basketball hell

Guilt pokes only the slightest of holes through the pounding in his head as he wonders where you’re off to, if you’re stopped somewhere for breakfast, or if you’re even planning to return today. He couldn’t blame you if you didn’t come back; last night had been, for a lack of better word, powerful. The fury and the fragility of exchanging a whole self for someone else for the first time? Undeniable, sure, but the intensity that bordered on fanatical had taken you both by surprise.

Midorima cleans his glasses on his sweatpants as he shuts the door behind him. The room’s humidity does not register before he rests the frames on the corners of the sink and hooks his thumbs into his waistband.

The shower curtain pulls back with a sudden, metallic shriek, and Midorima flinches in shock. The realization floods his senses as the heaviness of the steam and the rushing sound of the water all click into place.

“Shin-chan?” you more mouth than speak.

Your flushed body shimmers in the blurry outlines of Midorima’s vision, but he can see enough to note the telltale signs of exhaustion present in your every bend and curve.

“Good morning,” he murmurs with a growing ache in his chest as the realization dawns that he’s been staring at your slippery, supple form for what he’s quite certain is an inappropriate amount of time.

“Good morning,” you return, beckoning to him with an outstretched hand, but Midorima shakes his head lightly before turning on his heel and making his way out to the hallway.

Midorima stops abruptly and presses his forehead to the wall, his eyes closed and his breath caught like fire and hot ashes in his lungs.

The curtain screeches back closed again. “You could come in with me,” you call.

A shiver courses over all of his sensitive skin and Midorima groans quietly to himself. You, the Undine. For you, he would happily brace that risk, for he’s lost so deep that if he were to ever surface, he might just die anyway. He’s hard again, even though only hours ago you’d taken each other past the point of breaking and come out as something new and mended with your hearts threaded together. To think, the blurry outlines of your body he’d seen for only a moment are enough to get him gnawing at the corner of his lip and clenching and unclenching his fists in an unconscious need for release. Midorima would have never let himself think he would be the type.

Every pore; every vein; every scar, mole, and freckle — this much he can feel on his lips and in his fingertips just with one unexpected look at you.

He takes a long, shuddering breath before replying in a tone so normal it surprises even him. “I’ll wait until you’re finished. Will you stay for breakfast?”

“What’s on the menu?” you ask, a smile obvious in your voice even over the sound of the running water.

“Anything,” he says hoarsely.

“What’s that?” you call, turning off the faucets with an audible squeak.

Murasakibara stands at the top of the stairs for a good minute, just listening to your half-yell with a smile on his face and the bag of crisps in hand.

“I want you to come with me-ee-ee-EE!! Something, something, ba-by! Nuh nuh nuh, we flow like the wi-i-IND, okay! Tho-ose are theee words, I think, mayyybe!”

Murasakibara enters through the open door and says your name through a mouthful of crunchy salt but you don’t seem to hear, and from the sounds of it, you’re completely immersed under the water flow. He comes right up to the tub edge and looks directly over the top of the curtain, which for him is easy enough, even if he hadn’t meant to do so.

He frowns at the sudden constriction in his chest. The minimal steam in the air lays thick in his lungs, causing him to bunch his shirt into his hand as if somehow that will stave off the feeling of suffocation.

Your wet hair, your sloping shoulder, and the droplets that had fallen like tiny waterfalls over your nipples — all of this is just cause for him to take another look. He tries to be more critical this time around, to understand exactly what had provoked this sudden sense of falling into himself, this immediate feeling of self-awareness.

He sits on the edge of the tub and lets the crisp bag fall from his fingers. Things have changed so quickly, haven’t they? When had you gone from childhood playmate to this? Is it you? Is it him? Murasakibara shakes his head and shifts a little to accommodate his hardening length.

It was just a matter of time, he supposes. And it’s not like he didn’t know, somewhere in the back of his mind, that your school skirts had gone from being just a piece of clothing to something illusive and tempting. From your hair tangled and pulled in fun to soft and seductive locks. From you simply being smaller and someone that he had to be mindful not to crush too hard to being someone smaller and in need of protection from being hurt in any way by anyone.

“Hey,” he says, drawing out your name and only including the ‘-chin’ as an afterthought.

You shriek, and in half a second, Murasakibara is treated the sight of you covering yourself with one arm and one hell of a throw as your conditioner bottle hits him squarely in the shoulder.

“Atsushi! You jerk! You could have knocked!” You pull the shower curtain back, fashioning it into something like a makeshift toga around your body. This, unbeknownst to you, creates the effect of the plastic clinging to your curves. “I’m kind of naked!”

