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v. The attraction of two like poles.
“You two are fucking unbelievable,” groaned Kagami, cycling as hard as he could manage. “You’re heavy, you realize.”
“We’re going to be late, Kagami,” said Midorima smugly, adjusting his glasses. “But if you like, you can always re-challenge Takao and see the result. He has the better luck today, of course.”
“I could always leave you two here,” said Kagami.
“Oh, yes sure,” said Takao, glaring at Kagami with his eyes of don’t leave me alone with this freak I’ll kill you. “You lost, fair and square, and how do you think I’d feel, lugging you two around? I'd drop dead."
“Is it really so important we go to see your middle school teammates?” said Kagami, who was never quite able to give up hope that someday, someday, Midorima would see reason, no matter how many times Takao told him to give it up already. “Won’t you see them when we beat them? Isn’t that enough for you?”
“No,” said Midorima crisply, “Hurry up.”
“When he’s exceeded his three items can I punch him,” said Kagami, putting all his anger into the pedals, and in fact, making excellent time.
Takao snorted. “Join the queue.”
iv. Gone to the dogs.
“Dog,” said Taiga.
“What?” said Himuro.
“Dog,” said Taiga. “Tatsuya, dog, DOG!”
“Oh,” said Himuro, watching No.2 wiggle his way to Taiga with happiness. Strictly speaking, they probably shouldn't have brought him to the streetball tournanment with them, but Tetsuya had picked him up, and then no one had bothered to say anything. “Yes. We have a team dog! Isn’t he cute? We named him after our teammate. He loves basketball.”
“Get it away,” begged Taiga. Tetsuya picked up No.2 and said, “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s a dog!” yelled Taiga.
“I meant you,” said Tetsuya, and there was that tiny line between his eyes that meant he was deciding whether or not to be offended, and Himuro did not want Taiga to be the target of that offense.
“He got bitten when he was little,” said Himuro. “Don’t tease him, Tetsuya. Taiga’s scared of dogs.”
“He doesn’t look like he’d be scared at all,” said Furihata, which Himuro pretended not to hear for the sake of Taiga’s dignity.
“But he’s such a nice dog,” said Tetsuya, coming closer, No.2 held in front of him. “See? See?”
“Tatsuya make him stop,” said Taiga, ducking around three people to shove Himuro between him and a tiny, tail-wagging dog.
“Taiga, you’re ridiculous,” said Himuro, laughing, but he gave Tetsuya a stern look. “You’re playing today?”
“They said they could use a hand,” said Taiga, embarrassed. “And- I sort of lost- one of my teammates, he’s gone off to get food and he's taking forever.”
“You’re not actually allowed to play, are you?” said Himuro; he could see, even now, something in the way Taiga was holding his knees, had Yousen faced someone even stronger? Why wasn’t Taiga playing today, in the Interhigh?
Taiga confirmed this by colouring and touching the back of his head; achingly familiar. “Well, it’s just streetball,” he said. “I was just walking around looking for him, but since they asked... Tatsuya, you’re competing? And your team?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Himuro. “Maybe it’s not the best time for us to settle this, though.” His teammates were nothing special, and Kuroko and Kiyoshi alone could probably have swept them up. A little shiver ran over Taiga’s face, and then Tetsuya- dammit when had he lost track of Tetsuya- lifted No.2 up and hit first him, then Taiga in the face.
Taiga screamed and ran straight for Kiyoshi, who patted his head absently as Taiga cowered behind him. Tetsuya turned and started scolding Taiga, familiarly, earnest, intense. Kiyoshi nodded at appropriate intervals.
“Nigou, that was mean,” said Himuro, touching where No.2 had hit him, and regretting suddenly that he’d spilled his guts to Kuroko about Taiga, all about Taiga, all the ugliness in himself that he hated, that made him hurt to look at Taiga’s open, trusting face. Himuro had confessed in the wake of Touou, after Kuroko had sunk to his knees and that proud head was bowed under the despair of being flawed and human under the eyes of those blessed by the gods, after Kiyoshi had returned and smiled their heart back into their bodies, after he'd found out the heart of them through his basketball. Kuroko had told him about Aomine before they faced him, but that time after Himuro had wrenched his heart wide open he’d told Himuro about Murasakibara, and watching Kiyoshi-sempai rise up before that pressure, and why would they make their promises, if they didn’t intend to keep them? And they'd made another promise, then and there: they were going for number one.
