Work Text:
Let's call this story, "the last man in the world." The summary will be, Kise buries a body, metaphorically.
First, the setting. Post-series, post Last Game. (You will allow for the existence of Last Game in this canon.) Kise's third year, maybe. He is stuck at a crossroads. He will need to start studying for exams. He should already have been studying for the entrance exams. Wait, no, you are getting ahead of yourself—he will need to decide if he wants to go to college. If he does, and likely he does, then the easiest way is a sports recommendation. But does he want to keep playing basketball? Ask yourself, what does Kise want? (Think to yourself: isn't that the whole point of this story?)
At eighteen, Kise is growing up. He thinks, in fact, that he is a grown-up. He has not quite grown up enough, but he does not know it yet. You do, and once danced on that edge yourself, the line between being not quite grown up enough and being a grown-up, but perhaps that is another story for another day. For the moment, this is Kise's story.
There is another man. You will introduce him in the first sentence.
Open on the scene of a photoshoot. Address, briefly, like a waiter sweeping crumbs off the table between courses, the current state of Kise's basketball career: another loss for Kaijou in quarterfinals, strong second years, the aforementioned exam dilemma. This explains in broad strokes why Kise is still modeling. At eighteen, Kise is at the height of his good looks. After this he will become less beautiful but more palatable, the kind of handsome that will always be photogenic and turn heads at a cafe, but without the arresting shark-like quality he has now. This is a good thing—it's not healthy to be beautiful all your life, especially not as a man. Of course, Kise knows nothing of this and assumes he will be this attractive for the rest of his life. At eighteen, the only thing he registers is that he is the busiest he has ever been and consequently has more money than before to spend on sneakers.
The other man is a model, an older one, with whom Kise has recently been paired together often. They work for the same agency. Kise calls him only by his last name, which should be something ordinary with a good mouthfeel. Kubota, or Ueda. Or let him be Miyamoto, and everyone calls him by a nickname, Miyahon. "Like Zelda," he tells Kise early on, winking, and looks nonplussed when Kise stares blankly back at him.
"You know, the creator of Legend of Zelda," Miyamoto says with a frown.
Kise shrugs. "If Miyamoto-san says so."
"Kids these days," Miyamoto huffs, and leans in close to Kise, his head almost at the crook of Kise's neck, the way the photographer tells him to.
Afterwards, this becomes their little recurring joke. Others might, in Kise's mouth, become "Watanabe-senpai" or "Yamacchi" or, in a rare occurrence, simply "Itsuki." But to Kise, Miyamoto will always be "Miyamoto-san."
This is the first sentence: It takes Kise working together on three photoshoots before he gets up the courage to ask Miyamoto to sleep with him.
Miyamoto will say no, of course. But only at first. To his credit he is very firm as he turns Kise down. To his detriment, he does not know that rejection only makes Kise more determined. He is not prepared for the obstacle course you set out for him: a karaoke birthday party for a makeup artist they both know, driving Kise home after a shoot that goes late, remembering his own high school years full of stolen lunchtime naps on rooftops with a good friend he never talks to now and letting that influence his decision to allow Kise to fall asleep on his shoulder one time—a mixed message he can never take back. Miyamoto is the kind of person who covers up his ambivalence towards long-term commitment with shallow demonstrations of thoughtfulness, and Kise has had years of practice faking pleasant surprise at unexpected kindness. It is the perfect combination to get Miyamoto in trouble. By the time Miyamoto realizes that he's been conned, it is already too late.
After all, when was the last time Kise did not get what he wanted, outside of basketball?
(After all, when was the last time Kise wanted something that wasn't connected to basketball?)
You are a careless, unimaginative god. Not for you the fully fleshed out original character who appears on the page complete with hobbies and secrets and preferences for sweets or an aversion to tomatoes. What you know about Miyamoto are merely the mercenary details, just enough to get by: that he is older but not too old, that he is almost exactly Kise's height and thus doomed to one day be shorter than Kise, that he has black hair and a strong, sturdy build and a wry smile that makes him easy to like but hard to trust. You don't even know Miyamoto's given name. It's okay. Neither does Kise. It is possible Kise will never even ask.
Oh, no. Now you have made a point too early and too directly. Time to walk it back, to misdirect. Better to let Kise unfold slowly.
At some point you will have to write the sex scene. Realistically, there should be a number of them. Furtive handjobs in a dressing room, more dare than seduction, Kise caught between the honest reactions of his teenage body and his desire to be a dishonest adult. Have you done this before? Miyamoto will ask, and Kise has, though maybe not as often as the impression he gives off. With whom? Miyamoto will ask, and Kise, trying to catch his breath, sneers, Really? Are we recreating dirty-old man AV dialogue? What Kise is trying to do is obvious from miles away, but instead of dodging and letting this insult wash over him, Miyamoto catches it neatly, like a jab straight to the solar plexuses of his shame, and retaliates with an ever escalating series of bad decisions, rising to a challenge Kise didn't know he was setting up.
