Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Akashi is walking back towards the Rakuzan dorms when Tetsuya drops into his life again.

A goldfish catching game has been set up by the side of the park and Akashi wanders over. His expression gleams.

Twenty minutes later the poi is still unbroken but Akashi has cleared the field of all contenders- save the four-year old girl dabbling at the water with her fists- and has cleared all thirty-five goldish from the arena, much to the oohs and aahs of the gathering crowd.

He means to decline all his prizes, but then one lone remaining goldfish catches his eye, and the vendor sucks in a breath as Akashi leans forward because he missed one.

As he scoops it out, however, he’s struck by how unobtrusive it is. How it held itself perfectly still near the bottom, mimicking an age line in the tank’s plastic. How it stares at him, resigned and gulping faintly, when he finally flicks it into the air.

“Well, kid,” sighs the vendor. “That’s it, you’ve got them all. Want a prize?” He looks sadly at the emptied basin.

Akashi nods. “This one,” he says, still staring into its eyes. It looks rather like Tetsuya.

Yes, Akashi decides, as he’s walking back to the dorms, and signs himself in with a nod to the supervisor. That’s what he’ll name him. Tetsuya. He raises the bag to his face. Tetsuya gulps. There’s something ephemeral about Tetsuya, the way the slightly ragged edges of his fins drift in the water like mist in the air, like three-dimensional shadow.

Tetsuya bubbles at him, which is reassuring. Akashi unearths a Tupperware from somewhere, and drops Tetsuya into it. Akashi vaguely recalls fish care involves pumps and filters and nautically-themed ornaments. Tetsuya will like that. Tomorrow he will get one of those small tanks, and perhaps a plant. Tomorrow after school Akashi will procure the necessary items for Tetsuya’s care.

.0.

Tomorrow, Tetsuya is dead. His slim dark body floats on top of the water, and when Akashi cautiously prods him with the blunt eraser side of a pencil, he doesn't move.

How cruel life is, thinks Akashi distantly as he carries the container out to the common dining room, filled with basketball club members who chorus a greeting that goes unacknowledged. He gathers his breakfast and eats it with Tetsuya's dead body in front of his plate to reprimand himself. How fragile and how transient. How could he have been so careless with Tetsuya? Surely there was some way he could prevented this outcome.

Kotaro bounces up to the table with his own food, and is mid-slurp when he notices the fish. The soup goes up his nose, and he slips under the table coughing and choking. Half the room surges as one to ensure that Sempai's death throes will not upset the Captain's breakfast. Akashi regards him levelly. The weight of his failure lies heavily on him. Even Kotaro could depart at any moment. Look how close he has come now. Could Akashi have done anything to prevent it?

Kotaro heaves himself back up into his seat and puts his face right up against the clear plastic wall, staring into Tetsuya's blank eyes. Akashi grimly chokes down his miso soup.

"Good morning, Akashi-kun," says Mibuchi, surreptitiously kicking Kotaro into sitting back upright. "Did you sleep- what the hell is that and what is it doing on the breakfast table?"

Akashi sighs. "Tetsuya," he says, and then sighs again. No one at Rakuzan knows about Tetsuya, either. “I failed him,” he adds.

Mibuchi peers at the fish. “You went to a festival last night?” he says. “Oh, Akashi-kun, you know those fish never live very long.”

Akashi transfers his gaze to Mibuchi’s face.

“Don’t they?” breathes another first-year, wide-eyed.

“They get knocked around and they’re not kept very well and sometimes they just can’t take it,” explains Mibuchi. (“Reo-nee, so smart!” cheers Kotaro, in response to this motherly tone.) “You can get another one.” Then his brow furrows. “But you really shouldn’t,” he continues. “Strictly speaking we’re not allowed to have pets.”

Akashi raises his eyes to his new teammate’s face. How easy it sounds. Replace Tetsuya. “I see,” he says, politely. They finish their breakfasts in silence, and then scatter to the business of the day. Akashi places Tetsuya in the shadow of a hydrangea bush, in a shallow grave in the grounds. Let him return to the earth.

At the end of the day Kotaro is the one who brings Akashi the new fish, cradled in his hands like an offering. Nebuya looks resigned as to how he came to be carrying a tank and several boxes and containers in other bags inside it.  Akashi is on the verge of refusing it- they aren’t allowed pets, strictly speaking. Akashi doesn’t have time to be responsible for another life, no matter how tiny. But then the blank stare turns upon Akashi. The fish’s mouth opens. Closes. Tetsuya the second. Akashi reaches out and cradles the plastic baggie, warm from Kotaro’s hands. Tetsuya eyes him.

He’ll do.

.0.

“He just looked so… happy,” says Kotaro. “Peaceful.”

“Who would have thought Teikou’s Akashi would feel homesick,” marvels Mibuchi. “But of course he would! It’s so cute. Look at him. Talking to his little fishie. Which he’s named. He wasn’t going to be some freak like you two.”

“He’s talking to a fish,” Nebuya points out. He stares at the slightly open door meditatively. “You know he’ll get in trouble if they find out he’s keeping an illegal pet.”

“I can’t imagine Akashi-kun getting into trouble,” says Mibuchi, which is true. More to the point, maybe, he can’t imagine Akashi doing anything which would get him into trouble. “Anyway you eat in your room all the time, and that’s against the rules.”

“Prove it,” says Nebuya.

“We can smell it you-“

“I don’t think we would have known it of it him in junior high,” says Kotaro, ignoring all this.

Mibuchi sniffs. “He’s an animal lover,” their shooting guard says. Kotaro doesn’t have to remind them of those years of despair, of being on the other side of Teikou’s unbeatable starting squad. “That’s sweet.”

