#mellowmaven

[stephanericherthanyou]

80. Nostrum + Nakamura Shinya for the vocabulary prompt.

Nostrum: Remedy

Nakamura’s given up on finding some remedy, some instantmiracle, some hypothetical cure-all for his woeful offensive skills. He canblock and steal with the best of them but his shots don’t land where theyshould and half the time he’s jumping the gun and shooting too soon and theother half the shot clock’s run out or the opposition’s gotten in perfectposition to deny him no matter what.

It’s nice to believe in some mystical fortune-tellerchanging things for him; it’s nice to fantasize about a deal with the devil (he’dgive up most of his remaining eyesight; he’d give up his school performance—hell,he already has with the way basketball takes over his life during the seasonand the amount of extra time he puts in shooting the ball fruitlessly, alone onthe court). It’s nice to believe, but it’s stupid. He is as he is; he is adefender, not an attacker. The skills he’s developed aren’t the mostmarketable, but they’re still skills. And he can’t waste his time dreaming whenthere’s reps left to do.

#andddd that's the lot #mellowmaven #fanfic #i need a request tag #nakamura shinya #kuroko no basket #drabble

[stephanericherthanyou]

79. Incubus + Sakurai Ryou for the vocabulary prompt.

Incubus: Encumbrance; nightmarish thing

They always ask him who told him he wasn’t good enough; healways wants to say that’s not the fucking point. The one who told him he wasn’tgood enough was the losing score, the missed basket, himself; not being goodenough itself told him he wasn’t. It’s the truth, a tautology. And it’s alwaysringing in his ears; nothing short of perfect is close to good enough and he isnever close to perfect—but to not try is to lose worse, and he’d rather (ifgiven such a sadistic choice) fail when he takes his chances than not try atall and lose even more ground.

The fear of it weighs him down; the burden of not-good-enough,not-tall-enough, not-strong-enough, not-finessed-enough, presses against hisshoulders like weights on the machine when he’s taken too many at once. And yethe runs, rolls his shoulders to lift it off even though he knows the relief isonly temporary—he can shout that he’s good, that he’s better, all he wants. (It’snever loud enough for him to believe it himself.)

#mellowmaven #fanfic #drabble #i need a request tag #sakurai ryou #kuroko no basket

[stephanericherthanyou]

72. Somatic: Furuhashi Kojiro for the vocabulary prompt.

Somatic: concerned with the body

Bodies are so breakable. An elbow here, a wrong fall there;tendons snap and bones crack and fracture. Thousands of years of evolution havelead them to this, of needing pads and helmets and seat belts just to make surethings of their own invention don’t smash them to pulp. Furuhashi might laugh,if it was funny—but it’s not. It’s just simple.

Get out there, break a body; he doesn’t even have tocalculate the angle of max efficiency the way Hanamiya does (burning his braincells, although perhaps he has too many of them in the first place). He canjust throw a hand in someone’s face and smack the cartilage of their nosewrong, kick out his leg and mess up their knee. It’s funny how bodies are soweak, and yet they undo each other just like that. (Well, not funny. But likethat.)

#warning furu is an asshole i guess #mellowmaven #fanfic #drabble #furuhashi koujirou #i need a request tag #kuroko no basket

[stephanericherthanyou]

33. Extemporize + Mayuzumi Chihiro for the vocabulary prompt.

Extemporize,Speak without preparation or rehearsal

People are stupid. Sometimes they’re too stupid to realizethey’re stupid and they try to oh-so-cleverly ad-lib a speech or presentation infront of the class and then run out of words ten seconds in. It’s so typicaland so stupid; and people say Rakuzan students are the cream of the crop. Maybesome of them are—but the ones who grip their notes aren’t much better (they’rejust as boring, most of the time).

On the other hand, class is going to be boring anyway, andthey won’t be tested on this material and this is a better time than most tospace out and stare at the wall and think about light novels and basketballpractice and how he really does have to clean his dorm room so it passesinspection this weekend (and Mayuzumi would really rather not). But even that’smore pleasant than stumbled words and forgotten facts about classicalliterature. Mayuzumi tries not to sigh. If he were the protagonist of a lightnovel he wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit, or maybe he’d get assignedto work in a group with a very pretty girl. But he’s long since given up on thatkind of fantasy; it’s just pointless.

But then again, it’s better than listening to this drivel.

#mellowmaven #fanfic #drabble #i need a request tag #mayuzumi chihiro #kuroko no basket

[stephanericherthanyou]

13. Extirpation + Wakamatsu Kousuke for the vocabulary prompt.

Extirpation,Wiping out; complete destruction

It’s been a long time since they’ve mopped the floor with anopponent like this. And okay, their opponent’s long since dropped out of thenational rankings entirely, but that doesn’t make the feeling any less satisfying.If anything, it’s more satisfying because this is a team they should beflattening, a team that should want to win by the skin of its teeth, a teamthat’s really going to realize the bullshit of the phrase “the one who wins isgoing to be the one who wants it the most”.

It’s a pure win, pure strategy and execution, well-oiledcogs in a polished machine rolling tanks across the floor, quick passes andharsh dunks, well-timed drawn fouls and solid blocks. They don’t hold back;they just go. Sakurai mutters under his breath that it’s too easy and thenthrows up two straight perfect, arcing threes; Momoi draws and discards andredraws the plans as fast as Wakamatsu can memorize them and Aomine can ignorethem (but of course Momoi’s already planned for that).

