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Entry tags:
- 0-500 words,
- 000501-001000 words,
- 001001-010000 words,
- c: akashi seijuurou,
- c: aomine daiki,
- c: kagami taiga,
- c: kise ryouta,
- c: midorima shintarou,
- c: momoi satsuki,
- c: takao kazunari,
- fandom: kuroko no basuke,
- label: alternative universe,
- label: angst,
- label: genderswap,
- label: smut,
- series: rule 63
[drabble post] - KnB
Time for another round-up of Tumblr drabbles!
#aokuro-alldayeveryday
#AoKuro, university
#Ordinary People
"I know this is a crazy idea," Satsuki said, late in the evening, "but hear me out anyway. Have you considered actually telling him how you feel?"
Daiki raised his eyes from the last of the beers from Satsuki's fridge and squinted at her. "What do you mean?"
Satsuki did the thing where she looked down her nose at him, just like her mother did when she was feeling particularly disdainful, and held the pose until Daiki had started to squirm. "I mean, have you considered going to Tetsu-kun and telling him that you like him? Using your actual words and everything? I know that this is a really wacky idea and all, but I bet it's so crazy that it might just work."
Daiki did his best to scowl at her, though it was a pretty pointless effort—it never worked on her anyway. "Oh, fine," he said. "I see how it is. I sit here and pour my heart out to you and you're just going to mock me."
"Dai-chan, if I were going to mock you, you'd know it. I would be laughing, for one thing." Satsuki propped her chin on her hand and studied him. "Also, I don't think you've poured your heart out at all." She held up her hand when he started to protest that. "You've talked an awful lot about Tetsu-kun, I'll give you that, and I'm even willing to be convinced that you think he's pretty neat. What's got me confused is the fact that you haven't already asked him out already. This really isn't like you."
The thing was, she really wasn't mocking him; Daiki knew exactly what that did look like, thanks to long experience. That was the problem with having a best friend who'd known him since before he'd ever lost his baby teeth. Satsuki knew him entirely too well.
That didn't mean he was at all inclined to roll over for her that easily. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Dai-chan." That was all she said, but it was enough: there was something about the patient, utterly inflexible way she said it that made it clear that she was going to drag the truth out of him, one way or another, and that she didn't feel particularly inclined to be merciful about it.
Daiki looked away from her and drained the last of the beer from the bottle without really tasting it. "He's different, okay?"
"He's certainly not your usual type, I'll grant you that."
He winced and wished that it hadn't seemed like such a good idea, once upon a time, to team up for their bar crawls and assorted efforts to find appropriate partners for the night. Satsuki really did know more about him than she had any right to, and it wasn't much comfort to know that he probably knew too much about her in return.
She hummed, tapping her fingers against the table while Daiki avoided her gaze by studying the stack of textbooks next to his elbow. "Really, really not your type at all," she remarked, sounding thoughtful about it. "No offense, Dai-chan, but you tend to like them pretty and easy, and the bustier the better. Tetsu-kun isn't really any of those."
"What are you talking about, Tetsu's plenty hot!" Daiki retorted. He only realized that he'd somehow played into her hands when he turned a glare on her and found her smiling at him. "Well, he is."
She just smiled even wider. "You really do like him, don't you?"
Daiki hunched his shoulders and folded his arms across his chest, refusing to dignify that with an answer.
Satsuki laughed and shook her head. "If that's the case, then really, Dai-chan, why haven't you just said something to him already? I've seen you invite people back to your place by flat-out asking them if they want to fuck. How hard can it possibly be for you to go up to Tetsu-kun and say, 'Hey, Tetsu, I don't know if you've noticed me mooning over you or not, but I really like you, you know'?"
He didn't know which was worse, the way she obviously thought that that sounded anything like him, or—"I'm not mooning!"
The look she gave him was full of pity. "Oh, Dai-chan. You just spent the past two hours telling me all the ways in which Tetsu-kun is the most amazing person in the world. You are so mooning over him."
Daiki opened his mouth to protest that, but Satsuki tilted her head at him, as if to dare him to contradict her, and he thought better of it. He grimaced at her, not that it did any good.
"Seriously, Dai-chan." She wasn't quite laughing at him, but she was getting close to it. "It's very simple. You go up to Tetsu and tell him that you like him, and let things take their natural course. What's so hard about that?"
Daiki looked away again and focused on fiddling with the label on his beer bottle, wishing that it hasn't been the last one in the fridge. She was right, of course—objectively speaking, that was all there was to it. All he really had to do was catch Tetsu some afternoon after classes, or maybe some night when they were all out for the weekend, and just tell him, it was just—just—
He scraped his thumbnail along the edge of the label, peeling it off in soggy little shreds. "He's different, okay?"
Satsuki sounded a little gentler when she said, "Different how?"
Daiki refused to look up, even when she reached over and laid a hand on top of his, murmuring his name. She didn't say anything more than that, but it was enough. She wasn't one to give up, not when she'd decided something mattered. Apparently this did.
In retrospect, deciding to give Satsuki a straight answer when she'd asked what was on his mind might have been a mistake.
"It's Tetsu," he said, finally, when Satsuki's quiet had stretched out and out and out some more, past the point of bearing. "I really like him, okay?" Liked Tetsu's quiet, subtle expressions and his wicked sense of humor and the way Tetsu didn't know the meaning of the word surrender.
"That's not an answer," Satsuki said, or started to say, but she stopped herself. Daiki could feel her watching him, putting the pieces together; when it all clicked, she squeezed his hand. "That's what makes him different, huh? This time it actually matters."
"I guess," Daiki muttered.
She squeezed his hand again. "That's why you're going to have to say something, you know." Sympathetic as she sounded, she also sounded absolutely determined. When Daiki peeked at her, she was smiling again, soft and fond. "If he's that important, he deserves to have you tell him, don't you think?"
Daiki made a face at her. "I hate it when you make sense."
"Lies." She reached over and ruffled his hair. "You love it when I make sense. Saves you the effort of figuring things out for yourself."
He grumbled at her, batting at her hand, for all the good that did him. "Do you really think I have to?"
"I don't think Tetsu-kun is just going to throw himself into your bed if you don't," she said. "Use your words, Dai-chan. I think you'll be surprised at how well it all works out in the end."
"If this goes badly, I'm going to blame it on you," he warned her.
Satsuki smiled at him, her eyes dancing. "That's a risk I'm willing to take, Dai-chan. Don't worry. I'm sure it will work out just fine."
When events ultimately proved that she was right, she just smiled at the way Tetsu's hand fit in Daiki's and murmured, "I told you so," and that was all.
#branch-and-root
Ordinary People: how cuddling works now
#BEWARE OF FEELS
So the first get-together after the three of them worked out their arrangement? Yeah, it was weird and kind of awkward. Not that Daiki really figured it was going to be anything but, all things considered. He braced himself for it, but even so, he wasn't quite prepared for the way Satsuki looked at the three of them when they came in together, him on one side of Tetsu and Kagami on the other. She hadn't said much about it since Daiki'd tried to explain it to her the other day, and he'd hoped that her silence had meant that she'd reconciled herself to the idea.
So much for that.
It wasn't like Daiki hadn't had a lot of practice in pretending to be perfectly oblivious, so he put it to good use and greeted her like everything was normal, stuck his contribution to the evening's festivities in the fridge, and immediately jumped into the friendly wrangle over what kind of takeout to order. What, Satsuki was gnawing on her lower lip and looking worried? Naw, he hadn't noticed that at all. Hadn't noticed Midorima giving him the hairy eyeball, either, or the fact that Kise was conspicuously absent, or the fact that even Mitobe seemed to be a little nonplussed when he looked at the three of them. Way he figured it, all they had to do was go along with it for a little while, and eventually it would become the new normal. They just had to get there first, preferably without talking about it.
Naturally, it was Midorima who raised his eyebrows when Tetsu claimed one end of the couch and settled himself right between Daiki and Kagami, fitting himself right into the curve of Daiki's body and letting Kagami slouch against him and drape a casual hand over his knee. (Daiki thought that maybe the three of them shouldn't have fit together quite so easily, but fucked if he was going to question it. He wasn't stupid and he knew perfectly well that it was a really bad idea to look gift horses in the mouth.) "I can't make up my mind," Midorima said after looking them over. "Kuroko, are you crazy? Or just masochistic?"
Tetsu probably felt the way Daiki froze at the blunt question—fuck, Kagami probably noticed, too—but he didn't say anything about that. Instead he leveled one of his calmest expressions on Midorima, the one that signaled that he was deeply annoyed, and said, "No, I don't believe so. If I were inclined to describe myself at all—which I am not—I would simply say that I am very lucky."
For a moment, Daiki thought that that would have frozen even Midorima to the bone. Then Midorima snorted. "Is that what we're calling it now?"
Well, no one could say that Midorima didn't have big brass ones.
"It's what I'm calling it," Tetsu said, still perfectly calm, before transferring his attention to Satsuki. "Have we left you and Mitobe-san enough room?"
Satsuki was a little slower to answer than usual, probably because she was looking at Tetsu, considering him maybe. "It's fine, Tetsu-kun," she said at last.
"That's good." Tetsu deliberately snuggled himself down between Daiki and Kagami—there was no other way to describe the little wriggle of it as he wormed himself deeper into the space between them but that—and smiled calmly at them all. "Should we start the movie now, or wait until after the food arrives?"
Midorima snorted again, shaking his head just a bit. "May as well start it up," he said. "If only to keep you from snapping at people."
Tetsu gave him a long, steady look. "You know, I tell my students that they shouldn't start anything that they aren't willing to deal with all the way to the end." He paused, just long enough for that to sink in. "Perhaps you should consider that."
"Okay!" Satsuki said, too loud and bright, bouncing to her feet. "I think I need a drink. Does anyone else want a drink while I'm up?"
"Yeah," Daiki said, while Midorima and Tetsu tried to stare each other down. "That would be great, Satsuki, if you don't mind?"
"No trouble at all, Dai-chan!" She made inquiring noises at Mitobe and Kagami, too, and then said, "Midorin, would you mind giving me a hand?"
It was pretty much the exact opposite of subtle, but whatever. It worked to break the deadlock and Midorima only grumbled a little as he pried himself out of the armchair to go lend Satsuki a hand in the kitchen.
Daiki let out a slow breath then as some of the edged tension melted out of the air. "Tetsu—"
He didn't really know what to say—what he wanted to say, because this was—Tetsu had been the one who'd kept up all his friendships, inexplicable as they sometimes were.
Tetsu seemed to get it anyway, because he smiled at him, small, a bit rueful. "It's all right," he said. "I thought this would happen." He slipped his fingers between Daiki's and set his other hand over Kagami's. "We'll just have to be patient while everyone adjusts."
Kagami huffed a soft laugh at that, amused. "And while you refuse to budge an inch."
Tetsu's smile was serene. "Naturally," he agreed, and tugged Kagami a little closer, snuggling in and making himself comfortable between them. "I already have what I want."
And really, what could anyone say in the face of that?
#kagasexual
#MidoTaka, Rule 63 'verse, makeup help
#in which Em fakes all cosmetic knowledge
"You know what the absolutely ridiculous part is?" Takao squinted, eyebrows beetling, and reached out to rub her thumb against Midorima's cheekbone again. "The ridiculous part is how completely and utterly redundant this is. You're stupid pretty, Shin-chan, and I mean that."
Midorima strained all her willpower in an effort not to color at that, but she felt her cheeks warm anyway. The only thing to do was hope that the layer of foundation and now the blush that Takao was blending into her cheekbones was enough to conceal that fact. "Stupid pretty."
Takao grinned at her, eyes bright. "Yep. Stupid pretty."
Midorima pursed her lips—she wasn't going to ask, she wasn't going to ask, she wasn't—"I get the impression that I'm supposed to take that as a compliment, but I don't quite see why."
Takao dropped the little sponge on the vanity and closed up the little pot of crème blush. "Don't you?" She sorted through the other little trays and pots and compacts and tubes, selecting several apparently at random. "Glasses off. I'm gonna do your eyes next."
