Archive of Our Own ^beta

This is not good, was the only thought in Kuroko’s mind as he watched Hyuuga sink onto the locker-room bench, head in his hands. This is really, really not good.  

They’d been invited to a practice game at Senshinkan, and everyone had been excited. Hyuuga, however, looked nothing but uneasy, and it set Kuroko on edge. The match began on an unsteady foot when Hyuuga missed his first shot and they lost the rebound. Ever since then, they’d been hard-pressed to score, completely out of sync with each other despite Izuki’s valiant efforts to maintain control. Now they were here at halftime, the score 29—50, and Hyuuga was quite frankly a mess. 

Kuroko wasn’t the type of person to rely so heavily on his captain’s emotions, but somehow Hyuuga possessed a quiet charisma that made everyone around him see him as an unshakable pillar. Even Kiyoshi looked to Hyuuga with a silent admiration when they played, implicitly trusting the shooter to score time and again. So when it didn’t click for Hyuuga, it tended not to click for the rest of the team (putting it mildly). 

“Hyuuga,” said Riko, sounding a mixture of worried and exasperated. “Come on. Get it together. We need you.”

“No you don’t,” Hyuuga muttered. Kuroko blinked, alarmed—but as he looked at his upperclassmen, they seemed unsurprised. Kiyoshi was shaking his head, Mitobe and Koganei were exchanging exhausted glances, Tsuchida looked pained, and Izuki… Kuroko didn’t know what to call his expression as he looked Hyuuga up and down. It wasn’t the same kind of resignation as the others, nor was it worry or fear. Izuki’s brow was knit and his eyes steely in a manner Kuroko had never seen from the mild-mannered boy before.

“Uh huh.” Riko folded her arms over her chest and glared. “Who wants to deal with this?”

“There’s only one person who can,” Kiyoshi said meaningfully. The rest of the second-years save Izuki nodded in unison, heads bobbing up and down like they were dolls moving in sync. Kuroko shuddered slightly at the creepy image, then frowned as Kiyoshi’s words sank in.

There’s only one person who can. Did that imply that—

“Alright,” Izuki said as if responding to Kiyoshi’s comment, and the unusual gravity in his voice had everyone except Hyuuga looking up in alarm. “It is the duty of a vice to give out timely advice, so… just remember you brought this on yourself, Jun.” Kuroko barely had a second to wonder who Jun was before Izuki rounded on their captain and glared so hard it could have melted steel.

“Hyuuga Junpei!” he snapped. “Are you listening to me or not?” Hyuuga didn’t respond, choosing to continue staring at the ground. Izuki grabbed his chin forcefully, their eyes meeting, but Hyuuga looked away. That adamantine gaze sent chills down Kuroko’s spine, and he shivered lightly, finally understanding what Riko had meant all those months back when she’d taken the first-years aside and warned them that it was far, far better to infuriate Hyuuga than Izuki. He would never groan at any of Izuki’s jokes again.

“Hey, I’m talking to you. I know you can hear me. What are you, stupid?”

Hyuuga ignored him studiously. Kuroko had to mentally commend his captain for his balls—he wasn’t even the one being yelled at and he was just about shaking in his shoes.

“Is that it?” Izuki grinned suddenly, cracking his knuckles, and Kuroko had to grasp Kagami’s wrist very tightly so as not to get up and run a mile in the opposite direction. “You’re not gonna listen to me? Okay, you fucking idiot,”—he heard Kagami stifle a very audible gasp, which was frankly understandable given that Izuki had said it just the way Hyuuga usually did, down to the very intonation of the word. It was creepy, and a little more than scary—“let’s do this. You asked for it, scrub.”

“Not a scrub,” Hyuuga mumbled. Izuki placed his hands on his shoulders and bodily dragged him upright, forcing the taller to rest his entire body weight on him. Hyuuga peeled away, standing on his own, and shot Izuki a weak glare.

“Oh, you’re glaring at me now?” Izuki put his hands on his hips and laughed, a short and sharp thing that grated harshly against Kuroko’s ears. “What’s wrong with you? The basket’s literally right there. A baby could do it, but you can’t?”

