Work Text:
The sun was sinking behind the school, bathing the world in an orange glow. Hyuuga ran the back of his hand over his forehead, breathing hard, and stared up at Kiyoshi. He was slick with sweat, golden light picking out the hollows and curves of the muscles of his arms and neck.
Their evening one-on-one match was becoming a tradition, ever since Kiyoshi had finally gotten him to agree to be on the team. Hyuuga was starting to think of Kiyoshi in sunset colors all the time—red warmth in his brown eyes when they snapped to Hyuuga’s on the court, little scraps of sun-gold caught in his hair as he dozed off in class. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated on the rhythm of his hand against the basketball at his side, focused on the shift of Kiyoshi’s muscles under his tee so he could predict how he might move.
Kiyoshi shifted his weight, one arm moving to knock the ball from Hyuuga’s grasp, and Hyuuga smirked, curling his fingers around it and shifting with him, passing the ball behind his back into his other hand and then lofting it upward. He was a little off on his release—but he made the three points easily. Kiyoshi relaxed a little, chuckling, and turned to grab the rebound.
That made it a tie. Hyuuga scowled and darted forward, catching Kyoshi by the wrist. Kiyoshi turned back to him, looking surprised. “Hyuuga-kun?”
“Stop holding back,” Hyuuga snapped. “I don’t need you going easy on me.”
Kiyoshi stared at him for a long moment. “I’m not—“ he started, but that just made it worse.
“Bullshit,” Hyuuga said. “You could’ve picked that out of the air in your sleep.” He realized he was still holding on to Kiyoshi’s wrist, fingers tight in his anger, and he let go hastily.
“Ah,” said Kiyoshi, smiling sheepishly, and he was completely relaxed now, out of his whip-sharp basketball mode and into weird, too-soft Kiyoshi, determined sweet Kiyoshi who set Hyuuga’s teeth on edge in an entirely different way. “I’m sorry, I am not supposed to jump.”
Hyuuga blinked at him. “Not supposed to—what the hell does that mean?”
Kiyoshi scratched the back of his head. “I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “Riko’s orders.”
Hyuuga clenched his teeth. “You didn’t ask?” It was a stupid question; Kiyoshi was so thoroughly, happily living in the palm of Riko’s hand that she could tell him to—to move to Australia and he’d have his passport out before you could say ‘whipped’. It was a relationship that Hyuuga didn’t like thinking about, because it was a relationship he couldn’t fucking touch.
(Not that he wanted—he just. It was depressing, seeing a giant guy like Kiyoshi be bossed around by a girl barely half his height.)
Kiyoshi smiled down at him, the wind threading through his hair, and then lifted one of his huge, ridiculous hands to Hyuuga’s face. Hyuuga’s eyes widened, and then Kiyoshi was delicately lifting his glasses off his nose. He held them up to the light as if examining them. “Your glasses are dirty,” he said softly.
Hyuuga felt his face heat. “Of course they are,” he snapped, “I’ve been playing basketball, it’s not like I’ve had time to clean…them…“
Kiyoshi rubbed the lenses perfunctorily on his shirt and then slid the glasses onto his own face. He grinned at Hyuuga. “What do you think, Hyuuga-kun?”
Hyuuga wasn’t blind—honestly, he could see pretty well without his glasses. But there was sweat in his eyes and he was blind enough that everything was just a little bit soft around the edges, colors and shapes blending into one another like a painting. Kiyoshi should look ridiculous, Hyuuga’s glasses were way too small for his face, but instead he looked—vulnerable, like Hyuuga had caught him in a totally unguarded moment somehow. His brain ran away with him entirely, imagining Kiyoshi bent over his books at midnight, the glasses slipping down his nose as he yawned—Kiyoshi waking up in the morning, bleary-eyed, perching the glasses awkwardly on his nose as he smiled up at Hyuuga and—
“Cute,” said someone fondly, and Hyuuga had a moment of terror that he’d gone mad and that the voice was his until Kiyoshi looked past him and his smile changed, no less warm but a little less brittle, somehow. Hyuuga turned to see Riko stepping onto the court. She was far away enough that he couldn’t see her face without his glasses, but he didn’t have to. He knew she would be smiling, the kind of smile she only got when Kiyoshi was doing something irritatingly adorable. He scowled and made a grab for his glasses, hoping to capitalize on Kiyoshi being distracted by Riko.
Kiyoshi dodged him easily, dodged him without even looking at him, continuing to smile down at Riko as she approached. “Well,” he said, “I’ll be going now,” and he laid a giant hand on Riko’s shoulder as he passed. “See you tomorrow, you two.”
Hyuuga stiffened. “Oi—“
“Teppei,” Riko said calmly.
Kiyoshi half-turned to her, his profile picked out in the fading light. “Hm?”
Riko reached up and slid Hyuuga’s glasses off his nose. Her hands lingered by his face and the two of them were shaded red and purple with dusk-light and Hyuuga pressed a fist to his suddenly-tight chest, trying to breathe normally.
“Oh,” said Kiyoshi, and then let out a little self-deprecating chuckle. “I forgot!”
Hyuuga gaped at him. “You—no you did not—“
Kiyoshi turned and left, waving a lazy hand over his head. “See you!”
Riko shook her head, watching him go. “What an idiot.” She looked down at the glasses in her hands and Hyuuga expected her to just hand them to him, but instead she also cleaned them—more thoroughly and probably much more efficiently on her skirt than on Kiyoshi’s sweaty tee—and then slid them onto her own face. “Oh?” she said in surprise. “You’re not very blind, Hyuuga-kun.” She turned to look at him. “Have you ever thought about contacts? Lots of athletes wear them.”
Hyuuga stared at her and wondered if the world were ever going to reassert itself under his feet properly again. Kiyoshi in glasses had been one thing—one thing he was going to try very hard not to ever think about again—but he’d seen Riko in glasses before, she sometimes wore them for reading. Somehow, though—well. They were his glasses, and a possessive streak in him that he was both extremely aware of and extremely uncomfortable with was perking up its ears. “Lots of athletes have money,” he muttered, not looking at her face.
