Work Text:
look for me in the streets of Siam (i'll be there with the ones i love best)
2014.05.17
Kagami had always been the lucky one, Kise thought, having gone abroad when he was little. He was probably far more adaptable to new living conditions than any of their peers. Kise knew enough of foreigners from the people he worked with to know that going with a bus tour with people that spoke the same language wasn't really seeing new places.
Still, when his itinerary for Thailand was announced, he was surprised by how many others wanted to join in. Mainly, the rest of the Miracles plus Kuroko's 'light'.
Most worrying was Akashi and Kuroko on the Saturday they planned to meet. Their red-and-blue heads were already bent over various brochures and travel guides and notebooks scrawled with lists of places to go, things to see, food to buy, items to shop for - and Kise had made sure to arrive to their meeting place twenty minutes early. In contrast, the two looked like they had been at it for hours.
"Oh. Ryouta," Akashi looked completely preoccupied, resurfacing only for a moment before diving back in. "See? This is a mockup of what it might have looked like, based on a local historian's sketches." Akashi's tablet was propped very, very precariously on the edge of the table as he flipped through the websites. "Isn't that interesting? They said they called it a gallery before."
"It must have been magnificent back then," Kuroko agreed.
"Err, why are you two suddenly so interested in coming...?" Kise asked weakly.
Both of them pinned him with stares that were so piercing that the blond froze like a butterfly on a mat. "Thailand is different," Akashi said in the same disdainful tone that he usually said You are a fool and so far beneath me that I am seriously considering squishing you. "Very different from Kyoto."
"The shrines and temples in Japan are usually intact, you see," Kuroko said with a little more sympathy. Obviously, someone else remembered being on the end of Akashi's basilisk stare. "But these 'wats' are shaped very strangely." He pronounced the foreign word delicately.
"But Ayutthaya's not even on my itinerary."
"It is now," the two said in unison. Mentally Kise threw up his hands and mourned his shopping time - he had wanted to spend two days in Chatuchak! Think of all the shopping! - but was cut off from actually saying anything because the two dumber lugs of the group arrived in that instant.
"So hey, I saw this," Kagami showed them all a picture of what looked like lots of different meats on a stick [1]. "And I wanna eat it."
"Me too, looks good," Aomine said. He chewed enthusiastically on a set of eight takoyaki from somewhere down the street, impervious to the glares he was getting from the cafe owner. "So, where are we going?"
"Thailand."
"The place with that soy sauce mince meat over rice [2], right?"
"That's Taiwan."
"Oh. Okay. Is that near?"
"Are you turning into Murasakibara-kun?" Kuroko asked a little desperately. "I don't remember you being this fixated on food in junior high school."
Aomine only shrugged. " 'S'his fault." He jerked a thumb to Kagami, who was humming happily as he bookmarked an English page that Kise only got a glimpse of before he bookmarked and closed it. It looked like...well, minced meat, tomatoes and spices served with raw vegetables [3]. Kise couldn't quite see what was so cool about that.
A sudden thought arrested him. Unless... The blond side-eyed the two food-stupids with a jaundiced eye. But no, they didn't act any different than before, unless they had been fucking from the beginning.
"Are you actually blaming Kagami-kun for getting you into foreign food?" Kuroko demanded. And of course, there was their 'shadow' to consider.
"Well, I was hardly gonna turn down free food. And it didn't look poisoned."
Kagami snickered. "You mean it didn't look like your girlfriend cooked it."
"Argh, man, your life is so easy without any women in it. Except for that ex-coach of yours, she always looked like a hardass back then." He glared a little, but Kagami didn't notice. "And Satsuki isn't my girlfriend."
"Guess not, if she's shoving her boobs at him every time," Kagami nodded at his ever-present 'shadow'.
"I do wish that was less suffocating," Kuroko sighed.
It was to be the five of them before the last two Miracles caught wind and demanded to be part of the trip to. "Educational experience", "Good food," was the two excuses Kise was given, before they signed onto the same aircraft and same itinerary as the rest. Really, Kise should have given up keeping it as a secret before they left.
"And your reasons aren't original!" he yelled after they excused themselves from the table of the second planning meeting.
The last straw was his manager, who was literally squirming with excitement the week before he left. "Kise-kun," she gushed. "I've got such great news! I was just thinking about your Thailand trip and thought we might, well, publicize it!"
"What," Kise's throat closed up in horror.
"I mean, it's you, young hot thing, going with six other hot boys, and well, you know our studio's not the biggest so we can't really hire a photographer, but I'm sure between all of you, you'll take enough pictures? To write a little piece about backpacking through a foreign country? And all the culture shock that comes with it?"
"A 'little piece'? How little?"
"It's a full spread, so...six pages? Make sure to take lots of pictures, Ryouta-kun!"
It was with this dawning sense of fear that he boarded the red-eye to Thailand while his friends - were they friends? Would friends just go and invite themselves onto someone else's trip?? - jabbered about foreign food, drink, history, and transportation before the cabin finally turned down the lights for bedtime. But Kise couldn't sleep.
What if this is all a big mistake!?
----------------
Okay, so it wasn't that bad.
But it wasn't that good either.
As the only English-fluent speaker, Kagami was unanimously volunteered to speak to any and all locals unless they were shopping. He wearily took on the task with silent cheerleading from Kuroko, whose support consisted of hovering like a ghost whenever Kagami spoke English and looming whenever Kagami read English pamphlets, but Kise couldn't tell if it was because Kuroko wanted 'in' on that previously-untapped section of Kagami's life, or because there was something going on that he wasn't aware of. As in, some sort of attraction.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, for Kise's gossip-sense), he didn't really have time to reflect on that troubling matter because apparently everyone else thought he was some sort of endless fount of Thai knowledge and was busy firing questions at him left and right.
"Why was this temple refurbished so nicely? Did the government pay for this? Or did they force Buddhist followers to do so?" Akashi demanded, looking upward at the golden stupa at the Grand Palace [4]. Correction, one of the golden stupas.
