Chapter Text
Recovery post-lost game is simple, and painful. As soon as he can, Taiga gets a hold of the tape of the game to replay exactly what went wrong. It's fucking awful watching himself slip up, get fouls, and fumble easy passes. Mortifying that Daiki's parents were there to see this, and still told him that they were proud of him. It makes his skin crawl thinking about what the crowd must have been saying. This is the team that beat Rakuzan last year? That's the ace? Ugh. It's terrible. But for as bad of a time as Taiga had, there's no way that Kuroko enjoyed the game either. He doesn't know what to do with this realisation after his first watch-through. Taiga thinks to text Kuroko and talk about it with him, but what is there to say? He would dissolve into useless apologies and promises to do better next time. It's a waste of time. Kuroko knows that Taiga put everything on the line, though, and his team never doubted it on the day. It's a hard thing to do, but Taiga knows that the only way forward is to forgive himself for not being as good as he thought he was. Yet.
The second awful step to getting stronger is accepting that for some of those faults, there was truly nothing wrong with him except his headspace. He can't fix that as easily as running drills of lifting heavier weights.
Taiga watches the match on the TV, sat on the floor with a notebook on his glass coffee table. He notes timestamps, and every idiotic thing he does.
Should have passed to Izuki
Walked into a trap
Fell for a fake
Another FUCKING fake
Fucked up a pass
Fake
Should have passed to Hyuuga
1st FOUL hit Daiki
Tripped over feet
Bit tongue missed opportunity
Shit pass
Fake
Missed shot
2nd FOUL hit Sakurai
Et cetera.
It's a really fucking bad way to spend an afternoon, in case you're wondering. To make things worse, Taiga has taken to isolating himself away from his team again. He's ashamed of his play, regardless of whether he picked things up in the third quarter. He doesn't make a list, but he does notice when decisions worked out well later on in the game. When the teamwork played out. Overall, he has to work on his perception/reaction time the most, his power second, and speed third. Yeah… hard to work on both power and speed, but he isn't doing this alone.
He won't go for as long a time as he went last time, but Taiga would like to go back to the States during the summer break. He ends up calling Alex to discuss a possible program he could start to improve his weak points, and only tells her that he's visiting soon after she complains for a minute straight about how he never comes over to see her. As if he doesn't have school, and isn't on the other side of the world! She's so annoying.
"Oh, shit," he says (in English) towards the end of the call, after the pressing basketball talk is out of the way, "I just realised I forgot to tell you somethin'."
"All ears, kiddo. Spill your heart."
"Do you remember Aomine? From the Generation of Miracles?"
"Hoooo yeah, I remember. Fast as a bullet and twice as deadly,"
"Why don't you ever say cool shit like that about me?"
"Maybe I do, but not to your face! Your ego would explode."
"Ugh. Whatever. Well, guess what?"
"What the hell? I don't know! Why are you tellin' me you have news then making me guess, punk!"
She can't see him, but he smirks lopsidedly, proudly. "He's my boyfriend."
Alex screams, "what the hell, Taiga! What did you just say?! He's your boyfriend? My baby is all grown up! How could you keep this from me? Don't you think I wanna know exciting shit like this? Taiga!! He's your boyfriend? You said that so casually! What's this? Is he good to you, kid? If he gives you any shit, tell me and I'll sort him out!"
What is it with the women in his life assuming Daiki is going to be a cause of pain, and threatening to beat him up? Taiga, who held his phone at arm's length throughout all of that, returns with a grimace:
"He's great, alright? Calm down. And I'm not your freaking baby!"
"You're always gonna be the little kid with scraped up knees, Taiga," she goes all sentimental, then makes another screeching noise, "oh my GODDDD, you have a boyfriend. I'm so happy for you, kiddo! And you're happy? How are things?"
"Yeah, I'm happy. He just beat me at the Interhigh, though, so that sucks."
"Ah, I see. As is life. You knew what you were getting into when you started things with him. Wait, tell me everything! Did you initiate, or did he? What's he like? He seems so aloof. Is he nice to you, my little basketball protégé?"
"Enough about that. Back to basketball or I'm hanging up."
"What! Absolutely not! Which one of those miracles guys used to be your friend Kuroko's light thing?"