She shook her head at him. “So would you, if you didn’t waste it all on stupid historical figurines. Honestly, that’s why I thought you’d be blind as a bat, you’re such an otaku—“
“I am not,” he snapped, glaring at her, and she grinned back, taking off his glasses and then she was just Riko, not his, not anyone’s.
“It’s a shame,” she said, holding them out to him. “You look good like this.”
Hyuuga took his glasses back in a moment of stunned silence and then she was stepping past him, swinging her school bag up and over her shoulder. “Shall we?”
Hyuuga followed her out through the fence and down the street. The sun was truly down, now, the golden light draining from the world, leaving calm blue shadows in its wake, and Hyuuga felt his own tension drain away with it. This was just any other day. This was just life.
He resettled his glasses on his nose. “Hey,” he said. “Why’d you tell Kiyoshi not to jump?”
Riko raised her eyebrows at him. “He told you?”
Hyuuga ran a hand through his hair, wincing at the cooling sweat he found there. “I was able to keep up with him today,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Riko chided. “There’s a reason you two make a good team.”
Hyuuga shrugged off the compliment. “Still.”
Riko sighed, and when Hyuuga glanced sideways her mouth was pinched in worry. “He’s been favoring one of his legs,” she said. “He hasn’t said anything, but.” She bit her lip. “I know him, and if I asked he’d just deny it, so. Easier just to tell him to stop jumping until I know more about what’s wrong.”
Hyuuga swallowed. “I didn’t notice,” he admitted, and he hated that.
But Riko just smiled sideways at him. “Of course you didn’t,” she said. “He’s been hiding it from you in particular.” She stretched upward. “Plus, noticing’s my job.”
As his coach or as his ex-girlfriend? Hyuuga wanted to ask, but it wasn’t something they talked about—he wasn’t sure he wanted it to be something they talked about—so he just said, “He’s okay, though, right?”
Riko nodded. “It might be that we have to switch up his training regimen—maybe he’s just putting too much pressure on one side of his body. I don’t know yet. But for now, I told him to take it easy.” She bumped Hyuuga with a shoulder. “Sorry.”
Hyuuga shook his head with a scowl, dismissing the apology as stupid. “We can stop playing one-on-one—“
“No,” said Riko immediately.
Hyuuga raised his eyebrows at her, and she looked steadily back. “You haven’t noticed?” she asked. “I guess you wouldn’t.”
“Notice what?” Hyuuga asked, annoyed.
“You never saw him play in middle school,” she said. “He was good—obviously, he was amazing. But now he’s better.”
Hyuuga blinked. “But surely that’s you.”
Riko grinned at him. “I’m not saying I won’t take any credit,” she admitted. “But he’s not just coached better, he plays better. Because he plays with you.” Her smile softened. “Our Iron Heart’s not so Iron after all,” she said. “When he’s playing with good players, he’s great. But when he’s playing with people he likes?” She shook her head. “He’s unbelievable.”
Hyuuga licked his lips, feeling too-warm in the cool air. “He’d still be playing with people he liked,” he protested, “Izuki and everyone…”
He trailed off. Riko had stopped, and he realized they’d reached her door. He stopped, too, turning to face her. She cocked her head at him. “You’re very stupid, you know,” she said matter-of-factly, and he bristled. Before he could protest, she reached up and carded her fingers through his hair, just once, a quick, fond touch. “Goodnight,” she said.
He watched her let herself inside, caught between annoyance and embarrassment and a weird breathlessness he didn’t have words for. He closed his eyes and listened to the wind, and when his heart had slowed enough he turned and walked home.
+
He woke up the next morning to his phone buzzing insistently on the nightstand. He considered ignoring it—it was Saturday, and he had enough of last night’s memories clinging insistently to the inside of his skull that he didn’t want to talk to Riko or Kiyoshi without a shower and coffee and a full suit of armor. But his caller ID said ‘Izuki’, and that. Izuki kind of counted as armor.
“Yeah,” he answered, sitting up, his hand hovering over his glasses. Fuck, they’d fucking infiltrated his whole life.
“It’s been a while since we’ve hung out outside of practice,” Izuki said, his voice casual. Hyuuga wasn’t buying it for a minute. “There’s a Masamune Date exhibit at the museum, you wanna go?”
Hyuuga sighed and relented, putting on his glasses. “You know, you can just suggest we hang out without bribing me,” he grumbled.
“But also yes?” Izuki suggested, amused.
“But also yes.” He checked his watch. “Meet you at the station in an hour?”
He showered quickly, not thinking about anything (he was getting pretty good at it, with all the stuff he had to Not Think About) and spent a minute or two just looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, first without glasses, then with, then without again. He’d always kind of thought he looked like a child without them, his cheeks still a little too round for him to be taken seriously, but.
Curse her for using a word like good. What did good even mean? Cute? Hot? Handsome? Distinguished? Less like an otaku? She did have an annoying habit of trying to act like his mother, maybe she meant he looked younger. Disgusted, he ran a hand over his face and replaced his glasses. It wasn’t like it mattered. She and Kiyoshi were so, so—
Unbidden, the memory of the two of them in silhouette against the sun slid back into his head—his glasses cradled gentle between Riko’s hands as she stared up into Kiyoshi’s face, Kiyoshi’s lips parted just a little as his bemused smile faded into something more complicated. In his mind Kiyoshi leaned down and Riko leaned up and then they were kissing, one of Kiyoshi’s long-fingered hands coming up to cradle Riko’s face. Riko wrapped her arms around Kiyoshi’s neck and Hyuuga saw a flicker of tongue between their mouths and then they were pulling back, Riko releasing Kiyoshi’s lip from between her teeth with a little grin and then she—no, Kiyoshi—no, they both were turning to look at Hyuuga and—
He leaned too hard on the sink, his hand slipping through a patch of water, and hit his elbow hard against the porcelain. “Shit,” he snapped, and then, “fuck,” and sucked in his breath in pain and frustration, his stomach squirming. He wished he could just—at least decide who he was jealous of, decide whose place he wanted to take in these fucking daydreams. He massaged his elbow, trying not to be sorry for himself and failing miserably.