"Err --"
"Is the taking-shoes-off-thing a sign of respect?" Kuroko asked aloud.
"Must be, this is a major center of worship in Thailand," Kagami shrugged, already toeing off his sandals.
And then even Kise was stopped by the guards because apparently shorts were not aloud and all of them had to fork over thirty bahts for sarongs.
"This is dopey," Murasakibara complained. He looked fairly hilarious so Kise snapped a picture of his sarong barely reaching his knees.
"That would be because it does look hilarious," Midorima smirked, doing the same on his phone. They went in to stare at the Emerald Buddha for a bit before Akashi claimed he had a growing allergy to the incense they used and Aomine claimed a bee had gotten caught in the folds of his sarong and stung his ass. Cue returning the sarong and no bee, just the broken skewer from the grilled meat he had eaten on the way that he had shoved into his pocket.
"Wow, what a dumbass," Kagami snickered as scowling, Aomine marched fruitlessly around the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles for a trash can.
"Your ice cream is dripping onto your pants," Akashi noted pointedly.
"Shit!"
"No blasphemy in the royal holy areas," Midorima scolded.
"Well, fuck you too. Dammit, now my shorts are all sticky."
"I could spill this water on you," Aomine offered, grinning. "But it might look like you wet yourself."
"Shut UP!"
Yeah, Kise definitely should have kept his mouth shut about this in the first place. But at least he got a good picture of Aomine chasing Kagami around with a water bottle as Kuroko watched from the side, the tiniest pleased upturn on his lips signalling his contentment.
--------------
It wasn't a ferry as much as a rickety boat with no AC and a conductor/captain pair that hollered loud enough to make even Kagami wince, and Kise had once tried on his headphones. "How did you even keep your hearing?" he had asked. "It feels like I'm standing next to a stereo speaker."
"That's pretty much why I bought those," Kagami had answered.
None of their company seemed to know where to stand or where to put their hands except Kagami, who didn't care about the peeling paint on the bars nor the rusted insides of the boat, and was happily taking pictures of the Wat Arun [5] pointing towards the sky with the sparkling river in front. The sparkling river that, upon closer inspection, was completely unpotable and brown, like the color of cafe au lait.
And there was a body floating facedown in it.
"Body?" Murasakibara asked, mango skewer temporarily forgotten as the rest of them swiveled their heads towards where something that definitely looked like a human body was knocking against the post of a ferry bank.
"Body!" Kise gasped.
"It is a body," Akashi noted with mild interest. "It looks swollen from the river water. I wonder who it is."
"Bet it was a gory murder," Aomine suggested.
"Mafia, yakuza, Triads - something like that," Kagami agreed. "The underworld's dangerous."
"I thought you were bringing us to a safe place," Midorima admonished Kise.
"I thought the most we'd have to deal with is pickpockets, not corpses in the water. And we're not involved in an investigation, so it's none of our business. After all, none of us are murderers," Kise said firmly, eyes still locked on the retreating dock. The memory of it sobered them all, and the rest of the afternoon spent in the hotel was quiet as people shuffled through their pictures, read guidebooks, or napped. They got up to eat at the restaurant downstairs, and everyone laughed when Murasakibara claimed he was never going to eat anything but mango sticky rice ever again and he was going to stay in Thailand forever, but the mood became solemn once they went back upstairs.
Tomorrow will be better, Kise thought before he slept.
---------------
Tomorrow was Ayutthaya.
They took a coach bus up to the famous wats, shuffling them around to various derelict temples full of visitors, where Akashi and Kuroko happily joined the throngs of people staring up at the crumbling red brick and taking picture after picture.
But first:
"Are we there yet?" Aomine squirmed in his bus seat.
"Not yet," Midorima answered, absently scanning one of the guidebooks' sections about the old capitol city of one of the three kingdoms of Thailand. Kise couldn't see how he could; he always got dizzy when reading on moving vehicles, and Thailand didn't have the best roads.
"I don't see what the point of this is. Isn't it just to see a stone head in a tree [6]?"
"Aomine-kun, that was culturally insensitive. Don't downplay other cultures just because you scored a fourteen on your world history test in junior high school."
"You remember that!?"
Kagami snickered. "Sounds on par for the course."
"I bet you weren't any better," Aomine sneered.
"Actually, World History was one of the only subjects Kagami got good grades in," Kuroko clarified. Kagami preened a little. "But everything else was horrible. You had remedial Japanese classes all through high school, and you had to retake college calculus twice."
"It was calculus! How's anyone supposed to understand that shit?!"
"People smarter than you," Midorima muttered, finally putting in his headphones in an attempt to sleep. Kise copied him, but jerked awake almost every other pothole in the road.
So it was a bleary, roadsick bunch that stumbled out onto the Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon [7].
"It's so old," Kuroko gushed, as much as the 'shadow' ever gushed.
"That is a pile of mouldering oldness, yeah," Aomine agreed. "Ow!" Kuroko had kicked him.
"I don't see what's so interesting that they had to make this a UNESCO Heritage Site," Midorima frowned down at the map, then up at the ruins. "I mean, it's falling apart. It's not perfect."
"Perfection is overrated," Kagami said, sipping generously on a bag of Thai ice tea he had gotten from the vendor outside. Kise gulped a little when he saw the redhead's eyes go half-lidded with bliss, and his shoulders sag in relief from the hot weather. The blond wondered if anyone else in their group, especially Kuroko, had some sort of claim on the redhead already. Because Kise would definitely hit that if he could.
And then what Kagami said hit him. "Hey, I'm perfect!" he announced. He might have tossed his hair, primped his shirt that impeccably matched the shade of his eyes, and rearranged his sunglasses somewhat. Midorima looked stone-faced at that pronouncement - prude - and the rest looked shades of amused.
"Wow, I guess me too then," Aomine smirked.
"Yeah, you're the perfect asshole," Kagami jeered.
Still smirking Aomine smacked his ass with one hand. "You just wish you had this, motherfucker."
