ezyl
in
pillowcased
[kuroko] SAVING PRIVATE DAIKI
--Eat shit, Imayoshi.
written for sterlynsilverrose @ touchpass exch. based on prompt no.4! Touou interactions with each other after they lose to Seirin showing how much the dynamic has changed for everyone after Imayoshi and the other seniors retire.
→ pg. feat. touou ensemble, an unapologetic mushroom, + totally platonic aomine/kise
SAVING PRIVATE DAIKI
01, momoi
Later that week, Satsuki knocked back three shots of flammable faith and emptied an entire bucket of curdling bloodthirst into the Touou locker room, mopping it around like she was picketing a personal cleaning campaign and her sanity was the undiluted bleaching product. By itself, and mostly because she was incapable of being partial to anybody's cause but Aomine's, this form of approach was flawless--minus the general impracticality that came with any brand of Satsuki-endorsed psychological warfare, she enforced her enthusiasm by showing everyone videos of Seirin beating the shit out of Shuutoku and Seirin beating the shit out of Touou and Seirin beating the shit out of Kaijou, prettied up drill practices with complicated strategy and piss-worthy prayers to basketball deities, even continued against her better judgment to chisel off particles of pride from the soles of Aomine's basketball shoes before soldering them onto the bleacher seats to rot in delicious defeat. She didn't allow any single player on the team time to lick their paws. They'd been down that road far too often, and if any spectacular result had surfaced beforehand, she wouldn't be pulling this kind of bullshit stunt anyway. Story of her life.
"And it's for your own good," she explained to Aomine. Or attempted to. "Games have expiration dates, too, or did you think you could just reconnect so easily after neglecting it for the whole damn year?"
"I never thought that," said Aomine.
"You're right," Satsuki agreed sadly, "you never think. Why do I even bother with you?" Why did she even bother ever?
"Should I be sorry?"
"No, don't be sorry. Please don't be sorry. God forbid you're ever sorry."
Aomine winced. He could almost taste the burnt words curling out of Satsuki's mouth and it maybe worried him a little, enough that he wondered if she'd gone too far this time for it to be completely about his personal problem with basketball. "Hey, what if I'm actually sorry though? What if I wanted to change and wanted us to win, but I'm just waiting for you to say something first?"
"But you're not and you don't and you aren't," said Satsuki. "Look, how about this: you can ask me anything you want right now, and I can guarantee that nothing I say will make you want to change the way you are."
"Okay," said Aomine. "I have a question, then. How long does it take for you to get over a guy you like?"
A pause.
"What a dumb thing to ask, Dai-chan," said Satsuki, after a while. But she was smiling now. There were pretty creases around her eyes when she smiled. In all the years he'd known her, Aomine swore he hadn't noticed the pretty creases around her eyes until now. "And the answer to your dumb question is I don't know."
"Oh. And why's that?"
"Don't think I've gotten over the first person yet. So I don't know. Come to practice tomorrow, yeah?"
She left him thereafter to rot in delicious defeat.
02, wakamatsu & sakurai
After several hundred repeated plays of Sandstorm Remix #89, Wakamatsu promptly gave the fuck up and launched into a gross tirade of sentences missing any actual descriptive expletives, the entire premise of his rant so far-reaching and high up in the sky that it ended up neither detracting from Sakurai's listening experience nor giving him much leeway to pretend that he didn't hear any of it at all.
"Do you have to," Wakamatsu said, finally pausing to gather his breath, "fucking play the same song over and over again? I mean is it difficult for you to listen to something else? I'll lend you my new Crayon Pop CD, how about it, Sakurai, Crayon Pop is pretty good, don't you think? I have a thing for pretty Korean girls in pastel-colored tracksuits, did you know. Actually, I have a thing for any kind of music that is not this stupid techno rubbish."
"It's europop," Sakurai corrected him. "And it's been a popular song since 1999. I bet that's way before you even started to appreciate good music, Wakamatsu-senpai."
