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smashconTitle: It's fine until someone wants to win the game.
Author: arctic_dragon
Rating: G
Prompt: “Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.” – quote by Josh Billings
Fandom/Series: Kuroko no Basket
Word Count: 1509
Disclaimer: I do not, in any way, profit from the story and all creative rights to the characters belong to their original creator
Summary: He comes off the court smiling and his father smiles back at him every time, hand reaching out to gently ruffle Kuroko's hair. His heart is lighter than a feather and he decides this is what love feels like. Pre-canon.
It's fine until someone wants to win the game.
He's five when he sees a basketball game for the first time.
Unnoticed in some other family's hospital room when his mother had forgotten him to cling desperately to his grandfather's hand he watches them clutch each other's hands yelling at the TV. It is strange how much emotion the family put into shouting as two brightly coloured teams chase a ball back and forth, put it through the hoop and then repeat it all over again. He doesn't really care about the game but he enjoys the atmosphere of the room and the family's joyful groans and shouts and it is only when the game ends and the TV goes off the family hugging and kissing the boy in the bed that Kuroko thinks to go and find his own family.
His mother hasn't noticed he is missing, but his grandfather drops him a wink and smiles at his return gesturing him over to hold the hand not tightly gripped in his mother's.
He remembers the game but only for the family's joy so out of place in that hospital room.
X--X--X
It is not until he is eight and they play basketball in P.E. that the game itself makes an impression on him.
He is, as per usual, selected last for a team. Forgotten entirely until he reminds the teacher he's there.
Playing games with people is hard as they overlook him when looking for someone to pass to, but his father has taught him the trick for just these occasions. It's not in his nature, but his father says games are an important part of growing up and all the best games are played in teams, so when Inoue looks around for someone who is unmarked Kuroko raises his arm and shouts.
Never having played before it takes him a while to work out how to keep contol of the ball while bouncing it going forward. While he has the ball no one forgets he is there. He passes to Terada who gets blocked by Nakano under the hoop and the ball is quickly tossed back to him. He takes a shot at scoring and barely manages to hit the backboard let alone the ring.
Nagai bumps shoulders with him. "Don't mind. You'll get it next time."
After that it is easier to get his team to remember that he's there. He smiles brightly, lips just upturned, for the rest of the game.
Their team doesn't win (the other team has Saito who excels at every sport) but for 15 minutes Kuroko is part of the team.
Basketball, Kuroko decides then and there, is something he would like to be good at.
That night he asks his father to buy him a basketball so he can practice. The downturn of his father's lips is subtle but since all his father's expressions are hinted at in the tiniest of muscle movements Kuroko knows that is sadness/reluctance. It is his mother who agrees, smile stretched across her entire face and his father's lips straighten out in acceptance.
It is his father who takes him down to the local park twice a week so he can practice, ball carefully bouncing along the pavement all the way to the courts and home afterwards. There are many times he trips over the ball, other times where he bounces the ball too hard and at the wrong time and it hits him in the face, as well as a careful learning curve to remember to look where he's going and not at the ball or else he runs head first into the pedestrians who didn't notice him.
Occasionally he can get the boys who hang around on the park's half size basketball court to let him join in. With no actual referee it turns into a bit of a free-for-all most of the time, but there are still 2 hoops and a team of people that Kuroko is one of.
He comes off the court smiling and his father smiles back at him every time, hand reaching out to gently ruffle Kuroko's hair. His heart is lighter than a feather and he decides this is what love feels like.
x--x--x
Practice makes perfect as the saying goes but there is only so much you can do by yourself or with a few backyard basketball scrambles so he looks to his father hopefully when he first hears of youth basketball league being run from local community centre. The sadness/reluctance shift of his father's lips returned but Kuroko was determined and his eyebrows said as much to his father and he won the argument with only a gentle "Please."
The place is amazing. It has three full size basketball courts in one of the halls, wooden floor polished until it shines and racks of basketballs all in a line. The youth league is even better.
There are 58 boys who all want to play basketball everyday just like Kuroko.
It's wonderful.
The coach puts them through their paces; sprint drills, shooting drills, passing drills and laps. Best of all is the game they have each day. The pounding of the ball echoing the pounding of their feet.
Kuroko passes and dribbles and passes and shoots (and misses) and plays and plays until the air wheezes from his lungs and his legs burn with just discovered muscles.
The Youth League only has 2 mandatory practices a week but Kuroko goes to every practice that his parents are available to take him to.
He can run and play to his heart's content and he has teammates who remember to invite him to their birthday parties. His mother teases him that his face got stuck when the wind changed since he smiles all the time now.
Then the coach takes him aside and the coach is gruff and loud but in this instance he is as gentle as a butterfly as he breaks Kuroko's dreams apart.
No stamina. Unreliable shooting accuracy. Too small. Unnoticeable.