Himuro intended to keep his promises.
Then a massive hand landed on Tetsuya’s head as he was staring very seriously at Taiga about the value of basketball promises, and Taiga was grinning like he’d had one of his sudden bullheaded ideas, and Kiyoshi had gone still and silent and steady, and Tetsuya was saying, “Murasakibara-kun,” eyes cold.
Himuro met Taiga’s eyes and smiled, a little sweetly, a little sad, probably a bit evil. “Or maybe we’ll get our match today, after all.”
iii. Band of brothers
Kagami loses the team and wanders outside, where it's cold enough that his breath fogs in the air. He needs to clear his head. Tatsuya had shook his hand, and passed the ring over, and Kagami had looked at it and squeezed his hand and eyes shut at the same time, and didn’t have to look to know that Alex, up in the stands, was blubbering into her hands, and every breath that he took screamed through his lungs like a sob.
He’d thought right up until the end that he was going to flub it, to bow under Murasakibara’s pressure before Tatsuya could break Aomine’s genius; that Tatsuya would beat him while Aomine fought that monster. He’d looked and looked at Tatsuya, and thought but it’s different now, but I promised now, Touou was going to go straight to the top, and thought but Tatsuya. But then near the end Murasakibara had thrown up his hands and gone limp on the bench, giving up, and Tatsuya’s fury and despair had echoed off their bench, genius, he’d said, and genius, fuck, Kagami knew about that, and not from that side: he’d never beaten Aomine either, never even come close. And maybe he never would.
And Kagami had thought, I didn't start playing basketball to be a genius. To play alone and unaided. To stand at the top.
Aomine had drawn in a ragged breath and said to Kagami, “Unless my opponent’s giving a hundred percent against me, I don’t feel like I’ve won,” sitting on the edge of the bench next to Kagami, watching Murasakibara tie up his hair, and Kagami had wanted to say to him, fuck you, you hate winning, you hate it. You barely liked winning against Kise and he beat you so hard he sent you out of the finals. You won against Seirin and walked away so unhappy even Wakamatsu felt sorry for you. You won against Seirin the second time and it fucking broke your heart. What gives you the right to say shit like that to me?
“Tetsu-“ Aomine had said, and hesitated, and stopped. He’s staring at his feet and all he can see is history. And Kagami had wanted to say it’s not the same I don’t hate Tatsuya; I don’t want him to hate me. You burned your bridges with your friend long ago, you don’t get to lecture me on this.
Fuck you I don’t want to be you.
But Aomine had never let up against that other boy, and neither had Momoi, Momoi who kept all their secrets and could see into your soul. Momoi, who’d said, “Of course I love him. But that and this are not the same,” and Kagami had not quite dared to ask her which of them she had been talking of right in that moment; it had seemed to him that not even she might know. Sometimes Kagami thought that he would like to know all the secrets that Aomine and Momoi kept locked between them, guarded as jealously as possession of the ball, but then he would realise that, as Imayoshi had once crisply said to them when Ryou had unwisely asked Momoi about Teikou and had her burst into tears, he did not actually want to care about Aomine. It would wring them all dry.
And then Kagami had gone out there and played like his life was on the line, the end of all their times together, and Aomine had forced his way past Murasakibara’s wall, and they’d smashed Yonsen with score to spare, and Kagami had lifted his head to see those faces watching them, set and watchful, and thought you next. We’re coming for you next.
And now he’s sitting alone in the dark and two rings in his hand, and they’re so small, so dreadfully small, small enough to fit ten-year-old hands and too small to keep their bonds going. Was this what winning was, and why Aomine hated it; alone in the dark, unable even to reach out a hand to his friend?
Aomine isn’t his friend, but there he is suddenly, grumbling under his breath, Momoi a chirping voice out of his phone, reaching for Kagami; they have to go, he’s here to drag him, Kise’s next again, Wakamatsu's about to blow a gasket, and the non-Miracle teams are dropping like flies. Touou still has three of the monsters to go.