"Fucking," said Wakamatsu. "Fuck you."
"Sure. When?"
"..."
"Ha ha, I was just joking. Take a joke, Wakamatsu-senpai. Take this one and put it in your pocket, okay?"
On his forehead there was a vein that had begun to pulse rather violently, ever since Wakamatsu started having this conversation with Sakurai. Wakamatsu could feel it throbbing two centimeters above his left eye, the tip of a warning bell for things to come and his temper being gone not around any longer, a throbbing that was delivering small, perpetuous kicks to his ballsack and simultaneously telling him to wrap his hands around Sakurai's throat and squeeze, perhaps for just a minute or two. He also knew that the vein on his forehead was quite visible just like he knew that Sakurai could fucking well see it too. "Dude, why are you like this. Why can't you be normal Sakurai again, huh, is it something I did to offend you? Am I not a good captain to you? I'm trying so hard, man."
"That's not possible," said Sakurai, and he turned his speakers off until all the Darude was gone and only Wakamatsu's heavy breathing was left to fill the spaces. "You're a great captain."
"...Wow. Really?"
"You're just not Imayoshi-senpai."
(inb4 kise, part 1)
"Why does everybody think we just want to fuck," said Kise, sipping at his iced coffee methodically. "Why does everybody think I just want to fuck you. Why can't we just be friends, Aominecchi?"
"Impossible," said Aomine, and he wound two of his fingers around Kise's hair in a manner that was perfectly platonic to anybody who cared to observe them. "It's just not how things work. You probably know it better than me."
"I don't claim to know anything," said Kise. "In fact, I'll have you understand right now that I don't like you that way at all!"
"So you're in love with me," Aomine scoffed. "Big deal."
The atmosphere in the cafe was thick and overbearing and it closed over the negative right side of Kise's chest. He really didn't have the heart to correct Aomine, so he smiled sourly instead. "Hey, Aominecchi."
"Yeah?"
"What are you gonna do with your life once you stop playing basketball?"
A beat. Aomine's hand retracted from Kise's hair, and he experienced momentary panic. He knew better than to project this kind of dangerous emotion out loud (and particularly not in front of Kise), but his palms started to sweat anyway.
"...W-What do you mean by that, Kise."
"Don't play dumb with me, Aominecchi! I know you've been thinking about it. Your old team captain's gone now, isn't he? He did a lot of great stuff for you but I don't think anybody's gonna understand your situation as well as he did. Plus none of us are here to help you, not me and definitely not Kurokocchi. Momocchi can only do so much, and even now I know you're trying to push her away again."
"What the fuck, she's been sending you those kamikaze text messages again, hasn't she?"
Kise's face was guilty as all hell. "Text messages aren't the issue here!"
"I'm not gonna quit basketball."
"So you're sure about that?"
"..."
"Hey, Aominecchi, have you ever tried playing on top of a building? I think it's kind of fun. Especially when you jump to shoot and realize that the hoop was never there to begin with."
"You know, I'm just...going through a phase right now, Kise."
"Everybody's going through a phase right now, it's the Seirin Effect," said Kise solemnly. "Maybe talk to my leg injury while you're at it, too." He finished the rest of his drink and went to pay.
Aomine slumped back in his seat and covered one hand over his mouth. The fingers that he'd had in Kise's hair felt hot, and smelled like smoke. Maybe Kise's faith had been flammable, as well.
03, imayoshi & susa
Like jamming wrong wires into the breadboard and programming error-ridden code into each successively shittier circuit, the idealized university life had its associated risks and rewards as well, most of which were uncovered in the first few months of feeling lonely and singing about patentless success, none of which your past life in middle or high school could have given you rise for. Everybody had accomplished something amazing or committed some dastardly crime three months ago, but ultimately the guy sitting at the end of his row in this lecture hall shared the same entrance exam score as Imayoshi, and that was how most of the unfortunate things in this world tended to work out to, when the logic simplified. Entropy fucking with the system again, that was all.
