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They’ve been together officially for only a month but Kagami has been preparing for this moment for years.
They’re both nearing their thirties, worn out through their respective jobs, he as a fireman and Aomine as a police officer, and he can’t believe it’s taken nearly twelve years for them, having danced around the idea for years and years, to finally have come to this.
Living in a house. Together. As a couple.
Okay, well it’s a small apartment and it’s actually Aomine’s, not to mention the circumstance in which Kagami has moved was less than ideal (he was evicted because of…stuff), but nevertheless they’ve lived together for a year and finally decided to accept each other as their “significant other.”
So…love?
It was a relatively new concept to Kagami and he can’t imagine the other man knowing full well what it meant. The only thing he’s ever associated love with was basketball and food, and maybe, if he thinks back a bit, the times since high school probably counts too—when the two of them are lounging in the living room or when they’re just piled on top of each other in a tangle heap of limbs just because they’re simply too tired from their one-on-one plays to get up and shower.
(He’d be damned to say anything like that in front of Aomine though, so…)
It’s the shared space that Kagami likes.
It’s calming to have another solid body in the room and feeling the warmth from him, as they sit shoulder to shoulder or limb upon limb, emanate in waves. It’s the slight body touches that he lov—likes. The way Aomine casually drapes himself over his shoulder, the way how he lets Kagami tousle his hair and drift his fingers down his neck, the graze of knuckle to knuckle as they bump fists in the morning when they leave for work and wish the other well—or “Don’t die today.” “Fat chance.”
But it’s without a doubt that he knows he wants this to continue forever. They’re both old enough, they’ve known each other since high school, became great rivals, closer than friends, and—
Love is a confusing concept, but even though what they are doesn’t fit into the cookie cutter mold of it—
He’s sure he loves him.
(Definitely, maybe, yes, it goes without saying.)
—
It was Aomine who decided to pop the comfortable and domestic bubble and say: “Kagami, let’s get together.”
“Why?” Kagami, then, had just blinked out of his stupor having been so concentrated on scrubbing out the bottom of the pot he had accidentally burned during dinner.
“Because,” Aomine said slowly and is that a flush on his face? Kagami watched, bemused, as Aomine looked away, at the floor and glared holes into it. “There’s this girl that’s been stalking me the past few months…and she wants to ask me on a date. I think.” Just say yes, damn it, his glance or glare said.
Kagami knew about this girl because Aomine complained about her constantly. Aomine just happened to be at the right place at the right time, taking a stroll out from the convenience store late one night with a purchased gravure magazine under his arm when he ran into thugs crowding around a girl.
Now, Aomine wasn’t a saint because he hadn’t even noticed them, but his uniform called attention and…well. Things went on from there.
Kagami wasn’t surprised with the recent development. After all, Aomine was a bit too nice to push away people he didn’t want bothering him. (Yeah, Aomine being nice, that’s a bit of a change, but years have taken a turn to mellowing out his personality.)
“And…you don’t want to?” Kagami scoffed, his lips turned down and set in a thin frown (or pretended to because he liked this; this pleasure of having a rare upper hand over Aomine.) “So you’re using me as an excuse?”
“Well, not exactly an excuse,” he started and it was entertaining, watching Aomine falter and stumble over his sentences. There was a visible struggle on his face, eyes flickering everywhere and glaring as he tried to pick words (among the few he knew ahaha) to convey what he meant. “I mean, look.” He waved a hand at the apartment, and Kagami wondered what he was supposed to see. “We live…here.”
“I’m aware of that?” Kagami squished the sponge once under his hand before kneading it into the pot.
“And we like the same things,” Aomine said, and by the edge in his voice, he was finally getting some backbone. “We live together and like the same things. AND—I know the landlady already thinks it, so why not. I mean, if you don’t have a problem with that…”
Aomine gave him something like a puppy-eyed look and pout. And Kagami surprised himself by thinking he actually looked cute—narrowed eyes as blue as they could be and mouth turned down, and it shouldn’t look adorable, but damn. Kagami bit down on his lip before a smile escaped him.
“Bastard,” he said and punched Aomine in the shoulder with a sudsy fist.
“I know you love me,” Aomine said, pout dropping and lips curving into a boyish grin. It took a few seconds before he sputtered on air and turned away muttering a quick apology, and only then Kagami realized his cheeks were flaming too.
And that was a month ago.
Now Kagami had finally dug up that untouched portion in his savings account that he’s been investing since he started working. He didn’t think it’d be for Aomine—(someway along his twenties, he even thought it’d be for some girl he’d meet at a bar), but there was something in him that felt relieved when it was.
Family funds is what he called it, even when his family is as detached and far away as the distance from Japan to America is. It’s not for his parents, no, they can take care of themselves, but for his future family, and it warms his stomach a bit because he’s excited and a little bit scared of what’d happen afterwards.
Where would they be married? Who would they invite? Would they adopt a kid and train him or her up to the best basketball player in Japan? Would they move out from Aomine’s too small apartment and build a new life somewhere preferably away from hustle and bustle in the heart of Tokyo? Would Aomine be okay if they moved back to America just for a while, to show him where he grew up, introduce him to his parents, his old friends—
Kagami stops in his stroll along the streets and scolds himself for letting thoughts and possibilities swarm his mind.
