lysapadin | [drabbles] KnB - Miscellaneous drabbles (Reply)

Just posting a number of different drabbles here for the sake of archival purposes.

Aomine and Kuroko drabbles

No prompt, just because
#Aomine has more issues than the Library of Congress

Sometimes Daiki gets nervy. Not as often as he did at first, when he didn’t quite believe the evidence of his senses, didn’t believe that Tetsuya meant the things he said and did. Back then, when this was still new, Daiki watched him constantly, warily, like he was waiting for Tetsuya to change his mind and leave again. It took time, even more time than Tetsuya had initially anticipated, for Daiki to relax and begin to believe in him, in them, again.

Tetsuya still regrets that. Not that he did it so much, because it was necessary for him, for Daiki, for their game and their teammates’ games, but that the doing of it hurt Daiki so badly. At this remove, years out, he can’t say whether the route he chose for them was the best or even the only way to fix all the things that were broken between them. He chose it and it worked, changed them all for the better (eventually), and he shoulders the consequences of his choice willingly.

This is one of those consequences: Daiki skittish, unsure of himself or, more precisely, of Tetsuya. Because it is Daiki, this does not manifest in any way that might be called typical. When Daiki is uncertain, he reacts by holding on more tightly to what he has, as though convinced in his soul that if he loosens his grip even a little bit, he will lose everything.

Tetsuya doesn’t mind this. He’s had years to hone his talent for working with and around what he’s been handed, and he’s all but specialized in working with Daiki in particular.

It’s not a hardship. Rather the opposite, really.

Tetsuya has resigned himself to the fact that Daiki is always going to be that much taller and broader than he is, that Daiki will always be able to sling an arm around his shoulders and lean over him, that Daiki can make good on the concept of manhandling him if he happens to be in the mood for it. It’s not so bad a thing, really. Sometimes, like now, it’s even good.

Daiki is a warm, solid weight draped against Tetsuya’s back. He has his mouth pressed against the side of Tetsuya’s throat, warm and wet and gentler than anyone who isn’t Tetsuya might believe Daiki can be. Even so, Tetsuya is fairly sure that he’s going to find a mark there later.

He doesn’t ask Daiki to stop, even though Daiki would if he did.

Instead he rolls his head to the side a little further, rests his cheek against his wrist, and sighs at the brush of Daiki’s lips against his skin, whispering the syllables of his name like a secret. There are pillows beneath Tetsuya’s hips, canting them up for the way Daiki is moving against him, inside him, but most of his weight is actually resting against Daiki’s hand, splayed against his stomach. Daiki holds him easily, steadying him against the slow back-and-forth rocking of his hips and the leisurely build of pleasure that each thrust sends rippling up Tetsuya’s spine.

Tetsuya rather likes how simple it is for Daiki to hold him this way, and he relaxes into it, trusting Daiki to see them through and letting Daiki hear the sounds he makes, soft gasps and murmurs of satisfaction as sensation twines through him, warm as sunlight. Daiki does not let him down (Daiki will never let him down; Tetsuya knows this even if Daiki himself is not convinced). When Tetsuya’s breath is moving fast and he is hovering on the edge, ready to tip over it, Daiki shifts his hand lower and closes it on him, his grip perfect. Tetsuya closes his eyes and moans outright as satisfaction rolls through him, long lazy shudders working him from head to toe, lingering even after the first sweet flash of pleasure subsides.

Daiki groans against his nape, open and breathless, something without words in it as he moves faster, driving himself against Tetsuya deeper and harder. Tetsuya reaches back to him and slides his fingers into Daiki’s hair, stroking it as aftershocks of heat dance along his nerves, until Daiki goes taut against him, shaking as he comes.

He sprawls against Tetsuya when that tension finally leaves him, breathing hard and pressing Tetsuya against the sheets. He’s heavy enough that it isn’t strictly comfortable, even factoring in the lassitude of the afterglow, but Tetsuya doesn’t mind. Daiki is warm and close, the indefinable edge of tension that he’d had before they’d tumbled into bed together soothed away. That alone would make Tetsuya willing to put up with a great deal more discomfort than this.

He reaches for Daiki’s hand, still loosely fisted in the blanket. When he brings it to his mouth and kisses the palm, Daiki sighs against his nape, shaping the syllables of Tetsuya’s name again.

“Yes,” Tetsuya says, one more promise that he is here and not going anywhere at all, not without Daiki, and smiles when Daiki’s grip on him finally begins to relax.

Domesticity meme
#Aomine is pretty adorable sometimes

This is probably the best part of living with Tetsu, not that the rest isn’t great—Daiki never stops being entertained by Tetsu’s understated, biting snark and he loves being able to press Tetsu down against the futon and cover every centimeter of Tetsu’s skin with his kisses and he is never ever going to get tired of rolling over in the morning to find Tetsu watching him and smiling beneath that crazy bedhair of his, but this—this is the best of all, when he can stretch out and rest his head in Tetsu’s lap while Tetsu reads and go to sleep to the feeling of Tetsu’s hand curled around his nape, holding him close and safe.

AU meme
#I don't even know y'all #I really don't

The thing Daiki can’t understand is what on earth a guy like Tetsu is doing working the street in the first place. It’s no kind of life for a guy as quiet and polite as Tetsu is, a guy who sometimes gives away little snatches of himself like pieces of a puzzle. Daiki collects each one that Tetsu lets slip, hoping that if he can just fit them together, he’ll be able to figure Tetsu out.

In the meantime they share an apartment so small Daiki can hold his arms out and touch the walls at once and he does his best to look out for Tetsu, who has no apparent sense of self-preservation when it comes to dealing with the assholes who think a fistful of bills earns them the right to do whatever they want to you (Daiki has seen him throw punches at guys twice his size; yeah, that wouldn’t have ended well, but Tetsu didn’t seem to be fazed by that later when Daiki was yelling at him). And sometimes they wake up in the afternoon and lie together on the futon that they share, and when they reach for each other it doesn’t have anything to do with money at all.

#and then Kagami shows up a la Pretty Woman or something and sweeps the two of them off to live a life of luxury with him or something, I dunno

"a Sunday afternoon with nothing to do"
#Kuroko is kind of evil
#but Aomine likes him that way

It's Sunday afternoon, and there's nothing to do.

"You could do your homework," Tetsu says, which is what he's doing, sitting prim and proper at Daiki's table, his books and notebooks spread out around him.

It's like Tetsu doesn't even know him or something. "I'll get the answers from Sakurai in the morning," Daiki says, because Sakurai is dependable about doing all the bullshit assignments their teachers hand out and is, more importantly, easily cowed.

Tetsu actually looks up from his work and gives Daiki a look full of disapproval. "I don't see how you expect to learn anything that way."

"That would be because I don't," Daiki tells him, flopping onto his back so he can avoid Tetsu's gaze. That gives him the right angle to see the rain still falling outside the window, a steady grey curtain that has foreclosed any possibility of going out with Tetsu and hustling a game on the street. Damn rain.

Tetsu is not Satsuki, for which Daiki is grateful for all kinds of reasons. Instead of trying to scold or cajole him into doing his work, Tetsu turns the page and says, "I see." For a moment, there's no sound but the rain drumming on the roof above them and the quiet scratch of Tetsu's pen. Daiki is just beginning to think about taking a nap when Tetsu adds, "I'm sure Kagami-kun will enjoy having better test scores than you."

"Oh, hell no." Daiki lifts his head and makes a face at Tetsu. "That trick isn't going to work on me again."

"I'm not sure what trick you're referring to." Tetsu slides his finger down the page of his textbook, searching for something; when he finds it, he begins copying it down, face a mask of concentration. He's got his lip caught between his teeth and his eyebrows drawn together, and anyone who didn't know better would assume he's completely focused on the task at hand.

"Sure you don't." Keeping his head up is too much work; Daiki braces himself on his elbows instead. "I'm on to you, Tetsu. You're not gonna fool me that way again." No way is he going to be manipulated into trying to one-up that idiot Kagami, not this time.

"I still don't know what you mean," Tetsu says, completely bland. "I was just making an observation."

"I'm on to you and your tricks," Daiki tells him. "I'm not falling for it."

Tetsu glances up again, mostly straight-faced except for the glimmer of laughter in his eyes. "If you say so." He taps his pen against his chin. "I suppose a year and half is a good run."

The worst part is that he's not exaggerating that timeline. "I hate you so much," Daiki says, flopping back down again.

"Mm." Tetsu turns another page and writes something else down and doesn't touch that one. "I suppose it's up to you if you want to be the least educated player in the BJ League."

"That's not going to work either." No one is going to give a shit what kind of grades he pulls down after he signs. Until then, all he has to do is make sure he doesn't flunk any major tests that will keep him from playing, and he's got that much covered.

