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Kise doesn’t like inconveniencing people because he doesn’t like to be in debt to anyone. Being in debt depreciates him into a position at the mercy of the debtor and his pride is much too big for him to allow himself to put himself in that kind of situation. Aomine knows this because even while drunk, Kise puts on Perfect Copy to match his gait and is constantly readjusting himself so Aomine isn’t so much carrying him as walking beside him, holding him of his own volition. Still, Kise doesn’t move when they arrive at Kise’s apartment, so Aomine has to fish though Kise’s coat pockets for his keys. “Hey, Kisee,” Aomine says, letting the nickname slide off his tongue easily. “Where’s your keys? Did you forget them?”
“Hey, Aomine,” Kise mimics, laughing and throwing his other arm around Aomine’s neck so he’s effectively hanging around Aomine like a lopsided necklace. “They’re in my back pocket.”
“’s that so?” Kise is wearing dark wash jeans, of course he is, and Aomine can see the irregular jut of the keys in his back pocket. He looks for only a minute before he brings his hand down and pokes his fingers in to pull the keys out. Kise laughs in his ear, hot and shallow like he isn’t expecting it, and it makes Aomine laugh too, breathlessly. When they come into the foyer, Aomine slowly takes off his shoes as Kise sloppily leaves his kicks along the hallway and stumbles onto his couch.
“You know, Aomine,” Kise says. “I can totally drink more. I don’t know why you brought me home.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Aomine says. His voice is in the kitchen. He comes back out to the living room with a glass of water in his hand. “I was just worried that you’d be too tired if you stayed out too late. You know beauty sleep is the only thing sustaining your pretty face, idiot.”
“It maintains itself,” Kise yells. “I’m born with it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get you into bed. You’ll have knots in your back if you sleep on your sofa.”
His bed is unmade, but it still feels wonderful when his back hits the mattress. Kise hears Aomine place the glass on his bedside table. “Get your legs on the bed too,” Aomine says, and Kise feels him take his ankles and maneuver the bottom half of his body back in line with his torso. His blanket settles on top of his body. “You look like a damn fool,” Aomine says, straightening up and letting out a sigh of satisfaction. “Alright, I’m heading out. Call me if you need anything.”
Kise’s hand shoots out before he can stop himself and it grabs Aomine’s sleeve. “Wait,” he says, hearing his voice slur. “Are you really going home?”
“Yeah.” Kise feels Aomine shift the weight in his feet. “Unless you don’t want me to.”
All of a sudden, Kise feels tired. “I want you to,” he says, letting go. “I’m tired and I’m not in the mood to be social with anyone right now.”
“See, I told you.” He stops at the doorway of Kise’s bedroom and turns around with a smirk. “Good night, princess.”
“Get outta here.” Aomine’s laugh echoes down the hallway.
[=]
Kise organizes the Miracles meet up dinners because he knows they rarely go out of their way to see each other otherwise. Kuroko and Midorima are hot commodities because their schedules are so packed; Kuroko spends most of his days hounding authors for their manuscripts and Midorima can barely spare a word in between meeting his patients to agree upon a time. He’s really lucky, really, because he gets to see Aomine so frequently. Aomine is at the local university that Kise lives near because he’s finishing his Masters - it really blows Kise’s mind that Aomine is pursuing higher education, but Aomine has changed a lot since middle school, he’s gotten more serious about those kinds of things even though he says he wants to be a police officer at the end of the day - so it’s easy to call him up and get coffee.
“I have a proposal due at five,” Aomine says when Kise comes back to the table with two coffees. Aomine has his computer out and is typing away. “They just sprang this on us, and I didn’t want to cancel on you, so just do all the talking.”
“So mean,” Kise whines. Aomine is distracted, because he drinks his coffee without complaining even though it’s black and he prefers some cream usually. “I went on a date the other day.”
“Yeah?” Aomine says, looking up for a second, before his eyes return back to his proposal. “What’s she like?”
“She’s nice. She’s a friend of a friend. My friend was saying how disappointing it was that all the nice people she knows are single and have no way of meeting each other and gave me Yuko’s number. We just went on a few dates for fun.”