"Do you have to?" Midorima objected, even as she took her glasses off and the sharp, bright edges of the room softened and blurred.
"Mm, I don't think I have to do very much." Takao leaned close, peering at her. "Even your eyelashes are fantastic. Shin-chan, is there anything that you're not good at?"
In the mouth of anyone else, that would have had an edge to it, would have been full of the astringent bitterness of jealousy and resentment or, at best, would have been heavy with the rueful sense of the speaker's own shortcomings. Takao was different from anyone Midorima had ever known, because she only sounded admiring. Delighted, even, with no resentment to sour it.
"Which one of us is doing my makeup again?" she asked.
Takao laughed. "Me, but only because your parents are super old-fashioned and strict and you needed to learn how to do it from somewhere." She brandished a tube. "Seriously, close your eyes now."
Midorima obeyed, trying not to flinch as Takao began brushing things against her lids and her eyelashes. The sensation was strange, soft and ticklish; Takao had leaned in close again, close enough that Midorima could feel the air move whenever Takao huffed out the little thoughtful noises that she made when she was concentrating especially hard. Something about that gave Midorima a strange feeling, restless and jumpy.
She made herself hold still in spite of that feeling, curling her fingers tight around the folded frame of her glasses, until Takao hummed. "Are you done yet?" Whatever Takao had done made her eyelashes feel strange and heavy; she itched to rub them.
She heard the click of some small plastic container as Takao set it down, then felt Takao's fingers against the underside of her chin. They were cool and Midorima obediently tilted her chin up when she felt the pressure of them.
"Really, really stupid pretty," Takao said again, a peculiar hushed tone in her voice.
"What does that even mean?" Midorima asked, exasperated, wondering whether it was safe to open her eyes again or not.
Takao laughed, soft. "It means you're so pretty that it makes me kind of stupid, Shin-chan."
Then next thing Midorima knew, there was a strange soft pressure against her mouth, warm and a little bit moist. When she opened her eyes, her field of vision was full of Takao, watching her from bare centimeters away because Takao was kissing her.
Midorima froze and Takao drew back. She smiled, small and a little wry. "Like I said. Stupid pretty."
There were a hundred different thoughts tumbling around inside Midorima's skull, so many that they ran together into a strange staticky roar. She stared at Takao instead and passed her tongue over her lips, tasting the candied stickiness of Takao's preferred lip gloss on them, and swallowed hard. "You're not stupid."
Takao went wide-eyed, startled at that. "Shin-chan..." She smiled then, something softer than her usual cheerful grin, practically shy. "I'm not?"
Staticky brain or not, Midorima knew the answer to this one; it came straight from her best instincts. "No, you're not."
She'd seen Takao red with exertion and with laughter, but she'd never seen her go pink like this, color blooming across her cheeks, soft and happy. "Oh." Takao said it like she was wondering over it, quiet and amazed. Then she shook herself, turning brisk again. "Okay, lipstick and then we're done."
"It can wait." Midorima reached out to draw Takao close again and was pleased by how easily Takao let her do it.
They never did get around to finishing the makeup tutorial that afternoon.
#andreaphobia
#Aomine and Kuroko, library
#I am not making any of this up
In principle, Tetsuya approved wholeheartedly of his university's dedication to academics and its insistence that even the athletes its sports programs had recruited purely on physical merit would graduate with meaningful degrees. That was what academic integrity was all about, and he applauded the school's dedication to its intellectual standards.
In practice, Tetsuya fulfilled his twenty hours a week of work-study in the library's writing lab and tended to look forward to the portion of his hours that was reserved specifically for the student athletes with mingled dread and resignation. It wasn't that his student athlete peers were stupid, precisely—he was acquainted with a few members of the tennis team who were actually brilliant, a guy on the baseball team who was just less interested in academics than he was baseball, at least one member of the football team who was terrifyingly intelligent (emphasis on the terrifying), and a couple of guys on the basketball team who were deeply impatient with the requirement that they attend five hours of peer tutoring a week, with good reason.
It was just—well, he would have defied any of his fellow writing tutors not to look forward to the Aomine Sessions without feeling a certain amount of trepidation.
"So," Tetsuya said after Aomine had come slouching down to his cubicle and settled in for their latest session. "What can I help you with this week?"
It wasn't that Aomine was a bad guy. Far from it. He was friendly enough, even kind of charming in his own way, and not at all hard on the eyes.
He was also absolutely impossible.
"So I guess I have to write another paper," he announced, as if having to write several papers for a writing class was an incredible burden. Tetsuya waited for him to dig around in his backpack; the assignment sheet he produced was wrinkled and stained with something unknowable. "Maybe you can help me with it?"
Tetsuya took the paper from him gingerly, holding it by the corners; the first thing he saw, right at the top of the page, was the due date. "This is due tomorrow."
Aomine rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah?"
That didn't mean anything—perhaps Aomine had taken his lecture about time management to heart and had already begun working on the paper. (Perhaps pigs would someday fly.) Surely anything was possible. Tetsuya took a deep breath anyway, told himself not to be pessimistic, and smiled at Aomine. "So," he said. "How far along are you?"
Aomine scratched his chin. "Well, I dunno. I guess it's supposed to be an argument? I was thinking I could write about energy drinks."
"Energy drinks," Tetsuya repeated cautiously, because he had not yet forgotten the causes paper and Aomine's initial decision to write about why catsup was delicious. That particular tutoring session was going to live forever in infamy.
But perhaps the leopard could change his spots: Aomine brightened up some. "Yeah, energy drinks. I was thinking about talking about how they're really not all that effective or something."
Tetsuya blinked and consulted the assignment sheet. That actually seemed consonant with the assignment as written, which was a promising start. "Okay," he said, feeling the first flush of optimism. "So tell me what you're thinking."
Aomine stared at him. "That's about as far as I've gotten."
Optimism died a tragically early death. "Right," Tetsuya sighed. "Have you done any of the research you'll need yet?"
"Research?"
"You're going to need to cite some sources in this one," Tetsuya told him and at least had the satisfaction of seeing the first dawning light of panic cross Aomine's face. He sighed again and nudged his mouse to wake his computer up. "Let's start there."
"You're the best, Tetsu," Aomine told him, pretty much beaming at him.
"I try," Tetsuya said, dry, and hoped privately that Aomine was a better basketball player than he was a scholar.
#itsthechangingoftheseasons
#AoKuro, pool
#Kuroko has never pretended not to be evil
Daiki has seen fish bellies that have more color to them than Tetsu does, which is at once hysterically funny and simultaneously really kinda sad. Like, seriously, Tetsu is pretty damn pale—one time he took his shirt off at practice and Kise made a big production about falling over and clutching his eyes and claiming that he'd been struck blind, at least until Akashi told him to stop being ridiculous and to go run some more laps if he had that much energy—and no matter how much time he spends in the sun, he never tans.
Instead, he burns.
Daiki has lost count of the number of times he's seen Tetsu with his nose and cheeks burned red thanks to a practice running late—not that he keeps track of things like that, not really, except insofar as he keeps track of most things having to do with Tetsu. During the summer, Tetsu walks around smelling of sweat and zinc oxide and aloe vera gel when he inevitably forgets to reapply his SPF 9000 in a timely manner. Those scents are so much a part of Daiki's conception of Tetsu that once, during that bad period between the end of things at Teikou and the start of things in high school, Daiki caught himself missing Tetsu so badly it made his stomach hurt a little. Turned out it was because the girl he was sitting next to on the train smelled like the same brand of sunscreen Tetsu used. Not that it made Daiki feel any better, once he figured out that was what was getting to him.
Fortunately that period's over and done with and they're never going back there, so help him, so he doesn't have to worry about getting blindsided by sudden bouts of visceral sense-memories anymore. Well. Not exactly.
Tetsu draws his knees up and leans his cheek against them. "No hurry," he says when Daiki fails to move right away. "Whenever you're ready, of course."
It's Tetsu, of course, so the dry civility of it does more to spur Daiki into acting than any amount of yelling might. It's just—
Tetsu's spine makes a single smooth curve from his nape down to the waistband of his swim trunks. They're a little loose and sit low on Tetsu's hips, which means that Daiki can see just the faintest shadow of the pit end of his spine, a bare suggestion of what the trunks cover up. Tetsu's skin is sleek and pale over the definition of his muscles, and the problem Daiki has right now is that he's pretty damn sure that it is not fair for Tetsu to hand him a bottle of sunscreen and give him permission to run his hands all over that skin and then force him to stop, because this is after all a public swimming pool.
Man. It's like Tetsu expects him to have self-control or something. Surely he ought to know better than that by now.
Then again, there are an awful lot of little kids around. Now might be a really good time to develop some self-control.
Daiki takes a deep breath and fills his palm with sunscreen; it's thick and goopy and white and smells exactly like Tetsu to him. It goes on smoothly enough, sinking into Tetsu's skin as he sweeps his palms across Tetsu's shoulders and up his nape, down the line of his back to where his waist tapers in at his hips. Tetsu hums as Daiki massages the sunscreen into his skin. There's too much shrieking and laughter from the kids splashing and playing in the pool for Daiki to hear it, but he feels it, a subtle vibration beneath his palms and the way Tetsu softens and relaxes, going pliant.
He works his hands up and down Tetsu's back just for that, even after he's pretty sure he's gotten sunscreen everywhere it's supposed to go. And then some, maybe, because Tetsu's trunks are a little loose. Daiki strokes his fingers beneath the waistband, running them along the curve of his ass and fingering the cleft of it, at least until Tetsu clears his throat. "That seems like enough."
"Are you sure?" Daiki dips his fingers a little lower—what, it's not like any of the kids or their mamas can see what he's up to.
"Quite enough," Tetsu says firmly.
He withdraws his fingers and brushes the tips of them up Tetsu's spine. "If you say so," he says as he caps the bottle again.
"I really do." Tetsu's face is pink, but Daiki would bet anything that it's not because of the sun. Well, that's only fair, considering, he thinks, at least until Tetsu adds, perfectly casual, "Of course, you're free to save that for later."
"You are a terrible person," Daiki says, because his brain is already flashing forward to the things that they might get up to later, in the privacy of their hotel room, and yep, it's definitely going to be a couple of minutes before he's going to be able to get up and get in the water.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Tetsu smiles at him, perfectly composed, and leaves him to hit the water.
Daiki ruefully adds the scent of sunscreen to his mental list of inappropriate aphrodisiacs and does his best to think unsexy thoughts in the meantime.
#skyfireflies
#AoKuro, career-ending injury
#Aomine has his doubts about this one
Daiki stared at the bandages on his knee, brooding over them in grim silence. Tetsuya sat nearby, keeping one eye on his book and the other on Daiki, and held his peace. Daiki wasn't the type to keep things bottled up for very long; all one really needed to was have a bit of patience. Eventually it would all come boiling out.
Indeed, it took about one and a half chapters to get there, but eventually Daiki cleared his throat. "Tetsu," he said, hoarse, with the raw edge of his fear lurking beneath the surface of that, vast as the submerged volume of an iceberg. "Tetsu, what if I never play again?"
Tetsuya tucked his thumb between the pages of his book to mark his place and looked at Daiki. "You're going to play again." He drew on all the skills he'd learned as a kindergarten teacher and projected every last iota of calm he possessed in the hope that Daiki would listen to him and be soothed.
Unfortunately, it was easier to pacify the average five-year-old than it was to deal with Daiki when he'd worked himself up. He clutched his blanket, fists gone white-knuckled, and turned a thousand-yard stare on Tetsuya. "But what if I can't?"
Perhaps it was time to be a bit more direct. Tetsuya lifted his eyebrows just a bit. "Don't you think you're being a little melodramatic?"
It was a manifestly ridiculous question; obviously Daiki didn't feel that he was being melodramatic in the slightest. His expression was tragic, dark-eyed and clearly miserable. Tetsuya supposed that he could understand the root of Daiki's fear—a career-ending injury was every professional athlete's nightmare, of course, and basketball always had been at the center of Daiki's world.
Nevertheless.