So, then, something Kise really has never tried before: a languid blowjob, setting undetermined, Miyamoto's hand guiding Kise slowly until Kise, irritated, bats it away so that he alone is setting the rhythm, muttering I know how this goes, thank you. Of course that is a type of seduction too, being in sole possession of Miyamoto at his most vulnerable moment, and there is a split second during it when Kise looks up and sees the exertion on Miyamoto's face as he tries to keep himself from shoving further down Kise's throat, his thumb resting on the corner of Kise's open mouth, afraid to press or pry open further, and wires crossed, Kise feels himself getting hard, wanting to rub against Miyamoto's smooth palm, Miyamoto's leg, the sheets of Miyamoto's bed. He has never felt this way before and, terrified, he finishes Miyamoto off with his hand instead, hurried jerks that leave them both panting.
What you love about the one-time original character is the blank canvas with no expectations. He can be whatever you want him to be, at the mercy of the story's demands. A canon character's personality exerts its own inescapable gravity, and you're well aware of the limitations of being chained to a canon mostly populated by preposterous asshole teenagers, when your favorite character type is the badly behaved adult who always starts with good intentions.
Which leaves you with Miyamoto. He will never actually fuck Kise, and you are not quite sure if he ever wants to. Miyamoto is flexible, has definitely been in a threesome situation with at least one other penis involved, maybe even had an open-minded sex with benefits relationship with a gay friend that never panned out, but to be honest he is terrified of crossing a threshold with Kise, whose every gesture screams that he will ruin Miyamoto's life and is, after all, still in high school.
All that is true. But what Miyamoto will do is, eventually, offer to fuck Kise with a dildo. "Have you ever wanted to try it?" he asks nonchalantly, pulling out a slim, unassuming black one from a container under his bed.
"Have you?" Kise asks, a little shocked.
Miyamoto chuckles, then stops when he realizes Kise's question was genuine. "Sure," he says, pretending to turn away and look for more lube so that Kise won't see the smile on his face and misinterpret it as teasing. "Is that a surprise? I enjoy it, even. A lot of men do."
"I just figured that you'd, you know." Kise bites his lip. "Never mind. No, obviously not."
The first time, it won't take. Kise endures, clenching a little too tightly, then cracks, half-laughing, then half-crying, then cold and bitchy as he withdraws. "I'm not in the mood," he says, and raids Miyamoto's fridge for beer, which Miyamoto only keeps for his friends and now Kise. (He's a model and a B-list actor, and he gains weight easily. It's rare that an Asahi at home is worth the crunches he'd have to do later.)
But the second time, something falls into place. Kise is a little drunk, or Miyamoto has managed to find the right compliment, or maybe he is fresh off a photoshoot where they'd let him show off some basketball skills, blood pounding close to the surface of his skin, searing hot to Miyamoto's touch. Later Miyamoto, seeing Kise's distraught and embarrassed face, will say it is because they switched brands of lubricant. No matter—the point is that Kise fucks himself back hungrily, taking in Miyamoto's fingers so quickly he is afraid they'll sprain. "Easy," Miyamoto hisses, stroking the flank of Kise's thigh soothingly, drawing a strangled "fuck!" out of Kise as he pulls out. By the time he gets the dildo in, Kise is already squirming, like he's been waiting years to come and is going to die if it doesn't happen right now.
Miyamoto hands Kise the dildo, has Kise put it in himself. Kise, shameless, leans his weight on Miyamoto's chest, adjusting himself against Miyamoto's body as he takes in inch after unyielding inch. Years of control and a no-longer-eighteen-year-old libido means Miyamoto can be patient, almost unaffected as he coaxes Kise along, one hand on Kise's cock but only as reassurance, just holding Kise there so that they can both feel every jerk of Kise's body as he takes the dildo in, again and again.
"It's okay," Miyamoto tells him. He puts an arm around the back of Kise's neck, kissing Kise briefly on his closed eyes, his wet eyelashes, before pressing Kise into his shoulder. His other hand guides Kise's, setting a firmer rhythm, both of their grips sticky with lube, reluctant to part. "I'll take responsibility. Stop thinking. You're doing great. Just let it all out."
And in that moment, that perilously close moment, it slips out. A thing Kise had never said to Miyamoto before, the secret you have been keeping close to Kise's chest, until this very second, waiting for Kise to be stretched so thin he is like a string pulled too tight, ready to snap at the slightest touch.
"Senpai," Kise sobs, and comes so hard he blacks out.
