usually takes days or even weeks for the both of them to come around after a fight, mostly with the help from Satsuki or Tetsu, but after something as big as this, as public as this, when he just lashed at Kagami in blind anger, and even pushed at him too—

Maybe Kagami just doesn’t want to see him right now at all, maybe—not ever. (Aomine fucked up, he fucked up so badly—)

He shoves the thought away for another day to consider and catches Kagami’s wrist. When he looks closely, there are red streaks raised on his skin and faintly he wonders if he scratched him during their scuffle. (Well, shit, if he hurt him in this way too, what is he supposed to do now.)

Aomine starts to pull him back in the other direction, hoping that Kagami wouldn’t slap him away, shrug him off, or finish the punch he had intended to throw just twenty minutes ago. (Even though he probably deserved it.)

“Let’s,” Aomine mumbles, before sliding his hand lower to grasp at Kagami’s fingers. They’re cold and limp, Kagami’s not saying anything. “…let’s get your legs iced, okay?”

Kagami wordlessly follows after him; the silence between them is suffocating.

—

They don’t apologize, not verbally anyways if there isn’t some kind of mediator between them (usually Momoi) chaining them both down on a table at Maji’s and forcing them to spit out pre-written, cheesy sentences like, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that, please forgive me, pretty please with a cherry on top.”

Aomine apologizes through half a tray of burgers, in a messaged wall of text filled with half-baked excuses and “I love you’s” snuck in like little Easter eggs, by standing outside his door with a ball under his arm even after being ignored repeatedly for days, and then this—

Aomine slides his cool fingers against the skin on his knee, gentle and caressing over his bruises, and pushes down the half-soaked leg sleeves down to his ankles; Kagami shivers when there’s a bag of ice carefully placed on his leg, and another cushioning underneath his thighs.

The air in the locker room is heavy and thick. It’s quiet and Kagami doesn’t know what he can do or say, so he just glares down stubbornly at the plastic bag of melting ice, at Aomine’s hands on his calf, massaging the ache away in comforting, rhythmic motions.

It’s uncomfortable, the silence.

The clock on the wall is ticking, the sound bounces against the metal lockers, half-reminding him that there are just a quarter left to decide the outcome of the game outside. He  should be worried but.

The thought of the game dissipates when he becomes conscious of Aomine’s slow breathing as he sits on the floor front of him. Another inhale, this time it’s forceful, a short huff, and Kagami braces himself for the worst—

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Aomine finally says, both venom and anger lacking.

“That’s not really new,” Kagami mutters hollowly, but he clenches his fists against the metal bench he’s sitting on, and tries to burn holes into the floor. (He’s trembling a little and Kagami hates how weak he is, how his shoulders are shuddering.)

Aomine shakes his head and sighs loudly before standing up. His shadow looms over him, and a cold hand brushes down his shoulder to grip at the striped collar of his jersey jacket. “Hey, take everything off.”

Kagami sputters and finally glances up at him, eyes wide. “What?” 

He has to be joking—

“Jacket, jersey, off, now,” Aomine gruffly says, plopping right onto the bench, too close, but hands dropping away from his jacket. Aomine is staring at him, waiting with a crinkle on his forehead, expression unreadable.

(He’s not joking.)

“You’re not fucking me here if that’s—”

Aomine growls, loud and exasperated, reaching a hand up to scratch at the back of his head. There’s a light tint of red dusting his cheeks as he frowns and stares at the floor. “Do you honestly think I’d do that to you right now?”

Kagami opens his mouth—”Y—” and then shuts it after Aomine narrows his eyes. “Fine.”

With a defeated huff, Kagami peels off his jacket, shrugging it from his shoulders. It pools in a heap behind him and he shudders when his bare arms are bare. His entire back is damp from the sweat in his jersey, and only now he notices how cold it is in the locker rooms.

Faintly, he hears Aomine click his tongue just as Kagami grabs the back of his shirt and tugs it over his head, pulling it off in one motion. There’s a tremble in his spine now that he’s half-naked, damp skin at the mercy of the freezing air and—

Kagami flushes dark red; the embarrassment of the situation now making itself very, very clear when he realizes he’s very much nearly naked in front of Aomine, with only his shorts left on for some modesty, but even those are pushed up high to avoid getting damp from the melting bag of ice under his legs.