Kuroko has, as the coach puts it, no winning cards in his hand.
Up until this moment Kuroko has enjoyed the coach's colourful way of saying things but now that phrase is stuck in his head and it is worse than the recitation of his failures.
When he leaves that afternoon he is unsure whether he can bring himself to come back to finish out the term his parents have already paid for.
His father's hands land gently on his shoulders and they are warm and loving and everything Kuroko needs right now.
"I'm no good." There are no tears because tears would help nothing, but his lips pull down and his hands keep reaching for the basketball and then pull back before they ever reach it.
His father sighs and scoops Kuroko up so he is held tight against his father's chest and starts to speak, his voice rumbling gently against Kuroko's ear. "My mother always used to tell me that I was special and my ghost like presence was a gift. I didn't believe her of course. What kid wants to be picked last every time or forgotten by teachers on field trips or overlooked by their team mates. What kid wants to practice every day and not get faster or stronger. And unfortunately you inherited that from me as much as I hoped you wouldn't."
"So I give up?"
His father shakes him softly, a gently rocking motion. "No. My mother was right and it does make us special, but we have to work especially hard to turn that gift into something worthwhile. You have to think about what else you can do if you're never going to be able to run faster or jump higher than anybody else. You have to play the way only Kuroko can play and not try play the same way as everybody else."
The words patch the wounds the coach has left in his heart but it's still difficult to go back to the community centre the next day when he knows the coach has already dismissed him as useless.
His heart's not quite in it, the coach is right he's last in nearly all the drills they run.
He's never going to be able to run as fast as Sasaki or shoot as well as Ito and halfway through the game that afternoon he decides he is OK with that. No matter what the coach has said his teammates still pass him the ball and he has numerous assists and he loves the game.
He wants to keep playing so he's going to find a way to play that only he can.
He's special and people don't notice him even when he stands right in front of them.
His father says it's a gift so he's going to turn it into one.
So maybe he can't shoot consistently but he can make assists, although he can't jump higher or run faster than anyone else he can be Kuroko. He can stand next to someone and steal the ball before they know he's there.
He's going to be his own type of winning hand.
When he becomes the phantom 6th member of the Teiko basketball team...
When he is acknowledged as one of the Generation of Miracles...
When he steps onto the court and Aomine is the only one that can catch his Ignite Pass...
...he knows he has succeeded.
Please take the time to comment on the fanfic. Thanks.
Author: arctic_dragon
Rating: G
Prompt: “Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.” – quote by Josh Billings
Fandom/Series: Kuroko no Basket
Word Count: 1509
Disclaimer: I do not, in any way, profit from the story and all creative rights to the characters belong to their original creator
Summary: He comes off the court smiling and his father smiles back at him every time, hand reaching out to gently ruffle Kuroko's hair. His heart is lighter than a feather and he decides this is what love feels like. Pre-canon.
It's fine until someone wants to win the game.
He's five when he sees a basketball game for the first time.
Unnoticed in some other family's hospital room when his mother had forgotten him to cling desperately to his grandfather's hand he watches them clutch each other's hands yelling at the TV. It is strange how much emotion the family put into shouting as two brightly coloured teams chase a ball back and forth, put it through the hoop and then repeat it all over again. He doesn't really care about the game but he enjoys the atmosphere of the room and the family's joyful groans and shouts and it is only when the game ends and the TV goes off the family hugging and kissing the boy in the bed that Kuroko thinks to go and find his own family.
His mother hasn't noticed he is missing, but his grandfather drops him a wink and smiles at his return gesturing him over to hold the hand not tightly gripped in his mother's.
He remembers the game but only for the family's joy so out of place in that hospital room.
X--X--X
It is not until he is eight and they play basketball in P.E. that the game itself makes an impression on him.
He is, as per usual, selected last for a team. Forgotten entirely until he reminds the teacher he's there.
Playing games with people is hard as they overlook him when looking for someone to pass to, but his father has taught him the trick for just these occasions. It's not in his nature, but his father says games are an important part of growing up and all the best games are played in teams, so when Inoue looks around for someone who is unmarked Kuroko raises his arm and shouts.
Never having played before it takes him a while to work out how to keep contol of the ball while bouncing it going forward. While he has the ball no one forgets he is there. He passes to Terada who gets blocked by Nakano under the hoop and the ball is quickly tossed back to him. He takes a shot at scoring and barely manages to hit the backboard let alone the ring.
Nagai bumps shoulders with him. "Don't mind. You'll get it next time."
After that it is easier to get his team to remember that he's there. He smiles brightly, lips just upturned, for the rest of the game.
Their team doesn't win (the other team has Saito who excels at every sport) but for 15 minutes Kuroko is part of the team.
Basketball, Kuroko decides then and there, is something he would like to be good at.