Tetsu sighs. "I suppose it'll have to be bribery, then." He sounds resigned, but Daiki's pretty sure he's amused, too, underneath that.

Daiki doesn't stir, not willing to let Tetsu know how that's piqued his interest. "Not a big enough bribe in the world," he tells the ceiling.

"Do you think so?" Tetsu asks. Daiki hears the quiet click of him putting his pen down. Daiki knows that tone—it only ever means that Tetsu is about to do something drastic—and raises his head just in time to get hit square in the face with—what the fuck? Something warm and soft that, when he finally claws it off his face, turns out to be the button-down that Tetsu was wearing over his t-shirt.

Daiki looks at his fistful of Tetsu's shirt and then at Tetsu, whose bare arms gleam pale in the grey light from the window and whose expression is so carefully blank that Daiki immediately braces himself for something really evil. "What the hell?"

"A gesture of good faith," Tetsu says calmly. "For every piece of homework you finish, I'll take off something else." He picks up his phone. "Momoi-san already sent me the list of your assignments."

For a moment, Daiki is speechless with the sheer scope of Tetsu's evil genius. "You bastard," he says, full of admiration. "What happens if I finish all my homework?"

Tetsu's smile is small. "I suppose that depends on how long it takes you, doesn't it?"

"Fine." Daiki sits up and reaches for his school bag. He'll start with his literature homework, which should go pretty fast.

After all, Tetsu didn't stipulate that the assignments had to be done correctly.

"what they really do with all that ice cream"
#the ice cream is a metaphor
#a metaphor for how badly they want to screw

Tetsu is as fastidious with his ice cream as he is everything else. He unwraps ice cream bars with meticulous care and never, ever forgets to dispose of the wrapper in the appropriate trash receptacle. He always manages to eat his ice cream without ever dripping it on his fingers or his clothes, even on the hottest days of summer when it's a matter of eating fast or seeing one's ice cream splattered across the sidewalk.

Daiki doesn't know how he does it and chalks it up as another of Tetsu's mysterious ways. Tetsu has a lot of those, more than Daiki expects he'll ever understand.

Like right now. Objectively speaking, all Tetsu is doing is eating his ice cream, one careful lick at a time. Nothing weird about that, aside from the fact that clearly the proper way to eat an ice cream bar is by biting off mouthfuls and letting them melt on the tongue while complaining about the brainfreeze. Tetsu eats slowly, methodically, tongue pink and lips red against the vanilla white of the ice cream bar, occasionally lifting the bar and rotating it to catch stray runnels of melting ice cream with the tip of his tongue.

For the life of him, Daiki cannot look away, not even when his own ice cream starts melting across his fingers, chilly-sticky-messy. There's something about the way Tetsu's eating his ice cream that has him transfixed. It shouldn't, right? He has a dim inkling that there shouldn't be anything special about watching Tetsu slide the last of the bar into his mouth and pull it back out again, slow, so very slow, and for some reason the word obscene springs to Daiki's mind.

Tetsu looks over at him; there's just a trace of ice cream at the corner of his mouth. Daiki doesn't even know why, but there's a part of him that suddenly aches with the urge to find out how it tastes. Before he can even react to having that thought (what the hell, seriously, that's not—that's not normal, is it?), Tetsu raises his eyebrows. "Your ice cream is melting."

Which it is, the half-eaten bar now mostly just a mess across his fingers and knuckles and, shit, his uniform slacks, too. Daiki curses and drops the remains of his ice cream; it splats against the ground while he tries to shake the worst of the mess off his fingers. He curses his failure to ever carry tissues or a handkerchief or anything useful (though that's what Satsuki's for, isn't it?) and, for lack of a better solution, sticks his fingers in his mouth to lick them clean.

It's not until he's swiping his tongue across his knuckles that he realizes that Tetsu is watching him, a strange, distracted look on his face. "What?" he demands, wary of that expression (Tetsu has a wicked sense of humor for such a quiet little guy).

"You need help." It comes out more a statement of fact than a question, really.

Daiki debates taking offense and decides not to, not if Tetsu is willing to loan out some tissues or something. "Yeah, well—"

That's when Tetsu takes Daiki's hand in his, which, weird, very weird, and lifts it, and then Daiki's brain shorts out completely as Tetsu applies his mouth to the remains of the mess on his fingers. His lips and tongue are cool against Daiki's skin, soft and wet, and very thorough as he scours the ice cream off Daiki's fingers and palm... and keeps going even after Daiki is sure that there can't possibly be anything left on his fingers.

This definitely isn't normal, Daiki thinks as Tetsu slides his mouth down over his thumb and flirts the tip of his tongue against the ball of it. This definitely isn't normal, and he's definitely not gonna be the one to stop it, either.

Tetsu drags his mouth off Daiki's thumb, slow like his mouth on the ice cream, and Daiki can hear his own breathing loud and fast in his ears. Tetsu looks at him, lips shining and wet, and there's still a little dab of ice cream at the corner of his mouth.

"You have—" Daiki says, hoarse, gesturing at it. Tetsu looks at him, lifting his eyebrows the tiniest bit, until Daiki swallows hard and stoops to dart his tongue out, quick, and stroke it against the corner of Tetsu's mouth, sweet vanilla and the salt of skin beneath that.

Tetsu turns his face before Daiki can begin to think of pulling back, bringing their mouths together, awkward with the bump of noses and teeth until Daiki tips his head just so and Tetsu leans like that, and they're kissing, hot-wet-slick.

Oh, some distant part of Daiki thinks, oh, I get it now. And with that, the only sensible thing to do is pull Tetsu closer and concentrate on chasing the last taste of the ice cream out of his mouth.

Microfic Meme
#Aomine and Kuroko are complicated

1. Angst

"I'm sorry," Tetsu said and maybe even meant it. "Maybe if you'd said something sooner..." His voice trailed off into uncertainty and he looked aside. Daiki knew what was coming before he even opened his mouth again. "The truth is, there's already someone else."

2. AU [ordinary people]

They have a class together, history, that's how the group of them initially collide with one another. Goodness knows they're just disparate enough that probably nothing would have brought them together in the ordinary course of things—Kise can't think of anything but the sky and Midorima studies obsessively; Murasakibara is more interested in food than anything else and Akashi is just weird, juggling school and a budding career in shougi as if it wasn't anything at all. Daiki hardly knows what he thinks of these people, so very different from himself, but Satsuki likes them pretty well, which is enough to be going on.

And there's Kuroko, quiet and deceptively earnest, Tetsu who cares more than anyone Daiki has ever met, who has a quiet smile and a profoundly evil sense of humor, and Daiki is in over his head before he even knows how deep those waters run.

3. Crack

"Daiki," Tetsu says, a very solemn look on his face. "This is very important. How do you feel about becoming a father?"

Daiki manages to snort beer a clear four meters across the room, through his nose. "Say what?" he demands, after the burning and the hurting have subsided a little bit.

"I need to know," Tetsu says patiently. "How do you feel about becoming a father?"

"Oh my god," Daiki says, "I changed my mind, you can be on top, I don't care."

Tetsu's expression doesn't really change, but Daiki gets the sense that he's somehow satisfied. "Well," he says. "If you're sure."

"I'm very sure," Daiki says fervently.

(Later, much later, Satsuki eventually stops laughing long enough to explain why skipping out on so many biology classes was not the smartest decision Daiki has ever made.)

4. Crossover [tenipuri]

"But Tetsu, this guy is a jackass," Aomine protests.

"I have better things to do with my time than to make conversation with peasants," Atobe sniffs.

Tetsuya ignores them both. "Just keep talking," he says, resting his chin in his hands. "Read the phone book to one another, if you like."

Atobe eyes him, then glances at Aomine. "Is he... not quite right?" he asks, apparently under the impression that he's being delicate about it.

Aomine just sighs. "Better to do what he says." He gives Atobe a long look. "So, tennis, huh? Kind of a wussy sport, if you ask me."

Tetsuya enjoys listening to the ensuing argument very much indeed.

5. First time

Eventually Tetsuya puts his hands over Daiki's and grips them firmly enough that they stop shaking. Daiki looks at him with eyes gone wide and unsure, at least until Tetsuya says, "It's all right," and "Let me."

And Daiki does.

6. Fluff

Daiki not a morning person. He's more of a mid-morning person at best, a late-morning or early-afternoon person by preference. Getting him out of bed to attend to little things like practice and school is a constant exercise in exasperation on Tetsuya's part, not least because Daiki is grabby even when he's asleep.

