Work Text:
Here are the things that Himuro does not want to remember about Kagami:
-
his backyard in Fullerton between the buildings with the flowers in it and 10-year old Kagami burying a penny in the grass; the coin had sparkled like a star and Kagami had told him a fantastic story, let his smile stretch farther across his face than Himuro had ever seen it go
-
the afternoon in July when it had rained over the peninsula and they had paused under the same tree to catch their breaths, the raindrops in Kagami’s hair mixed with some kind of esoteric wonder in his eyes and how the simplicity of the moment had rendered Himuro speechless for perhaps the first time in his life
-
the glittering generalizations he’d spoken of, that Kagami had accepted without any hesitation after Himuro had had a fight with his parents over school and basketball; he’d locked himself in his room after and climbed out the window to go to Kagami’s house, hid under Kagami’s bed when his parents came over to look for him, let Kagami throw his blankets over both of them and clasp a hand over Himuro’s mouth, his muffled emotions lurking below the thrill of defying authority and thwarting family melodrama, sharpened under the pretense of maybe falling in love
-
three months when Kagami’s mind had been full of nothing but basketball and Himuro’s mind had been full of nothing but Kagami
-
Kagami’s third pair of basketball shoes in two months, white stripes and Adidas laces, how he’d gotten them muddy the very next day running through puddles playing tag under the concrete bridge, and then the week after, when Kagami had worn the same shoes to the court and they’d collectively defeated the neighborhood street ball gang (from there on, neither of them had looked back)
-
the next two years that they spent together under the sun with Alex, where one hidden aspiration was revealed after another and Kagami became aware of the gap between the hoops and the sky, and how he and Himuro were only tiny pinpricks between the cracks, waiting for a spotlight to catch up to their sights
-
the rings
-
Kagami telling him, “You can’t let me chase after you forever,” and how he was the only one who could feel the contextual irony drip out of his heart and seep into the asphalt
-
the thirty-three steps leading up to Kagami’s apartment in Tokyo, lights off in the early evening of a weeknight, how Himuro’s hand had hesitated against the door before he heard Kuroko Tetsuya’s voice, careful affection melting the steel in his conviction, the melody of it spun from everything Himuro was not and could not prepare to become
-
Atsushi telling him, “Kuro-chin and him, don’t they suit each other pretty well?” and the ghastly amount of inner-turmoil and self-deprecation he will encounter that night when he takes a walk in the hotel parking lot
-
and finally, Kagami’s last day in Japan before he will leave for America again, the silence at the airport and the quiet desperation in Kuroko’s eyes, when all Himuro will think about is how happy he will be when he does not have to worry about someone taking over his heart.