But by the time he has left the bank, he has already thought up a list of people he’d like to see at the wedding ceremony and who’d do what—Kuroko as his best man and a few others as their groomsmen.
All he has to do now is buy the ring.
(And…all the other stuff between.)
—
It’s disconcerting that after that declaration of love, or as close to love as it can get, Aomine resumes life like how it’s always been.
He talks like nothing has happened, he eats like nothing has happened, the silences aren’t awkward (not at all) and Kagami is relieved (but also wondering why nothing has changed.)
Once, during a sleepless night, Kagami even entertained the thought that maybe Aomine really is just using him as an excuse, but a mumble to his left and a heavy arm over his side dispels that idea quickly and he’s pulled into an embrace.
But he does notice that Aomine has taken to struggle a bit more with handling…some chores he isn’t meant to do. Sure, Aomine is responsible to an extent—washing dishes, taking out the trash, cleaning things in organized messes, not to mention that he had always been the semi-bread winner of their cohabitation since Kagami eats too much for his pay to completely cover.
But cooking, grocery shopping, laundry—those were Kagami’s territory since he actually knows what food goes with what and how to separate the colors and whites.
Aomine does try, he really does, so Kagami doesn’t argue. He appreciates the effort but also wonders if Aomine is trying to make a point somehow and that point just didn’t come across right.
Whatever the case, Aomine is staring hard at a shirt and folding it in uneven angles when Kagami is sitting next to him, watching him from the corner of his eye as he faces the TV. Kagami’s nervous, shoulders twitching slightly and tense, too tense.
He twiddles with the thin band of silver in his pocket. It’s nothing fancy, he ran out and bought it as soon as he withdrew a size-able chunk from his account. It was something thin, something that would probably not get in the way of basketball (he hopes.)
Kagami glances at Aomine again and found a slowly accumulating pile of clothes folded in unpredictable ways. Kagami debates whether if he should ask now or maybe after he refolds the clothes. The question…is seemingly out of the blue, and would this be considered rushing too quickly?
They’ve only gone out on several dates (granted they weren’t any different from what they usually did, but still) and there was rarely a show of affection on his part.
Taking in a slow breath and letting it out, Kagami calms his nerves and lets the ring slide back into the corner of his pocket, making a mental note to fetch it out when he took a shower. It’d be a hassle if the expensive ring lost itself in their laundry. He doesn’t notice how Aomine had stopped tucking the sleeves into the shirt and instead, is staring at him.
“Hey, Kagami,” he says and that snaps Kagami from his thoughts. Aomine is giving him a pensive look and Kagami blinks when a hand takes a hold of his arm. Suddenly Aomine’s face is so close—
There were dry lips on his, tentative and soft, and Kagami blinks at this, because he’s only noticed that Aomine’s eyelashes are a tinted blue—Aomine pulls away and tears his eyes and looks at the TV. A blush stretches across his cheeks and reaches his ears as he scratches the back of his head. He grounds out, “I…er…just realized we never kissed and stuff.”
Kagami feels his face flood red and he clenches his fists tightly. Seriously, this guy.
Is Aomine trying to get jumped or something?
(Then, Kagami realizes that they haven’t even done anything like that in any way, let alone hold hands or kiss each other, or other couple lovey-dovey stuff. Now, Kagami is realizing that marriage is definitely rushed and–)
“Oi, at least answer me,” Aomine growls before he moves closer and cups the back of Kagami’s head. Kagami doesn’t think twice as he leans forward and kisses him, hands grabbing at Aomine’s shirt and tugging him on top of him.
(There are some things that need to be fixed first.)
—
So they had sex, had been having sex for two weeks now and things didn’t go weird and it was good, so that’s a relief in some ways.
They also kissed a lot more and settled into a morning routine of fist bumping, snide comments, and then a quick peck on the mouth. Aomine even laces his arms around his waist and contents himself to watching Kagami cook, and he lets Kagami sleep on his favorite side of the bed.
They also hold hands now, their hands automatically seeking the other’s warmth during the times they sit close on the sofa.
Kagami stares at the ring pinched between his fingers watching it shine in the dim morning light. It’s been a month now and he’s thought up a hundred ways to approach the topic that didn’t make it sound stupidly cheesy like the girly magazines that Kise’s always featured in.
Maybe this time, it wouldn’t be so weird.
—
The first time Kagami tries to propose, it’s in a rather fancy restaurant.
Paycheck came in and there wasn’t really a reason to elaborately celebrate a Friday but Aomine shrugged, enticed by the promises of good food, and went along with it.
They sit in a corner, private and isolated, and Kagami is thankful for this arrangement because if he’s planning to get down on one knee and propose, he doesn’t want everyone to watch him (possibly being rejected.) Aomine is blissfully unaware, or Kagami thinks he is, because he’s flipping idly through the menu with a raised brow at the names.
“I have no idea what these are,” Aomine comments and lies the menu flat on the table. Kagami hides behind his own menu and stares hard at the entree listing; of course, Aomine doesn’t know what these are, it’s French.
(And Kagami has no idea what these were either but thank god he came prepared with recommendations from a website, otherwise this dinner would’ve tumbled too downhill for him to propose.)
