The story of how Kagami wound up willing to be submissive for Kuroko.
“So, I know how I got here,” Aomine remarked thoughtfully, shifting a little against the bed. “But how did Tetsu talk you into this?”
Taiga grumbled against his bare shoulder. “You pick the weirdest times for long, meaningful talks.”
Kuroko wants a tangible marker of his committment to Kagami and Aomine, and of how they belong to him, and that’s when other people start noticing what’s going on.
It was Daiki who mentioned it first, stroking his thumb along the line of Taiga’s collarbone one afternoon when they were all tangled together in Tetsuya’s bed, still a little sticky but catching their breaths again.
“You’ve stopped wearing that necklace all the time.”
Aomine, Kuroko, and Kagami finally all wind up in bed together. Aomine thinks he knows how this will work, but when there are actual emotions at stake he’s probably the one with the least idea what’s going on.
“So.” Daiki flexed his foot and stretched his leg over the length of Seirin’s changing room bench, working the threatening cramp out of his calf. “New school year. Seems like the kind of thing we could stand to celebrate a little.”
Kuroko hauls Aomine to Seirin, and Momoi comes with them. The team is delighted, if a little taken aback by Kuroko’s unnoticeability and Aomine’s lack of condition. Kuroko is all the more convinced he’s brought them to the right place after he meets Kagami, and sees the challenge he has the potential to offer Aomine.
The door of Tetsuya’s classroom slammed open and Aomine stood glowering in the doorway. “Tetsu!”
Ah. He’d finally heard. Tetsuya put down his sandwich and waited while Aomine stalked through his scattering classmates to slam a piece of paper down on Tetsuya’s desk. The header, as much of it as was visible under Aomine’s hand, said Sei. “What the hell is this?” Aomine demanded.
“A letter,” he observed, just to get things rolling properly.
Aomine is increasingly annoyed by the attention Kuroko is paying Kagami, and for that matter everyone else on the team, and annoyed by the restraints Aida puts on him, but Kagami does pique his interest a little.
Daiki had thought he’d gotten used to just how ridiculous it was that Tetsu had dragged him to this no-name school and dropped him into a basketball club that apparently had nothing going for it but enthusiasm. But this was where he put his foot down. The very idea of ‘announcing his intentions’ during morning assembly in order to ‘prove’ himself for this new team was laughable. He was the ace of Teikou, he didn’t have a damn thing to prove to a team that couldn’t even get to the Interhigh.
Kagami is pleased with his new team and his new challenge, though puzzled by the tension between Kuroko and Aomine. A practice match against Kaijou tells him at least a little of what the tension is over, and also gives him his first taste of working with Kuroko in a real game.
Taiga swatted his alarm clock into silence, rolled over, and smiled up at the ceiling. He woke up with a smile a lot, lately.
Okay, so his strongest teammate was a total jerk, and he honestly thought Kuroko liked scaring the liver out of people by popping up out of nowhere, and their coach was clearly some kind of demon. He could deal with all of that and more, because basketball was interesting again. A challenge again, and more than a challenge. A bone-cracking, tendon-snapping, nerve-burning hurdle to get over, like it hadn’t been for over a year since he came back to this country.
Momoi knows that the problems between Aomine and Kuroko and Kagami have to be ironed out before they start the Interhigh preliminaries, and she has a plan. That doesn’t make it easy, though.
Momoi Satsuki liked Seirin. They were a challenge, and she liked a challenge to her skills just as much as any of the boys did.
Aomine plays against Seihou, and the team that surprises him the most is his own. He watches Kagami and Kuroko play against Shuutoku, and understands some of what went wrong the previous year.
On the second day of the Tokyo preliminary finals, Daiki’s heartfelt comment was, “About damn time.” He shrugged off Satsuki’s admonishing look. “Oh, come on, I’ve been bored out of my mind. Shinsenkan was pathetic, and even those Touou guys weren’t exactly a challenge.” Which had been a great disappointment, after he’d hauled himself through the whole month of A-block matches on the hope that the ‘Kings of the West’ would be at least a bit of fun. Or at least that their first match in the final block would be. But no, not so you’d notice. If it hadn’t been ridiculous to imagine, he’d actually have thought Touou was holding back against him.
