A/N: For my friend, RM, as thanks for sharing her romantic paper plane experience.
And for MidoKise Week Theme AU...which was yesterday -.-
In an alternate universe where the Miracles didn't go to middle school together and didn't compete with each other in high school even though they kept playing basketball. I don't know how that works either… But it's college now!
Oh and ps, I started writing this around the same time I wrote Lucky People and that's why Kasamatsu's in this. But don't worry it's still very much a MidoKise fic..
Enjoy~! :DD
"Origami?"
Kise Ryouta's sunflower radiance deflated a little at his senpai's complete and utterly obvious disinterest. Kasamatsu should really pay for his skin products, especially with all the dirt and grit his soles were leaving on Kise's source of income; his face.
"They bring luck" The model pouted, aiming his face ever so subtly away from the line of impact of senpai's basketball shoes.
"Three things" Kasamatsu poked him on the forehead with 3 fingers. "One, you're an idiot"
Kise tried to summon up the proper offended expression, but really, senpai had said the same thing so many times, he could've lip synced it backwards without background music.
"Two, I hope you're not planning to rely on luck against international level college players, this is not high school, and three," -This would've been the time for a dramatic pause, to lift up the tension, but senpai's no nonsense attitude was ruining all the dramatic tension- "It's cranes that bring luck, not fucking whatever the hell that thing is, and you need a thousand of them"
Kise held up the poor excuse for a paper plane, creased with multiple folds and refolds.
"Nee-san… she used to make these for me, all the time, whenever she left for Fashion Week. I remember it starting off as a plane, but I…can't remember anything more"
Kise let the silence drag on to let the words sink for proper dramatic effect.
"What, you think your wonderful sob story is going to make this idea any less stupid?" Kasamatsu-senpai had no respect for dramatic effect. At all. "And stop talking about your sister like she's dead! She-Both of your sisters are rich, famous and happily married"
"But senpaiiii~" Whining worked on everyone but senpai, but Kasamatsu was far from done.
"And you have the nerve to call that piece of recycled garbage, a paper plane, in fact, you've lost the right to ever use the word 'plane' again! Or touch paper, for that matter!"
"It's not like senpai could do it any better" Kise mumbled, only to admit defeat when Kasamatsu produced the ideal paper crane out of the newspaper piece the lady at the food stall had wrapped their takoyaki in.
"Okay, okay, okay, you did it better" Kise flung up his tattered and tortured paper masterpiece in the air "But this is still a paper pla-Aah!"
The plane was snatched off his hand, nails scraping Kise's skin along with it.
"Hey careful! That's my precious dunking hand, you know" Kise snapped at the offender, only to realize it was only another senpai of his. Really, the number was endless. He'd all but have a collection by the end of the term.
"Wouldn't want to ruin his manicure now" Moriyama berated Kobori in perfect seriousness "I heard that girls appreciate smooth hands"
"He plays basketball" Kobori deadpanned back.
"I use hand conditioner" Kise preened, as if that made the situation any better.
"Are you kidding me? Are you f-" Kasamatsu muttered into his palms in disbelief. "Please, oh please, tell me you're joking"
"It's for the girls, Yuki-chan" Moriyama smiles and nods knowingly at Kasamatsu which only served to irritate him further.
"This isn't a basketball team, it's a freakin' circus! Might as well pin our hopes on the freakin' paper cranes!"
The rest of the team stared at Kise's work of art, as if they were questioning its very existence.
"Is that what this is?" Moriyama mused.
"It doesn't look much like a paper crane" Kobori said, straightforward and to the point as ever.
"That's because it's not! It's a paper plane!" Kise defended.
"It looks even less like a plane than a bird"
"How could you say that!?" Kise whined theatrically, genuinely offended.
"IT PROBABLY CAN'T EVEN FLY!"
"IT CAN TOO" "CAN NOT!" "CAN TOO!"
"Oi" Kasamatsu pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing he had long since nipped any idea of origami in the bud, before it could get this far. "Remind me how old you bunch of idiots are again? It's against club rules to have toddlers as members"
"It can too! And what's more, I'll prove it!" Kise tore his precious creation from his senpai's oh-so-cruel hands, and took aim-no that's a lie, when he's not copying, that is to say, borrowing someone else's physical prowess, he had all the grace of a wilted tulip. So he very much aimlessly tossed it in the air.
There was no convenient gust of wind to blow it far, far away. His paper plane must be as stubborn as his eternally grumpy captain when it took a sharp curve downward, and plopped on the striking green hair of an innocent passerby.
Kise promptly hid behind Kasamatsu, despite him being a good third of a foot (11 cm) taller, since he was pretty much resigned to be the baby of the group by now.
Kasamatsu was not amused.
He showed said lack of amusement with a fist to Kise's side, forcing him to come out with a squeak.