They sub in the second string in the third quarter;Wakamatsu watches from the bench with a water bottle between his teeth and atowel over his shoulders, legs outstretched. This is it; this is his team, thepoint guard barking out orders and the forwards clogging up the passing lanes,all five of them setting up the perfect trap and waiting for their exhaustedfoes to trip over the wires.

“Don’t get too cocky,” Aomine says next to him.

Wakamatsu elbows him, but keeps his voice in check. He’sready to go back in if needed—but as it turns out he doesn’t have to.

#mellowmaven #fanfic #drabble #i need a request tag #wakamatsu kousuke #touou #kuroko no basket

[stephanericherthanyou]

28. Refulgent + Hara Kazuya for the vocabulary prompt.

Refulgent,Glowing; radiant

“Hara. Oi.”

Hara makes a muffled sound, involuntarily; he blinks andthrough the gauzy pink of his bangs the refulgent screen of his monitor ispractically screaming. He shuts his eyes again.

“You didn’t fall asleep, did you?”

Hara’s pretty sure he left the headset on mute, and it’shard to fumble around in the darkness of his screwed-shut eyelids and find thebutton, but eventually he does.

“Hara? Are you even still there?”

“Yes,” Hara says and sighs.

“You were asleep,” says Hanamiya, and if they were in thesame room Hara would be rolling his eyes (if they were in the same room hewouldn’t have fallen asleep anyway because he’d be poking Hanamiya with thecontroller or something—gaming by himself is exponentially less interesting,even with Hanamiya on the other end of the headest).

Hara doesn’t bother to deny it (at least he won’t unlessHanamiya claims to somehow have heard him snoring because he doesn’t snore andeven if he did the headset was on mute).

“Are we going to get this boss or what?” says Hanamiya.

Hara’s eyes have adjusted (mostly) to the screen; he can seehis character pressed face against the wall, and honestly he’d like to be facedown on the bed right now. But Hanamiya’s never going to let him live it downif he doesn’t, and if they beat this boss (and Hanamiya does most of the work)Hanamiya will be relatively happy and then Hara can shut off his headset andreally go to sleep.

“Yeah. Give me a sec.”

“I’ve already given you—”

Hara pulls the headset off his ears. Like this, Hanamiyadoesn’t know he’s not listening.

#mellowmaven #fanfic #drabble #i need a request tag #hara kazuya #kuroko no basket

[stephanericherthanyou]

12. Stygian + Hayakawa Mitsuhiro for the vocabulary prompt.

Stygian: Very dark

The end of last season had been nothing but darkness, theknowledge that they’d been so close and blown it, the things that Kasamatsu(Hayakawa’s favorite upperclassman because he was just so damn steady even whenhe was fired up) had taken to heart so much that he’d seemed to be falling downto a place he couldn’t return from, the somber mood over the whole locker room.Kobori had ruffled his hair and told him to try and keep it together for theseniors, and he ahd tried, but it was hard not to be disheartened by the waythey’d looked.

And here they are this year, barely pushed out of the finalthey wouldn’t have been able to win anyway because their ace is playing on abad leg and the rest of them can barely hold off Seirin’s luck let aloneanything else—and yet the future seems a whole lot brighter. This year they’renot so much caught up in what ifs as they are with what did happen, with whythey lost now and why they won’t lose next time. This time, Nakamura squeezes Hayakawa’shand as he does bawl because it feels damn right to cry after all they’ve beenthrough, and then Kobori’s hugging them both and telling them how great they’regoing to do next year and even if it wasn’t Kobori Hayakawa would totallybelieve it.

Because they are. This year was leaps and bounds better thanlast year; next year’s going to be even better than that because they’ll all beeven better than that, all finally free from the stygian cling pulling themunder.

#fanfic #mellowmaven #drabble #i need a request tag #hayakawa mitsuhiro #kuroko no basket

[stephanericherthanyou]

8. Diphanous + Mibuchi Reo for the vocabulary prompt.

Diaphanous: Transparent;thin and delicate

Mibuchi likes to pretend he’s the perfect student, alwaysdiligent and attentive. And for the most part he is; for the most part he’s notdoodling in the margins of his notebook or falling asleep or failing to sitstill. But sometimes Nebuya will catch movement out of the corner of his eye,of Mibuchi in the second-row window seat with his face turned outside.

Today there’s a butterfly, fluttering its diaphanous wingsalmost hesitantly as it perches on the sill. How very like Mibuchi, alwayspreoccupied with small things, details he could so easily crush between hisfingers or spear with one nail. The butterfly’s wingspan is probably no longerthan Mibuchi’s thumb, and yet. He stares.

And then Nebuya blinks, and the butterfly’s taken off;Mibuchi’s carefully rearranging himself as if he’d been turned toward the frontthe whole time and it’s as if it had never happened.

#tfw u spell ur own prompt words wrong #mellowmaven #fanfic #i need a request tag #mibuchi reo #feat #nebuya eikichi #i was going somewhere with this? #drabble #kuroko no basket