“I can’t believe this…those damn bastards,” Aomine hisses and Kagami jumps at the dry hand sliding down his rib, at the thumb pressing lightly between the bones and at purple clusters.

Kagami can’t help but shiver when Aomine’s fingertips ghost over another bruise near his collar bone—the touch is light, fleeting, but uncomfortable (teasing.) “I’m going to rip their throats out—”

Kagami coughs a little before he catches Aomine’s fingers in his hands, they’re cold and damp from the ice. He gives a weak grin and squeezes Aomine’s hand. “Do that and you’ll be disqualified. Besides, they’re not worth it.”

“Uh-huh. Right. Not worth it,” Aomine echoes, distracted, as he pulls away to grab at a Touou duffle bag lying on the floor among some others. (Kagami lets out a breath he’s been holding because Aomine was so close, so, so close.)

“Here change into this.” Aomine pushes a black sweater into Kagami’s hands; it’s warm, dry, and smells distinctively different despite being freshly washed at Kagami’s apartment. “Your clothes are drenched, you don’t want to catch a cold on top of all those…injuries.”

“It says Touou,” Kagami mumbles but pulls it over his head anyways. It has red stripes running along the sleeves and 桐皇Gakuen sewn in red on his chest with a small 5 stamped right underneath it—it isn’t the first time Kagami’s wearing it but wearing it while being in Touou’s locker rooms? It just doesn’t feel right—”Maybe I shouldn’t. I’m—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Aomine interrupts loudly, collecting Kagami’s discarded jersey and jacket. He crumples it in his palms with a growl and added force—(Kagami twitches when he hears Aomine’s knuckles crack; he’s still angry apparently)—before flicking it over his shoulder and into his bag like trash into a bin. “No one cares.”

Easy for him to say that.

“Your team doesn’t even know about me. Unlike someone, I don’t waltz into the rival school every day,” Kagami grumbles, rubbing at his still freezing arms. He watches Aomine lean back against the bench with a thoughtful look.

“Well, even if they did, they won’t care. I’ll make sure they don’t.”

Kind of not the point, Kagami thinks before he hears Aomine hiss, frustrated. “You know—I swear to god, you let all that shit get to your head. You’re not even Kagami anymore.”

He blinks, eyes widening just a bit. “The hell are you talking about—”

Kagami stiffens when Aomine throws an arm around his waist and tugs him into an awkward embrace on the bench. “I’m talking about responsibilities, being a captain—I know you took the hit for your team in that fucking match and that’s nice of you, but god, think about yourself sometimes. Being all sacrificial and crap, are you some kind of masochist— “

Kagami feels a laugh bubble in his throat at the ticklish way Aomine is grumbling against his ear and into his neck. He relaxes and leans into Aomine’s chest, reaching his hand up to grasp at his shoulders. “I’m not, but—”

“Shut up. I’m not done.” Kagami quiets and listens to Aomine breathe against the side of his head. “All right, I know it’s a big deal for you, since you like to mother-hen people, especially the kids, but your team doesn’t need you to fucking babysit them all the time—” Kagami opens his mouth to object–

“Shut up. Anyways, like I was saying. Before you’re the Captain of Seirin remember you’re Kagami-fucking-Taiga—” He snorts at the nickname but the hold around his waist just tightens, almost painfully so. “You can be cool and shit, but you don’t owe anybody anything and if you think you do, I’m going to punch you and that person. Got it?”

“…I guess,” Kagami sighs, exhausted and letting his eyes close. Aomine sighs before pressing a kiss against the side of his head and then at his ear.

“Jeez. The more this goes on, the more I seriously think you should transfer to Touou. You can be #10 again instead of a fucking #4—”

“Wouldn’t I just be stealing your junior’s jersey then?” Kagami laughs into Aomine’s jacket, sleepy and surrendering himself to the exhaustion keeping his eyelids weighed down.

“Not like they do anything to deserve the number.” He feels a gentle rumble against his chest as Aomine laughs at the thought. He smells nice, like some sports cologne or deodorant covering up the light spike of sweat; it’s soothing in a way.