Kuroko gets a chance to play the way he wants to, again, with Aomine against Kaijou. When he has to play without his partners against Touou, though, he finds himself hitting a wall.
“All right,” Hyuuga-san called, waving them to gather close. “We’ve played Kaijou once, but don’t let that make you overconfident. I doubt they were going all out, not in a practice match, and Kasamatsu knows what we can do, now. Stay sharp.” He nodded as everyone chorused agreement, and then reached up to wrap a hand around the back of Aomine’s neck. “Except for you,” he added. “You need to calm down.” He shook Aomine a little, holding his rather startled gaze. “Kaijou isn’t running away, and you don’t need to hunt them down for pity’s sake. Breathe.”
Tetsuya was actually the one who followed that order, breathing out as one thread of tension uncoiled down his back. He had been right, so right, to bring Aomine to Seirin.
Al stumbles over the clue to finding his brother that he was looking for, in a way he didn’t expect. (Continued after a seven year hiatus, I recommend re-reading the first two stories in the arc.)
Al picked an easy path, down by the lakeshore under the trees where the light rain wouldn’t get him too wet. Sensei was probably right. His brain felt so full it might spill if he moved too fast, and his thoughts jostled against each other. He was pretty good at modern alchemical codes, but he’d been reading much older texts, and if you went back far enough it was as much philosophy as science and every statement seemed to mean at least three different things at once. Probably more, actually, but he had threes on the brain; it was Trismegistus’ fault. And Salmon’s. Mercury meant spirit meant animal, and where did that get him?
Al visits home and tells everyone about how his studies are coming,
and Rose talks sense to him.
Al ignored the rattle of the train wheels to scowl over his notebook, certain at the bottom of his heart that his notes weren’t going to do him any good. Plenty of people wrote about the Stone, but as far as he could tell no alchemist, in four hundred years and more, had written down anything about the Gate. Given his own experiences, he supposed he couldn’t blame them, but still…! And Sensei must agree that his books were a dead end, or she wouldn’t have loaded him on the train for a visit home without a single book to his name except one volume of poetry he’d bought a year ago and hadn’t opened since.
Al goes to Ishvar, searching for answers.
Al sighed. Getting to New Ishvar had been simple. Finding the temple had been even easier; it was the tallest building in the city and by far the most finished-looking one. The next step was proving a little harder.
Gil does his best to make restitution and finds himself being drawn out by Al.
Gil had not been surprised when Alphonse mentioned nightmares. The boy had died, been hauled back by his heels and bound to a suit of armor, tramped all over the country running after the false hope of the Stone, been transmuted into the Stone, and finally sacrificed those years of love and effort to be returned to true life. Nightmares were surely to be expected. He hadn’t quite expected his new houseguest to start up in the middle of the night, screaming, though.
He certainly hadn’t expected it to happen every night.
Al settles into closer company with Gil and, as the year draws on, finds the key he needs—if he can use it.
He frowned down at the sheaf of papers in front of him, the delicately colored and carefully labeled concentric circles and the dissertation below on their interrelations. "All these accounts and explanations… they all talk about joy," he murmured.
"Of course." Alec-san blew on a carefully copied page to dry it and pulled up a fresh sheet of paper, turning to the next page. "They speak of the pathways to completion, to perfection, if you will."
Al frowned some more, tapping his pencil against his chin. If that was so, then why was it only fear that he remembered?
Gil assists Al and has a bit of an epiphany, and finds some peace with his past.
Alphonse looked stubborn. "I need to not be afraid. If I’m afraid of the Gate, I’ll just keep running away from it and forgetting and I’ll never be able to find Nii-san through it." The stubbornness shifted into the earnest entreaty Gil was far more wary of. He had fewer defenses against it. "Please, Gil-san. I do think it should be you."
