Work Text:
blue
The Touou players file out of the locker room one by one, but Aomine finds himself lingering until only he and Imayoshi remain. The older boy is leaning against a wall, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses, where the redness is still visible. He looks around, realizing they’re the only two left, and something in his frame softens, a certain weariness laid bare.
“I’m sorry,” Aomine blurts.
Imayoshi just chuckles quietly in response, and it’s a strange sound, a hollow exhale empty of all of his usual deviousness.
“Don’t be sorry, brat,” he says, and there is no venom in the words as he looks at Aomine from behind the glasses. “You were, and still are, the team’s ace. You don’t have time to apologize. You have to win next time.”
Aomine’s hands curl into fists by his side, and he wonders how Imayoshi can do it, how he can say such things when he just looks so tired where he leans against the wall. But Imayoshi is (was, Aomine corrects himself) a captain, and this is why Aomine never will be.
Imayoshi inhales once, deeply, and then he’s pushing himself off of the wall, straightening his glasses before heading for the door. Aomine just stands there, frozen, as the other boy moves, and is surprised when he feels a warmth on his head.
It’s Imayoshi’s hand, ruffling his hair lightly as he passes, and then it’s gone and so is he, the locker room door closing behind him. Aomine’s head feels suddenly cold where the hand is no longer there, colder than before the touch, and he trails his own fingers over the spot absently.
You have to win next time.
The words ring in his ears, and he feels the heat in his eyes, threatening to explode if he doesn’t hold it together. He’d forgotten the blood and tears that he once put into basketball, but he’s ready to do it again; he’ll bleed for Touou if he has to, and he clenches his fist so hard he can feel his nails cutting into the soft flesh of his palm.
But you won’t bleed for him.
Glasses and a smile flash across his mind, and Aomine’s mouth opens in a silent cry, the hand that’s still in his hair tightening and pulling on the strands in frustration.
A drop of blood drips from his hand to the floor, and the tears follow soon after.
–
purple
Murasakibara finds that he does not like the taste of tears. But he can’t seem to stop them, his body shaking, the bitter flavor distracting as it runs across his lips. Himuro watches him as they pack their bags together and head off towards the locker room, his gaze red-eyed but soft, and Murasakibara wants to punch a hole through a wall just thinking about it.
Don’t look at me like that.
Don’t look as if you see strength where there is none.
Murasakibara sits as soon as they make it to the locker room, a towel thrown over his head in the hope that no one will see, or at the least no one will try to say anything to him, even if they do notice.
And then Himuro is approaching, hands shaking as he moves them slowly towards Murasakibara’s face, like a cautious stranger approaching a wild animal; Murasakibara assumes that he can see the way his fingers are gripping the bench beneath him with too much force. He’s surprised – another new experience for the day – at the realization that losing has made him so foreign and unpredictable, because Himuro should know that of all people, he is the one that Murasakibara would never touch in that way.
There is a brief movement, a brush of skin on cheeks as Himuro wipes salt and bitterness away, and somehow Murasakibara feels lighter even as the hands disappear from view. He wonders what Himuro tastes like, because it’s probably nothing like his tears; he imagines something cold and delicate, a fresh popsicle on a thick summer day, taking all unpleasantness away as it dissolves.
Perhaps that thought is where the impulse comes from, he doesn’t really know, but he follows through, reaching out and grasping one of the retreating hands and pressing lips against the gentle fingers there. It is cool, he marvels, cool and just the right degree of sweet to ease the pain in his features.
But it’s a tender gesture, frail and full of care and not permitted for someone as large and monstrous as him, and he drops the hand immediately, picking his giant frame off the bench and heading for the door.
“Atsushi-”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
Loss makes Murasakibara feel unworthy, even moreso than ever, and at that fact alone, he feels a disgusting urge to fight.
–
green
He wants to scream when he hears the buzzer going off, signaling the game is over, because Midorima does not want it to end like this; he wants to keep going, so long as he still has breath in his body and a will to fight, no matter how the odds drift further out of their favor. But the numbers on the scoreboard are red and harsh and final, and they leave no room for argument.
If the stars had cursed Midorima Shintarou that day, it wasn’t the fate itself that bothered him now, turning his eyes away from the display, so much as the realization that the rest of his team had been tied to it as well. He glances at Takao’s face as they walk away from the court, and something in him twists, because it’s not his loss anymore; it’s theirs.
They enter the locker room in silence and Midorima follows Takao to a corner out of sheer habit, his thoughts scattering aimlessly with each step. So many hours flash through his memory, long nights spent alone together in a gym, practicing passes until their hands were raw and red. Takao had always smiled, afterwards; no matter how much he’d been hurting, he’d looked at Midorima like these extra hours were the greatest gift in the world. They would be unstoppable, Takao had proclaimed, resting his head on Midorima’s shoulder as they sprawled out on the bleachers.