Fortunately, Tetsuya has no compunctions about playing dirty and has acquired a whole host of tricks for getting Daiki up in something resembling a timely fashion. The list starts with relatively innocuous things like ripping the blankets off the bed, progresses to more complicated methods involving cold water and ice cubes, and culminates with a fairly elaborate arrangement of recorded threats delivered by Akashi-kun that Tetsuya plays right against Daiki's ear. (Fortunately for all concerned, Tetsuya has only had to rely on that measure a couple of times, because there's something about hearing Akashi-kun murmuring dire things in his ear that makes Daiki levitate out of bed.)

And some mornings, Tetsuya doesn't bother. He switches off the alarm and lets Daiki wind him up in his arms and the blankets, and smiles softly at the sleepy, contented sounds Daiki makes as he nuzzles against Tetsuya's shoulder.

7. Humor

"Oh my god," Kagami moans, covering his eyes. What he can't see can't traumatize him forever. "What do you think you're going to tell Kuroko later?"

Aomine's reply is muffled, presumably by the show girls' breasts. "Don't be stupid. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?"

"You've known Kuroko longer than I have," Kagami points out. "Do you really believe that? Do you?"

"You never let me have any fun," Aomine grumbles, but the next time Kagami peeks through his fingers, he is shaking off the show girls, so maybe he's got some sense of self-preservation rattling around inside that skull of his after all.

If so, it's the first sign of it that Kagami has seen yet on this road trip from hell.

8. Hurt/Comfort

They've left their marks on each other, for good and for ill. Sometimes Daiki can't help reaching for Tetsu, can't help holding onto him, desperately afraid that if he lets go (again), Tetsu will vanish like the mist does in sunlight.

When he does this, Tetsu doesn't say anything about it at all. Instead he lets Daiki hold him for as long as he likes, until Daiki can convince himself that Tetsu isn't going anywhere (never again).

9. Smut

There are some benefits to being so much smaller than Daiki, and this is one of them—Daiki's weight against his back, solid and broad, while Daiki pushes into him. The stretch of it is hard and slow, relentless enough that Tetsuya can only breathe in small, panting gasps as he curls his fingers against the sheets and closes his eyes against the aching fullness of it. Daiki groans against his shoulder, a low wordless sound, and flexes his fingers against Tetsuya's hips, holding him steady as he begins to move.

10. UST

"You know," Taiga said, the day he finally got tired of watching Aomine make eyes at Kuroko whenever Kuroko had his back turned, and tired of looking at the way Kuroko's wistful gaze followed Aomine all around the court. "You two should kiss each other already and get it over with. I'm just saying."

Aomine yelled and sputtered a lot, because he was an idiot, but Kuroko blinked at Taiga and said, "I suppose you're right." Then he hooked a hand in Aomine's shirt to drag him close enough to get down to business.

"It's about damn time," Taiga said, ignoring it when Aomine flipped him the bird. "Now can we please play some basketball without getting angst all over the court?"

Riko, Hyuuga, and Kiyoshi

Domesticity meme
#Riko has standards

Not surprisingly, it is Riko who puts her foot down about it. “No,” she says, “I absolutely refuse.” So hotels are right out of the question.

Actually, it’s not so bad. They pool their budgets together and get an apartment that is not very large, considering that it houses all three of them (Junpei argues that Teppei ought to count as 1.5 people, given the size of him, 1.2 people at the absolute minimum, but Teppei just points out that Riko only counts as .8 of a person, and then Riko smacks both of them and tells them to shut up). But it is just large enough to hold three desks and the world’s ugliest couch and one bed, and as far as they’re concerned, it’s perfect.

Even if it does make Aida Kagetora weep tears of blood every time the subject comes up. But as far as Riko is concerned, that’s just a pleasant bonus.

Domesticity meme
#the knitting thing is totally canon compliant

They make gadgets for this. Junpei knows so, because he has seen them. (Junpei has seen all kinds of things, things he shudders to tell: a scrum of little old ladies after the last of a batch of deeply discounted Malabrigo is a thing to haunt a man’s nightmares.) They make gadgets for this that can’t possibly cost that much, and yet here he sits, hands stretched out in front of him while Teppei winds the skein of yarn off them into a tidy center-pull ball.

When he points out that they don’t have to be doing it this way, Riko simply smiles and shrugs. “I like this way better,” she says. “Teppei’s balls are the best.” Her needles never even slow down as Junpei sputters and Teppei laughs.

(Handknit socks are pretty much the best thing ever, however—even Junpei can admit to this.)

Aomine and Kise

Domesticity
#Kise has layers
#like an onion or perhaps a parfait

The thing about Daiki is that with him, what you see is pretty well what you get. There’s never any need to wonder whether he is hungry, or tired, or bored, or horny—Daiki will be sure that everyone knows just how he’s feeling, loud and clear and why hasn’t anyone done anything about it yet? Even the other things, feelings, those are pretty transparent too, coming from Daiki. Rough around the edges, sure, but then, so’s Daiki—if Ryouta had to pick one word to describe him, it would probably have to be elemental.

He’s not like that. Pretty much the opposite, in fact—Kise Ryouta has lived a very public life since middle school and is well-schooled in how to present different faces to the world as seems appropriate at any given moment. Most people, he knows, are not really interested in anything beyond that, not really. That’s fine—that’s better than fine, he makes a damned good living trading on his ability to offer the right surface at the right time—but it is a little lonely, maybe, moving through crowds of people and never really connecting with them. Hollow, maybe.

But then he goes home and Daiki hooks an arm around his shoulders, grumbling about how late Ryouta is and how hungry he’s been and isn’t it time to eat already, where are the delivery menus, and Ryouta feels at home in his skin again, because the best part about Daiki’s utter transparency is that Daiki never expects anything but the same from him in return.

"I know you better than anyone else"
#Kise likes watching Aomine

He loves to watch the way Daiki moves, full of the unconscious rangy grace of a hunting cat even in his laziest moods. His agent still weeps over the way Daiki laughed in her face when she tried to talk him into just one photoshoot, just the one, Kise-kun, can't you talk him into it somehow?

Ryouta doesn't know whether he could have done it or not, but he's not sure it would have worked either way. Daiki has something, a kind of presence, that he's not sure would translate very well in pixels or ink. Or maybe that's just him, struck stupid by Daiki every time since the beginning. Who can say?

It's not like it matters in the end. Ryouta knows what he likes, and Daiki is right at the top of that list whether he's playing or lolling around looking at his precious gravure magazines ("Hey, you should do one of these sometime") or when he's like this, braced over Ryouta, his grin slicing white across his face as he rolls his hips just like that, fuck. Ryouta wraps his hands around Daiki's wrists, hanging onto him and watching him from beneath his eyelashes as pure sensation lances up his spine.

Daiki's laugh brushes over him, intimate as a caress. "That the spot?" he asks, doing it again, and Ryouta would swear at him for being such a damn tease if only he could catch his breath long enough to do it. "I guess so."

And then he moves, surging against Ryouta, rocking his hips against Ryouta's with a rhythm far steadier than the way Ryouta's heart is pounding, trying to drum its way right out of his ribcage. Ryouta answers that the only way he can, bucking into the way Daiki moves over him and pleasure twists through him, tightening with every shift and slide of Daiki's cock inside him, nearly unbearable. His throat is parched with the ragged way he pants for breath and his skin is slick with his sweat and the sounds he makes are completely undignified. None of that even slows them down for a second, not until Ryouta gives in to the desperate crescendoing edge of that heat and reaches for his cock, one stroke, two, and there, he hits the peak and loses track of everything outside of his own skin as he flies apart.

He only barely comes back down in time to see Daiki arch over him, nearly growling as his hips jerk against him, the stutter of them sending another ripple of pleasure up Ryouta's spine, before Daiki sags over him, sprawling against his chest and panting into the hollow of his throat. "Holy fuck," Daiki says, breathless against his ear.

"Yeah," Ryouta agrees, not capable of much more and utterly content with that.

Ordinary People Drabbles

Domesticity meme
#this verse involves corgis
#lots of corgis

This is not the life that Kise Ryouta once thought he would have, not by a long shot, though it must be said that his expectations were fairly vague ones, all of them pending on Aominecchi’s many and varied personality potholes. And maybe that was the problem; it’s hard to plan a future when the linchpin of that future can’t quite seem to get his act together.

Funny thing is, he can’t quite remember what he thought that other life was going to be, these days—what was it he had planned for them, an apartment together, maybe? Ryouta has a hard time picturing it in his head, maybe because what he has now is so very concrete: a house just large enough to come home to, a little bit of slightly unkempt yard, Yukio.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

(But really, though: he hadn't expected the corgis.)