No answer. Izuki frowned and leaned in, locking eyes with Hyuuga.

“You’re just going to pretend that you can’t hear me, hm? Do you really want to suffer the consequences of that again?” he whispered so softly Kuroko wasn’t sure he heard it right. Consequences? That sounded oddly charged with something: Were his upperclassmen in some kind of strange relationship? 

He… did not want to think about that. Kuroko shook his head quickly and refocused on Izuki and Hyuuga, the latter of whom had turned pale as he trembled.

“N—no,” he breathed. Izuki tilted his head and looked expressionlessly at him.

“Good. Are you going to answer me or not?”

“I—I—”

“Yes, a personal pronoun. How original.” Izuki sneered, lip curling. He looked rather like the ice-queen-playing lead actress from a drama Kuroko’s parents watched every night—her real-life name was Aya or something. “Talk or I’ll make you.”

“I just—can’t seem to make my shots.” Hyuuga hung his head. Izuki rolled his eyes.

“But what about all the three-pointers we’ve been racking up? Wait, that’s right, they don’t exist,” he said dramatically, throwing his hands up in the air, “because one goddamn idiot couldn’t be bothered to throw a ball into a net.”

“I’m sorry—”

“A sorry excuse of a shooting guard, yes!” Izuki said immediately. Hyuuga looked like he’d been slapped. “If you don’t start making your shots, I will start making mine when we get home. And you know I won’t miss at such close range.”

“What the fuck,” Kagami said faintly. Kuroko nodded in agreement, clinging closer to his light. The other first-years were huddling together, white-faced and looking ill. “What’s going on here?”

“Don’t mind him,” Kiyoshi whispered. The first-years all blinked at him, stunned. “Izuki’s a little homicidal sometimes. He owns a handgun and uses Hyuuga as target practice when he’s mad at him.”

“Quit looking so scared,” Riko added. “It’s their thing. Izuki’s never going to actually harm him.”

The entire bench turned to look at Izuki and Hyuuga. Izuki now had Hyuuga’s jersey in his fist and was hissing into his face; the captain was stiff as a board, limp in the point guard’s hold like a ragdoll.

“—can’t do your goddamn job, you might be more useful guarding someone’s vault of riches as a skeleton to scare people off. Oh, wait, your face is too dopey to terrify anyone, they’ll just laugh—”

“Probably not going to harm him,” Tsuchida said with a nervous laugh. Kagami blanched harder.

“Izuki’s just blowing off steam,” Koganei said reassuringly. “He puts up with all of our crap even if his puns are horrible. He needs an outlet too.”

“I don’t know what kind of blowing off steam is threatening to shoot at your captain with a loaded gun,” muttered Furihata. 

“Actually shooting,” Koganei corrected. “Hyuuga taped it once to use as blackmail. That kinda worked against him.” Furihata stared at him.

“I wasn’t scared of Izuki-senpai before this,” Kawahara murmured.

“Is this some kind of clutch time?” Fukuda said, terrified. 

“Riko gave you a warning about pissing Izuki off, right?” Kiyoshi said, shrugging when they all nodded. “That was for a reason. Not to worry though. You’d have to have murdered someone he loves or something to get that from him. There are only three people in the world who can make him that mad. Hyuuga and he have known each other for so long, they can get a rise out of one another very easily. Those two are a lot more alike than they look.” Watching Izuki continue to threaten Hyuuga, even adding a slap upside the head, Kuroko believed it.

“So long?” said Kawahara tentatively. “Are they old friends?”

“That doesn’t begin to cut it,” Riko said with a soft snort. “You should see them finish each other’s sentences. They’ve been friends since they were five or something. It makes sense, honestly. Both giant basketball idiots. I met them in fourth grade and it was fucking creepy how in sync they were, even during Izuki’s delin—”

Izuki turned around as if hearing his own name and shot Riko a look whose contents Kuroko couldn’t quite discern. The coach paled slightly, gulping.