"Yeah, it's Daiki. They're friends again now, though."
"How's your dad about all this? He was weird before."
"Uhhhh."
"Ah. Well, who cares about him, huh? You've got the approval of your basketball master! I'm way more important than some businessman."
Taiga scoffs, "riiiiiight. Not sure it works like that, but okay. I met Daiki's parents a while ago, by the way. They're really nice, his cousins too. So it's alright."
"Aw! What are they like?"
Oh! But aren't they nice? And Daiki, too, he's the nicest guy Taiga's ever known like this. Well. OK. Taiga loves him to pieces. Is he the nicest guy he's ever had a crush on? Perhaps not reliably, but he wouldn't be Daiki without the sharp corners and hard edges. He's excited about the relationship and has no one to gush about to, so he wishes that he was more comfortable talking about things like this with the one person he feels like he actually could talk to. But Alex's excitement and energy has embarrassed him beyond repair. Taiga is happy she's happy, and grateful that she's supportive, and forgives her for how mortified she's made him feel. The blush steadily growing upon his face now reaches discomfort, and he has to back out of this conversation fast before it gets worse. In all honesty, though, it has felt nice to think about Daiki as the man that he's dating, and not just the basketball rival as he had been while watching the games back.
"This is embarrassing," Taiga says in a grumble, "I don't wanna talk about him anymore."
"What? Why! We never get to talk about boys. I'm interested in your life, Taiga! Not just the basketball!"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna ask him if he wants to come with me to the States, so maybe you'll get to meet him properly."
"Oh, fuuuun! Taiga, I've just thought of a fun way you can improve your reaction speed. I'll tell you about it when you get here, but how's about building on some non-basketball specific training activities sound to you? Eh? Fun?"
"Sure, you know what you're doing."
"Alright, alright, alright. I'll let you get back to moping post-game. Keep your chin up, though. There's a direction we can charge in now to unlock even more of your skillset. You're still so young, Taiga."
"Uh, okay? Anyway, thanks a lot for your help, Alex. I'll let you know when I'm flying."
"Okay, kid. See ya." Alex hangs up, and Taiga breaths a sigh of relief. She's optimistic, that's good. Of course, she hasn't seen the video, but there's no need to think about it now.
Stamina over speed. She mentioned that as something he can push in the meantime. Longer runs, faster runs, faster drills, going all out and dying afterwards. Fortunately, his boyfriend is more than capable of handling that. He's more difficult to convince to do one-on-ones with this week, but maybe it's just the heat.
His next phone call is to Daiki. It rings for so long that Taiga thinks he probably won't pick up, but then he does, and he sounds drowsy.
"Hey," Daiki groans, "be gentle."
"Be gentle?"
"Not too loud,"
"And why's that?" One of Taiga's brows raise sceptically.
"Biiig headache, probably gonna die in the next few minutes."
"Don't say that," scepticism gone, welcome to the stage: immediate sympathy! Oh how rarely you show your face. "It can wait. You wanna go back to sleep?"
"Nah, I'm up. How's your training going?"
"Just called Alex, she's gonna develop another program for me. You don't gotta decide now, but I'm going to L.A. next week sometime. Do you wanna come?"
"Shit, where'd that come from? You serious?"
"Yeah,"
"Fuck, dude. I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one. You remember being, like, a little kid and getting your friend to ask your mom for you to go over to their house and play?"
Taiga squints. "I guess?"
"You should come over—"
"Fuck no, handle that yourself!"
"Gah, didn't I just tell you to be gentle?"
"Sorry,"
Daiki sighs. "I'll call you back later. Gotta go suck up to my parents for a bit, I guess."
"Okay. Bye."
"Taiga,"
"Yep?"
"Love you."
"Ditto," Taiga snorts softly, and waits for Daiki to hang up first. For anyone else, maybe Daiki's sharp tone and lack of enthusiasm would have put him off having him come along to America with him, but Taiga is pretty used to this by now. He picked up the phone. He didn't used to, before they were dating. He'd just let it ring, and ring. Annoying as fuck. Taiga forgives him for the attitude because he's got a headache, and he's actually just grateful he picked up the phone at all. Where are his standards, have you seen them? I think he dropped them somewhere on the floor.