"Daiki," Tetsuya said, very clearly and precisely. "You tripped on a sidewalk and cut your knee. You had to get a couple of stitches, and that was only because you raised a big fuss over the bandaids not being sufficient treatment. You probably won't even have a scar. You are going to be just fine."
For a moment—a single, blissful moment—Tetsuya dared to hope that Daiki was ready to actually listen to the voice of common sense.
Then Daiki heaved a sigh, one that probably came up all the way from his toes, and said, mournful, "But what if I'm not?"
Tetsuya sighed, too.
It was going to be a very long week until the stitches came out.
#gunmetal-blue
#AoKuro, martial arts AU
#making it up as I go along
Tetsu's step was so soft that Daiki barely felt the trembling of the floorboards that heralded his approach. He stayed where he was, sprawled across the porch and enjoying the patch of sunshine that was turning the insides of his eyelids rosy. Tetsu's footsteps paused when Tetsu was still a little distance from him; he stood in silence for the space of several breaths before Daiki heard the exasperated huff of his breath. "I thought you were going to meditate."
Daiki cracked his eyes open just enough to make out the shape of Tetsu standing in the open door, arms folded across his chest. "Who says I'm not?"
"I should think I know the difference between meditating and laziness." Tetsu stepped out onto the porch, his feet silent against smooth-polished wood. His shadow fell across Daiki's face, blocking the sunshine. "Do they let you get away with this at Touou?"
Daiki opened his eyes the rest of the way and grinned up at him. "Do you think they have any choice?"
Tetsu didn't really smile at that; if anything, the corners of his mouth went tighter, though it was difficult to make out his features when he was backlit by the sun like that. "I thought you were here to train."
"Kagami went out," Daiki explained. "Said he had to run errands or something." Tetsu's proximity was suggestive. He reached out, meaning to grab Tetsu's ankle.
Tetsu stepped aside, evading his hand. "There are other people training here besides Kagami-kun."
Daiki grimaced when the sunlight fell across his face, right into his eyes, and shaded them again. "Yeah, but he's the interesting one." Tetsu probably thought he was out of arm's reach; Daiki grinned at him and snapped his hand out, faster than even Tetsu could react, and wrapped his fingers around Tetsu's ankle. "Well, not the only interesting one."
"Aomine-kun, please let go." Tetsu's voice was perfectly even.
Daiki grinned at him, stroking his fingers over the bare skin just above Tetsu's sock, tracing the tips of them over the bones of his ankle and sliding them up under the fall of Tetsu's hakama to tease against his calf. "Are you going to make me?"
Tetsu lifted his eyebrows just a bit. "I suppose I should be flattered that you think I could."
Daiki gave that due consideration. "Nooo," he said after a moment, following the curve of Tetsu's calf up and finding the soft skin behind his knee; Tetsu's mouth twitched just a bit. Yeah, he'd thought Tetsu might still be ticklish there. "I don't really think you could, but I know you'd try anyway." He traced his fingers against the skin behind Tetsu's knee, watching Tetsu doing his best not to laugh, and grinned again. "You don't know how to give up."
"That's true enough," Tetsu conceded. It sounded a bit strained. "Are you going to come train or not?"
"I think I'd rather stay here." It was quiet and secluded; no one but Tetsu had been by in all the hours he'd been drowsing on this porch. Daiki rubbed a circle against the inside of Tetsu's knee, slow and inviting. "Why don't you stick around and keep me company?"
Tetsu's voice had dropped; it went husky when Daiki stroked his hand higher. "Aomine-kun..."
Daiki grinned when Tetsu took a step back, pulling away, and let his fingers slide back down Tetsu's leg. He stretched out his hand to Tetsu. "Why don't you come on down here and join me, huh?"
Tetsu gave him a long look. "I see that you're giving me no choice."
"That was kind of the idea." Daiki smiled when Tetsu shook his head and leaned down to take his hand.
The next few seconds went by very quickly: Tetsu wrapped his fingers around Daiki's, sliding them into place and twisting just so, until the torque of his wrist sent a bolt of pain up Daiki's arm and he had to move to relieve the stress on his muscles. Daiki yelped, even as Tetsu pressed his advantage and twisted Daiki's arm behind him, fuck fuck fuck, why had he forgotten that Tetsu was most dangerous when his hands were completely empty? "Tetsu!"
Tetsu did not let up his pressure on Daiki's arm and even went so far as to press his knee against the small of Daiki's back. "I think you should know that Aida-san sent me to find you," he announced while Daiki whined at the pressure. "She sounded like she had some things she wanted to work on. Now, are you coming or am I going to have to drag you?"
Daiki, his cheek pressed against satin-smooth boards and his arm creaking in its socket, considered his options and found that none of them were particularly good. But he didn't really want to deal with an injury and hurting Tetsu to get free was out of the question, so that left him one choice. "All right, fine, geez, let go already, I'll come train."
"I thought you might see it that way." Tetsu released his arm and stood; by the time Daiki had shaken his arm out and clambered to his feet, he was smooth and unrumpled as ever. "I do think we should hurry. She doesn't like to be kept waiting."
Daiki settled his gi more or less into place and made a face at Tetsu. "All right, fine, since you insist. Wouldn't wanna make Aida-san unhappy."
"It's generally not a good idea," Tetsu agreed, tranquilly enough. "Shall we go?"
Daiki laughed in spite of himself and fell into step with Tetsu. "You never do give up until you get your way, do you?"
"Of course not." Tetsu looked at him, wearing the tiniest of smiles. "I learned that from you, didn't I?" He smiled a bit more widely as Daiki blinked at him, caught off guard by that. "Come on, Aomine-kun. Aida-san is waiting." And if he said nothing more about it, well, what more was there to say?
#Aomine, solo
#the only one who can make Aomine come is Aomine himself
Tetsuya permitted himself a moment to absorb the details of the scene before him—the pillow beneath Daiki's hips and the supple curve of Daiki's body, the wide splay of Daiki's legs and the slow steady flex of his wrist, the soft wet sounds the dildo made as Daiki played it in and out of his ass and the eyes-closed look of utter concentration on Daiki's face as he fucked himself—and committed them to memory for later consideration before he finally cleared his throat. "So is this something you do every time I go out of town for business, or is this a special occasion?"
Daiki, who never had grasped the meaning of the word shame, just cracked his eyes open and grinned, lazy, without missing a beat. "Well, you know how lonely I get." He pressed the dildo deep and shuddered, slow and sensuous. "Feel free to pitch in, if you wanna."
Tetsuya leaned against the doorframe. "No, thank you," he said. "You seem to have things well in hand."
Daiki was still laughing when he finally adjusted the angle of his stroke and came, arching taut and shuddering through his pleasure.
Eventually he relaxed again, breathing deeply as he sprawled against their bed, spent. "Fuck," he said, and it wasn't entirely clear to Tetsuya whether that was meant to be an observation or an invitation.
He chose to take it as the latter as he came away from the door, shedding an article of clothing with each step: jacket, tie, vest, shirt, slacks, underwear, socks. Daiki observed the progress of this with open interest, turning his head to watch and not making any move to do more than that, until Tetsuya slid a knee onto the bed. "I see you enjoyed the show."
"Yes," Tetsuya agreed, throwing a leg across Daiki's chest and kneeling over him. "You might say that." He reached down, curving his palm around the back of Daiki's head. "Why don't you do something about that?"
"Bossy, bossy," Daiki said, but he lifted his head anyway and opened his mouth for it when Tetsuya guided his cock against his lips. He took it easily, humming as Tetsuya rolled his hips forward in automatic response to the wet heat of his mouth, and his eyes crinkled up like he wanted to laugh when Tetsuya groaned.
Tetsuya slid his thumb through Daiki's hair, damp with sweat, and braced his other hand against the headboard as he fucked Daiki's mouth. When he'd stepped away from the door, he'd had a vague intention of taking his time, but it had been a long week away from home and the pressure of Daiki's mouth wrapped insistent pleasure around every nerve that he had. It wasn't long before he was rocking his hips in short, urgent jerks, breathing hard as he trembled on the edge of coming entirely undone. Then Daiki hummed again, mouth and throat vibrating around him, and Tetsuya fell, groaning as pleasure burst through him and tightening his fingers in Daiki's hair.
He caught himself against the headboard when the heat finally released him, breathing hard and shuddering as Daiki let him slide out of his mouth with one last flick of his tongue against sensitive skin. Daiki grinned at him and slide his palms up Tetsuya's thighs, kneading the tension out of them as Tetsuya eased himself back. "So hey," he said, "welcome home."
Tetsuya laughed, helpless, and brushed his fingers against Daiki's cheek. "It's good to be back."
#minatu
#Aomine/Fem!Kuroko, married with children
#fluffier like a down comforter wrapped around a piece of broken glass
So the thing is, when it comes to the kids, Daiki is a hulking 192-centimeter pushover. When Tetsuna stops to consider this fact, she supposes that it doesn't really surprise her all that much. After all, as Satsuki-chan often points out, sometimes it's difficult to tell Daiki apart from the kids, and on certain fronts, it's clear that Daiki is never ever going to grow up. It's only natural that their kids pretty well have him wrapped around their fingers, because a lot of the time, the only way to tell him apart from them is by comparing their heights.
Well. Perhaps that is an exaggeration. Besides, she's always had a soft spot for Daiki's transparent zest for life. It was one of the things that drew her to him in the first place and the thing she missed most when he lost his way there for a while, and it was the thing she was most grateful to recover when she helped guide Seirin and Kagami-kun through their matches against the various members of the Generation of Miracles. If having that back means occasionally having to deal with Daiki's excesses, well, Tetsuna made her peace with that long ago.
It's probably a good thing that she did, she thinks, because the kids can play Daiki like a violin.
She's standing back, tucked in the doorway from the living room to the kitchen and unobserved by either Daiki or their youngest, when she has the latest opportunity to observe this in action. The kids have decided to take up their latest pet cause—hah, pet cause, somewhere Izuki-senpai is snickering and he doesn't even know why—with Daiki.
Daiichi is their strategist; though he's the older one, he lets Sumire take the lead, which is a solid tactical move on his part. Sumire takes after Tetsuna—has her hair and her eyes and is particularly good at mimicking Tetsuna's most earnest expressions, or so Tetsuna is reliably informed—and the sad truth of the matter is that Daiki is pretty much defenseless against their daughter's wiles. She's launched this particular campaign by going to Daiki, who automatically picks her up and settles her in his lap when she holds her arms out to him. Once she's settled to her satisfaction, she looks up at him, eyes wide and solemn, and says, "Daddy, why don't we have a puppy?"
It's a good move; Tetsuna silently congratulates Daiichi for it, because it immediately puts Daiki on the defense. He flounders for a minute, clearly caught off his guard, and sputters. "Why do you ask?"
"Because." Sumire screws up her face and carefully begins counting things off on her fingers. "Mariko-chan has a puppy, and so does Yuusuke-kun, and Aiko-chan has a kitty. Natsumi-chan has both a puppy and a kitty." She lays the last one down with the air of someone playing a trump card. She's named nearly the whole of her social circle, which Tetsuna suspects is at least part of the impetus behind Sumire's newfound desire for a puppy. One must keep up with one's peers, after all.
Daiki blinks a little at the careful recitation. "Well," he says, carefully, "that's very interesting, but I'm not entirely sure why that means we should have a puppy."
Sumire gives him a wide-eyed look of such innocence that Tetsuna is honestly impressed. "Because," she says, "Uncle Kagami says that every kid should have a pet growing up, but I like puppies better than kitties."
It is a masterful stroke; if Tetsuna hadn't already heard Daiichi carefully coaching her on the point, she would have been tempted to applaud it. One of the things that Daiki has not outgrown is his deep-seated rivalry with Kagami-kun, and the merest fact that Kagami-kun's daughter has a kitten is possibly the only reason Daiki needs to go out and find Sumire the puppy she so earnestly desires. Tetsuna sees it on his face and decides that this is the opportune moment to intervene.
She clears her throat gently, before Daiki can commit them to an irreversible course of action, and it's just in time, too. Daiki glances up and looks both guilty and relieved; Sumire merely frowns and looks thwarted. "Dinner is almost ready," Tetsuna tells them. "Sumire, go find your brother and wash your hands, okay?"