“Um, even when they had… fights. And stuff,” she said. Kuroko wasn’t entirely convinced, but he nodded as if he’d understood. Everyone went quiet after that, continuing to stare from Hyuuga to Izuki like they were watching a tennis match.

“Okay,” Izuki announced a few moments later, having thoroughly dressed the captain down, “I think we’re good to go. Jun,”—he turned to Hyuuga again and smiled sweetly—“I’m going to pass every last ball to you. And you’re going to score. Don’t be shy about it. If you don’t…” Hyuuga swallowed, paling even harder.

“Yes. Got it. I’ll score. Sorry.”

“We’re picking up tendencies from our opponents now?” Izuki mocked, sticking his tongue out. “I thought your name was Hyuuga, not Sakurai.”

“S—” Hyuuga flushed and did not finish. Izuki scowled at him, taking the ball up in his hands. He turned to Kuroko, who felt a weak bolt of lightning go up his spine at the intense look in those dark eyes.

“Kuroko.” Izuki didn’t sound particularly angry at him, but there was a fiery undercurrent to that voice that solidified his decision never to piss the older boy off. “Let’s put a cap on our captain’s bullshit. I know you and I coordinate the most, so if my passes miss, make sure they go to him.” Somehow Kuroko doubted that Izuki would be missing any passes today. It felt rather like he’d entered his own version of their captain’s clutch mode, as Fukuda had so aptly put it.

The whistle blew and the game began. Kuroko kept his senses on high alert, watching for the ball, eyes occasionally drifting to Hyuuga. His senior still looked sheet-white, but strangely, there was a new light in his eyes and his body language screamed of readiness.

The ball soared across the court. Izuki swooped in to steal it and passed it directly to Hyuuga, the landing clean and smooth as always. Kuroko had noticed it before, but it was even clearer now that the captain and point guard had a special kind of synergy which put Izuki’s passes to Hyuuga on a different level entirely.

Hyuuga jumped, took aim and shot from well beyond the three-point line. The ball slid into the basket without so much as touching the rim, and he smiled tersely, wiping sweat off his brow. Izuki gave him an icy once-over, making the smile fade, and play resumed.

The rest of the match passed without Kuroko, Kagami or Kiyoshi even touching the ball once. Izuki and Hyuuga monopolised the game, pulling ahead with sublime ease and barely allowing the other team to score. Three after three after three raced up on the scoreboard, ending the match with a final 98—50 in Seirin’s favour.

“I had a ball out there,” Izuki said, grinning, as they cleaned up, barely seeming to notice how on edge the first-years were. “It was a good game in the second half.”

“Yeah. I think I did pretty okay. Didn’t miss a shot after halftime.” Hyuuga rubbed his face against his towel one last time and shoved it in his bag. Izuki shot him a flat look and he groaned.

“Come on. Quit looking so unimpressed.”

“You say that like me being unimpressed with you is a rare occurrence,” Izuki retorted, slinging his own bag over his shoulder. Hyuuga deflated a little, and they went to stand by the door together, bickering softly. Riko sighed after them, but she was smiling fondly, and Kuroko suddenly questioned his coach’s taste in men. He looked to Kiyoshi, one of the two remaining voices of reason, and found him also staring goofily at the pair of captain and vice.

“There are only three people in the world who can make him that mad,” he remembered Kiyoshi saying, and came to a revelation that he would have happily gone his entire life without knowing. Kuroko took advantage of his presence to slip out quickly and stay unnoticed on the bus ride home. 

He could barely speak to Izuki, Kiyoshi, Riko or Hyuuga the next day. Koganei, Mitobe and Tsuchida gave him sympathetic pats on the back when they understood what he was going through. As for Kagami, he froze when Kuroko pointed out the way the four interacted and proceeded to choke on thin air, wheezing and coughing like his very life had been robbed from his lungs. Furihata, Fukuda and Kawahara had already picked up on it, and the five freshmen discussed it in hushed whispers with pale, sweating faces until Izuki appeared behind them and gave them a smile almost close to the one he’d shown Hyuuga that day.

None of the first-years looked the starting second-years or Riko in the eye for weeks after. Neither did they ever discuss their teammates’ love lives ever again.