"meeting the rents"
#Kise is adorable when he's worried about making a good impression

Yukio tries to tell him that he doesn't need to be so worried, but it doesn't really take. Ryouta spends the days leading up to Sunday dinner a wreck, enough so that Yukio's just glad that he had the foresight to make sure that he told his mother they'd be coming over on one of Ryouta's down weeks. Goodness knows that if Ryouta had to fly this week, he'd probably manage to crash the plane or something.

Having finally found himself that nice boy Kaasan had been nagging him about settling down with, Yukio isn't particularly interested in seeing him go down in flames. Call him crazy, but he'd rather Ryouta stick around, not least because Kaasan would never let him hear the end of it.

He doesn't bother trying to talk Ryouta out of wearing a tie. For one, it'll go over well with Tousan. For another, the business of picking out the right tie and shirt combination gives Ryouta something to focus his nerves on. And finally, a tie gives Yukio something to grab onto when Ryouta's fidgeting on the front walk of Yukio's parents' house gets to be excessive. He winds it around his hand and uses it to pull Ryouta down so they're eye to eye. "Stop it," he says, over Ryouta's protests. "You're fine. They're going to love you. I promise."

"But what if they don't?" Ryouta protests.

"They will," Yukio tells him again, because it's true: his parents always have been supportive, right from the start, and he fully believes what his mother told him long ago. (Whoever you choose, baby, that's fine by me, she'd promised. I know I'll love him as long as you do.)

"But—" Ryouta starts, so Yukio takes advantage of his proximity to kiss him, quick and sure.

"It's going to be fine," he says as he lets go of Ryouta's tie. "Now come on, they're probably watching us through the front window."

Ryouta makes a strangled sound as Yukio strides up the sidewalk, probably because there is a certain amount of suspicious movement going on behind the curtains in the front window, but follows after him.

Yukio smiles when Ryouta twines their hands together, holds on, and rings the bell.

Domesticity meme
#Momoi finds Mitobe very restful

Dai-chan is convinced that Rinnosuke is actually mute and nothing Satsuki can tell him will persuade him otherwise. But that’s Dai-chan for you, all pigheadedness and not afraid to show it. Once he makes up his mind about something it pretty much takes an Act of Tetsu-kun to change it.

It’s true that Rinnosuke tends to be quiet, preferring to watch and listen to speaking up. Having met his family—his lovely, exuberant, above all loud family—Satsuki finds this understandable. Sometimes she wants to be quiet, too. Sitting on the couch with Rinnosuke underneath the warm weight of his arm around her shoulders, being quiet comes easy.

2. AU [ordinary people]
#from the microfic meme

They have a class together, history, that's how the group of them initially collide with one another. Goodness knows they're just disparate enough that probably nothing would have brought them together in the ordinary course of things—Kise can't think of anything but the sky and Midorima studies obsessively; Murasakibara is more interested in food than anything else and Akashi is just weird, juggling school and a budding career in shougi as if it wasn't anything at all. Daiki hardly knows what he thinks of these people, so very different from himself, but Satsuki likes them pretty well, which is enough to be going on.

And there's Kuroko, quiet and deceptively earnest, Tetsu who cares more than anyone Daiki has ever met, who has a quiet smile and a profoundly evil sense of humor, and Daiki is in over his head before he even knows how deep those waters run.

Aomine and Kagami

Domesticity meme
#there's gotta be SOME reason people put up with Aomine's bullshit

“Oh thank god,” Satsuki says once she realizes that Kagamin, contrary to all expectations regarding the average college-aged male, actually knows how to cook and clean and otherwise fend for himself. “He’s your problem now.” And she promptly washes her hands of making sure Dai-chan doesn’t die of scurvy or beneath an avalanche of his own dirty laundry.

Kagamin is less annoyed by this desertion of her post as Dai-chan’s keeper than she’d expected him to be, which puzzles her until she finally gives up and asks why he doesn’t seem to mind being a housewife.

He just shrugs at her. “No gag reflex,” he tells her, which. Well. Satsuki didn’t need to know that about Dai-chan, but it does go a long way towards explaining Kagamin’s willingness to tolerate Dai-chan’s foibles, doesn’t it?

Domesticity meme, cont.
#this would be that reason

Aomine’s eyes are half-lidded and that does absolutely nothing to hide the challenge in them as he gazes up at Taiga through his lashes. Go ahead, they seem to say. I dare you. Or maybe just You don’t have the balls to do it.

Taiga’s got plenty of self-knowledge, enough to recognize when he’s being goaded, but maybe not enough to keep himself from responding. In his defense, Aomine has raised provocation past the realm of art and somewhere into the stratosphere of natural wonders. Or something. Whatever, it’s hard to think when Aomine’s got his mouth around Taiga’s cock and is doing that thing with his tongue that makes Taiga’s eyes want to roll back in his head.

His hands fit against Aomine’s jaw like they were made for it, thumbs against the pointed corners and fingers fanned down the sides of Aomine’s throat, holding him in place. Aomine makes an interested sound around the head of Taiga’s cock, and another as Taiga rolls his hips forward, pushing deeper and hissing between his teeth as his cock disappears between Aomine’s lips. That sight alone is enough to make Taiga breathe harder, and the feel of it—hot, wet suction wrapping around him, inch by inch as he lets himself sink into Aomine’s mouth—nearly drags a groan out of him.

When he hits the back of Aomine’s throat and Aomine just swallows him down, Taiga does groan at how it feels to have the grip of Aomine’s throat working around the head of him. Aomine makes another of those sounds and it vibrates, right up Taiga’s cock and spine, impossible and incredible. The only reason Taiga doesn’t lose it then and there is that he knows for a damn fact that Aomine would never let him hear the end of it.

“God damn,” he breathes, looking down at Aomine with his nose pressed against Taiga’s stomach and Taiga’s hands holding him there, the dark glitter of Aomine’s eyes looking back and the shape Aomine’s mouth makes around him. Taiga has to move, he has to, and does, pulling back and rocking into Aomine’s mouth, fucking it, fucking him, and Aomine kneels there and takes it. “God fucking damn, you—”

Aomine hums again while Taiga’s buried in his throat, and that’s it, he’s done, he’s coming straight down Aomine’s throat and making frankly embarrassing noises while he does it, but he can’t help it. This orgasm hits like a sledgehammer crashing into him, hard enough that Taiga feels bruised after, practically broken, knees barely holding him up while Aomine pulls off him and blots his lips, swollen and wet, against the back of his hand. He smirks up at Taiga. “Beat that.”

“Watch me,” Taiga growls, tackling him down to the futon.

Anything Aomine Daiki can do, he can do better.

"all grown up and doing their different thing, and Aomine misses having someone to play basketball with"
#Aomine is a pushy bastard

Pretty much the first thing out of Aomine's mouth when Taiga sees him again is, "About goddamn time. Are you ready to play?"

Given that Taiga has only just staggered off an eleven-hour flight from LA and through customs, no, he is not ready to play in the slightest.

Not that Aomine, arms folded across his chest, foot tapping, seems at all inclined to accept that as an answer. "Well?" he asks as Taiga rubs a hand over his face, trying to sweep away some of the travel and reminding himself that he's back in Japan, really back, and that means dealing with Aomine Daiki, pushiest sonuvabitch Taiga has ever had the dubious pleasure of knowing.

"Food," Taiga says—Aomine should have seen that much coming, surely. "Food first. And a shower." Can he have sleep, too? Christ, he doesn't have any idea what time it's supposed to be here or whether it will help him or hurt him to catch a nap. Goddamn jetlag.

"Food first, okay, but why take a shower when you're just going to get all sweaty again playing?" Aomine argues.

Because, Taiga thinks and does not say, maybe that way he can figure out some way to divert Aomine from his single-minded attempt to herd him onto the nearest basketball court. "Because I need it," he says. "That's why."

Aomine sulks an awful lot for a grownass man, but what else is new. "Food," he says, nevertheless, steering Taiga in what he devoutly hopes is transportation. "And then basketball."

"Hello," Taiga says, ignoring him. "It's nice to see you again." He changes his voice, pitching it into his best approximation of Aomine's drawl. "It's nice to see you again, too. How was your flight?" He changes back to his normal register while Aomine gives him some serious side-eye. "About the usual. Two crying babies and three hyperactive toddlers. Didn't sleep at all." He switches back to mimicking Aomine. "Gosh, really? That sounds awful. We had better get you to your hotel so you can rest."

"So I take it that you've finally lost what passes for your pathetic mind," Aomine observes.

Taiga surrenders and flips him the bird, though it just makes the asshole grin at him. "You have an entire team," he points out. "You play basketball for a living. Why can't we wait until tomorrow to play?"

He knows the look Aomine gives him then, the pathetic look that Aomine usually uses to cadge favors out of Momoi, and even so, it still sort of works. "They're not like you," he says, all but batting his eyelashes. "They're just not."