Murasakibara sighs, forces the blush out of his cheeks through sheer power of will, and turns his gleaming eyes to the ground.

“And anyway, you’re early!” you accuse, sticking your arm out for a towel.

“You’re late,” he counters easily, holding the towel just out of your reach. “I guess I could come in there with you.”

“You could fall out the window and break your big jerk head, you… Atsushi, just give me the towel!”

He hadn’t been teasing but he’s more than less glad it comes off that way. For now, he crosses his legs to hide his erection and rearranges his features into a mask of familiarity and blandness as he hands you your towel. That feeling in his chest has just grown that much more overwhelming, that much more difficult for him to take, but for you, he will bear it. Just for a moment, if only a second, he’d seen the crack in your armour. He had seen a realization you’re not yet ready to have flash over you, in the goosebumps on your skin and in the part of your lips.

Because, realistically, if he had truly wanted not to think of you, he would have just left his phone at home. That frustrating realization propels him down the hallway with his phone burning a hole of attention in his pocket as the crowds thin into only a pair of couples lining the hall. Seeing them doesn’t make Kagami particularly embarrassed or uncomfortable, but it does remind him of the urgency he had unintentionally created as soon as he had noted that the apartment has a balcony.

He pushes open the bedroom door to find a couple pressed against the far wall. He’s two steps into the room before he even registers what they’re doing. 

“Ah, sorry,” he mumbles, reddening at last and cursing himself for not knocking. He averts his eyes to the floor, and as he does, the image of the guy with his hand up the girl’s skirt and her hands presumably full and busy, comes flooding in more detailed relief.

Then, quite suddenly, time stills for everything but the speed of Kagami’s pulse. The party noise turns to a faint buzzing in his ears, and he just blinks as the room swims and shifts as he stares at the blank space between the bed and the floor.

“Taiga?” comes the familiar voice, cutting through everything, crushing Kagami’s chest and threatening to obliterate his being.

At least in some small way, Kagami knows exactly what he’s doing, like he has never been more focused, but he also seems to leave his body to watch as he strides the room in two easy paces, rips the pair apart at the shoulder, and draws his fist back to strike Himuro so hard it leaves him gasping on the floor and already swelling at the cheek.

Then his attention turns to you, and he hardly recognizes you through the lenses of disgust and rage that permeate his vision. But there you are, nonetheless, flushed and hands clapped to your mouth in shock.  Kagami can feel his hand forming into a fist again, can feel the tension and recoil forming at his elbow, but forces his arm to stay down out of sheer force of will. Himuro is saying something, but Kagami can’t hear him.

“You,” he hisses, watching the confusion and terror play over your flushed features. “We’re done. And you!” Kagami rounds on Himuro, who has a hand raised to his cheek. His left eye is swelling and completely reddened, but he looks concerned above all. Kagami’s ire is near to breaking, and it’s all he can do to restrain himself further as he spits out what he has to say. “You could have had anyone!”

With that, he spins on his foot and nearly shatters the door as he flings it open. He hardly stops even to pull on his shoes with shaking hands. His graceless heart flutters and bounces off every corner of its cage and he scowls as he kicks his feet through the light dusting of snow as he considers just cutting it right out and saving the pain of his pride.

Your voice sounds from behind him, but it just serves to spur him on faster. He can outpace you fairly easily on a regular day, and each of your calls of his name sounds more winded and desperate and as he cuts down an alley and you stop calling his name, he considers it fitting that you could have given up that easily.

It’s not until he’s two full blocks away that it clicks in his mind, and Kagami hates himself for accidentally putting it together. He hates himself even more drawing to a complete stop.  Snowflakes land on his cheeks and lashes and melt down his face in little rivulets, though it doesn’t register. He’s busy re-enacting the events, how had seen your body go into shock, how he had watched as your eyes grew vacant and blank. He had heard your cries grow fainter and more and more breathy with each call. He has seen panic before. But even so, Kagami hesitates. What kind of an idiot would he be to go back now?

He gives in and clenches his fists at his side, scowling, to draw a deep and cold breath into his lungs and holds it for at least five full seconds before letting it go and turning back around.

When he finds you, he grinds his teeth. You’re collapsed right in front of a commercial recycling bin, unconscious but breathing steadily in slow streams of white vapour against the crisp air. You’re dressed in little more than flat shoes that look to him more like slippers and a dress meant for indoor or summer use only. The snow settles in your hair and on the fabric of your dress, and your body shivers out of self-preservation. You must have leaned up against the recycling can to catch your breath before you realizing that the inability to breathe wasn’t coming from the cold or from running after him, but from the panic constricting your throat and tearing at your lungs.

