Chapter Text
“Furihata-kun, am I correct?” Akashi smiles politely down at Kuroko’s teammate. Furihata shakes, eyes wide like he’s looking at a nest of poisonous vipers. Behind them, Midorima squawks as his bag of dried mushrooms is sacrificed to the soup. It is nothing more and nothing less than Akashi would have expected for Kuroko’s birthday party, which has managed to connect the top high school basketball players across all of Japan to display their absurd incompetence at every other aspect of life. Except for himself, of course. Akashi has never been anything less than competent, barring Kuroko-related exceptions. “I believe we met at the Winter Cup?”
“Yes!” squeaks Furihata. The outburst, of impressive pitch and volume, coincides with a brief interval of silence in the rest of the room. For a single second, they command the attention of the masses. It’s nothing Akashi isn’t used to, but Furihata’s face approximates the shade of a ripened tomato and he shrinks into his own collar. His eyes dart around the room. It could not be a clearer call for assistance.
Akashi, gracious in all aspects, grants him the invisibility that he desires. Seamlessly, he transitions his attention to Murasakibara, who watches the soup pot with bored, single-minded focus.
“Huh?” Murasakibara looks up on hearing Akashi’s footsteps, then looks back down to meet Akashi’s eyes. Akashi, in a show of consideration, pretends not to notice. “Oh, it’s Aka-chin. Here, this is really good.”
“Thank you, Murasakibara.” Akashi leans against a counter, taking the bowl of soup from Murasakibara’s proffered hand. They watch in blissful silence as Midorima works himself into an incandescent rage – “don’t eat it, that’s my lucky item!” Akashi eyes the soup. A single shiitake mushroom floats in amongst the rest of the vegetables and, gods be praised, tofu. The base looks to be some kind of bone broth. Akashi takes a sip. It is very good. He bites into the mushroom. Midorima’s sacrifice has not gone to waste, he concludes.
Midorima is now trying to strangle his belaboured point guard. He needn’t bother, thinks Akashi idly. Takao Kazunari seems quite capable of choking to death by himself on his own laughter. Were he inclined to, Akashi would make a dramatic, oracular prediction: the future is set, the stars are aligned, tonight is the night Takao suffocates under the weight of the sexual tension between himself and Midorima that he chooses to pass off as humour. This I have seen with my all-seeing eye. Now ye all who listen, despair before me, for I am absolute. As things stand, he takes another sip of his soup.
Behind the chaos in the kitchen, a smaller gathering catches his attention. It’s all of Seirin’s benchwarming first years, gathered in a huddle on the tatami mats. Furihata is saying something. As one, they look up to see him staring at them. Their faces blanch. They scatter like so much ash before the wind.
“Ne, Aka-chin,” Murasakibara says, “Mido-chin is really loud and annoying, and still sort of stupid. I’m almost out of snacks.”
Akashi, who always came prepared for all possibilities, pulls an umaibo out of his bag. “Murasakibara,” he says, eyes still on the spot that the first years had vacated, “am I intimidating?”
Murasakibara’s fingers, curled around the umaibo, freeze. Silence stretches, interminable.
“You can tell me the truth, you know,” Akashi says at last.
“Aka-chin isn’t intimidating at all,” Murasakibara responds immediately, and a little too quickly. “I’m going to find Muro-chin. Do you want any sandwiches?”
Akashi declines the offer, almost perfunctorily, as before the words have quite finished leaving his mouth Murasakibara is already heaving himself up and moving at a brisk pace towards the countertop. Well, he thinks, eyes following Murasakibara’s towering, fleeing back.
It’s indication of a problem. Akashi Seijuurou does not tolerate problems, especially not in himself.
Years of working with Momoi have taught Akashi that data collection is useless without an adequate sample. Murasakibara he has history with. Furihata could be a potential outlier. Before he moves to act, he should ascertain from a few more sources that the problem exists.
After the Rakuzan-Yousen practice match, Akashi asks the members sharing his train carriage: “Am I intimidating?”
Nebuya chokes on his sushi. Hayama freezes in place. Mibuchi drops his magazine.
Akashi waits. The train rumbles along, leaving Tokyo in the dust. They still have two hours to go before they reach Kyoto, and Akashi can be very patient.
“Well,” Nebuya says.
“Um,” Hayama says.
“Er,” Reo says.
Mayuzumi’s absence is a palpable thing. They have yet to promote a new, permanent starter, and are instead swapping in different members of the first-string as the situation necessitates. The gap of sharp, disinterested sarcasm remains like an open wound.
“A little bit?” Nebuya says at last, deciding to take the fall.
“Only a little though, Sei-chan!” Reo adds hastily, a chorus to which Hayama quickly joins, in response to Akashi’s downturned mouth. He kicks Nebuya’s muscled shin. Nebuya winces.
So it’s true , Akashi thinks, grimly.
It is not, Akashi must acknowledge, that intimidation is without its uses. Intimidation has served him well so far. Unwanted persons keep an appropriate distance. He always has a seat in the common room for meals. No one has ever attempted any sort of hazing ritual on him. Support for his leadership had been largely unanimous (it remains so, surprisingly).
The problem lies in being unable to control such a perception of himself. Akashi has no wish to be treated like a particularly fearsome leper by any random stranger that he chances to come across. That’s something he wishes to reserve for business competition and jealous malcontents. He reaches up to touch his left eye, idly. In the bathroom mirror, it stares back at him, darkened by shadows to a rich shade of burgundy. Steam, dissipating after his shower, clears away in a white-mist halo from the mirror. Sometimes he can barely recognise himself.
