ARE YOU READY?

Prologue

"Are you ready?"

"S-Sei-kun…"

"Hush, be quiet, Tetsuya…" Akashi's low, thin, laughter in his ear is like the first of a child: ringing like silver and fresh like lemonade ice. It's sweet and tickles while his hands take care of his sides almost as gently. "You don't want the others to hear us, do you?"

"If Sei-kun wasn't a pervert, there would be no problem." the phantom mutters, averting his gaze to hide that little blushing that escaped his control to bloom on his cheeks like poppies in a field, "Waiting to come back home was too much for His Majesty."

"I'll oversee this attitude of yours only because I must admit you're right." But Akashi keeps on laughing and his threat isn't much worthy, especially with his nose-tip brushing against the teal-head's earlobe. "However, I beg you to try to understand me, Tetsuya. It is almost two weeks we're here, alone, in a wood on the mountains, with a sweaty and panting you passing continuously in front of me and…"

"We're not alone, Sei-kun." Kuroko reminds him, but turning his head to make their noses touch, "Both our teams are here. And this is a training camp, it's pretty normal for me to be sweaty and panting."

"Irrelevant." Akashi shrugs, raising a bit from his position on all four above Tetsuya to admire the other, laying on his futon. Kagami took the hint and vanished in order to not meet their effusions so, at least for this night, they have the room just for them. And after ten days of chastity and five still ahead of him, Seijuro is determined to treasure those hours. "You have to take responsibilities."

Kuroko pouts, offended, and the red-head smiles because he knows he's the only one the teal-head is so open with, the only one the phantom shows so many emotions to.

They kiss. At first slowly, carefully, with Seijuro's hand brushing tenderly Tetsuya's cheek and nothing more, but then the phantom wrapped his arms around the red-head's neck and their tongues become bolder, the heat rises, the bodies sweat, until when, breathless, Akashi pulls back to move his mouth to his lover's ear.

"I have a request…" he murmures.

Tetsuya only knows in this moment he would give him the moon even, if only his boyfriend asked for it.

Kuroko moaned, shaking his head to chase away that memory from his mind. Guilt trip and fear were pulsing in his chest, stronger and harsher for every second of that night he remembered and every moaned he had let out was like a lash on bare skin, humiliating and painful.

The phone in his hand vibrated again – Kagami, for the third time –, but Kuroko ignored it again and resumed his walking back and forth in the car park of the little mountain lodge where Seirin and Rakuzan were having their conjunct winter training camp. He nervously checked at the road, but still nothing and so he peeked at his mobile only to spot the digital clock pushing the numbers a digit forward, a meter lower in the ravine. Tetsuya knew that precision didn't matter when it came to some things, that it could have been already too late as likely as missing a whole lifespan of time, but his head needed to hold onto something or he would have gone crazy.

He couldn't believe he had done what he had done, he had consented to Akashi so foolishly, arrogant in his certain of being able to fix everything later. He felt tears trying to reach his eyes because of anxiousness and fear, but his five years with the mask of a ghost allowed his to restrain them.

How came he was so imbecile?!

He moaned again, without clue of what he should do to stop, and looked around again. There were already forty-five digits too much.

If only he hadn't slept so much, if he had thought before saying 'yes', if only there were a damn real pharmacy and not just a store with a limited inventory!

He let himself fell on the small wall of the car-park and took his head in the hands while his phone vibrated again, this time for a text from the coach which forced him, lightening the screen, to see another sand grain falling on the wrong side of his clepsydra.

What to do?! A part of him wanted to call Akashi and tell him everything, but his mind was screaming that Seijuro had really no faults in that story. It was only him who chose to keep that secret of his life when they got together for the first time in middle school, and then not to tell him even when they got in high school, despite their relationship being two-years long then; the red-head didn't deserve to be dragged into it because of him being a stupid.

"Kami-sama, please…" slipped past his lips before he could stop himself, "Please…!"

His voice, broken by a barely kept sob, had been reduced to such a low whisper that he could hear the car approaching at least fifteen seconds before this one entered the park lot and his body, instinctively, jumped on its feet.