“You know,” Izuki said over their exorbitantly expensive museum lunch, “being bisexual doesn’t actually mean you have to want to date two people at once.”
“Shut up,” Hyuuga snapped, “I know.”
Izuki put his chin in his hand. It wasn’t that Hyuuga regretted coming out to him, or even telling him—when he first realized the difference between hating Kiyoshi and really wanting to kiss Kiyoshi—about his current difficulties. Izuki had helped him out a hell of a lot, and Hyuuga really did think of him as a kind of armor—Hyuuga tended to work himself up to a place of, of rawness, where every little touch might send him spiraling, and Izuki was a good, calming presence. It was just—Izuki wasn’t as observant off the court than he was on it, but Hyuuga still kind of wished he saw a little less.
“What if they start dating again?” Izuki asked.
Hyuuga shrugged. “They’re going to,” he said, because they were, he didn’t understand why they’d ever broken up in the first place, why anyone would break up with either of them ever. “And when they do, I’ll probably crawl into a hole and die.”
“You wouldn’t say anything? Try and stop it?”
Hyuuga glared at him. The thought had never even occurred to him (and was that weird? That was probably weird). “Why the hell would I do that?” he asked. “If I said anything to either of them it’d just be—it’d be stupid, because they’d reject me and start dating anyway.”
Izuki raised an eyebrow at him. “And if they didn’t? Say you confessed to Riko on Monday, and she didn’t turn you down.”
Hyuuga swallowed. “That’s,” he said, because it’s not like he hadn’t thought about it. Dating Riko would be amazing, not the least because it wouldn’t actually change much. They’d still fight and they’d still coach and they’d still train and he’d still go along with all of her stupid plans and pretend to like her cooking and walk home together with her but he’d be able to kiss her when he wanted to, when she was particularly brilliant or infuriating, he’d be able to throw himself around her when they won a game and show her how fucking incredible he thought she was.
But it only worked in a universe where Kiyoshi didn’t exist. It only worked when he narrowed his vision so much as to exclude his nightly games, exclude the way Riko and Kiyoshi looked at each other, exclude Kiyoshi from their moments of victory. He almost couldn’t think about what Kiyoshi would look like if he were there when Hyuuga kissed Riko. He’d never seen Kiyoshi cry, and he never, ever wanted to.
He’d crushed his soda can in his grip without noticing. “Unthinkable,” he said, and there must be something in his eyes because Izuki leaned back in his chair, his second eyebrow rising to join his first.
“And the other way?” he asked. “If Kiyoshi didn’t turn you down.”
Hyuuga clenched his teeth. “He would,” he said, because he needed that certainty. That certainty kept him sane. “He’s straight, Izuki.”
Izuki shrugged. “He probably thinks the same of you,” he pointed out. “You don’t really make a secret of liking girls, or any effort to show you like boys.”
“Doesn’t matter what he thinks,” Hyuuga said shortly. “He would turn me down.”
Izuki held up his hands. “Okay, okay,” he said, and then got a familiar glint in his eye. “No need to be so cold, Hyuuga-kun. Don’t give me hypothermia over a little hypothetical.”
“That was a stretch,” Hyuuga muttered, but he felt better, pulled back from the panicky edge of imagining either Kiyoshi or Riko without the other. They’d come into his life as a duo and they would remain in it as one. It wasn’t worth changing that for anything, especially not his stupid, wonderful, torturous feelings.
So he did the only thing he could think to do with those feelings: he totally ignored them.
For the most part it was fine. For the most part it was amazing—he’d never felt this good playing basketball, never fought so hard to win, never felt so in tune with anyone the way he felt with Kiyoshi, with Izuki watching his back, with Riko on the sidelines guiding him with fire in her eyes and steel in her voice. They were good—they were really, really good, impossibly good for a new team with nothing but first years, some of whom hadn’t even played basketball a day in their lives before Kyoshi and Riko got their hooks into them.
And then Kiyoshi collapsed in the middle of the court, his face twisted in pain, and Hyuuga felt his heart stop. He learned what it was like to see Kiyoshi cry, learned what courage meant, what bravado meant, what absolute fucking stupidity meant and when he walked Riko home from the hospital he learned what helplessness meant, too.
“This is my fault,” she said blankly, without looking at him. “I saw him favoring his leg—I should have known, I should have seen it, I should have benched him—“
Hyuuga stopped, and when Riko kept walking he grabbed her by the shoulder, spinning her to him. “Hey,” he said fiercely. “Hey.”
She blinked at him, a little of the void in her eyes easing, and he fixed her with his worst glare. “This is not your fault.”
The corner of her mouth turned up but it wasn’t a smile. “It’s my job to notice,” she said bitterly, “remember?”
“Mine, too,” he snapped, “both of us, as his coach and his captain, as people who love him.” He hadn’t meant to say it but it didn’t feel important now that he had, somehow—the idea that she might not know was suddenly almost laughable. “So unless you’re gonna blame me, too, shut the fuck up.”
She stared at him, and then her eyes softened. “That goes for you, too,” she said, “so no going home and crying your eyes out, either.”
He blinked at her, slow and sad. “No promises,” he said softly.
She swallowed. “God,” she said. “What if he doesn’t get better—“
“It would’ve killed him to be benched,” he interrupted her. “You know that.” He shook his head. “He still might have done it, because I’ve never seen him refuse you, but it would’ve killed him.”
She dropped her eyes, but she nodded.
He reached out to tilt her head up, fingers under her chin. “He’s going to be fine,” he said, holding her eyes, “and we’re going to win.”
Her eyes searched his face for a long moment and he was suddenly very aware of the position they were in—aware of how easy it would be, to lean in and try and comfort her not just with words but with his lips, too, make her understand how good she was, for Kiyoshi, for him, for everyone. He swallowed.