Aomine rambles about work as they wait for their dishes. Usually, he hardly says this much but Kagami is glad because really, he’s a nervous wreck himself and would stutter over words on how to breach the wedding proposal weighing on his mind.
Aomine talks about how this week, everyone at work seemed to come out of the woodwork and announce their “official togetherness.”
“It’s weird,” Aomine comments and sips on ice water, his eyes are roaming and taking in the quiet atmosphere of the dim-litted restaurant, “It’s like everyone was dating under everyone else’s noses.”
“Not really, I could understand how people might want to keep things professional,” Kagami says and he wishes he has something to poke at because with the way this conversation is going, he could just casually—very casually mention how maybe he would want to spend the rest of his life with Aomine, just because they’re together and they’ve been that way a long time ago even before the official togetherness.
“I was invited to a wedding,” Aomine starts and Kagami feels his heart lurch up to his throat because this was a perfect moment he could seize. Any time now, he could just say by the way… But Kagami’s knuckles tighten around the ring in his pocket and he’s five seconds too late, when Aomine speaks again, “Apparently, I can bring someone so I was wondering if you weren’t busy…”
“I don’t mind,” Kagami answers and Aomine responds with a: “That’s good.”
Aomine is smiling at him and that’s enough to get Kagami’s heart thudding loudly in his chest again, in a mixture of contentment and also anxiety.
There’s no way Aomine would turn him down right? Kagami swallows thickly and watches as Aomine catches himself smiling and looks down at the table instead. Across him, Aomine resorts to pushing the utensils around on the table, picking it up and dropping it, and if Kagami hadn’t known him for years, for a decade almost, he’d think he’s bored.
What’s got you worked up? Kagami thinks as he watches a finger tap into the table cloth. A chill crawls up his arm and it isn’t the cold nipping his skin. Kagami’s hand is shaking every so often in his pocket, because now would be the nice time to…
He sucks in a breath and—
“Kagami, are you free this Sunday? There’s a place my coworkers suggested—“
“Aomine, have you ever thought about what you want to do in a few years—“
An awkward silence settles between them and they stare at each other while sharing a few blinks—did Aomine just talk over him? (He feels a flush over his cheek and down his neck because—! Because—)
Aomine has the decency to look sheepish. “Uhm, what was that?”
Kagami feels like having the restaurant floor open up and swallow him whole because this is the first time he’s worked up enough courage to even approach the subject and Aomine goes ahead and talks over him.
“It’s nothing,” Kagami mumbles with a frown.
He’s sure Aomine noticed the dejection in his voice and was glad he didn’t have the chance to ask Kagami about it because the waiter appeared just then with food and that was that.
(They ate in relatively, subdued silence because Kagami felt too embarrassed to even try talking about that again and so they made little comments about food, about the place, about work, and someway, somehow the topic came back to Aomine’s coworkers and this place Aomine wanted to take him to on Sunday was a place to buy/rent tuxedos.
For the wedding, of course.
Kagami silently wonders if fate really wants this to happen or if he has the worst (or best) luck.)
—
Saturday.
Wake up at six in the morning, eat cereal in silence, kiss and fist bump—“See you tonight.”
Return home at eight, make dinner, and wait, and wait; two hours past midnight, he hears the door open and a thump near the bedroom door. A hand brushes the hair on his head, he hears: “Sorry, work held me up.”
(The memory is fuzzy but Kagami remembers latching onto that arm and reeling him into bed; content with weaving his legs around the other’s, and face burying into the crumpled police uniform.)
—
The second time Kagami tries to propose is on Sunday, because come on, they’re looking for tuxedos and what better time is there to present the ring and question when they’re decked out in the wedding attire.
Both he and Aomine are dressed for the weekend, comfortable shirts and dark jeans, and traveled by sub from their apartment to the heart of one of Tokyo’s shopping department store.
It’s a high end store and to be frank, Kagami has never been here before. He’s familiar with groceries stores and thrift shops, having no real need to venture into high middle-class shopping districts since his clothes were gifts—from Kise and a few worried others. Aomine is amused by his gaping awe of the place, teases him a bit for being such a hermit, and takes his hand and leads him into the store.
(They let go once the entering crowd dissipates because it’s still embarrassing for them to hold hands in public.)
—
Aomine controls the wallet. He has more self-discipline when it comes to buying things, (well unless these things are magazines, then he’d splurge a little.) Kagami on the other hand, he is embarrassed to admit that he gets lured into stores with the signs such as “SUPER SELL, 70% OFF” on them.
He likes the spark of satisfaction he feels when he knows he’s stumbled on a bargain, and some items just don’t go on sale that often so it feels right for Kagami to stock up just in case.
It’s these times when Kagami isn’t buying food or trivial convenience store items that Aomine ends up dragging Kagami away from stores and dissuading him that no, you don’t need another pair of shoes, Kagami or Kagami, we already have a whole closet of towels. or Kagami, we don’t need that…really.
But oddly today, Aomine is just letting Kagami bound up to the stores, eyes glittering at the sales of mugs, pillows, and other furniture items.
(Kagami doesn’t get this excited for clothes, but home furnishing is kind of a luxury he missed out on during high school because he was simply too uninterested in making a home cozy for himself. But now since they live together, that’s another story.)