Relationships: Kise Ryouta/Original Male Character(s), Kasamatsu Yukio/Kise Ryouta
Additional Tags: Unrequited Love, Crush
A list of things you know about Kasamatsu's sexuality:
He is painfully, tragically heterosexual.
He likes serious girls. (It does not follow that this means he only likes serious guys. But, again, see above.)
Once at an impromptu goukon made possible only by Kise, he was so nervous he ended up blurting out "oppai!" instead of "kanpai!"
Some people are beloved by friends of their own gender. You are one of those people. So is Kasamatsu, a favorite among his male friends, but pitied by girls.
You had once said about Kasamatsu that he would walk into traffic without a moment's hesitation for Kise. As if talking about a real person, you had said, Kasamatsu would lay his life down, let a truck crush his legs, let a train shatter his spine, give blood and organ and limb for Kise. But no matter how hard Kise may beg, no matter how much Kise may want it, even if Kise could admit to himself that he wanted it, Kasamatsu would never touch Kise like that.
That too is a kind of love. Parceled out, with boundaries, but limitless within those boundaries. A person could stay there forever, if they wanted. Friendship is a bubble, so small that you could stand up, arms outstretched, and touch both sides at the same time with your fingers. As long as you never leave, you will be safe. You know every inch of that space, and it will never betray you. Yet, you cannot stop wanting to cross over into the unknown, to shatter the glass and let the water flood in on all sides until there's no air left.
Isn't that you, Kise? Isn't that what you've always wanted? To never be satisfied with what you are given, to always take what isn't yours.
To drown.
There are things that cannot be taken back once said out loud. "I love you." "I hate you." "I hope you die." "You are the light to my shadow." "Play basketball with me for life." "I don't even remember how to receive your passes anymore." (No one's ever said that to Kise, but he knows the consequences, and intimately.) Somewhere in there is probably, thinking about your high school basketball team captain while you have five inches of rubber cock up your ass and then orgasming when you finally (don't) shout his name. That much, at least, should be obvious to Kise.
Some people love the Teikou era, the generation of miracles whaling on each other with their wet noodle egos, the lasting trauma of one middle school monster loving another as only they can. You have always loved best the post-Teikou ride-alongs, the sidecar characters, the "therapy dog boyfriends," you once joked. But of them, Kasamatsu is unique. Takao, Himuro, Mayuzumi—they were all reflections of Kuroko, could either see themselves in him or he in them. They were all partners, or servants, or attempted friends.
It is Kasamatsu alone who is a captain, a leader of men, the kind of player on and off the court that Kuroko could never and would never aspire to be. For Kise, Kasamatsu is a mixed metaphor. When it comes to Kasamatsu, Kise feels love like a slap to the back of his head, longing like the heaviness of an arm slung around his neck, loss like the salt taste of sweat and tears. Responsibility, to Kise, has a precise weight: exactly 66 kilograms.
If what drew you to Kuroko and his merry band was the endless parade of sad high school boys ugly-crying in public, it does not escape your attention that that was a luxury reserved for the freshmen, the generation of miracles plus two or three. Kasamatsu did not have that luxury. When he cried, even Fujimaki hid his face, so that no one would have to bear that sadness, not even Kasamatsu himself. That is the weight of a captain, all 66 kilograms.
What is it that you said earlier? Even if Kise could admit what he wanted to himself. Perhaps you underestimated Kise. He doesn't need help. He was only running away. After Seirin lost to Touou, Kise went back to Kaijou, to where he knew Kasamatsu would be practicing freethrows, to a place where he knew he could feel safe. To the third-year captain who told Kise to bow his head to the ground just like he was any other piece of freshman trash, to the man who would accept Kise for everything he had been and everything he would be. When something he loved for a very long time died, when Kise wasn't even able to tell if it was Kuroko or Aomine who broke his heart, Kise could go back to Kaijou and play one-on-one with Kasamatsu. He could reaffirm that there was one thing in his life that was unbroken. He could stand in that bubble, perfectly in the center, stretch out both his arms, and touch all the familiar sides.
Where can you go when it is your safe place you are running away from? Who can do for Kise what Kasamatsu did for him, if he should ever lose Kasamatsu?
Reject the impulse to introduce a scene in which, somehow, Akashi calls Kise to discuss the matter at hand. You have done this too often, and you know you use it as a crutch. It would be so easy to have him tell Kise, we mistake reciprocity as validation of our feelings. It would be so easy to have him inform Kise, you of all people know that true validation is never emotional. The problem is that no one in real life says things like that.
The problem is that Akashi is not like anyone you have ever met in real life.