Damn it. Taiga rubs his eyes again. "Food," he sighs. "Food and then one game. One. Game."

Aomine breaks into a bright smile. "Awesome," he says, bumping his shoulder against Taiga's. "This is gonna be great. I'm gonna trash you completely."

"You and what army?" Taiga demands immediately, forgetting some of his weariness in the face of that challenge.

"Please, you know damn well I'm two games up," Aomine scoffs.

"Not for long, you aren't," Taiga promises him. "You're going down, and you know it."

Aomine grins at him, sharp. "Believe that when I see it."

They argue the rest of the way to the car, and all the way to the gym where Aomine trains, and it isn't until after their third game that it occurs to Taiga that, once again, Aomine has managed to get all his own way. But then, he supposes, he probably should have seen that one coming himself.

Midorima and Takao Drabbles

"easy to just push it up"
#Takao likes to feel pretty

There's a lot of reasons Kazunari likes to wear skirts, some of them simple and some of them not, but this is one of his favorites. When he's in a skirt, it is easy (so very easy) for Shintarou to put his hands on Kazunari's knees and run them up his thighs, pushing the hem of the skirt up as he goes. Kazunari likes that, and he likes how it feels to spread his knees wider so that Shintarou can fit himself between them as he strokes his hands over Kazunari's hips, skin against skin (Shintarou always, always untapes his fingers for this, and that still gets Kazunari hot every time.)

He thinks Shintarou likes it, too, at least judging from the way Shintarou touches him, moving his fingers over Kazunari's skin slow and deliberate, following his thighs up and tracing them along Kazunari's hips, teasing the tips of them along the edges of his panties and over the curve of Kazunari's ass. Shintarou watches him, eyes dark even behind the lenses of his glasses, at least until Kazunari draws him close and kisses him again, slow and filthy. He likes to slide his tongue into Shintarou's mouth, tracing the textures of it and learning all its corners, and likes the sounds Shintarou makes against his lips.

When he's in a skirt, it's so easy for Shintarou to hook his fingertips under the edges of the panties and just draw them aside, and easy for him to press slick fingers into Kazunari just like that. Easy, too, for Kazunari to hook his arms around Shintarou's shoulders and groan against his mouth, just a little wanton with how good that feels, and to tell him to come on, hurry up, until Shintarou presses closer. Then all Kazunari has to do is wrap his legs around Shintarou's hips and hold on while Shintarou sinks home, feeling the hard stretch of it in every tingling nerve in his body and struck breathless with the hoarse sound Shintarou makes against his throat.

Kazunari winds his fingers in Shintarou's hair and uses his leverage to grind himself against Shintarou, gasping as he does, and Shintarou takes the hint for what it is and moves. He holds Kazunari's hips, fingers spread wide against the curve of his ass, and fucks him just the way Kazunari wants it, deep and hard, each long thrust driving the groan right out of Kazunari's throat. Kazunari flexes against him, gripping Shintarou's shoulders and urging him on, broken phrases and half words tumbling from his lips as pleasure builds at the base of his spine, doubling and redoubling on itself until Kazunari thinks he might fly apart with it. When Shintarou shifts a hand and palms him through the thin silk of his panties, he does, tipping his head back and groaning as pleasure races through him, fierce as lightning, wrecking him completely.

He must look like a wreck after it releases him, dress rucked up and stained, flushed beneath the make-up Shintarou has kissed off his skin, loose-limbed and dazed. Shintarou seems to like that best, because he always raises his head and watches Kazunari come undone, at least until he can't hold himself back any longer and falls over that edge after Kazunari. But that's just as it should be, and Kazunari's always right there with open arms, ready to catch him.

"sex under a piano"
#Takao is wily

"But it's a classic!" Kazunari protests, to no avail.

Shin-chan continues to look at him as though he has proposed something utterly sacrilegious. "Absolutely not."

Kazunari makes a face at him. "You're crushing my dreams," he points out. "Grinding them beneath your heel. Don't you feel the slightest bit sorry about that?"

Shin-chan actually pauses and seems to give that some thought. "No," he says, just as Kazunari's beginning to get his hopes up. Then, conscientiously, he adds, "Sorry."

Kazunari folds his arms and pulls out his last resort, a full-bore pout. "Please," he begs, giving Shin-chan the most mournful look he can manage. "As a special favor? To me?"

"We are not going to have sex on the piano," Shin-chan says, wound up enough that he barely even blushes on the word sex (hey, progress! Kazunari awards himself several points). "Do you have any idea what that would do to its tuning?"

Kazunari, not being a musician, has no idea, and doesn't really care. "Pianos can be re-tuned, can't they?"

"That's not the point," Shin-chan says, and that tone's just final enough that Kazunari knows it's no good to push it.

"Fine," he says. "We'll just have to have sex under the piano instead."

"What—?" Shin-chan says, just as startled by this swerve in Kazunari's purposes as he was supposed to be.

"Never say I don't know how to compromise," Kazunari says, cheerfully stripping out of his shirt as he does and watching Shin-chan's eyes go wider behind his glasses. "Come on, what are you waiting for?"

It's a measure of how far Shin-chan's come that he barely hesitates before reaching for his buttons.

Kazunari grins in his victory. Re-enacting that one scene between Julia Roberts and Richard Gere can wait (at least for now). For now, this will do nicely.

"Takao knows all the possible ways to tick off Midorima, and he's extremely proud of himself for it."
#Takao is a protective little cuss

As the designated Keeper of Shuutoku's Ace, Takao Kazunari is intimately familiar with the care and feeding of Midorima Shintarou. Aside from the transportation issue, this is not that onerous a duty. (Admittedly, that's a pretty big issue to set aside; Kazunari consoles himself with the thought that pedaling Shin-chan all over creation is doing wonders for his stamina and leg strength.) Primarily it consists in being the buffer between their ace and, well, the rest of the world.

At first he thought that was because the world needed to be buffered from the utter weirdness of Midorima—the verbal tics; his obsessive focus on training, even above and beyond Shuutoku's already rigorous training schedule; his meticulous rituals before games; his selfish demands, three a day before the senpai give over being patient and begin making improbable pineapple-based threats; the lucky items, good grief, the lucky items are a category in their own right. It makes sense, doesn't it, to have someone relatively normal be the interface between all that bizarre behavior and the ordinary people who don't even have a love of basketball to encourage their tolerating Shin-chan's behavior.

Lately, though, Kazunari has come to think that it might be the other way around: rather than being the one to shield the world from Grade A Unfiltered Midorima, he thinks he might be the shield that comes between Midorima and the world. Shin-chan's good—he's better than good, he might even be great—at covering it when he's caught off-guard, but Kazunari's specialized now. He can tell when Midorima's nudging his glasses up his nose to buy himself time to think and to hide the moments when he's utterly confused by the behavior of the people around him, and he can tell when Shin-chan has gone stiff and silent because he genuinely doesn't know how to respond to some overture or question or because he's missed the joke completely.

Kazunari hasn't quite decided whether he thinks Shin-chan was raised by wolves or robots—maybe robots, with Teikou to be the wolves after that? yeah, that sounds plausible—but he guesses it doesn't really matter. Either way he's gotten pretty good at judging when to drop himself into Midorima's conversations with a ready quip or non sequitur, whatever seems to be in order. Sometimes it gives Shin-chan the context to figure out what's going on and others it just steers things back on track. Either way, it's not difficult and Kazunari doesn't mind doing it. He's even kind of proud of how good he is at it, and the way he sometimes feels Shin-chan's shoulders relax that minute bit when he hooks an arm around them and interjects himself into the conversation.

That's the way it should be, he reasons. Midorima's his ace now, and Kazunari'll be damned before he lets anyone else mess with his ace.

(Now, if only he could persuade Shin-chan to take turns with the rickshaw, life would be perfect.)

"So, like, is it a bad thing that I’ve convinced myself that Takao Kazunari likes to wear pretty dresses (and their accoutrements) so he can feel pretty (and tease the life out of Midorima)?"
#Takao likes to feel pretty

Takao props his foot up on the vanity and runs a damp washcloth up and down the length of it before he fills his palm with shaving cream. The water rattles in the basin and gurgles in the drain as he covers his leg from ankle to knee in snowy white, working up the lather with single-minded concentration. He reaches for the razor, holds it under the running water, and leans forward to stroke it over his skin, drawing a clean, bare line through the foam. He rinses the razor, repeats the action; his eyes are narrowed with concentration for the task. The barest tip of his tongue shows between his lips, pink.

The long expanse of his calf and thigh go quickly enough, smooth strokes of the razor gliding over the sleek lines of his muscles. Takao spends the longest time on the skin around his ankles, maneuvering the razor around the knobby protrusion of the joint carefully. He frowns in concentration, stops to run his fingers over his skin, testing it, then moves on to his knee, which earns the same careful attention and short, delicate strokes of the razor.