“They’re only five hundred yen,” Kagami says as he studies the various designs on the mugs. He’s grabbing and choosing between the red patterns and it’s a wonder how Aomine had just wordlessly followed him in, looking immensely impassive and…bemused. “I kind of want them.”
“Well, you can get it then” Aomine says with a shrug and even he picks up a blue mug and peers at it. Kagami can’t help the laugh from his throat, grin a mile wide because this is the first time Aomine is actually enabling him to buy anything.
“Yo, Aomine, how about this?” Kagami grabs two mugs, a blue and red, both with weird, ugly designs but they were the biggest soup mugs he’s ever seen and imagine the stuff they could eat out of it. “Let’s match!”
“Stupid, what are you getting so excited over,” Aomine says, reprimanding, but the corners of his mouth twitches upwards.
By the end of their foray into the furnishing store, they emerged with new curtains, an extra plate set, more pillows, mugs, and a few other things that came in two, both red and blue. Usually, on any other given day when Aomine had lost to a battle of will to Kagami, he’d be lecturing Kagami’s ear off about money and how they didn’t need all that crap, and how troublesome it is to lug everything back in one piece.
But today, Aomine is oddly quiet, amiable almost, offering a few jibes here and there about Kagami’s shopping habits. Then, with his smooth casualness (that Kagami’s a bit jealous of), Aomine reminds him that they need to have enough money to, at least, reserve a tuxedo for the next month and—
Kagami stops in mid-walk because he completely forgot about that and how he was planning to bend on a knee and propose. The queasiness in his stomach returns, but by tenfold, because what if he messes up and says the dumbest things? What if there are people watching?
The large lunch they had at the department store’s food court decides to do crazy back flips in his gut and it doesn’t help that the walk to the store feels more like a funeral march.
—
Aomine, who always wins first in everything even if they aren’t explicitly stated to be a competitions, had already picked out his suit and put it on reserve for that day.
Kagami really suspects that maybe it’s that he’s hung out with Momoi too much during her shopping expeditions during their younger years or maybe it’s Kise’s influence, the guy who wears nearly 5k yen’s worth of clothes on him, but Aomine knew what fit him and what didn’t and yanked out a tuxedo from the rack that looked…not as stupid as Kagami thought it would.
Now, Aomine is just sitting on one of those cushions on the side of the room, plastic bags covering every inch of the velvet surface, and he’s watching Kagami and the saleslady try to make sense of his proportions.
He’s been wrapped and measured with measuring tape and made to strip down to his jeans even. (Kagami is kind of sure, Aomine is enjoying it; what a sicko.)
Kagami is broad-shouldered but with thick(er) arms and an unnaturally slim(mer) waist than most; and it is proving difficult to find a cut that actually fit him without bagging around his torso.
It is frustrating, how he has to change in and change out of all the tuxedos the lady gave him. The private dressing room is soon covered with rejected tuxedos and Kagami wonders if they can just skip the formalities and wear shirts and slacks for their own wedding; he doesn’t want to live through this hell twice.
Speaking of which, Aomine is still sitting, still staring, and usually when he’s bored, he’d pull out his phone and fiddle with it while he waited. But today, he’s just watching Kagami, deep in thought and not speaking.
“You know, you can wander around the stores or something. It’s going to take a long time,” Kagami says with a frustrated growl in his throat. It doesn’t help his mood at all when Aomine is just sitting there waiting for him to finish. If there’s one thing Kagami hated, it is the fact that his rival is gloating in front of him by just sitting there.
Aomine shrugs but makes no move to leave the room. “I don’t mind,” he drawls and does the most Aomine-like thing he’s ever done that day, yawn. “Besides, it’s funny watching you try these things. It’s different seeing someone in a tux, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Kagami mutters but he feels his jaws tense just a bit. The silence after that had sent alarm bells in his head—a chance to speak up.
Fate must really like him to hand him this opportunistic moment on a silver platter. Kagami’s rehearsed this a million times in his head just for this day. Unclenching the fists at his side, he schools his expression into a less nervous countenance.
“So—” he starts but nerves get the better of his voice and it cracks.
Just a little.
But still so fucking embarrassing.
He clears his throat again, feeling the heat steaming his face red. Kagami moves his eyes to stare down at his feet. (Which is a dumb idea since now he can’t gauge Aomine’s reaction.)
“So…uh, Aomine, I was wondering—…” He fumbles to get the ring out, and for a second, his heart drops down to the pit of his stomach when he realizes it isn’t there.
There is a long enough pause for Aomine to elicit a response. “Hm?”
And his breath resumes when Kagami sees that he’s still in the tuxedo. His jeans are lying behind the curtains of the changing stall and–well, shit. Now what. He can’t just take five seconds to walk over to the stall now that Aomine is fixing him with a probably confused stare.
Wow, fate is a bitch.
“Ah, never mind. I’ll ask you later.” Kagami laughs, it’s weak and frayed. Completely nervous, yeah.
There’s a slight shift from the couch but otherwise no response. (It’s hard to figure out what’s going on in that man’s head; although they are very alike in some aspects, their train of thought…that’s something that is still unpredictable even after years of knowing each other.)