Gil stifled a sigh. He wasn’t at all sure he was ready for the burden of that trust, but if it was laid on him already he couldn’t bring himself to break it. "Very well."
Al finds his brother. In a way. LAST CHAPTER, INCOMPLETE
Even asleep, Al could tell this dream was different.
Comes in the middle of "A Good, Free, and Unconstrained Will". Takao won the coin toss. Midorima doesn’t actually mind that.
Shintarou lay waiting for him, breathing deep and quick, but still not looking. And that was why Kazunari let him keep that arm over his face for a while; he was, after all, a point guard, and no one should be surprised if he liked to be in control. The way Shintarou’s breath caught when Kazunari’s hands slid down his thighs to spread him wider, the open way he moaned when Kazunari’s cock pushed into him, the way he relaxed into Kazunari’s hands so easily, Kazunari loved all of those.
Three moments in the developing relationship of Kagami, Aomine, and Kuroko as they all try to find a balance with each other.
Taiga had resisted for a long time, because there was such a thing as going down fighting, but the plain fact was that Aomine was cute when he was snitching food off someone.
Kuroko decides to push Aomine a little further, and offers to spank him for breaking his collar (again). Aomine is perfectly pleased, but Kagami needs a bit more reassurance.
“You know,” Tetsu murmured, fingers stroking over the line of Daiki’s new collar, “sometimes I think you let them break just so I’ll put another on you.”
Daiki looked up at him, relaxed by the feeling of being collared again. “You did say that you would, as often as necessary.”
The corners of Tetsu’s mouth curled up faintly, and he set his fingers under Daiki’s chin, keeping his head tipped back. “I did, and I will. Though I’m starting to wonder if I should punish you, when you break another one, for putting me to the trouble.”
Kagami and Aomine have a quiet moment together–so quiet that Kagami wonders a little how they got to be like this.
One of the things that had come as a surprise to Taiga—and this was saying something considering that he’d never, ever expected to be in a B&D relationship, let alone a threesome of the same—one of the things was that Daiki was a cuddler when they were together.
Kasamatsu and Kise play bed games, and Kise gets the punishment he deserves. (And, more importantly, the spanking he wants.)
Yukio gave him a stern look, setting his fingers under Ryouta’s chin to tip his head up and meet Yukio’s eyes. “What did you do, Ryouta?”
“Well, Hayakawa-senpai was trying to beat his own record for successful passes after a rebound.” Ryouta already sounded a little breathless, eyes wide under Yukio’s steady gaze. “And I just mentioned that maybe it would help if he kept his energy up longer, and that I had a spare bottle of Yunker Fanti. Nakamura-senpai said that really wasn’t the problem, but Hayakawa-senpai had already drunk the whole bottle.”
Thanks to the assholes at Ebooks-tree.com hotlinking to my ebooks in a way that is not easily prevented, ebooks are currently password-protected. They will return to open access as soon as the aforementioned assholes are shut down. In the meantime, the log-in to download ebook formats (or view cover art) is “Guest” and “FuckEbook-tree.com”.
The ebooks-tree assholes have gone down, so open access to my epubs and mobis is back! To celebrate, have a story I’ve been meaning to post for a while.
Imayoshi may have a bit of an exhibitionist streak, and Kasamatsu may be incapable of turning down a challenge, and this may eventually get them both in trouble. They should probably stop–but maybe not just yet.
Imayoshi Shouichi was enjoying himself.
So was his current partner, to judge by the sounds Kasamatsu was making, and Shouichi leaned closer, pressing Kasamatsu more firmly up against the wall to purr in his ear, “Careful, now. You don’t want anyone looking down here, do you?”
Kasamatsu pushed him back far enough to glare at him in the dimness of the arena service hall they were currently taking advantage of. “Like you’d care,” he hissed. “You like doing this practically in public.”
Four moments when Miyuki actually thinks about his hair, often to keep from thinking about something else.