She nodded, her lips trembling but her face determined. Before he could react, she reached up and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close and hugging him hard. “You better hope you’re right,” she said against his ear, voice arch and familiar in a way that made him sag with relief, “because I really don’t think you want to strip naked and confess to the person you like.” She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek and let him go.
He walked home, steps meandering, waiting three whole blocks before he corrected softly, “People.” He wondered what she thought she knew, whether it was just his slip about loving Kiyoshi or whether it had shown on his face when he looked at her. He almost didn’t care.
He had nightmares that night—that night, and every night for a while afterward. Kiyoshi collapsing, face gone white, but this time he didn’t get up. Riko crying, her eyes dull and awful, shaking and shaking against him as he tried to hold her.
After they lost, he visited Kiyoshi as often as he could, sometimes with Riko and sometimes without. Every time they came together he expected them to kiss each other hello or goodbye, to have re-formed, some time without him, their romance. But they didn’t. It was weird, he could see them caring so deeply about each other, so why didn’t they do something about it?
One day he came alone to find Kiyoshi flipping through a picture album. He saw enough to recognize Riko’s smile before he averted his eyes, studying Kiyoshi’s profile instead. His eyes were soft as he looked down at the pictures, the late afternoon sunlight casting warm shadows across his skin. It wasn’t often Hyuuga had time to recognize how beautiful Kiyoshi was—in motion, sure, he could hardly help but appreciate his grace and the ripple of his muscle on the court. But he was beautiful in stillness, too, radiating a kind of wistful, joyful peace that made Hyuuga’s heart ache.
“Why did you break up?” he asked before he could stop himself, and Kiyoshi started a little, glancing at him. He flushed, putting aside the album, and Hyuuga was so thoroughly far gone that he blushed right back.
“Hyuuga-kun, hello,” Kiyoshi said, smiling at him, and that—really wasn’t helping with the heat of Hyuuga’s cheeks. He stepped into the room, dropping his school bag with a thump to cover his embarrassment. He could feel Kiyoshi’s eyes on him. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Sorry,” Hyuuga said automatically. He perched in the chair at Kiyoshi’s bedside, then met his eyes. “You—don’t have to answer my question, I know it’s personal.”
Kiyoshi shook his head. “It’s, ah.” He bit his lip, and it would be really nice if Hyuuga could stop blushing sometime this century. “It’s not about it being personal, although it is that,” Kiyoshi continued apologetically. “It’s just—I don’t think I should tell you without Riko.”
Hyuuga blinked at him. Well that was a pretty weird response. “What the hell does that mean, idiot?” He frowned. “It was mutual, then?”
Kiyoshi stared at him for a minute, and then started to laugh. He buried his head in his hands, shaking with it, while Hyuuga stared at him in total bewilderment. What the hell?
Kiyoshi calmed himself with a visible effort. He looked at Hyuuga, and the laughter faded from his eyes to be replaced by something infinitely more tender, something that wrapped itself around Hyuuga’s heart and pulled it up into his throat, beating wildly. “Yes,” Kiyoshi said quietly, “it is mutual.”
Hyuuga swallowed hard, dazed and absolutely lost. Is? The thing that broke them up was current, some current feeling? He opened his mouth to ask what the hell that meant when Kiyoshi broke eye contact. “So,” he said, louder, somehow more false. “How’s the team? How are the new first years?”
Hyuuga wanted to object, wanted to somehow bring back that expression to Kiyoshi’s face, never wanted Kyoshi to look at him any other way again, but Kiyoshi was gripping the sheet of his hospital bed with shaking hands. He swallowed down his confusion and his longing and concentrated on the topic at hand. It wasn’t like the topic at hand wasn’t unbelievably cool, anyway.
Kuroko and Kagami changed everything. Not just the dynamic of the team on the court, although they certainly did that—it took Hyuuga a while to get used to not being one of The Pair That Won Games, partially because of his ego and partially because playing without Kiyoshi was like playing without his right arm—but the dynamic of the team off the court, too. Kagami was weird and taciturn and loud and a show-off, but he was also bizarrely likable, and he wormed his way into Hyuuga’s heart with surprising ease.
Kuroko was…
Hyuuga had expected to hate Kuroko. After all, the Generation of Miracles were the reason—even more than the Uncrowned Kings—that Hyuuga had almost given up basketball for good. When he heard that one of them was coming to Seirin, he’d steeled himself for a supercilious asshole, a diva who put himself above the team, a show-stealer that would force Hyuuga and the others back into perpetual second-best.
When he actually met Kuroko, he thought someone was pulling an elaborate prank.
Even once he saw what the kid could do, he had his doubts. Kuroko could work miracles, there was no question there, but he had none of the attitude that Hyuuga had seen in the other members, none of the arrogance, just a kind of quiet confidence that snuck up on Hyuuga and impressed him almost without him noticing.
“He’s like Kiyoshi,” he muttered to Riko one day, watching Kuroko and Kagami practice.
She glanced at him, surprised. “Kagami-kun?”
He shook his head. “Kuroko,” he said. “When he plays with people he likes, he’s amazing. And…” he flicked his eyes around the court, “he makes everyone else better, too.”
Riko nodded. “Very like Kiyoshi,” she agreed, her voice thoughtful, and for some reason the affection in it made Hyuuga feel warm rather than jealous.
There was a major difference, though, and it wasn’t one Hyuuga was about to discuss with Riko. He watched Kagami hang from the net, all pleased energy, watched him drop and sling an arm over Kuroko’s shoulders, watched Kuroko smile and push himself further into Kagami’s side. Kuroko wasn’t playing with someone he liked. He was playing with someone he loved, and he was loved back.
The two started dating quietly. There was no announcement, but there didn’t have to be. Their fistbumps just turned into them holding hands, and no one said anything. They’d arrive together most days. Kuroko started sitting in front of Kagami while Riko gave them instructions rather than beside him, so Kagami could card his hands through his hair while they listened. Everyone kind of… relaxed, and it wasn’t as if Hyuuga ever expected any of his team to be homophobic but it was really nice to see just how little of a deal it could be.