When the figure of his mother's car appeared, Kuroko felt a childish relief spreading in his chest, as if the woman's only presence could fix everything. He held the cell-phone in his hand so tightly that his knuckles whitened and he prayed that those forty-six minutes weren't enough, that he was hurting himself for nothing, that everything would go back in its place.

But as soon as the tall and slim, like bamboo, figure of Sakura Kuroko exited the vehicle, Kuroko felt only the weight of those minutes crushing him yelling all together in his mind the same sentence.

"It's too late…" he murmured, without knowing why he was repeating it but keeping on saying again and again until when his mother was in front of him and had him in her embrace, "It's too late…"

Sakura had long azure hair, like his son's, and his same big cornflower-coloured eyes; the same pale skin over light feminine traits, but she had a little fleshier red lips and she was tall, outstretched toward the sky she seemed to have stolen her colours from. He face, beautiful like a porcelain doll's, was rigid in a worried expression while she held in her hands three subtle with little tubes, and yet was still caring and gentle. That absolute devotion made Tetsuya even more ashamed.

"I'm sorry…" he found himself sobbing, sat with his knees to his chest, on the commune bathroom floor, suddenly unable to keep himself from crying, "I'm sorry!"

Sakura knelt in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders, looking for his eyes with hers and trying to cover her own anxiousness.

"Hush, Tetsuya, calm down, please…" she murmured, with a low but firm voice, "Listen to me, Tecchan, please." The hold of her hands on him was kind, but Kuroko felt it boiling-out, as if it was trying to melt his skin on the bones. "Listen, hermaphrodites rarely are fertile; the pill was just…a precaution, okay? And so was the pill of the day after. They were all plus, to be sure, but if you didn't…if you didn't take them it doesn't mean anything, understood? Don't worry…"

But the tears on Tetsuya's face didn't stop falling; they simply change their path a bit when he shook his head violently.

"Mom…" he sobbed that name like a pray, a plead so desperate that it break something within Sakura. "I…I can feel it, mom…" It was crazy, it didn't make sense, how could he know? Tetsuya had no idea but it was there, in the right centre of his own being, like a light point in the middle of an eternal darkness, and it pulsed and made everything spinning around itself and…God, how could he explain it, when he was the first one to not comprehend?! "I know it is crazy, but…" he tried to say, but the alarm of his mother's phone made him jerk and strangled the words within his throat like a dog's whimper.

Sakura knew what his son was trying to say, but hurried up in checking the tests without helping him to explain.

The results before her eyes were all unanimous, but she would have sold an arm for it to be different.

Damn, Tetsuya just turned eighteen three days ago! Seijuro barely reached his seventeen the previous month!

She closed her eyes for a moment, but then she turned to his son and that terrified gaze, lost, so hurt and humiliated, forced her to grab that body still so frail and held it to her chest as if it was a child's. Even if, sadly enough, he was not a child anymore.

Kuroko was going to ask for an answer, when his mother's words slipped in his ears.

"It is not crazy, Tecchan…" she was murmuring and, even without seeing, he can feel the tears in her voice, "It's just…that there are things a mother simply knows."

Tetsuya closed his eyes while those words broke him, melted him in strong loud sobs like maybe only a five-year-old child, pushed him to hide his face against his mother's breast and hold her shirt so strongly he thought he would leave a hole.

What should I do?!

He kept on crying for hours, unable to find an answer.

I'm not ready.

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Authoress' notes:

Okay... Ehilà! Yes, it's me again -.-

Here's a new fic that, don't worry, it's already complete ;) I began posting it on Tumblr ( agapantoblu . tumblr . com ), but forgot posting it here, eheh ^^" Thus, here the first FOUR chapters, the remnant three will be posted weekly on Sundays, as for on the blog.

As you probably read in the introduction, this will be a particular story, with a Transgender!Character and a Male!Pregnancy, so if you don't like stop here, please.

For all the others...have a nice reading ;)

See you!

Agap