Tenderness Of First Times

...

Akashi is twenty-three and approaching his Law degree with the whole grace and elegance of the world in the palm of his hand. He has his red hair a bit longer than in middle school, not on his face because he proudly shows his again scarlet irises but on his nape, and his facial traits are finer, his face a bit longer to better frame his typically oriental eyes, stretched and yet bit sharp. In this moment, his closed eyelids let the long eyelashes caress the pale, almost snowy, cheekbones and his thin lips are half-open not due to a malicious or amazed smirk but to let out the heavy and yet silent sigh of sleep. He's shirtless and the muscles years of training had defined are visible even in his relaxed pose, supine in his occidental bed with the sheets barely over his waist and his head a bit turned felt, unconsciously exposed to his observer's eyes.

Kuroko thinks he could die there and now and he would still have no regrets.

Being careful not to wake his companion up, he moved a fugitive lock from him temple and then comes back to his position, laying prone beside the red-head but with his elbows pointing the ground and his head sustained by his palms to have a better sight of the show a lazy Sunday morning was offering him.

In the end, after five minutes more of ecstatic contemplation, he chooses to get up and to go making breakfast – boiled eggs, who knows for how long still Akashi will manage to pretend he's okay with always eating just them, when he sleepovers to his place, before snapping and ordering him to learn how to cook something else; maybe he should ask Kagami for some lessons before then, but Seijuro never really liked Seirin's ace and Tetsuya knows it would be like adding fuel to a fire, thing that he would very much like avoiding –. He has just laid a hand on the floor when certain fingers snap and wrap around his wrist, forbidding him from running.

He turns, always the same apathetical expression on his face, but inside himself he is cursing for not having a camera in hand reach: Akashi lifts just one eyelid and peeks him with his face still half buried in the pillow, showing off his best smirk and blinding him with the brightness of toothbrush-advertising smile and the quick dart of his forearm muscle under skin. Sometimes, Kuroko finds his absolute perfection kind of annoying.

"Good morning, Tetsuya." Seijuro doesn't even wait to finish his greeting before using his grip to pull the other downward and make their mouth meet. And Kuroko thinks his perfection maybe is not that much irritating, just a bit.

Tenderness of first times

Tetsuya lives alone. Theoretically, he still lives with his parents, but they're overseas eleven months a year for work. He has never complained, but surely is suffering a far less since he and Seijuro has started dating after the final Winter Cup match of their high school first year, almost two years ago already. Effectively, during their second and third year tournament it hadn't been easy, but they had managed to keep a balance that allowed them to be rivals on the court and lovers out of it and their teams had accepted it with no second thoughts – with huge stupor of Akashi and scare of Kuroko, Aida Riko had had a nosebleed when they officially announced their relationship –.

While he distributes the rice in the cups and hears Seijuro stopping the water in the shower, Kuroko blushes a bit. In moments like that, when Akashi spends the night and sometimes stays over for days, during breaks, it's almost as if they were married and Tetsuya likes it. He likes waking up in the morning and staying there watching his boyfriend that instead would gladly do everything but getting up, he likes making breakfast while Akashi's in the bathroom or vice versa, he likes eating together and helping each other in getting dressed and seeing Seijuro moving around in the apartment as if it was his too, knowing every inch of it and never mentioning the fact that his real house is a mansion of five-hundred square meters or more. They're all just everyday little things, but they make him feel good.

Akashi enters the kitchen and all the sweetness vanishes.

"Sei-kun."

"Yes, Tetsuya?"

"Why are you wearing only the bathrobe?"

Tenderness of first times

Kuroko hates being provoked and Akashi loves seeing him struggle, torn between his landlord duty telling him jumping on his host is not really polite and the languid warmness slipping from his belly downwards a bit more every time Akashi makes his tongue slip on the chopsticks or gulps letting his Adam's apple raise and fall. It's all normal, but the teal-head knows there's a second meaning behind every action.

"Kiyoshi-senpai and Izuki-senpai will be waiting for us at the street-court in two hours and I still have to shower." he sais with fake casualty, but the warning 'We can't do it now so behave' is pretty clear in his voice.

Akashi has an adorable irritated expression on his face – if Kuroko didn't know him so well to know that voicing his thoughts could led him to death, he would say he's pouting –, but after a second he's grinning again.

"It takes you less than thirty minutes to shower." he replies, with not even making the effort to try to hide his true intentions.

"If nobody distracts me."

"If you're good before, than I shouldn't be able to distract you, should I?"