Sumire sighs and slides off Daiki's lap, suspending the campaign for the time being. Daiki picks himself up off the couch, looking rueful, and comes over to wrap his arms around her. "Saved in the nick of time," he says against her ear.
"I noticed that." Tetsuna tips her head to the side just a bit, smiling when his lips brush against her jaw. "May I suggest a script for the next time they bring this up? Try, 'Ask your mother. If she says yes, then sure, we can get a puppy.'"
Daiki pulls back a bit and looks at her, curious. "And when they finally get up the guts to do that, what are you going to say?"
"That I'll think about it." Tetsuna smiles just a bit. "This ought to be good for at least a few months of good behavior, don't you think?"
Daiki absorbs that and grins. "You're a terrible, evil woman, I hope you know that."
"Naturally," Tetsuna agrees, and lets him steal a kiss from her. "Isn't that why you love me?"
"One of the reasons, yeah." He steals another kiss, then yelps when she swats him. "Hey!"
"You're supposed to wash your hands, too," Tetsuna reminds him. "As a good example and role model for our children."
He rolls his eyes at her, but heads for the kitchen sink anyway. As he turns on the water and Tetsuna moves to transfer their meal to the table, he says, "You know you don't have to say yes, right? If you still miss him."
He's very studiously focusing on lathering up his hands, which is his way. He won't ever embarrass her by noticing something she'd rather not remark upon, like the way she sometimes gets misty-eyed over Nigou, the very best of dogs, even to this day.
"I know that," Tetsuna says, after a moment. "But Kagami-kun isn't wrong, you know. And I think it's just about time."
"Well, as long as you're sure," Daiki says, accepting her word for it as he rinses his hands and dries them off.
"I'm sure," Tetsuna tells him, and steals a kiss of her own before the pounding of feet coming down the stairs alert them to the imminent arrival of their children.
#lowboys
#MidoTaka, Married AU
#When writing id fic go big or go home
"You know," Kise said, thoughtfully, as he tweaked one of the flower arrangements, "if you'd asked me before this all went down, I'd have sworn on my mother's grave that Midorimacchi was the one who'd end up being a bridezilla."
"Your mother doesn't have a grave," Akashi said. "She's alive and well and living in Chiba. Does this look straight to you?" He eyed the garland he'd just pinned up, frowning at it critically.
"There's nothing straight about this wedding," Aomine said, lounging at the altar and not actually doing anything to help with the decorating. "Ow! Tetsu! That hurt!" He clutched his ribs, rubbing them and sulking until it became clear that no one was paying him any mind.
"That joke wasn't funny the first time you made it." Kuroko shook his fist out and studied the garlands draped along the aisle. "They look fine to me, Akashi-kun." He resumed winding the white ribbons around the candelabra.
"Of course they look fine to you," Aomine said. "You're not the crazy one."
"Not so loud," Kise hissed. "He'll hear you."
"No, he won't, he's in the kitchen and freaking out over the wedding cake." Aomine shrugged when they all turned to look at him. "What, I was hungry. I thought maybe Murasakibara would have something I could snack on. Then I realized that there was something wrong with the petit fours and got the hell out of there."
There was a moment of silence while they contemplated a world in which someone could conceivably find fault with something Murasakibara had baked with his own hands. At length, Kise shook his head sadly. "Bridezilla," he pronounced. "Definitely."
Akashi left off fussing with the garlands and reached for his phone. "I'll let Shintarou know that he needs to come and calm his fiancé down. Again."
"You'd think he'd be getting tired of that by now," Aomine observed. "You know, considering."
"I think it's sweet, really," Kuroko said. "Takao-kun just wants everything to be perfect for their big day."
Kise shook his head and added another spray of baby's breath to his flower arrangement. "If any of you decide you want to get married, I will pay you to elope. I mean it. I will write you a check, I swear, just so long as you promise to never make me do this again."
Aomine brightened at that. "How big a check?" he asked, and followed that up immediately by hollering at Momoi as she passed through the hall on some errand of her own. "Hey, Satsuki, Kise says he'll pay us to get hitched, how about it?"
"DREAM ON, DAI-CHAN!" she yelled back, not even breaking stride.
Aomine settled back on his hands. "Well, damn," he sighed. "Ow! Tetsu, stop that!" He rubbed the back of his head. "What was that for?"
"Figure it out yourself," Kuroko said, frosty, tying off the last ribbon.
"What?" Aomine appealed to the rest of them as Kuroko stalked out. "What did I do wrong?"
Kise only shook his head, and Akashi said, "One hardly knows where to begin." He snapped his fingers. "Come here and hold this up for me, I think I can make it hang more evenly."
Aomine slouched over to hold up the garland as directed, but no matter how much he pestered them, they refused to explain what he'd done to earn that head-slap.
It wasn't until long after Midorima and Takao's wedding that he figured it out, but when he did, he was willing to admit that okay, yeah, he'd definitely earned that head-slap fair and square.
And Kise's check was enough to cover the elopement and a pleasant honeymoon in the South Pacific, so it worked out pretty well for everybody in the end.
#yorimei
#MidoTaka, Midorima's unconscious seduction
#sometimes the clue trout stings a bit when it slaps you in the face
So the thing that Takao feels is important to remember is that first of all, he had no idea that Midorima Shintarou was going to enroll at Shuutoku when he set his own sights on Shuutoku—no idea at all, complete cluelessness on his part, it was a complete shock to meet Midorima there. Takao selected Shuutoku for his own reasons and frankly it was a toss-up between Shuutoku (sterling reputation, fantastic basketball team and coach, one of the three kings of Tokyo) and Kaijou (Kasamatsu-san! plus all those other amenities like a fantastic school and basketball team and so forth). The presence or absence of any one of the Generation of Miracles would have been a matter of supreme indifference to him, if he'd even realized they were in play. In the end, not even Kasamatsu-san's manifold charms were enough to outweigh the fact that Takao had zero desire to commute to Kanagawa on a daily basis, so Shuutoku it was. Shin-chan was something in the way of a surprise bonus—a cosmic compensation for giving up on Kasamatsu-san, perhaps.
Takao is convinced that the cosmos has a bizarre sense of humor; Shin-chan probably knows this too, at least in his heart of hearts, though he refuses to own up to it.
Second, Takao didn't start out by being fixated on Midorima in particular or anything. For one thing, that would have been going from acceptable levels of earnest, sportsmanlike declarations of eternal rivalry and crossing over into creepy, stalkerish behavior. For another, the members of the Generation of Miracles were more like a faceless blur in the wake of that humiliating, crushing defeat—who could fixate on a single member when all five (well, six, but that didn't sink in at the time) had united to triple their score? What Takao really remembered from that day was the stinging ache of knowing himself to have been utterly surpassed, that he had just seen basketball played at a level so far above him that he had a better chance of reaching the moon first, and the insidious internal voice that whispered that it was no good, he might as well give up then and there, because there was no point in playing when there were guys like that out there.
He didn't fixate on any single one of them so much as he fixated on the general idea of them, these guys who were geniuses, miraculously good at basketball and wonders on the court. In the wake of that defeat, Takao took stock of himself and his basketball and thought about it long and hard, and said fuck that every time the thought crossed his mind that it would be easier to just give it up and let it go. Things that were worth doing weren't supposed to be easy, or so he'd heard. Making the Generation of Miracles recognize him and his basketball sure as hell wasn't going to be easy—so what? Every boy needs a hobby.
When it turned out that he was going to have a member of the Generation of Miracles for a teammate, Takao just congratulated himself on his good fortune—Shin-chan's proximity just meant that he wasn't going to have to hunting them down to issue challenges. Wasn't that convenient?
Third, and as far as Takao is concerned, this is the really important part, it's not like he got to Shuutoku and met up with Shin-chan and immediately recognized that Shin-chan was going to be, well, pretty damn important to him. It wasn't like bells rang or choirs sang or the clouds parted for a single beam of sunlight to shine down on them or anything. Insofar as Takao recollects his thoughts upon meeting Shin-chan at Shuutoku, they went something like this: Huh, I think I know that guy—wait, didn't he play for Teikou? I think he did. What the heck was his name, again? Midorima? Something like that. Well, this is handy.
Things like that don't actually happen in real life, and anyway, the first couple months of high school ended up being really busy for Takao, certainly too busy for him to pay attention to anything but not dying of exhaustion. Shuutoku might not have been a premier place to go for folks whose first priority was their academics, sure, but that didn't mean it was a slouch, either, so there was homework and classes to keep his brain occupied. And then there was training for basketball. He'd kept up with his physical conditioning during the break between retiring from his middle school's team and starting high school, sure, but Nakatani-kantoku was some kind of demon for training. The club lost a lot of first-years during the first two weeks of classes, probably because no one really liked running until they puked. That didn't even count staying over at the end of practice, which was apparently de rigueur for anyone with ambitions of being a starter. Takao didn't harbor those kinds of ambitions, at least not in the short term, but since their resident Miracle did it he gritted his teeth and stuck it out, too, drilling himself until he was swaying on his feet and refusing to stagger home until Midorima called it quits for the night.
Yeah, the first couple weeks of high school were pretty brutal and passed in a haze of exhaustion. And then, just when he was starting to get his feet under him, Nakatani-kantoku and Ootsubo-san put their heads together, looked over the surviving first-years, and appointed him Midorima's partner.
There weren't any choirs of angels for that, either, though when Takao found out about the rickshaw, there might have been some howls of the damned.
So the point is simply this: this thing that Takao has with Shin-chan, this weird and awkward friendship that they've built up and the partnership that is more seamless than Takao every would have imagined it could be, this thing of theirs pretty much sneaks up on him while he's not paying attention. (Sadly, the Hawk's Eye really only works on purely physical and spatial terms. Alas.) He doesn't even notice it happening, in between finally telling Shin-chan that they've met before and carting him home after the Interhigh prelim finals and training like hell to get ready for the Winter Cup and then dealing with the disappointment of almost having gone all the way. After that, there's the fuss of exams and getting the team settled after the senpai retire, which then has to be done again when the fresh crop of first-years comes in at the start of the new school year. While all that is happening, a logical progression just as natural as the way spring ripens into summer, he learns to understand Shin-chan's relentless drive towards perfection and the weird superstitious kink of his character, and Shin-chan learns to rely on him and their teammates, and somewhere in there it becomes natural to think of Shin-chan as his partner. By the time that Shin-chan recognizes him and their senpai during the game against Rakuzan, Takao thinks of Shin-chan as a friend, too. The recognition is good, but doesn't feel quite as important as it used to, for some reason. He and Shin-chan have more important things to worry about, like paying Rakuzan and Seirin back.
So it catches him completely by surprise the afternoon that he turns around during a brief break in practice and finds himself arrested by the sight of Shin-chan dragging his shirt off. Groaning first-years litter the landscape around them; at least one of them is whimpering for his mother while the second- and third-years snicker breathlessly. Shin-chan is standing a little apart from them all, bare-chested and gleaming in the July sun. He tips his head back and dumps a bottle of water over himself; it runs down his face and throat and body in gleaming rivulets that transfix Takao's attention. Distantly he is aware of the fact that his mouth has run dry; he's staring and he can't help himself, because holy shit, Shin-chan is possibly the hottest thing he's ever seen in his life.
And that's saying something, because he has his own laptop and an internet connection and he knows how to use them. What, he's seventeen, he's got needs.
Lucky for Takao, or maybe not, it's Inoue who notices him staring and not Shin-chan, and Inoue who kindly does him the favor of elbowing him. It's enough to jar Takao out of his rapt contemplation of the water sliding down Shin-chan's abdomen, anyway, which is probably for the best. He looks at Inoue, who just grins at him, knowing. "Probably wanna save that for your own time," he says, winking before he turns away.
He's right, of course, this is totally something that Takao needs to save to think over and process in privacy, where he can have a proper freakout over the fact that Shin-chan has suddenly been revealed as some kind of living demigod of hotness. And over the fact that that his internal gauge for things that he finds compelling enough to file away for consideration when it's just him and his hand has just redlined. That would be the sensible thing, so of course Takao's gaze veers right back to where Shin-chan is standing.