“Well, you’re calling her by her given name so there’s something there, isn’t there?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Kise leans back in the chair and watches Aomine’s brow furrow as he backspaces a line. “If I dated her, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you so much.”
Aomine laughs. “You know I would be the last person to stand in the way of your number one person. I won’t feel bad if you throw me aside for young Yuko-chan. Give her my regards for me.”
Yuko calls him a few hours later. “Hey, Kise,” she says. “Let’s go to this ice cream place I found yesterday and talk, hmm? We’ve been going on dates for a while, so I’m wondering if it’s time we started calling them actual dates.”
“I’m sorry,” Kise says. “I like someone else. I didn’t mean to string you along or anything.”
Yuko hangs up on him.
A few hours later after that, she calls him again. “Thank you for telling me the truth,” she says, although her voice sounds hoarse like she’s been screaming her woes to her younger sister, who lives in the room next to the bathroom at her flat. “Although I wish you’d told me this sooner. I turned down this cute guy at work for you, dammit.”
“How serious about me were you?” Kise laughs.
“Who’s the person you’re not going on dates with in order to see me?” she demands. “What kind of person are they?”
“Why does that matter at this point?”
“I just want to know. Who it is that charmed you so much. You can’t just turn me down by saying there’s someone else without telling me about them! That’s not constructive criticism.”
“You’re a great girl, Yuko,” Kise says. “Honest. You’re probably better than him, really. He’s impulsive and speaks his mind and apologizes later. He’s charming but in a crude and basic way. He’s minimalist; if I had to compare him to a style, he’s totally minimalist so I need to be the one to fill in the details for him.”
“Sounds like a character,” Yuko says, although her voice doesn’t sound like she really gets it. Kise doesn’t blame her. Aomine isn’t someone that people like automatically or even understand why they like him. He’s like an aesthetically pleasing weed that a gardener allows to grow until the entire garden is full of him and suddenly the gardener doesn’t know what to do. Certainly that is a fitting metaphor for the moment Kise realizes almost all he does is think of Aomine in his frivolous thoughts, and it’s unexpected because they’re no longer in school together and Aomine usually calls him only about a sale at the grocery market. “Well, good luck, I guess. Are you going to confess?”
“Probably not.”
“Oh, they don’t like you like that?”
“He does,” Kise says. “I’m pretty sure he does.”
“Then why don’t you say anything? You don’t strike me as a herbivore at all, Kise, or even someone who wouldn’t do something just because there’s a chance he won’t make it. But if they like you back, that’s a pretty cut and dry case, isn't it?”
“It’s complicated,” Kise drawls, in the dramatic way he knows makes Yuko roll her eyes but endears him to her. He thinks suddenly it would have been a mistake for Yuko to date him, even if wasn’t interested in someone else. Yuko is a free spirit and she isn’t looking for the kind of commitment in a relationship. Being with him would only hurt her if they went through all the motions. It’s a tragic love story he loves to read about and watch movies on. “It’s hard to explain.”
“You’re a diva,” Yuko says.
[=]
Kise has these fantastic daydreams of coming out of the studio where all his photo shoots take place and Aomine is waiting for him outside on the curb, leaning against the metal divider and wearing his secondhand leather jacket and maybe sunglasses. “Hey,” daydream Aomine would say. “Good job today. Want to grab dinner with me?”
Every evening whenever Kise finishes up a shoot, there’s no one waiting for him at the divider.
“Hello? Kise?” His voice echoes like he’s in a hallway and there’s the sound of many voices in a room away in the background. It sounds like a restaurant with sliding doors for private rooms and a narrow hallway connecting them all. “Are you alright?”
“Aomine,” Kise says, leaning his forehead against the train window and leaving a smudge. “I wish you’d pick me up at work sometimes.”
“Did something happen? Where are you?”
“Nothing happened. I just finished a shoot. I’m on the train.” Kise decides he hears Aomine breathe a sigh of relief.
“Okay, good. You made me worried for a second there. Why are you calling me about this?”
