Fag

The cigarette shortens with each slow drag, lips wrapping around the roundness of the not-quite-brown end. Short. Short and brief. He wonders idly if the inside of his lungs are painted as black as he feels. Why is he smoking? He shouldn't. But the winter is bitterly cold, cold enough to justify the respite he has found in his cigarette, he reasons.

Back in summer, the cravings hadn't made him this needy. If anything, the flare was stifling. Summer sun, summer heat, summer fun, summer kiss…

He almost wishes that the cigarette will be pulled from his mouth, trampled underneath a clean white sole, crushed into choking, polluting non-existence into the grass-green earth. Brown eyes in gentle reproach, blue-black head in annoyed resignation.

But it is winter, and no one will do the honour. There is no one to prod him to do his homework, the stupid pages and pages of homework in various languages he doesn't understand – Math, Science, History, English. No one to brush off his excuses; Inter-High Tournament means his grades must be tolerable to the school board, bunch of old farts deciding that regurgitated rote memory is the only way to live. Nobody who will slide him smiles – encouraging, intimidating, pleading, caring smiles from behind round spectacles that hides the most beautiful brown eyes he has ever seen. Nobody to believe the cigarette is a friend's and I'm holding it for him sort of excuses.

So, it's back to the cigarette now, is it? He sucks the stick dry, but his mouth leaves wet imprints; basic manners forgotten in his solitary figure astride a bench dipped in light frosting.

Nobody is going to take away his addiction.

He decides that, as he throws the half-finished cigarette to the ground and swallows down the last bitter taste with a wince. If only the fags were his addiction. It burns more than he remembers.

It doesn't burn more than remembering he is now the only third-year left who will fight with Shohoku High in the Winter Games. Nor remembering brown eyes behind round glasses won't be at practice anymore. Nobody is going to tell him how special, or how wonderful he is, or "Good shot, 'Sashi!" and mean it without the cackle of Sakuragi's nyahaha laughter.

Nobody to fuss over his once-bum knee. Or was even there when it happened.

Why hadn't he taken the chance when beautiful eyes had been bent over school textbooks and exercises and trying to teach him the meaning of life in the one night at Akagi's house? With Rukawa snoring, it had been difficult not to purchase that ticket to dreamland and join the fox-face. Even Ryota, despite Ayako, was in line at the ticket counter.

Cigarettes and smoke and nights of curling grey woven in in-depth perspective of brevity. The night was longer without his midnight fag.

What would Winter Games be without?

Mitsui Hisashi slams a fist into the wood of the bench and gets up determinedly. It isn't far from here, he knows; two blocks down and 3 o'clock at the roundabout. He quickly pops in a mint, hoping against past experience that the pungent bitterness washes down his throat.

One summer kiss is not enough, as Mitsui has learned from his cigarettes. One is never, ever enough.

Oh, Kogure Kiminobu was going to be in for a surprise.


AN: Don't make sense to you. Does to me.

Update: 'Fag' here is not used specifically as a slur for gay people; instead, it denotes the British slang of referring to cigarettes as fags. I thought I needed to clear that up:) Although, I did intend its meaning to be ambiguous.