Kagami raised his leg to kick it, but Aomine dodged. "Yeah, if my one wish in life was to become a twisted sadist with a face to rival a crappy old Frankenstein."
"Che', Frankenstein's immortal. Like my legend will be!"
"Your legend of assholery, you mean. You keep claiming that Momoi girl isn't your girlfriend! That's messed up!"
"That's because she isn't!"
Kagami strutted ahead - Kuroko took a picture of him glaring against the backdrop of red pillars that reached the sky and headless Buddha statues blackened by fire - and huffed, "You need to treat that girl better. She deserves better."
"Like what, you?"
"At least I can cook! Since she can't!"
"Are you seriously thinking of leaving Tetsu!?"
"Huh? Did you think me and Kuroko are going out??" And then he thought about it. Looked at Kuroko, who was staring blank-faced back at him. Then at Aomine, who looked like he had had turned into one of those Naga-creatures that guarded the wat staircases. And then at the rest of the crew, who were alternately looking elsewhere, taking pictures of his stunned expression, or trying to stab more watermelon onto a stick.
Evidently remembering his own activities had caught up to him, because he queried Kuroko weakly, "Uh...we're going out?"
"We're going out," Kuroko confirmed.
"Like...on dates?" Kagami asked, the last word wavering uncertaintly upwards.
"Considering I don't particularly like hamburgers but keep going to Maji Burger every day with you though we're long past high school or college, just so I can watch you hork down twenty of them at a sitting, yes."
"I'm going out with you." Kagami took a seat on one of the nearby mounds of brick, eyes wide and shocked. "I...I'm going out with...I have a boyfriend? I have a boyfriend!" he shouted to the sky.
"Congratulations," Kuroko said dryly.
Aomine's clap on his shoulder almost sent Kagami to the ground. "Well, shit, that's just awesome. Now, all you have to do is fuck him. And can we go look over there? I think that stupa's actually sinking into the ground."
"No flirting. Also, language," Akashi admonished. And for reasons Kise would never ask but probably because a) he was on vacation, and b) he could occasionally be return to being a randy teenager too, and c) he just could, Akashi stopped briefly between the two stupid lugs and reached out to both sides to pinch their asses. Aomine squawked like a chicken and Kagami bolted upright, a look of thunderous shock on his face. "It doesn't matter if we're in a foreign country, holy places should be respected."
"You just pinched my boyfriend's ass before I could," Kuroko said murderously.
"What are you going to do about it?" Akashi countered sweetly. "After all, you're all mine."
"Excuse me," a pissed National Parks ranger said from behind them. "But you're all currently standing on a National Treasure that was created, at latest, by year 1450. Please READ. THE SIGN." She pointed a shaking finger right next to where Kagami had been sitting, with clear picture directions to not sit, not climb and not touch any of the ruins.
"Uh," Aomine leaned away from what he clearly recognized to be an iminent feminine blow-up.
"GET OFF!"
The seven men scrambled off the rock as fast as they could.
-------------------
"Is this old? It doesn't look old," Kise poked at the white rock that was showing gray in some places. "It looks like someone painted over it in the last ten years, and the paint was flaking off. Like that unused classroom at Teikou."
Aomine smirked. "I remember that place. I remember it intimately." Kise shot him a baleful look, but because Touou's ace was himself a shameless, randy bastard, he added, "I remember pushing you against the wall with no complaints after you sucked me -" Like the mature adult he was, Kise threw a slice of cantalope at him. To his eternal disappointment, Aomine dodged.
"Wasting food!" Murasakibara wailed.
"Akashicchi said no sex on this trip!"
"Oh my God," Kagami had to sit down again. This time he couldn't look at anyone else, not even his new boyfriend. "Oh God. You're gonna expect me to have sex with you, aren't you?"
"No sex talk, even," Midorima added. "Save that for when we're back in Japan. And you're alone."
"Yeah, that's Shin-chan's favorite girl too, just as I thought, Rosy Palm and her five friends -" Aomine snickered.
"Have you been speaking to Takao?" Midorima's eyes widened in horror. "No. No, you can't have. He would have never deigned to speak to a lowlife like you -"
"Hey! Last time I checked we were all equal!"
"Not in brain power," Kise muttered. He stomped up the stairs of the Wat Phu Khao Thong [8] so he could escape the escalating bickering, but unfortunately it followed him like a bad smell.
"What did you bribe him with? Souvenirs from Thailand?"
"Fruity soap," Aomine admitted. Takao, from the few times they had met, was completely gone on Midorima and fruit. Kise wondered why he hadn't come on this trip, actually, Thailand was a fount of fresh produce in every season.
"You bribed my lover!" Midorima yelled, outraged, and then gulped in shock when everyone's heads jerked towards him.
"He's your boyfriend?!" Kagami screeched. "How did I not know? You guys came over all the time!" Kise remembered those two couples had gone to the university, and it sounded like they had also lived fairly close. "Wait - wait. Did you have sex on your couch? Please don't tell me I sat on a couch where you - you - you guys did stuff!"
Midorima smirked. "Alas, I cannot tell you that."
"Aw man, that is nasty!" And then as an afterthought. "Huh. Now that I'm thinking about it, it's kind of obvious. You guys smell like each other all the time."
" 'Smell'?" Midorima repeated dubiously.
"Yeah, smell," Aomine agreed, nodding in unison with Kagami. Kise rethought the whole 'lights having sex' thing; wouldn't it be kind of like fraternal twins making out? And okay, perverted brain, stop, because now Kise reflected that might actually be kind of hot.
And then they were at the top, looking at the spread of the Thai jungle below them. The day was bright blue and clear, save a few white clouds floating above - a friendly breeze caught Kise's hair and he sighed happily, finally able to tune out the argument behind him. Other tall stupas and prangs poked out from the forest here and there; there was a gray kind of haze from the pollution in one place, Kise guessed that had to be Bangkok. But otherwise he was finally able to forget work, Japan, the stress of getting here, and all other concerns. Everything was put on hold as he sat on the top step and just breathed.