Kuroko doesn't answer but puts a seaweed in his mouth evilly, keeping his eyes focused on his lover's red ones and the challenge is clear in the way Akashi makes a face at the thoughts of the hated flavour.

"We still have to find a present for Hyuuga-senpai and Aida-senpai." the teal-head reminds him and in spite of himself there's a note of depression in his words. What can they give his ex-captain and ex-coach to celebrate their engagement?

"A cookery book." Kuroko shoots a glare that helplessly bounces against Seijuro's smirk. "Admit your senpai would be grateful for it."

Tetsuya is sure of it, but Riko would kill him so he shakes his head.

Seijuro resumes his eating and the phantom silently imitates him.

Tenderness of first times

Kuroko is cleaning the cups in the sink when Akashi hugs him from behind and brushes his face against hi neck

It's not that strange. Most of all because they live in distant cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, it happens that he or Seijuro has some moments of lack of affection and ends up looking a bit more for physical contact with the other. Tetsuya gets it and he too feels the need to turn, shove his tongue down his lover's throat and then push him on the cooking table, but it wouldn't be polite toward his parents that live in the house one month a year and toward his senpai that will be waiting for them so he limits himself to caress his partner's locks without looking for his lips.

Seijuro sighs, but stretches. In the end, he has dressed and is wearing a white shirt with a pair of black jeans and a gilet of the same colour.

Kuroko chose a pale-azure t-shirt with horizontal blue lines of different thickness on his pectorals zone, he too black jeans but with a sweatshirt of the same colour with the design of a teal basket-ball above his heart.

They're different, but look good together.

The phantom leaves the cups beside the sink, dries his hands and then turns in his lover's hug.

"Shall we go?" he asks.

Akashi fakes a snort, but then smiles and nods.

Tenderness of first times

It isn't a big party, but the warm and friendship atmosphere makes it funny and pleasant. There are all the guys from Seirin plus the Generation of Miracles – because Riko and Satsuki turned immediately friends as soon as the first had found a man who was not interested in the second and Aomine had come by as a consequence, Midorima and Hyuuga reached a reciprocal respect as players in the same position, Kise plays perfectly the role of the bride's friend and Kiyoshi had asked not to leave Murasakibara out since Taiga was going to bring Himuro – and Mibuchi Reo, that Kuroko still can't understand how he has managed to befriend Riko after plainly trying to flirt with Junpei, but it's alright all the same.

Akashi doesn't look out of his depth anymore like their first hangouts with Seirin. He and Aida get along very well, always ending up talking about training and demoniacal exercises and they look like they learn a lot one from the other's sadism. The teams weren't that happy about it, at the beginning. He is even very close to Kiyoshi, who he plenty respects because he had had the bravery to face and threaten him if he had ever hurt the other's kohai, and to Izuki, with who he shares even if differently the inability of making people laugh. He found comfort, he says, in thinking that at least he's not to the levels of the eagle-eyed player.

Kuroko stares at him, talking with Mibuchi and Takao – here as Midorima's lover – from afar and feels happy that the red-head is no more isolated as once.

Then, beside him, Aomine opens his mouth, Kise follows him, Midorima gets offended and Tetsuya finds himself full of doubts.

Tenderness of first times

That night, shirtless Akashi in his pyjamas black trousers is laying on his stomach on their occidental bed and busy reading a novel he himself lent him, so Tetsuya simply sits and watches him. Point is, he sits on the floor.

Seijuro is caught in the book and for a moment doesn't notice, but the he finds with the corner of his eye his lover sitting crossed-legs on the pavement and lifts his head to turn it toward him.

"Tetsuya, what are you doing?" he asks, frowning.

Kuroko, in his gym suit blue trousers and teal T-shirt, keeps on staring at him without blinking, but his mind stands for a while more at that afternoon party. He's happy Akashi's staying over, he wouldn't have liked getting separated from him before solving the question.

"Akashi-kun, are you ashamed of being a bottom?"

For a moment, Seijuro stares at him. He seems vaguely confused by the question and Kuroko wonders if he has said something strange, then the red-haired man bent his head to a side.

"Where does this come from?" he asks and he seems sincerely curious so Kuroko simply bends his knees to his chest and wraps them with his arms, thinking.

Their ex-teammates cheerful and happy voices sound in his mind like echoes from a distant dream, and yet they sting something inside making him restless and nervous. It wasn't a quarrel and he knows they all talked without even thinking about the possibility of someone taking offence, not even a word had been said to hurt anyone, and yet… Tetsuya decides it is probably just him thinking too much.

