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sportsanime2016-05-27 10:01 am
referees) wrote in sportsanime2016-05-27 10:01 am
Entry tags:
Bonus Round 1: Memory
This round is CLOSED as of 7PM on June 9 EDT. Late fills may be posted, but they will not receive points.
Please read this whole post before commenting to ensure that your team gets the most points possible. (There are changes from last year!)
RULES
- Submit prompts by commenting to this post! You prompt should consist of one scenario beginning with the phrase "Remember when", along with any ship/ot3/etc. from our list of nominated fandoms.
- Your prompts can take the form of recalling canon facts/events ("Remember when Nozomi and Eli got parfaits after school?"), non-canon events ("Remember when Megumi and Jin met at the Tadokoro Family Reunion?"), or somewhere in-between ("Remember when Bokuto and Kenma first met?"). Headcanons and AUs are welcome!
- Your prompt MUST include some kind of relationship. (This is not the sports anime gen olympics.) Platonic relationships are indicated by an "&" between the names (e.g., Rei & Nagisa). Non-platonic relationships use "/" (e.g., Rei/Nagisa). Please don't say "Any pairing," either!
- Post fills by leaving a responding comment to a prompt with your newly-created work.
- Remember to follow the general bonus round rules, outlined here.
- 400 words (prose)
- 400px by 400px (art)
- 14 lines (poetry)
- Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team you belong to, including Grandstand or Sports Teams
- Write it exactly as it appears on the team roster or your team will not receive points
- Place the prompt's relationship in the first bolded line of the comment. Including the canon isn't required, but it's nice.
- Below that, place applicable major content tags (when applicable; otherwise write "no tags" or "none")
- Visual example
- Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team you belong to
- Write it exactly as it appears on the team roster or your team will not receive points
- Replace RATING with the rating of your fill (G - E)
- Place applicable major content tags and word count before your fill (when applicable; otherwise write "no tags" or "none")
- NSFW FILLS: Please cross-link these fills and use clear tags in your comment. Written/text fills should be hosted at AO3 ONLY. Art/visual fills can be hosted anywhere. You may include a small safe-for-work preview of the fill in your comment.
- To place an image in your comment, use this code: <img src="LINK TO YOUR IMAGE" alt="DESCRIPTION OF YOUR IMAGE"/>
- Visual example
- Replace RATING with the rating of your fill (G - E)
- Place applicable major content tags and word count before the fill, where applicable
- NSFW FILLS: Please cross-link these fills and use clear tags in your comment. Written/text fills should be hosted at AO3 ONLY. Art/visual fills can be hosted anywhere. You may include a small safe-for-work preview of your work in your comment.
- To place an image in your comment, use this code: <img src="LINK TO YOUR IMAGE" />
- Visual example
FORMAT
Bonus round shenanigans all happen in the comments below. Brand-new works only, please.Required Work Minimums:
Format your comment in one of the following ways:
| If PROMPTING: | If FILLING: | If FILLING as a TEAM GRANDSTAND participant: |
| PROMPT: TEAM [YOUR SHIP]
| FILL: TEAM [YOUR SHIP], [RATING]
| FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, [RATING]
|
Posts not using this format will be understood to be unofficial discussion posts, regardless of what they contain. They, like all comments in this community, are subject to the code of conduct.
SCORING
These numbers apply to your team as a whole, not each individual teammate. Make as many prompts/fills as you want!For prompts: 5 points each (maximum of 50 prompt points per team per round)
First 3 fills by any member of your team: 20 points each
Fills 4-10: 10 points each
Fills 11-20: 5 points each
Fills 21+: 2 points each
All scored content must be created new for this round.
Etc.
If you're hunting through the prompts looking for what to fill, a good trick is to view top-level comments only.Have a question? Check The FAQ first. If you still need help, feel free to contact the mods. Happy fanworking!
Prompt: Team Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
wing fic & possible injury (if the filler wishes to make it AU)
Remember when you looked at him and thought it’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky?
Bonus if there are references to Icarus because smhh who isn't a glutton for mythology.
Re: Prompt: Team Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
FILL: Team Miyuki Kazuya/Narumiya Mei, T
When Bokuto breaks a wing for the first time, he cries and cries and cries.
