Chapter Text
Like a black hole, the silence was so dense, it suffocated, non-existent sound particles absorbing into oblivion.
Momoi cringed, trying to swallow without the gulping sound ringing audibly in the cafe. Since when had it been difficult to talk to Aomine – no, Dai-chan?
They had nearly two decades of friendship where they had chatted non-stop. Silence had never existed in their friendship. Teachers had used to seat them on opposite ends of the classroom despairingly, then put them back together because, as several parent-teacher conferences had revealed, Aomine was “virtually incapable of functioning without Satsuki-chan.”
Yet here they were, the ringing buzz of the fluorescent lamp above them deafening the conversation they were supposed to be having.
And there he was, staring, and staring, unnervingly at her. Still waiting for her response. Eyes cocksure and purposeful, his gaze occasionally flicked to the empty table in front of him. He was leaning forward, still in the usual relaxed, flippant way he had, although Momoi’s sight was sharp enough that she could see the forced slouch of his back. He was trying not to care, when he did, as he waited.
Momoi resisted the urge to scream and whack him on the head, a reaction she had developed to become an instinct over the years of their friendship. Why was Dai-chan always ruining a good thing when they had one?
***
Like water gushing through a dam, their conversation was non-stop. They had nearly seven years to catch up on, after all. Momoi was glad, despite everything, that they had been able to go back to an almost-form of the friendship they had.
A friendship they had used to have before graduating from Touou. Before he had left her in pursuit of his dream. Before he had come back to her, lost and wanting, as usual, for her to fix all his problems, whenever he screwed up. Before she had cut him out of her life, needing to find who was when she was Momoi without Dai-chan.
Before the kiss.
It had been an unspoken agreement, not to talk about it. Aomine, instincts sharp as always, had intuitively pretended it had not happened. Momoi, unable to think about it without flushing and being thoroughly annoyed at herself for relapsing into an immature version of herself, had methodically written out a pros and cons list and seen that the cons outweighed the pros of talking about it, and had thus decided to follow his lead.
So their catch up had been devoid of awkwardness, of tiptoeing around one another. They had simply blacked out the memory that it had ever happened, and became Satsuki and Dai-chan, childhood friends who had gone through puberty, and high school, without anything ever happening.
It was for the best. Dai-chan had never been very good at being socially adept and astute around awkward situations. If they had talked about it, Momoi decided, he would probably have found a way to simultaneously insult her and ruin their friendship beyond repair, and not apologize for it, all at the same time.
It had been nice, too. Forgetting the kiss ever happened was as safe as a fluffy warm blanket, whereas even thinking about it made Momoi feel like she was swallowing knives. In the fluffy warm blanket of the nostalgia of their childhood friendship, they went back to how they had used to be, how they always had been. How they were meant to be, Momoi firmly believed. After all, if they had meant to be anything all, it would have, should have, happened a long time ago.
Like slipping into a favourite pair of shoes, all the aspects of their friendship Momoi had not thought she had missed that much came back. Watching Dai-chan play basketball, cockily beating the boys in the neighbourhood he played with for fun. Unconsciously thinking about footwork and training techniques, even when it was not her job anymore. Eating in cafes and fast food restaurants, giving him the parts of her food she didn’t like, and him grumbling but still paying for her anyway.
Some things weren’t the same, though. How could it be? After six years of estrangement, a brief, awkward reunion, and another year of estrangement, they had both grown up, and matured, apart from one another. They were Aomine and Momoi, and not Dai-chan and Satsuki, as much as they wanted to pretend they were for the sake of their friendship.
For one thing, the boys Dai-chan played with weren’t rivals – they were at least 10 years younger than him. They were mentees, surrogate little brothers. He didn’t demonstrate his skills to beat them, he demonstrated to teach them. And he played for fun now – not with a self-destructive determination to be the best, not to be the one no one beat but himself.
Momoi still felt the pang of an irrational sadness whenever she saw him patiently demonstrate a layup, again and again. It should be better that he was now more caring, less , but a part of Momoi missed the little boy who used to blaze with a passion for basketball so all-consuming he had been willing to abandon all his friends in pursuit of his dream, with the hunger to be the best complementing the talent he had, in basketball. The part of Aomine that had desired to be the best had been intrinsically tied to his ego, and his self-destructive love for basketball.