One day at lunch he nearly walked in on them, alone in the locker room, managing just in time to duck behind the doorway. He was hidden enough that he could sort of peer around it at them without being seen, and he did, feeling guilty and sick about it but—he was confident in his bisexuality, kind of had to be with the people he loved, but he’d never actually done anything with other guys before, and he was desperately fascinated.
Besides, they weren’t even doing anything dirty. Kuroko was standing between Kagami’s legs where he sat on a bench, and Kagami was just running his hands over his face and neck, his eyes intent. Kuroko leaned into his touch, eyelids fluttering. It was intimate but it wasn’t necessarily sexual, and even when Kuroko leaned in to kiss Kagami Hyuuga couldn’t quite manage to be guilty enough to look away.
They separated, and Kagami frowned at something, his fingers pausing in their exploration of Kuroko’s throat. “What’s this?” he asked softly, and Hyuuga took a sharp breath, seeing the mark on Kuroko’s skin, framed by his hands. If Kagami didn’t know, then—
“Aomine-kun,” Kuroko said softly, and then Hyuuga felt dizzy and awful, because hearing about Kuroko’s infidelity was absolutely not his place. He stumbled away, noting with half his brain Kagami’s dark repetition, “Aomine…”
He expected practice the next day to be tense, but if anything it was better than it had been for a while, Kuroko and Kagami just as happy and relaxed and united as they ever were, and Hyuuga was amazed—impressed, and also confused as hell. It was certainly not the behavior of a couple who had just had a fight, a couple where one party had presumably cheated. He shook it off, though, just glad that they’d managed to settle it so perfectly—he must have misheard, misunderstood something—and went back to being pleased for them.
But it made his stomach knot up with jealousy so hard he couldn’t breathe, sometimes. He was forced, pushed by their simple, easy love, by the way they looked at each other, by the little kiss Kagami pressed into Kuroko’s hair one day after a game, to imagine the rest of Izuki’s hypothetical. It was impossible not to imagine himself and Kiyoshi in their place, impossible not to think about what it would feel like to kiss him after a game, to have the support of the team.
And along with that, it was impossible not to imagine Riko’s reaction. He’d seen her dull-eyed and despairing, after Kiyoshi got hurt, and now he couldn’t stop imagining how it would feel to be the cause of that kind of pain.
They’d gotten closer since Kiyoshi had been in the hospital. If Kiyoshi was always sunset in his head, Riko was dawn—they walked to school together every morning, and when crunch time was on they ran—well, he ran, and she biked along beside him, berating and encouraging him by turns. He knew what she looked like when she’d just woken up after being up too late strategizing, her hair mussed and her eyes gentle with sleep. He knew what she looked like picked out all in pale and pearl and grey light, knew what it was like to have hers be the first face he saw every morning, knew her better than anyone on the team and it felt good to have that knowledge, to know when to fear her and when to reassure her and when to step in if she faltered. Her smile, her laugh--she pulled the world into light through sheer force of will.
They still went to the hospital together sometimes, and Kiyoshi and Riko still weren’t dating, and Hyuuga still had no idea what Kiyoshi had meant by is.
He didn’t tell Kiyoshi about Kagami and Kuroko being together, not out of any hesitance but because it literally never occurred to him—infidelities aside, it was such a non-event that he didn’t really mention it to much of anyone. He assumed, vaguely, that Riko had probably mentioned it, but when Kiyoshi came back, when Kiyoshi saw Kagami pull Kuroko sideways to kiss his cheek, his steps faltered and Hyuuga suddenly thought, maybe she didn’t.
He wasn’t sure why the thought filled him with such tension—the rest of the team wasn’t homophobic, and the literal last person he thought could be was Kiyoshi. Kiyoshi recovered from his surprise quickly, at the very least, and certainly showed no kind of bigotry or judgment toward them, but there was—something. He kept glancing at them, eyes unreadable, and Hyuuga didn’t like that, didn’t like not knowing what was going on in his head.
He sidled up to him one day during practice. Kiyoshi was watching Kagami and Kuroko play with the other first-years, his face distracted and a little distant, and Hyuuga had to nudge him with a knee to snap him out of it. “Jealous?” he teased.
Kiyoshi turned to him, looking surprised. “What?” he asked.
Hyuuga grinned at him. “Relax, I wasn’t serious. You’re not petty that way.” He watched Kagami blow past three defenders. “I am, a little,” he admitted. When he looked sideways, Kiyoshi was still watching him, eyes careful. “Jealous, I mean,” he clarified, and then shook his head. Beside him, he heard Kiyoshi take a sharp breath, and checked the court absently to see what he was reacting to. He didn’t see anything worth gasping about, so he finished his thought. “And petty, I guess. There’s definitely a part of me that doesn’t like no longer being the star duo.”
Next to him, the tension went out of Kiyoshi like the air out of a balloon. “Oh,” he said, and Hyuuga looked at him, startled. “Yeah, no, me too,” Kiyoshi said brightly, back to his normal, baffling, open self. Had Hyuuga imagined it, that tiny twist of disappointment to his mouth? The note of resignation in his voice?
What if he hadn’t? Shit, what if he hadn’t?
“I definitely missed playing with you, Hyuuga-kun,” Kiyoshi said quietly, and before Hyuuga could think about what he was doing at all he’d reached up to pull Kiyoshi’s face down to his and kissed him.
It wasn’t much—he kind of started panicking in the middle of the motion and almost missed, pressing his lips to the corner of Kiyoshi’s mouth—but it was a kiss nonetheless and it was impossible to take back. Kiyoshi let out a surprised breath against his mouth and then Hyuuga let him go, stumbling backward a few steps, his whole mind torn in half because he wanted nothing so much as to look at Kiyoshi’s face but he needed to—where was Riko—
He scanned the stands wildly. She was nowhere to be found. Izuki was looking at him, eyebrows raised. The first-years were still playing, somehow not noticing the absolute nuclear meltdown that was happening on their sidelines, and Kiyoshi—
Kiyoshi was staring at him, his eyes huge, one hand raised to the corner of his mouth where Hyuuga had kissed him. Hyuuga licked his lips and Kiyoshi took a swaying step toward him. “Hyuuga-kun,” he said, and Hyuuga felt like he might be dying.