You are always tempted to make every post-canon story a full house of ex-Teikou teammates. But there is no reason why Kise should need to consult Midorima on this subject. (Murasakibara is, of course, out entirely.) In other fics, you have already written this sequence. You have nothing new to say about their interactions. Spend half an afternoon lost in figuring out whether Midorima has ever interacted with Kasamatsu (yes, indirectly, at the okonomiyaki restaurant, when Takao stole the scene, as he always does). Realize with a dawning horror that the only person from Teikou who would knowing anything about falling in love with a captain, and not a man who just happens to be a captain, would be Akashi, and you have already rejected that idea.
So. There is only one solution.
Kise goes to Kuroko for assistance.
Insert a dream sequence. It doesn't matter what happens in the dream or who has it. You just always have to have one. Bird, ocean, flowers, heat, a sudden slash of light in the dark. Here is your spinning wheel of metaphors. Hand Kise the dart. Tell him there are no wrong answers, and let him throw it where it may land.
Kuroko has retired from the Seirin basketball team, but the coach they hired to replace Aida Riko is new and the team still sometimes asks Kuroko to oversee practice. So Kise goes there, waltzes through the front entrance and loiters outside of the gym, and attracts so much attention waiting that Kuroko has to personally come out to fetch Kise and make him go away. They walk to a streetball court, because of course they do. They play a bad one-on-one match, because of course they do, and despite Kise still wearing his school loafers and full uniform and only using a fraction of his normal ability, he wins against Kuroko handily.
The match lasts barely ten minutes. When it's over, Kuroko collapses on a nearby bench, trying to catch his breath as he drinks from a bottle of water. Kise tails after him like a slightly embarrassed dog, hovering with his hands in his pockets as Kuroko squints at him with unimpressed, half-lidded eyes.
"You look terrible," Kuroko tells him bluntly.
Kise grimaces. "Thanks."
"Like a ghost," Kuroko continues. "Is something wrong? Did you want to tell me in person that you are suffering from a terminal illness?'
"It's good to see you too, Kurokocchi," Kise snaps. But as if Kuroko's words were a curse, he suddenly feels bone-tired, drained. He collapses on the bench next to Kuroko and, after a second of hesitation, scoots down so that his knees hang over the edge of the bench and his head is on Kuroko's lap. He's surprised when Kuroko doesn't protest, doesn't even try to shock Kise by pressing the side of his ice-cold water bottle against Kise's face. Instead, Kuroko shuffles his knees a little, like doing so would make his bony lap more comfortable to rest on, and carefully places a hand over Kise's eyes. His hands are so gentle it is almost a caress, and for a few minutes they sit there quietly, Kuroko moving his fingers every so often through Kise's bangs, as if Kise had really become his dog and he was absentmindedly petting his fur.
"Aomine-kun used to do this for me sometimes, after practice," Kuroko muses, his voice sounding from very far away.
"He was only ever nice to you," Kise says, and manages to only sound a little bit bitter.
"Gross," Kuroko says. He presses the palm of his hand down a little too hard on Kise's nose, almost suffocating him for a second. "If he was ever nice to me, it was because in his mind, he thought I was weak."
But why should you know that? Kuroko's tone seems to imply. That was between Kuroko and Aomine, a trauma the rest of them were only tangentially invited to share. Kise had been closer than most, but even he had been relegated to peanut gallery with Midorima, trying to pick up the pieces after Kuroko stopped coming to school. Things always look smooth when you are looking in from the outside.
With his eyes closed, Kise can't see the expression on Kuroko's face. Kuroko's palm smells like the rubber of the basketball, the salt tang of skin moving against late summer evenings, nostalgic and strange at the same time. In this moment Kise feels this is the closest he will ever be to Kuroko, though he won't know why. It does not occur to him to think about that promised land of intimacy that Kuroko and Aomine also once shared, just like this, which is now forbidden to them forever.
"What did you want to talk about? You came all this way."
"Ah, it was nothing," Kise lies. "I was in Tokyo anyway, so I thought I'd stop by and see how you were doing."
Kuroko waits him out, because of course he does. Though Kuroko will never be able to beat Kise in a basketball one-on-one, this is one match that Kise will never win. Eventually Kise gives in. He takes a deep breath, then exhales.
"I don't like when feelings change," Kise says.
"If it helps, my feelings about Kise-kun have remained exactly the same."
"Hey! I can tell that's an insult, you know! And anyway, I didn't mean us. Well. It is a little about us, in a way. But that wasn't what I was talking about."
He can almost hear Kuroko scrunching up his face. "Just be nice to me for once," Kise says, to ward off the insult he knows is coming.
Kuroko's laughter is a soft puff of air, a jiggling of the knees under Kise's head, barely sound at all. "Okay. So, Kise-kun is growing up. Congratulations. It happens to all of us."
"I hate when you act like you're more mature than me," Kise says fiercely.
Kuroko hums, pinches Kise's nose until Kise splutters for air. "Am I not, though?"