Remarkably, he does not nick himself even once.

He runs his hands up and down his leg, probing for missed spots; he finds one and attends to it before he runs the washcloth over his skin again, wiping away the remnants of the shaving cream.

Then he switches legs and repeats the performance. It takes an inordinately long time to do both legs, an eternity before Takao reaches for a towel and pats his skin dry, and then still more time while he massages lotion into his skin with the same tender care.

It’s not until he’s done finished with these ablutions that he straightens again, balling his fists at the small of his back and stretching it, and turns to where Shintarou has been watching from his perch on the edge of the bathtub (his hands fisted on his knees; his slacks painfully tight). Takao smirks at him, saunters across the tile, and props his foot up on the lip of the bathtub next to Shintarou. “Go ahead,” he says, his grin a dare. “Tell me it doesn’t make a difference.”

Shintarou lays his bare fingertips against Takao’s calves, silky smooth and tender, and must admit, however reluctantly, that perhaps it does.

Microfic meme
#Midorima and Takao are up to no good

1. Angst

"So what do you think?" Takao asks, after she's excused herself for a moment and he's lost sight of her in the crowd. He's all but glowing as he looks to Shintarou for his opinion. "Isn't she great?"

Shintarou finds a smile for him, though he hasn't wanted to smile since he asked her for her birthday and found that it was July third. "She seems lovely," he says. "I'm sure the two of you will be very happy."

Takao just beams at him. "Oh," he says. "We are."

2. AU

Shintarou honestly doesn't have much time for anything that isn't schoolwork or basketball, which is just as well—other people are confusing, when they aren't plain irritating. He's perfectly happy keeping to himself as much as possible, and letting his teammates and classmates get on with their lives around him.

He has no idea why the basketball team's manager seems determined to stand in the way of that, but she does with a determination that Shintarou thinks even Momoi would have found impressive. Takao-chan drags him into conversations, sometimes literally, and shows up at his desk to demand assistance with homework, and forces him to attend the matches of rival teams with her so he can provide insight about his former teammates, and she assumes a relentless breezy familiarity with him that nothing he says ("My own mother doesn't call me Shin-chan!") can budge. Shintarou doesn't understand her at all, and tells her so, frequently.

What he will never admit (or so he thinks) is that, secretly, he thinks he might actually like it.

3. Crack [look, you clicked that link to read this, you probably knew this was coming]

"I think they're rather fetching, don't you?" Takao says—well. Purrs. If one were inclined to be accurate. On the top of his head, the—there's no denying what they are, they're cat ears—are pricked forward, alert. It's the lashing of Takao's tail that gives him away; the tip of it twitches eagerly.

"You look ridiculous," Shintarou tells him. "Completely ridiculous."

Takao just grins. "Hey, you wanna pet them?" he asks, and nothing Shintarou says can persuade him that he does not want to do any such thing.

(They are silky-soft under Shintarou's fingers, softer even than Takao's hair, and when Shintarou rubs them just so, Takao dissolves into a deep, contented purr and goes boneless against him. And—somehow—Shintarou can't quite make himself stop.)

4. Crossover [tenipuri, and I am not sorry]

Koujirou blinked a bit. "He makes you cart him around in a rickshaw?" he asked, not sure he'd actually heard that one right, or that his cousin was actually serious. Sometimes it was difficult to tell with Kazunari. "Really?"

Kazunari heaved a sigh. "I couldn't make this up if I wanted to," he said. "Wait till I tell you about the lucky items."

Koujirou patted his shoulder sympathetically. "And here I thought Yuupyon was demanding."

5. First time

He doesn't even see it coming the first time—Shintarou is in the middle of expounding upon the many reasons that astrology is a perfectly valid science when Takao just laughs and catches his shoulder. Before Shintarou even realizes what is happening, Takao leans in and presses their mouths together, quick and casual, cutting Shintarou off mid-word with it. "Sorry," he says when he pulls away again. "I just needed to do that. Go on, you were saying?"

But Shintarou can't remember a single word of it, thanks to the way his lips are tingling and his heart is thudding against his ribs.

6. Fluff

He's not even going to pretend that this isn't his favorite—warm sunshine pouring through the window, nowhere to be and nothing to do, the low murmur of something lazy and jazzy on the radio, and Shin-chan's bare fingers sliding through his hair while Kazunari dozes in his lap.

Kazunari smiles and nudges into Shin-chan's fingers, perfectly content.

7. Humor

Takao not only seems to find the humor in everything—a talent which Shintarou does envy, a little—but also has an evil sense of humor of his own.

It is for this reason that Shintarou neglects to warn Takao about Kuroko—also possessed of a wicked sense of humor—and enjoys the fallout immensely.

At least until Takao and Kuroko join forces and turn their collective evil on the rest of them.

8. Hurt/Comfort [stretching the limits of 'micro' here]

Even with all the deliberate caution in the world, it was bound to happen sometime. They played hard, all of them did, and injuries—bruises, sprains and strains, torn ligaments, bad knees—well, they weren't ever fun, but it was practically the price of admission, wasn't it? Sometimes, no matter how careful a guy was, he got hurt.

Not that Shin-chan seemed to have much in the way of a zen approach to the basic realities of life at the best of times.

This was not the best of times.

Oh, Shin-chan wasn't saying much at all—after the initial startled exclamation, not even a curse (in other circumstances, Kazunari would have been disappointed by that restraint), he'd just pressed his lips together so firmly that they showed white and had held his hand very carefully while their coach had bent over and frowned thoughtfully. It was probably just a jammed finger, he'd said, but he'd told Shin-chan to go get it looked at and had detailed Kazunari (of course) to go with him.

Which Kazunari had, standing by while the doctor had manipulated Shin-chan's fingers and asked him to flex them this way and that, and so he'd seen the subtle shift in Shin-chan's posture when he'd agreed with their coach's diagnosis.

Huh, Kazunari thought, as the doctor began taping up Shin-chan's fingers and dispensing advice about ice and ibuprofen, Shin-chan was really, truly freaking out over this. Made sense, of course, given the anal retentive way he taped his fingers and attended to their care, but—huh.

That was no good.

He continued to shoulder both their bags when the doctor turned Shin-chan, armed with a securely-taped finger and an icepack, lose, and fell in at his side readily enough. "Guess this means you'll have to take it easy for a few days, huh?" he started out. Shin-chan didn't say anything. "Though I bet that you'll still have to do all the conditioning exercises. Don't need you hands to run laps." He checked on Shin-chan, who didn't look noticeably pleased by this prospect. Well. Laps. "Least it's a while till the season gets started, huh?"

"Yes," Shintarou said, and that was all—tight and clipped and maybe, just maybe, a little strained.

"Well, it'll be fine," Kazunari told him, thinking about that. "Plenty of time to recover in there, and I bet you won't even have to use any selfish requests to keep from having to play while you do." That still didn't seem to be quite the right set of reassurances, though Shin-chan didn't look quite as tense. "Ah, well." He bumped his shoulder against Shin-chan's, carefully. "You hungry? I know I am." Nothing was so bad that grabbing a bite to eat couldn't make it a little better.

Shin-chan glanced at him and finally said, "I guess," and let Kazunari steer him to the nearest Maji Burger. And, as Kazunari continued to let himself rattle on, talking about the team and schoolwork and their classmates, Shin-chan's shoulders continued to loosen up. Wasn't back to normal, not by a long shot, but then, Shin-chan. One had to be flexible about the whole concept of 'normal' around him.

And even if he wasn't, well. That's what Kazunari figured he was there for, after all. He stole some more of Shin-chan's fries and grinned at Shin-chan's subsequent irritation, because if nothing else, looking after Shin-chan was pretty much his métier these days.

Honestly, he wouldn't have had it any other way.

9. Smut

There are very few reliable ways to shut Kazunari up, and Shintarou knows each one intimately.

This is his favorite: Kazunari spread out beneath him, splayed open for him, mouth opening and closing on silent gasps for breath while Shintarou moves inside him, driving him to the edge of pleasure and then beyond.

10. UST

Shintarou doesn't know why it is that he cannot seem to keep his eyes away from Takao—cannot seem to keep himself from looking at the way Takao's hair falls in his eyes unless Takao pins it up, or the way Takao's eyes are clear and grey, sometimes laughing and sometimes as intent as the hawk that he is on the court. Cannot look away from the sleek development of Takao's shoulders and arms. (It's ridiculous, they all have perfectly good physiques; why should Takao's be special?) Cannot stop himself from studying the line Takao's back makes when he stoops over a sink to splash water over his face, or the paler skin that shows where his shirt rides up.