"It's peaceful, isn't it?" Kuroko noted next to him. Kise jumped a little; he hadn't even heard the 'shadow' sit down. "The green, and the white and red of the wats...it's so different from Japan."
"It's not a bad kind of different," Kise frowned.
"I didn't say that. Thailand is a very welcoming country even for people who don't speak Thai. Something about it makes me want to come again, and I haven't even left."
"More ruins on your hypothetical itinerary that you couldn't squeeze in this time?"
"They all look so different. It's very interesting."
Kise smiled. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself."
Kuroko turned his pale, focused gaze towards Kise, and abruptly the blond remembered why he had been so crazy about Kuroko in grade school. He was like that American song about mirrors and how they reflected the best part about him - right now that was his own contentment despite the chaos of having his friends with him. But they were all very good friends, who really did give a damn about him past his money, his fame, his past or even the girls that swung off his arm (except Aomine; he had never quite gotten over his crush on Mai-chan, and had chased Kise around the room when he saw the spread Kise shared with her).
"I'm glad that you are, Kise-kun. You were getting that twitch in your eye again. This vacation has been long overdue for you. I only hope we're not too big of an imposition."
"Oh, if I didn't want you to come, I wouldn't have told you." And then, because once the matter was poked at he couldn't resist, he asked, "What 'twitch in my eye'?"
Kuroko rarely touched people, but now he pressed one cool finger against the corner of Kise's right eye. "Right here," he said softly, smoothly, and he leaned in very close, so close Kise could tell Murasakibara had given him a bite of his mango sticky rice two wats ago, and that it had really been excellent and sugary-sweet...
They paused a hairsbreath from each other's lips when Kise gave a shaky laugh. "Kurokocchi...do you ever think we're an incestuous little group?"
"I think that all the time." And because no one could ever say Kuroko was a weak-willed cringing damsel in distress, he pulled Kise the last centimeter in for what Kise had thought would be a close-mouthed peck. Then Kuroko slipped him some tongue, and Kise just could not let that pass without responding, so he leaned forward and maybe he was being too forward but whoa, apparently not because Kuroko was climbing into his lap -
"He's making out with my boyfriend!" Kagami gasped. Kise broke away to find both Aomine and Kagami frozen in the middle of a brawl that somehow ended up with their legs locked around each other's and their hands fisted in each other shirts. Bizarrely, it looked more like they were the ones making out on top of a Thai wat, and Kise said so.
Both of them scrambled upright so fast that they blurred. "We're not," Aomine blurted out as Akashi came around the corner. Kise had to squint to make sure he wasn't actually shooting lasers out of his eyes, but it was hard to tell with Akashi, he seemed the type to suddenly break out the mutant superpowers strong enough to knock everyone dead in the vicinity. And, he proved he still had the uncanny power to make everyone part before him, no matter if the other visitors spoke Japanese or not. Kise himself felt a little like bowing, though that was ridiculous, 'Emperor' was just a nickname, what the hell, brain.
Still, Akashi exuded kingly power as he stared down the two hotheads until they were melted piles of abject apology. "No sex with each other for a week," he pronounced finally.
"What," Aomine protested half-heartedly.
"How'd you know?" Kagami cried.
"That you've been secretly groping each other while pretending you're fighting? That should be obvious to everyone watching," Akashi said drolly. Next to Kise, Kuroko huffed softly in what would have been a fully belly chuckle for anyone else. "Also, I walked in on you when you were ineffectually changing each other's clothes in the street ball locker room once."
"I didn't see that!" Kagami yelped.
"Your mouth were somewhat occupied with Aomine's nether regions at the moment, so I did not call out to you. Aomine might have lost a few centimeters otherwise." On reflex, the ex-Touou ace covered his groin. Kise couldn't blame him, acting manly definitely took a backseat when actual bodily harm was inacted upon one's private bits, whether potential or past. "And I mean it. I don't even want to see you sit on the same couch without two people between you."
Kagami raised his hand tentatively. "Does that mean foursomes are allowed?"
"No."
"Are you cheating on me already, Kagami-kun?"
"We haven't even had sex yet! Or even kissed - wait, that means that blond idiot has had more action from my boyfriend than even I have!"
Kise clung to Kuroko a little tighter. "I'm not letting go without a fight. Kurokocchi chose to make out with me first, it's not my fault you seem like a horrible kisser." And Kuroko had to know since they were partners for years. Kagami probably gnashed teeth and mashed lips all the time.
"He's really not," Aomine said, probably from real experience.
"C'mon, Kuroko -"
"No."
Desperately Kagami cast about. "Errr, okay, can you just get away from the idiot blond -"
"Hey," Kise objected, only half-defensive. Man, it was sad how it had already been two days and he already responded to that moniker again.
"Then how about a bribe -"
Murasakibara clutched his pineapple slices defensively. "I'm not sharing!"
"You made out with my best from with junior high school without even having invited me," Kuroko said flatly, arms crossed. He wiggled backwards a little and Kise wiggled back. "I am exercising my right to withhold sex for the foreseeable future, since you never told me."
"I thought you'd be mad," Kagami said, dejected. "I thought you'd say I was being an opportunist. Or worse, easy."
"With your body, maybe. But you'd better not be with your heart."
"I'm not," Kagami promised stubbornly, shaking his head. Kuroko scrutinized him a beat longer before whatever he saw was evidently enough, because he gestured to be let up.
He placed one hand on Kagami's jaw, and - aww, alright, Kise could see why Kuroko had gone. Kagami, the big baby that always cried at the end of movies even when the action heroes were only saying goodbye for a little bit, had huge googly eyes when they were watery and this pout that looked like someone had substituted a parentheses sideways for his mouth. He resembled a very large child that had been told by everyone else that no, teams could not have odd numbers and no, he couldn't join the game.
"Will you come home to me sometimes? Whenever I ask?"
"Always," Kagami said fervently.