“I have to—Riko,” he managed, and ran.
He couldn’t find her. Had she even seen? Had she ducked out for something before he’d made a massive idiot of himself? Was she back, now, having Izuki and Kiyoshi tell her what a massive idiot he made of himself? God, was that worse? Should he go back in there and explain? What would he even say? It’s not like he could deny the kiss, or even the feelings behind it, but how could he drive home how much she mattered, how much the last thing he wanted was to come between them, how much he wished more than anything he could take it back. He threw himself down on the grass, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Selfish,” he snapped at the sky, hating himself for leaving Kiyoshi there and hating himself for kissing him at all and hating the thickness of self-pity that sat bitter in his throat. “Selfish, selfish—“
“You’re being stupid,” someone said, and Hyuuga opened his eyes to find Kuroko leaning over him.
“We need to get you a fucking bell,” he muttered, sitting up.
Kuroko settled next to him. He was breathing a little hard, his hair damp with sweat. Had he come directly from playing basketball to insult Hyuuga? When had he even noticed what was happening?
Kuroko leaned back on his hands. “You love them both,” he said, “right? Kiyoshi-kun and Riko-san.”
Hyuuga stared at him. “How—?”
Kuroko smiled at him, just a tiny bit, and Hyuuga felt weirdly honored by that, even if he was being mocked. “You’re kind of obvious,” he said. “Kagami-kun and I used to talk about it, how we couldn’t understand why you and the Coach weren’t dating.”
Hyuuga blinked. “Really?”
Kuroko nodded. “Of course, once Kiyoshi-kun came back, I understood,” he said, and looked up at the sky.
Hyuuga nodded bitterly. Once they’d seen how Riko and Kiyoshi were with one another, there was no way anyone could think there was room for him.
“It’s because you’re stupid,” Kuroko concluded.
Hyuuga bristled. “You don’t understand,” he insisted. “They used to date each other, they love each other, I’d just. Get in their way.”
Kuroko shook his head. “I might not understand them,” he admitted. “I don’t know them very well. But I understand you, Hyuuga-kun, because we’re the same.” He smiled again, wider. “I love both Aomine-kun and Kagami-kun,” he said with an ease that made Hyuuga take a sharp breath.
“You do?” he asked, blinking. He’d assumed Aomine was Kuroko’s ex—Aomine was kind of obviously Kuroko’s ex, was pretty vocal about being Kuroko’s ex, but maybe that had been resolved. Hyuuga couldn’t really imagine loving him—the man was a complete tool—but then, he couldn’t really imagine loving Kagami, either.
“It was complicated at first, because they didn’t really get along,” Kuroko said absently.
Hyuuga couldn’t help but snort at him. It was the understatement of the goddamn century—Hyuuga had never seen Kagami as fired up about anyone as he was about Aomine. But maybe—maybe in some ways that helped. After all, not so long ago he would have insisted he hated Kiyoshi. “Only at first?” he asked.
Kuroko nodded, pushing himself to his feet. “You have it easier,” he said. “They already love each other.”
Hyuuga scowled at him. “That’s the problem,” he pointed out. “They love each other, so where does that leave me?”
Kuroko gave him a flat look.
Hyuuga scowled harder. “Let me guess,” he said. “I’m stupid.”
Kuroko didn’t nod, but he didn’t have to. “Have you asked them why they broke up?” he asked. “Really asked, so they answered you.”
Hyuuga shook his head. “Do you know?” he asked hopefully.
“Of course not,” Kuroko said bluntly. “How would I? But I have a hunch.” He paused for a minute, and then said, “Kiyoshi-kun was kind of overwhelmed, so Riko-san took him home. If you hurry, they will probably still be together.” He paused. “Also, Izuki-kun is looking for you.”
Hyuuga licked his lips. “Okay,” he said, and then took a breath, steadying himself. “Okay.”
Kuroko turned to leave, and Hyuuga shot to his feet before he could vanish. “Kuroko-kun,” he said, and Kuroko turned back. “Thank you,” Hyuuga said, as heartfelt as he could manage.
Kuroko nodded, and then he was gone.
Hyuuga took a moment to compose himself, to realize the full implications of the conversation. Kagami and Kuroko and Aomine were dating. All three of them. No wonder there had been no blow-up about infidelity—there had been no infidelity.
It was—enormous. It was unbelievable, and if it had come from anyone but Kuroko he would have assumed it was a lie, someone cheating and making up a pretty fantasy for themselves, or, or boasting about something unhealthy and unfair. But Kuroko had an air of certainty about him that made you believe him, and—if Hyuuga and Kuroko could have feelings for more than one person at once, why couldn’t Kagami and Aomine, and—and he and Kagami had wondered why Hyuuga and Riko weren’t dating. Not wondered why Hyuuga was chasing after Riko like a pathetic lost puppy, or—or bothering her all the time, why they weren’t dating, which implied they’d seen something in Riko’s behavior towards him, and that.
He swallowed, and thought of Kiyoshi’s face, of his shaky little breath ghosting over his mouth. Thought about kissing him for real, without the terror of hurting Riko flooding through his veins. Thought about kissing Riko—
He had two choices. He could run off right now, try and catch them together, and explain himself—really explain, the whole truth, bare himself completely and hope that Kagami and Kuroko had been right about Riko, hope that he hadn’t misread Kiyoshi’s face, hope that he wasn’t fucking up both his friendship with two people he loved more than anything and their relationship with each other.
Or he could go find Izuki, and talk it out with him, and armor up, and what—practice?
Suddenly he was disgusted with himself. Who was he, anyway? The pressure was on, and he thrived in pressure. He made all his shots under pressure. His first-years feared him under pressure. This was clutch-time, and he was going to face it head fucking on. Why should life be any different from basketball?
He took off his glasses. He put on his glasses. “Right,” he said, and started towards Kiyoshi’s apartment.