Akashi draws his bathrobe around himself and turns resolutely from the mirror. He’s trying to be better, after all.
It’s by chance that the answer strikes him, a lightning bolt from the blue sky. Midorima would have called it fate. Akashi can almost see him, taped fingers pushing up his glasses, oversized stuffed toy held firmly in the crook of his elbow. Man proposes, God disposes.
It may be, Akashi thinks, staring into Furihata’s terrified, quaking face, that he hasn’t given Midorima enough credit. The other boy looks like a stiff breeze could knock him over, and his eyes are glazed over somewhat worryingly. Akashi smiles. Furihata shrinks like a worm left too long in the sun.
“Furihata-kun,” he says, untucking a hand from the pocket of his jacket to lift in a wave. Furihata mimics him, robotic. “what a surprise to see you in Kyoto.”
“Yes!” Furihata’s face makes a strange expression. It seems as if all the muscles in his face are spasming at once in different directions. After some observation, Akashi determines that Furihata is trying to corral his face into a smile, and graciously does not comment on the endeavour’s success. “I’m here with my family.”
“Interesting.” Akashi himself could imagine nothing less so, actually, but he’s self-aware enough to recognise that his family situation is in the extreme minority of the Japanese population. “Do you come here often?”
“No!” Furihata squeaks. “My aunt moved here for business! We’re helping her get settled in!”
The short, staccato bursts of speech burst into the air like anxious fireworks. A mother across the street stares at them, and pulls her daughter closer. Furihata goes pale, then red, and clams up.
“How lucky, then,” Akashi says. He means it too. It really is a remarkable coincidence that Furihata’s outing to Kyoto has coincided not just in time, but also in location, with Akashi’s bimonthly game of streetball with the Rakuzan regulars (for team building purposes), and just as remarkable that they have both found themselves meeting alone, separate from the groups to which they each belonged. “Out of every possible path we both could have taken, I chose the same one that you would take, on this particular day, for this particular occasion. There are far more ways we could have missed each other than there were ways to meet. How incredibly fortuitous. We should exchange phone numbers.”
He pulls his phone out of the pocket and stares expectantly at Furihata. Furihata, whose head is mindlessly bobbing up and down, freezes and whips his phone out.
“Yes!” he says, fervently, feverishly. “That would be delightful!”
They exchange numbers. Furihata’s fingers shake the whole while, and Akashi texts him just to be sure the number is correct. It’s an unassuming, polite, “Hello”. Furihata’s phone pings. He starts, but doesn’t check it.
Akashi smiles. “I look forwards to being friends.”
Furihata’s face stretches somewhat grotesquely. He says something so quickly that it’s unintelligible, points wildly behind him, and flees. Akashi assumes the small cluster of three further down the street to be his family, and is proved satisfyingly right when Furihata skids to a stop before them.
Furihata, he thinks, who is so terrified of him that speaking to him causes earthquake tremors under the force of his nervous vibration. Furihata, who might faint even when Akashi turns the most gentle and winsome of his smiles on him.
Furihata, who will serve nicely as his victory metric. If Akashi can reassure Furihata into accepting him as a presence not to be feared, he can reassure anyone. If Akashi can befriend Furihata, Akashi has clearly won.
How fortuitous , he thinks, this time to himself. He basks in his own superiority, his absolute absolution, found on a desolate, small street with concrete walls stretching up over him to block out the sun. The silence pays tribute to him, interrupted only by the hesitant cheeps of birds. Fate is playing by Akashi’s rules once more, the wheel turning instead of bucking at his touch.
Behind him, Mibuchi calls from around the corner: “Sei-chan, I’ve got the Pocari!” and Hayama: “Oi Akashi, where’d you go!” Nebuya says, a little quieter, “we didn’t lose him, did we?”
Akashi turns, mortal once more. “Thank you, Mibuchi,” he says, taking the proffered Pocari. Mibuchi smiles, a little uneasily. No one except for Akashi himself is used to the sudden switch back to formal normalities. Mibuchi doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with himself when his captain and junior isn’t blatantly disrespecting him in a show of arrogance through the use of his personal name. “Let’s go before we miss the bus.”
On the bus ride back to Rakuzan, Akashi checks Oha-Asa. Sagittarius is ranked first, and he resolves to mail Midorima his lucky items for the next week.
Akashi’s phone goes off during dinner. He wipes his mouth with his napkin and pulls the offending device out of his pocket. Furihata has replied to him.
Hi! says the message, and nothing else.
Hayama leans in. “Ooh, who is it?” His eyes sparkle, his teeth gleam. He buzzes with curiousity. Akashi is not in the habit of receiving texts at dinner. Akashi is not, in fact, in the habit of receiving texts at all. Mibuchi leans in on the other side. “Don’t crowd him, Kotarou!” to which he gets a whine of “Reo-nee, you’re doing the same thing!”
Mibuchi chooses to ignore that, and says, more gracefully but just as irrepressibly, “Someone’s texting Sei-chan?”
Nebuya, busily going through his sixth serving, shows himself to be indomitably dedicated to food and his own stomach.
Akashi smiles, pleased, and let’s his phone’s screen go dark.
“A friend,” he replies.