Kagami sighs. He ignores the suggestion born of raw pain to just leave you there, that someone would be along soon and help, and instead leans down to grab your limp form and heave your body over his shoulder.

It’s not until he’s riding the bus back to his apartment and ignoring a couple of blatant stares at your disheveled body, that he realizes he couldn’t stand the thought of someone else coming along and touching you, even just to check your temperature as they called for an ambulance. He adjusts the sleeves of his winter jacket to wrap around your frame as best he can; he had shrugged you into it when he’d set you down in the seat and assured the driver you wouldn’t be sick, but it only dwarfs your frame, it doesn’t necessarily give you the warmth you need.

As he catches the blur of lights through the snow, he realizes he isn’t really concerned about the jacket warming you at all — he simply doesn’t want anyone looking at you.

He sees the thick red flag of jealousy waving in front of his eyes. He can smell the smoke before the fire. Kagami knows better than to go down this path.

He blinks, tucks his arm around your shoulder, and as your head meets his chest, he barrels headlong and fully aware into the danger anyway.

When you awake, you’re warm.

You’re wet.

You’re in Kagami’s bathtub.

Kagami watches passively as you blink back into consciousness. Every flutter of every lash brings you back into yourself, and every second that passes drags with it the weight of remembrance. He won’t tell you this, but you’d regained consciousness once before on the bus ride, though out of perhaps some sense of desperate self-preservation, your body had shut right back down again just as quickly.

He can see your head swimming, the confusion playing out in your eyes as a film reel of the last couple of hours goes back even further to every judgement and decision of the day that had lead you pressed against a cool wall in the soothing hands of the closest thing Kagami has to a brother.

At what point, he searches repeatedly, had you made the decision? Kagami stares hard into your dazed and doelike eyes as you silently replay the events over and over, as if by watching, he could see the turning point himself. Was it in the small choice of picking what shade you would wear on your lips that had predetermined the encounter? Had you woken up thinking today would be the day? Was it when you had first crossed the threshold? Could it have just as easily been with anyone? Was it when you had first seen Himuro and had fallen hard and fast for his handsome, alluring mystery and the promise that lay in under the weave of his shirt and his tight jeans? Or was it when you had first exchanged words, at Himuro’s easy confidence and disarming voice? Or had you always had an unfaithful mind and this was a chance for you to act on it?

Kagami knows this is the first time you’ve cheated. He has construed it from your expressions of the particular type of shock — not necessarily from having been caught, but from having been in that situation in the first place and caught at it only to boot.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to even himself, when Kagami shifts his stance to rest his weight on the balls of his feet as he leans over the edge of the bathtub to better see the entirety of your face, when he asks a very different question than the one he’s been considering all along. “Why?” he growls. It feels like pouring molten steel down his throat and he grimaces at the burn, but there it is.

Your skin is already pink in the areas he’d polished with soap and a face cloth, like the repetition would start to chip away at Himuro’s touch on your skin. You flush, deep and uncomfortable and completely self aware, as you draw your hands around your knees and draw in on yourself. You don’t so much as blink, but tears stream from the corner of your eyes in more of a biological function than intentional grief. When you’re finally composed enough to speak, you meet Kagami full-on, eye to eye, and what he finds there is the start of a dark, smouldering fury. His pulse sings through his veins as he returns the energy easily.

“You said we should take a break,” you say quiet and low. You’re a danger like this, to yourself and to him, but Kagami can’t find it in him to care much past the point of matching your anger. “It was you, Taiga.”

And Kagami knows he shouldn’t act, but his body moves on its own to assert itself as the aggressor and aggrieved in this situation, to make himself look as big and as intimidating as possible. He silently dares you to add the word that single provocation to the end of your sentence.

You fall for it. There’s no way you couldn’t, because the cornered rat will always bite the cat. You hiss the word through your clenched jaw. “Remember?”

Kagami reaches out as a conduit of lightening itself to grab your forearm and pry it from your leg in a physical display of tearing down the walls of what he sees as your self-imposed, self-righteous defensiveness.

The warning alarms are blaring red and loud and seizing at the edges of his mind, but the hallways are abandoned and all of Kagami’s focus is on breaking you down until he’s staring into the heart of the truth the way he wants it to look.

He knows he’s hurting you, but your eyes and your truth don’t back down. Hell, he could — and in this state, he probably could — tear the apartment down around you and you would still be there, naked and vulnerable and completely exposed, and still not prostrate yourself to the far-sweeping edges of his pride.

Remember?

“We didn’t break up!” he says, much louder than he means to. “And there you are, whoring yourself out — no, that’s wrong, they get paid! They’re in business! — you’re just more than happy to fall into the arms of the first big, strong man you can find! You saw him and thought, ‘wow, Tatsuya would be a good fuck’.”

