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Kuroko missed Aomine's smile. The real, broad one, not the cheap, egocentric, teasing and menacing new one he added to his a hundred and one smiles in the two years they didn’t talk. The crooked to the left one, so big and wide his eyes closed by default. The one that spread warmth through his veins, not dread and resentfulness. The one that made him realize that maybe, definitely, his friendship with Ogiwara wasn't that platonic after all and those guys who yelled at them that one time they were walking back from the street court with minimal space between their hands weren't that off with their shouted slurs but random angry-at-two-twelve-years-old’s-first-crushes citizens don't matter anymore, even if they're probably one of the reasons why it took him so long to understand why he held Aomine's real smile so closely to his glass heart.
He did not hold as dearly that smile that he was sporting then, cheaper than that one bottle of wine they bought with the money they were supposed to buy food at Maji's, bitter as that wine they end up throwing down the drain when morning came because they were barely 15, of course they didn't drink a whole bottle of wine by themselves. That cheap smile, he didn't hold as close to his chest, but he did appreciate because Kuroko was a weak, weak man for Aomine, even weaker for his a hundred and one smiles.
However even though he appreciated it, that one smile made Kuroko feel things he swore, promised to Aomine himself he was never going to feel towards him. It made him feel like he weighed a hundred and one smiles that never saw the sun, like all the vanilla milkshakes he consumed in that last year were sand now pooling in his arms and legs. His knees ached under the weight, made them wobble unsteadily. He wanted to make it go away and it fucking killed him. Kuroko never thought he was going to see the day he wished Aomine Daiki would stop smiling at him. But there he was, that was his life at that moment.
In retrospect, this smile, the cheap one, could never be worse than that other smile. The shattered one, lost in the woods at night with a backpack full of stolen old books and a flashlight with half the batteries it needs to survive for more than three hours type of smile. Lost, frightened, fragile. That one smile of the one hundred and one smiles that is the cry for help of someone who was taught not to ask for it, not to bother, someone who was too prideful and held together only by old hello kitty band-aids and washi tape in a world wherever everybody's hands are sweaty. That smile, the shattered one, that one smile Kuroko hated more than anything else, more than the harvested skill of preteen miracles, more than those assholes who called him a fag when he was 12 with his first crush, more than that one lose nail on his bedroom door that always caught the lose ends of the sweaters his granny used to make him. He hated that shattered smile so much he learned to love the cheap one if just because while the cheap smile stayed on Aomine's lips, the shattered smile couldn't creep up unannounced once again.
But still, Kuroko missed the real one more than he missed sunny days in winter, craved it like he craved brownies after eating sour gummies, longed for it like he longed vanilla shakes after a good practice, needed it like he needed Aomine by his side. But life becomes shittier and shittier as the years go by, so he didn't get that smile, not that day or the day after, not even a week after. Kuroko didn't see it until well after he relearn the names and physical aspects of Aomine’s other one hundred and one smiles.
Like for example, the shy one was one of Kuroko's favorites. Those smiles were like a rare Pokemón or a caramel pudding Kit-Kat, you treasure them and savor them. They are beautiful too, too beautiful in Kuroko's very panicky gay opinion, with a barely there blush in the back of his neck, small like Kuroko's own regular smiles, slightly pursed lips as if he were fighting it, like showing any emotion besides cockiness and arrogance was a defect, a weakness, and not completely humane and a fuel for Kuroko's fantasies. Those smiles were usually accompanied by averted eyes followed by a badly, so badly, change of topics as if Kuroko would get distracted and forget to put the cause of that beautiful smile under a daily to do list.
Another good, beautiful example of one of the smiles Kuroko relearned in that time was the content long smile Aomine got whenever he, Momoi and Kuroko spent an afternoon together. It was soft at the edges and long like the movie marathons they had back in Teiko when Momoi would promise food, a warm bed and affection after a long day which was more than what Aomine and Kuroko had, have. The smile was thin and sweet like cotton candy, ready to be dissolved by the mouth, words, of others, but firm in place until then. seeing that smile, after so long, a smile that was reserved only for them and the ugly fluor pink with mismatched polka curtains Momoi got when she was nine, made Kuroko feel like he could touch the clouds, he could have if he stopped being a coward and dare to swipe a thumb on Aomine’s barely stretched cheeks like he so desperately wanted to.
The sleepy smile was good to see again too. The one which Aomine doesn't even realize he's doing, with his eyes barely open, not as small as the shy one but not as long as the content one. The one which the old Teiko bus walls and the tree on the park between Touou and Seirin knew even better than Kuroko himself, the one that filled Kuroko with the need to be alive for at least another 10 years just so he could get to see that smile in different settings. The smile that happens only when Aomine's brain wasn't fully on gear and what grounded him was the feeling of Kuroko's weight on his shoulder and not the lack of serotonin.
Kuroko also got to learn new hidden smiles, like the one he was given when he caught Aomine with a menthol cigarette on his mouth in the small balcony of Momoi’s bedroom, an almost full artisan ashtray on the railing giving to understand it was a common occurrence. It was a mix between the shy one and the shattered one, small and lost, resigned to the sermon he most certainly was going to get and so very afraid of the rejection and conditions he might endure. He was tight lipped, eyes hesitant, left pierced eyebrow raised slightly higher than the right one, and with a reason, not an excuse, on the tip of his bitter tasting tongue. And when Kuroko graced him with one of his own smiles, the “i’m sad i understand” one, and silently asked for the cig with a motion of his head, Aomine’s smile fell, relieved he didn’t have to explain himself, not about his coping mechanism, not to Kuroko.
And when Kuroko finally got to see the smile he missed so much, the broad one that stretched Aomine’s cheek so high and tight it made his left cheek twitch and his eyes shut, the one which displayed his too sharp canines to the world to speculate whether he was a vampire or a werewolf, the one that made Kuroko’s knees weak, chest burn and stomach drop, the one that he held so dearly to his chest, he, unknowingly, gave Aomine the smile he was craving so much.