.0.

It is a possible Tetsuya the Fourth who first catches Akashi’s eye. There’s a whole rack of them: little, darting, very confused fishes in sealed plastic sachets. He almost passes them by, thinking they’re just whimsical, if realistic, keychains. Then one of them moves, and Akashi pauses. Crosses the street towards them. The small crowd of girls gather to the side, parting way for him. Naturally.

He inspects the packets, frowning. There surely cannot be enough air inside these things to support life for- Akashi glances sideways- up to two months, as the placard promises. A handful of girls are cooing over the fishes, and Akashi suppresses the urge to tell them to refrain from inadvertent animal cruelty.

Then Akashi sees the other half of the peddler’s wares. Little turtle versions of the keychains. FOR LUCK proclaims this sign, along with the repeated claim that the ornaments will live for two months. There’s only one left, an extremely phlegmatic-looking reptile with an icy stare. It moves its tiny feet against the plastic, which is barely big enough for it. It isn’t even a turtle. It’s a tortoise. Akashi feels offended on the behalf of all mislabeled wildlife everywhere. It’s perfectly clear that the animal is in fact a land-dwelling- sigh.

He picks up the tortoise gently and fixes the peddler with a glare.

Akashi doesn’t have to pay for the tortoise, and marches back to the dorm indignantly. A few minutes work with scissors takes care of that, and he lets the tortoise walk all over a wad of tissues to dry off.

Akashi puts the tortoise on his desk while he unearths a suitable box to arrange as habitat; he will need to have someone look up tortoise care. Perhaps Kotaro will be useful again in this regard. Perhaps-

Tetsuya the Third swims down to inspect the tortoise. It cranes its tiny head up to the fish. Tetsuya’s fins flare, threateningly.

Akashi looks up Oha-Asa on his phone, just to check. He’s changed his phone since graduation, but the bookmark remains intact.

.0.

“Oh,” coos Mibuchi. “That’s- how cruel. How cute. Of course you had to rescue it!” He makes a motion to pet Akashi on the head; hastily aborts it. Kotaro has somehow escaped Akashi’s summons today.

“What do they eat?” says Nebuya, interestedly. “You know, if you grow them a bit, there’s good eating on one of-“

Akashi turns his head, very slightly.

“Er, yeah, of course you had to rescue him,” says Nebuya. “Good on you. Poor little thing.”

“His name is Shintarou,” says Akashi. His finger moves under the tiny head, which refuses to waver from its proud arch.

“It was very lucky for him,” offers Mibuchi, “That you came along.”

“Yes,” says Akashi,  then adds, apparently apropos of absolutely nothing, “His lucky item was a cellphone charm.”

After he leaves- having carefully fed Shintarou some leaves of lettuce taken from Nebuya’s permanent stock of take-out bentos, carefully washed- Mibuchi leans over to his teammate.

“That seems familiar,” he says. “Shintarou. Shintarou. Hmm.”

Nebuya shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “It’s a cute tortoise. Where’s he going to keep it, though? A box? Chuck it out into the garden?”

“Never mind,” says Mibuchi, huffily. “It’s not important.”

.0.

With Daiki, things are much more simple. (But then, Daiki always is.) It’s raining. There’s a kitten, and there’s a box.

His brothers and sisters are dead or gone already, but when Akashi puts his hand into the box, Daiki opens eyes of the deepest, purest blue. He is black to the tips, except for his little pink mouth, which closes on Akashi’s finger, drawing blood.

The kitten wiggles out of Akashi’s jacket during class, to an explosion of female squeals. Shirogane-sensei just sighs.

.0.

Akashi has some kind of appointment to get to after school, so they’re left with a little black ball of fuzz- a murderous, bloodthirsty fiend from hell little black ball of fuzz- deposited in the club room wrapped in Akashi’s jersey with Akashi’s earnest and hurried instructions to take care of Daiki.

“This is getting a little out of hand,” says Mibuchi, once they’ve discovered that Daiki turns up sweet as pie the second a girl bends over him cooing as she cuddles him to her chest, and thrown the monster across the locker room at one. Thank goodness for managers.

“Cute, you said,” says Nebuya, sucking at his fingers. “Normal for a kid living away from home for the first time, you said. If we have an elephant by the time the Interhigh starts, I’m going to blame you.”

“Tetsuya was cute,” says Mibuchi. “Tetsuya was normal. Shintarou was just basic human kindness. And now Daiki is... Daiki. Kittens in a box by the roadside. It’s like we’re living in manga.” Daiki is handsome, though. Mibuchi could look into those eyes forever.

 “Daiki,” says Nebuya, thoughtfully. “Are we talking Aomine Daiki?”

“What?” says Mibuchi. “You mean Teikou’s ace? You mean-“ As one, they look at Akashi’s locker. They’re not even sure why they do it. “Aomine Daiki?”

"You said his tortoise’s Shintarou," says Kotaro, who is looking up cat tips on his phone. "...Midorima Shintarou?"

There's a pause. Mibuchi, like all the Uncrowned, like all of Japanese high school basketball, has the names of the Generation of Miracles burned into his brain. It's not like they wouldn't know who Midorima was, anyway. Akashi occasionally mentions him, though usually in the context of how many games of online shogi they managed to play on their one free night before Midorima has to go to sleep. For the months between their final Nationals win and their junior high school graduation, speculation was everywhere: surely they would all come to Rakuzan. Where else would the champions go, but to the emperors? Maybe one or two of them would decide to go elsewhere, but by and large they had imagined that Teikou’s elite would become Rakuzan’s elite with very little fuss.