Shintarou can't stop looking, and so he resolves to keep doing so until he figures out why it is that Takao is so very compelling.

"basketball boys in the mafia"
#just think about how pretty they'd look in those suits

When the Family needs someone to handle business negotiations that Momoi says are going to be particularly tricky, if not outright impossible, Midorima taps Kise and Aomine to do it.

Kise is the logical choice for tense negotiations, because he is absolutely Teikou's most charismatic member. He's been known to smile and flirt his way out of situations that should have ended in gunfire and blood, and not only walk away without a single blond hair out of place, but also with precisely whichever agreement he'd been sent to acquire in the first place. There's just something about him that people respond to—maybe the painful sincerity of his smiles or the intensity of the attention he turns of them—that he knows very well how to work in his favor.

Aomine is the other logical choice for tense negotiations, because sometimes even Kise's charm isn't quite enough to achieve Teikou's goals. When that happens, that's where Aomine steps up, cracks his knuckles and then some heads, and doesn't stop until either the other Family changes its mind and decides to cooperate, or he and Kise can take what they want from the ruins on their way out.

This is what it means to be Teikou and Akashi's Guardians—nothing less than absolute victory for the Family is to be accepted.

4. Crossover [KHR, because of reasons]
#the beginning of the end

Later they will say that it began when Aomine turned from looking at Kagami to Tetsuya and saying, “Really, this guy, Tetsu?” while Kise tapped a finger against his chin and said, “I don’t know, Aominecchi, I could see it, maybe.” That, they will say, is the moment that Akashi Seijuurou’s position as the Teikou Ninth began to crumble.

Tetsuya knows the truth, and it is this: Akashi never really held their Family to begin with. His power over them began to fade the first time Tetsuya ever witnessed him order Teikou people to battle without concern for anything but Teikou’s ultimate victory, because that was the first time Tetsuya thought No, it should not be like this.

Aomine, Kagami, and Kuroko, inspired by some pictures from this set
#jerking off over basketball

1.
When Tetsuya closes his eyes and slides his fingers down the length of his cock, he sees Aomine’s face in the darkness behind his eyelids, transformed like a fuzzy photograph brought suddenly into focus. He can’t stop thinking about Aomine’s eyes, alert again, focused on the challenge in front of him, or the way Aomine has shed the discontented, indolent expression that he’s worn since middle school, but it’s the thought of Aomine smiling again (not smirking or scowling, not bored anymore) that makes Tetsuya bite down on his knuckle to muffle the sound he makes as he comes undone.

2.
Taiga wraps his fist around his cock, closes his eyes, and sees him again, Aomine Daiki on the court, impossibly fast cuts and unfeasible shots and strength that really is as miraculous as it is ridiculous. He sets his teeth against his lips and strokes his cock faster as the memory makes his blood surge: this time, he was better, this time he and Kuroko won through, this time the game was theirs, but who knows what Aomine will meet them with next time?

He leans his head back and groans as he comes, and can’t wait to find out.

3.
Daiki closes his eyes and doesn’t think of anything at all when he slides his hand down into his shorts. He doesn’t have to conjure up images of anything to help him along while he strokes himself off—doesn’t need to. He’s fizzing with the unaccustomed energy that drives his hand up and down his cock until he’s teetering on the edge of coming. He remembers this feeling from before, from when basketball was still fun. It might be fun again now, he thinks, and that’s it, he’s coming, falling into the promise of opponents who won’t ever back down.

Domesticity meme
#Akashi and Himuro because why not?

Akashi’s is an orderly mind and an orderly life, filled with quiet and calm and tradition and the absolute certainty that this day will be very like the one before it, because that is how Akashi prefers it.

Akashi is very good at getting precisely what he prefers.

Himuro intrudes upon this life like a bray of laughter in the middle of a symphony, too casual and too Americanized, not particularly interested in tradition and not inclined to bow his head to anyone, either.

By all the rules of logic, it shouldn’t work. They shouldn’t work, at least not past the first week, by which point Akashi should have tried to kill Himuro for disrupting his peaceful existence (Himuro has heard stories from Taiga, who does his best to be supportive and still gives him Very Disappointed looks when Akashi’s name comes up) or Himuro should have walked straight out the door after the umpteenth gentle cough and “But really, I prefer things this way” (Akashi sees no reason to adjust his routines when they are so clearly the only right and proper way of doing things).

And yet. Somehow they continue on, in all defiance of expectation (and arguments about the proper way to squeeze toothpaste from the tube).

Domesticity meme
#Kuroko is something of a scientist at heart

It’s not that Tetsuya set out to do it, precisely, except that he actually did. Subconsciously at first, perhaps, but then with increasing deliberation as the weeks turned to months slipping by. It was one part curiosity to two parts his admittedly regrettable sense of humor—just how long was Taiga going to last before he noticed?

The answer was four months and three days, and Tetsu maintained that if he hadn’t had the nerve to replace the broken-down but shockingly comfortable couch with one only slightly less comfortable (but far less likely to be harboring nascent civilizations down among the cushions), Taiga would never have noticed that Tetsu had moved in.

Microfic meme
#AoKagaKiseKuro
#try saying that three times fast

1. Angst

Ryouta laughs, because otherwise he’d cry: he just can’t unstick himself from Aominecchi, but Aominecchi is completely hung up on Kurokocchi, and Kurokocchi has resolutely fixed his attention on Kagamicchi.

And Kagamicchi is an absolute zero on the Kinsey scale and is therefore possibly the only one of them who has the slightest chance at actually being happy.

At least they still have basketball, Ryouta tells himself, because that’s better than nothing.

2. AU [I swear I don’t actually like vampires]

One vampire, Taiga could have handled that all by himself, no sweat. He was just that good, and besides, blondy was probably more interested in the cut of Taiga’s battered leather jacket than anything else. (“How could you treat Gucci like that?” he’d wailed while Taiga was trying to stuff a stake through his sternum. Then he’d cartwheeled away from Taiga, apparently to sulk.)

Two vampires, well, okay, he’d have to work up a sweat doing it, but still. Well within his capabilities, even if the second vampire was a complete asshole about it. (“What, this is what hunters are these days?” he’d sneered, batting aside Taiga’s attempt to take his head with one hand. “You interrupted Night of the Giving Head for this? Boring.”)

Three vampires, though. That was a problem, especially since Taiga had never even seen the third one coming, not till he was on his knees with sharp nails pressing his chin up. Taiga stared up into eyes the color of icebergs, swallowed hard, and braced himself for the end.

The third vampire looked down at him, too thoughtful by half, and said, “You’re wrong. This one isn’t boring at all.”

3. Crack [hey, it’s not catfic!]

Kise kept going around in circles, trying to get a good look at them and apparently incapable of remembering the existence of mirrors in the world. Aomine was still rolling around on his stomach, laughing beneath the rustle of feathers.

Taiga was too busy to pay attention to either of them or the unfamiliar weight that had sprouted from his own shoulders, because Kuroko was hunched under the inky sweep of his own wings and sulking quite distinctively. He patted Kuroko’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said, “we already knew you were evil anyway.”

That just made Kuroko sulk harder, though Taiga didn’t know why.

4. Crossover [KHR, because of reasons]

Later they will say that it began when Aomine turned from looking at Kagami to Tetsuya and said, “Really, this guy, Tetsu?” while Kise tapped a finger against his chin and said, “I don’t know, Aominecchi, I could see it, maybe.” That, they will say, is the moment that Akashi Seijuurou’s position as the Teikou Ninth began to crumble.

Tetsuya knows the truth, and it is this: Akashi never really held their Family to begin with. His power over them began to fade the first time Tetsuya ever witnessed him order Teikou people to battle without concern for anything but Teikou’s ultimate victory, because that was the first time Tetsuya thought No, it should not be like this.

5. First time

Kagami is as red as his hair and doesn’t seem to know where to put his eyes, let alone his hands, and Kise is pushing at Aomine, who, catlike, seems to have expanded to take up the entirety of the futons they have spread across Kagami’s floor, and is laughing a little bit too loudly to be as confident as he seems to be. Aomine is watching him, though, and all he says is, “Hey, Tetsu, how do you even think this is gonna work?”

“Like this,” Tetsuya tells them, and he twines his fingers through Taiga’s, sets his other hand against Ryouta’s shoulder, and leans down to press his mouth against Daiki’s.

6. Fluff

The rain is drumming hard against the windows and the roof, and everything outside the space of their apartment is grey and chill. Inside is different—they’re all of them here, no one traveling for basketball or work or running errands. Daiki is stretched out on the couch, asleep or most of the way there, with his head in Tetsuya’s lap. Tetsuya is reading, absorbed in it and probably not even aware of the fact that he is sliding his fingers through Daiki’s hair.