“Erm, hey. About what happened earlier…” There’s an uncertain edge to his tone, a slight tremble as he tries to keep his voice level, as casual as he could. It’s kind of endearing and warming, it makes Kagami smile a little at his efforts. “I didn’t—you know. Mean all that—…but I am pissed that you tried to fucking hide it from me, god, do you know how—”

“I know,” Kagami says, pulling himself away, just enough to press a kiss onto the corner of Aomine’s mouth; Kagami grins at him tiredly. “But I didn’t want to sit out on our match, and—”

Aomine glares at him with a frustrated twitch in his lips before reeling Kagami back against his chest, hand sliding between the expanse of Kagami’s shoulder blades. “Yeah, yeah.”

Aomine relaxes against him, the tension seeping from his muscles and whatever anger left in him is blown out with a  slow breath. It’s comforting somewhat knowing that Aomine has apologized (almost) and that he’s let the issue go, but— “I still really want to punch you for the shit you said—”

“—yeah, you can do that later. Just shut up and sleep first.”

Which sounds like a good idea.

“Wake me up before Senshikan’s match starts,” Kagami yawns tiredly, burying himself into Aomine’s neck, inhaling his warm scent and feeling the rise and fall of his chest.

“I’m not letting you play in that—” Aomine says with an indignant huff, but even then, Kagami’s too tired to argue.

—

From: Tetsu
Please tell me you know where Kagami-kun is. He’s missing from our locker room.
Thank you.

—

From: Aomine-kun
He’s with me, don’t worry.
and. I’m not letting you have him.

—

From: Tetsu
That’s fine. You can borrow him for now, but please return him after the next match.
Also, good luck against Midorima-kun.

—

From: Aomine-kun
yea

—

From: Tetsu
I’m not joking, Aomine-kun.
Please remember to return him.

–extra–

Kagami fell asleep quicker than expected, so Aomine shifts him into a more comfortable position. He lets Kagami rest his head against his shoulder, cushioned by a makeshift pillow of clean towels that he had somewhat scavenged from his bag. And with another towel plopped over his head, he hopes it’d shade Kagami’s eyes from the blinding lights in the room.

Aomine sighs to himself, flicking his phone open and closed; not bothering to respond to Tetsu anytime soon.

Kagami can be an idiot sometimes, but what matters the most now is that he’s resting (although it took some literal kicking and screaming)—

—in Touou’s locker rooms.

Shit, how on earth will Aomine explain himself?

“‘Sup guys. You know that captain of our rival team? Yeah, we’re kind of going out,” just wouldn’t cut it.

It would raise countless questions and make him lose some of his ~co-captain~ authority. (If they stopped idolizing him, how would Aomine get them to do whatever he said?) Instead, his underclassmen would be cheeky and irritating once they see that Kagami’s his weak point. They’d probably bother him a lot about the secrets to beating Seirin or some other crap they think he’d know when he really doesn’t—

Not to mention Mai-chan.

Everyone believed that Mai-chan was the only one for him. Bullshit, Aomine calls it because his heart is big enough for both Kagami and Mai-chan (besides they’re different, two different kinds of love) but his underclassmen don’t know that—

God.

Is this what Kagami constantly worries about? Wow, even if Aomine didn’t want to think that he cares about people’s opinions, it actually makes sense now that he thinks about it—

What a headache.

Aomine inhales just as the door opens to the sound of shuffling feet—it’s quiet, that usually means one thing—and the person in front of the team with his head hung low in defeat is—

“Oh, Ryo, how’d the match go—”

His eyes widen like saucers before he ducks, quickly into a 90 degree angle. “A-Ah, please excuse me!”

The metal door rattles shut as quickly as it had opened, and Aomine distantly hears the captain stutter up some weak excuses for a fresh breath outside, quick jog in the sun, lunch out for a quick twenty minute break before the next game—

All of which Satsuki plowed through doubtfully before she was the next one to open the door and—

A few minutes later…

From: Satsuki
omigod dai-chan, THE BATHROOM WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE BUT
PLEASE NOT IN THE LOCKER ROOMS.
You owe me and Sakurai-kun lunch. Dont be late for our match!

—

From: Dai-chan
What the hell are you talking about??