Instead they scattered across the landscape of high school basketball and turned to face each other as worthy foes. Akashi might name one animal for his vice-captain, as a private joke. But now there’s another.

Now there’s a Daiki. As in, Aomine Daiki. His name is burned into all their minds, all that sleek supremacy, Teikou’s unstoppable Ace. “Was there a Tetsuya at Teikou?” he asks the air. They’re all thinking it, he’s sure. All of them. Maybe some of the non-regulars, more obsessed with Teikou’s Generation of Miracles, have already noticed the connection, and not just chalked it up to their captain’s perennial and all-encompassing weirdness or his clear generosity of character with regards to small helpless animals.

“You ask him,” says Nebuya. “I have to take this little monster to the vet later. You can throw yourself on that sword.”

.0.

Even Akashi is willing to admit that perhaps he has overreached himself with Daiki. But whenever he thinks that, Momoi-san’s face swims before his eyes. Her reproachful stare. Her efficient voice. Her magnificent- well. Her dedicated and caring heart. What can he say to that? I have Tetsuya the fourth and they are starting to live longer than a week now, I have Shintarou and I think he is close to achieving shogi sentience, I had Daiki and I threw him out into the street.

Even Tetsuya’s tank, with the fronds of the water-plants drifting back and forth, reproaches Akashi. He has not given up there. How can he give up on Daiki, stalking back and forth on Akashi’s desk, yowling and bothering Shintarou?

Shintarou, with quiet dignity, folds up into his shell and stays in there until Akashi has taken Daiki away and scolds him. Daiki- much like his namesake- utterly refuses to listen to Akashi's improving lecture, rolling on his back and batting the air while Akashi tries to impress upon him the severity of his actions. Shintarou stalks back under the tent of history textbooks and fumes when Akashi gives into Daiki's advances and rubs his tummy, pressing on his soft ears. This is Daiki, too, this unexpected sweetness.

And then Akashi notices. Tetsuya the fourth is gone. Eventually Akashi finds his desiccated body in the space between the desk and the wall, and concludes that the world may have been too much for Tetsuya the fourth. He adds a little basketball to the tank, which bobs on the current of the pump. Tetsuya loves basketball. Basketball must make Tetsuya’s life worth living.

.0.

Tetsuya the fifth is never found.

.0.

With Tetsuya the sixth, he imagines even Shintarou mourns, munching his lettuce with more solemnity than usual. Kotaro complains about Daiki being sick in the common room, so Daiki must suffer too. 

The pet shop proprietor seems perplexed when Akashi demands more mental stability in his Tetsuyas, as though this is a thing that has never occurred to him. How can anyone keep fish like this? Some people are just not cut out to be animal lovers.

.0.

When it comes to Tetsuya the seventh, Akashi catches Daiki in the act of consuming his poor little corpse, and the shock of it makes him sag against the doorpost.

He should have expected this, he thinks, after Daiki has been caught and spanked and someone is looking for a tank with a lid. Outside, one of the more impressionable freshmen in charge of Tetsuya’s daily care is weeping into Kotaro’s shoulder. Akashi sympathises. Poor Tetsuya. How could Akashi ever have expected Daiki to act against his nature?

Ludicrous.

.0.

Daiki solves all their problems at once when he decides to be an outside cat, returning only to be fed, petted and sleep. Very like the actual Daiki. Akashi makes a note of this. At least Daiki still has his handsome red collar with all Akashi’s information, and will return whenever he wants to.

He doesn’t appear to want to very often, admittedly. Whenever he does stalk in, he paws unhappily at the fish tank before choosing Akashi’s pillow to nap on, hissing whenever he is disturbed.

“You’re right,” says Akashi to Shintarou, retreating to the common room while a group of second-stringers sally forth to give Daiki a much needed bath, carrying the tortoise under his arm. “This is very typical of him.”

Shintarou sets off to explore the common room, and promptly gets stuck under a table, scrabbling noisily until Akashi shifts several sets of furniture to let him loose, straining to lift the sofa. Unfortunately, this is typical too.

.0.

Since the Daiki incident, Akashi has gained something of a reputation among the girls of Rakuzan as an animal lover. He’s so perfect, they sigh as he walks past. So responsible and so kind.

Some girl, desperate, has brought her baby hamsters to school and is giving them away by the school gate, targeting impressionable first-year girls who all light up when they see Akashi walking past them.

A third-string member crashes into the shoe lockers in his haste to alert a regular of their captain’s trajectory. Mibuchi throws caution to the winds, and just runs.

It is too late. Akashi arrows in on their tiny cage, eyes shining, and the girl is cooing up into his face about how sweet they are, how cute with their mouth pouches full of food-

"Atsushi," pronounces Akashi with satisfaction, and hands the informative hamster care flyer to Reo by the end of the day.

.0.

Akashi develops a disconcerting habit of carrying Shintarou around with him, most particularly whenever he plays shogi- which seems to be most of the time.

“Is it boring to play by yourself all the time?” asks Kotaro. 

“I was playing against Shintarou,” says Akashi, absently.

“Er,” says Kotaro.

Akashi looks up at Shintarou eating berries out of Reo’s hand, and the careful gaze of the first-string players. “Midorima Shintarou,” he explains. “We used to play frequently. I am playing against myself playing as he would play.”

There’s a collective oooh of understanding. Several nods. Akashi-san is intellectual. Smart people do things like that. Which look crazy. But never mind.

“Why don’t you just play with him, then?” says Nebuya, tactlessly. Mibuchi kicks him, swiftly.

Akashi looks down. “Shintarou’s school is preparing for his summer training camp,” he says. “He has no access to a computer. Reo, I think Shintarou has had enough.”

