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When Yousen left their hotel and filed onto the bullet train back to Akita Tatsuya smiled and waved goodbye and reminded Liu to drop off his souvenirs in his room, promised the coach to be back in two days, promised the captain he’d be alright all on his own, and promised Atsushi to bring back lots of snacks when he finally returned to them. When they finally settled in their seats and the doors hissed shut they pressed their faces to the glass and stared at him owlishly and with suspicion (Fukui was telling them lies about Alex) until the coach hit them all with a rolled-up newspaper and told them to stop. Tatsuya waved goodbye dutifully to their train until it was out of sight, which was not very long at all.
And then he went to Taiga’s place.
“How did you even get- Alex,” said Taiga when Tatsuya knocked on the door, and let him in without further protest.
“She’s not in?” said Tatsuya, pulling off his shoes and noting the total absence of a blond battering ram striking him in the chest. It was cleaner than he would have expected. The dorm rooms at Yousen, Tatsuya’s included, mostly looked like they were the aftermath of disaster areas, but except for a scatter of notebooks and stationery across the room’s only table, Taiga’s apartment was scrupulously neat. It suddenly struck Tatsuya that Taiga had left the states two years ago, and his parents hadn’t come with him. He’d lived for two years alone.
“She’s stocking up,” said Taiga grimly. “Sorry ‘bout the mess,” he added, walking into the kitchen area to rummage in the cabinets. “What d’you want to dri…what?”
Tatsuya looked up and smiled at him. “Nothing,” he said, from where he’d been looking at the metal rack of shelves with the stacked magazines and the framed photos and the jaunty little cactus sitting on top, right where Taiga would see them first thing he got home, and the last thing before he left. “You’re very adult, Taiga.”
Taiga blushed and looked down and said, “It’s just a drink, geeze.”
Tatsuya thought about sharing extra-large sodas with Taiga so that they could pool their money to buy him more cheeseburgers. “Did Alex buy beer?” said Tatsuya, entering into the kitchenette to look into the fridge. It was stuffed with food, which didn’t surprise Tatsuya. He couldn’t make out anything in the incredibly overstuffed interior, but knowing Alex, there would be beer.
“We’re high school students,” said Taiga, looking down at him with an expression of resigned disapproval. Oh yes. There was beer.
“High school students get drunk all the time,” Tatsuya pointed out, smiling up at him. He straightened up, still smiling into Taiga’s face, and found that Taiga had leant over to catch the open refrigerator door in the same moment, and god Taiga had grown. The last time they’d been this close together Tatsuya had been hauling him forward by his shirt collar and- they’d been eye-to-eye. Tatsuya was surrounded by mutants.
“I’m going to need to go out and get more food,” said Taiga, looking at what Tatsuya assumed was enough food to feel an army for eight days.
Tatsuya raised an eyebrow.
“Alex is going off tomorrow,” said Taiga, still looking disgruntled. It made his face crease in ways Tatsuya was not familiar with. It was cute, though. “She wants a feast tonight. I don’t have the stuff.”
He looked at Tatsuya and swallowed. “How long are you-“
“I have two days,” said Tatsuya, taking pity. He smiled. “I wasn’t done sightseeing yet.”
Taiga looked relieved, open, a smile breaking across his face and that Tatsuya was eminently familiar with. Tatsuya’s grin widened as he looked at it, until they were both standing in Taiga’s tiny kitchen beaming at each other like children all over again, and for once the thought was did not send prickles streaming over Tatsuya’s skin. Sometimes it was nice to feel like a kid again, and to know that some things would not have to change, if he did not want them to.
“I’ll make what you like, too,” Taiga said.
Tatsuya laughed. “You know what I like,” he said, and leaning against the counter nudged Taiga’s side. Taiga nudged him back and it was just like leaning against the chain-link fence waiting for their turn to come up in streetball, trading insults and promises and dreams, just close enough to jab each other in their soft unprotected sides at the first possible opportunity.
“Tell me anyway,” said Taiga, shutting the fridge door.
.0.
In almost no time at all, however, the unutterable and unbearable tension of boredom set in and all that Tatsuya could think of to do was play basketball, even though he and Taiga had just wrapped up a season of unrelenting basketball, and he was almost sure that even Taiga would be sick of being asked to play basketball.
And then Tatsuya went over what he had just said to himself, and thought ruefully that Alex was right, as usual, and he really was stupid beyond belief.
“Taiga,” he said, waking Taiga from what he suspected was another endless replayment of the Winter Cup final- not because Taiga was particularly bored of his company, or regretted what he had chosen to do, but because he was awed by the way the court had rushed to meet and repel him as one animal, the incredible endless inevitability of play, and besides, Tatsuya felt that for him, too, that match would continue to sear its way across his mind even long after he had forgotten who Akashi Seijuurou and Kuroko Tetsuya even were, if he ever did. “Let’s go play one-on-one before grocery shopping.”