His mother always combed his hair for school.
Miyuki spends some time contemplating Chris’ hands.
Miyuki Kazuya tended to watch people’s hands. He watched their whole bodies whenever they were throwing, of course, but especially their hands. It was the hands that told you exactly where the ball was going.
Chris finally notices just how much Miyuki has been seeking him out and decides it’s his turn to speak with his actions.
He wasn’t sure whether to kiss Rei-san or curse her for carting him off to Chris’ father’s gym for his physical therapy. He thought there might be discounts involved. Either way, there was Chris involved, and he was very aware of how pathetic it was to want to show off via physical therapy, thank you, he just… couldn’t quite stifle the impulse. He’d never been able to completely stifle that particular impulse, around Chris.
On a night, soon after affairs in the Water tribe’s territory are concluded, Hak, Yona, and Soo-won think about each other, what they’ve become to each other, and what may wait in their future.
Hak tried not to be grateful that Yona’s hands were as sure, now, on her bow and sword as they were, once, on her long sashes and bright over-robes. He tried hard not to be grateful for that.
It wasn’t because of the old king’s memory and his determination to keep his daughter and people free of blood, though Hak still respected that. It wasn’t because he was her guard, should be her sword, should never allow her to be in danger, though he still felt that. It was because of where the gratitude came from.
Joo-Doh tries for a long time to contain, or at least conceal, what Soo-Won’s anger at his father’s death might lead him to do, and in the process misses exactly what Soo-Won is doing and what part he may have to play in it.
Joo-Doh was beginning to worry about Soo-Won.
Months after his father’s funeral, the boy walked the halls of the palace as if he were still in the funeral procession, stumbling and uncertain. Joo-Doh was a little afraid that, if the princess stopped coaxing him to eat like a pet bird, he genuinely wouldn’t remember to do so. And Joo-Doh didn’t know what to do, now, any more than he had years ago when it was the queen who had been killed and Yona who was wild with grief.
Actually, that wildness had been easier to deal with than Soo-Won’s pale, stunned silence.
The anime’s ending leaves a great deal up in the air; this story takes up some of those loose threads. Picks up immediately after the end and throws everyone a little further into the future.
“Takuto is with him,” Wako said firmly, eyes fixed on the sky. “They’ll be all right.” Takuto’s look had promised her that, in that long, silent moment of fierce understanding they’d shared before she’d agreed to break the southern seal. And she was going to hold them both to that promise, if she had to regenerate Wauna and go up there herself to make sure of it!
Wako has an epiphany and decides it’s time to break the deadlock between her boys in a way neither of them anticipated.
Was that what they’d have to do, to stay together? Not let anything be romantic or… or anything, between them at all? Because, for all Shinada-senpai teased their schoolmates sometimes, none of those three had ever dated anyone. Certainly not each other.
The drama club is putting on a play with some scenes worth of Wako’s fantasies. Takuto has to work a little to wrap his brain around the whole thing.
“We are the future of the world.” Sugata’s words filled the space, low and intimate. “What do you wish to make of it?” His thumb stroked over Takuto’s lips slowly and Takuto felt his whole face flush hot.
“I… um… The… The world…” Takuto’s hands scrabbled at the wall behind him as Sugata leaned closer. “Help…?” he finished, strangled.
The corners of Sugata’s mouth quivered as he looked at Takuto. One breath, and then two, and he finally lost it, dissolving into helpless laughter.
“Takuto-sama!” Yamasugata-senpai scolded. “If you forget your part, the word is ‘line’, not ‘help’!”
Lin Shu survives, and, with a certain amount of salutary brow-beating, finds a purpose in doing so that moves him to enter the world again, seek out his loved ones, and start walking a meaningful path forward with them.
For a long time, or what might have been a long time, he was afraid he’d failed, each time he woke. He woke weak, groggy, never able to rouse to full awareness, and he knew that sensation from a decade worth of illness, fought stubbornly against it, as he always had, to push his thoughts past the fog to grip on the world again.