"Today at the party I heard Aomine-kun teasing Kise-kun and then they both mocked Midorima-kun when he said he and Takao take turns so I was wondering…" He shrugs, it is far more difficult to clear his thoughts out loud, "I've never really thought much about it, but if you're uncomfortable, we can switch."

To him it makes no difference in the end, he simply hasn't thought about it before. Since when they started dating, he has always been the top and Akashi has always let him do, so he had never even considered the problem. At least, not since when Aomine and Kise made him doubt how his boyfriend could feel. Seijuro has a really strong personality, Kuroko knows it, so maybe he's not really for being the bottom? Maybe he'd rather being the one in command even in the bedroom, as in everything else? Effectively, sex is the only field his ex-captain didn't take the reins in.

Tetsuya is still lost in his thoughts when the deep sigh of his boyfriend reaches him, making him blink once.

Akashi closes the book marking the page he's at and lays it on the bedside table while turning. He stays laid on the bed, but turned on his back and sighs heavily.

"Tetsuya, Daiki and Ryouta are two idiots." he reminds, moving just his head toward his lover and the fact that he used the other two's first names can only mean he's really serious. "You shouldn't worry too much about what they say."

"It's not what they say." Kuroko immediately defends himself, sighing, "It's what they think. I don't like for them to apply some comments they made even to Sei-kun."

"I'm sure they didn't mean to offend anyone, you know they need to tease each other sometimes." Akashi reassures him, smiling to the teal-head, but when he sees the other looks determined in his doubts, he sighs and turns his head to the ceiling. "Also" he adds, but without changing his voice tone, keeping the calm and gentle one that is his when they're alone, "it's a quite common opinion that the ones who bottoms is less manly than the ones who tops, since he plays the female role in the sexual intercourse, but that's it. It is a ignorant and limited opinion, without a proper fundament, that it's not worth taking in account."

Kuroko observes Akashi while blinking a couple of times, even if the other doesn't reciprocate the gaze. If Aomine insinuated those doubts in him just because of such a stupid idea, he will slip a popsicle in his shirt. Again.

Seijuro stares at the ceiling and smiles a bit, in his mind the image of Kuroko's apathetical expression while asking him that naïve question and he feels happy for that care. Turning on his side, he sits up and kneels, then he stretches toward the mattress edge and with a hand he reaches for the panthom's soft cheek while this one keeps on staring expressionlessly at him.

He thinks he'd sell his soul just to keep on staring at those baby blue eyes for the rest of eternity.

"To me, it makes no different what role I have in bed as long as you're the person I share it with." His smile stays, but there's a new fondness in his gaze, so immense Kuroko thinks he'll drown in it, "If that was what you need, I'd gladly play the part of the wife sustaining her husband. Why should I feel uncomfortable with such a thing?"

It's not like Tetsuya has a real answer to that question. The few ones coming to his mind sound really stupid if compared with the stubborn worshipping in his lover's voice.

"Akashi-kun makes it look even more appalling that topping." he comments however, fascinated by the other's persuasive skills.

And Seijuro laughs, with an hand still on his boyfriend's cheek and his knelt body on the mattress all bent forward, toward the other's.

Kuroko smiled of that light-heartedness in their touches and he too kneels to stretch up and brush his forehead against Akashi's.

The physical contact between them has always been limited before they dated, they were both too tied to the Japanese rigid etiquette to allow themselves casual gestures like Kise's or Aomine's ones, thus in the first period of their relationship there have been some long…not awkward, but confused moments. Nobody of them was sure about where was the line they couldn't cross, theirs as much as the other's one, and so maybe they had an whole date laughing and talking but during which they didn't even brush hands by mistake.

Kuroko slips his hands in Akashi's hair, stretching up as best as he could not to force him in a uncomfortable position. He knows it would be easier if only he climbed on the mattress too, but he wants to stay like this, feeling the red-head somewhere higher and knowing that, yes, he has reached him.

Some leftovers from Aomine's speech float in his mind, but this time they give the starting push to a new chain of toughts.

Kuroko remembers their first time.

It is scheduled and maybe it sounds shabby, but they have no other choice.

Akashi's father doesn't know about them and this is their last occasion of seeing each other before he comes back from a journey in Europe and stays in Kyoto for who-knows how long, obviously demanding everything he could from the son he usually doesn't even seem to remember the existence of. They talked about it, they know they won't be able to meet for the whole time the man will be checking on the red-head, and they chose they don't want to wait anymore.

It's their high school last year, they're eighteen – Kuroko, at lease, is; Akashi needs four months still before reaching him – and out of the window they can already see the leaves paling into yellow and gold and red. While they show off against the teal sky, they look like an incitement for the two lovers.