“I just want you to, okay? For you to show up at work and buy me dinner or something.”
Aomine laughs. The phone makes it a flat sound. “You’re not a girl. I don’t need to escort you home, and I’m pretty sure you make more than I do, so you should be treating me in any case.”
“You’re so insensitive.”
“Hey, if I was insensitive, I wouldn’t have picked up. I’m at a celebration dinner with my department right now; one of the regular professors just got tenure so apparently it means her wallet runneth over. Did you eat dinner yet? Do you want to come?”
“I don’t want to come.”
“Okay, then. Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want me to stop by afterwards?”
“No, it’s okay. I’m tired.”
“Um, okay.” It’s becoming a chorus of okay. “Well…um, if it’s any solace, I wish you’d use your insiders advantage to send me an exclusive 2015 Mai photo book along with yours, so I guess we both have wishes for each other. I can’t slack in my collection and it’s a really hard one to get a hold of this time.”
Kise hangs up. Aomine expects that, and already begins to script out his apology for later. When he returns to the room, he returns to a third round of beers on Professor Hasegawa and sits back down next to Momoi, his plus one for the night. “Who was that?” she asks.
“Kise. Just called to whine at me, like usual.”
“I thought so. Either that or your mother, considering the way you practically ran out of the room to answer.” Aomine spitefully decides not to tell Momoi about the foam from the beer on her upper lip for that comment. “Both never call you unless there’s a crisis but they both also want you to call them more often.” Momoi dabs her napkin over her mouth. Damn. “Is he alright?”
“Probably.”
Momoi is a sleepy drunk, so Murasakibara comes to pick her up after the dinner is over. When he arrives, she’s sitting on a bench outside the restaurant with Aomine, dozing with her head on his shoulder. “Here you go,” Aomine says, handing her off to Murasakibara. Murasakibara picks her up bridal style because he can. Damn show-off. “Take your high maintenance fiancee and get her home.”
“You don’t need to tell me,” Murasakibara frowns. Momoi shifts in his arms and he readjusts so he looks like he’s holding something precious and porcelain. “Say hello to Kise for me.”
“What makes you think I see Kise a lot?” But Murasakibara is walking away and not looking back.
[=]
Aomine works part-time at the DMV. It’s more exasperating than everyone seems to think it isn’t, because there’s a bunch of whiny brats every day who want to apply for licenses but don’t read instructions and old folks who insist on doing things a certain way. He’s always exhausted when he comes home. Takeya, his roommate in the graduate building, looks upon him as he comes in and lies among the shoes near the door. “You have a package for you,” he says.
“I didn’t order anything,” Aomine speaks into the ground. Takeya throws a package at him. It’s a thin box. He opens it and pulls out a limited edition 2015 Mai photo book. “Whoa! The world was looking out for me today.”
“Weren’t you looking for that one recently?” Takeya disappears into his room. He no longer borrows Aomine’s gravure books after he received a serious tongue lashing for kitty-cornering a particularly sensuous page (“You ruining the mint condition of my valuable collection aside, that was a good one, wasn’t it?” Aomine said, grinning although he had been spitting fire and glaring lasers out of his eyes a moment before.). Takeya prefers Mimi anyway.
“Yeah.” Aomine carefully opens it so he doesn’t bend the spine too much and allows himself an eyeful of beautiful skin before he closes the book again. He’ll enjoy this later in the privacy of his own room. His elbow jolts the box and he hears something else inside. Aomine reaches in and pulls out another photo book, although this one is less showy and thick.
Takeya comes out to get water and finds Aomine still lounging on the floor of the foyer. The Mai book is right next to him, closed. He’s flipping through a model catalogue, it seems. “You’re still there,” Takeya says.
“You definitely can’t look at this one,” Aomine says. He has a disgustingly huge smile on his face. Takeya considers once again the option of requesting a room change.