This time, though, he could never force himself past the cloudy uncertainness of almost-dreams. And what did that mean, if not failure, to fall ill again before his last task was done?
Lin Shu and Nihuang settle into life at court, in the field, and in Jingyan’s home while Lin Manor is repaired. The rest of the court may need a few stiff drinks to recover from the process, especially once a complex political scandal breaks in the middle of it.
Now Jingyan returned his gaze, steady and serious. “Even though you hoped to be done with being the strategist, after Prince Qi, my brother’s, and Lin’s and Chiyan’s names were restored?”
For a long moment, he was silent, because that had been true. “I did finish with it, though,” he said at last, slowly. “And I returned to my old self, my own world, long enough to die there. I thought that would be the end of it, and I still believe I was right about that. This,” he swept a hand around, at the palace, at the ministers and officials and ladies moving through the halls and gardens, each intent on their own ends and ambitions, and the three of them in the middle of it all, “this is what comes after that end, another new life.” He gave Jingyan a tiny smile. “Now, what I can do, all that I can do, is for you and with you, nothing held back. That’s as it should be, and I have no wish to be done with it.”
Jingyan is figuring out why Lin Shu likes to be held tightly, in bed, and in the process shakes a few truths loose that he didn’t expect.
Perhaps this wasn’t something he would have expected of xiao-Shu, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t put the pieces together when they were in front of him—and he was more than willing to oblige.
Jingrui is finding himself drawn back toward a military position, after fighting at the northern border, and Yujin follows along, as he always has, despite his own reservations. Along the way, the two of them get into trouble, politics, and eventually a deeper understanding.
Very few of Yujin’s reservations had ever held up in face of Jingrui’s smile. Not when they were little and stealing sweets off Aunt Jing’s table (with her amused connivance, Yujin had realized years later); not when they were a little older and Jingrui had dragged Yujin everywhere after their glamorous, if also sometimes alarming, older cousins; not when they’d come of age and Jingrui hauled Yujin out onto the roads to wander the country with that very same smile. He could barely imagine leaving Jingrui’s side, at this point. So there was really nothing else to do but elbow him back until they managed to shove each other into the shallows, laughing.
Their work finally pushes Akai and Furuya together once too often, and Akai forces the issue of what happened to Scotch. In the wake of it, they find in each other some of the understanding they’ve both needed.
"You see so clearly, most times," Akai said, very softly, almost a whisper between them. "Remember what you saw, Furuya-kun. He didn’t do it on his own, no. Think about what he would have seen and heard, up on that roof. Already sure that the Organization would be coming for him, what did he hear right before he shot?"
Bits of the daily life of two agents and the people around them, how the work is wearing on Furuya, and what Akai plans to do about that.
“There are no ‘should’s, for us,” Shuuichi said, soft and steady over Rei’s ragged words, fingers sliding slowly through his hair. “Only what can be done. Of the two of us, I’m the one who can make this promise, right now. So I do.”
Furuya is finally, if not prepared, at least willing to start dealing with Hiromitsu’s memory.
Rei felt that he was doing pretty well at the whole ‘having a partner again’ thing, especially after several years of human interaction that was almost exclusively business. But sometimes he still couldn’t help showing how long it had been, or, he suspected, the echoes of who used to be his anchor to human connection.
Shen Wei’s ten thousand years of watching Kunlun’s lives and, eventually, finding his own.
The humans were building a city around the sacred tree.
A city.
Over the gateway to the underworld.
Shen Wei wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or to despair.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
It wasn’t, Zhao Yunlan thought, anything like what he’d have expected. He didn’t feel any great enlightenment or sudden attack of wisdom. It didn’t feel like a scroll of ages unrolling in his head, or like he was about to burst with the weight of memory. Returning divinity didn’t feel like anything appropriately dramatic, in his opinion. It was just…
He recognized this.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
Knocking woke Yunlan up, and it took him a moment to figure out why, when he turned over to bury his head in the pillows, he wound up pressed tight against another body instead. “Ngh?” he asked, squinting at the expanse of chest in front of his nose.