Akashi arrives but Kuroko doesn't let him in. They don't even exchange a kiss; they practically don't even dare to watch each other's face. They're both confused and worried, hesitant, while the phantom takes his jacket too and they head together to the pharmacy.

They buy condoms and lube and Akashi blushes a bit while handing everything to the shop assistant who stares at them with eyes wide open and the gum he was chewing still on his tongue and well visible through her open mouth. If Kuroko doesn't turn the same shade of his boyfriend is just because he's by now a master of apathy and because he feels more annoyed by the girl than embarrassed by the situation.

They get home and the phantom thinks about making tea, but then realizes it would be stupid. The red-head is not there to drink and he surely doesn't want to interrupt halfway because the teapot is whistling in the kitchen. They reach silently for the teal-head's bedroom, turn off the lights and close the curtains because light embarrasses them and then, in the dim light that makes their bodies barely visible, they sit on the occidental bed – double, because his mother definitely can't mind her own businesses – both with legs crossed, in front.

At this point, they stare at each other.

Kuroko doesn't really know what he should do. He expected Akashi to take the lead, but the other is simply looking at him as if waiting. The phantom needs a moment to realize he's as lost as him and when it happens it's as if a wave of new pure blood has been just released from his heart to his whole body, 'til the very tips of his feet.

He's blushing, he knows, but Akashi imitates him just a few after and they're both again at the beginning, no one daring to start.

Maybe this is not the right way, maybe some things can't be scheduled between an appointment and the other, but Kuroko…he doesn't want to let his boyfriend go like this, with the memory of how they hadn't been able to do it because they're both eighteen-year-old guys far more clumsy than what their age and characters would let think.

Akashi doesn't lower his gaze, but he's rigid in his shoulders and back. In a sense, the whole situation reminds of the day Kuroko confessed: even then they were sitting in front of each other, but on the school roof; they were talking and suddenly the teal-head hadn't managed to hold back anymore, had bent forward and laid his lips on the red-head's, who then made the kiss deeper and more passionate.

Maybe that is how it should be done.

The phantom bends forward, he feels strange in taking the lead with a cold mind and not in the heat of a moment of desperation, and slowly, so much that his back muscles tremble for the pressure, he gets his face near the one of his partner, who instead doesn't move of an inch. He bends his head a bit to a side and kisses him.

Not, it's not true, that is far less than a kiss. They barely brush their lips together, and yet there's a whole new meaning behind that gesture, a different consciousness, and no French kiss could be worth as much.

Tetsuya detaches for a second before kissing again and this time Seijuro opens his lips like a flower with its petals and welcomes him. It's the first time the phantom has such a great power and the feeling is weird; he's inebriated and at the same time pressured with an huge responsibility so he explores the other's mouth carefully, as if he had never done it before. He hits slightly the other's tongue with his.

Seijuro moans and the shiver that sound makes run down Tetsuya's spine seems to be awakening every nerve, every muscle, every inch of flesh that has been frozen 'till then.

He moves on his knees and his hands lift to the red-head's cheeks who keeps on not moving. He's too stiff and Tetsuya feels under his fingers that sometimes he hazards a movement but then stops, uncertain about what to do, and then he act first, again.

He moves his grip on the other's shoulders and with his whole weight he pushes softly the other backward. Akashi obeys meekly, entangles his crossed limbs to lay his feet on the mattress and keep the legs open to let Kuroko's body lying between them while accompanying his on the bed and finally he stretches his arms to his back, holding on his shoulder-blades.

It's Kuroko who moans now feeling his boyfriend clinging like that to him.

He doesn't stop kissing him even once while unbuttoning the other's shirt and just a part of him realizes they both wore clothes that were easy to pull off. When Akashi pulls up a bit to slip the cloth away from under his back, his fingers dig in the teal-head's flesh leaving little red marks.

Tetsuya detaches a bit to pull off hurriedly his own t-shirt and when he bends again on his lover, after throwing it who knows where in the room, he brings the lips immediately to one of his nipples.

Akashi bites his lower lips over half a surprised exclamation and Kuroko compliments himself.

He did study a lot for today, after all. To be honest, on the web he had seen things he would have never wanted to see, but it was for Seijuro and he wanted to make sure he knew at least what to do to try to please him the best possible. Sure, he thought the red-head would be different, he had never expected to be the pushing one.

While playing with his teeth on his lover's flesh button, he thinks that maybe in the end it doesn't matter if the other still has to move a bit: the moans Akashi lets out of his lips are more than enough to bring him on the edge.