And as Shin-chan wipes his face and puts his glasses back on and catches him staring, Takao realizes that he is so, so screwed.
#aokuro-alldayeveryday
#AoKuro, university
#Ordinary People
"I know this is a crazy idea," Satsuki said, late in the evening, "but hear me out anyway. Have you considered actually telling him how you feel?"
Daiki raised his eyes from the last of the beers from Satsuki's fridge and squinted at her. "What do you mean?"
Satsuki did the thing where she looked down her nose at him, just like her mother did when she was feeling particularly disdainful, and held the pose until Daiki had started to squirm. "I mean, have you considered going to Tetsu-kun and telling him that you like him? Using your actual words and everything? I know that this is a really wacky idea and all, but I bet it's so crazy that it might just work."
Daiki did his best to scowl at her, though it was a pretty pointless effort—it never worked on her anyway. "Oh, fine," he said. "I see how it is. I sit here and pour my heart out to you and you're just going to mock me."
"Dai-chan, if I were going to mock you, you'd know it. I would be laughing, for one thing." Satsuki propped her chin on her hand and studied him. "Also, I don't think you've poured your heart out at all." She held up her hand when he started to protest that. "You've talked an awful lot about Tetsu-kun, I'll give you that, and I'm even willing to be convinced that you think he's pretty neat. What's got me confused is the fact that you haven't already asked him out already. This really isn't like you."
The thing was, she really wasn't mocking him; Daiki knew exactly what that did look like, thanks to long experience. That was the problem with having a best friend who'd known him since before he'd ever lost his baby teeth. Satsuki knew him entirely too well.
That didn't mean he was at all inclined to roll over for her that easily. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Dai-chan." That was all she said, but it was enough: there was something about the patient, utterly inflexible way she said it that made it clear that she was going to drag the truth out of him, one way or another, and that she didn't feel particularly inclined to be merciful about it.
Daiki looked away from her and drained the last of the beer from the bottle without really tasting it. "He's different, okay?"
"He's certainly not your usual type, I'll grant you that."
He winced and wished that it hadn't seemed like such a good idea, once upon a time, to team up for their bar crawls and assorted efforts to find appropriate partners for the night. Satsuki really did know more about him than she had any right to, and it wasn't much comfort to know that he probably knew too much about her in return.
She hummed, tapping her fingers against the table while Daiki avoided her gaze by studying the stack of textbooks next to his elbow. "Really, really not your type at all," she remarked, sounding thoughtful about it. "No offense, Dai-chan, but you tend to like them pretty and easy, and the bustier the better. Tetsu-kun isn't really any of those."
"What are you talking about, Tetsu's plenty hot!" Daiki retorted. He only realized that he'd somehow played into her hands when he turned a glare on her and found her smiling at him. "Well, he is."
She just smiled even wider. "You really do like him, don't you?"
Daiki hunched his shoulders and folded his arms across his chest, refusing to dignify that with an answer.
Satsuki laughed and shook her head. "If that's the case, then really, Dai-chan, why haven't you just said something to him already? I've seen you invite people back to your place by flat-out asking them if they want to fuck. How hard can it possibly be for you to go up to Tetsu-kun and say, 'Hey, Tetsu, I don't know if you've noticed me mooning over you or not, but I really like you, you know'?"
He didn't know which was worse, the way she obviously thought that that sounded anything like him, or—"I'm not mooning!"
The look she gave him was full of pity. "Oh, Dai-chan. You just spent the past two hours telling me all the ways in which Tetsu-kun is the most amazing person in the world. You are so mooning over him."
Daiki opened his mouth to protest that, but Satsuki tilted her head at him, as if to dare him to contradict her, and he thought better of it. He grimaced at her, not that it did any good.
"Seriously, Dai-chan." She wasn't quite laughing at him, but she was getting close to it. "It's very simple. You go up to Tetsu and tell him that you like him, and let things take their natural course. What's so hard about that?"
Daiki looked away again and focused on fiddling with the label on his beer bottle, wishing that it hasn't been the last one in the fridge. She was right, of course—objectively speaking, that was all there was to it. All he really had to do was catch Tetsu some afternoon after classes, or maybe some night when they were all out for the weekend, and just tell him, it was just—just—
He scraped his thumbnail along the edge of the label, peeling it off in soggy little shreds. "He's different, okay?"
Satsuki sounded a little gentler when she said, "Different how?"
Daiki refused to look up, even when she reached over and laid a hand on top of his, murmuring his name. She didn't say anything more than that, but it was enough. She wasn't one to give up, not when she'd decided something mattered. Apparently this did.
In retrospect, deciding to give Satsuki a straight answer when she'd asked what was on his mind might have been a mistake.
"It's Tetsu," he said, finally, when Satsuki's quiet had stretched out and out and out some more, past the point of bearing. "I really like him, okay?" Liked Tetsu's quiet, subtle expressions and his wicked sense of humor and the way Tetsu didn't know the meaning of the word surrender.
"That's not an answer," Satsuki said, or started to say, but she stopped herself. Daiki could feel her watching him, putting the pieces together; when it all clicked, she squeezed his hand. "That's what makes him different, huh? This time it actually matters."
"I guess," Daiki muttered.
She squeezed his hand again. "That's why you're going to have to say something, you know." Sympathetic as she sounded, she also sounded absolutely determined. When Daiki peeked at her, she was smiling again, soft and fond. "If he's that important, he deserves to have you tell him, don't you think?"
Daiki made a face at her. "I hate it when you make sense."
"Lies." She reached over and ruffled his hair. "You love it when I make sense. Saves you the effort of figuring things out for yourself."
He grumbled at her, batting at her hand, for all the good that did him. "Do you really think I have to?"
"I don't think Tetsu-kun is just going to throw himself into your bed if you don't," she said. "Use your words, Dai-chan. I think you'll be surprised at how well it all works out in the end."
"If this goes badly, I'm going to blame it on you," he warned her.
Satsuki smiled at him, her eyes dancing. "That's a risk I'm willing to take, Dai-chan. Don't worry. I'm sure it will work out just fine."
When events ultimately proved that she was right, she just smiled at the way Tetsu's hand fit in Daiki's and murmured, "I told you so," and that was all.
#branch-and-root
Ordinary People: how cuddling works now
#BEWARE OF FEELS
So the first get-together after the three of them worked out their arrangement? Yeah, it was weird and kind of awkward. Not that Daiki really figured it was going to be anything but, all things considered. He braced himself for it, but even so, he wasn't quite prepared for the way Satsuki looked at the three of them when they came in together, him on one side of Tetsu and Kagami on the other. She hadn't said much about it since Daiki'd tried to explain it to her the other day, and he'd hoped that her silence had meant that she'd reconciled herself to the idea.
So much for that.
It wasn't like Daiki hadn't had a lot of practice in pretending to be perfectly oblivious, so he put it to good use and greeted her like everything was normal, stuck his contribution to the evening's festivities in the fridge, and immediately jumped into the friendly wrangle over what kind of takeout to order. What, Satsuki was gnawing on her lower lip and looking worried? Naw, he hadn't noticed that at all. Hadn't noticed Midorima giving him the hairy eyeball, either, or the fact that Kise was conspicuously absent, or the fact that even Mitobe seemed to be a little nonplussed when he looked at the three of them. Way he figured it, all they had to do was go along with it for a little while, and eventually it would become the new normal. They just had to get there first, preferably without talking about it.
Naturally, it was Midorima who raised his eyebrows when Tetsu claimed one end of the couch and settled himself right between Daiki and Kagami, fitting himself right into the curve of Daiki's body and letting Kagami slouch against him and drape a casual hand over his knee. (Daiki thought that maybe the three of them shouldn't have fit together quite so easily, but fucked if he was going to question it. He wasn't stupid and he knew perfectly well that it was a really bad idea to look gift horses in the mouth.) "I can't make up my mind," Midorima said after looking them over. "Kuroko, are you crazy? Or just masochistic?"
Tetsu probably felt the way Daiki froze at the blunt question—fuck, Kagami probably noticed, too—but he didn't say anything about that. Instead he leveled one of his calmest expressions on Midorima, the one that signaled that he was deeply annoyed, and said, "No, I don't believe so. If I were inclined to describe myself at all—which I am not—I would simply say that I am very lucky."
For a moment, Daiki thought that that would have frozen even Midorima to the bone. Then Midorima snorted. "Is that what we're calling it now?"
Well, no one could say that Midorima didn't have big brass ones.
"It's what I'm calling it," Tetsu said, still perfectly calm, before transferring his attention to Satsuki. "Have we left you and Mitobe-san enough room?"
Satsuki was a little slower to answer than usual, probably because she was looking at Tetsu, considering him maybe. "It's fine, Tetsu-kun," she said at last.
"That's good." Tetsu deliberately snuggled himself down between Daiki and Kagami—there was no other way to describe the little wriggle of it as he wormed himself deeper into the space between them but that—and smiled calmly at them all. "Should we start the movie now, or wait until after the food arrives?"
Midorima snorted again, shaking his head just a bit. "May as well start it up," he said. "If only to keep you from snapping at people."
Tetsu gave him a long, steady look. "You know, I tell my students that they shouldn't start anything that they aren't willing to deal with all the way to the end." He paused, just long enough for that to sink in. "Perhaps you should consider that."
"Okay!" Satsuki said, too loud and bright, bouncing to her feet. "I think I need a drink. Does anyone else want a drink while I'm up?"
"Yeah," Daiki said, while Midorima and Tetsu tried to stare each other down. "That would be great, Satsuki, if you don't mind?"
"No trouble at all, Dai-chan!" She made inquiring noises at Mitobe and Kagami, too, and then said, "Midorin, would you mind giving me a hand?"
It was pretty much the exact opposite of subtle, but whatever. It worked to break the deadlock and Midorima only grumbled a little as he pried himself out of the armchair to go lend Satsuki a hand in the kitchen.
Daiki let out a slow breath then as some of the edged tension melted out of the air. "Tetsu—"
He didn't really know what to say—what he wanted to say, because this was—Tetsu had been the one who'd kept up all his friendships, inexplicable as they sometimes were.
Tetsu seemed to get it anyway, because he smiled at him, small, a bit rueful. "It's all right," he said. "I thought this would happen." He slipped his fingers between Daiki's and set his other hand over Kagami's. "We'll just have to be patient while everyone adjusts."
Kagami huffed a soft laugh at that, amused. "And while you refuse to budge an inch."
Tetsu's smile was serene. "Naturally," he agreed, and tugged Kagami a little closer, snuggling in and making himself comfortable between them. "I already have what I want."
And really, what could anyone say in the face of that?
#kagasexual
#MidoTaka, Rule 63 'verse, makeup help
#in which Em fakes all cosmetic knowledge
"You know what the absolutely ridiculous part is?" Takao squinted, eyebrows beetling, and reached out to rub her thumb against Midorima's cheekbone again. "The ridiculous part is how completely and utterly redundant this is. You're stupid pretty, Shin-chan, and I mean that."
Midorima strained all her willpower in an effort not to color at that, but she felt her cheeks warm anyway. The only thing to do was hope that the layer of foundation and now the blush that Takao was blending into her cheekbones was enough to conceal that fact. "Stupid pretty."
Takao grinned at her, eyes bright. "Yep. Stupid pretty."
Midorima pursed her lips—she wasn't going to ask, she wasn't going to ask, she wasn't—"I get the impression that I'm supposed to take that as a compliment, but I don't quite see why."
Takao dropped the little sponge on the vanity and closed up the little pot of crème blush. "Don't you?" She sorted through the other little trays and pots and compacts and tubes, selecting several apparently at random. "Glasses off. I'm gonna do your eyes next."
"Do you have to?" Midorima objected, even as she took her glasses off and the sharp, bright edges of the room softened and blurred.
"Mm, I don't think I have to do very much." Takao leaned close, peering at her. "Even your eyelashes are fantastic. Shin-chan, is there anything that you're not good at?"