“Do you want me to answer the door to your apartment?” Shen Wei asked, sounding both amused and far too awake.
Imagining the response of any of his team to that, Yunlan winced and pushed up onto his elbows. “I’m awake, I’m awake.”
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
Yunlan had seen Shen Wei fight and heal, entrance and command, but he’d never seen such delicate shaping as this—though that deep echo inside him felt like it had. Had even seen xiao-Wei play with his strength, perhaps—had coaxed or maneuvered him into it, most likely. Predictably, xiao-Wei looked entirely serious the whole time, as if this little whimsy was nothing but a functional test of control. Someone, at some point, must have convinced him that it was an appropriate test, though, and Yunlan was pretty sure that someone had been him. He gave his past self an approving internal nod.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
He dropped Shen Wei off at the university, even though it meant circling back to the SID headquarters, and took away with him the tiny, wicked curl to xiao-Wei’s lips when Yunlan wished him a good day. The thought of xiao-Wei walking through his campus, greeting colleagues and students with a polite smile and trailing shock and disruption in his wake like a more entertaining version of his black cloak got Yunlan through the morning without giving in to the urge to sneak up behind his dreadfully earnest new office staff to see who was paying attention.
Much.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
“You were always a morning person, weren’t you?” Yunlan asked from under his pillow, far too early the next morning. Why hadn’t he remembered that sooner?
“Just because we’re not going to the office doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do.” Xiao-Wei’s clear voice and unreasonably firm step approached, and something clinked on the bedside table. “If you’re not up in ten minutes, I’m going by myself.”
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
He was starting to understand, all the way up in his head, what xiao-Wei meant when he talked about the weight of gods in the world. He could feel the ground singing under his feet, feel the sky like it was something he could reach up and touch, feel the attention of the city’s river like it was alive and listening for his word and would rise if he just spoke.
Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei go apartment hunting.
At first Shen Wei had been amused by Yunlan’s team bringing another box of his belongings to Yunlan’s apartment every time one of them visited, as though he might not notice them moving him in if they just did it gradually enough.
Zhu Hong works on how to be Chief Elder, and falls hard for Ya Qing in the process. (Her uncle may have a point about her terrible taste.)
Zhu Hong had perfected the pout, the winsome look, and the hard fist as tools to make the world go her way, and she knew exactly how to use them. As time went on, and she’d started wanting to be stronger, she’d honed her natural abilities until she could do almost what any of her fully-transformed cousins could. She’d learned human ways so well she could blend in as completely as she wished.
None of that told her the first thing about how to be Chief Elder of the Yashou people.
Zhao Yunlan provides a temptation that Shen Wei has no intention of resisting. Even if they are in his office.
Yunlan waved an airy hand. “Oh, nothing urgent. Just a little matter I wanted to consult our consultant about.” He hopped up to sit squarely on the desk, planting his boots casually on Shen Wei’s chair, on either side of his thighs.
“Ah, I see,” Shen Wei agreed dryly, and crooked his fingers at his office door, beckoning it closed and locked for good measure. He leaned back comfortably in his chair, looking up at Yunlan, just as mild and enquiring as possible when there was a bubble of laughter trying to escape his chest. “And what is this little matter?”
The SID introduce Dixing to the police as ordinary citizens. The Supervisory Bureau may be having heart attacks in the background.
The first official visitor from Dixing had flown straight past “visitation” to a trial of citizenship, and Zhu Hong personally thought it had been planned to stress-test Minister Guo’s nerves. It would have done hers, too, if she hadn’t already known the whole thing was a put-up. As it was, she stood straight and serious beside the middle-aged police lieutenant who’d been assigned as her oversight partner, and carefully bit back her smirk when the gateway between realms misted into visibility and the man startled back.
“Is that it?” Tan Xiao asked eagerly, from behind them.
“Be patient, Mr. Tan,” she admonished. “She’ll be here in a moment.”