"Then you've just got to debug your circuit," Susa shrugged. Nothing seemed to faze him these days, not his terrifically difficult math courses nor the cute girls in the literature building nor any measurable amount of Imayoshi's irrational fears. "In general, the first step is to not make any bugs. But it's harder than it looks, so when you mess up you go and debug."
Imayoshi shook his head. This was exactly why he could never stomach a course in software design. He flipped through Susa's notes binder instead. "Susa, these diagrams look like cartoons of male anatomy that I might have drawn in elementary school."
"I am aware of that, Imayoshi. But I can tell you for sure that they are not penises."
Imayoshi's laughter was full of mirth. "Penises? I wouldn't go so far as to suggest tha--"
"You were thinking it," said Susa shortly. "I know you."
"Ha ha well, I guess you do."
"These are logic gates, Imayoshi. The rounded tip is an AND gate, the one with a bead on the end is a NAND gate. The pointy one is a NOT gate. The one with the curve at the inputs is an OR gate. Theoretically you could redraw every single logic gate using just NAND gates. Simplifies things when you piece it together with the hardware."
"NAND gates, huh," said Imayoshi."So that means not-AND, I'm guessing?"
"You catch on quickly."
"So if I were to input Aomine, Sakurai, and Wakamatsu into a NAND gate, what would happen to them then?"
"Going by positive convention, it would return a logic zero for the case when Aomine and Sakurai and Wakamatsu are all logic one, and a logic one otherwise."
"Ah, that makes sense. I never liked them very much together as a group anyway. Too many individual qualities get ignored like that. You see, if I had to pick a favorite, I think I probably liked Sakurai the best. He was definitely the most obedient one out of all three, I'd say. There was even some sort of charm in his obedience, I'd say."
Susa raised his eyebrows. "Really? Thought your favorite would have been Aomine-kun for sure. He seemed more like your type."
"Nah. I mean, I cared about him for sure and I'm positive that Momoi-kun is the only one who can do anything for him now, but that kid needs some genuine help, Susa, you know what I mean? You have to put one of your pointy logic gates in front of everything he does to invert the effects. And I dunno if I'm completely qualified to offer my own help. I'm a horrible consultant, don't you know? So it sucks to be Aomine, I guess."
04, wokamatsu-senpai
"Look," said Sakurai, "I'm making Chinese food. It's great, isn't it? Aomine-kun likes Chinese food too. He doesn't mind the extra canola oil. Acne doesn't show up very well on his dark skin anyway. The carrots are also nice and crispy this way. Tastes great."
"Smells pretty good, Sakurai," Wakamatsu had to admit.
"It's all about the smell," Sakurai grinned. "My fingers smell like garlic right now. I love it when they smell like garlic."
"That's...great, Sakurai," said Wakamatsu.
"Hey, I just thought of a really funny pun with this wok right now, senpai. Wanna hear it?"
(inb4 kise, part 2)
When he got home he sneezed twice, once into the closet as he put away his coat and another time when he turned on the television. His sister wasn't home yet. They were airing an old episode of Ryouri no Tetsujin on FujiTV and Kise sat down on his carpet with his head slightly spinning from having absorbed too many dark details during the day. He was vaguely aware that his windows were open and even more vaguely aware that it was raining quite heavily outside, unsure of which particular set of dice he'd finally rolled to chance upon this questionable stage in his life. Aomine at his worst was comparable to a depraved ex-boyfriend who refused to be written off the script of a romantic comedy show, and despite Kise's best efforts to dispatch him it was ultimately impossible to, because Aomine would continue to play the part of Extreme Villain Aomine and Kise would continue to play the part of Extreme Antihero Kise who would always be there to foil Extreme Villain Aomine. Story of his life.
He turned off his phone; mostly because later when he'd open it he would realize that he had conveniently missed going out to lunch today with the girl he was currently dating, as well as probably bear witness to another explosive torrent of kamikaze texts from Momoi. There'd be several missed calls from his agent Sanada-san, too, because there was a photoshoot tomorrow for Choki Choki's July center spread. He lived a hard life, he really did.