But the stars had frowned upon their efforts, and Midorima is left with nothing to do now but throw his arms around Takao and feel the smaller frame beneath him as it quakes with poorly suppressed sobs.
I’m sorry.
Takao trembles, wetness soaking into the front of Midorima’s jersey, but neither boy moves to put any distance between the two of them.
I’m so, so sorry.
Midorima knows of pain and awkwardness and voices that whisper in the shadows when his back is turned. His life had been made of these, but he was always alone in it, and he assumed that it would always be this way, his failures becoming burdens to carry in solitude as well. Seeing someone else suffering at the hands of his inadequacies cuts even deeper than any pain he had ever felt on his own.
He bites his lip and buries his face in Takao’s hair, shaking, until he can no longer distinguish the tremors of one body from the other.
–
yellow
Kise does his best to suppress the way his body shakes when he puts his weight down on his injured ankle, but of course, Kasamatsu sees it anyway. He is a captain, as attentive as he is strong, and Kise is both grateful and embarrassed at his own readability.
There is a touch, then, across his shoulders that shatters everything, and Kaijou has to watch their ace fall to pieces in front of their eyes.
It is strange, Kise thinks, but he cries even harder at the thought. He doesn’t want them to see him like this, crumbling both in body and in spirit as they make their way off the court and towards the locker room. They walk single file down the hallway, and they’re all trying their hardest to not look too dejected; he can see it in the falseness of their movements and the stiffness of their strides.
And he just can’t, suddenly, freezing in his tracks. He can’t go back into a small space and face the people whose hopes he’d carried on his shoulders and then dropped so carelessly along the way. His gaze drifts sideways towards Kasamatsu, who even with his own exhausted body is still working to support Kise’s weight.
I can’t breathe the same air as them.
They shouldn’t have to look at this.
Kasamatsu just stares for a while, studying the fear in Kise’s features and the way his breath catches in his throat, before nodding once and changing his course, leading them outside instead.
The night air is clear and cold when they emerge from the building and Kise is grateful for it, breathing patiently until he finally isn’t gasping anymore, while one of Kasamatsu’s hands rubs small circles between his shoulder blades.
“You have two more years,” a gruff voice mutters, breaking the silence.
Kise turns to look at his senpai, ready to issue a flurry of apologies; he has no place feeling so crushed, he knows this, when it’s Kasamatsu’s high school career that’s ending here, not Kise’s. This thought hurts him, too, a knife threatening to slip into his back where Kasamatsu’s touch hovers over his jersey.
But the captain’s eyes aren’t accusatory, and the hand on Kise’s back moves to squeeze his shoulder lightly.
“Learn to face your team without regret.”
Kasamatsu’s eyes sparkle in the darkness, and Kise tells himself it’s just the moonlight.
–
red
Akashi learns of loss over time, the lessons coming in fragments.
The first lesson is sharp and cutting and there are tears, too, but he wipes them away and the moment passes. By the time the team is loading up onto the bus, the sting is but a memory, and he’s already talking quietly with Mibuchi over possible training regimens moving forward. So this is it, he thinks – it’s uncomfortable, but not earth-shattering – so he settles into a seat, still maintaing conversation with his teammate beside him. The gray head of hair in front of him slumps further down into its own seat, and at the time, Akashi doesn’t understand why he feels a sudden need to reach out and run his hand through it.
The shattering comes second, and long after he’s forgotten the first. He finds Mayuzumi on the rooftop, predictably, and they exchange pleasantries and parting words, but for the first time the space between them seems somehow smaller and warmer than what Akashi had been accustomed to. It’s over in minutes, and he’s already back in the stairwell with his hand on the doorknob, the light behind him diminishing bit by bit as he slides the door shut, when it hits.
There’s a tearing inside of him, and something spills through the gap; he doesn’t know grief in this way, so he has no name for it, but he understands the meaning behind it.
You don’t get to play with him again (not that you deserve it).
You’re finished (or rather, he is, with you, but what’s the difference).
He cries alone in the stairwell, the tears like fire along his face, and if he has any thought of rushing back outside and pulling Mayuzumi as close to him as physically possible, he makes no move to do so.
The third isn’t so much a lesson as a state of being, Akashi realizes as the months pass. Everything of value looks different through the eyes of one who has lost, much more wispy and fragile, like apparitions that might vanish at a moment’s breeze. He wonders if this is how the others – the losers, as he liked to think of them – always saw the world, right from the start.
The next time Mayuzumi messages him, he finds that he finally understands the need, now, which made no sense to him all those long months ago, and he holds onto the ghosts as tightly as he can.