[=]
Aomine doesn’t tell Kise, but he sees Kuroko on a fairly consistent basis. Firstly, Kuroko was the one to reach out to him, and Kuroko is the type of person to be picky about his company, so if he hasn’t reached out to Kise personally, he probably wants to keep it that way. Secondly, his conversations with Kuroko are fairly one sided and he becomes a sounding board for Kuroko’s complaints. They’re not the kind of pleasant talk that Kise would like in the first place. Thirdly, thirdly - he kind of likes his one-on-ones with Kise, so he doesn’t really want to give that up yet. “A cup of coffee,” Kuroko grouses to the waitress. “I’d like a Lunch Set B and the Child’s Set C, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll just have a Coke,” Aomine says. “Thanks, by the way.”
“You’re welcome,” the waitress says, beaming. She bats her eyelashes at him in a way she wouldn’t to Kuroko, who has a dark face and a bad demeanor to him. Aomine wonders when the last time he had more than six hours of sleep. Kuroko has quickly climbed up the professional ladder and has settled into a rather prestigious editor position at a famous publishing house and is handling three fairly big name authors who write long novels or are churning out book and after book in popular teenage oriented series. The problem is that not only is Kuroko chasing after them for their manuscripts, he has pages on pages of writing to look over and badger for edits. Aomine doesn’t envy him at all. The waitress walks off and Aomine doesn’t miss the way she sways her hips, a little bit purposefully for him.
“Oh, quit staring,” Kuroko grumbles. “You look like a pervert.”
“Are you sure you’re not just jealous because she didn’t look at you?”
“Don’t even go there. My Misdirection days are long over.” Kuroko taps his finger against the table and Aomine knows he wants to light up a cigarette but it’s a no smoking establishment. “Anyway, I’m happily taken, so it wouldn’t matter.”
“Isn’t that such a middle school thing?” Aomine says. “That we all ended up dating people within our close social circle.”
“Speak for yourself. I would never date any of you.”
“Doesn’t Kagami count as one of us?” The waitress sets down the coffee and Coke. Her lips look freshly glossed. Aomine gives her a weak smile and she winks at him. “How is he, by the way?” he asks when she finally walks away again.
“Fine. When is he not. He says you guys should play a game sometime. He’s getting restless feet sitting down all day.” Kuroko settles for stirring sugar into his coffee, although his fingers are still fidgeting around the spoon. “How’s Kise?”
Aomine hangs his head and lets out a single laugh. “Why does everyone ask me about Kise?”
“Because you always hang out with him. Whenever we have our get-together dinners, he’s always talking about when you and him did this, did that.”
“You could hang out with him too. He’s pretty free pretty consistently.”
“Only you can handle his company beyond our get togethers,” Kuroko says. He drops the subject and Aomine feels grateful. “Do you ever feel like you’ve run out of time?”
“Um, all the time. I treat school deadlines seriously, you know.” The waitress sets down Kuroko’s food and looks at Aomine, but he doesn’t bother to look up at her. Kuroko’s face is set in a terribly bland expression. “That’s part of your job too, and it’s part of every job, I think. What’s wrong?”
“I feel like I peaked too early,” Kuroko says, and begins digging into the hamburger steak of the child’s set. “I feel like I’m doing the same things over and over and I can’t get out of it. I’m going in a circle because that’s what I feel safe doing and it’s not bad but I just wonder sometimes if I’m missing anything by doing that.” His eating is haphazard, which is like his style, bits here and there like a bird. “Kagami says it’s just a rut I’ll work myself out of but it just feels like I won’t.”
“Hmm,” Aomine says. “Maybe you should break up with him?”
“No.” Kuroko doesn’t raise his voice or get visibly indignant but his tone shakes and it’s clearly not an option he’s ever entertained. “No, that’s not why I feel this way. I couldn’t - he’s - that part’s right, of everything, at least.” He brings a hand up and pinches the space between his eyes. “I think I need a change of pace. I imagine it’s what a plant feels like when it’s rooted to a spot but it sees another place that has more sun and gets more rain. Have you ever felt like that? Like you’re going down one way when you feel like you should have gone in another direction?”
“I think you need some sleep,” Aomine says gently. “It’s normal to feel burdened by things when you’re not on top of your game. Take a couple days off and take some time to sleep. You’re still young and can totally turn things around.”