He entertained the idea of settling down for a year. Wondered if his mouth was any softer from speaking to Aominecchi today.
There was a knock at his door and two seconds before he remembered that he'd forgotten to slide the lock back around, Satsuki burst into the living room, her cheeks wet and her eyes red from what were presumably tears. They regarded each other momentarily, Kise less startled by her surprise appearance than he probably should've been and Satsuki too exhilarated to say something for once, her speech either deterred by the speed with which she'd arrived here or the magnitude of the bomb she was about to drop in Kise's living room. Or maybe she was just really happy to see Kise. You could never count the last option out.
"Forgive me Kobe for I have sinned," she breathed.
"Fucking Aomine," Kise swore, and ran to grab a raincoat.
05, --saving private daiki--D-->
"Step back from there," Satsuki yelled, "Dai-chan, please, what are you trying to do?"
Ten feet away from her on the ledge of the school building, his feet balanced on the very tip of the concrete and two fingers gripped to the side of a thin metal rail, Aomine didn't respond. He was staring at something farther away down the street, past the school gates and the trees and the premise of Wakamatsu's rant high up in the sky, looking beyond what he'd probably set his eyes on in the first place. It was still raining, although the raindrops were less thick at this point in the evening compared to before, and there was only one wet piece of cloud covering the edge of the setting sun. In some respects, it did seem like a pretty good day to survey his surroundings and figure out his place in the world.
"Aominecchi," Kise tried too, "this is not an answer! I didn't mean this when we were talking today! Come back here, Aominecchi!"
"DAI-CHAN PLEASE--" "AOMINECCHI--"
It was getting dark and Aomine turned his head around. His fingers let go of the metal rail, and he waved goodbye.
06 ...
07
"Except that was totally not even what the fuck was going on," Aomine slammed his fist down on Kagami's coffee table. "I was not trying to kill myself. I was never suicidal. Holy fuck do I even look like the suicidal type to you?"
"He has a point," said Kuroko.
"Explain what you were doing on the roof then," Kise argued. "Explain what you were doing on the ledge and why I had to run over there and haul you back up from your death with Momocchi when you let go of the railing. Explain that, Aominecchi, why don't you try?"
"I was dribbling on the roof. Seemed like a change of pace, okay?" said Aomine. "Accidentally dropped the ball down the building so I was looking for it. And then you and Satsuki showed up and started yelling at me like retards, so I lost my balance."
"Lost your balance," said Kise, incredulous.
"It seems possible," said Kagami.
Satsuki glared at him. "Stop trying to qualify his actions when you weren't even there, Kagamin, so not helping."
Kagami shrugged, but he crossed his arms over his chest and shut up.
"And I got a text from Imayoshi earlier," said Aomine. He laid his hand down flat on the table and started drawing lines across the glass. "I asked him this morning how his university classes were going for him. He told me to come over to Todai and 'suck his logic gate'. The fuck does that even mean?"
"You were making conversation with Imayoshi-senpai?" said Satsuki. "When did you ever try to talk to Imayoshi-senpai about anything?"
"I just missed him a bit," said Aomine, suddenly uncomfortable. "That's all. Don't we all miss him a bit?"
Satsuki looked perplexed.
"I dunno, Aomine-kun," said Kuroko. "He was kind of a dick."
"Just a bit," Kagami agreed.
Aomine didn't look up at either of them. He continued to trace lines around Kagami's coffee table. One of them looked suspiciously like a NAND gate. "Tell that to the videos Satsuki's been making us watch. Every single one is Seirin beating the shit out of us or Kise's or Midorima's school. Between that and a year of listening to him spoon-feed Sakurai a bunch of really awful puns and complaining to Susa about us behind our backs, I think I prefer my old senpai to you guys," he said, and then he shrugged. "So what if he's graduated now? Guess he's still a part of us. Maybe it's just a Touou thing."