Kuroko doesn't blush anymore while thinking to that evening, but he did it for months, after. Mostly because Akashi's father left Kyoto barely three days after his arrival to go to Los Angeles. If possible, the embarrassment between him and his lover was higher at that news than when they chose when and where having their first time.

Not even Seijuro blushes anymore but once, at the beginning, he used to – obviously trying not to be noticed – and Kuroko adored every single instant of those moments.

He opens his eyes, who knows when he had closed them, to look for Akashi's ones, even if with their faces so close it hurts to focus on them, and he smiles while recognizing a malicious and yet tender glint in them. He's so caught up in Akashi that his mouth acts on its own.

"I think I'd like for you to top me."

Well, sure he didn't want to say those words out loud, but when Seijuro widens his eyes and loses his smile he can't help but feeling a bit disappointed. Akashi even detaches their foreheads and heads back, slipping out of his hands.

Tetsuya lets him go and brink his own arms back in his lap, but never averts his eyes from Seijuro's uncertain face even when this one sits back on his calves.

"…Is that so?" he murmurs, but he doesn't even remotely sounds like a question. It's like an implicit order to answer no. Not that Kuroko has ever been someone to obey without questioning.

"Sei-kun, what's wrong?" he asks in fact and to show his confusion he reaches the point of bending his head a bit to a side, "You don't want to do it?"

Seijuro shakes his head, but doesn't look him in the eyes, he observes the blankets under him and Kuroko is not sure he understands.

"That's not the point, Tetsuya." his lover reassures him, even daring half a smile, "I want to do it, really, but…I think I'm not ready yet."

If the phantom before thought he didn't understand, now he's sure he doesn't.

"…Ready?" he repeats, as if doubting what he has heard. Effectively, those words made Akashi a bit out of character.

Seijuro nods, but finally looks for his eyes.

"I mean… Tetsuya, that would be your first time, wouldn't it?" Kuroko nods and a strange melancholic smile blooms on Akashi's lips, "This is the point." he explains, "First times usually hurt and there is almost no pleasure at all." Scarlet eyes darken. "I don't feel ready to hurt Tetsuya on purpose, especially after what happened in middle school." Seijuro sighs, almost defeated or disappointed in himself, "I guess I don't feel confident enough to risk losing you again."

Kuroko blinked. He's incredulous and at the same time he feels like everything in his body, under the most superficial stratum of skin has melted into something liquid and warm that demands to hug his lover. As he some rare times allows himself to, he leaves a little fond smile bloom on his lips while he stretches on his knees and with his hands looks again for the face of Seijuro, who immediately bends to lay again against his touch.

He looks like a puppy and Tetsuya feels even more softened in getting up on his feet just to sit on the mattress edge, almost in front of him.

"I'd never leave you for such a thing, you know it." he declares, then another flash of their first time comes with different things he read in different occasion and he shrugs trying to encourage his boyfriend, "Also," he says with a crumble of enthusiasm in his usually apathetic voice, "it looked like you weren't in such a great pain during our first time."

Problem is that Akashi doesn't answer.

Kuroko stares at him, keeps on staring even when Seijuro lays again on the mattress on his back and resumes looking at the ceiling as if lost in who knows what thought, even when the red irises turn melancholic and almost guilty. Even when the weight of the words in that silence lays slowly on the bottom of his conscience, almost scared of breaking him, and he understands.

"…It wasn't your first time."

It isn't a question, just a statement.

Seijuro bites his lower lip and brings an arm to cover his mouth and Tetsuya smiles a bit, softened, but stops moving.

Tender, he holds his lover's wrist with his free hand, leaving the other to sustain the leg his boyfriend has bent on his shoulder, to better position himself and giving him a better entrance. As soon as he applies a little pressure, the red-head moved the limb, clearly to see what brought his lover to an halt, and the sight that is presented to Tetsuya's eyes almost makes him cum immediately.

Seijuro is blushing, his skin hot and sweaty, and is breathing heavily with his nose. The teeth on his lower lip barely refrain the moans in his throat and his gaze is watery and hungry, sensual. Kuroko felt their bodies all entangled together and clenches a bit his hand on the other's knee, straightening to better adjust himself within his lover.

Seijuro immediately closes his eyes and moans again against his own clenched teeth.

Tetsuya smiles while slipping out of him almost entirely.

"Sei-kun," he whispers, hot like the air in their locked, almost dark, room, where their sealed without knowing since how long, because time like the whole world out of those four walls has no meaning or value anymore, "let me hear, please."