“You…don’t look so bad like that,” Aomine says, carefully, like he’s aware of the awkward silence between them.
Kagami spares a glance, prepared to die in embarrassment, but sees Aomine taking a sudden great interest in the chair off in the corner of the room. “I think black fits you more than white, maybe—I mean, if you had a choice to wear…black.” He reaches a hand to ruffle the hair on the back of his head. He’s glaring at the floor now, eyebrows dipped downwards and twitching. “Kagami, I think, if you want to—“
There’s a expecting flicker in Aomine’s eyes when it meet his before it blinks in surprise as it settles on something behind him.
“—you can just take that tuxedo, it’s fine as is,” Aomine says after an extremely long pause. He seems to have deflated, his once tense shoulders (tense?) relaxing into a gentle slope. He goes on to fall back against the sofa, seemingly melting into the velvet like he’s a puddle.
Kagami blinks, giving him a weird glance before he realizes the lady came back with more clothes under her arms.
Give me a break.
—
They don’t talk about tuxedos or weddings or marriage while they take the sub home, and to be honest, Kagami isn’t all that disappointed that they aren’t.
Two failed attempts in a row is something that cleared his head up a bit, and maybe someone is just trying to teach him a lesson.
Maybe, he’s rushing it, though that thought became moot since they’ve been living together (or in the vicinity of each other) for years before their official status. But marriage, it’s a delicate topic and just jumping the question on Aomine is sure to scare him off because marriage is commitment and—
Kagami isn’t sure if Aomine wants that.
It scares him a bit how much and how little he knows Aomine.
He knows what kinds of eggs Aomine likes best in the morning, knows his habits down to the way Aomine always washes his hands after he’s home, even knows Aomine’s play style by muscle memory—but there’s this small gap, from high school graduation to when they met again in their perspective careers that Kagami doesn’t know of.
It was right after high school when Kagami left for America and their communication dwindled to a text every some weeks.
He’s heard from Kuroko that Aomine played around with girls then because he was simply bored, and even Kuroko admitted that he was afraid Aomine had partly regressed back to his middle school mentality.
Kagami knows that bad habits could change and it’s been many years since Aomine had left that life behind, but that flippant attitude haunts Kagami. Because what if—
(He puts the thought to rest and stows the ring somewhere safe; maybe in a few months or another year, he’ll ask again. Maybe.)
—
Weeks come and pass and finally it’s the day of the coworker’s wedding and Kagami was a bit jittery because all that did was make him want to dig up that ring again and throw himself at Aomine’s feet and ask him for his hand in marriage, flippant attitude be damned.
Kagami can’t deny though, the deep sense of satisfaction and happiness (?) for Aomine’s coworkers who stood at the alter, dressed in a satin wedding dress and tuxedo.
The ceremony was boring but the reception was amazing. It was held outside on a vast lawn, with glowing white lights stringing over them. Kagami had to hold himself back on food.
Apparently, he’s been talked a lot about in the division (courtesy to Aomine; though also due to coworkers’ nagging) and there are some people who he recognized based on Aomine’s complaints. During dinner, he was swarmed by eager female coworkers who weremore or less interested in him and had decided to peg him with questions since he is the housemate of the great, stuck up Aomine.
Kagami’s not great with turning them down and he didn’t want to be rude, but Aomine, who was within sight, became increasingly irritated until he stood up and snagged Kagami by the lapels of his tuxedo, dragging him away.
Kagami would have hollered at him to stop ruining his suit, but the way Aomine forcibly took him from the crowd silently had Kagami shut up for the time being.
“Don’t mind them, they think I’m a stick in the mud and if they can get any embarrassing thing on me, they won’t let me live it down,” Aomine finally says and he lets Kagami go once they’ve gone away from bustle of the crowd. It’s an empty hallwaywhere they stood and music had started playing from a little ways off, a modern slow dance song or something like that.
“Stick in the mud? What really? You?” Kagami laughs a bit and brushes down the lapels; it isn’t horrible crinkled as he thought. Aomine really has a strong grip that he sometimes doesn’t keep in check. “Yeah, don’t worry, I didn’t blab about your porn collection—” He gets a mock glare and punch in the shoulder for that. “But it was fun, you know. Finally meeting the people you gripe about.”
“Hah, I guess…”
Aomine chews the inside of his cheek and stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“Yeah…well,” and he shrugs, eyes sliding away and focus probably on the lyrics of the faint song. Kagami watches him, slightly curious to the softening expression on his face; his eyes are glassy almost like he’s in thought.
“Oi, Bakagami, do you ever want to…” Aomine muses before he drags his eyes back to him. Aomine blinks several times, almost startled to realize that Kagami had been already staring at him.
“Want to what?” Kagami repeats slowly as he blinks.
“…uh,” Aomine says uselessly before he completely sags. (Kagami’s convinced Aomine is part jello, because there’s no way a guy built like thatcould shrink himself so quickly.) “…dance. Do you want to dance?”
Dance? In an empty corridor? Weird thing to ask, but not so weird considering how Aomine has been keeping Kagami a secret from his coworkers and vice versa.
Kagami nods a bit and he steps right up into Aomine, who flinches back. (Seriously, who was it again that asked him for a dance?)