The water sloshes as you relax your knees and lean forward to face him closer, white-hot in your rage. “Would it have been better or worse if it hadn’t been Himuro?”

“I don’t know!” Kagami says, finally able to regain the modulation of his volume but exchanging it for stinging inflection.

“You wouldn’t be able to needle me with specifics, like I bet you’re going to, if it hadn’t been,” you hiss.

His jaw is set and his mind is blank, even the struggle to form a coherent thought is a difficult process to follow, even one straight line is too almost too much.

“Like you didn’t go to that party to get your dick wet,” you cry, and now it’s your voice that cracks into half a yell, now it’s your breath hot and heavy on his face, and that’s not how Kagami had wanted it. He prepares for the verbal hammering and can barely draw in a deep breath before you’re serving it out. “I wasn’t even thinking about getting laid. I was thinking ‘hey, I’m going to have a nice evening for the first time in, oh, three weeks, since my boyfriend suddenly said he needed some time’ — and I get that you have priorities and the world is spinning too fast for you! I get it, Taiga! — and then I ended up at that apartment! And hardly a word from you! For weeks! What am I supposed to do with that!? And, guess what? We’ve been dating for months and I have never been introduced to Himuro, not even when you call! So, I meet a guy and I get this strong sort of vibe, that he’s special, like he’s special in the way I think you’re special, and it just happens!” you’re shrieking as you wind down, but your breathing has gone ragged and punctured, and Kagami sees what you don’t, that you’re rubbing at your chest and throat for air that’s hard-coming once again. “Don’t act so high and mighty with me!”

Kagami can’t find a way to loosen his hold on your arm, not that you struggle for it back, leaving him forced to rise with you as you stand. You’re dripping and nude and full of the confrontation he hasn’t understood how to face until now.

But the hurt doesn’t die without a few last vicious kicks, so Kagami lets his mouth be a vessel for it. “That doesn’t change anything. You wanted it. You were all over him! And it probably would have been more if I hadn’t found you.”

“You said we were on a break, Taiga!” you gasp, shrill and clear and losing control of your lungs. You lurch forward, colliding with his chest in a blow that Kagami barely registers.

“‘I need some time’ is not a break,” he grumbles, low and steady as your composure breaks apart in front of his eyes. He circles your fist with his free arm and is only now able to loosen his grip on your arm.

“And you think you can have whatever you want without any regards to the consequences?” You rage, furling and unfurling your fingers in both hands in impotent upset. “You only texted me a few times. How was I supposed to know you were even still interested? The world doesn’t revolve around you alone!”

Kagami winces. You’re right, there’s no way you could have known that he’d been checking up on you several times a day, but that doesn’t excuse your actions, not yet.

“Still,” he says quietly to the top of your head, “you wanted to sleep with someone else. You kissed him without even trying me first,” he lets go of your arm completely and lifts your chin up so you have no choice but to look up at him. The fury in your eyes is unbelievable and sets his nerves further on edge. “How did it feel, to be touching someone else? To have Himuro playing you like you’re an instrument until you’re just about ready, to have you begging him for it —”

The hit doesn’t come from your dominant arm and you’re far too close to have as much of an impact as you must want, but the slap still rings sharply against Kagami’s cheek. He opens his eyes, before turning his head back to face you only to feel the loathing in your stare. “Damn you, Taiga. Is this what you want? If you don’t want me anymore then just tell me and I’ll go.”

“Don’t you move,” Kagami growls, surprising himself once more as the red, blaring alarms fade into silence. He re-enters himself with the sting on his cheek helping to cool his focus. “If you wanted sex, you could have come over any time.” 

“Nice,” you grumble. “R-really special.”

He captures your arm once again before you are able to move it, but this time he forces his hold to be gentler. He strokes over the bruise he knows he’s left on your wrist with his thumb. Your shudder sends cold wave of delight over him. “So what were you looking for?”

“Attention, maybe? Like, to feel like I wasn’t a burden. I wanted to be wanted,” you whisper, panting the words for breath that’s so hard-won. You fail to smother the hoarseness of your voice. “I wanted… I… why didn’t you want me?”

“Oh,” Kagami exhales. He knows the look on his face is what’s causing the tremble in your knees just as he knows the fist against his chest is no longer for impact but to brace yourself. Your eyes are so big and beautiful and imploring and the material wet dreams are built from. He pulls backward, and you follow, stumbling out of the tub to press against him. The whole of your naked need to be wanted presses into him and Kagami surrenders with a shudder of his own, easily passing from betrayed into determined.

