Ship: Akashi/Mayuzumi Fandom: Kuroko no Basuke Major Tags: TAGS OMITTED Other Tags: TAGS OMITTED Word Count: 419
***
Even invisibility can be a facade, the stoic nothingness belying something more beneath. It’s not necessarily something dark or twisted, for someone like Mayuzumi who takes great pains to imagine himself as profound, like a hero, ordinary but not too ordinary, a little darker and more cynical, it might be the opposite. Or it might be nothing masking nothing, mystery to disguise shallowness, but that’s not Mayuzumi’s case. Akashi can see that part of him well enough.
It’s different than Kuroko, whose own self-importance had taken a different turn; Mayuzumi’s bitter in a different way, long-practiced and set in his bones, not reactionary. It’s stupid to compare the two when his dick is in Mayuzumi’s mouth, when his fingers are fisted in Mayuzumi’s soft, neat hair, when he’d never wanted that with Kuroko, even at the end (though thinking about it doesn’t seem like betrayal now, or even betrayal’s next of kin). Mayuzumi is indeed an upgrade, physically and emotionally and in terms of what he is. Shadow, role player, teammate, and this, too, beyond the court.
“I wonder if you’re just doing this to placate me about minutes,” Mayuzumi grumbles, half-asleep on Akashi’s bed.
Akashi doesn’t placate that way, and Mayuzumi knows it. Akashi doesn’t need him that much; in the end they’re all expendable like that. This, though, is because he wants it, because they both do, because he can see straight through Mayuzumi’s facade of indifferent and above it all, to the messy want within, and Akashi likes what he sees there enough to want more. It’s got everything and nothing to do with dribbling the ball across the court, with light passes and straight shots from beyond the line. If Mayuzumi had wanted minutes he could have been the ace of some shitty fourth-rate team somewhere and never been to the Winter Cup, but his ambitions lie beyond that, foolish fantasies he’d entertained about stealing minutes from someone with prestige. And so maybe he doesn’t mean those kinds of words, but somewhere inside him he does.
But even though he hides it, constructing his facade of another face in the crowd, blank grey eyes like gravel in Akashi’s driveway, he’s not particularly ashamed of wanting. Not glory, not Akashi, not anything, really. It’s nowhere near his best quality, but it just might hold the most appeal; it just might be the one Akashi can tug on the most, that lets him reach even deeper inside of Mayuzumi than he can see.
FILL: TEAM HIMURO TATSUYA/NIJIMURA SHUUZOU, T
Fandom: Kuroko no Basuke
Major Tags: TAGS OMITTED
Other Tags: TAGS OMITTED
Word Count: 419
***
Even invisibility can be a facade, the stoic nothingness belying something more beneath. It’s not necessarily something dark or twisted, for someone like Mayuzumi who takes great pains to imagine himself as profound, like a hero, ordinary but not too ordinary, a little darker and more cynical, it might be the opposite. Or it might be nothing masking nothing, mystery to disguise shallowness, but that’s not Mayuzumi’s case. Akashi can see that part of him well enough.
It’s different than Kuroko, whose own self-importance had taken a different turn; Mayuzumi’s bitter in a different way, long-practiced and set in his bones, not reactionary. It’s stupid to compare the two when his dick is in Mayuzumi’s mouth, when his fingers are fisted in Mayuzumi’s soft, neat hair, when he’d never wanted that with Kuroko, even at the end (though thinking about it doesn’t seem like betrayal now, or even betrayal’s next of kin). Mayuzumi is indeed an upgrade, physically and emotionally and in terms of what he is. Shadow, role player, teammate, and this, too, beyond the court.
“I wonder if you’re just doing this to placate me about minutes,” Mayuzumi grumbles, half-asleep on Akashi’s bed.
Akashi doesn’t placate that way, and Mayuzumi knows it. Akashi doesn’t need him that much; in the end they’re all expendable like that. This, though, is because he wants it, because they both do, because he can see straight through Mayuzumi’s facade of indifferent and above it all, to the messy want within, and Akashi likes what he sees there enough to want more. It’s got everything and nothing to do with dribbling the ball across the court, with light passes and straight shots from beyond the line. If Mayuzumi had wanted minutes he could have been the ace of some shitty fourth-rate team somewhere and never been to the Winter Cup, but his ambitions lie beyond that, foolish fantasies he’d entertained about stealing minutes from someone with prestige. And so maybe he doesn’t mean those kinds of words, but somewhere inside him he does.
But even though he hides it, constructing his facade of another face in the crowd, blank grey eyes like gravel in Akashi’s driveway, he’s not particularly ashamed of wanting. Not glory, not Akashi, not anything, really. It’s nowhere near his best quality, but it just might hold the most appeal; it just might be the one Akashi can tug on the most, that lets him reach even deeper inside of Mayuzumi than he can see.