Taiga is sitting on the floor next to Ryouta, muttering under his breath as he navigates his character through a post-apocalyptic landscape and steadily kills zombies. Ryouta leans against the warm bulk of his shoulder, not particularly interested in the killing of zombies or Taiga’s curses, inventive though they are, and smiles.

When Taiga glances at him, raising his eyebrows, Ryouta only shrugs, because it’s good to be home.

7. Humor

Daiki doesn’t have a dog in this fight—hah!—so he feels perfectly comfortable sitting back and laughing while Ryouta and Tetsu lay siege to Taiga, because the spectacle of a grown-ass man cowering in fear before the horrifying menace of a beagle puppy is never not going to be funny.

“Please, can we keep him, Kagamicchi?” Ryouta whines. “Please, please, please?”

Come to think of it, watching a grown-ass man whine like a toddler is also pretty damn funny.

The puppy barks, wriggling in Tetsu’s hands, and Taiga flinches back. “Can’t we just get a cat instead?” he says. “Daiki, you want a cat, right? Cats are great!”

Daiki just snorts at him. “Have some dignity, man. You know you’re going to give in anyway.”

“I am not!” Taiga snaps, but then Tetsu says, quiet and sad, “Please?” and Taiga does anyway.

8. Hurt/Comfort

“This isn’t fair at all,” Ryouta said, but it sounded more like dis iddn’t faiw at awl thanks to all the congestion.

Daiki would have agreed with him, but by the time he finished sneezing several times in a row, hard enough that his head—aching, dizzy, and stuffed with snot and cottonwool—felt as though it were about to detach itself from his shoulders and float away altogether, he’d forgotten what he wanted to say.

Tetsu didn’t say anything; he was buried under several blankets and the only thing anyone could see of him was a tuft of his hair. The only reason they were sure he was still alive was that he growled any time he was disturbed.

“I told you that you should have gotten the damn flu shots,” Taiga said, relentlessly healthy and spiteful about it. He plunked a tray down. “Cheer up, I made you chicken soup.”

“I hate you,” Daiki told him, but grabbed a bowl and spoon anyway.

9. Smut

It’s true, it does take a bit of choreographing, but not as much as anyone outside seems to think. When they’re together, one thing follows after another, as naturally as the turning of the seasons. This time, Ryouta spreads himself across Daiki’s hips, moving with him and arching against him, and tips his head back to take Tetsuya’s cock, swallowing him all the way down and humming around the sleek, hot weight of it, and still somehow manages to have enough coordination to fist Taiga off. This time it probably only works because Ryouta is a genius at copying things and Daiki has a well-curated porn collection and is not stingy about sharing it with the rest of them, but that doesn’t matter. Next time it will be someone else’s turn to be in the middle, or not, and they’ll figure that out, too.

10. UST

Tetsuya watches Aomine-kun play in something like wonder, the same way he might watch a great cat hunt or a wild horse gallop. Aomine-kun plays basketball like he was born to do it, taking a joy in it so pure in its intensity that it hurts Tetsuya’s heart, a little, to see it.

Kise-kun is different, but no less fascinating for it. Kise-kun is beautiful and conscious of it; his game sparkles as much as he does, and Tetsuya can’t help wondering what lies behind that—what Kise-kun’s game might become, someday.

After everything goes wrong, Kagami-kun’s game—open and free, rough-edged and still brilliant—is what gives Tetsuya the hope to go on with, hope that he can regain the things he’s lost, and hope that perhaps, just perhaps, he might even be able to have more than that.

Microfic meme
#Midorima and Kise are surprisingly compatible

1. Angst

Midorima never stopped watching him. Ryouta could feel that quiet gaze following him around the gym and school, measured and thoughtful, seeking him out in every crowd and at every opportunity. But though he waited for it, created opportunities to linger after practice, Midorima never said anything. Eventually Ryouta stopped waiting.

It wasn't until a long time after that it occurred to him that he could have said something himself. But by then, it was too late.

2. AU

Shintarou performed the exam with the same careful efficiency as always, taking his patient's temperature and checking his blood pressure, listening to his heart and checking his ears and throat. As he worked, he could feel himself wanting to frown, but kept that off his face—one of his early mentors had warned him, once, never to frown in front of a patient lest they take the wrong idea from it. Even so, he wanted very much to frown now.

Finally he took the stethoscope from his ears and settled back on his stool. "Kise-san," he said carefully, "Could you please describe your symptoms again? They, er, don't seem to be manifesting in a physical fashion." There, that was nicely diplomatic; it did not do to tell a supermodel that there was nothing wrong with him and that he was wasting Shintarou's valuable time.

Kise turned a wide-eyed look on him, the same heart-melting gaze that meant that he couldn't walk past the nurses' station without a gale of sighs following after him. "It's my heart." He reached out and actually took Shintarou's hand to press it against his chest. "Can't you feel how it's pounding? You're the only one who can fix it, Doctor."

Shintarou blinked at him, the first inklings of enlightenment finally beginning to penetrate his confusion. Kise continued to give him an earnest look and did not release his hand.

"There is something profoundly wrong with your brain," Shintarou told him, but he did not try to pull his hand away.

3. Crack

"I'm begging you," Ryouta had said, and "It will pay very well, just think of all the lucky items you can buy," and "Just one day, that's all I'm asking," and finally, "Please, Midorimacchi, please?"

Shockingly enough, that last actually worked somehow, which is why Kise Ryouta's most valuable possession is a framed photo from a magazine shoot, him and Midorima shirtless and tangled up together on a couch and Midorima's hand tucked into the back pocket of the designer jeans Kise is wearing.

Midorimacchi still blushes every time he sees it.

4. Crossover [Petshop of Horrors]

"Wait," Shintarou says while Kise coos over the—the—it looks like a small child, a girl, with long silky rabbit ears, but Kise insists on saying that it's just a sweet little bunny, because Kise is an idiot.

"Oh," Kise says, vague. "Some place over in Shinjuku. Strange name. Count D's, I think?"

"We are taking her back," Shintarou says. "We are taking her back right now." And he does not let Kise's tearful protests sway him in the least, because every time the—whatever it is—looks at him, she smiles, fey and knowing.

On the way home, they stop at a perfectly normal pet store and Shintarou buys him two kittens and a puppy to make up for it, and counts himself lucky to have had such a narrow escape.

5. First time

"Oh," Shintarou says, a little shocked by how good that feels. "Oh."

Ryouta slants a smile up at him, this one small and private and just for Shintarou, and does it again.

6. Fluff

The kitchen is a mess when Ryouta finally lets him come near it, and Shintarou has to repress a sigh (why is it that Ryouta can't cook anything without getting every dish in the house dirty?). But he sits down at the table and closes his eyes when Ryouta tells him to, listens to the rattling of cabinets and the clatter of dishes, wondering what on earth Ryouta has gotten up to this time.

"Now open them," Ryouta says, so Shintarou does.

There is a bowl sitting in front of him, steaming gently, the mochi already beginning to dissolve. Shintarou stares at it, then looks up at Ryouta, who is jittering from foot to foot and twisting his fingers together and beaming anxiously. "Did you—make this?" Shintarou asks.

"From scratch!" Ryouta jitters some more. "I got the recipe from my grandmother, and I think I got it right, but—"

"I'm sure it's perfect," Shintarou says, and the smile blooms across Ryouta's face.

7. Humor

"Oh my god," Shintarou moans. "Oh my god."

"I told you that googling our names together wasn't a good idea," Ryouta says, absolutely unsympathetic. "Fangirls are crazy, Midorimacchi. Completely crazy." He pauses, and his silence has a reflective quality to it. "Pretty inventive though, I have to admit. Even if they do insist on making you top in everything just because you're taller."

Shintarou just covers his eyes and moans some more.

8. Hurt/Comfort

"Ow, ow, owwwwww!" Ryouta whined, writhing around on the bed.

"Hold still," Shintarou commanded, pinning him down with a knee and digging his thumb into the knotted muscle. Ryouta whined louder, at least until the knot gave way. Then he went limp against the sheets, whimpering.

"You're so brutal, Midorimacchi," he complained.

"Stop whining. It got the job done," Shintarou told him, and rubbed his fingers over the tender spot gently.

9. Smut

Shintarou grips the pillow over his head, knuckles white, throws his head back and shows the long line of his throat as he gasps, and Ryouta holds his knees wide, so wide, and rocks into him again, just for the way Shintarou's voice wavers and breaks on the syllables of his name.

10. UST

Wait, Ryouta thinks the day he catches himself watching Midorimacchi wrapping his fingers up after a game and wanting to peel that tape away again, with his teeth, wait, what?

But by that point it's much too late to save himself.

[drabbles] KnB - Miscellaneous drabbles

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