“Taiga,” you say quietly, “it’s so hard to breathe.” The truth of your statement lies in the quick, shallow contractions of your chest and your warm pulse flickering staccato under his hand.

“Yeah,” Kagami swallows, frowning as he holds your chin up and brings his lips to meet yours. You heave a tremulous gasp and moan, twisting and shaking under him. He diverts your attention by softening his grasp on your chin and curling his fingers out over your cheek, stroking, calming, while demanding your focus on the moist heat of his kiss. He slips his tongue past your teeth, forcing them to release their subconscious clench, and after a long moment, you respond in kind.

When you lean into the kiss, Kagami shuts his eyes, only to be greeted with the sight of Himuro’s bruising face and of how Himuro had you in the palm of his experienced hand. He grunts, slamming his fist backward into the cool sink marble. “Do me a favour,” Kagami pants as he breaks the kiss.

“Anything,” you respond immediately.

“Hit me again,” Kagami demands, his voice low and hoarse.

A second of indecision is all it takes before you realize the gravity of his request and comply with a stinging slap across his face.

“Again,” he hisses his approval as the thought of Himuro’s is replaced with the grounding sharpness in his cheek. You frown but silently agree, and when you bring your arm up in a wide arc, Kagami’s sluggish senses finally perk up. 

He grabs your arm before you can make contact and drags you against him, pulling you up to the tips of your toes into a bruising kiss. As he backs you against the sink with a guttural moan and you settle on top of it, you shiver into the intensity of Kagami’s touch. Instinct takes over and he grabs your back to crush you into him and your heartbeat is as ragged as his breathing. You wrap your legs around his hips and Kagami lets loose a gravelly moan from the back of his throat. “Hold on to me,” he orders, breaking away, watching the expression on your face as he lifts you clear up and away and makes his way to the bedroom.

“Taiga,” you whisper, and he’s distantly pleased that you’ve remembered how to breathe despite how it’s shallow again, but for a completely different reason. “What are you going to do to me?”

Kagami groans, rolling his eyes as if asking for the patience not to break over your shores too soon. You’re not trying to test him, and he has to tell himself that it was a genuine question, not a provocation dripping with sex. It proves difficult, though. He slams your back against the wall and holds you up with the help of his thigh and his left arm. The right, he braces against the wall. You quiver before him, your desire shaped in every little movement.

“First,” he says, lowering his forehead to yours and closes his eyes, inhaling the scent of your need, “I’m going to take you, hard, right against this wall.” You moan and he exhales slow, shuddering, and laden with restraint over your ear. “Secondly, we’ll move to the bed and you’ll come for me. I’ll be ready to go again by then, so I’ll take that pretty little body of yours and fuck you slow and deep until you’re crying my name. After, we’ll clean up, have some food, and talk this over.” He opens his eyes, meeting your blown pupils with his own, and kisses your neck. It’s not really a request, but he needs to hear you submit. “Agreed?”

Your strangled yes is enough to make his cock throb more painfully than he has felt in a long, long time. When your hands work frantically at his belt and fly, Kagami keeps his forehead pressed to yours, his gaze heavy on you, and only presses you into a deep, brief kiss when you have his straining cock in your hand. You’re a molten mess of desire riding high on his thigh, and Kagami can’t help but take the weight of your breast in hand, though there will be time for that later, so he only pinches once before bracing his arm from shoulder to shoulder across your chest to pin you to the wall.

“Please, Taiga,” you whisper, and he responds with a low moan as he eases his way into your wet heat. It feels like coming back to a home he thought he’d never see again, and Kagami pants as you squirm between him and the wall, at the exquisiteness of you at his mercy. His thrusts pick up speed as you gasp and paw at his shoulders and arms and leave little crescent-moon indentations in your wake. He growls for you to stay still, and when he does, you respond with an aching noise and let your head hit the wall. Like this, he can grab your hips better, drive himself into you, fill you full of him, but that’s not enough, it’s not nearly enough, and this won’t last long enough to fulfill either of you; he can already tell by the shaking in his legs and the fire stoked in his stomach that he’s close to coming. 

Kagami abandons your skin to press his fingers into the wall and rakes his way down. Paint flakes come away under his fingernails. He slams his fist against it as your everything clenches hard against him: your fingers, your legs, your throbbing cunt. You’re murmuring something unintelligible with the soft length of your throat exposed for him, and he’s so tempted to bite down on it, but there’s not the space, so it’s with the picture of sundering you into trembling pieces under his control that Kagami comes sudden and hard. He shoots so thickly into you that you’re keening at the hot rush that takes too long to stop and squishes out between your thighs.