By the time he got there he was down to about half his nerve, but he managed to ring the bell anyway. There was a short pause, and then Kiyoshi’s voice said, “Who is it?”
“Ah, it’s Hyuuga,” said Hyuuga, fighting the ridiculous urge to give his full name, like somehow Kiyoshi would have forgotten who he was.
There was another pause, and then Riko’s voice said, “Junpei,” and that—she never used his first name, she’d maybe said his first name twice in the entire time he’s known her, always when she needed him to know that she was being very serious—“I’m here too, just so you know.”
Hyuuga swallowed. “Good,” he said, and was proud of how steady it sounded. “I would like to talk to you both, please.”
A third pause, shorter than the others, and then they let him in. He jogged up the stairs, wanted to kiss Riko as soon as she opened the door, hurried past her instead with a kind of desperate look, and stopped.
Kiyoshi’s apartment was really big, and really nice, and Hyuuga had a moment where he had to steady himself because he hadn’t really spent much time here but maybe—maybe he would, maybe this would be a thing. He swallowed hard against a new burst of daydreams, and god, he could probably kiss Kuroko just for that, how long had it been since he had daydreams about anyone that were purely good, not shadowed by guilt?
(But if he kissed Kuroko he’d probably have to fight off Aomine and Kagami both and that was a thought that steadied him out of pure terror).
Kiyoshi was sitting on his couch facing the door, turned to him but not actually looking at him, his eyes fixed on the floor next to Hyuuga’s feet. He looked—embarrassed and nervous and awful, and Hyuuga was getting very good at being angry with himself.
Riko closed the door behind him and come to stand by the end of the couch. She was looking at him, but he couldn’t read anything at all in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Kiyoshi flinched. Riko closed her eyes.
“No,” Hyuuga said quickly, because how the hell was this going so wrong already? “I didn’t mean—I’m not sorry for kissing you,” he said firmly, and that brought Kiyoshi’s eyes to his. “I have wanted to for a long time and I—I’m glad I did, whatever comes of it.” He took a breath and looked at Riko. “But it’s more complicated than that and I think you know that.”
Kiyoshi was looking down again, but his cheeks were pink, now. Hyuuga had a lovely, startled moment of knowing that Kiyoshi was blushing because of him, and then he looked at Riko again. “Will you tell me why you broke up?” he asked. “I—asked Kiyoshi, before, but he just said it was mutual and that he didn’t want to tell me without you.”
Riko raised her eyebrows at Kiyoshi. “You didn’t tell me he asked,” she said softly.
Kiyoshi looked guilty. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was when I was in the hospital, and you guys were spending so much time together and I thought—“ he stared hard at his knees. “I thought he would just go to you once he knew.”
Riko shook her head. “Stupid,” she accused.
“Hey,” said Hyuuga, annoyed. “C’mon, stop speaking in code, you assholes.”
Riko grinned at him. “Okay,” she said, and then bit her lip. “Technically, we broke up because of you.”
“Riko!” Kiyoshi said in horror. “That’s so mean, that sounds so awful!”
Hyuuga barely heard him, horrified and hopeful all at once. “E-excuse me?”
Riko sighed. “We’re in love with you,” she said, as if it were something he should know, as if this was the fifteenth time they’d done this play and he kept fucking it up, and his body was trained to respond to that tone of voice so he shifted his weight and shut down his brain and listened. “Both of us. Teppei realized first and he was all horribly guilty about it, but then I started thinking about it too and like.” She looked him up and down and shrugged, her face a little flushed. “Yeah. So. We really weren’t sure about how you felt about either of us—I mean, Teppei still probably thinks you hate him because he’s a total idiot but I don’t know, like, we fight all the time, and we hang out a lot but maybe it’s just because it’s good for the club to have a united coach and captain or you like me but just as a friend and—“
Hyuuga realized halfway through the very familiar thought that he’d like to shut her up by kissing her that he actually could. He stepped forward, curling a hand around the back of her neck and leaning down and in to capture her mouth, and in true Riko style she continued to talk against him for a minute before she woke up to what was going on, and then it was like someone cut all her strings. She went absolutely pliant against him, her arms winding around his neck, and she was good at basically everything so he really shouldn’t be surprised she was so good at this but he was anyway, his whole brain stuttering when she licked into his mouth, and then she was releasing him and leaning back to smile smugly at him. “Mm,” she said. “Okay. That answers that, then.”
“Unfair,” Kiyoshi complained, sounding mostly teasing but a little bit sad, “that was a much better kiss than I got.”
Hyuuga stepped back from Riko slowly. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he demanded, when he’d had a little time to process the fact that they were both in love with him. He looked from her to Kiyoshi. “Either of you? I—fuck, it would have made my life so much easier.” He stepped sideways until he was standing between Kiyoshi’s knees, and he had a sudden memory of Kuroko and Kagami in the same position. He lifted his hands and ran his fingertips up Kiyoshi’s neck to his face, marveling that he could touch, Kiyoshi wanted him to. Kiyoshi swallowed against his palms, his lips parting, and Hyuuga kissed him before he could say anything.
Kiyoshi’s hand came up to toy with the hair at the nape of his neck and for the only time ever Hyuuga kind of missed his long hair, had thought about what it would feel like to have those fingers tug and mess with it enough that he was a tiny bit sad he missed his chance. He wondered what Riko would think about him growing out his hair again and then Kiyoshi deepened their kiss and he couldn’t think about anything else. Kiyoshi’s hand was cupping his head and keeping him close as he kissed him thoroughly, his other hand coming up to rest huge and warm on Hyuuga’s hip. Hyuuga tipped their foreheads together as he pulled away to breathe and Kiyoshi said, “we broke up so you could choose.” His voice was breathless, and it sparked something low in Hyuuga’s gut even as it set off warning bells in his head. He pulled back further to stare between them.