Kagami and Kuroko's first kiss at the top of a Thai wat shouldn't have been the sparkling-happy-rainbows that it was, but it was. The feeling of Awwww, cute new couple only lasted three long kisses in when Kuroko demonstrated he wasn't against sucking Kagami's face off every third step down the stupa after they had gone inside and paid fifty bahts to stick little squares of gold filigree on a serenely smiling Buddha statue.
"Dammit," Aomine groused, envious as he stomped down the stairs. Kise was rather thinking ignoring the two behind them as well, but they were walking too slow and all of them took turns to yell at them to catch up.
"Really, you two?" Midorima said with thinly veiled disgust. Aomine snarled wordlessly back. "That's just too much stupid in one room to contemplate."
"Kagami, Midorima just called you stupid!" Aomine called backwards.
That unglued Kagami for a moment. "What!" He looked indignant.
"Seriously, even if you put your IQs together, they would score less than ten. And it would go negative if you're in the same room. How you could find the location of the right equipment astounds me - did you read a map or a manual, or...of course you didn't, you gave up on written words halfway through," Midorima mocked.
"What the fuck!" "Shut the fuck up!" Aomine and Kagami said at the same time.
"Midorima-kun," Kuroko scolded. And shit, even the neutral party was getting involved, what was going to happen next, World War 3? Kise didn't put it past these people to snark each other to death -
"No sex talk! And, language!" Akashi called, arms crossed as he glared at all of them. "Also, our bus left without us."
------------------
It was late by the time they got back to the hotel.
"Ohhh, I'm so English'd out," Kagami moaned as he staggered into their suite. "I mean, seriously, I don't give a shit anymore, my English is toast and I can't speak. Go find someone else if you want to English for you." He collapsed facefirst on the nearest bed, which happened to be Midorima's. "Oh God, bed, I love you bed, bed, I adore you bed, mmmm...."
"Wow, he is out," Aomine said as he watched his ex-rival smother himself with a pillow. The exhausted redhead rolled back and forth a few more times before he finally passed out though Murasakibara was defending his spicy flavored seaweed from Kuroko quite loudly in the sitting room of their suite.
"Get OFF," Midorima growled, poking sullenly at the motionless, lightly snoring lump in his way. "Your bed is on the other side of the room and I am not switching, I like my bed, MOVE!" He shoved to no avail, since Kagami was one of the only two of them that still played basketball and thus still retained all of his sportsman physique. And oh, ew, that was kind of weird to think about. Did Kagami and Aomine's little league basketball team ever walk in on their instructors 'wrestling'? That would have been an awkward talk. And seriously, Kise had always suspected the two had something going on, he was kind of mystified how Kuroko hadn't known.
Finally Midorima had prodded Kagami to one side of the bed and evidently deemed that barely acceptable, because he dropped into the space that remained with a sigh. A moment later he flailed, because sleepy Kagami was an octopus that latched onto anything that was near, and soon the only thing between Kagami's dick and Midorima's back was the thin pair of boxers each of them wore. Kagami hummed something about Kuroko before clumsily snapping his hips a few times.
"GET OFF!" Kagami retaliated against the flailing by wrapping one leg around his new teddy bear. "I'm not Kuroko - now get off of me!"
"Oh c'mon, you can't tell me you weren't checking out his ass a few times in high school," Kise said, kneeling eye-height next to the bed. Midorima's eyes crossed briefly trying to focus on where he was without his glasses. "I saw you. You were totally checking out his legs. And his arms. And you tried to sniff his neck once."
"I did not!" Midorima's blush was painfully red against his pale skin and dark eyelashes. "I'm not attracted to this - this lump of useless, braindead Bakagami!"
"Bet that's what you said about Taka-chin too, before he convinced you it was too late and you were already bumping uglies." Kise watched Midorima mouth the phrase, bumping uglies, with a disbelieving look on his face. Murasakibara reached over - and damn, Kise always forgot how long his arms were until they were reaching around his shoulders - and flicked a lock of red hair away from Kagami's face. "And Kaga-chin isn't so bad. He's pretty cute."
Midorima visibly swallowed all the disparaging comments he had about Kagami, Murasakibara, Takao, his pride, and anything or anyone else and simply pleaded one word: "Help?"
Murasakibara gave him a little pat on the cheek and said, "No." His eyes were laughing.
"Wait, please, you have to -"
"C'mon, Midorimacchi, it isn't that bad," Kise cajoled. "Even I'd hit that, if Kagami ever showed any interest."
"I will make him interested sometime. Also, I think I can help Midorima-kun." And Kuroko climbed into bed between Kagami and Midorima. Unfortunately, Kagami still didn't let go of Midorima, and in addition, Kuroko had some other...additional problems that needed timely intervention.
"What are you doing!?" Midorima hissed, outraged. "I want my bed to myself, not two other people in it!"
"Ah. That's too bad." Oh, only Kuroko could make his voice so level and yet so droll. Seriously, it was as if Akashi had bottled and sold his brand of desert-dry humor and Kuroko had drunk too much.
"And what is that poking me in the back!"
"My cellphone," Kuroko lied with a sly wink at the two of them as they left.
"Oh," Midorima calmed some. "Well, can't you put it on the table? It's kind of...insistently poking where it shouldn't."
"I'm sorry Midorima-kun, it seems to be firmly lodged in my pants, seeing that I'm sandwiched so securely between you two," and that was the last thing Kise heard before he and Murasakibara closed the door. Then the two of them burst into snickers.
"Are they fucking in there?" Aomine demanded. "Shit, and I can't join them. I can only listen. Fuck! C'mon, Kise, rub up against me a little?"
"I told you the first time we broke up, you have cooties," Kise teased.
"Yeah, but they're cooties you like," Aomine waggled his eyebrows and Kise almost choked on his water. Managing not to drown by water down the wrong pipe, he crossed his arms and tried to look stern.
"All you have that I want right now is Kagami-cooties, and I only like those from the source, thanks."