In the mouth of anyone else, that would have had an edge to it, would have been full of the astringent bitterness of jealousy and resentment or, at best, would have been heavy with the rueful sense of the speaker's own shortcomings. Takao was different from anyone Midorima had ever known, because she only sounded admiring. Delighted, even, with no resentment to sour it.
"Which one of us is doing my makeup again?" she asked.
Takao laughed. "Me, but only because your parents are super old-fashioned and strict and you needed to learn how to do it from somewhere." She brandished a tube. "Seriously, close your eyes now."
Midorima obeyed, trying not to flinch as Takao began brushing things against her lids and her eyelashes. The sensation was strange, soft and ticklish; Takao had leaned in close again, close enough that Midorima could feel the air move whenever Takao huffed out the little thoughtful noises that she made when she was concentrating especially hard. Something about that gave Midorima a strange feeling, restless and jumpy.
She made herself hold still in spite of that feeling, curling her fingers tight around the folded frame of her glasses, until Takao hummed. "Are you done yet?" Whatever Takao had done made her eyelashes feel strange and heavy; she itched to rub them.
She heard the click of some small plastic container as Takao set it down, then felt Takao's fingers against the underside of her chin. They were cool and Midorima obediently tilted her chin up when she felt the pressure of them.
"Really, really stupid pretty," Takao said again, a peculiar hushed tone in her voice.
"What does that even mean?" Midorima asked, exasperated, wondering whether it was safe to open her eyes again or not.
Takao laughed, soft. "It means you're so pretty that it makes me kind of stupid, Shin-chan."
Then next thing Midorima knew, there was a strange soft pressure against her mouth, warm and a little bit moist. When she opened her eyes, her field of vision was full of Takao, watching her from bare centimeters away because Takao was kissing her.
Midorima froze and Takao drew back. She smiled, small and a little wry. "Like I said. Stupid pretty."
There were a hundred different thoughts tumbling around inside Midorima's skull, so many that they ran together into a strange staticky roar. She stared at Takao instead and passed her tongue over her lips, tasting the candied stickiness of Takao's preferred lip gloss on them, and swallowed hard. "You're not stupid."
Takao went wide-eyed, startled at that. "Shin-chan..." She smiled then, something softer than her usual cheerful grin, practically shy. "I'm not?"
Staticky brain or not, Midorima knew the answer to this one; it came straight from her best instincts. "No, you're not."
She'd seen Takao red with exertion and with laughter, but she'd never seen her go pink like this, color blooming across her cheeks, soft and happy. "Oh." Takao said it like she was wondering over it, quiet and amazed. Then she shook herself, turning brisk again. "Okay, lipstick and then we're done."
"It can wait." Midorima reached out to draw Takao close again and was pleased by how easily Takao let her do it.
They never did get around to finishing the makeup tutorial that afternoon.
#andreaphobia
#Aomine and Kuroko, library
#I am not making any of this up
In principle, Tetsuya approved wholeheartedly of his university's dedication to academics and its insistence that even the athletes its sports programs had recruited purely on physical merit would graduate with meaningful degrees. That was what academic integrity was all about, and he applauded the school's dedication to its intellectual standards.
In practice, Tetsuya fulfilled his twenty hours a week of work-study in the library's writing lab and tended to look forward to the portion of his hours that was reserved specifically for the student athletes with mingled dread and resignation. It wasn't that his student athlete peers were stupid, precisely—he was acquainted with a few members of the tennis team who were actually brilliant, a guy on the baseball team who was just less interested in academics than he was baseball, at least one member of the football team who was terrifyingly intelligent (emphasis on the terrifying), and a couple of guys on the basketball team who were deeply impatient with the requirement that they attend five hours of peer tutoring a week, with good reason.
It was just—well, he would have defied any of his fellow writing tutors not to look forward to the Aomine Sessions without feeling a certain amount of trepidation.
"So," Tetsuya said after Aomine had come slouching down to his cubicle and settled in for their latest session. "What can I help you with this week?"
It wasn't that Aomine was a bad guy. Far from it. He was friendly enough, even kind of charming in his own way, and not at all hard on the eyes.
He was also absolutely impossible.
"So I guess I have to write another paper," he announced, as if having to write several papers for a writing class was an incredible burden. Tetsuya waited for him to dig around in his backpack; the assignment sheet he produced was wrinkled and stained with something unknowable. "Maybe you can help me with it?"
Tetsuya took the paper from him gingerly, holding it by the corners; the first thing he saw, right at the top of the page, was the due date. "This is due tomorrow."
Aomine rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah?"
That didn't mean anything—perhaps Aomine had taken his lecture about time management to heart and had already begun working on the paper. (Perhaps pigs would someday fly.) Surely anything was possible. Tetsuya took a deep breath anyway, told himself not to be pessimistic, and smiled at Aomine. "So," he said. "How far along are you?"
Aomine scratched his chin. "Well, I dunno. I guess it's supposed to be an argument? I was thinking I could write about energy drinks."
"Energy drinks," Tetsuya repeated cautiously, because he had not yet forgotten the causes paper and Aomine's initial decision to write about why catsup was delicious. That particular tutoring session was going to live forever in infamy.
But perhaps the leopard could change his spots: Aomine brightened up some. "Yeah, energy drinks. I was thinking about talking about how they're really not all that effective or something."
Tetsuya blinked and consulted the assignment sheet. That actually seemed consonant with the assignment as written, which was a promising start. "Okay," he said, feeling the first flush of optimism. "So tell me what you're thinking."
Aomine stared at him. "That's about as far as I've gotten."
Optimism died a tragically early death. "Right," Tetsuya sighed. "Have you done any of the research you'll need yet?"
"Research?"
"You're going to need to cite some sources in this one," Tetsuya told him and at least had the satisfaction of seeing the first dawning light of panic cross Aomine's face. He sighed again and nudged his mouse to wake his computer up. "Let's start there."
"You're the best, Tetsu," Aomine told him, pretty much beaming at him.
"I try," Tetsuya said, dry, and hoped privately that Aomine was a better basketball player than he was a scholar.
#itsthechangingoftheseasons
#AoKuro, pool
#Kuroko has never pretended not to be evil
Daiki has seen fish bellies that have more color to them than Tetsu does, which is at once hysterically funny and simultaneously really kinda sad. Like, seriously, Tetsu is pretty damn pale—one time he took his shirt off at practice and Kise made a big production about falling over and clutching his eyes and claiming that he'd been struck blind, at least until Akashi told him to stop being ridiculous and to go run some more laps if he had that much energy—and no matter how much time he spends in the sun, he never tans.
Instead, he burns.
Daiki has lost count of the number of times he's seen Tetsu with his nose and cheeks burned red thanks to a practice running late—not that he keeps track of things like that, not really, except insofar as he keeps track of most things having to do with Tetsu. During the summer, Tetsu walks around smelling of sweat and zinc oxide and aloe vera gel when he inevitably forgets to reapply his SPF 9000 in a timely manner. Those scents are so much a part of Daiki's conception of Tetsu that once, during that bad period between the end of things at Teikou and the start of things in high school, Daiki caught himself missing Tetsu so badly it made his stomach hurt a little. Turned out it was because the girl he was sitting next to on the train smelled like the same brand of sunscreen Tetsu used. Not that it made Daiki feel any better, once he figured out that was what was getting to him.
Fortunately that period's over and done with and they're never going back there, so help him, so he doesn't have to worry about getting blindsided by sudden bouts of visceral sense-memories anymore. Well. Not exactly.
Tetsu draws his knees up and leans his cheek against them. "No hurry," he says when Daiki fails to move right away. "Whenever you're ready, of course."
It's Tetsu, of course, so the dry civility of it does more to spur Daiki into acting than any amount of yelling might. It's just—
Tetsu's spine makes a single smooth curve from his nape down to the waistband of his swim trunks. They're a little loose and sit low on Tetsu's hips, which means that Daiki can see just the faintest shadow of the pit end of his spine, a bare suggestion of what the trunks cover up. Tetsu's skin is sleek and pale over the definition of his muscles, and the problem Daiki has right now is that he's pretty damn sure that it is not fair for Tetsu to hand him a bottle of sunscreen and give him permission to run his hands all over that skin and then force him to stop, because this is after all a public swimming pool.
Man. It's like Tetsu expects him to have self-control or something. Surely he ought to know better than that by now.
Then again, there are an awful lot of little kids around. Now might be a really good time to develop some self-control.
Daiki takes a deep breath and fills his palm with sunscreen; it's thick and goopy and white and smells exactly like Tetsu to him. It goes on smoothly enough, sinking into Tetsu's skin as he sweeps his palms across Tetsu's shoulders and up his nape, down the line of his back to where his waist tapers in at his hips. Tetsu hums as Daiki massages the sunscreen into his skin. There's too much shrieking and laughter from the kids splashing and playing in the pool for Daiki to hear it, but he feels it, a subtle vibration beneath his palms and the way Tetsu softens and relaxes, going pliant.
He works his hands up and down Tetsu's back just for that, even after he's pretty sure he's gotten sunscreen everywhere it's supposed to go. And then some, maybe, because Tetsu's trunks are a little loose. Daiki strokes his fingers beneath the waistband, running them along the curve of his ass and fingering the cleft of it, at least until Tetsu clears his throat. "That seems like enough."
"Are you sure?" Daiki dips his fingers a little lower—what, it's not like any of the kids or their mamas can see what he's up to.
"Quite enough," Tetsu says firmly.
He withdraws his fingers and brushes the tips of them up Tetsu's spine. "If you say so," he says as he caps the bottle again.
"I really do." Tetsu's face is pink, but Daiki would bet anything that it's not because of the sun. Well, that's only fair, considering, he thinks, at least until Tetsu adds, perfectly casual, "Of course, you're free to save that for later."
"You are a terrible person," Daiki says, because his brain is already flashing forward to the things that they might get up to later, in the privacy of their hotel room, and yep, it's definitely going to be a couple of minutes before he's going to be able to get up and get in the water.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Tetsu smiles at him, perfectly composed, and leaves him to hit the water.
Daiki ruefully adds the scent of sunscreen to his mental list of inappropriate aphrodisiacs and does his best to think unsexy thoughts in the meantime.
#skyfireflies
#AoKuro, career-ending injury
#Aomine has his doubts about this one
Daiki stared at the bandages on his knee, brooding over them in grim silence. Tetsuya sat nearby, keeping one eye on his book and the other on Daiki, and held his peace. Daiki wasn't the type to keep things bottled up for very long; all one really needed to was have a bit of patience. Eventually it would all come boiling out.
Indeed, it took about one and a half chapters to get there, but eventually Daiki cleared his throat. "Tetsu," he said, hoarse, with the raw edge of his fear lurking beneath the surface of that, vast as the submerged volume of an iceberg. "Tetsu, what if I never play again?"
Tetsuya tucked his thumb between the pages of his book to mark his place and looked at Daiki. "You're going to play again." He drew on all the skills he'd learned as a kindergarten teacher and projected every last iota of calm he possessed in the hope that Daiki would listen to him and be soothed.
Unfortunately, it was easier to pacify the average five-year-old than it was to deal with Daiki when he'd worked himself up. He clutched his blanket, fists gone white-knuckled, and turned a thousand-yard stare on Tetsuya. "But what if I can't?"
Perhaps it was time to be a bit more direct. Tetsuya lifted his eyebrows just a bit. "Don't you think you're being a little melodramatic?"
It was a manifestly ridiculous question; obviously Daiki didn't feel that he was being melodramatic in the slightest. His expression was tragic, dark-eyed and clearly miserable. Tetsuya supposed that he could understand the root of Daiki's fear—a career-ending injury was every professional athlete's nightmare, of course, and basketball always had been at the center of Daiki's world.
Nevertheless.
"Daiki," Tetsuya said, very clearly and precisely. "You tripped on a sidewalk and cut your knee. You had to get a couple of stitches, and that was only because you raised a big fuss over the bandaids not being sufficient treatment. You probably won't even have a scar. You are going to be just fine."
For a moment—a single, blissful moment—Tetsuya dared to hope that Daiki was ready to actually listen to the voice of common sense.