“Stay still, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says, as he pulls the crooked pinions straight and digs his fingers into the pillowy down. He tries to be gentle—tries to keep his touch soothing, as if he could smooth away Bokuto’s unhappiness with each sweep of his hand—but Bokuto shudders and the wing pulls out of the loose bandage again.
Akaashi bites his lip in frustration, and reaches out to try again.
“I’m broken,” Bokuto is saying, muffled into the bedsheets. His other wing trails off the edge of the mattress, the enormous length of its flight feathers flaring out over the tiled floor. There’s a veritable puddle of feathers all around him, strewn across the bed as if a minor battle had been fought and lost on Akaashi’s lap. “I can’t fly, I can’t do anything! I’m useless. Grounded. I might as well be dead.”
“It’s just a broken wing,” Akaashi replies. He folds Bokuto’s broken wing carefully, bending the joint into its correct place. Outside the window, he can hear the distant sound of waves crashing against the cliff-face, and he thinks, it's lucky Bokuto hadn't fallen into the ocean. “It will heal, if you’re not reckless with it.”
Bokuto makes a soft, warbling noise—not quite pain, but misery enough. It makes him seem soft, small and confused where he hides his face in his arms. “I said I can’t fly, Akaashi!” he says, voice thick. “What will I do, if I can’t fly?”
Stay still for longer than a few minutes, Akaashi thinks to himself. Stay here, with,
But he holds his tongue, and doesn’t say anything. Just runs a gentle hand over the curve of Bokuto’s wing, pale feathers glossy and neat where they poke out of the bandage. Perhaps it’s selfish of him, to savour the moments when Bokuto is caught by the pull of gravity, weighed down and human.
Akaashi buries the thought, quashed it down when Bokuto stirs enough to lean into the warmth of his arms. His face presses against Akaashi’s stomach, breath warm as it fans over bared skin. The demand is unashamed and obstinate; Bokuto in his grief, is as loud as when he soars through the open sky.
“You don’t understand, Akaashi,” he mutters. His voice is hoarse and scratchy from his earlier tears. “You wouldn’t. You can’t fly! Up there, in the sky. The world is—it’s everywhere, it’s mine. I could touch the sun, and bring it back for you.”
“You would burn, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi replies. He continues stroking, as Bokuto hiccups a protest.
Sometimes, Bokuto comes back with his shoulders red and peeling, and his nose decorated with little flakes of dried skin. Akaashi will tell him, as he rubs filmy ointments into the angry patches that he can see, don’t fly too far away.
Bokuto, of course, does it again just several days later, and Akaashi lets him go with the certainty that Bokuto will return to him, surly and aggrieved, at the fact that the sun insists on burning him.
He keeps those moments like little pebbles in a sack, collected from the riverbed as he waits for Bokuto to tire and come home. Moments like these, when Bokuto is quiet and seeks comfort in his arms; like mementos, keepsakes. Sentimental trinkets that he would deny if discovered, yet hoards all the same, tucked away and hidden somewhere dark and forgotten.
Akaashi wonders, sometimes, why his heart feels so heavy.
Re: FILL: Team Miyuki Kazuya/Narumiya Mei, T
Re: FILL: Team Miyuki Kazuya/Narumiya Mei, T
Re: FILL: Team Miyuki Kazuya/Narumiya Mei, T
Re: FILL: Team Miyuki Kazuya/Narumiya Mei, T
Re: FILL: Team Miyuki Kazuya/Narumiya Mei, T
FILL: Team Tennis no Ouji-sama, G
I'm so slow that everything I go for has been filled already, but this was a really cool prompt so HAVE ANOTHER ONE.
Word Count: 1779
-
There’s a catch in the contract when they sign for theirs, the sort Akaashi’s used to seeing when he goes bouldering, or gets up for the trampolines. Akaashi peers at the finely-spaced lines thinking of high nets and feet springing higher still, and when he signs he can already feel the press of needle against skin. “Everyone’s doing it,” their agent says, taking back the tablets. “You can’t be competitive without.”
To Akaashi, it seems little more than a gimmick. They run trials at practice the next week, spread their feet across the wider court, and he watches Bokuto’s wings unfurl for the very first time. They’re designed to open at the apex of a jump, an added element of surprise with every spike. Akaashi understands it would be irrational to refuse the advantage. Even so, he looks at Bokuto wavering in his descent, fingertips grazing the balls as they whip past him as if he’s learning to play all over again, and he wonders if this might be a completely different game altogether.