“Choose,” he said, feeling horrible, feeling like yes, this is the other shoe, feeling like someone had shown him heaven and then pulled the clouds out from under his feet and the earth too, sent him tumbling straight down into hell. “I—I don’t have to, do I—I don’t think I could—“
Riko crossed to them and slapped them both in the back of the head, first him, then Kiyoshi. “Don’t say shit like that, Teppei,” she said, “not when you call me mean.” She smiled softly at Hyuuga, a gentle counterpoint to the ringing in his ears. “Of course you don’t have to,” she said. “But we thought you did—we thought you were going to, because.” She shrugged. “Society, I guess?”
Hyuuga gaped at her. “Society.”
Riko lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s not like you had anyone around showing you you could be in love with two people. Hell, we didn’t know if you were even interested in either of us.”
Hyuuga shook his head. “You’re kidding. You have to be kidding.” He’d been so obvious.
“Hyuuga-kun,” Kiyoshi said quietly, “last time we talked about your feelings towards me you told me you hated me.” He held the hand not still settled—possessively, said Hyuuga’s hindbrain—on Hyuuga’s hip out to Riko, and she took it, threading their fingers together with a smile.
Hyuuga stared at him. “I didn’t mean it,” he said, feeling a little overwhelmed and disbelieving, “I never meant it, obviously I never—“ He fixed Riko with a look. “You knew,” he accused. “I basically told you I was in love with him, the day he collapsed!”
Kiyoshi made a noise kind of like a cat being strangled and used his grip on Hyuuga’s hip to pull him forward, tipping his head against Hyuuga’s side, and Hyuuga draped an arm around his head, glaring at Riko. It wasn’t like he’d wanted Kiyoshi to know at the time—he would’ve been horrified to know that Riko had passed on that little tidbit, in fact—but it was different now and he felt positively offended she could let Kiyoshi go on believing anything less.
Riko bit her lip. “You did,” she admitted, and Kiyoshi made a smaller version of the same noise. Hyuuga could feel the shape of his cheek against his ribs, the warmth of his breath. It was extremely distracting. “Honestly,” she said, “I thought you’d tell him immediately after that. I thought—I don’t know, I thought it was over, you’d chosen, but then you didn’t say anything and I thought I was wrong and I didn’t feel right telling him myself, not when you hadn’t said anything—“
Hyuuga kissed her again, and he was going to have to be very careful to restrain himself around the team because it was kind of exhilarating, the little half-pleased, half-frustrated sigh she gave into his mouth, like, yes, this is very nice, but I was talking. It wouldn’t do to undermine her like this in front of the others, but he could feel Kiyoshi smile against his side and feel her smile against his mouth, and. God.
“I didn’t say anything because a blind fucking monkey could see you two were still head-over-heels for each other, broken up or not,” he said when he pulled back. “I wasn’t going to do anything to hurt either of you,” he said, “not ever, not if I could help it, and I thought if I acted on my feelings for either of you, that.” He swallowed. “I thought I hurt you today,” he said to Riko, “and it was the worst feeling I’ve ever felt.”
She stepped up to him, curling in to embrace him, her face buried in his neck. “I’m sorry we never said anything,” she said, and he felt Kiyoshi nod.
“I’m sorry, too,” Hyuuga said quietly, and just—stood, half supporting them, half being supported by them, feeling them both breathe against him. He felt—anchored, safe, secure, and so impossibly, utterly relieved.
Riko pulled back first, then Kiyoshi, and they looked at each other for maybe the first time since Hyuuga came in. Riko grinned, and Kiyoshi shook his head. “I was so sure I was going to lose,” he said. “I was this close—“ he held his fingers about an inch apart—“to just gracefully stepping aside to wallow in my misery, and then I saw Kuroko-kun and Kagami-kun and I—“ he shook his head. “I couldn’t anymore.“ He looked up at Hyuuga. “When you asked me if I was jealous today I couldn’t believe it.”
“I asked because I was,” Hyuuga said, and this, this was maybe the best feeling he’d ever had, being able to be this open, this honest. “Have been, I—every time I see them I want it to be us.” He scowled. “It was starting to really piss me off.”
“No wonder you’ve been so irritable with Kagami-kun lately,” Riko commented, sinking down on the couch next to Kiyoshi. “I thought it might be something like that.” She smirked. “Or both of us had struck out and you were secretly in love with Kuroko-kun.”
Hyuuga laughed at her, open-mouthed. “As a matter of fact, I did think about kissing him today,” he said, and felt a thrill of satisfaction when they both stiffened a little. He grinned. “Only because he gave me good advice about you guys.”
Riko raised an eyebrow, and Kiyoshi looked curious. “Really?”
Hyuuga nodded, and then, feeling very much like someone dropping a bomb, he said, “did you know he’s also dating Aomine?”
They both stared at him for a minute, and then Riko shrieked, “What?” and Kiyoshi said in a small voice, “Aomine Daiki?”
Hyuuga smirked, looking back and forth between them. “You guys are so cute,” he said, pushing his voice to the sugary-sweetest level he could to hide his total sincerity.
Riko punched him in the arm, Kiyoshi went red and mumbled something indistinct, and Hyuuga couldn’t remember a time in his whole goddamn life that he’d been so happy.
Outside, the sun was starting to set. “Teppei,” he said, and Kiyoshi raised his eyebrows, startled. Hyuuga smiled at him. “You and me,” he said, “one-on-one.”
Riko shook her head. “Of course you want to play basketball,” she said, rolling her eyes, “of course.”
Hyuuga widened his eyes at her innocently. “We missed half of practice, coach,” he said, “I’m just trying to keep to the training regimen!”
“Just because you’re our boyfriend now doesn’t mean I won’t kill you,” she snapped, and then seemed to realize what she’d said. She went red. “I mean—“
Hyuuga knew his own face was just as red. “Yeah,” he said, quickly. He looked at Kiyoshi, who was staring at him, and saw the sunset light of his eyes. “Yeah,” he said again.
(Hyuuga lost their game and that was how it should be, but now he could lean in while Kiyoshi tried to block him and murmur about how gorgeous he was in his ear and Kiyoshi would miss a beat and Hyuuga would dart around him and on the sidelines Riko would laugh and laugh, and that was how it should be, too.)