Then Daiki heaved a sigh, one that probably came up all the way from his toes, and said, mournful, "But what if I'm not?"
Tetsuya sighed, too.
It was going to be a very long week until the stitches came out.
#gunmetal-blue
#AoKuro, martial arts AU
#making it up as I go along
Tetsu's step was so soft that Daiki barely felt the trembling of the floorboards that heralded his approach. He stayed where he was, sprawled across the porch and enjoying the patch of sunshine that was turning the insides of his eyelids rosy. Tetsu's footsteps paused when Tetsu was still a little distance from him; he stood in silence for the space of several breaths before Daiki heard the exasperated huff of his breath. "I thought you were going to meditate."
Daiki cracked his eyes open just enough to make out the shape of Tetsu standing in the open door, arms folded across his chest. "Who says I'm not?"
"I should think I know the difference between meditating and laziness." Tetsu stepped out onto the porch, his feet silent against smooth-polished wood. His shadow fell across Daiki's face, blocking the sunshine. "Do they let you get away with this at Touou?"
Daiki opened his eyes the rest of the way and grinned up at him. "Do you think they have any choice?"
Tetsu didn't really smile at that; if anything, the corners of his mouth went tighter, though it was difficult to make out his features when he was backlit by the sun like that. "I thought you were here to train."
"Kagami went out," Daiki explained. "Said he had to run errands or something." Tetsu's proximity was suggestive. He reached out, meaning to grab Tetsu's ankle.
Tetsu stepped aside, evading his hand. "There are other people training here besides Kagami-kun."
Daiki grimaced when the sunlight fell across his face, right into his eyes, and shaded them again. "Yeah, but he's the interesting one." Tetsu probably thought he was out of arm's reach; Daiki grinned at him and snapped his hand out, faster than even Tetsu could react, and wrapped his fingers around Tetsu's ankle. "Well, not the only interesting one."
"Aomine-kun, please let go." Tetsu's voice was perfectly even.
Daiki grinned at him, stroking his fingers over the bare skin just above Tetsu's sock, tracing the tips of them over the bones of his ankle and sliding them up under the fall of Tetsu's hakama to tease against his calf. "Are you going to make me?"
Tetsu lifted his eyebrows just a bit. "I suppose I should be flattered that you think I could."
Daiki gave that due consideration. "Nooo," he said after a moment, following the curve of Tetsu's calf up and finding the soft skin behind his knee; Tetsu's mouth twitched just a bit. Yeah, he'd thought Tetsu might still be ticklish there. "I don't really think you could, but I know you'd try anyway." He traced his fingers against the skin behind Tetsu's knee, watching Tetsu doing his best not to laugh, and grinned again. "You don't know how to give up."
"That's true enough," Tetsu conceded. It sounded a bit strained. "Are you going to come train or not?"
"I think I'd rather stay here." It was quiet and secluded; no one but Tetsu had been by in all the hours he'd been drowsing on this porch. Daiki rubbed a circle against the inside of Tetsu's knee, slow and inviting. "Why don't you stick around and keep me company?"
Tetsu's voice had dropped; it went husky when Daiki stroked his hand higher. "Aomine-kun..."
Daiki grinned when Tetsu took a step back, pulling away, and let his fingers slide back down Tetsu's leg. He stretched out his hand to Tetsu. "Why don't you come on down here and join me, huh?"
Tetsu gave him a long look. "I see that you're giving me no choice."
"That was kind of the idea." Daiki smiled when Tetsu shook his head and leaned down to take his hand.
The next few seconds went by very quickly: Tetsu wrapped his fingers around Daiki's, sliding them into place and twisting just so, until the torque of his wrist sent a bolt of pain up Daiki's arm and he had to move to relieve the stress on his muscles. Daiki yelped, even as Tetsu pressed his advantage and twisted Daiki's arm behind him, fuck fuck fuck, why had he forgotten that Tetsu was most dangerous when his hands were completely empty? "Tetsu!"
Tetsu did not let up his pressure on Daiki's arm and even went so far as to press his knee against the small of Daiki's back. "I think you should know that Aida-san sent me to find you," he announced while Daiki whined at the pressure. "She sounded like she had some things she wanted to work on. Now, are you coming or am I going to have to drag you?"
Daiki, his cheek pressed against satin-smooth boards and his arm creaking in its socket, considered his options and found that none of them were particularly good. But he didn't really want to deal with an injury and hurting Tetsu to get free was out of the question, so that left him one choice. "All right, fine, geez, let go already, I'll come train."
"I thought you might see it that way." Tetsu released his arm and stood; by the time Daiki had shaken his arm out and clambered to his feet, he was smooth and unrumpled as ever. "I do think we should hurry. She doesn't like to be kept waiting."
Daiki settled his gi more or less into place and made a face at Tetsu. "All right, fine, since you insist. Wouldn't wanna make Aida-san unhappy."
"It's generally not a good idea," Tetsu agreed, tranquilly enough. "Shall we go?"
Daiki laughed in spite of himself and fell into step with Tetsu. "You never do give up until you get your way, do you?"
"Of course not." Tetsu looked at him, wearing the tiniest of smiles. "I learned that from you, didn't I?" He smiled a bit more widely as Daiki blinked at him, caught off guard by that. "Come on, Aomine-kun. Aida-san is waiting." And if he said nothing more about it, well, what more was there to say?
#Aomine, solo
#the only one who can make Aomine come is Aomine himself
Tetsuya permitted himself a moment to absorb the details of the scene before him—the pillow beneath Daiki's hips and the supple curve of Daiki's body, the wide splay of Daiki's legs and the slow steady flex of his wrist, the soft wet sounds the dildo made as Daiki played it in and out of his ass and the eyes-closed look of utter concentration on Daiki's face as he fucked himself—and committed them to memory for later consideration before he finally cleared his throat. "So is this something you do every time I go out of town for business, or is this a special occasion?"
Daiki, who never had grasped the meaning of the word shame, just cracked his eyes open and grinned, lazy, without missing a beat. "Well, you know how lonely I get." He pressed the dildo deep and shuddered, slow and sensuous. "Feel free to pitch in, if you wanna."
Tetsuya leaned against the doorframe. "No, thank you," he said. "You seem to have things well in hand."
Daiki was still laughing when he finally adjusted the angle of his stroke and came, arching taut and shuddering through his pleasure.
Eventually he relaxed again, breathing deeply as he sprawled against their bed, spent. "Fuck," he said, and it wasn't entirely clear to Tetsuya whether that was meant to be an observation or an invitation.
He chose to take it as the latter as he came away from the door, shedding an article of clothing with each step: jacket, tie, vest, shirt, slacks, underwear, socks. Daiki observed the progress of this with open interest, turning his head to watch and not making any move to do more than that, until Tetsuya slid a knee onto the bed. "I see you enjoyed the show."
"Yes," Tetsuya agreed, throwing a leg across Daiki's chest and kneeling over him. "You might say that." He reached down, curving his palm around the back of Daiki's head. "Why don't you do something about that?"
"Bossy, bossy," Daiki said, but he lifted his head anyway and opened his mouth for it when Tetsuya guided his cock against his lips. He took it easily, humming as Tetsuya rolled his hips forward in automatic response to the wet heat of his mouth, and his eyes crinkled up like he wanted to laugh when Tetsuya groaned.
Tetsuya slid his thumb through Daiki's hair, damp with sweat, and braced his other hand against the headboard as he fucked Daiki's mouth. When he'd stepped away from the door, he'd had a vague intention of taking his time, but it had been a long week away from home and the pressure of Daiki's mouth wrapped insistent pleasure around every nerve that he had. It wasn't long before he was rocking his hips in short, urgent jerks, breathing hard as he trembled on the edge of coming entirely undone. Then Daiki hummed again, mouth and throat vibrating around him, and Tetsuya fell, groaning as pleasure burst through him and tightening his fingers in Daiki's hair.
He caught himself against the headboard when the heat finally released him, breathing hard and shuddering as Daiki let him slide out of his mouth with one last flick of his tongue against sensitive skin. Daiki grinned at him and slide his palms up Tetsuya's thighs, kneading the tension out of them as Tetsuya eased himself back. "So hey," he said, "welcome home."
Tetsuya laughed, helpless, and brushed his fingers against Daiki's cheek. "It's good to be back."
#minatu
#Aomine/Fem!Kuroko, married with children
#fluffier like a down comforter wrapped around a piece of broken glass
So the thing is, when it comes to the kids, Daiki is a hulking 192-centimeter pushover. When Tetsuna stops to consider this fact, she supposes that it doesn't really surprise her all that much. After all, as Satsuki-chan often points out, sometimes it's difficult to tell Daiki apart from the kids, and on certain fronts, it's clear that Daiki is never ever going to grow up. It's only natural that their kids pretty well have him wrapped around their fingers, because a lot of the time, the only way to tell him apart from them is by comparing their heights.
Well. Perhaps that is an exaggeration. Besides, she's always had a soft spot for Daiki's transparent zest for life. It was one of the things that drew her to him in the first place and the thing she missed most when he lost his way there for a while, and it was the thing she was most grateful to recover when she helped guide Seirin and Kagami-kun through their matches against the various members of the Generation of Miracles. If having that back means occasionally having to deal with Daiki's excesses, well, Tetsuna made her peace with that long ago.
It's probably a good thing that she did, she thinks, because the kids can play Daiki like a violin.
She's standing back, tucked in the doorway from the living room to the kitchen and unobserved by either Daiki or their youngest, when she has the latest opportunity to observe this in action. The kids have decided to take up their latest pet cause—hah, pet cause, somewhere Izuki-senpai is snickering and he doesn't even know why—with Daiki.
Daiichi is their strategist; though he's the older one, he lets Sumire take the lead, which is a solid tactical move on his part. Sumire takes after Tetsuna—has her hair and her eyes and is particularly good at mimicking Tetsuna's most earnest expressions, or so Tetsuna is reliably informed—and the sad truth of the matter is that Daiki is pretty much defenseless against their daughter's wiles. She's launched this particular campaign by going to Daiki, who automatically picks her up and settles her in his lap when she holds her arms out to him. Once she's settled to her satisfaction, she looks up at him, eyes wide and solemn, and says, "Daddy, why don't we have a puppy?"
It's a good move; Tetsuna silently congratulates Daiichi for it, because it immediately puts Daiki on the defense. He flounders for a minute, clearly caught off his guard, and sputters. "Why do you ask?"
"Because." Sumire screws up her face and carefully begins counting things off on her fingers. "Mariko-chan has a puppy, and so does Yuusuke-kun, and Aiko-chan has a kitty. Natsumi-chan has both a puppy and a kitty." She lays the last one down with the air of someone playing a trump card. She's named nearly the whole of her social circle, which Tetsuna suspects is at least part of the impetus behind Sumire's newfound desire for a puppy. One must keep up with one's peers, after all.
Daiki blinks a little at the careful recitation. "Well," he says, carefully, "that's very interesting, but I'm not entirely sure why that means we should have a puppy."
Sumire gives him a wide-eyed look of such innocence that Tetsuna is honestly impressed. "Because," she says, "Uncle Kagami says that every kid should have a pet growing up, but I like puppies better than kitties."
It is a masterful stroke; if Tetsuna hadn't already heard Daiichi carefully coaching her on the point, she would have been tempted to applaud it. One of the things that Daiki has not outgrown is his deep-seated rivalry with Kagami-kun, and the merest fact that Kagami-kun's daughter has a kitten is possibly the only reason Daiki needs to go out and find Sumire the puppy she so earnestly desires. Tetsuna sees it on his face and decides that this is the opportune moment to intervene.
She clears her throat gently, before Daiki can commit them to an irreversible course of action, and it's just in time, too. Daiki glances up and looks both guilty and relieved; Sumire merely frowns and looks thwarted. "Dinner is almost ready," Tetsuna tells them. "Sumire, go find your brother and wash your hands, okay?"
Sumire sighs and slides off Daiki's lap, suspending the campaign for the time being. Daiki picks himself up off the couch, looking rueful, and comes over to wrap his arms around her. "Saved in the nick of time," he says against her ear.