And, well. What exactly did Kise think he would find here? Kuroko's not wrong. He has lived through this, maybe more than once. But if Kuroko had ever felt this way about Aomine or about Kagami, it was not the same. He and Aomine had grown out of each other, just as he and Kagami had grown into each other, until there was no part for Kise to ask about ill-fitting. Kuroko only understood snapping together, or snapping apart, the wholeness of discovering that someone else is a part of your body or the tragedy of a phantom limb. Either way, barely applicable to Kise's situation.
A canon character's personality exerts its own inescapable gravity, and Kise's is that of a man convinced he is always the main character, though he was never intended to be one. Even Fujimaki succumbed—after all, how else do you explain Tip Off? Life rearranges itself in Kise's mind, so that reality is simply a series of things happening to him and him alone, for him and his development alone. And why shouldn't it be? Even you are not immune. Here you are, sidelining your favorite story about Kuroko and Kagami until it is just an anecdote in Kise's, an experience he never had and thus doesn't matter.
Once upon a time, a friend told you that he knew exactly how he would dispose of a body after murder. But it would have to be someone I didn't know, he said. One day you will stop equating love with dead bodies. But today is not that day. This is Kise's story. With little experience, he probably thinks of his love as a great light suddenly flooding in, or a color he has seen all his life the wrong way, or a precious weight he didn't realize he was carrying and now cannot drop, or that movie moment when a montage plays across the screen and you realize, it was him all this time. It was him all along.
You, on the other hand, think of his love as an exquisite corpse, one he started by himself and now must complete by himself. It is easy to finish off a thing that never bloomed, like hiding the body of a person you never knew. Love is like digging a hole in your heart, one that can fit a person. You can fill it with dirt, or with a body. It doesn't have to be the body you had in mind when you dug it. Just enough that it's the right shape. One way or another, we cover the hole back up. Then we go right back with a shovel, and dig again.
An interlude. Kise may have forgotten about Miyamoto, but you have not. This moment begins in media res, like all of Miyamoto's scenes. They are in a studio filming a commercial for face cream, or life insurance, or iced coffee concentrate. Kise is leaning against a wall, in semi-shadow, pretending to review the script. His part is short, very few lines and mostly directions for how to look at the camera and when.
"So," Miyamoto says by way of greeting. "Not to sound like a needy girlfriend, but usually people at least text me afterwards if they don't want to see me again."
"Does Miyamoto-san get dumped a lot?" Kise asks, eyes not leaving the page.
Miyamoto laughs. "Only because I'm too kind-hearted." He pauses, then taps the corner of Kise's script. "I let people use me."
Kise, stung, jerks his head up. "You had a good time," Kise snaps, moving Miyamoto's hand away and rolling up his script. "Were you expecting more? Should I have taken you out to dinner first?"
"Whoa, whoa," Miyamoto says, putting up his hands in a mocking gesture, like Kise is an off-leash dog trying to jump in his lap. "I didn't mean that at all. I was worried, that's all. I wanted to make sure you were feeling okay about everything. That you weren't… hurt."
"I'm fine. I wanted to figure out some stuff and, well, you were there." Kise shrugs, attempting nonchalance. "It seemed like a good experience to have, and it's not like you didn't enjoy yourself. After that, I got caught up in something else and forgot all about it. Sorry that I didn't leave a performance review."
Miyamoto is silent for a while. He rests his shoulder against the wall, crosses his arms, his back against the studio lights, throwing his face in half-shadow. He is in a denim jacket, or a thin sport coat, or a light blue shirt with the sleeves perfectly, crisply rolled up to his elbows. Maybe Kise finds him attractive at this moment, or maybe he doesn't. It's hard for Kise to tell, made more difficult by the fact that they have already had sex, the best sex of Kise's short life.
"And did you?" Miyamoto asks.
"What?"
"Figure out the stuff you wanted to figure out."
Kise scowls, sliding his hands in his pockets, casually so that someone could even now take a picture of the two of them, and it would look like an advertisement. This is answer enough for Miyamoto, who cocks his head a little to one side, surveying Kise with a small smile on his face.
"You're just a mess, aren't you, Ryouta-kun? You look like you got it all put together. But in the end, you're still just a kid, huh?"
"You don't have to feel guilty for corrupting the youth, Miyamoto-san. It's not like you were my first time."
Miyamoto snorts. "Don't try to turn this around on me. You're a hundred years too early for that. When you're young and pretty, people forgive easily. They think you don't know any better. When you get older, it'll be harder for you to get away with things. So if you're going to make a mistake, you might as well do it now. While you can still pretend you didn't mean to."
"I don't know what I'm supposed to say to that," Kise grouses.
"'Sorry for taking advantage of you.'"
"You didn't. I asked for it."