And Seijuro half opens his lips and maybe he wants to tell him that this is not really the situation to concentrate on politeness, that it's unfair to attack him by surprise and who knows what else, but he is evil and calculator and everything the other wants to call him and takes advantage of the moment to push in again, hitting straight the point he has learnt being his lover's sweet spot.

The omnipotent Akashi barely manages to throw his head back and moan loudly his partner's name, maybe as a curse or as a warning – Kuroko honestly doesn't know – but that still sounds like a begging and reaches a chord, within the teal-head's chest, that immediately breaks.

A strange tear falls by a baby blue eye and lays immediately under a red iris that is suddenly eaten by a surprised pupil.

"T-Tetsuya?" Seijuro asks, in his laboured breaths, but Tetsuya shakes his head.

"I'm happy…" he whispers, allowing himself a huge smile, as bright as the moon in the nightly light of room, "I'm so happy…"

Seijuro's arms know it, that's why they stretch out to him. Seijuro's hands caressing his neck and slipping in his hair know it, as much as his muscles forcing him to bend over and who cares of the uncomfortable position they're the first to get in. Seijuro's lips know it while embracing his ones, wrapping them like a rose petal tasting like lemonade and while whispering reassurances in such a chaste kiss and yet so perfect for that carnal moment. All of Seijuro knows it while moving against him and mimicking his tears.

It's scheduled and maybe is shabby, it's not 'normal' and maybe is against nature, is unsure and hesitant and clumsy and maybe it could have been better. Maybe it isn't even right, but no other mistake in this world is as sweet as this.

Kuroko almost jerked when the slight touch of fingers on the wrist of the arm he's using to support himself brings him back to the present, ripping him from his memories and making him lower his apathetic gaze on his partner.

Akashi stares at him for a moment looking for something that probably, judging from the minuscule darting on a muscle in his jaw, he can't find. He keeps on brushing his hand, but he's hesitant, as if waiting to be chased away.

"Are you angry?" he gives up and asks, unable to read under the incredibly thick mask suddenly put on by the phantom.

Tetsuya doesn't refuse his touch. He blinks once.

"Please, tell me it wasn't Mayuzumi-san." he simply says.

Akashi would laugh in relief, but he knows his phantom wouldn't forgive him so he simply smiles gratefully and makes his hand a bit bolder, passing the arm to look for the side of his comrade.

"No, it wasn't him." he answers and the laughter he has hold back echoed in his words.

Kuroko thinks about pouting a bit, but instead he kept on his façade.

It'd be useless to pretend he's no more jealous of his taller, stronger, older, more, copy. When he talked about his inferiority complex toward Chihiro to Akashi, his lover had started with a list of things he had more than the new model and they ended up in bed for the following six consecutive hours, but Tetsuya still doesn't trust the grey-head.

In the same way it would be useless to deny that he needs to know to let his heart in peace. Or to let someone else rest in peace.

He's not angry with his boyfriend, at all. He can't blame him for having someone else before and they were together since eight years, it isn't worth getting paranoid over such an old story. But. He just wants to know for…vigilance needs.

"Who?" he asks and Akashi notices his threatening aura, such that not even his mask can hide it, but the smile he makes is a bit too melancholic.

It's not the one of someone who still loves the person in his thoughts but neither the one of someone that remembers with a new affection, weakened by distance and new feelings for others and yet still strong. It's the one of someone who regrets.

Just by those eyes, Kuroko hazards the answer in his mind even before this one leaves his boyfriend's lips.

"Nijimura-senpai."

"Hey, is Akashicchi again with Nijimuracchi?! Do they ever take a break?!"

"They're discussing our strategies for next match, nanodayo."

"Do you think, Midorimacchi? I'm sure there's something going under, instead! What do you think, Momoicchi?! Wouldn't they look good together?! Neh?! Neh?!"

Kuroko averts his gaze from the surprised and yet ecstatic expression of Momoi as she sees the fujoshis' paradise doors opening before her and he ignored the continuous muttering of Aomine and eating of Murasakibara.

They're all having lunch, but Akashi hasn't come. He was busy with Nijimura.

The phantom thinks it's good that nobody notices him much, so he can avoid answering questions about why he's staring so intensively at an empty chair.

It hurts and he doesn't know why.

Akashi doesn't close his eyes, be he moves them on the ceiling again without focusing on it.

Tetsuya stares at him, he wonders what he should do, but in the end the expression on Seijuro's face defeats him and he ends up sitting on the bed too, on his side at his boyfriend's left. He lays his head on the other's shoulder and brings a hand to his chest, looks with his fingers for his heartbeat and stops right above it. He closes his eyes, lulled, and thinks that after all it is nothing important.