That part had died with Aomine’s failure in a professional basketball career. To Momoi, it felt like she had lost a part of the little Aomine Daiki she had used to take care of.
More than that, however, there was the staring. The way his eyes would flick to her as he corrected the shooting position of a little boy. The way he would send little smirks at her way, always conscious of her presence, so different from when used to have to scream her way into his attention, especially when it came to basketball.
There was the conscious lack of touching. Throughout the years of their friendship, Dai-chan never had any regard for her personal space. A sweaty arm over her shoulder during basketball practice, looking through her private belongings, hiding his Mai-chan photobooks in her locker – Aomine had never cared about her boundaries, and she from his. They had been that close – so close Momoi never thought anything could happen between them. They had been too close for anything to happen.
But now – even as he ate the raw onions she picked out for him, and even as she stole bites from his ice cream parfait, she would almost physically avoid his gaze. Their fingers would brush, and he would pull back, making the movement natural when it was obviously not. Momoi would have been frustrated. She would have wanted to ask him sarcastically if he found her that disgusting, if she had not been so relieved. She preferred that they did not touch, because each time she felt like she was going to shrivel into a ball, the horrifying mixture of frustration and embarrassment too confusing to bear.
And Momoi would resist the urge to slap herself, for feeling all this for a person she thought she knew in and out. At those moments, Momoi always wondered if she still really knew him after all.
***
If Momoi had to point out a moment that led to the conundrum she was having now, she would refer to it as the Incident.
It had been a regular day, a Sunday afternoon. Not too rainy, not too sunny, not even too cloudy. An unremarkable day in all senses of the word.
Aomine had been lying on her couch on his stomach, flipping through B-ball monthly idly. She had been on the floor near him, crouched over her coffee table as she fastidiously pored over recipe books, comparing nutritional value and calorific content for next week’s meals.
“Why do you bother with all that?” Aomine drawled, through his huge yawn. Momoi ignored him, taking out a grocery store brochure to compare ingredient prices.
“I mean,” Aomine sat up, leaning towards her languidly. “You’re only going to end up ordering takeout, anyway. It takes you forever to cook something edible.”
Snapping up and fixing him with a glare, Momoi opened her mouth, but he continued. “Don’t get me wrong, you’ve gotten a lot better since high school, but you’re still friggin slow.”
Narrowing her eyes, Momoi took a deep breath, but then Aomine leaned in, reached out a hand, and she froze. He was pushing her hair back, where it had fallen over her face. The movement had been so instinctive, so intuitive, so natural to him, but Momoi felt as though she had been suddenly submerged deep underwater. A resounding silence ringing in her ears, as she felt his fingertips brush gently on the side of her face.
At that moment, the memory of their kiss came back so rapidly to Momoi she was struck breathless, staring at him, the focused pinpricks of his dark eyes, the line of his jaw, the shape of his lips. Her heart was pounding so harshly Momoi could feel it in her throat.
Then she blinked, and he was sprawled back on the couch, back towards her. Still breathless, Momoi could feel the heat rise on her face, and she watched the red rise simultaneously on the back of his neck. Momoi had always known Aomine best, and in that moment, she knew he had remembered the kiss as well.
The retort and nascent argument died in Momoi’s throat. She suddenly felt disappointed, then angry, all at once. The desire to run away struck her strongly, while the desire to grab him, make him face her, and kiss him battled equally within her chest.
“I-I’m going to go look at some photobooks in the magazine store.” Aomine’s voice broke through Momoi’s thoughts and she snapped back into attention to see that he was standing up and stretching. He was still consciously avoiding her gaze, and his voice sounded forcefully flippant and cheerful. “Think Mai-chan’s still popular?”
Momoi knew he meant it as a joke. She knew Aomine had wanted to restore things to the way they were, expecting her to shriek and rail at him. He was giving her an out of the brief awkwardness, a way to get back to how they usually were. He was handing control to her, giving her the reins in their friendship.
At that moment, however, anger struck hot and forceful in her chest. He was shoving the responsibility to her, yet again, when Aomine had been the one to first create the awkwardness by kissing her in the first place. It had not been Momoi’s fault, that they were now tiptoeing around the casual touches they used to have no problem having in their relationship.