Miyamoto barks out a laugh. "No, you idiot," he says. "That's what you should have said to me."
He puts his hand on Kise's shoulder. This will not be the last time that they ever touch, but it will be the last time in this story. Miyamoto's hand lands lightly, tenderly. He is facing forward, so Kise cannot see his face. If Miyamoto is hurt, Kise doesn't know it. This will be a weight that Kise will bear for many years, the not knowing. He will need to have his heart broken a few more times, and at least once by a person who cares so little for him that it never occurred to them that he could get hurt, before he will truly understand. Because Kise is young and attractive, and uses his charm like a weapon in a video game on easy mode, straightforward to aim and always on target, it will take many years before such a thing can happen to him, before he will find someone whose heart truly gives him no quarter. Even Kuroko, to his own chagrin, cannot claim that.
When it finally happens, Kise will find himself reaching, unconsciously, for his shoulder. Hugging it close, pressing down hard, like he is trying to massage out a phantom pain, like he is trying to break the leg of something desperate to fly away, like he is searching for a forgiveness that will never come.
By then, you are sure, he will have forgotten all about this moment with Miyamoto.
But none of this has happened yet, or will happen, ever. This is Miyamoto's last scene, this other man without whom you could have never begun. For the time being, the only time that exists, Miyamoto pushes himself away from the wall, away from Kise. He propels himself into the future and away from this moment, out of this story and into nonexistence.
A deleted subplot where Kasamatsu gets a girlfriend and asks Kise for dating advice. Kise bites down on the inside of his mouth, so hard he draws blood. I've never gone on a proper date, Kise lies. His voice plaintive, searching for sympathy. Quavering. He's disgusted with himself. Liar, Kasamatsu laughs, cuffing him gently on the head. Hungry for touch, Kise leans into the impact, until Kasamatsu's hand softens against his hair, almost a caress. Kise lets his mind go wild. Thinking of Kasamatsu with a faceless woman, the room is dark, they are on a bed (it would have to be a bed, Kasamatsu is a romantic), he is touching a breast, fingers trembling, afraid to open his mouth, even to kiss. And in the dark, on his own bed, Kise trembling as he reaches down for—afraid to touch himself, not after—after—
Where could this scene possibly fit? Where would Kasamatsu even meet a girl willing to date him? Better to keep it simple. To what extent do Kasamatsu and Kise still communicate? Text messages and comments on Kasamatsu's Instagram, which Moriyama helped Kasamastu set up and is mostly filled with pictures of the shiba inu Kasamatsu's family adopted recently to take his place. An exhibition match at Kaijou last year where Kasamatsu was only supposed to be the coach, only it ended with Kasamatsu benching Kise for "showing off" and substituting himself in over Kise's fervent whining. Once in Tokyo for a networking event hosted by Kise's colleague because they needed to "make up" the numbers, where Moriyama of all people had gotten a girl's phone number, and afterwards Kise had treated Kasamatsu to fast food to make up for it, gloating obviously the whole time at this unexpected date.
Or perhaps, just this once, you will be kind to Kise. You will eschew the post-graduation separation, which you've aped from other, better authors. Instead, let's posit that Kise and Kasamatsu talk often—via LINE, Kise mostly through enthusiastic emojis. Kise has always been confident in his own basketball skills, but being captain had scared him. He had never been a leader of men, not even particularly adept at manipulation. All of Akashi's efforts had, after all, gone to Kuroko, and that to destabilize and demolish, to create a boy who would always only move in the shadows. Kasamatsu, who has always been emotionally intelligent though not particularly eloquent, had been the one to give Kise his number. "Don't call me just because you want to," he'd warned Kise. "Call me only when you really need help. I'll block you if you take advantage of this."
He hadn't, of course, even after Kise failed to call him only in crises or for important matters. Kasamatsu, unlike you and Kise, is kind.
The thesis of a story should only be revealed to the reader at the end, but as a guide for the writer, you should put it up front. So here it is, simple and plain: Kise is afraid of change, of the idea that a relationship could mean everything one day and simply disappear the next. Not because anyone has done anything wrong, by which he means, "not because anyone has wronged me," because Kise does not think he has ever done anything wrong. Rather, he is terrified that some relationships may only exist because of tenuous states of being. That Aomine might have only seen him as important because they were both basketball players. That Kuroko only cared for him as a teammate.
That he was only connected to Kasamatsu so strongly because Kasamatsu was his senpai.
How can it be that something so important can change so quickly? Even if you try, you cannot hold on, when the thing you are holding is not a rope or a bridge or a knot, but two ghosts haunting a house that no longer stands. You had not realized how many things exist only temporarily, caught between two ends and defined by the fact that they are fleeting. The trajectory of a bird in flight. The unfurling of a flower. Flash blindness. Air hunger.
