Kasamatsu was so scared and so stiff and frankly a damn emotional wreck before his coach asked to sit down with him. Kaijo had just lost the interhigh preliminaries and it had been his fault.
Images of himself being kicked off the team quickly vanished however at hearing his Takeuchi's words. "I want you to be the next captain. I want you to be the next Ginjiro Miki." Now, Ginjiro Miki was the year's previous captain who had led Kaijo to the interhigh quarterfinals and lost in overtime by one point. But that wasn't to say he failed as a captain. Kasamatsu remembered him vaguely from his time as a first year, he was bold and strong and tall and proud and a leader above all else. What a captain needed to be. He was everything that a victorious team needed.
He tried to be all these things. He attempted to teach the underclassmen respect while begging for the third years to look up to a captain who was their junior. He mentored them and watched them grow and fail and try and try again. He poured his soul out, but never felt that he received much in return.
Kise, of course, was the exception to this. Kasamatsu knew that Kise saw him in a different light since basically the moment he met him. The two were strong apart but together they were unbreakable. At least so they had thought.
After months of training and conditioning and practice camps and living, breathing, sleeping, sweating, bleeding basketball the Kaijo vs. Touou match of the interhigh (the same quarter finals that Ginjiro Miki lost at)crept upon them. Kise was prepared and ready to face Aomine despite never beating him before. Hayakawa was as pumped as ever and seemed to lend the team energy when it had none. Nakamura had spent countless hours analyzing footage of Touou's playing style and had articulated this in painstaking detail to the rest of his team. Miroyama wanted this more than anything else in high school and everyone knew it. Kobi's body was at the point of breaking due to how long he spent at the gym increasing his stamina. Kasamatsu just didn't want to let the team down again.
But not everything works out perfectly, and Touou won the quarter finals.
The winter cup rolled around. Kasamatsu had wiped away the scars of losing in the interhigh, as well as he could but not completely, and focused every ounce of strength he had into the game. Fukuda Sogo would be a different type of match entirely and Kasamatsu was at a loss as to how he could help the team. They were dangerous and good at basketball. He couldn't protect his teammates and play his best game; he just couldn't do both. So, he played his best game and they won - they won - and Kise was injured and Kasamatsu went home crying. Because somehow that hurt more than losing to Touou did. How was that possible? They had won! They were on to the semi finals, more so than ex-captain Ginjiro Miki had ever gotten, but Kasamatsu felt so rotten inside.
Somewhere along the line, he realized that Ginkiro Miki never would have let his teammates get hurt, and would have thrown the game before anyone had to go to the hospital. Kasamatsu discovered this and then promptly ignored it.
Then they had to play Seirin and Kasamatsu wanted it more than anything. He led the team through warm-ups, through the cheer, through the game, against the Shadow and Light Duo Kagami and Kuroko (The Generations of Miracles' Sixth Man!) and the Sword and Shield of Seirin Hyuuga and Kiyoshi (The Crownless General Iron Heart!) and they were doing okay. They were holding on, but only by a thread.
Then the thread snapped, and Kasamatsu watched it as everything spiral out of control.
They lost against Seirin. They lost against Shutoku, too. Kasamatsu graduated without a medal, without Kaijo winning a title. In fact, he was graduating and losing his title. He was no longer the captain of a lost team.
It was the summer after he graduated. He was headed off to college soon. He didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. His life had been basketball, and now basketball was done, leaving a ripped shredded beating thing in his chest that led him on without purpose. He had done a good job of living in the moment, that was for sure, so much that he had no plans and it terrified him. If he didn't have basketball, if he couldn't work to improve his team and earn his keep as captain what did he have left? Hell he hadn't ever had that, had he? Had he even earned his keep as captain? He hadn't won. They had made it to the quarter finals but lost in the semifinals. The seniors left without anything to show for their efforts. Nothing at all.
He watched the underclassmen warm up. He had an off afternoon and decided to slip into the gym and help Takeuchi out. And he missed basketball like he missed breathing and losing a few hours for homework wouldn't really matter if he could feel that same ignited passion again.
Kasamatsu collected the basketballs as they rolled around the court during shooting practice, carefully depositing them back on the racks or passing them to his ex-teammates. "In this light you look like him. It took me a few seconds because I was thinking, 'what the hell is Ginjiro doing here, I haven't seen him in years.' Maybe it's the light or how your hair has grown out. But from the back you look like Ginjiro Miki." Kasamatsu held his breath and turned around to see Takeuchi glancing at him offhandedly. He shrugged as Kasamatsu chocked out a reply and continued on coaching the team, but Kasamatsu had to run a hand over his eyes before he could think the statement through too much. He looked like him. He looked like him. Like the captain his coach had wanted him to be. But did that mean...?
It only took a few seconds after his bedroom door shut behind him that Kasamatsu began sobbing, laughing and sniffling and crying and outright sobbing. He had done it and he hadn't even noticed. He had been doing it and it never crossed his mind. He had been too focused on the fact that Kaijo had lost for him to realize that he had became the captain everyone wanted him to be, needed him to be. He was Kaijo's captain. He deserved to be Kaijo's captain, because maybe leading didn't necessarily mean victory, it was different. So very vastly different Kasamatsu wasn't entirely sure how he missed it. It was motivating and watching and crying and caring and yelling and cheering and running and everything he had been doing for years. He was the captain they wanted him to be. Finally. It had taken so long, so very long but Kasamatsu couldn't stop smiling (or crying). It had taken all this time for him to become captain, to be worthy of that jersey. Or maybe he had been becoming a captain all along.
A/N: So I thought I would be done after the first chapter, but then more inspiration struck in a horrible way and I had to keep going. Special thanks to Veiled Curiosity for asking if I would be expanding this into a multi-chapter fic and unknowingly inspiring me to continue. Updates may be sporadic but I bet they will come. However I plan on all of the chapters of this to be either read in chronological order or randomly alone. In other words, you don't have to read one chapter to understand the next. The next chapter will focus on Hyuuga's mental process regarding his position as captain, and how it affected him, etc. Feedback is always appreciated! Thanks so much guys.
Also, I created Ginjiro Miki. He does not exist in canon, nor could I find the name of the previous captain of Kaijo before Kasamatsu. I just wanted to clear that up. Ginjiro Miki is my OC. I do not plan on making OCs a reoccurring theme, I just felt that Kasamatsu having a physical person to compare himself to would be a lot more effective and realistic than if I had just kept continuing to repeat 'the previous captain'.