Another hand, warm, slips on his and the arm he's using as a pillow encircled him protectively. He feels Akashi's cheek laying on his forehead and in the end he lets out a satisfied sigh. That damn Seijuro could do everything and manage to get forgiven all the same.

"It was when Nijimura-san told the coach he renounced to the captaincy." Kuroko opens his eyes again, surprised that the topic is touched again, but Akashi keeps him against his chest and prevents him from discovering what emotions is on his face. In his voice there's a mixture of honey and periwinkle, a melancholy that's sweet and yet almost…guilty? "He had just received very bad news regarding his father's health. We met in the corridor and he told me he was entrusting the team to me, but it was clear that he was strange. I pretended I didn't notice, but when he left the school I followed him. He entered a bar and I stood out waiting for him because it looked like…not really a safe place, I don't know how to explain it." There's a little laughter in the breath Akashi takes, but for some reason Kuroko doesn't find it amusing. "I stood two hours straight in the middle of the street waiting for him, before realizing something wasn't right."

Tetsuya widens his eyes. He pushes a little more and escapes Seijuro's grip to almost sat up and observe him, but when his lover returns the gaze his eyes are strange, they have a dark shadow foreseeing something unpleasant.

Kuroko doesn't talk, he wouldn't know what to say, and Akashi pretends to laugh again, shaking his head with kind commiseration.

"I got in to take him and it was a bar for…alternative punks or something like that. It was so clear that I didn't fit it that they all were staring at me as if I had horns on my head." He stopped laughing, but not talking, "Nijimura was at the counter. Practically drunk."

Akashi knows he's nothing to do with the place, he knows they're all staring at him, knows that someone's even pitying him – a middle school student clearly out of place, in a bar, at that time of night – but he never moves his eyes from the bent back of his senpai, laying on the counter, since when he put an hand on his shoulder-blade slightly protruding out.

"Uh?" Nijimura has watery eyes, but maybe not just for the alcohol, his necktie crooked and almost untied, his shirt a bit too much opened and who knows where's his jacket. In that single syllable Seijuro smells the beer and a part of him wonders how the other managed to get the bartender to give it to him, but in the end the one that wins is the part that makes him tighten a bit his grip on the other's shirt fabric. "Akashi? What are you doing here?!"

"Senpai, let's go home."

"I convinced him to give up and accompanied him to his apartment. He managed to walk, but staggered a bit. I helped him open the door because he couldn't slip the key in the lock, he kept on missing the hole. Guess that should have been a clear warning." He, Seijuro, smiles of his own shabby joke, but he doesn't look amused. At all. Kuroko keeps silent, but stretches his hand to look for the one his lover's keeping on his belly, the one he previously used to hug his shoulders, and lets him on. "I didn't even ask if I could go in, I just did it."

Nijimura sinks on the couch. His house is empty because his mother's going to spend the night at the hospital and he's an only child.

Akashi looks at him, lying on his back with his undone necktie and the shirt opened up to the second button. The dark-haired boy seemed to be still lucid enough when he lays an arm on his eyes and Seijuro doesn't know what takes over him: he approaches his senpai slowly and opened up the third one.

Shuuzou moves the arm from the face and Akashi's bent over him. He's…what? Thirteen, maybe fourteen? He himself is barely fifteen, after all, but the fact that the red-head was born in December confuses him and he's not sure he knows what months they're in. The younger has those red hair that looks Bordeaux in the dark room, big eyes staring at him with confusion and a bit of shame for the gesture he had just made, his lips half-opened and such an adorably lost expression that Nijimuro can't resist, grabs his necktie and pulls him to his mouth.

Akashi's first kiss tastes like beer, but is masterly.

It makes his knees tremble so much that they give up and he falls on the floor near the couch. Shuuzou is quick in getting up, barely detaching from him, and in slipping an arm behind his back to lift him up and bring him on his own lap. He's so little and light that the older one barely makes any effort.

Akashi spreads his tights to his senpai's sides, sits on him and interweaves fingers in his hair letting the other exploring his back with his hands, even if they're cold. He let himself be caressed, kissed, licked, even undressed, and when he manages to pull out long enough to take that little of air to turn his brain on again he's naked on all four on the couch.

He turns his head to look for the eldest and he finds him knelt beside him, panting, with the zip of his trousers – the last piece of clothes he's wearing – already down and yet he looks hesitant.