"What, why that stupid dunderhead?" But then further insults were shelved in favor of Aomine's libido. "Oh c'mon, I could show you how to make him rub off all over you?"
"That is an appealing thought," Kise admitted.
"Are you twelve? Cuz rubbing off went out of fashion then." Murasakibara, lounging in the armchair across from Akashi, was busy demolishing a bag of dried mango with what Kise thought was unfounded glee. Until he tried one, and tried to steal the bag. "Not sharing! And as I was saying, at least you should taste."
" 'Taste'?" Aomine repeated faintly.
"Yeah, taste. Kaga-chin tastes really good. I would have thought Mine-chin would have bitten him all over already."
"You've slept with him too?" Murasakibara didn't even pause in eating as Kise pointed an accusatory mango slice at him. "Wait, don't tell me - that's why you wanted to help him home after he got drunk at Aomine's Yay-You're-In-Basic Party!"
Murasakibara smirked. "He likes it hard," he drawled, as if especially to make Kise's cheeks burn with envy. "He likes marks everywhere except for where they show, but he likes them deep. You'll never hear him say you bite too hard."
"Not fair!" Kise cried.
Murasakibara nodded at Akashi's raised eyebrow. "Hmm, I'm the only one who has slept with everyone in this suite. Yes, I'm good."
"By subterfuge and taking advantage of drunk people!"
Murasakibara tossed his empty bag with unerring accuracy into the trash can and picked up another. "Kaga-chin wasn't complaining. In fact, I distinctly remember him telling me 'More, more." A moan started up from the other room. It was probably Midorima. "Like that."
Another moan followed and Aomine swept a hand over his face. "Sheesh, that was Kagami. He woke up? I thought he was tired."
"You have," Kise sat stunned on one end of the sofa. "You really have slept with everyone here. You've beat me."
"Congratulations to me," Murasakibara said agreeably. "Naaa, can you get me the hot water and the ice cubes? I could make Thai ice tea -"
"Fuck tea! I wanna fuck something! Someone!" Aomine couldn't seem to stop pacing outside of the bedroom door, where rhythmic sounds of the bed bouncing against the wall, slick skin slapping, and soft groans emerged. He turned again to Kise, pleading, "Oh c'mon, the door's not locked, let's use one of the other beds and give'em a run for their money!"
"I refuse to be a second-choice pity fuck," Kise denied him out of hand, pushing Aomine's face away when he bodily tried to lunge at him, and went to the far window. He had other more pressing things to think about... like Bangkok spread down beneath them - sprawling, massive, a little polluted, but still friendly and colorful. He took a picture and then started to organize the pictures on his laptop like his manager wanted him to. Wow, Wat Arun at sunset with the lights and the darkening sky from the ferry. And the colors of the fruits and the markets here - mangosteen, dragonfruit, starfruit, durian, mangoes, custard apple, shrimp and fish and rounded Thai eggplant, sauces with labels in squiggly lines, noodles and rice porridge and wonton soup...
No wonder those two lugs had wanted to come, Kise thought fondly. I'm half in love with the food myself, as foreign as it is. The sweet-sour-tangy sauces were so different from the plain soy sauce or miso based foods back home. And though he didn't like the Tom Yum Goong back home, it didn't hold a candle to the deliciousness of the real thing - even the image of shrimp and seafood in the red-and-white soup made his mouth water in memory.
The pointed red brick stupas of Wat Phra Si Samphet [9], the neat row of statues draped in yellow cloth at Wat Mahathat. Aomine's 'head in a tree', with the grinning lug mugging for the camera with a 'peace' sign kneeling beside it. All of them stretched out on the grass on their sides in front of the face of the reclining Buddha at Wat Lokayasutha [10]. The soaring roofs of the Grand Palace, the silky textiles of the Textile Museum...the white guard at the gates of the palace, the hawkers on the street selling purses, lottery tickets, chopsticks, jewelry, T-shirts, postcards. Pants and water and candy in the same stall. Donuts and fruit juice in another. Kagami and Aomine taking their first bites of Thai barbeque on a stick, and Kise had snapped it when the juice was dribbling from one corner of Aomine's mouth and Kagami's face trapped in euphoric bliss.
The others were present too - Akashi stopping at a stall of books, mopping the sweat from his neck; Kuroko trying on a ring far too large for him, the turquoise elephant emblem dangling upside down from his hand; Murasakibara buying the nth bag of fruit from one of the nearby sellers; Kise himself posing, decked out in 'I <3 Thailand' gear, from sunglasses to sandals. I'm here, he thought with a little awe, in a place I thought I'd never be. I thought I'd be too scared to come, too foreign - but in other ways, I fit in perfectly.
He glanced back at the trio in front of the bedroom door. Akashi had his legs curled up like he did only when he was fully relaxed and a guidebook in his lap. He was laughing softly at Aomine who was still trying to get one of them to have sex with him. Murasakibara, whose hand reached out lightning fast to pat Aomine on the ass, and Aomine turning and pouncing, Just for old time's sake. And Akashi himself watching the other two kiss, not actively joining in but just watching, a fond look on his face.
I'm turning into a nostalgic old biddy, Kise thought ruefully, and locked out the sounds of certain things happening in the background with headphones, and went back to work.
-------------------
Kise woke everyone on Saturday morning having gone to the nearest bakery at the crack of dawn to a) buy bread, and b) actually see the monks. He had snapped some pictures of the orange-clad Buddhist monks receiving alms from various businesses, young children to old men cradling rice and dishes in plastic bags and containers to place reverently into waiting hands. Then they bowed low, somewhat like Kise did when he met a valued client for his studio, and the monk went on his way.
But that wasn't the point of today. "Chatuchak Market!" he crowed as the room collectively moaned and groaned their objections. "Also known as J.J., it's the biggest weekend market on this side of Earth! Now c'mon, chop-chop, let's go, we've got shopping to do!" [11]
"We were out drinking until one yesterday!" Aomine buried himself under his pillow after that statement."
"Not an excuse!"