That night he asks his father to buy him a basketball so he can practice. The downturn of his father's lips is subtle but since all his father's expressions are hinted at in the tiniest of muscle movements Kuroko knows that is sadness/reluctance. It is his mother who agrees, smile stretched across her entire face and his father's lips straighten out in acceptance.
It is his father who takes him down to the local park twice a week so he can practice, ball carefully bouncing along the pavement all the way to the courts and home afterwards. There are many times he trips over the ball, other times where he bounces the ball too hard and at the wrong time and it hits him in the face, as well as a careful learning curve to remember to look where he's going and not at the ball or else he runs head first into the pedestrians who didn't notice him.
Occasionally he can get the boys who hang around on the park's half size basketball court to let him join in. With no actual referee it turns into a bit of a free-for-all most of the time, but there are still 2 hoops and a team of people that Kuroko is one of.
He comes off the court smiling and his father smiles back at him every time, hand reaching out to gently ruffle Kuroko's hair. His heart is lighter than a feather and he decides this is what love feels like.
x--x--x
Practice makes perfect as the saying goes but there is only so much you can do by yourself or with a few backyard basketball scrambles so he looks to his father hopefully when he first hears of youth basketball league being run from local community centre. The sadness/reluctance shift of his father's lips returned but Kuroko was determined and his eyebrows said as much to his father and he won the argument with only a gentle "Please."
The place is amazing. It has three full size basketball courts in one of the halls, wooden floor polished until it shines and racks of basketballs all in a line. The youth league is even better.
There are 58 boys who all want to play basketball everyday just like Kuroko.
It's wonderful.
The coach puts them through their paces; sprint drills, shooting drills, passing drills and laps. Best of all is the game they have each day. The pounding of the ball echoing the pounding of their feet.
Kuroko passes and dribbles and passes and shoots (and misses) and plays and plays until the air wheezes from his lungs and his legs burn with just discovered muscles.
The Youth League only has 2 mandatory practices a week but Kuroko goes to every practice that his parents are available to take him to.
He can run and play to his heart's content and he has teammates who remember to invite him to their birthday parties. His mother teases him that his face got stuck when the wind changed since he smiles all the time now.
Then the coach takes him aside and the coach is gruff and loud but in this instance he is as gentle as a butterfly as he breaks Kuroko's dreams apart.
No stamina. Unreliable shooting accuracy. Too small. Unnoticeable.
Kuroko has, as the coach puts it, no winning cards in his hand.
Up until this moment Kuroko has enjoyed the coach's colourful way of saying things but now that phrase is stuck in his head and it is worse than the recitation of his failures.
When he leaves that afternoon he is unsure whether he can bring himself to come back to finish out the term his parents have already paid for.
His father's hands land gently on his shoulders and they are warm and loving and everything Kuroko needs right now.
"I'm no good." There are no tears because tears would help nothing, but his lips pull down and his hands keep reaching for the basketball and then pull back before they ever reach it.
His father sighs and scoops Kuroko up so he is held tight against his father's chest and starts to speak, his voice rumbling gently against Kuroko's ear. "My mother always used to tell me that I was special and my ghost like presence was a gift. I didn't believe her of course. What kid wants to be picked last every time or forgotten by teachers on field trips or overlooked by their team mates. What kid wants to practice every day and not get faster or stronger. And unfortunately you inherited that from me as much as I hoped you wouldn't."
"So I give up?"
His father shakes him softly, a gently rocking motion. "No. My mother was right and it does make us special, but we have to work especially hard to turn that gift into something worthwhile. You have to think about what else you can do if you're never going to be able to run faster or jump higher than anybody else. You have to play the way only Kuroko can play and not try play the same way as everybody else."
The words patch the wounds the coach has left in his heart but it's still difficult to go back to the community centre the next day when he knows the coach has already dismissed him as useless.
His heart's not quite in it, the coach is right he's last in nearly all the drills they run.
He's never going to be able to run as fast as Sasaki or shoot as well as Ito and halfway through the game that afternoon he decides he is OK with that. No matter what the coach has said his teammates still pass him the ball and he has numerous assists and he loves the game.
He wants to keep playing so he's going to find a way to play that only he can.
He's special and people don't notice him even when he stands right in front of them.
His father says it's a gift so he's going to turn it into one.
So maybe he can't shoot consistently but he can make assists, although he can't jump higher or run faster than anyone else he can be Kuroko. He can stand next to someone and steal the ball before they know he's there.
He's going to be his own type of winning hand.
When he becomes the phantom 6th member of the Teiko basketball team...
When he is acknowledged as one of the Generation of Miracles...
When he steps onto the court and Aomine is the only one that can catch his Ignite Pass...
...he knows he has succeeded.
Please take the time to comment on the fanfic. Thanks.