Kotaro tries to lighten the mood. “But you have Shintarou now, so that’s alright!” he says, grabbing the tortoise and setting him on the other side of the shogi board.

This, Mibuchi realises, is possibly the saddest thing he has ever heard in his life.

“Yes,” says Akashi, and grabs Shintarou before he can charge the shogi board and upset all the pieces again.

.0.

Summer marches in. Rakuzan is moving towards national supremacy as usual, and without hiccup. They won’t be playing Shintarou’s namesake this tournament, but the match-ups are causing excitement among any of the club members who fancy themselves experts on high school basketball, all those who believe implicitly that Akashi Seijuuro has come to them to secure victory against his former teammates. The addition of a single player to all of these teams has changed the landscape immeasurably.

Akashi doesn’t play. He trains, but he doesn’t look to be put in, doesn’t hunger for the court and ball the way they’d expect a genius to. He doesn’t need to. Rakuzan expects no competition.

When Touou Gakuen doesn’t field Aomine Daiki among their starters, Rakuzan think that their captain may be disappointed. Maybe. Just maybe.

Akashi’s quote gets put up on the school notice board, published across Japan. It’s the simple truth, though Touou Gakuen must gnash their teeth to hear it.

Victory, thankfully, doesn’t particularly involve having fun.

.0.

Akashi is bored, which is not unusual. Though he rarely attends the interminable house parties of his parents’ circles, certain events are unavoidable, no matter how repetitive the conversation or close they are to the Interhigh. He wanders the estate, managing somehow to stumble upon their host, who has abandoned his guests to play with his dog and her new puppies.

Somehow, Akashi doesn’t blame him the slightest. While dogs are not as relaxing as Tetsuya, or as dignified as Shintarou, Akashi deeply empathises with the desire for animal companionship. Even as Suoh-san invites him in, eager to show off his lovely puppies, Akashi thinks of his own companions. They will have been fed by now. Perhaps they are tucking up to sleep. Akashi sighs.

Suoh-san offers him a puppy with a glittering smile and sparkling eyes and shining hair- to say nothing of the dog, a mass of golden fur and happiness. Most of the puppies are already spoken for, he explains- to be distributed to what Akashi knows to be some of the biggest families and conglomerates in Japan. People who, Suoh-san explains, will really appreciate Antoinette’s puppies.

Looking at Suoh-san, Akashi rather thinks they will.

Except for one, explains Suoh-san. Like that one. That one right there that Akashi-kun is holding. He has no home yet. He’s homeless. He could do with someone to love him.

Akashi’s grip tightens on miniaturised happiness before he can stop himself.

"What will you name him?" says Suoh-san, in hushed tones.

"Ryouta," says Akashi without thinking. But no, he cannot take Ryouta. Tetsuya and Shintarou and Atsushi he hides under his bed as unobtrusive, and even Daiki he can pass off as a stray, fed by the generosity of the building as a whole. But Rakuzan's dorms, strictly speaking, do not allow large pets, or in fact any pets at all. And Ryouta will be large, and troublesome. Ryouta will take a lot of time, thinks Akashi, looking at his mother sitting proudly with her litter. Antoinette is long-haired and long-limbed and beautiful. Can he truly justify taking Ryouta if he will have sit alone at the estate for months? No, he cannot. He carefully tries to ease Ryouta back into Suoh-san's arms, explains all this. There is no place in Akashi's life for him. (Ryouta fought well, at the Interhigh, Ryouta has faced Daiki at last-)

Ryouta whimpers.

Suoh-san's face falls.

Well, Akashi amends. There is no place at Akashi's school.

One new sports complex later, there is space enough at Rakuzan's dorms for Ryouta to accompany the basketball team on their laps, barking joyfully at every turn. Ryouta rests his adoring head on Akashi's lap and sheds gold all over the brown blazers and is perennially kidnapped by the girl's dormitory for ribbons and sweaters, but he is by far the greatest success with Akashi’s teammates, some of whom are beginning to form into factions, arguing for Shintarou’s quiet dignity over Daiki’s swaggering insouciance. Akashi is unsurprised.

Daiki and Shintarou and Atsushi and Tetsuya look on with polite disbelief at an animal who actually obeys commands like 'sit' and 'stay' and 'do not climb on my face'. Ryouta's two great loves- to Akashi’s mild amusement- are Daiki and Tetsuya, but Daiki is capricious, as likely to send Ryouta whimpering as he is to cuddle and play, and Akashi has learned enough about fish-keeping to keep Tetsuya the twelfth well out of reach, so Ryouta is reduced to staring at the tank, lying on his back entranced by Tetsuya's unhurried passage back and forth. Akashi tickles his stomach with his socked foot.

He’s such a good dog.

.0.

“Kaijou’s Kise Ryouta,” reports Nebuya, confirming what they already know. Kotaro and the fifth of their starting squad are playing tag with a boisterous Ryouta, a basketball and no regard whatsoever for the clear and encroaching mental breakdown of Rakuzan’s genius captain.

"Is that all of them," says Reo, with feeling. The Winter Cup is coming along, and while Rakuzan has no shortage of members, it seems something of a waste to deploy them on pet care. Also, it’s increasingly unnerving to watch match videos of the former Teikou regulars, mostly because Akashi always considered it perfectly clear if he was talking about the human or animal version, even when it patently was not. "That's all of them, right? We're done? It's over?" Even Sei-chan won’t pull team members out of thin air, will he?” They still don’t even know who this Tetsuya is, beyond that his twelfth incarnation is swimming in Akashi’s dorm room, pushing a tiny basketball around with his nose.