"Speak for yourself, I was pinned to the bed facedown until two. Or was it three?" Kagami asked the ceiling.
"Three AM," said the Kuroko-shaped lump bundled in the sheets next to him.
"All. Not. Excuses! Now, you're on my trip, my time, my itinerary, dammit! Now, up-up-up, all of you!"
Slowly they dragged their zombie selves across the floor - except for Akashi, who had slept early with earplugs firmly in his ears - and one-by-one into the bathroom to shave, wash their faces, and piss. In fact, Kise listened with a cocked head at how the two idiots seemed to be trying to one-up each other once again.
"Mine totally lasted longer."
"And mine was totally more volume. Hell, half the bowl is my piss!"
"You pee like a girl."
"You just want an excuse to grab this -"
"A-hem," Kise rapped sharply on the door. "Scheduled activity. NOW."
Shamefaced, both of them filed out the door. Or tried to, but both of them tried to do it at the same time, so their broad shoulders got caught. Then they pushed and jostled to try and get out first. It was hard-pressed to say who won, because it escalated in an instant to an elbow in Kagami's gut and a fist in Aomine's jaw, but since Kagami's injury didn't show, Kise mentally gave him the win.
Both of them sat sullenly away from each other as they rode to the end of the MRT line, and then the combination of cheap stuff and good food brought them out of their shells some.
"Is that an American bomber jacket? Why the hell is that here? Also, cool, I can actually wear that, unlike most of the clothes in Japan." Kise had to sympathize; save Akashi and Kuroko, the rest of them sometimes had a hard time finding clothes. He didn't even want to think about where Murasakibara got his - online, maybe?
Aomine chortled. "This store says I can have a naked lady embroidered on my jeans! And then they'll mail it to me."
"No naked ladies," Akashi said firmly. He may have done...something that Kise couldn't see because of the display in the way, but he wouldn't put it past Akashi to do a little groping in public like the other day. Their scary leader had a streak of exhibitionism that put Kise's to shame.
"No naked ladies," Aomine gulped, instantly cowed. He may or may not have been clutching at his nether regions again.
"Better put your hands down, people are gonna think you're constipated, Mine-chin," Murasakibara warned before Kise could open his mouth.
"Shut up!"
Meanwhile Kuroko and Kagami had wandered...off somewhere, it seemed, though Akashi didn't seem worried that their translator had basically been hijacked. The rest of them poked through stalls of bootlegged American DVDs, used clothes, handmade jewelry, fruit juice stands, coconut ice cream, fake antiques, real antiques, hedgehogs -
- Kise did a double take at the last one. Hedgehogs?! Are these for sale??
They were. Evidently they had finally hit the pet section, because further in they were surrounded by yapping, meowing, barking, hissing, chittering, and otherwise not human sounds. Along with the pets there were pet goods stores in between, selling everything from leashes to cages to pet clothes. Kise didn't even know there were companies that made clothes for guinea pigs.
It was also where they found Kagami and Kuroko. Kagami looked like a cornered cat, eyes darting every which way; Kuroko was not helping, he had two husky puppies, one in each hand, and was alternately letting each one lick Kagami's nose.
"Kagami-kun, they're harmless."
"I'm surrounded by things that could bite my head off!"
"Kagami-kun, they're just puppies. They probably don't have enough strength in their jaws to bite even your pinky toe off."
"They're vicious predators and nothing you tell me is going to convince me otherwise. Please, please put those down. PLEASE!" Kagami all but begged. Kuroko gave him the stink-eye, knowing the gig was up now that his partner had invoked the pleading three times, and reluctantly put the puppies back into the pen, where they eagerly licked and nipped at his fingers. Then Kuroko picked up another one, this time a pale yellow retriever that blinked sleepily at being held, and the whole process starting again, Kagami hovering over Kuroko's back, torn between helping and running away with his tail between his legs, and Kuroko petting the puppy with no hint of anything save perfect satisfaction.
"That is never going to stop being amusing," Aomine said, grinning.
"I know," Kise half-sympathized with Kagami, because he had a similar experience except with a much rarer animal (a goose), whereas Kagami couldn't escape his fear. Something like one-third of Japanese families had dogs, Kise had heard somewhere, whereas geese were, well, not present anywhere.... except apparently in Thailand, because one lone goose in a cage honked, imperious as Akashi, at their makeshift party as they passed.
Besides the regular pets they also had lizards and snakes (Kise and Midorima adopted looks of disgust, whereas Akashi and Kagami both fearlessly went in), spiders and other insects, squirrels, iguanas, parakeets, lovebirds...it really was the whole world collected in one place, Kise realized. Just like the guidebook said.
It was thus, with every one of their backpacks full of cheap (and some tasty) souvenirs that they went home the next day. Kagami's house wasn't closest to the airport, but it was where they had set out, so that was also where they ended, mostly facedown in somewhere unmoving and semi-comfortable, uncaring if they landed on someone or not since their flight had left at two in the morning. The rest of that day they spent alternately napping, blindly shoveling food into their mouths, and then passing out again.
Kise, however, only had a half-day's grace before he had to stagger to a photo shoot. So he slept as long as he could and then wearily pulled out his laptop to work. Kagami was up, cooking like a zombie (but somehow, the food turned out fine; Kise wished he had that skill) and grunting like one too when asked something, but he did pause long enough to hand over the SD card to his own camera.
And ah, despite having the look of an irritated, glaring thug sometimes, Kagami could be surprisingly thoughtful. The pictures he took either had most of the rest of the party in it, or only sky and scenery in perspectives that were somewhat artistic. Kise found a few of just him that he copied into his article (and he wasn't sure if he had permission, but Kagami's grunt at his question hadn't been disagreeable, and he had followed it with a 'shoo, shoo' gesture).