"I noticed that." Tetsuna tips her head to the side just a bit, smiling when his lips brush against her jaw. "May I suggest a script for the next time they bring this up? Try, 'Ask your mother. If she says yes, then sure, we can get a puppy.'"
Daiki pulls back a bit and looks at her, curious. "And when they finally get up the guts to do that, what are you going to say?"
"That I'll think about it." Tetsuna smiles just a bit. "This ought to be good for at least a few months of good behavior, don't you think?"
Daiki absorbs that and grins. "You're a terrible, evil woman, I hope you know that."
"Naturally," Tetsuna agrees, and lets him steal a kiss from her. "Isn't that why you love me?"
"One of the reasons, yeah." He steals another kiss, then yelps when she swats him. "Hey!"
"You're supposed to wash your hands, too," Tetsuna reminds him. "As a good example and role model for our children."
He rolls his eyes at her, but heads for the kitchen sink anyway. As he turns on the water and Tetsuna moves to transfer their meal to the table, he says, "You know you don't have to say yes, right? If you still miss him."
He's very studiously focusing on lathering up his hands, which is his way. He won't ever embarrass her by noticing something she'd rather not remark upon, like the way she sometimes gets misty-eyed over Nigou, the very best of dogs, even to this day.
"I know that," Tetsuna says, after a moment. "But Kagami-kun isn't wrong, you know. And I think it's just about time."
"Well, as long as you're sure," Daiki says, accepting her word for it as he rinses his hands and dries them off.
"I'm sure," Tetsuna tells him, and steals a kiss of her own before the pounding of feet coming down the stairs alert them to the imminent arrival of their children.
#lowboys
#MidoTaka, Married AU
#When writing id fic go big or go home
"You know," Kise said, thoughtfully, as he tweaked one of the flower arrangements, "if you'd asked me before this all went down, I'd have sworn on my mother's grave that Midorimacchi was the one who'd end up being a bridezilla."
"Your mother doesn't have a grave," Akashi said. "She's alive and well and living in Chiba. Does this look straight to you?" He eyed the garland he'd just pinned up, frowning at it critically.
"There's nothing straight about this wedding," Aomine said, lounging at the altar and not actually doing anything to help with the decorating. "Ow! Tetsu! That hurt!" He clutched his ribs, rubbing them and sulking until it became clear that no one was paying him any mind.
"That joke wasn't funny the first time you made it." Kuroko shook his fist out and studied the garlands draped along the aisle. "They look fine to me, Akashi-kun." He resumed winding the white ribbons around the candelabra.
"Of course they look fine to you," Aomine said. "You're not the crazy one."
"Not so loud," Kise hissed. "He'll hear you."
"No, he won't, he's in the kitchen and freaking out over the wedding cake." Aomine shrugged when they all turned to look at him. "What, I was hungry. I thought maybe Murasakibara would have something I could snack on. Then I realized that there was something wrong with the petit fours and got the hell out of there."
There was a moment of silence while they contemplated a world in which someone could conceivably find fault with something Murasakibara had baked with his own hands. At length, Kise shook his head sadly. "Bridezilla," he pronounced. "Definitely."
Akashi left off fussing with the garlands and reached for his phone. "I'll let Shintarou know that he needs to come and calm his fiancé down. Again."
"You'd think he'd be getting tired of that by now," Aomine observed. "You know, considering."
"I think it's sweet, really," Kuroko said. "Takao-kun just wants everything to be perfect for their big day."
Kise shook his head and added another spray of baby's breath to his flower arrangement. "If any of you decide you want to get married, I will pay you to elope. I mean it. I will write you a check, I swear, just so long as you promise to never make me do this again."
Aomine brightened at that. "How big a check?" he asked, and followed that up immediately by hollering at Momoi as she passed through the hall on some errand of her own. "Hey, Satsuki, Kise says he'll pay us to get hitched, how about it?"
"DREAM ON, DAI-CHAN!" she yelled back, not even breaking stride.
Aomine settled back on his hands. "Well, damn," he sighed. "Ow! Tetsu, stop that!" He rubbed the back of his head. "What was that for?"
"Figure it out yourself," Kuroko said, frosty, tying off the last ribbon.
"What?" Aomine appealed to the rest of them as Kuroko stalked out. "What did I do wrong?"
Kise only shook his head, and Akashi said, "One hardly knows where to begin." He snapped his fingers. "Come here and hold this up for me, I think I can make it hang more evenly."
Aomine slouched over to hold up the garland as directed, but no matter how much he pestered them, they refused to explain what he'd done to earn that head-slap.
It wasn't until long after Midorima and Takao's wedding that he figured it out, but when he did, he was willing to admit that okay, yeah, he'd definitely earned that head-slap fair and square.
And Kise's check was enough to cover the elopement and a pleasant honeymoon in the South Pacific, so it worked out pretty well for everybody in the end.
#yorimei
#MidoTaka, Midorima's unconscious seduction
#sometimes the clue trout stings a bit when it slaps you in the face
So the thing that Takao feels is important to remember is that first of all, he had no idea that Midorima Shintarou was going to enroll at Shuutoku when he set his own sights on Shuutoku—no idea at all, complete cluelessness on his part, it was a complete shock to meet Midorima there. Takao selected Shuutoku for his own reasons and frankly it was a toss-up between Shuutoku (sterling reputation, fantastic basketball team and coach, one of the three kings of Tokyo) and Kaijou (Kasamatsu-san! plus all those other amenities like a fantastic school and basketball team and so forth). The presence or absence of any one of the Generation of Miracles would have been a matter of supreme indifference to him, if he'd even realized they were in play. In the end, not even Kasamatsu-san's manifold charms were enough to outweigh the fact that Takao had zero desire to commute to Kanagawa on a daily basis, so Shuutoku it was. Shin-chan was something in the way of a surprise bonus—a cosmic compensation for giving up on Kasamatsu-san, perhaps.
Takao is convinced that the cosmos has a bizarre sense of humor; Shin-chan probably knows this too, at least in his heart of hearts, though he refuses to own up to it.
Second, Takao didn't start out by being fixated on Midorima in particular or anything. For one thing, that would have been going from acceptable levels of earnest, sportsmanlike declarations of eternal rivalry and crossing over into creepy, stalkerish behavior. For another, the members of the Generation of Miracles were more like a faceless blur in the wake of that humiliating, crushing defeat—who could fixate on a single member when all five (well, six, but that didn't sink in at the time) had united to triple their score? What Takao really remembered from that day was the stinging ache of knowing himself to have been utterly surpassed, that he had just seen basketball played at a level so far above him that he had a better chance of reaching the moon first, and the insidious internal voice that whispered that it was no good, he might as well give up then and there, because there was no point in playing when there were guys like that out there.
He didn't fixate on any single one of them so much as he fixated on the general idea of them, these guys who were geniuses, miraculously good at basketball and wonders on the court. In the wake of that defeat, Takao took stock of himself and his basketball and thought about it long and hard, and said fuck that every time the thought crossed his mind that it would be easier to just give it up and let it go. Things that were worth doing weren't supposed to be easy, or so he'd heard. Making the Generation of Miracles recognize him and his basketball sure as hell wasn't going to be easy—so what? Every boy needs a hobby.
When it turned out that he was going to have a member of the Generation of Miracles for a teammate, Takao just congratulated himself on his good fortune—Shin-chan's proximity just meant that he wasn't going to have to hunting them down to issue challenges. Wasn't that convenient?
Third, and as far as Takao is concerned, this is the really important part, it's not like he got to Shuutoku and met up with Shin-chan and immediately recognized that Shin-chan was going to be, well, pretty damn important to him. It wasn't like bells rang or choirs sang or the clouds parted for a single beam of sunlight to shine down on them or anything. Insofar as Takao recollects his thoughts upon meeting Shin-chan at Shuutoku, they went something like this: Huh, I think I know that guy—wait, didn't he play for Teikou? I think he did. What the heck was his name, again? Midorima? Something like that. Well, this is handy.
Things like that don't actually happen in real life, and anyway, the first couple months of high school ended up being really busy for Takao, certainly too busy for him to pay attention to anything but not dying of exhaustion. Shuutoku might not have been a premier place to go for folks whose first priority was their academics, sure, but that didn't mean it was a slouch, either, so there was homework and classes to keep his brain occupied. And then there was training for basketball. He'd kept up with his physical conditioning during the break between retiring from his middle school's team and starting high school, sure, but Nakatani-kantoku was some kind of demon for training. The club lost a lot of first-years during the first two weeks of classes, probably because no one really liked running until they puked. That didn't even count staying over at the end of practice, which was apparently de rigueur for anyone with ambitions of being a starter. Takao didn't harbor those kinds of ambitions, at least not in the short term, but since their resident Miracle did it he gritted his teeth and stuck it out, too, drilling himself until he was swaying on his feet and refusing to stagger home until Midorima called it quits for the night.
Yeah, the first couple weeks of high school were pretty brutal and passed in a haze of exhaustion. And then, just when he was starting to get his feet under him, Nakatani-kantoku and Ootsubo-san put their heads together, looked over the surviving first-years, and appointed him Midorima's partner.
There weren't any choirs of angels for that, either, though when Takao found out about the rickshaw, there might have been some howls of the damned.
So the point is simply this: this thing that Takao has with Shin-chan, this weird and awkward friendship that they've built up and the partnership that is more seamless than Takao every would have imagined it could be, this thing of theirs pretty much sneaks up on him while he's not paying attention. (Sadly, the Hawk's Eye really only works on purely physical and spatial terms. Alas.) He doesn't even notice it happening, in between finally telling Shin-chan that they've met before and carting him home after the Interhigh prelim finals and training like hell to get ready for the Winter Cup and then dealing with the disappointment of almost having gone all the way. After that, there's the fuss of exams and getting the team settled after the senpai retire, which then has to be done again when the fresh crop of first-years comes in at the start of the new school year. While all that is happening, a logical progression just as natural as the way spring ripens into summer, he learns to understand Shin-chan's relentless drive towards perfection and the weird superstitious kink of his character, and Shin-chan learns to rely on him and their teammates, and somewhere in there it becomes natural to think of Shin-chan as his partner. By the time that Shin-chan recognizes him and their senpai during the game against Rakuzan, Takao thinks of Shin-chan as a friend, too. The recognition is good, but doesn't feel quite as important as it used to, for some reason. He and Shin-chan have more important things to worry about, like paying Rakuzan and Seirin back.
So it catches him completely by surprise the afternoon that he turns around during a brief break in practice and finds himself arrested by the sight of Shin-chan dragging his shirt off. Groaning first-years litter the landscape around them; at least one of them is whimpering for his mother while the second- and third-years snicker breathlessly. Shin-chan is standing a little apart from them all, bare-chested and gleaming in the July sun. He tips his head back and dumps a bottle of water over himself; it runs down his face and throat and body in gleaming rivulets that transfix Takao's attention. Distantly he is aware of the fact that his mouth has run dry; he's staring and he can't help himself, because holy shit, Shin-chan is possibly the hottest thing he's ever seen in his life.
And that's saying something, because he has his own laptop and an internet connection and he knows how to use them. What, he's seventeen, he's got needs.
Lucky for Takao, or maybe not, it's Inoue who notices him staring and not Shin-chan, and Inoue who kindly does him the favor of elbowing him. It's enough to jar Takao out of his rapt contemplation of the water sliding down Shin-chan's abdomen, anyway, which is probably for the best. He looks at Inoue, who just grins at him, knowing. "Probably wanna save that for your own time," he says, winking before he turns away.
He's right, of course, this is totally something that Takao needs to save to think over and process in privacy, where he can have a proper freakout over the fact that Shin-chan has suddenly been revealed as some kind of living demigod of hotness. And over the fact that that his internal gauge for things that he finds compelling enough to file away for consideration when it's just him and his hand has just redlined. That would be the sensible thing, so of course Takao's gaze veers right back to where Shin-chan is standing.
And as Shin-chan wipes his face and puts his glasses back on and catches him staring, Takao realizes that he is so, so screwed.