He has a confused gaze, as if the sober half of him was fighting with the alcohol disinhibited one to get what's the best course of action, and when the grip of his hands on the younger's sides loosens, Seijuro realizes he's going to pull back.

"Nijimura-san."

It's so wrong and he knows it as much as he knows that nothing good can come out of something like that. He's taking advantage of his senpai; even worse, he's taking advantage of his senpai's pain! He should stop everything, he knows, and yet…

"Go on."

No, no, no, don't do it, Sejuro, stop before…!

"You know I'm stronger that what it seems."

No!

"I can take it."

Turns out that, no, he can't.

Kuroko doesn't know what to think and Akashi keeps on pretending it is nothing important, while looking at the ceiling.

"Did it hurt?" is all the phantom wants to know.

Seijuro smiles and surprises him by pointing his lower lip.

"I think I still have the scar, on the inside, for how much I bit." he admits, but then sighs, "I thought I was going to fie, I clenched my fists enough to leave marks and I felt definitely not pleasure at all, but I kept on telling myself it was worth it, for the senpai."

Tetsuya feels a crumble of jealousy, but he abruptly suffocates it. He's worried for Akashi, for this memory he wished he didn't have, and so he moves and comes back laying, but on his lover, forbidding him from watching at the ceiling as he's done up 'til now.

"Why didn't you get together?" he asks.

"The next morning, he apologized a thousand times for hurting me; he's a good person, he just was not really sober in that occasion." He shrugs, "Then he asked me to leave before his mother came home. He apologized again and explained me that as soon as his mother would be able to earn the money, they would have moved to America for his father's medical treatment and that he didn't want to start anything with me while knowing that he should have later ended everything up." Akashi shakes his head, "I sure couldn't tell I had fallen for him, so I simply answered he didn't have to worry because I did it just to console him and there was nothing more. And then I left."

There's a moment of silence as those words sink and Akashi savours it caressing his lover's head, while the other seems already unable to do anything but blinking in a way that's definitely too fast to be natural.

Seijuro begins to worry after thirty seconds of ceaseless blinking, but as soon as he opens his mouth to ask something Kuroko presses his over.

There is so much in that kiss. So much that it leaves Seijuro completely breathless, victim of his partner's tongue. Most of all, there's Tetsuya's hand slipping suddenly on his crotch and gripping – and surely not to hurt –.

Akashi almost chocks on the exclamation trying to escape from him, but Tetsuya doesn't seem to care and moves on to his trousers elastic band to slip them off.

"Tetsuya?" Seijuro tries to ask, but the other bends to leave kisses on his neck, his chest, his abdomen, everywhere, and forces him to concentrate on something else.

Akashi turns red as soon as Kuroko's face stops in front of his boxers to shot him a glare from downward.

"The first time," he whispers slipping even that last hindrance, "is only one. I'll make sure you have so many absolutely perfect others that that one would get lost in them."

And Akashi, effectively, gets lost, at first in the blackness of his closed eyes, then in the whiteness of the orgasm and in the end in the pale pink of Tetsuya's pink when the phantom holds him to his chest to let him sleep.

In this very moment, he regrets nothing.

Tenderness of first times

Nijimura yawns and curses at the same time when his phone buzzing wakes him up, but stretches his arm to grab it all the same.

He frowns when he reads 'Annoying Brat N.6' as the ID for the text he had just received.

What does Kuroko want?, he thought opening it.

.

From: Annoying Brat N.6

Text: Beware of the shadows, senpai, 'cause I'll be in one of them to get you when you least expect it.

.

Nijimura widened his eyes. What the actual fuck?!

.

To: Annoying Brat N.6

Text: You're in freaking Japan and I'm in America, Kuroko; how the fuck are you supposed to get me?! And what the heck are you angry for, you damn disrespectful kohai?!

.

The answer didn't make him wait.

.

From: Annoying Brat N.6

Text: They invented airplanes exactly to allow boyfriends to go to other States to hunt down the senpais who hurt they're precious persons by having sex drunk with them and forgetting how to properly do it, Nijimura-san.

.

To: Annoying Brat N.6

Text: He told you?!

.

From: Annoying Brat N.6

Text: Most definitely yes.

.

To: Annoying Brat N.6

Text: … Fuck.

.

From: Annoying Brat N.6

Text: No, thank you, senpai. You already did it far too much for my likings.

.

From: Annoying Brat N.6

Text: Just beware of shadows. Beware.

.

THE END

Authoress' Notes:

Yep, I know, is not that good -.-

Written for Dixie175, per request on Tumblr! :D

#ILoveShuuzouPleaseDon'tHateHim #OrMe

Agap