“My head hurts a lot lately,” Kuroko admits. He stops eating and just sits there with his eyes closed and his hands against his head. “Am I overworking myself?”
“Probably.” Aomine thinks for a moment. “About what you said earlier; I don’t think it’s a matter of working yourself into a place you can’t change or not being able to do it or anything as finite like that. It’s probably that because you’re comfortable, you have to really think about changing before you actually do it. You have to figure it out if it’s a better place than what you have already.”
Kuroko gives him a critical look. “When they said you majored in philosophy in undergrad, I definitely thought they were lying or they weren't talking about the Aomine I knew.”
“I think about a lot of things, okay!”
The waitress slips him her number when they leave, after Aomine pays for the meal. Kuroko looks even more tired after, the heavy bags under his eyes seeming to have gained weight over the course of eating. He walks out without even noticing. “Here,” she says, winking as she slides a piece of old receipt over to him with her digits. “Call me, won’t you? We can have dinner sometime.”
Aomine looks at it before looking back up to her and grinning. “Thanks, but I’m thinking about someone else right now, sorry.”
[=]
When Kise walks downstairs from the studio one night, he finds Aomine sitting on the divider in jeans and a red jacket. “Hey there sweet thing,” he says, holding up a bag of convenience store onigiri. “Have dinner with me? I’ll bring you to the finest bench any Tokyo park can offer.”
“What are you doing here?” Kise asks.
“Uh, I’m not sure how I can make myself clearer. I want to have dinner with you.”
“I,” Kise says. “You already thanked me for the photo book, so don’t be so extreme. And - what I said a few weeks ago, I was being silly, don’t take everything I say so literally -”
“Look,” Aomine interrupts, staring Kise in the eyes. “I want to, alright? Humor me here.”
Kise closes his mouth and his face changes from confusion to anger to something like crying. “Aomine,” he says, and his mouth feels so dry. “Come home with me.”
Aomine is so warm when he pushes into him that it brings a startled sound from Kise’s mouth. Aomine - damn him and his sneering mouth and the things that roll off his tongue - laughs, the sound careless and amused. “If I knew a few cheesy words would have gotten me in bed with you,” he says, barely catching his breath as Kise moves, jerky and perplexed, “then I would have said them way earlier. Damn!”
“Would you have?” Kise asks, dreading the wretchedness in his voice.
“Yeah,” Aomine says, showing his teeth. “I would have.”
Afterwards, Kise lies there feeling like a complete mess. He’s had earthshakingly good sex before, and this isn’t even close to any of those times, but he still feels like he’s gone through some ordeal and his legs feel like they can’t support his standing weight suddenly. Aomine rolls over, casual as can be, and peers at him. “Hey, you okay? You’re making me feel nervous, like you’re going to bolt or something now that you’ve used my amazing body for your perverted needs.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Kise protests. “I’m just…thinking, that’s all. I never thought we’d do anything like this ever.”
“You didn’t want to sleep with me? I could have sworn you did.”
“I did! I do, I mean.” Kise’s face is still flushed. His eyes tear from the ceiling down to Aomine’s face. “Did you?”
“What?”
“Um,” Kise says. “want to sleep with me. Did you?”
Aomine moves so fast that Kise almost can’t believe they just had sex, but then he finds Aomine there between his legs and kissing his right knee and pushing his legs up that it makes Kise’s heart race. “Hell yeah,” Aomine says, and it’s throaty and suggestive. “As if we’re done.” Kise’s hands are spread out beside him and he brings his chin down to look up at Aomine in the way his manager calls his virgin-who-knows-what’s-happening-next look. He feels Aomine shiver against his skin. “You’re really hot, Kise.”
“Aomine,” Kise says in between kisses and his insides are on fire. “Does…what does it mean for us? Are we, do you?”
“Let’s just think about that when we’re not in bed, shall we?” Aomine murmurs against his cheek, and Aomine Daiki makes a lot of irrational, stupid suggestions but this is one Kise thinks he’s alright with.