He sent the whole thing off, rough-draft since his manager didn't expect a final one anyway, with some possible ideas for revision, when Kagami trudged back out into the living room to see who was awake. It was still only Kise, so the two of them ate together straight out of the pot. Kise could feel himself waking up with every bite of Kagami's recreation of Thai fried rice noodles; the familiar spices of Kagami's food, plus a few added to his repetoire from this trip, in such simple and such tasty configurations, always had that result.
"I loved the food in Thailand, but I also missed your food," Kise admitted.
"I was thinking of recreating more recipes later. Was looking for a taste-tester. You wanna volunteer?"
"Ooh, I do. Save me a little if I happen to be in a busy spell at work?"
"Always, cuz it's you," Kagami agreed, and as if it didn't matter at all, leaned over to peck Kise on the mouth.
The blond blinked, but Kagami was still there, gaze intent on his reaction. Oh, and there might have been a hand curled around his waist too - sneaky, sneaky, had Kagami been taking ninja lessons from Kuroko? "Um, don't you have a new boyfriend to do that with?"
"When I left the bedroom he was busy interrogating Aomine about my 'happy spots'. I think they're gonna be a while, because he was demanded details, examples, and well, hands-on demonstration."
"Wow, they haven't done that in a while. I thought Kurokocchi was never going to forgive him."
Kagami snorted. "Apparently pre-debauching me so I don't get cold feet on our wedding night was a boon in his book."
Kise snorted at the thought of a 'wedding night'. Who would be in the dress? Kuroko would look adorable, of course, but so would Kagami in an actual hilariously not-pretty-but-still-kinda-embarrassingly-hot kind of way. "I don't hear anything from the bedroom."
"That's cuz Akashi's still asleep." Both of them shuddered at what a bear their resident Emperor could be when woke up before he wanted to be.
"Speaking of weddings, what is Aominecchi planning to do with Momocchi? Is he actually going to marry her while he...uh, has others on the side?"
"She doesn't care unless there's illegitimate kids. Apparently Aomine plus other men don't count as a problem in her book."
"She knows?"
"Hell if I know, I just see her send me these smirky looks all the time. Oh, and I think she wants to compare notes, but that seems like a really awkward conversation so I always say I'm busy."
Kise snickered. "That's gonna backfire on you. That woman is a menace." Teasingly he dipped a finger in the sauce and licked it off.
Kagami's hand tightened on his waist. "I can be a menace too."
"A menace to, what, all society?"
"Naw, too much work." Kise laughed outright at the look of leery avoidance that Kagami got at the thought of more to do. "Right now? Just a menace to you."
"And how do you plan on 'menacing' me?"
"Well, I could..." Kise's ears tickled with suggestions, and some them downright made his eyelids go half-mast. They didn't shake on it like regular men, because they were members of the same odd little club, they kissed instead, and then mutually decided kissing was good, and the countertop wasn't too bad of a surface as long as the spice rack was out of the way, and olive oil was a crude but acceptable replacement for lube in a tight spot...
...afterwards, lying facedown on the cool tile as Kagami carefully wiped them both off and placed errant kisses all over his love-bitten back, Kise realized that the trip was really over. Just a few short days, a few little places...yet Thailand had been a wonderful adventure that was gone too fast, like a beautiful car speeding past on the freeway. He wanted to admire some more, and while yeah, this particular trip had been a roller coaster of emotional ups and downs in the wake of discovery, he thought...maybe he had left a little bit of his heart back in Thailand without knowing it.
"It's over, isn't it." He thought of his backpack, stuffed with cheap clothes and souvenirs to give out to his coworkers and friends, but after that...the memories and experiences would be shelved away. That time, the magical feelings from then, would slowly be crushed under the pressure of Kise's daily grind.
"Yep." Kagami said it so easily.
Kise sighed, slumping back onto the countertop. "I wish it had been longer."
"Heh, I think we all wanted that."
Kise took a minute before he asked forlornly, "If I went on another trip, do you think the others would come? Would you come?"
Kagami rolled him over and propped him against the cupboards properly before kissing him and saying seriously, "Hell yeah, I'm not gonna leave you floundering with your half-baked English. And the others will want to too, I'm sure, because none of us could possibly leave your pretty ass alone."
Kise pulled a moue. "Just my ass?"
"Your pretty perfect princess everything, Kise."
"What time is it?" And then a second later Aomine swung into view, Kuroko padding silently behind him. "Hey, food!"
"I didn't say you could have some, asshole! I have to make up plates for the others, so don't touch anything! Unless you want to incur the wrath of your leader." Aomine froze in the middle of stealing a piece of stir-fried pork and meekly dropped it back in. "I saw that, you already touched it, so eat it! Also, hey Kuroko." 'Light' and 'shadow' smooched noisily while Aomine pretended to gag.
"You two are so married."
"Yeah, where's the honeymoon?" Kise chipped in.
"Well," Kagami said thoughtfully, "I don't know. But this last trip was cool, so why don't you choose again, Kise? I'm sure it'll be great."
"That's putting too much faith in a blond idiot, Bakagami."
"Not like you're rolling in brain cells either, Ahoumine."
"You're both juvenile. Like, five, forever," Kuroko muttered, rubbing his eyes. There was a bite mark peeking from under the hem of his shirt and he stumbled a bit before sitting down correctly at the table and digging mutely into the plate Kagami set before him.
But Kise wasn't listening, he was already thinking. Cambodia and Angkor Wat? No, too similar to this time. Vietnam? Sure, the food was definitely good enough. Somewhere farther? China? Russia? Mongolia?
Oh, that doesn't matter, he admonished himself with a wry smile. He looked out at where Kagami was still playing 'keepaway' with the yellow curry he had made from the spice packets he had brought home this time, brandishing a dripping ladle in his other hand, while Aomine kept making grabby, imploring hands at the redhead. Finally Kagami finished portioning it onto plates of rice and rewarded Aomine with his own plate. The next minute was filled with practically pornographic moans as Aomine downed the coconut milk-doused mess of yellow sauce and vegetables.
Kise snickered at the antics fondly. With this crazy family, I'll be happy no matter where we go, he thought, and tucked contentedly into his own serving.