Notes: Honestly, this is such a terrible idea. What is wrong with me? WIPs and I never work out.
Kuroko hadn't harbored very high hopes for his high school basketball team. He hadn't allowed himself to. Still, playing was a necessity to him, and a no-name school like Seirin seemed like a reasonable place to look for a team not consisting of dysfunctional athletic geniuses (himself excluded; Kuroko thought himself neither very dysfunctional nor athletic).
He had been wrong.
As Kuroko filled out his application form, someone lined up beside him, jutting up so high into the air that his shadow was engulfing him completely. Kuroko glanced upward.
Next to him stood — no, towered — a boy who was almost as broad as he was tall with hair a shade of red that reminded Kuroko of dying ember.
The boy handed in his own form without a word and left as abruptly as he had come.
Kuroko stared after him with a sinking feeling in his lungs.
The boy resembled Aomine.
To Kuroko Aomine was like a raw wound he thought he would never fully recover from, regardless of the effort he put into closing it.
On better days he simply missed him. His reckless laugh, all teeth and no eyes. His never-ending faith in Kuroko that had gone compulsively against all odds stacked up in front of him.
On bad days Kuroko mourned him, mourned everything the world had lost on the day Aomine had forgotten how to feel anything but apathetic boredom.
Aomine's transformation had petrified everybody involved despite — or maybe because of — the slow burn it had been. It'd been torture to witness, and every endeavor to retract it had been crushed by Aomine's thick-headedness, a trait Kuroko had admired before. Now all that was left of him was someone who looked like Aomine but wasn't.
Kuroko came to suspect that perhaps he simply wasn't meant to forget about him. It made him wary of the future, if it required him to remember.
The unforeseen encounter had shaken Kuroko off kilter. Signing up for Seirin's basketball club together with this boy who appeared to resemble Aomine in all the wrong places could easily turn into a second ultimate MCA for him. Usually, he wasn't prone to dramatics, but he was convinced that, were he to be part of the rise and fall of someone so beautiful and talented again, it would wreck him.
Well. It was a steep price to pay for basketball, but basketball was the one thing he loved the most in the world.
Kuroko had never been sure why it was basketball out of all things. Certainly, there was a lot to say about the beauty of the sport, the athletic challenge it posed; yet Kuroko felt he liked it for a different reason, something he couldn't quite explain.
He resolved it didn't really matter either way. People got invested in random things all the time. The daughter of his neighbor used to collect socks. Risking his emotional stability for basketball was perfectly sensible in comparison.
The first try-outs for the team confirmed Kuroko's misgivings. The boy was gifted with an exceptional talent for basketball, unwrought and sharp and bright. His name was Kagami Taiga. At least the coach, Aida-san, had called him that. The entire gym was dumbstruck, partly in admiration and partly in envy, as he stuck up impossibly tall next to everyone else, like some sort of extremely burly pillar.
To his own surprise, the prospect of having such a ridiculously talented teammate once again excited Kuroko more than it worried him.
Kuroko registered it immediately when Kagami's enormous form entered the food court that evening. Unnerved, he watched him order an astonishing amount of burgers and quietly hoped his misdirection would save him from any confrontation.
It didn't. To Kuroko's mounting discomfort, Kagami sat down on the seat directly opposite him. At first he thought it was deliberate, an attempt to get some info on the Generation of Miracles maybe, but he noticed Kagami hadn't even so much as blinked in his direction.
His misdirection had not saved him, it had caused this entire ordeal. Magnificent.
Kagami boggled once he saw that he hadn't actually sat down at an empty table.
"S-since when have you been here?" he squawked and inched backwards in his chair, nearly knocking himself over. Kuroko snorted into his jumbo milkshake.
"I've been here the whole time." He paused and added, just to see how Kagami would react, "Watching people."
It was priceless. Kagami stared at him in undisguised horror, and Kuroko guessed the only reason why he hadn't bolted yet was that running from a guy two heads shorter than him would probably kaput his ego beyond repair.
In the end, Kagami said nothing to that and just proceeded to maul his burgers while Kuroko drank his milkshake in silence, watching the fascinating, if slightly disgusting, display before him.
Amazingly, the encounter hadn't been finished afterwards.
"I want you to come with me for a bit," Kagami declared as he got up to dispose of the remains of his fast food orgy.
Kuroko had a hunch how this was going to turn out.
He sighed, tossed his empty cup into the trash and followed Kagami to a deserted basketball field just a few blocks over. He thought he remembered it from when he was little.
"I lived in America until second year of middle school," Kagami opened, stretching his arms toward the dull, black sky. "When I came back to Japan, I was really disappointed. The basketball here is pathetic. But I want to play in real matches. You know, matches that get my blood boiling. Earlier you and the coach were babbling about 'miracles' or something. Some strong team you used to be in, right? 'S weird, though, you don't look too impressive. I can smell that, you see. Power, I mean. You smell neither weak nor strong. You don't smell like anything at all. I'm curious about what you can do."
Yeah, Kuroko had seen this coming. "What a coincidence," he replied, shrugging out of his jacket. "I wanted to test you as well." It wasn't really a lie. He could assess Kagami's strength by looking, but seeing the real thing up close would give him a more accurate account. He had merely assumed he wouldn't have to find out in a spontaneous one-on-one game on some empty court at night.
As expected, he didn't stand a chance. Kagami moved with an agility that shouldn't have been possible for a fifteen-year-old, and Kuroko had nothing to counter it with. It was no shock that Kagami was extremely frustrated with this, but seriously? If he really was as good as he prided himself on, he should have known this was going to happen.