[ the end ]
written for sterlynsilverrose @ touchpass exch. based on prompt no.4! Touou interactions with each other after they lose to Seirin showing how much the dynamic has changed for everyone after Imayoshi and the other seniors retire.
→ pg. feat. touou ensemble, an unapologetic mushroom, + totally platonic aomine/kise
SAVING PRIVATE DAIKI
01, momoi
Later that week, Satsuki knocked back three shots of flammable faith and emptied an entire bucket of curdling bloodthirst into the Touou locker room, mopping it around like she was picketing a personal cleaning campaign and her sanity was the undiluted bleaching product. By itself, and mostly because she was incapable of being partial to anybody's cause but Aomine's, this form of approach was flawless--minus the general impracticality that came with any brand of Satsuki-endorsed psychological warfare, she enforced her enthusiasm by showing everyone videos of Seirin beating the shit out of Shuutoku and Seirin beating the shit out of Touou and Seirin beating the shit out of Kaijou, prettied up drill practices with complicated strategy and piss-worthy prayers to basketball deities, even continued against her better judgment to chisel off particles of pride from the soles of Aomine's basketball shoes before soldering them onto the bleacher seats to rot in delicious defeat. She didn't allow any single player on the team time to lick their paws. They'd been down that road far too often, and if any spectacular result had surfaced beforehand, she wouldn't be pulling this kind of bullshit stunt anyway. Story of her life.
"And it's for your own good," she explained to Aomine. Or attempted to. "Games have expiration dates, too, or did you think you could just reconnect so easily after neglecting it for the whole damn year?"
"I never thought that," said Aomine.
"You're right," Satsuki agreed sadly, "you never think. Why do I even bother with you?" Why did she even bother ever?
"Should I be sorry?"
"No, don't be sorry. Please don't be sorry. God forbid you're ever sorry."
Aomine winced. He could almost taste the burnt words curling out of Satsuki's mouth and it maybe worried him a little, enough that he wondered if she'd gone too far this time for it to be completely about his personal problem with basketball. "Hey, what if I'm actually sorry though? What if I wanted to change and wanted us to win, but I'm just waiting for you to say something first?"
"But you're not and you don't and you aren't," said Satsuki. "Look, how about this: you can ask me anything you want right now, and I can guarantee that nothing I say will make you want to change the way you are."
"Okay," said Aomine. "I have a question, then. How long does it take for you to get over a guy you like?"
A pause.
"What a dumb thing to ask, Dai-chan," said Satsuki, after a while. But she was smiling now. There were pretty creases around her eyes when she smiled. In all the years he'd known her, Aomine swore he hadn't noticed the pretty creases around her eyes until now. "And the answer to your dumb question is I don't know."
"Oh. And why's that?"
"Don't think I've gotten over the first person yet. So I don't know. Come to practice tomorrow, yeah?"
She left him thereafter to rot in delicious defeat.
02, wakamatsu & sakurai
After several hundred repeated plays of Sandstorm Remix #89, Wakamatsu promptly gave the fuck up and launched into a gross tirade of sentences missing any actual descriptive expletives, the entire premise of his rant so far-reaching and high up in the sky that it ended up neither detracting from Sakurai's listening experience nor giving him much leeway to pretend that he didn't hear any of it at all.
"Do you have to," Wakamatsu said, finally pausing to gather his breath, "fucking play the same song over and over again? I mean is it difficult for you to listen to something else? I'll lend you my new Crayon Pop CD, how about it, Sakurai, Crayon Pop is pretty good, don't you think? I have a thing for pretty Korean girls in pastel-colored tracksuits, did you know. Actually, I have a thing for any kind of music that is not this stupid techno rubbish."
"It's europop," Sakurai corrected him. "And it's been a popular song since 1999. I bet that's way before you even started to appreciate good music, Wakamatsu-senpai."
"Fucking," said Wakamatsu. "Fuck you."