Kagami lets Aomine lift him, because of the second game against Seirin, where he’d lifted his head and seen Aomine, turning away from all of them, face fixed to the top of the Winter Cup, and Momoi, crying and crying and crying as though her heart would break, and Kuroko Tetsuya, who’d pressed his hand to his eyes and wept. And those same faces, silent, watching, waiting.
They were coming for them next.
ii. Stick to your guns.
Kagami’s hand still hurt. Hanamiya fucking Makoto, and his damn dirty basketball, and the seniors who were cowed under the cruel twist of his smile, and his cronies, who were shaping the first-years into imitations of themselves.
He didn’t care if he never fucking played basketball again, as long as he didn’t have to do it on a team with that bastard. It made him angry, just thinking about what Hanamiya did to their opponents. He didn’t care that finally clocking that asshole had gotten him thrown off the team.
i. The end of the beginning; the beginning of the end.
“So you’re transferred from America?” said a ridiculously good-looking boy named Kise Ryota, who was tall enough to look into Kagami’s eyes as he spoke to him, he was on the basketball team, he’d said, and assured Kagami that they were good, with a little laugh as he said it. Kagami had just heard the magic words ‘basketball’ and followed him, because once Kagami found that something worked, he stuck to it, and he could do with some people who actually talked to him.
“Yeah,” Kagami said. “Just.” And wasn’t that just peachy of dad, too, to drop him right into the morass of school right when everyone knew each other and their studies were already well underway, leaving him stuck to grunts and single words and pointing, until a glittering Kise had stuck his head into his class to call for someone and spoken to him in English, accented, but gratefully familiar.
“I can introduce you around,” offered Kise. “I mean, don’t expect to get very far in the rankings, but even our second-string are pretty good, they’ll offer a game or two.”
His tie choked him; why were the uniforms so fussy? “You’d be surprised,” said Kagami. Kise was clearly strong, but Kagami had played in America against high schoolers, African-Americans, boys who’d been born with genius in their bones. Alex hadn’t trained a slouch. The lunchroom was huge; Teikou was a sight nicer than any school Kagami had even been in before, but basketball had been his bribe for returning, and basketball he was damn well going to get.
“Oi, Tetsu,” said a dark-skinned boy , who, even sitting down, his arm slung over an empty chair, Kagami could smell was strong, as tall as Kagami himself, and massive. Sitting at the table with him were a few more oversized boys, the biggest people Kagami had seen since touching down in Japan, period. “Who’s that?”
“Kagami-kun is new,” came a voice near his elbow; Kagami nearly jumped out of his skin.
“HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?” he yelled, in English.
Kise looked surprised, and then said to collective laughter, “Kurokochi called me over! He knew my English was good, and it was his idea to bring you to lunch with us.”
“I sit behind you,” said the small, unassuming boy, in careful, precise Japanese. “We’re in the same class.”
“Really?” said Kagami.
“He likes basketball,” said the boy to the table at large, ignoring both Kagami’s expression and the dark-skinned boy’s sniggers as he took his seat next to his friend. “He could join the team.”
“Play with us?” said his friend, and threw back his arrogant head to look over Kagami, towering over them. “Tetsu, are you joking?”
“You’re on the team?” said Kagami to the smaller boy, out of sheer disbelief, rude, but all the boys were smirking now, as he lifted his expressionless eyes to Kagami’s face and said, “I’m a regular, yes.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Kagami flatly, looking at the others at the table, strong, stronger than maybe anyone he had ever seen, and Kise hastened to throw oil on the troubled waters as Kuroko’s friend began to scowl, anger gathering on his face. “It’s true, it’s true! Look, you can come to practice later, and then you’ll see, right? Right, guys?”
All their heads turned to the boy sitting at the head of the table, visibly smaller than nearly all his companions, but with an aura of authority. His calm red eyes studied Kagami, and he nodded. “Come to practice later,” he said, commanded, and Kagami felt his blood surge in his veins. “You might have something good.”