He smirks and holds out a hand, giving a mocking gentleman’s bow. “Sure, I don’t mind, but can you?“
Aomine sputters on air like a goldfish gaping, and then he grumbles. “Sort of. I know the basics.” He catches Kagami’s hand with his own and pulls him close enough to rest his hand on the small of Kagami’s back.
“Hah, so do I,” Kagami says and he steps forward and he laughs when Aomine stumbles. “Waltz?”
“I thought we’re doing tango or something,” Aomine says through a grin full of teeth, and he effectively tips Kagami back–almost, if Kagami didn’t stomp on his foot.
—
Months pass and things are almost the same as before—their bantering, bickering, and make-up kisses and hugs (sometimes sex)—there’s been slight changes, very minor. Aomine’s cooking became a bit more edible; and he no longer folds clothes but rolls them up since that was much easier to deal with.
(Then there were times where Kagami thought Aomine was acting weird; something was obviously on his mind but Kagami was told nothing so he just brushed it away.)
Things fell into routine, mundane but comfortable. But once, Kagami found himself in the middle of turning a sock inside out and stunned to silence when he realized the possibility that this could all end.
With his stomach twisting, Kagami decides that maybe they need to talk.
—
The third time he attempts to propose—was…well. Kagami didn’t have the chance.
They get into a fight sometime around the beginning of December, the kind of fight that starts with misconceptions and thrown insults, and ends in confusion and hurt, unresolved things.
It’s nothing new. They had always butt heads and clashed words—when they were younger, they both used to explode about three times a month and had drawn out periods of sulking silences before Kuroko lured them both to a street court and threw a basketball at them from the bushes.
Now that they’re older, arguments happen less, but they’re still there–one-sided yelling from Kagami until his throat is red and raw, and masked hatred and bottled anger from Aomine until he burns himself up and recklessly tries to cope.
But this time it’s different, this time, Kagami says without a thought, “Aomine, I think we need to talk.”
Aomine freezes then, having come home from a (probably long) shift, shoulders tense and expression changing from shock, to hurt, to anger—and Kagami, at the moment, didn’t understand the thread of anger in his veins when Aomine looked him dead in the eyes, and asks quietly, deadly– “What did I do wrong?”
They say some other things—wrong things that hurt deeply—and voices escalate until he can’t tell who’s yelling what and why they’re yelling anymore.
White anger lashes and blinds him, Kagami doesn’t remember much, but he shoves Aomine against the wall, shouting at him, a bit angry but too afraid, and storms out into the cold without an extra layer.
He stumbles, almost slips, down the snow-crusted steps of the apartment complex and walks away, throat raw and flaming.
It’s stopped snowing but it’s still cold, and honestly he doesn’t know where he’s headed to. Kagami tries to adamantly claim it isn’t his fault, but he remembers how startled he was when Aomine grabbed his arm in a vice grip, blue eyes too livid and tension weaving into the muscles of his body, and there was mad desperation in his voice to know “What did I do?”
Aomine—didn’t do anything. Maybe he cooked weirdly, chopped vegetables in strange and mismatched shapes; maybe he irritated Kagami once or twice when he wrinkled a shirt that he loved to wear, but it wasn’t that.
It’s Kagami’s fault this time and in hind sight, he should have worded it differently, thought a bit more about what to say. But Kagami really wanted to know. This worry had been eating him up from the inside out for weeks and he’s afraid of many things. It’s one of those damn insecurities that he couldn’t shake off and all he wanted to know was if Aomine wanted to be with him for life—but Kagami’s never been good with his words.
Kagami returns home an hour later, when his nose stings from the cold and his skin is clammy from the blowing wind, and even then he’s cautious because it’s his fault and—he doesn’t remember how their old fights resolved and it might be that this could be their last fight, ever.
He tries not to think because it makes his head hurt (as if his head isn’t already hurting from the cold) and he tries the door, expecting it to be locked (expecting Aomine to have locked him out or left the house entirely) but it’s open.
It’s quiet once he’s inside, but there’s that faint turn of a magazine page before the entire booklet is dropped onto the table. Kagami jerks at this and the door slams shut behind him when the wind pushes it closed.
Aomine is slouched on the coach, head resting against the back, but Kagami doesn’t know what he’s thinking now that he knows Kagami’s come home. There’s a tense, thick silence that makes it hard for him to breathe.
This fight was entirely his fault and stupid too, Kagami thinks and he kicks off his shoes from his near frozen toes (he jammed his feet in and walked out like that) and hobbles a bit toward the couch, steps heavy even though he tried to tread light.
Aomine doesn’t turn, breathing evenly and deeply, his eyes are closed and there are worn bags underneath them that Kagami hasn’t noticed before. He’s twenty-eight, an adult with a respectable career, and yet here Kagami is, cold and shivering, huddled up in a ball like a weakened animal, because he stormed out on something that was his fault.
He sits on the space next to Aomine, curling up on himself, tucking his toes in and hugging his knees. He doesn’t even know where to begin.
“I was pissed,” Aomine says, eyes still shut and he coughs, voice gravelly from their argument. “Sorry.”