"Sure. When?"
"..."
"Ha ha, I was just joking. Take a joke, Wakamatsu-senpai. Take this one and put it in your pocket, okay?"
On his forehead there was a vein that had begun to pulse rather violently, ever since Wakamatsu started having this conversation with Sakurai. Wakamatsu could feel it throbbing two centimeters above his left eye, the tip of a warning bell for things to come and his temper being gone not around any longer, a throbbing that was delivering small, perpetuous kicks to his ballsack and simultaneously telling him to wrap his hands around Sakurai's throat and squeeze, perhaps for just a minute or two. He also knew that the vein on his forehead was quite visible just like he knew that Sakurai could fucking well see it too. "Dude, why are you like this. Why can't you be normal Sakurai again, huh, is it something I did to offend you? Am I not a good captain to you? I'm trying so hard, man."
"That's not possible," said Sakurai, and he turned his speakers off until all the Darude was gone and only Wakamatsu's heavy breathing was left to fill the spaces. "You're a great captain."
"...Wow. Really?"
"You're just not Imayoshi-senpai."
(inb4 kise, part 1)
"Why does everybody think we just want to fuck," said Kise, sipping at his iced coffee methodically. "Why does everybody think I just want to fuck you. Why can't we just be friends, Aominecchi?"
"Impossible," said Aomine, and he wound two of his fingers around Kise's hair in a manner that was perfectly platonic to anybody who cared to observe them. "It's just not how things work. You probably know it better than me."
"I don't claim to know anything," said Kise. "In fact, I'll have you understand right now that I don't like you that way at all!"
"So you're in love with me," Aomine scoffed. "Big deal."
The atmosphere in the cafe was thick and overbearing and it closed over the negative right side of Kise's chest. He really didn't have the heart to correct Aomine, so he smiled sourly instead. "Hey, Aominecchi."
"Yeah?"
"What are you gonna do with your life once you stop playing basketball?"
A beat. Aomine's hand retracted from Kise's hair, and he experienced momentary panic. He knew better than to project this kind of dangerous emotion out loud (and particularly not in front of Kise), but his palms started to sweat anyway.
"...W-What do you mean by that, Kise."
"Don't play dumb with me, Aominecchi! I know you've been thinking about it. Your old team captain's gone now, isn't he? He did a lot of great stuff for you but I don't think anybody's gonna understand your situation as well as he did. Plus none of us are here to help you, not me and definitely not Kurokocchi. Momocchi can only do so much, and even now I know you're trying to push her away again."
"What the fuck, she's been sending you those kamikaze text messages again, hasn't she?"
Kise's face was guilty as all hell. "Text messages aren't the issue here!"
"I'm not gonna quit basketball."
"So you're sure about that?"
"..."
"Hey, Aominecchi, have you ever tried playing on top of a building? I think it's kind of fun. Especially when you jump to shoot and realize that the hoop was never there to begin with."
"You know, I'm just...going through a phase right now, Kise."
"Everybody's going through a phase right now, it's the Seirin Effect," said Kise solemnly. "Maybe talk to my leg injury while you're at it, too." He finished the rest of his drink and went to pay.
Aomine slumped back in his seat and covered one hand over his mouth. The fingers that he'd had in Kise's hair felt hot, and smelled like smoke. Maybe Kise's faith had been flammable, as well.
03, imayoshi & susa
Like jamming wrong wires into the breadboard and programming error-ridden code into each successively shittier circuit, the idealized university life had its associated risks and rewards as well, most of which were uncovered in the first few months of feeling lonely and singing about patentless success, none of which your past life in middle or high school could have given you rise for. Everybody had accomplished something amazing or committed some dastardly crime three months ago, but ultimately the guy sitting at the end of his row in this lecture hall shared the same entrance exam score as Imayoshi, and that was how most of the unfortunate things in this world tended to work out to, when the logic simplified. Entropy fucking with the system again, that was all.