.0.

After the final, they know who Tetsuya is.

.0.

Reo moves quickly and ambushes Midorima Shintarou- the real one, not the tortoise one, which Akashi had to be dissuaded from bringing to the stadium with them to attend the closing ceremony. It takes only a few minutes to explain the situation as it stands to him. Certain recent emails and remarks become suddenly explicated, judging from the look on Midorima’s face before he launches into a lecture to rival Sei-chan’s.

By the sound of it, they've been managing Sei-chan all wrong, down to the fact that they have let him turn the dormitory into a menagerie and probably also that they have failed to keep Akashi sufficiently occupied enough to not turn the dorm into a menagerie. Reo wants to protest to this. It's not like Sei-chan came with instructions like 'don't let him go off to a festival unsupervised' or 'if you do, take away all his winnings immediately'.

"Murasakibara always does," Midorima informs them. "He flushes the fish and eats the consumables and disposes of everything in perfect order."

Sorry we're not you, is on the tip of Reo's tongue. Sorry we're not enough for him. Sorry he misses you so much he talks to a tortoise. Maybe if any of you ever bothered to call to see how he's doing-  “He talks to them,” he tries to explain. “He’s constantly talking to- Shintarou. Tetsuya. He lectures the hamster and Ryouta and Daiki even when they don’t listen to him. He never talks to us.”

There’s silence. The adorable point guard from Shuutoku is literally convulsed over by the wall, laughing so hard that he doesn’t even have the breath for audible laughter, just wheezing for breath between bouts of silent hilarity.

“That doesn’t sound like Akashi-kun,” comes a new voice.

Reo jumps and shrieks. Midorima drops his mint container.

“I’ve been here the whole time,” says Kuroko Tetsuya. Reo just stares at him. The latest Tetsuya is a handsome black beta with silver accents, flashing them when he flared his fins in display at faces, food, Shintarou, glints of light in the air. Mibuchi doesn’t see the resemblance. “Pets, you say.”

“One for each of you,” Reo explains. He lets them flick through the album again. He does feel, personally, that the one of Ryouta and Daiki napping in a pool of sunlight is adorable, if insipid. He crosses his arms and waits.

Midorima and Kuroko share a speaking look. Reo doesn’t have to have amazing eyes to see what they are saying to each other. Better them than us, it says, clearly.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help,” says Kuroko Tetsuya, politely. Midorima Shintarou just adjusts his glasses, thinking.

Reo stomps off, or tries to.

Shuutoku’s point guard chases after him. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Can you send me the picture of that tortoise? Have you ever thought of wrapping him up in bandages? Can I get a picture of that?”

.0.

A day later, after free time in Tokyo, Akashi returns to the inn with a plant, which he passes to Nebuya.

“What’s this?” he says.

“It’s for all of you,” says Akashi, and unwinds his scarf.

“It’s a money plant,” someone volunteers. “They bring luck.” Akashi’s eyebrows hit his hairline, and he turns his gaze to the plant.

“It's from Midorima-kun," says Reo, reading the attached tag. "He says it is a gift to the whole club. For luck. We're going to need it, he says."

Akashi stares doubtfully at it. “Luck,” he says.

"What's its name?" inquires Kotaro, who can never let a good thing rest.

The entire room swivels to look at Akashi, but he appears baffled. He can't have already have run out of teammates- of rivals, of comrades. Admittedly, it doesn't look like a Taiga. Or a Teppei. Well, maybe a Teppei. Kiyoshi hasn’t gotten any less annoying since Junior High.

"We're calling it Sei-chan," announces Reo. "And we're keeping it in the club room. Conversation is good for plants, you know.”

Akashi pauses in the act of smoothing down his hair. “Sei-chan,” he says, flatly.

Kotaro pinches off a leaf and offers it to Shintarou, who inspects it carefully before chomping down. “I think that’s a nice name.”

Chapter Text

The first thing that greets the Rakuzan Basketball Team upon their return to the high school is Ryouta’s embarrassingly mournful howling. Despite repeated skype calls just to ‘hear his barking- is he sad? Oh I hear him, he’s so sad, pet him for me’ from the regulars and supporters who travelled to Tokyo for the Winter Cup, they’ve missed him dearly, and he’s missed them. Ryouta bounds out of the lobby and down the driveway as the bus disgorges them, dancing in and around all their feet as tears stream down many faces at this homecoming. Reo can’t help but compare Kise Ryouta’s lovely, laughing face, that glint of absolute, unbounded joy. Akashi runs a hand down his flank, as though in memory of the same.

Ryouta, ecstatic, abases himself.

A sleek black form detaches itself from the bushes and saunters towards them, black tail held high. Reo detaches himself from the crowd and lets Daiki ram into his shins, making the grumbly engine-rrrrr of his purr.

Daiki had clawed three seniors across the forearms rather than let himself be packed up to follow them to Tokyo, but reports indicated he had roamed the empty corridors calling for them and found to his dissatisfaction that there was no one there to scratch his belly.

Which, really. Serves the little terror right. Reo remembers Aomine Daiki, standing in the stands to lead Seirin’s cheer, the terror of Teikou’s starting lineup with tears running down his face. With Daiki the cat condescending to stand still to be petted, however, tail raised in the air like an imperative, Reo can just about forgive the jerk he was named for.

Daiki turns his head under Reo’s hand. He has something in his mouth, still purring around it, and Reo goes to his knees to see what Daiki’s found this time.

Daiki spits out a furry shape, limp and stained with blood, onto Reo’s pristine white-clad knees. While Reo stares at it, it stirs, bares a mouth full of white teeth, and squeaks angrily.