Now that isn’t fair, Kagami thinks and he still has it in him to get angry, grab Aomine by the shirt and say it isn’t his fault, so don’t fucking apologize. But Kagami is tired and there’s a weight that shifts off his chest that he didn’t even know was there, and he mumbles, “I didn’t mean to…you know…say that. About you shirking responsibilities and stuff.”
He looks up and watches Aomine, there’s a deep breath as his eyes open–they’re red and dry. Kagami feels his throat tighten. “Yeah, I figured.” His voice is quiet, barely a whisper.
Kagami opens his mouth and doesn’t know what to say, so he shuts it and stares at the floor, and the couch and then at Aomine’s hand, just lying along his side, un-moving and loose.
It’s out of habit really that Kagami takes it into his own, but Aomine twitches and snaps his arm away, suddenly jerking upright. Kagami flinches, dread, hurt, and something else coursing through his veins, wondering why—
“Where the fuck did you go?” Aomine interrupts and there’s a warm hand resting against his cheek, palming the cold skin. Kagami bites down the need to snap back and he lets Aomine shred off one of his overlaying shirts and throw it over Kagami’s head as his hands, warm and dry, grip through Kagami’s cold shirt in an attempt to warm him.
“Out?” Kagami not so helpfully mutters and there’s a glare Aomine gives him, but it’s not so deadly as the one earlier and Kagami thinks he could probably live.
Aomine loosens with a long sigh, the tension draining from him and there’s a semblance of a smile, but not quite there, on his mouth.
“Shower and then we can talk.”
—
Kagami is terrible with words so it’s a miracle that Aomine didn’t stand up to leave just then while listening to Kagami babble about something he doesn’t quite understand.
He talks in circles, often back-tracking and wondering what point he was trying to make earlier. Aomine must be used to this, as an officer that deals with juveniles he’s probably gathered a lot of patience, a lot.
At the end of it, Aomine has a hand over his face and he clarifies, “You…just wanted to ask me what I thought about commitment.”
“Sort of,” Kagami admits, a frown on his lips. Commitment was a very broad subject, something simple and direct like a “Aomine, do you want to be with me for the next few decades or something?” would have sufficed but Kagami couldn’t say it, not casually anyways. “And then you were pissed and grabbed me, so that pissed me off—“
“Yeah, sorry,” Aomine says dryly, toneless, and his gaze settles on the air besides Kagami’s shoulder. For a moment, they sat at the low table in front of the couch, gripping almost empty glasses of wine (something to warm them up). Then Aomine, with his hand over his eyes, laughs.
It’s short and choked, an odd type of laughter as Aomine bows over, head dropping into his hands. Kagami doesn’t know for the life of him why he’s laughing now of all times.
“Fuck,” Aomine breathes in between, a little short on breath. “I thought—I thought you left me, god fucking damn—"
—which explained his red eyes, Kagami thinks and suddenly feels guilty for letting anger get the better of him. Tentatively, he puts a hand on Aomine’s arm, and gives it a light squeeze.
“I…didn’t want to punch your jaw out.” And he spoke honestly.
Kagami hears Aomine snort, and the hand falls from his face. He looks ten years younger almost, with a relaxed face and million-watt grin. “Dumbass.”
—
It’s the next morning and Kagami can’t believe that Aomine’s up earlier than him on their day off together. Usually, it’s the officer that lounges in bed, complaining about tired and weary bones, and it’s Kagami who lugs himself out to make breakfast.
But that morning, Aomine wasn’t in bed and Kagami would’ve thought he had left for an emergency call if there wasn’t a loud curse coming from the kitchen.
Kagami laughs to himself a bit and stretches, turning over and spotting the bedside drawer where he had hidden his ring. He blinks at it and remembers last night’s events, the dumb fight, and how they made up.
Today, today he’ll do it.
—
Aomine is…acting strange, that is to say the least.
He had made breakfast and even laid the table with a glass cup holding a flower in it (that he claims to have picked during his morning jog) decorating the side. It smells delicious, for what Kagami guesses to be some kind of microwavable breakfast, but it has Aomine’s efforts and Kagami isn’t too keen on eating dinner foods for a morning meal.
So while he walks out and blinks at the food already prepared on the table, he wonders if this is Aomine’s form of apology. (Not like he had to apologize for anything, it was Kagami’s fault and he made that clear to him the previous night.)
Aomine waves him close, with something like a grunt, saying that the food would become cold if he stands there too long. Assenting, Kagami sits and stares at the food–yup, microwavable but still edible. At least.
“It’s good,” Kagami comments only because he doesn’t know what else to say about microwavable rice and sausages. He sees Aomine fidget to the left of him, before he lets a small curse slip under his breath. Kagami chalks it up as nothing and wonders when, exactly to ask the big question.
The ring is in his pocket—or rather, it’s been taken out of his pocket and laid on the floor where his right hand is. All he needed to do now was approach the subject, somehow, bend down on one knee—
Well, he can’t exactly do that right now since he’s sitting and eating.
Kagami could…get up again and bend down on a knee but then Aomine would stare at him like a weirdo. So would that mean he’d have to pretend to grab water? But Aomine already has their glasses of milk and orange juice on the table.
Why is Aomine so freaking thorough with everything?
God.
He doesn’t realize the silence until he jumps at the slapping of a plastic fork against the wooden table. Aomine has his hands balled in a fist and glares straight at his food, and Kagami seriously wonders what the hell his problem is so early in the morning.
