For all Kagami's protestations that the cheeseburgers are cheap, he orders mountainous amounts of food, until the table is crowded dish-to-dish and Midorima's lucky item, an unlit paper lantern. Midorima is not unaware that, as a sixteen-year-old athlete, he eats enormously; even Akashi and Kise can make startling amounts of food vanish and the less said about Murasakibara the better. Kagami, however, devours food like he's never heard of it before, a thing Midorima knows to be categorically untrue.
"We had training today," says Kagami, in response to this diatribe. "The district championships are coming up."
Midorima blinks at him one long slow blink, outraged. "Of course I know," he says. Of course he does. The calendar in the locker room is marked up with all the dates, all the time Midorima has expected to spend in preparation. The coach sighs every time he passes it. Kagami doesn't appear to see Midorima controlling his outburst, though. Their knees knock together, two massive boys squeezed into a small booth, something like intimate. Midorima picks tidbits from Kagami's spread in revenge for making him stay out this late anyway, and lectures him on nutrition. Kagami appears to split all his attention between the food and Midorima, which Midorima can only hope means he's getting through.
(His fingers curl onto his utensils with delicate precision. He sits upright and implacable. He moves with absent grace, and the sound of his voice softens and drones, rich with the rumble of the man he is becoming. Midorima is not getting through at all.)
He's silent for a long period of chewing, and says, "I played Aomine Daiki the other day."
Midorima says, "Yes," and does not say a thousand other things that sprung to mind immediately and without prompting; that Kagami had lost, that Aomine had won, that Momoi had probably been with him, that Aomine has not changed since Junior High and probably would never need to, that Aomine's basketball, all edges and sighs and excellence flashed in front of his eyes like a lightning-strike and left Midorima blinking in the searing aftermath like he had been punched in the gut. There is something in Kagami's basketball like Aomine. There is something in Aomine's basketball that is amazing, that is something that was all that Teikou was for all their team.
Midorima cannot yet imagine that Kagami knows what he has let himself in for.
Kagami drinks deep from his steaming cup, and Midorima watches the snarl of a grin form around its rim. He continues eating, though he has watched Kagami eat for so long he is sure it is affecting his appetite; the remains of it turn to dust in his mouth.
Midorima imagines it goes without saying that Kagami will lose, that Seirin will.
He doesn't want Kagami to lose again until Midorima himself can defeat him.
He doesn't want Kagami to lose.
.0.
Somehow Midorima winds up taking back Kagami's other pair of headphones, settled around his neck after Kagami wrangles it out of him- somewhere between the gyuudon and the fourth bowl of katsudon- that Midorima only has cheap headphones or earbuds at home, the kind that come with the machines and are perfectly serviceable for anyone who isn't a ridiculously picky snob like Kagami. There's no way Midorima will understand what Kagami is saying about music since obviously Midorima doesn't know anything at all about this subject and won't until he actually gains some experience by trying the experiment over again.
Midorima maintains it was the shock of hearing Kagami muster a logical argument that weakens him and let Kagami put his other pair around his neck- his spare pair, apparently, which don't look quite as sleek as the one that Kagami had lent him first, for which Midorima is thankful. He doesn't think he could take having it for much longer, the jokes that Takao will make, the nervousness of having it, the weight it represents in his bag.
He feels stupid. It's foolish. It doesn't match with what he's wearing at all. It looks weird. Kagami insists, though, and if Kagami wants to be so unreasonable, then Midorima really has no option but to acquiesce. They split the bill and wander back to the station full and feeling removed somehow from their everyday lives. It's not unpleasant.
"Have you always been interested in these kind of things?" asks Midorima. It seems unlike Kagami. It seems too complicated for his simply brain.
"Started after I came back," says Kagami. "I got- more- I had a lot of free time, even though I joined the basketball club in Junior high. We weren't any good, and because I was new, sometimes- You can't really find streetball games around here? Not like in the States. So I wound up listening to music a lot and getting interested in stuff like this." He scratches his head. "I didn't play anything last time- but I set up the one I have at home, too. Nothing too fancy, but it's not bad. I used to walk around and just listen to stuff when I wasn't doing anything else."
Midorima does not remember anyone else in Junior High being any good, really, but doesn't say so. He is struck, suddenly, by Kagami young and alone, filling the apartment with sound in lieu of anything else. Walking around the city without talking to anyone. It's making him sad. Kagami is making him sad. This is unreasonable. Kagami is doing fine now. The thought sinks like a stone in his mind, and it's maybe why Midorima is being more lenient that he should be, even though Kagami has some big matches coming up and instead of practising or resting, is spending this time out with him. To get back his headphones. And trade another pair away.
"See you," says Kagami, when they're about to tap through to their different lines. Midorima is murmuring his goodbyes when Kagami is already gone, head and shoulders above everyone else, unmistakable.
He doesn't move to take it off even through the long train ride home, the cable plugged into nothing and the weight of it on his neck. His phone buzzes once he's already returned and put them on his desk, ready and waiting.
Good night, Kagami sends.
Midorima replies, You too.
.0.
Midorima is watching when Seirin's coach pulls Kagami off the court, while Aomine is playing, when Kagami is playing, while Touou halts Seirin's march to the Interhigh.
There's no way it wouldn't have ended like this.
It's not going to end like this.
.0.
Usually Kagami the one who initiates their conversations, which range from inanities like How do you make Kise stop mailing you (The answer is that Midorima doesn't, even though Kise is far more inane, keeps ridiculous hours and occasionally includes badly-drawn ACSII rabbits, dogs and basketballs in his mails. Midorima can only conclude this to be a failing in his moral fiber) to inanities like Practice was hard today. Sometimes entire days can pass without mails, even the Good night Kagami types out just before he goes to sleep, which Midorima usually answers in the morning with a You have terrible sleeping habits, taking the opportunity to inform Kagami of his horoscope for the day if it is exceptional. On those days when he doesn't reply, Kagami has usually passed out from tiredness. It never lasts, though. Kagami always mails Midorima again. They're both busy; their practices are both hard. You make time.
Takao sends him the match results, although Midorima doesn't need them.
Tonight, Midorima again cannot sleep for yearning, and is listening to music, to sound and fury with the blood boiling in his veins. He can't disturb his parents, so he has on Kagami's headphones, curled into a corner of his bed looking at the score on the phone.
Good night, he sends, without quite knowing why he does it.
(You lost and I was watching, you lost and I was there. You lost and I expected it, you lost and I-
You lost.)
.0.
One day passes. Two days. A week.
Kagami does not reply.