"What the hell," Kagami snapped, throwing the ball to the ground as though it had been the one to offend him. "You gotta be kidding me! I thought you wanted to test me!"
"I have. I never claimed I would be able to beat you, I just wanted to see you play."
Kagami's forehead met the palm of his hand, and he groaned. "God." He bent down to pick up his bag and jacket and said, "I'm outta here."
He took a few steps toward the exit, halted and turned around. "One last thing. You should quit basketball. No matter what pretty things you can say about effort or whatever, it's an undeniable fact that you need at least an ounce of talent to be a good player, and you? You have none."
Kuroko had been prepared for something like this, but it stung nonetheless. "I disagree," he answered as calmly as he could. "I love basketball, and I am not just going to stop playing it because you tell me to. Also, I do not particularly care about who is the strongest."
Kagami recoiled like a spring. "What —"
"I am different from you," Kuroko cut him off. "I am a shadow."
Kagami gave him a puzzled look. Kuroko shrugged, grabbed his things and headed home. He didn't care to elaborate any further. Kagami would find out soon enough.
The following day Aida-san had them play a "mini-game", freshmen vs. the club regulars. Kagami dominated it immediately with his feral ball control. Kuroko observed from the back, forgotten by opponents and teammates alike, and would have rolled his eyes at Kagami's selfish solo performance if he hadn't yelled at the others for being a nuisance, which was eleven kinds of rich, honestly.
Kuroko ground his teeth, exhaled through his nose and kicked him in the shin. Kagami whipped around from backing a frightened, brown-haired boy into a corner and erupted into another hissy fit upon seeing Kuroko, who ignored him and trailed off in the direction of the ball, lying abandoned in the center of the field. He'd had enough of Kagami's snooty attitude.
He took the ball and passed it to the player closest to the hoop. The boy caught it despite his surprise about the sudden resumption of the match and scored. In a flash, the whole gym burst into erratic shouting about how that pass had gone through, but, of course, nobody had seen anything. Kuroko didn't pay them any attention and went on to pass again. The coach would figure it out soon, and then she could explain it to everyone else.
Aida-san did not disappoint him. At the end of her explanation, Kuroko glimpsed over to Kagami who was evidently trying to single him out on the court and failing, mouth and eyes comically wide. Kuroko grinned and shot him the ball.
Somehow Kagami ended up at his table at Maji Burger again. Kuroko seriously debated switching stores even though the milkshakes here were the best in this part of town.
Kagami scowled at him over his stash of burgers as if he was the victim in this scenario. "Don't think we're friends now," he warned.
Kuroko had been nowhere near that thought, but he supposed saying that out loud would be too rude. "I was here first," he said around the straw of his milkshake. "You are the one who keeps seeking me out."
"I am not seeking you out," Kagami barked with a jerky motion of his hands that looked like he was attempting to shove the words back into Kuroko's mouth.
Kuroko raised an eyebrow. Kagami huffed and slumped back into his seat. After a while of mutual annoyed silence, he tossed Kuroko one of his burgers. Kuroko cocked his head in confusion.
"I'm not interested in weak people," he announced as though it needed any more clarification. "But I'll acknowledge that you're worth one piece of all that." He gesticulated toward the batch of burgers in front of him.
This wasn't happening. No one on this planet could be this much of a self-righteous douchebag.
"Thank you," Kuroko said by courtesy and restrained himself from kicking him in the shin again because this was a public place and his parents had raised him better than that. Still, the mental image was very therapeutic.
Pleased with himself, Kagami smiled broadly and started pitching into his meal. Kuroko used this moment of distraction to slip the burger back into the pile it had come from. Kagami didn't notice — or didn't mind.
It took Kagami eleven minutes and 37 seconds to plow through 26 Maji Burgers. Kuroko couldn't decide whether to be impressed or disturbed. Apparently, this was developing into a recurring pattern.
"How strong are those miracle dudes, anyway?" Kagami asked outside. Kuroko wasn't quite sure how they had gotten here together or why Kagami was asking this now. Maybe he was just slow on the uptake while hungry. It would certainly explain a lot. "What'd happen if I went against them right now?"
Kuroko was going to enjoy this much more than he should. "You would be crushed in an instant," he answered evenly. Kagami's expression derailed. Kuroko had to fake a cough to choke the incoming onslaught of laughter.
Kagami pursed his lips. "So what, they're all better than me?"
"The five of u — them have gone to different schools, all veteran ones." He paused to take a breath. He had almost said "us". "There is no doubt one of them will be at the top."
Kagami grinned. It looked kind of manic. "Sweet," he said, more to himself than to Kuroko. "That's what I've been looking for. I'm gonna take these guys down and become number one in Japan."
Kuroko eyed him with distaste and wondered how anyone halfway sane could be so delusional. Kagami's eyes were almost fluorescent in the dark, alight with crazed anticipation.
Scratch that, Kuroko thought to himself. Definitely nothing sane about this one.
Regarding Kagami like that, Kuroko couldn't help but get a little pulled in by his enthusiasm. In his own fucked up way, Kagami loved basketball just as much as Kuroko did. Even if his ego was way out of proportion and there was no guarantee they could actually beat the Generation of Miracles together.
Kuroko felt the wound that Aomine had left inside of him ache, the pain too sharp to be physical.
In all honesty, he had no right to judge Kagami for his egocentrism. He was self-absorbed himself, only in a more pitiful, self-loathing kind of way.
For a moment Kuroko closed his eyes. With Kagami Seirin might stand a chance against the Miracles, given he could learn how to be team player. Maybe they could resurrect whatever was left of the old Aomine. The power the possibility had over him frightened Kuroko. Kagami's delusions were far more infectious than estimated, it seemed.