"Then you've just got to debug your circuit," Susa shrugged. Nothing seemed to faze him these days, not his terrifically difficult math courses nor the cute girls in the literature building nor any measurable amount of Imayoshi's irrational fears. "In general, the first step is to not make any bugs. But it's harder than it looks, so when you mess up you go and debug."
Imayoshi shook his head. This was exactly why he could never stomach a course in software design. He flipped through Susa's notes binder instead. "Susa, these diagrams look like cartoons of male anatomy that I might have drawn in elementary school."
"I am aware of that, Imayoshi. But I can tell you for sure that they are not penises."
Imayoshi's laughter was full of mirth. "Penises? I wouldn't go so far as to suggest tha--"
"You were thinking it," said Susa shortly. "I know you."
"Ha ha well, I guess you do."
"These are logic gates, Imayoshi. The rounded tip is an AND gate, the one with a bead on the end is a NAND gate. The pointy one is a NOT gate. The one with the curve at the inputs is an OR gate. Theoretically you could redraw every single logic gate using just NAND gates. Simplifies things when you piece it together with the hardware."
"NAND gates, huh," said Imayoshi."So that means not-AND, I'm guessing?"
"You catch on quickly."
"So if I were to input Aomine, Sakurai, and Wakamatsu into a NAND gate, what would happen to them then?"
"Going by positive convention, it would return a logic zero for the case when Aomine and Sakurai and Wakamatsu are all logic one, and a logic one otherwise."
"Ah, that makes sense. I never liked them very much together as a group anyway. Too many individual qualities get ignored like that. You see, if I had to pick a favorite, I think I probably liked Sakurai the best. He was definitely the most obedient one out of all three, I'd say. There was even some sort of charm in his obedience, I'd say."
Susa raised his eyebrows. "Really? Thought your favorite would have been Aomine-kun for sure. He seemed more like your type."
"Nah. I mean, I cared about him for sure and I'm positive that Momoi-kun is the only one who can do anything for him now, but that kid needs some genuine help, Susa, you know what I mean? You have to put one of your pointy logic gates in front of everything he does to invert the effects. And I dunno if I'm completely qualified to offer my own help. I'm a horrible consultant, don't you know? So it sucks to be Aomine, I guess."
04, wokamatsu-senpai
"Look," said Sakurai, "I'm making Chinese food. It's great, isn't it? Aomine-kun likes Chinese food too. He doesn't mind the extra canola oil. Acne doesn't show up very well on his dark skin anyway. The carrots are also nice and crispy this way. Tastes great."
"Smells pretty good, Sakurai," Wakamatsu had to admit.
"It's all about the smell," Sakurai grinned. "My fingers smell like garlic right now. I love it when they smell like garlic."
"That's...great, Sakurai," said Wakamatsu.
"Hey, I just thought of a really funny pun with this wok right now, senpai. Wanna hear it?"
(inb4 kise, part 2)
When he got home he sneezed twice, once into the closet as he put away his coat and another time when he turned on the television. His sister wasn't home yet. They were airing an old episode of Ryouri no Tetsujin on FujiTV and Kise sat down on his carpet with his head slightly spinning from having absorbed too many dark details during the day. He was vaguely aware that his windows were open and even more vaguely aware that it was raining quite heavily outside, unsure of which particular set of dice he'd finally rolled to chance upon this questionable stage in his life. Aomine at his worst was comparable to a depraved ex-boyfriend who refused to be written off the script of a romantic comedy show, and despite Kise's best efforts to dispatch him it was ultimately impossible to, because Aomine would continue to play the part of Extreme Villain Aomine and Kise would continue to play the part of Extreme Antihero Kise who would always be there to foil Extreme Villain Aomine. Story of his life.
He turned off his phone; mostly because later when he'd open it he would realize that he had conveniently missed going out to lunch today with the girl he was currently dating, as well as probably bear witness to another explosive torrent of kamikaze texts from Momoi. There'd be several missed calls from his agent Sanada-san, too, because there was a photoshoot tomorrow for Choki Choki's July center spread. He lived a hard life, he really did.