That’s all that Reo remembers, really. Then he faints.

.0.

When Reo comes to, draped artistically over a duffel bag as a very kind first-year sponges his face with a wet towelette, they’ve moved indoors, the spectators have been dismissed, and the animal has been placed inside the box which held their second place trophy. Akashi has firm hold of Daiki, now cradled into the crook of their captain’s arm looking sorry for himself.

“We think it’s a weasel,” says Nebuya, offering Reo an arm up.

“Is it okay?” says Reo, hauled up quickly by Nebuya’s massive bicep. “I mean, did Daiki-”

“Still alive,” reports Koutarou. Beat. Check into the box. “I mean, for now.”

Reo delicately closes his eyes.

“I’ve called a local wildlife sanctuary,” says Higuchi-san calmly, returning to the centre of the action. “They have a veterinarian on staff and they’ve identified our photograph as a male juvenile Japanese weasel, they don’t think his injuries are life-threatening.”

Akashi nods. “Do you have the address?” he says. “I’ve notified my driver, I will take this animal to the center and see that it is put into the right hands.”

“You’re… not going to keep it?” says Mayuzumi, who sometimes forgets that when he talks, other people can hear him. It’s a habit that’s frankly made him very unpopular with the rest of the basketball club. “You’re not going to name it? Pet it? Anthromorphize it to represent your tattered and failed relationships with your closest friends and beloved teammates? With your real team?”

“No,” says Akashi without a blink. “I’m going to return the wild animal to the wild, where it belongs. Higuchi-san, can you take charge of Daiki? He needs a bath.”

Their indefatigable manager takes Daiki from Akashi’s hands, even as a well of silence envelopes the Rakuzan High Men’s Basketball Team.

“You don’t… want to keep it?” says Hayama.

Akashi blinks at him. “Of course not,” he says. Repeats. “It’s a wild animal and it belongs in the wild.”

“Do you-” says a first-year in an act of heroically suicidal courage. He looks at Ryouta sitting panting at his feet for strength. “Do you want to name it? I think it kind of… looks like… Hayama-sempai…”

Akashi turns a perfectly level gaze onto the first year, as the moment stretches out far too long.

A car screeches into the driveway. Akashi glances at it. “It’s here, I will return after I am done.” He picks up the towel-covered box and strides out the glass doors.

“I don’t look like a weasel,” says Hayama belatedly. No one pays attention to this. The car peels off down the driveway, speeding away an Akashi none of them are sure they know.

Nebuya is the first to stir. “He’s… he’s right, you know,” he offers up. “It’s not a pet.”

Ryouta whines, looking from face to face for the source of the unhappiness.

“Of course he wouldn’t have kept it,” says Mayuzumi, too-loudly in the echoing silence. No one likes him. Reo still doesn’t like him. “He’s got more than enough pets. He doesn’t want any more.”

.0.

Contrary to the nightmare that jerks Reo out of sleep early, there aren’t a pair of eyeballs floating in a jar in the denuded Basketball Club trophy case when he returns to school a week after they’ve lost the Winter Cup. This is a relief. He arranges Sei-chan’s fronds in pride of place where the sun filters gently through a north-facing window into the regular’s clubroom, and gently spritzes the damp earth with nutrient-enriched water. They’re going to need to be careful of overwatering it, and Reo knows exactly the Mozart concertos that are going to be best for little Sei-chan’s growth. Someone should make a list.

The school has just opened after the New Year’s holiday. Tetsuya the Fourteenth, moved into the clubroom for easy access by his caretakers while the dorms shut down, emerges from his flowerpot cave to inspect the intruder. Reo is beginning to have very mixed feelings about Akashi’s pets, now that he’s met- or at least seen- the originals.

Tetsuya the Fourteenth glares and turns sideways so that Reo can see his tailfins.

“It’s okay,” he says aloud to Sei-chan and Tetsuya alike. “Akashi’s okay.” Even after the disaster and a half that was the Winter Cup Finals.

Tetsuya the Fourteenth drifts to the surface of the tank, disinterested in Reo’s wishes, and lips at the air for food.

.0.

The tacit agreement to not talk about what happened at the Winter Cup doesn’t apply to Sei-chan. Situated right in the thick of the action, any time that someone passes in and out of the locker room, even just to grab their jerseys, they drop a quick greeting to Sei-chan. Centers with the sensitivity of concrete blocks wind up pouring their hearts out to Sei-chan as they pound iron, carrying his- its, its- pot into the weight rooms and straining out every impassioned word to the stems waving gently in the gymnasium air-conditioning. No one fights over Sei-chan. He’s passed from boy to boy whenever someone else needs a listening plant.

The opposite applies to Akashi. No one else is interested in bringing anything up to him. No one is speaking to him on a friendly, day-to-day basis, though admittedly, this isn’t much of a change from before. His disinterest in the plant Sei-chan, as a decoration, as a pet, as a repository of human hopes and fears, doesn’t change.

One time, Akashi pauses after pulling off his shirt and examines Sei-chan.

“Reo,” he says, thoughtful.

Reo freezes with his shirt half over his head, turning his head in the direction of the light, the light. “Yes?” he says, trying not to sound painfully eager.

“Sei-chan is getting too big for that pot,” Akashi says. His brow is knitted, looking at the innocent fronds. “See to it, please.”

“Yes,” says Reo, defeated.

“We have a practice game in Tokyo this weekend,” Akashi adds. “It’s Kuroko’s birthday.”

“Wait, what?” says Reo.

.0.

“Go away,” says Murasakibara Atsushi pre-emptively when Reo sidles up to him, and not just to get a little closer to that gorgeous shooting guard who’s just transferred into Yousen.