The grass haired stranger did not seem amused from what Kise could make out of him and his orange tunic from the distance. Also from the distance, his colour scheme was oddly reminiscent of an expired carrot.
"Hahaha.." Kise mustered a laugh weakly and lifted his hand in an awkward half wave half shrug "..Sorry Carrot-san?"
"I don't think he can hear you, idiot!" Kasamatsu gave him a light shove forwards. "Go and apologize properly!"
"No way! He looks mean and scary!" Kise regressed when he was under social pressure. It was a problem, he was working on it.
"More than our beloved captain?" Moriyama queried, teasingly draping himself over said extremely pissed off and fuming captain.
Kise decided he was too young, talented and pretty to die in the hands of his homicidal senpai, and decided to place his bets on the strange stranger. He took the newspaper crane for luck, just in case.
"And don't come back crying 'senpai senpai' when-!" When you get clocked out of the next spring tournament, is what Kasamatsu-senpai probably meant to say, but Kobori interrupted loudly.
"WHEN YOU NEED LOVE ADVICE!"
"That's what I have Moriyama-senpai for~" Kise sing-songed back in fake falsetto as he merrily skipped towards the grumpy carrot.
"You see, it's a plane!"
"I have motion sickness"
"But with paper~"
"I'm allergic to pulp"
This conversation, in three choice words, was; Not. Going. Well.
Add two more words, and you get; At. All.
"Let's start this again, shall we?" Kise blazed on, not waiting for the affirmation, or otherwise. "I'm Kise Ryouta. Welcome to Kaijo. It's nice to meet you. I think."
The stranger that Kise's paper plane had decided to poke sniffed at him disdain metaphorically dripping from every pore. Okay, he apparently was not very friendly.
"Midorima Shintarou" The owner of the namesake spared a finger to push his glasses back "It would've been nicer, not to mention hygienic, if you hadn't thrown your trash at me"
Or that forgiving, either.
Kise slapped his own face, ignoring the future cries of his manager echoing in his ears.
"Like I said, it's not trash, it's a paper plane~" He waved both his rescued plane and his senpai's rather impressive crane creation in the stranger's bespectacled face.
"I feel more nauseous looking at it than I do travelling on an actual plane" Midorima Shintarou scathingly scathed.
"God, you must be fun at parties" Kise sighed while his companion looked as if the word 'party' was conveniently absent from his mental thesaurus, which seemed more and more plausible as this conversation progressed. "Well, I suppose you'd make a good mascot. What kinds of parties have carrot mascots anyway? Health nut conventions?" This only served to deepen Midorima's confusion.
But digging himself deeper into holes was one of Kise's unwanted talents.
"But really, what's with the carrot costume? Is it for charity?" If so, Kise could relate. What has he done for charity? What hasn't he done for charity would be a better question. One, he's too mortified to give the answers to.
The carrot cosplayer looked downright offended, down to his very orange basketball shoes.
"This.." His teeth were so gritted, Kise was surprised he could get the words out "..is my school's basketball uniform-nanodayo!"
Kise looks down at his own sky blue and dove white basketball slacks that reminded him of Kanegawa beaches and daytime location shoot clouds.
"You need to change schools" Kise informed him, quite seriously.
"And you are everything that is wrong with youth today" Midorima sniffed, in self-righteous haughtiness, as expected from a rival basketball club member.
"Whatever you say, old man~"
Midorima massaged his temples with taped fingers.
"I find your way of apologizing to be very…" Many adjectives seemed to be considered and dismissed inside Midorima's head, before he settled on; "…strange"
Kise opened his mouth to inform him that Midorima was hardly the one to talk about being strange, with his neon orange slacks, bright green hair and jar of dirt-Oh and did he forget mention he was carrying a jar of dirt?
"Is that for you to stick your roots-I mean, your feet in?" Kise ventured cautiously.
Midorima turned purple, which Kise gathered was not a healthy colour for a carrot.
"I wish you the worst ranking of luck possible" He announced stiffly, about-turning to leave, and Kise felt a pang of regret. The guy was weird but endlessly entertaining. Kise wanted to ask him more about his jar of dirt, his taped fingers, and that guy half his size whose been holding his sides, giggling uncontrollably for a while now right next to them… (Oh, did he forget to mention that too?)
"Now, now, Shin-chan, remember how we talked about making friends? You suck at it!" The raven haired declared merrily, seemingly unconcerned about his companion's death glare.
"Ta…ka…o…" This aura must surely be what horror movie antagonists strived to create, but 'Ta-ka-o-kun' simply dodged the fistful of dirt aimed his way, laughing helplessly all the way. "Leave!"