“Sorry, you have to eat this shitty frozen food. I actually thought about making something else but the pancakes didn’t turn out too well. And I,” Aomine says, grinding out words like he was shredding them through his teeth. He breathes in a shuddering breath just as Kagami takes a long sip from his orange juice. “—about yesterday, I’ve been thinking and I’m still learning about this relationship stuff. But I know that I want to continue eating your food for the rest of my life, and I don’t want yesterday to happen again so—“
He jams—or more accurately: forcibly slides—something hard onto Kagami’s finger and when he sees it, Kagami nearly spits his orange juice out of his nose. “—marry me, okay.”
Actually, he does spit.
In Aomine’s general direction.
“Kagami, that’s so fucking gross,” Aomine yells and wipes the slight stain on his shirt with whatever used and greased napkin that was on the table. Kagami can’t breathe because some juice went up his nose, down his throat, and out his mouth, and it was pulpy and painfully cold—but.
“Aomine, what the fuck,” he chokes and coughs, sending Aomine a glare. Aomine’s eyebrow twitches and he scowls deeper, face reddening. Kagami just levels a stare at him because really. Really?
Wasn’t he the one that was supposed to propose, not the other fucking way around?
“I’m serious. Have been for the last year,” Aomine counters, bristling at the response. Kagami feels Aomine’s death grip clamp over his left hand and slowly the past few months of Aomine’s odd behavior clicked together.
Wow, so.
All those times, fate didn’t hand him opportunities. It was actually Aomine making passes at him, doing the same thing Kagami was trying to do—propose.
That was so fucking unfair.
“Oi,” Kagami mutters, voice low and that makes Aomine’s grip release, but he looks nervous all the same. For a while, Kagami was clueless as to why he’s looking at him like that until he figured that Aomine is waiting for an answer.
But Kagami is actually a bit pissed because he planned something and Aomine and his stupid casualness just goes on to ruin it. So much for proposing by dropping on his knees and shit.
“God damn it, give me your hand—“
Clueless and a bit slow, Aomine doesn’t stretch his arm right away, not like it matters because Kagami yanks it and he shoves his ring right onto Aomine’s finger, not caring about the sudden curse from Aomine’s mouth and the thought how he could’ve taken off a fingernail if he missed just a bit.
He feels Aomine pull his hand away and massage at the silver band resting on his finger. He bears his teeth with a hiss, “Bastard, that hurt!”
“As if you skinning my finger off didn’t,” Kagami sneers. He feels a throbbing where his ring finger is at and he rubs the skin around the metal.
They hold glares with each other before Aomine coughs and lets his eyes drift down to the ring on his finger.
“So,” Aomine trails and there’s a glassy look in his eyes and a very, very dumbfounded look on his face.
Kagami looks at his hand as well, a thin silver with a strip of gold decorated his ring finger; it’s not impressive but it’s not just a chunk of cheap jewelry either. It takes Kagami a few more seconds of scrutinizing the ring to actually feel the implications of it—
“…you…you want to marry me,” Kagami says, more to himself than to Aomine who probably mirrored the same thought since he didn’t reply with a back-handed comment.
“I…yeah.”
There’s a thick silence as their microwavable food turns cold and they stare at the wedding bands, nearly identical but just different enough, and then up at each other, eyes watering just a bit.
Kagami’s the first to laugh and pummels Aomine to the floor, wrapping his arms around Aomine’s torso and his orange juice stained shirt; he’s crushing him but he doesn’t care because Aomine’s doing the same, laughing and giving Kagami the tightest hug he probably ever had.
Because marriage, they’re engaged, Aomine said yes, of course he’d say yes, after all he had also been planning to propose to Kagami from the get go—
The euphoria subsides just a tad and Kagami has to bitterly laugh at himself and admit defeat.
Aomine always won first in everything even when they weren’t competitions.
—
“I want a redo, something more romantic than skinning your finger off,” Kagami says, content with having his face buried in Aomine’s neck. He feels Aomine’s short laugh rumble against his chest.
“I’m not giving the ring back,” Aomine says, matter-of-factly, and Kagami mumbles a airy fuck you into his shirt.
“Now that I think about it…was that why you took me to that fancy restaurant? To get the mood going?” Aomine tries to sit up but Kagami’s too lazy to move and was content on being dead weight.
“No shit?” he says and huffs a breath right under Aomine’s ear. Kagami laughs, breathless and tired. “You interrupted me, fucker.”
“Sorry,” Aomine says and Kagami can sense the eyeroll in that one. There is a brief pause and a short laugh. “Romantic? You wanted to be romantic? At dinner? Really?“
“Says the person who,” Kagami grumbles before pulling himself up to sit on Aomine’s lap. He sees Aomine’s eyes follow his hand toward the small table. “—picked a flower from his “morning jog” and decided to propose over microwaveable breakfast. I can’t wait to tell everyone about this.”
Kagami takes the pleasure in watching the blush spread across Aomine’s face as he cusses under his breath and looks away.
He mumbles, barely audible. “I…might want to redo that.”
Kagami laughs, wiggling his fingers and feeling the weight of the new ring, “Too bad I’m not giving it back.”