But Kise, if you don't bury that body, it will start to smell. When a thing is never meant for life, you must dispose of it properly. Like how you must gut a fish after catching it, letting the blood drain so that it doesn't pollute the flesh. Or so you have been told. You've never killed a fish before. In your search results for "how to bleed a fish," strangers tell you: It is better to have an idea what to do with the fish rather than spoil a life. Bleeding to death is like falling asleep. After inserting the spike you should feel it convulse and then stop moving. Several blows may be necessary to complete the job. If you cannot keep it alive, kill it quickly. If there is no blood, then try again a little higher.
Fine. You have gone on for long enough. It is time to end this thing.
Kise will call Kasamatsu up: when will you next be in Kanagawa, well would you give me a weekend anyway, let's go on a date, what do you mean, no nothing's wrong, Kasamatsu-senpai, please. They agree to meet up in Yokohama, to go on a bike ride, why not? After a solid hour of biking, interspersed with eating and yelling, they wind up by the side of a river, debating semi-seriously whether they can play a shoot-out game by aiming stones at the opening of a stormwater pipe on the other side. Kasamatsu's argument is not a no, just practicality: they can't find enough small rocks to throw.
"Why did you call me out anyway?" Kasamatsu finally asks, when they've both attempted one shot each and both missed. He gives Kise a familiar, critical once-over. "Don't tell me you're dying and you wanted to give me the news in person."
Kise swallows. He has another pebble in his hand, which he throws and manages to make, just catching the lip of the pipe. ("Nice shot," Kasamatsu says reflexively.) He shoves his hands in his pockets but then, remembering Miyamoto, takes them out of his pockets, annoyed.
"Nothing so bad," Kise jokes. "I just wanted to see you."
Kasamatsu snorts. Before he can start on a lecture about Kise wasting time, Kise cuts in. "I like you. Romantically, I mean. Even if you're a man. I just felt like I had to tell you, before—" But he does not know how to end this sentence. Before the world ends, he assumes. Before the bird lands, before the light dies, before they are no longer senpai and kouhai, haunting a team that doesn't exist. He bites the inside of his mouth, strong enough to draw blood and taste it, and falls silent.
"Oh," Kasamatsu says, in a very small voice. The expression on his face is troubled, though not disgusted. He looks, if anything, like a child who has gotten lost on his way back from his very first errand, who cannot remember how to make his way home and also forgot to go to the toilet earlier when he had a chance.
"Kise," he says in that tiny lost voice, and Kise flinches.
Then, for the first time in his life, Kise does something wrong.
Kise runs away.
Perhaps you can take this moment to invent Kasamatsu's future. He is too normal and straight to end up anywhere but here, a background character in his own life, becoming more normal and more straight by the second. This is what you have loved about him and your unfortunate half-born original characters, doomed to live ordinary, normal lives because you were the one to dream them up and trap them in a prison of your ordinary, normal reality. So, Kasamatsu will play intramural basketball with the others, go drinking with Moriyama and Kobori, meet a girl in a lecture class who eventually breaks up with him after a few moderately disastrous dates and many uneventful good ones. He will graduate college and become an accountant, or a financial analyst, or maybe something more exciting, maybe he'll work for a company that manages rights to streaming music. Or maybe even Nintendo. He is well-liked by his male colleagues, and secretly popular with his female colleagues, though he will never be very comfortable interacting with them one-on-one, not even his subordinates. He'll always be athletic, better than average at basketball, but that's all, just enough to be noticed but not enough for it to matter.
But things always look easy from the outside, smoothed out, no edges. There are depths to Kasamatsu too. He will always have a fondness for girls with light hair and a fair complexion who look good in bright blue. He will always have Kise's most current number in his address book, even if he never calls or texts first. A part of him will always look for Kise's name on Twitter, Kise's face in magazines, Kise's voice in public spaces turning down girls insincerely. He will always think of Kise as mixed metaphors: a natural disaster that Kasamatsu reined in, a wild horse only Kasamatsu can survive. When you call down the devil and tame him, you can't help but develop an attachment. Even if you do not stand in front of the mirror and say his name three times to summon him, you might still say his name once in a while, quietly to yourself, like a prayer for better days. Knowing he cannot hear you, and that is all right. You do not need the full weight of divine intervention, all 77 kilograms. You just need to carry with you the reassurance that if you called, he would come.
These are things that Kasamatsu, the person, can take with him. They will exist long after Kasamatsu, the senpai, dies. Ah, Kise! Don't you know? That too is a kind of love.
Kise does not get very far before he is overwhelmed by embarrassment. Having left his bike behind and on foot, he stops on a small bridge over the same river, only further down. His face is bright red and he contemplates screaming, but is embarrassed even further by the thought of it. Like a scene from some shitty TV drama, he thinks to himself, consumed by the desire to fall into a hole and die. Helpfully, his phone starts ringing.