"Yeah, yeah, I'll leave you to your tsundere flirting!" Takao turned his sharp eyes, bright with tears of laughter at Kise. "Don't mind Shin-chan, the more he is interested in someone, the meaner he gets, but he's a softie at heart really! You should see the amount of soft toys he brings to school-"
"I keep telling you those are lucky items-nanodayo!" Midorima had given up on throwing the dirt out of his dirt jar at him, and proceeded to lift the entire jar into the most perfect shooting position Kise had ever seen.
And the way Takao squeaked and scampered far, far away gave Kise little to doubt about his aim.
"I'm on my college basketball team too!" He smiled his sunflower blooming smile and Midorima who in turn stared down at Kise taking full advantage of his 0'2" inches of height he had over him.
Midorima muttered something under his breath that sounded vaguely like 'probably a monkey', but surely Kise must've misheard.
"Sorry, what? I didn't quite catch that"
Midorima cleared his throat contemptuously, though Kise had no idea how he managed to pass on contempt through his vocal chords.
"I said, you probably dunk a lot"
Kise raised his dunking hand up proudly, and declared.
"It's one of the coolest of basketball moves ever"
Midorima sniffed in derision, looking far too high and mighty for someone whose wardrobe choices resemble a carrot and lugs a jar of dirt around for fun.
"Something against dunking?" Kise pouted, mood slightly soured. Dunking was cool, after all.
"Why waste so much energy on something worth a mere 2 points when 3-pointers grant you more? The true skill is in getting the ball in from afar no close-any monkey can do that!" Midorima huffed out a breath.
Again with the monkey, Kise rolled his eyes, but-
"You sure are passionate about basketball!" His mouth curved into a smile on its own. "I have a friend who has a theory that no one who plays basketball can be too bad a guy"
Midorima was silent for quite some time that Kise thought he'd finally won him over with Aominecchi's pet quirk, but all it resulted was a delayed mini rant.
"Theories need proper parameters and experimentation and a sample size of more than a few happy-go-lucky idiots-!"
"Hey, you wanna grab a burger?" Kise interjected suddenly, probably surprising himself more than his newfound friend, who looked positively unnerved and a little suspicious (hey, now!) at the sudden subject change.
"Wha-How is that by any inkling related to the current situation?"
Kise shrugged. He decided to put some faith in Aomine's weird theories.
"I like you" Watching Midorima's skin flush at that innocuous statement was rather entertaining, so Kise made the pause longer before he added "…And I like burgers"
"Well I don't like either, so I see no reason to acquiesce to your request" His hand covered his face under the guise of repositioning his glasses "And I'd prefer it if you ceased speaking in such a misleading way!"
"Misleading?" Kise tilted his head playfully. "But I do like Midorimacchi~!"
"WHO!?"
Kise shrugged. His complimentary nicknames were rarely well received. Kurokocchi had delivered an ignite punch to his stomach the very first time.
"Oh, I add a -cchi to the end of the names of people I admire"
"…" Kise had finally managed to stun him into silence.
"I know this place called Maji Burger… Kurokocchi told me they have the best vanilla milkshakes ever-So, vanilla milkshakes?"
"No!"
"Really, how about chocolate milkshakes? Strawberry? I personally like Cappuccino but-"
"Shut up! Just-just stop talking! I'm not going anywhere with an idiot like you!" Midorima huffed huffily, though he looked more like a candidate to replace the picture next to the word tsundere in the otaku dictionary.
Centuries of Kise family members (though to be fair, mostly females) had been actors of the finest degree, so when Kise called upon his ancestors' powers to summon very fake tears, Midorima was doomed.
"I…I suppose I could grant you the displeasure of meeting again, if you teach me how to make this contraception…"
Kise followed Midorima's train of sight to his own hands where he was still holding on to his and Kasamatsu-senpai's paper adventures that he'd completely forgotten he had on him, while the allergic part of Midorima added "With something other than paper, preferably"
"The plane?" Kise perked up instantly. A small irrelevant part of him wondering if origami was still considered origami minus the paper.
"No, the bird" And down, again. "It's Cancer's lucky item for tomorrow"
"It's a date! I'll be waiting, Midorimacchi~" And he skipped merrily away, ignoring Midorima's mutinous growls of denial. "No takesy-backsys!"
The turn of events that graced the next few scenes were predictable to anyone who was in association of Kise Ryouta.
"Senpai, senpai, I need your help!"
At trying times like these, where one had 24 hours to learn how to make the perfect origami paper crane, one is grateful for one's senpai and one's own miraculous copying ability.
After all, Kise Ryouta was never one to back down from a challenge. And Midorima Shintarou was the most challenging person he'd ever met.
A/N: I'm a huge fan of interactions so I decided to give a first meeting interaction a try~
Thanks so much for reading this fic all you lovely humans! Remember to check out MidoKise Week on tumblr because… rare pairings are rare :)))