Bokuto, naturally, adores the challenge. “One more,” he says. His feet have barely touched the ground before he swoops up again, back arching in a way that has to be painful. Akaashi serves, so high the ball would have flown to the rafters if they still existed, and Bokuto leaps up, stretches out. His wings rise, silver and white, so bright they’re almost blinding, and they carry him those last few centimeters as he swings.
This time, he connects.
“I’m gonna smash the ball so hard into the ground it smokes,” Bokuto enthuses. Akaashi thinks about cracks in the earth like volcanic eruptions, walls that spiral up into the open air. About Bokuto in the midst of the chaos, shooting up in pursuit of a floating star.
“That seems excessive.”
Bokuto laughs, spring tests a couple of hops. “Maybe,” he says, and clenches his fists. His wings stir. “But I could, now.”
-
It takes a couple of months for the transition to settle. Publicly, at least; it’s been building for years now, ever since the first set of wings debuted in Akaashi’s final semester of university. Some of the heavier players hold out for a while; strains are relatively common with the limits on maximum wingspan, but Akaashi has his implant removed at least three times over the first year. The newer models are more stable, they say, can boost up to three times instead of just once.
Then Kuroo goes down in the middle of a game, too enamoured with the stylised advertisements to remember common sense, and the media explodes. The association deems it an inevitable risk of the sport, the way concussions have been smothered in football for decades, screaming arms in baseball.
“When we play,” Oikawa Tooru breathes into the microphone, eyes glassed over as he recalls a sight higher than the crowd of journalists pressing him from an answer, “When we play, we fly.”
Akaashi has never much liked him.
In the midst of the controversy, Bokuto inadvertently becomes the association’s poster boy, hey hey hey splayed across Tokyo’s twenty-three wards. They hired a good photographer, Akaashi allows, looking at the threads of light weaving through Bokuto’s wings. Bokuto has the largest wingspan of any active player; he has to watch his teammates when he jumps in spite of the increased court space. He takes to the air like it's natural, now, and his eyes are never so bright as they look coming straight off a high spike, his descents no longer unsure.
So Akaashi says nothing, skirts the issue in post-game interviews. For as long as Kuroo is in hospital, he refuses to unfold his own wings, but he declines to participate in the strikes, and Bokuto takes to the air for them both.
-
Akaashi sees the exact moment Bokuto forgets how to fly. His feint fails earlier than he had anticipated, his earlier spikes blocked too easily, and he twists his shoulders without thinking, wrenches his spine in a desperate attempt to stay aloft. His cry rings out harsher than a crow, and Akaashi thinks, Icarus flew too close to the sun, a white blur hurtling down faster than he can see. He moves on instinct, his own wings falling open as he rushes forward, and it’s not enough still - Bokuto tumbles into him on an angle, reflects back onto the ground. His wings fold under him like paper.
Everyone in the auditorium hears them snap.
-
“Here for Bokuto?”
Kuroo looks good, though anything is better than the damp paleness of his skin as they lifted him onto a stretcher, his feet dragging limply on the ground.
“Yes,” Akaashi says. “You look well.”
“Almost well enough to fly again.” There’s an all-too-familiar light in Kuroo’s eyes. Bokuto has it when he lifts off, finally clears the net. “I’ll get the sequence right next time.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Akaashi says mildly. Bokuto and Kuroo tend to watch the same videos, get hooked on the same moves. Kuroo learns fast, but he’s sloppy, in a sense, always tries to use them before he has them perfected.
“You’ll see.” Kuroo ruffles his hair, asks a touch too casually, “Heard from Bokuto yet?”
Akaashi hasn’t heard anything. He’s watched the replays on news sites, tried to extrapolate the injury to a prognosis. He can’t bring himself to turn the volume up. Bokuto has always been loud, from the squeak of his sneakers trailing the floor to the grunts of exertion when he raises his arm. He’s heard Bokuto howl before - frustration, pain, when they lose a game. Not like that.
Kuroo spreads his arms out, and for a brief moment, Akaashi sees the outline of black synthetics. “I know you’re busy thinking about Bokuto right now, but if you need someone to talk to, I have a lot of free time on my hands right now.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Akaashi replies, “but you should extend the offer to Bokuto-san.”