“Atsushi,” chides Himuro Tatsuya.

Reo could cry. This is what he wants with Akashi, this easy intimacy, this casual camaraderie. It’s not too much to ask, surely. They haven’t fallen so far from grace. Reo can be a surly jerk with an ego the size of the Tokyo Tower, if that’s what their captain wants.

“I don’t want to see another picture of that stupid hamster,” says Murasakibara.

“This isn’t about the hamster,” says Reo. Himuro Tatsuya’s visible eye crinkles, because the hamster is very possibly the best thing that has happened to him all year.

“And I don’t want to talk about Aka-chin,” says Murasakibara. He folds his arms and glares. He pouts a little, too. It would be unbearably cute if he wasn’t an overindulged, annoying monster.

Reo throws up his hands. “Then what are we supposed to do with him?” he demands, but quietly. Akashi, quite happily, is showing Coach Araki pictures of the hamster, on the ipad their new manager has taken to carrying around for expressly this purpose. There’s nothing for creating instant harmony like showing pictures of the pets to anyone victimized by their namesakes.

“How should I know?” says Murasakibara callously. “It’s not like we’re on such great terms anyway.”

But you are, Reo wants to shout, you are.

.0.

Reo takes bandages, some double-sided tape, and grapes with him to see Shintarou. The bandages and tape are to fulfill his promise to Shuutoku’s point guard, and the grapes are to bribe the tortoise into standing still.

The promise is an excuse to see Akashi.

“I have a present for Shintarou,” says Reo. He lifts the bunch of grapes in illustration. There is probably never going to be a good way to explain that Reo owes Takao Kazunari for taking vengeance on Akashi’s best friend for his snide plant gift. Or to convey what revenge.

“Be my guest,” murmurs Akashi, turning a page. Reo smiles somewhat helplessly at him and turns to get to work. He lays out the grapes and the bandages, and then looks into Shintarou’s tank.

Shintarou is standing on a rock.

A rock with eyes stuck onto it.

Reo can’t speak past the lump in his throat. Akashi sees him staring, and smiles at the rock- a smile that Reo has never seen before.

“Thank you for the grapes, Reo,” says Akashi, as though Reo can’t see the rock, that rock, right there. “When he wakes up, I’m sure Shintarou will appreciate them.”

.0.

“It’s what,” says Nebuya, loudly.

It’s a terrible phone picture, taken at an awkward angle with Reo’s hand behind his back, but they get the gist. They have to. It’s not like it’s a Dali painting.

“It’s a pet!” says Reo, unable to keep the joy out of his voice. “He got another one! A pet!”

“He got a rock,” says Nebuya.

“Let’s face it, you gorilla, he could have gotten another one of you!” purrs Reo. “Focus on the positive. He got a pet! He’s back. He’s okay.”

“How is this okay,” says Nebuya. “I thought we were trying to get him to stop getting pets. How is this better?”

But it is, it is, even when the rock starts showing up everywhere, all kinds of inconvenient and horrifying, its googly eyes set ever so slightly askew. The trophy shelf in the clubroom. The bench next to the water coolers nearest the basketball courts. On top of the free weights in the gym.

“He,” says Akashi, walking in on them staring into Tetsuya’s tank wondering if the rock is really in there, being gently lipped by Tetsuya the sixteenth. “Eikichi.”

Well, then.

.0.

The next shoe doesn’t take nearly so long to drop.

The huge bird cage is in the common room in the dorm in the morning, and everyone is standing around it muttering to themselves and each other until Akashi returns from his morning ten mile run and removes the cover, revealing…

“Kou-chan and Reo-chan,” murmurs Akashi. He’s barely sweating, his hair is curling at the edges from the run, and he has a mad, mad glint in his eye.

Reo’s missed it.

Two absolutely lovely lovebirds lift their heads from under their wings and blink at them. Reo can’t help gasping at how pretty they are, their shining colours and their bright eyes. Their cage is bright and airy and four feet tall, full of little play areas and hiding-holes, perches and treats.

“I thought since the weather….” says Akashi, though his voice falls away as Reo leans forward and stares into the gleaming black eyes.

“You could have gotten… one,” says Reo, grasping for sanity.

“I couldn’t, Reo, please,” says Akashi. He sounds remarkably pleased with himself, watching the light reflect off their feathers. “They’re social animals.”

“Kou!” calls one, leaping to perch on the bars of the cage, swiveling its head this way and that to take them all in. “Kou! Kou! Kou!”

‘Oh,” says Higuchi-san, his voice a pale and distant imitation of calm. “You’ve. You’ve taught them their names.”

“Aren’t they clever,” says Akashi, gazing into the cage. He almost looks misty-eyed as he whistles to Reo-chan to get its attention. “Who’s a clever bird?”

.0.

Mayuzumi, alone among the basketball club members a hundred strong, remains convinced that the parrots are a menace. As is typical of him, Akashi has their cage placed in the common room and they spend all day and half the night singing and calling to each other, screaming imploringly to members of the basketball club as they leave and exit the room. But when the birds put their heads to the side and coo their own names, bobbing up and down with excitement to see the members of the basketball club, it’s hard to remember what the Uncrowned were ever worried about in the first place.

“We were worried?” says Nebuya.

“We kinda were but a whole lot happened after that,” says Hayama.

“I was very worried,” says Reo. “I’m glad that Sei-chan’s okay.”

Okay for an operative term of the word, anyway. It’s a little galling to think that Midorima Shintarou’s lectures about not! indulging! Akashi! into! walking all over! you! were correct.

“Well,” says Hayama reflectively. “Could have been worse. I could have been a weasel.”