He entertained the idea of settling down for a year. Wondered if his mouth was any softer from speaking to Aominecchi today.
There was a knock at his door and two seconds before he remembered that he'd forgotten to slide the lock back around, Satsuki burst into the living room, her cheeks wet and her eyes red from what were presumably tears. They regarded each other momentarily, Kise less startled by her surprise appearance than he probably should've been and Satsuki too exhilarated to say something for once, her speech either deterred by the speed with which she'd arrived here or the magnitude of the bomb she was about to drop in Kise's living room. Or maybe she was just really happy to see Kise. You could never count the last option out.
"Forgive me Kobe for I have sinned," she breathed.
"Fucking Aomine," Kise swore, and ran to grab a raincoat.
05, --saving private daiki--D-->
"Step back from there," Satsuki yelled, "Dai-chan, please, what are you trying to do?"
Ten feet away from her on the ledge of the school building, his feet balanced on the very tip of the concrete and two fingers gripped to the side of a thin metal rail, Aomine didn't respond. He was staring at something farther away down the street, past the school gates and the trees and the premise of Wakamatsu's rant high up in the sky, looking beyond what he'd probably set his eyes on in the first place. It was still raining, although the raindrops were less thick at this point in the evening compared to before, and there was only one wet piece of cloud covering the edge of the setting sun. In some respects, it did seem like a pretty good day to survey his surroundings and figure out his place in the world.
"Aominecchi," Kise tried too, "this is not an answer! I didn't mean this when we were talking today! Come back here, Aominecchi!"
"DAI-CHAN PLEASE--" "AOMINECCHI--"
It was getting dark and Aomine turned his head around. His fingers let go of the metal rail, and he waved goodbye.
06 ...
07
"Except that was totally not even what the fuck was going on," Aomine slammed his fist down on Kagami's coffee table. "I was not trying to kill myself. I was never suicidal. Holy fuck do I even look like the suicidal type to you?"
"He has a point," said Kuroko.
"Explain what you were doing on the roof then," Kise argued. "Explain what you were doing on the ledge and why I had to run over there and haul you back up from your death with Momocchi when you let go of the railing. Explain that, Aominecchi, why don't you try?"
"I was dribbling on the roof. Seemed like a change of pace, okay?" said Aomine. "Accidentally dropped the ball down the building so I was looking for it. And then you and Satsuki showed up and started yelling at me like retards, so I lost my balance."
"Lost your balance," said Kise, incredulous.
"It seems possible," said Kagami.
Satsuki glared at him. "Stop trying to qualify his actions when you weren't even there, Kagamin, so not helping."
Kagami shrugged, but he crossed his arms over his chest and shut up.
"And I got a text from Imayoshi earlier," said Aomine. He laid his hand down flat on the table and started drawing lines across the glass. "I asked him this morning how his university classes were going for him. He told me to come over to Todai and 'suck his logic gate'. The fuck does that even mean?"
"You were making conversation with Imayoshi-senpai?" said Satsuki. "When did you ever try to talk to Imayoshi-senpai about anything?"
"I just missed him a bit," said Aomine, suddenly uncomfortable. "That's all. Don't we all miss him a bit?"
Satsuki looked perplexed.
"I dunno, Aomine-kun," said Kuroko. "He was kind of a dick."
"Just a bit," Kagami agreed.
Aomine didn't look up at either of them. He continued to trace lines around Kagami's coffee table. One of them looked suspiciously like a NAND gate. "Tell that to the videos Satsuki's been making us watch. Every single one is Seirin beating the shit out of us or Kise's or Midorima's school. Between that and a year of listening to him spoon-feed Sakurai a bunch of really awful puns and complaining to Susa about us behind our backs, I think I prefer my old senpai to you guys," he said, and then he shrugged. "So what if he's graduated now? Guess he's still a part of us. Maybe it's just a Touou thing."
[ the end ]