#dummytag

Neither of them has ever really learned ballroom dancing, but a slow dance at a wedding isn’t anything close to that level of difficulty. They start out with Tatsuya’s hands on taiga’s shoulder and Taiga’s on Tatsuya’s waist, swaying to the music, but as the song goes on Tatsuya just leans his head on Taiga’s chest, feels him breathing in time with the music and holds him tighter. He might have had a little too much good wine, and this might have already been a long day. He can feel Taiga’s quiet laugh, and the deeper inhalation of breath before he whispers into Tatsuya’s ear.

“You okay?”

“A little tired.”

“We should go soon,” says Taiga.

The only one who has a special ringtone on Alex’s phone is Masako, a song from a movie they’d gone to see on one of their first dates—corny as hell, but Alex never said she wasn’t. Masako doesn’t know it of course; even when she’s not calling Alex from across the ocean she’s calling from across a city or a few blocks away (even though she will never admit to getting lost in LA, she always does) or somewhere she can't hear it.

Alex loses her phone somewhere in the apartment; it’s too disorganized and her vision is too shitty to bother with a manual search and it’s on the loudest volume. So Masako calls it from her own phone and it begins to ring, the strains of the familiar melody fuzzy through the couch cushions. Alex fishes around for a few seconds and then picks it up.

Masako’s frowning. “Did you change your ringtone?”

“Only for you,” says Alex.

He’s never tried it before—it’s always seemed out of reach; he could jump and his fingers could scrape the backboard but he couldn’t quite tip the shot in or stop his opponent from getting it in; he’s never had quite enough lift. But today, spinning the ball on his finger, it seems like he does. It seems as if he might be able to dunk if he tries, if he jumps high enough—and so he leaps off the ground.

He asks before the first time he does it, and even asking is crossing a line he’s not sure he’s allowed over quite yet, on an old bridge that may have fallen into disrepair.

“Can I move your hair?”

Seto’s actually a little bit more active in the early evening than usual; he takes off his sleep mask and moves around, in transition from nap to nap the way the sky transforms from light to dark, blue to red to blue again or grey to darker grey.

He likes to sit and play his ukulele (unless Hara’s had time to mess with it and retune it all wrong, in which case he just tunes it himself because he’s got fucking perfect pitch) and it’s actually kind of cute to watch a big guy like him and a tiny instrument like that. And sometimes Hara tells him so.

Aomine’s still laid up with a sore ankle when he and Midorima are finally both home, and besides limiting what they can do together it also means he won’t get to play against him. It’s not something he’s looking forward to missing, but as he sits on the sidelines playing with the cuff on his shirt he realizes it’s been a long time since he’s seen Midorima play live without being directly involved in the game. And he’s still rooting for his own team, but he can’t help getting caught up in watching Midorima, because damn.

He dominates the court, and the rest of the players on his team just sort of fill in around him where they need to be—his blocks ring louder than anything else; his passes are clear and crisp and he doesn’t make them when it’s unnecessary. And his shots swing like ideal pendulums through the hoop, swishing silently and matter-of-factly as they always have, but it’s still a goddamn wonderful sight, the absolute path of the ball and the way his arms extend, long and beautiful, the look on his face.

Midorima’s team wins, and Aomine’s not surprised at all. They take a cab home together, and even though they’ve got the whole backseat Aomine stretches his arm out and pulls Midorima close.

“I adore you; you know that, right?”