It is Kasamatsu on the other end. "Where did you go?" he demands.
"I'm sorry," Kise whispers, pressing his other hand to his face, trying to hide from himself. "That's not how I meant for it to go."
"Answer the question, you idiot!"
"Senpai, promise me you'll pretend I never said anything," Kise blurts out. "Please, I'm begging you here. I messed up. I didn't mean it. I'm just confused."
"Like hell!"
A weird thing is happening to Kise. He can almost hear an echo of Kasamatsu's voice, like a ringing. When he opens his eyes, he realizes it is because Kasamatsu has managed to chase him down, and is screaming at him both through the phone and in reality, where he is a few meters away, still on the riverbank but under the bridge. Of course he has, Kise thinks despairingly. In his embarrassment, Kise ran in a straight line down the river.
"Stay there," Kise tells him frantically. "Don't come any closer!"
For a second, the distant figure of Kasamatsu doesn't obey. It advances until it is standing directly under Kise, resolving into Kasamatsu's familiar shape: black hair, a strong, sturdy build, an open, honest face that is easy to like and even easier to trust. Kise, flailing, makes a sudden move as if he intends to bolt again, but Kasamatsu puts a hand in the air in front of him, palm out, beseeching, like even from this distance he could soothe Kise down, or hold Kise's head in place and shove until Kise would be forced to seiza on the ground.
"Look. Just hear me out for a second." Kasamatsu's voice is gentle on the phone. He has never been this gentle before, not even when they had lost to Seirin and he had pulled Kise to him, both their bodies covered in sweat, held him close in that mockery of an embrace. Is that where it all started? Or even before then, when they had lost to Touou. Certainly Kise had said in that moment, like so many others, senpai.
"I don't know much about relationships," Kasamatsu says. "Or, well, you know. Things like that. Liking people. But it doesn't mean—if I don't feel the same—or, if you like me—what am I even saying?!"
"Senpai," Kise begins, "I—"
"Shut up, you moron. What I mean is, you're important to me, Kise. We have history together. Even though I hate saying it, you made my last year at high school memorable. So, even if I can't—even if there are some things I can't do—Argh! Don't make me say sentimental things to you! Especially not over the phone! Come down here and face me like a man!"
"I'm afraid!"
"Why!"
"Kasamatsu-senpai will hit me!"
"Of course I'm going to hit you! You called me all the way out here to do this? Why do I have to deal with your nonsense even now! I don't know how other people handle you, but I'll tell you this. No matter how you feel about me, or how old we are, even when we're old geezers, I'm always going to be your senpai and I'll always have the strength to hit you!"
"So come down," Kasamatsu says. He is smiling a little. "This is your senpai ordering you," he tells Kise. "Don't make me come up there and find you."
It is sunset, and the water is the color of anemones and autumn leaves, of Kise's face his freshmen year after he cried through the graduation ceremony Kaijou's basketball team threw for their third years, of endings. But Kise has always associated his heartbreaks with the color blue, with Teikou and Kuroko and Aomine, with the jersey he and Kasamatsu both shared and lost in. His heart pounds in his chest, and he can feel it pulsing in his fingers, which are holding his phone too tightly, afraid he will accidentally let go and fall into the water, lose this connection, break this little bubble he is standing in, the one that Kasamatsu is promising will be his forever.
Blood isn't blue, Kise thinks nonsensically. It only looks blue from the outside.
"I've given up kicking heads as a form of punishment," Kasamatsu growls, despite the grin in his eyes, "but for you, I'm always ready."
And perhaps here is where you can leave Kise: here on this bridge, his whole existence turned to Kasamatsu like a sunflower to the last scraps of sunlight, looking down so you cannot see his face. This is what Kasamatsu can give Kise, nothing more, nothing less. Such an ordinary, meager thing: I'll always be your senpai. But no one else can give Kise that. The only man in the world who can love him just like this, and only like this. This is a hole in Kise's heart that only one man can fill. It's okay to leave it empty, Kise. There is no body to bury, there is no blood to drain. It was never meant for life. It was never alive in the first place. But if you are ever lonely, you can come back here. You can call his name. You can call him senpai. You can put yourself in his care, his rough handling, the slap on the back and a blow to the head. He will say, you idiot, when will you stop causing me trouble? Lie back in this hole, close your eyes, let the weight of the dirt press in on all sides, all 66 kilograms of it. You know every inch of this shape, and know it will never filled. You know every inch of this shape, and know you will never need to dig it again.
(You told him there were no wrong answers: bird, ocean, flower, light. Here is where the dart lands. You are nothing if not predictable. Kise, of course, has to have it all.)
And in the author's notes, you'll write—