And now, here he was, shafting all the work to her yet again. And now, here he was, acting as though they had not kissed, bringing up photobooks, as though she was insignificant, someone to yank about in their friendship and whatever-more they had. Momoi felt insulted. She felt horrified, as she felt the angry tears rise.
“Just leave me alone,” Momoi bit out, viciously. “That’s what you like doing, anyway, right? You just leave whenever you like. You do whatever you like, whatever you want to do, everyone else be damned.”
A part of her immediately regretted bringing up the time he left her behind to pursue his pro-basketball dream, as she saw the hurt magnified in his widened eyes. She turned bitterly back to her lists, fists clenching on the papers as she breathed deeply to prevent the tears falling.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Aomine did not raise his voice. It was low and hollow, a growl like a wounded wolf.
Momoi dared not say anything in case she released a sob. She kept her eyes on her lists. She was only now starting to feel guilty for randomly snapping at him, and bringing up the most damaging failure of his life. But the part of her that was frustrated with the state of things between them felt the satisfaction of taking it out on him.
Damn him for making her feel like this, anyway. Damn him for not doing anything about the awkwardness hanging between them, and expecting her to do something about it.
Aomine’s footsteps were so quiet she did not hear him leave until her door slammed.
***
After the Incident, Aomine had not come over. He had not attempted to get in contact with Momoi.
Momoi thought she had gotten over being dependent on him in the year when she had cut off their friendship, but now, she felt the loneliness, all-consuming and ravaging, sweep over her. He always crept into her life so easily, becoming a part of her life so instinctively and unconsciously she could not ever imagine him not being in her life in some capacity.
So now it was Momoi’s turn to find him, to repair their friendship.
At first, she had stubbornly thought that she had always been the one to have to find him, and follow him, throughout their years of friendship. Now that she was finally, genuinely free of him, she should be happy.
But then she had remembered the quirk of his lips as he stood at her doorway, swallowing his pride to find her. She had remembered how he had bore the failure of his basketball career on his own. And she felt the pull to find him, regardless of her own pride. She felt the hole in her heart he had left, even as she tried to deny the hole ever existed.
He hadn’t been difficult to find. She was Momoi Satsuki, after all.
So, here they were, sitting in a cafe. Momoi had started off smiling and happy, apologizing for snapping at him. The smile had felt fake on her face. She had cringed inwardly, knowing that they were practically going through the motions of a reunion between old friends. It was artificial. It wasn’t them.
But Momoi thought that even if they were friends in that capacity, it would still be worth it. It was worth not having the awkwardness trying to reenact a version of their old friendship, when their bond had fundamentally changed. Even if she got Dai-chan in a capacity where they ended up as friends reminiscing smilingly in a cafe, she would at least still have even that.
It was better than the weird, tip-toeing, not-friendship they tried to have as former childhood friends. It was worth having Aomine back, even if it meant it would be just as a friend. Not as Dai-chan the childhood friend, or Aomine-kun, or the potential boyfriend. Just as a friend.
And then Aomine had to ruin her plans, like he always did. He had peered at her, so seriously Momoi had to fight down the flush as she bravely kept the smile affixed on her face, prattling on some vanilla story about a pregnant colleague who had given her a whole tin of kimchi she had no idea what to do with.
Then he had reached out and grabbed her hand. The gesture had not been like when he had touched her hair. This one looked like it had been driven by an impulse he could not control, unnatural yet uncontrollable. It was not the gentle touch of a suave lover. It was the awkward pawing of a person uncomfortable with what he was going to say, but that he had to say it.
“Satsuki.” His voice sounded scratchy, and he took a gulp. His eyes were intent on hers, and Momoi had to strike the urge to pull her hand back.
“I don’t want to be friends.”His larger hand handled hers so gently it was as though he was afraid he would break her, or worse, that she would twitch away from him.
Momoi felt the sob rise in her throat as she struggled to keep the smile on her face. “What do you –”
“W-will you go out with me?” Aomine’s dark eyes fixed onto hers, Momoi’s heart hammered hard in her chest.
Why did Aomine always have to ruin her plans?