Taiga blinked at him, rising from glorious basketball past to glorious basketball present, and smiled in the way he did whenever he was convinced that Tatsuya had just read his mind.
It had been a while since they’d played one-on-one- a long while, since space tended to be scarce on street courts, and company plenty- but the motions of it were familiar still; Taiga’s bound upwards on powerful legs, and the way he produced a basketball seemingly from nowhere, and the way it teleported from one to the other of them as they made their way down; in the corridor, in the elevator, in the lobby, narrowly avoiding decapitating the security guard as they went.
Taiga hunched embarrassed in his hoodie as the guard scowled at them, but Tatsuya just smiled and moved on.
They walked towards the street court near Taiga's house- the very one which they'd met at just two days ago, and what felt, irrational though that was, like a lifetime. Standing opposite Taiga as he bounced the ball felt like forever. Kagami lobbed the ball straight up, and they both waited for it to reach the arc and fall slowly down, and then Tatsuya jabbed Taiga in the ribs just as he was reaching upwards and stole the ball away in an instant.
Taiga roared and thundered after him, but Tatsuya had the lead and even as he felt it slipping away he made an almighty effort and Taiga flew, but not fast enough. He caught the ball as it bounced back up and told Tatsuya what he thought of cheaters. Tatsuya laughed.
“Age and treachery,” he quoted at Taiga. Taiga made a face, not understanding, but they were moving again, playing O-N-I-G-I-R-I, and Taiga had an O to pay back his older brother, and trying to hold him back now would be like clutching fire.
Tatsuya, like Atsushi, like Akashi Seijuurou, did not believe in the power of basketball to transform and redeem and sanctify and heal all wounds and ills and evils, not even searing basketball jealousy and shame and pride. The world was not so convienient, and humans were not so shallow. It was the people who played it that mattered. They were the ones who changed and changed each other, and Tatsuya refused to believe that even watching, playing an incredible match a year (two, forever) in the making could do that, wipe away traces of the person he could have become.
Someone had taught Taiga good lessons about leveraging bulk and speed, but Tatsuya played regularly against Murasakibara Atsushi, and Tatsuya knew Taiga from his head to his toes. Taiga was stronger and faster and even younger and he possesed an edge of brilliance which Tatsuya could never, would never have no matter how much he honed himself, but Tatsuya could still make him work for every step of victory, and neither would begrudge any to the other, and Tatsuya was surprised to find that after expecting himself to mind for so long, he didn't, really. After nursing the wound for so long, it was like slicing away dead flesh to find new pink healed skin, not even tender to the touch, and that very absence of pain was painful.
But the game helped.
Taiga fell for the mirage shot, again, and as the younger boy turned to watch it fall far beyond his reach the corners of his mouth were curled up and his eyes were glowing beyond all reason, and if Taiga was transfixed by the shot then Tatsuya was transfixed by Taiga, and the thump of Tatsuya's heartbeat in his ears was simultaneously painful and perfect, finite and endless. He never wanted that drop to end, but it did, and the ball fell through the hoop with that final, familiar sound.
.0.
As they walked away from the court towards the grocery store they discovered in each other a fount of horror stories about the Generation of Miracles. Tatsuya countered a recitation of Midorima Shintarou's eccentricities with Atsushi's vast library of quirks, and when Taiga talked in a soft voice of playing Aomine Daiki for the second time Tatsuya offered his approval of the look in Kise Ryouta's eyes when he played basketball. They shared a sideways disgusted look at the thought that they had been drawn into the drama of five prodigies who had turned the national stage into their proving ground, who were such enormously big fish that they could splash into any sea they wanted and were just biding their times until then.
They smiled a little, to think that now they were part of that.
From the tone of Alex's mails, Animate- whatever that was- wasn't going to disgorge her any time soon, so they had time for a snack before the store closed.
They halted in front of a Maji Burger, where despite the lateness of the hour Taiga ordered so much food they had to move to an eight-seater table to accomodate it all, but Tatsuya wasn't worried. Taiga could have ordered the whole menu eighteen times over and still had room for dessert.
If you don’t like the pickles in your burger,” said Tatsuya, sweetly, watching Taiga unwrap the first of many, many cheeseburgers, “you can take them out and give them to me.”
Taiga grinned at him, but said, "Maji doesn't put pickles in their cheeseburgers," as though vouchsafing a terrible secret: that he no longer needed Tatsuya to shield him from the horrendous consequences of accidentally ingesting something that had been a vegetable in a previous life. That here, now, Taiga no longer needed him.
"You poor, poor boy," said Tatsuya, shaking his head, closing his eyes. He took (one of) Taiga's fry packets, instead. "Somehow, I'll have to struggle through."