Kuroo hesitates, long enough for Akaashi to interpret the silence himself. His smile, when he finds it again, is brittle. “We’d be banned from each other’s rooms within the day.”
“True,” Akaashi says, thinking, if Bokuto isn’t in his depressed mode. “If he behaves,” he adds, before he can regret it, “I’ll chaperone.”
“You’re a good kid,” Kuroo says, attempting to ruffle his hair again. Akaashi slaps him.
-
“Bokuto-san?”
The lights are dim when Akaashi enters. Bokuto’s lying in bed, staring out the window like he’d rather be falling from there, but he’s pouting, and ironically, that’s more of a relief than any medical report Akaashi could procure. “I screwed up,” he says. “I had it, and I screwed up.”
Akaashi takes his fist, unclenches it. “We’ve lost before.”
“I can’t fly anymore,” Bokuto whispers, and Akaashi had known, looking at his silent phone. He’s been playing volleyball with Bokuto for over a decade.
“Who told you that?” He keeps his voice neutral.
“I just know.” Bokuto gestures wildly at his general appearance. He has an IV line trailing up from his elbow, a brace around his neck. “I’m done for, Akaashi. We never even made it to the Olympics.” He bites his lip. “Sorry you had to play with such a sucky ace.”
“You can be competitive without flying,” Akaashi says, still clasping Bokuto’s hand. It’s easier than trying to correct him. “You’ve been one of the top five spikers since you were in high school. We believe in you, Bokuto-san.”
Bokuto looks from Akaashi to their joined hands, then back to Akaashi. “Really?”
“Of course,” Akaashi says. Even if it’s true that Bokuto will never fly again - and Akaashi really, really has his doubts about that now that he’s had a good look around Bokuto’s room, where it’s situated on the wards - wings are just an advantage. Akaashi has been playing with Tsukishima Kei for longer than he’d like, has been envious of Kageyama since he first heard the name. For all the open roofs and wide courts, they’re still playing volleyball. Oikawa still overexerts himself, struggles with injury half the season each year. Kuroo still pulls sneak attacks from Youtube, tries to copy every trick artist he comes across. Hinata still jumps higher than anyone ever thinks he can. Bokuto still commands the crowd every time he steps on the court, still races through games on a high. Still gets down after a mistake, evidently. “You’re our ace, Bokuto-san, and we’re one of the best teams in the nation.”
A smile spreads slowly over Bokuto’s face. “Say that again,” he urges, shaking Akaashi’s hand. “Tell me I’m the best.”
“You’re the best, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says tonelessly, but his lips quirk up in answer.
-
The ground is littered with balls their side of the court; Kuroo waves lazily at them from across the net. At some point, Akaashi tells himself, the strategy is going to pay off, and Kuroo will infuriate Bokuto to the point he smashes a ball through the net into his face, if not over.
Bokuto wobbles on his way down. He grabs Akaashi’s arm as his toes touch ground, tilting them both, and Akaashi remembers their first practice again, all unsteady on their feet like newborn lambs. “It’s hard to keep track of you when you come down like that,” he says, thinks at least he’s not falling this time.
You're not afraid? Kuroo had asked him, earlier. It makes less sense because if anyone's afraid, it should be Bokuto, but Kuroo's probably seen the way Akaashi's eyes follow him into the air when he jumps these days, knows he'll concentrate ten times more when Bokuto does.
“You need to fly into his arms,” Kuroo calls now, grinning smugly at them both.
Akaashi ignores him. “Ready?” he asks, and Bokuto grins at him. His face is a little flushed; his eyes spark with a familiar flame. Akaashi’s missed it.
“Once more,” Bokuto pleads, then looks to Kuroo. “Do the thing!” he yells. “You’re not doing the thing!”
Kuroo sighs, holds his arms up into a ring above his head. “You’re going to miss,” he shouts back, and Akaashi serves, high into the air, watching Bokuto fly higher still.
-
"You're not afraid?" Kuroo asks again, nodding towards Bokuto as he springs towards the bench, jacks up to their supporters in the stands.
Akaashi thinks about skies, and falling, and wings that glitter in the sun. About Bokuto's hand on his wrist, warm and reassuring, his landing stable again. "A little," he admits. "But he'll come down eventually."
Re: FILL: Team Tennis no Ouji-sama, G