“Or,” says Nebuya bitterly, “you could have been a rock.”

“You’re a perfectly nice rock,” says Reo consolingly.

Mayuzumi ignores all of them, even though they all know he’s there.

It’s a first-year on filter rotation who reports that a small collage of pictures has appeared on the wall above Akashi’s desk, a weasel being weighed, tagged and unhappy about it, pink mouth bared in a snarl. Next to the photo, the very nice letter from the very nice scientists at the sanctuary assures them he’s doing well after his release back into the wild and commends them for taking such interest in his progress. Under the photo, in Akashi’s beautiful calligraphy, Koutarou.

Mayuzumi didn’t want to be a weasel, either.

.0.

“Well,” says Mayuzumi, who, stubbornly and amazingly, is still reading harem-plotline pink-covered novels on the roof in freezing March with his college entrance exams looming. “He’s back to normal. It’s over, right? It’s fine.”

“Well,” says Reo. “Not yet.” He waits to see if the implications of this latest pet-acquisition spree of Akashi’s have occurred to their senior. He wouldn’t have come up here for just anything, bringing Ryouta with him to gambol happily among the industrial concrete.

Mayuzumi finally sets down that damn book of his to frown at Reo. “He won’t get one of me,” he says.

“How can you be sure?” says Reo neutrally.

“He doesn’t like me,” says Mayuzumi. And neither do you and it’s mutual, his expression communicates. Ryouta comes to Mayuzumi’s side and noses happily into his lap, pleading with giant chocolate eyes to be petted and loved. Mayuzumi obliges, signalling the conversation over.

Perhaps.

.0.

It’s nothing but beautiful fate all the way down that Reo is present when Mayuzumi is returning Daiki to Akashi, holding the complaining cat inside the shreds of his jacket, with a look on his face that suggests he too would like to spit and hiss into Akashi’s face.

“Akashi!” yells Mayuzumi. He hammers twice on Akashi’s door. “I need to give you back your stupid cat!”

“You can’t bring Daiki in here,” calls Akashi.

“Why the fuck not,” demands Mayuzumi.

“Chihiro is in here,” says Akashi, supremely calm. “Out of his cage.”

Mayuzumi drops his jacket, and Daiki takes the chance to escape, becoming a black, screaming blur down the hallway.

“Daiki’s gone,” says Reo, seizing the opportunity. “Can we come in?”

“Of course,” says Akashi.

Reo pushes in the door while Mayuzumi stands stock-still in his shirtsleeves, staring straight ahead frozen between anger and shock. Akashi is lying on his bed propped up by pillows, gazing innocently at them from his supine position.

Chihiro peeks out from under the shadow of Akashi’s arm, and runs down his leg. At Akashi’s knee, the rat sits up, peers at them, and sniffs the air.

“Close the door behind you,” Akashi reminds them.

Reo, unwilling to miss a single beautiful moment, kicks the door shut behind them.

Chihiro is frightened by the noise and turns and runs back up Akashi’s leg, vanishing under Akashi’s torso to climb his pillow and start eating Akashi.

“Oh,” says Akashi. “He’s grooming me.”

Mayuzumi makes his first noise in nearly three straight minutes, a weird in-outtake of breath.

The rat continues to lick and nibble Akashi’s ear, Akashi’s temple, the fine soft tips of Akashi’s hair.

“Chihiro, that tickles,” says Akashi, reaching up to grab the rat. He cups it in his hands and runs his thumbs over the fine grey coat. The rat squeaks.

“I’m sorry, Mayuzumi-san,” Akashi says, holding the rat, the pet rat, the rat he bought and lets run over him and named after their ex-PF, Reo is going to expire right this second and die completely complete, “you had something to say to me about Daiki?”

Mayuzumi gives him a look like the legions of hell, turns on his heels, and barges out the door.

“Shame,” says Akashi. “Reo, would you like to pet him? Chihiro is very friendly.”

.0.

Mayuzumi pointedly avoids them all for the graduation ceremony, skipping it entirely. He expresses, without any doubt, that he would very much like to forget that this period of his life even existed.

Nevertheless, Reo arms himself with gardening shears, a book, and two members of the horticultural club.

Ryouta has the job of ambushing Mayuzumi, and Nebuya makes sure that the third-year is delivered to the locker room, where Hayama will guard the door.

Once Mayuzumi sees Akashi, he realises it’s useless to call for help.

“What do you want?” he says. Crosses his arms. Uncrosses them.

Reo takes the small pot out from behind his back. Mayuzumi looks at it. “What is that?” he says, even though it’s clearly a small Sei-chan stem, transplanted.

“We almost forgot to get you a graduation present,” says Reo, smiling so hard his face hurts. “I can’t believe we overlooked it.”

Mayuzumi stares at him, then stares at Akashi, then gets mixed up and ends up glaring at the plant.

Sei-chan’s leaves wobble.

“Your very own Sei-chan!” says Reo. “He’s growing so well, we thought we’d get you a cutting from him.” Reo pauses for effect. “You know. As a graduation present. To thank you for being on the team with us.”

Akashi, for possibly the first time since this entire thing has begun, looks badly like he wants to laugh.

Mayuzumi, clearly resolving to throw out the plant as soon as possible, stretches out his hands and takes it. “Thank you,” he forces out between gritted teeth. “I’ll take good care of… ‘Sei-chan’.”

“Will we get Sei-chans?” wonders Hayama. “Next year.”

“Why not?” says Reo, drunk on success. “Sei-chans for everyone!”

“You gotta remember to talk to it,” says Nebuya to Mayuzumi. “He gets lonely without friends.”