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They are on a roof, and the morning sun shines pale and bright.
“If I jumped, do you think I would fly?”
It comes out of nowhere, a break in the comfortable silence between them while the rest of the team talks about their last match. Kuroko gives this a moment of serious consideration, and also the fact that Aomine is the one who asked it. This kind of question isn’t like him at all— it’s more like something that Akashi would ask in one of his mindgames. He doesn’t want to compare Aomine to Akashi.
Kuroko thinks, instead, about saying no. But he can’t just give the obvious answer, because— there’s a little part of him that believes Aomine can do anything, and maybe Aomine wants to believe it too.
“Maybe,” he says, touching Aomine’s shoulder, “if you tried hard enough.”
“That’s what I thought,” Aomine replies. He goes back to devouring his lunch, just as Murasakibara flops into Kuroko’s lap demanding snacks.
Later, Kuroko will remember his answer and think over and over is this where it all started, but right now he doesn’t suspect a single thing.
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Aomine’s hands have gotten rough, lately. He isn’t being violent, just— desperate? That sounds like the right word. Kuroko wears long sleeves and high collars, even in the dizzying heat of August.
“Don’t you think you’re overdoing it?” Momoi says worriedly when he rolls up his sleeves one afternoon, forgetting the marks. He thinks about covering up again, but it’s too hot. He sucks at his milkshake, doesn’t answer. They all know something’s not quite right between him and Aomine, but no one actually comes out and asks. Akashi limits himself to the occasional pointed look, even though if he said to stop Kuroko would probably listen.
“You know you can tell me anything.” There’s too much strain in her voice. Kuroko gives her a tiny smile; it’s not a problem that she should be worrying about.
He’s not worrying about it either, of course.
“I heard you were confessed to the other day,” Kuroko says mildly, at which Momoi goes beet-red.
“Tetsu-kun, you know you’re the only one in my heart!”
It’s become a comfort, this well-worn exchange with Momoi. They both know their relationship will never go beyond the platonic, and they’ve made their peace with it. Sometimes Kuroko wonders, a little wistfully, about how much easier it could have been if he could have dated Momoi instead. But Aomine is his light, is the roar of fire and burning heat that remakes him in hardened steel. Kuroko can’t give that up, not for anyone— not even if it means hurting himself for it. Not even if it means giving up some things just for the ability to make Aomine happy.
“Are you okay?” Momoi asks, snapping him out of his thoughts.
“I’m fine, sorry,” he replies, gulping down more of his milkshake. “The boy who confessed, is he— ah—” brainfreeze! He hates this feeling, “sorry, is he cute?”
Momoi squints at him. “He’s not your type, Tetsu-kun.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Kuroko smiles. Momoi keeps her straight face for a while longer, then laughs.
“Of course it isn’t. You’ll never have eyes for anyone except Dai-chan.”
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In the corner, the television set is flickering static. Aomine had knocked the antennae down earlier; the signal’s lost.
“Did you know,” Kuroko says slowly, licking his split lip, “that the static is cosmic background radiation from the beginning of the universe?”
“I don’t care,” soft, deadly.
“When I watch the static on a TV, I’m just looking at the remnants of the Big Bang. I think that’s interesting,” he continues. Aomine’s fingers clench in his hair. It hurts a little— he thinks he can feel a couple of strands snap.
“It’s like how when I look at you now, I’m just looking at the remnants of someone who used to be Aomine Daiki.” Except it’s not true, not really, not at all, but Kuroko isn’t going to take it back.
Kuroko’s head aches when it hits the floor.
“You think just because I can’t pass a fucking exam, I don’t understand what you’re trying to say?” Aomine snarls.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” Kuroko sighs. Aomine makes an incoherent growling noise and bites at Kuroko’s mouth. He gives in, muscles lax, like he always does. Like he can’t stop doing, even when it hurts and it hurts and he can barely remember the sight of Aomine’s smile.
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“I don’t want to do this any more,” Kise is wiping tears from his eyes, furious with everything and nothing at all. Kuroko knows the feeling. “I don’t want to keep quiet because it’s not my place and then have to pick your bloody body off the side of the street!”
“Calm down, Ryota,” Akashi says sharply. Kise stops pacing, throws himself on the sofa. Murasakibara hands him a packet of Pocky which he takes but doesn’t open, muttering under his breath. Both Midorima and Momoi lean closer on either side of him.
“Tetsuya.”
Kuroko reluctantly looks at Akashi. Akashi has a policy of not overdoing his meddling with their lives— he’ll mother them and be disquietingly intense about it, but their interpersonal relationships he will not bother. Unless, of course, they let things get worse than Akashi deems appropriate. Then he brings out the unnerving thousand-yard stare he has when he looks at an opposing team. After all these years of seeing it, Kuroko has yet to build any sort of immunity.
“I think you owe us an explanation. I was willing to overlook it as long as you didn’t go overboard, but this?” Akashi gestures to his swollen-shut eye, the raw teeth marks on his arms, the finger-shaped bruises on his neck. “I hope you won’t try to—”
“I know,” Kuroko murmurs. He really does know. He’s allowed a few moments to gather his thoughts before Akashi clears his throat impatiently.
“The first thing you should know, and remember, is that it’s not completely Aomine-kun’s fault,” he starts, barely getting out the last word before Midorima has to wrap an arm around Kise’s waist to stop him leaping up in anger. Akashi sighs. Midorima looks at Kuroko, pained.
“Why don’t you stop covering—”
“Please,” Kuroko says, steadily, “listen until the end.” He doesn’t want to do this; his body aches all over. Deep breath. I have to tell them. He waits for Kise to subside and Midorima to look away before he continues.
“He’s— Aomine-kun is. Not well.” Kuroko watches as Momoi’s face crumples, Murasakibara loses the dreamy cast to his eyes, Kise grips Midorima’s hand so hard it has to hurt. Akashi’s expression doesn’t change. Kuroko knows he’s waiting for an elaboration.
The words are inadequate, they don’t convey the full breadth of how wrong everything is. Kuroko has no other way to say it. He’s never been the eloquent one— that was always Akashi’s territory. How does he tell them about the sand under his skin when he’s with Aomine, how does he begin to describe the overwhelming love he feels even as he wants to run away? It’s irrelevant, Kuroko decides.
“Yesterday, I came home. He was on the balcony.”
Do you think I’m gonna fly? I don’t think so. I don’t think I fucking want to fly.
“I don’t know— maybe he was just smoking. I pulled him back anyway, and.” Kuroko swallows. Something is stuck in his throat.
I tried, god, you know how much I tried. That’s the irony, isn’t it: I didn’t even have to try! Trying just sped up the whole goddamn process.
He can’t tell them what Aomine said. He physically can’t— when he tries to continue speaking he chokes up. Akashi watches him with narrowed eyes. Do you need a break, he’s asking silently. Kuroko shakes his head. He can tell it without Aomine’s words.
Flying? It’s so fucking pointless, Tetsu.
“Aomine-kun seems to believe that he’s exhausted the point of living,” maybe if he sounds detached enough he’ll feel detached too, “so he wants to… not. Live. I think maybe looking at me reminds him that he’s alive.”
Pregnant silence.
“What the hell,” says Kise. He only sounds tired now, all the anger drained out of him. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Actually,” Midorima points out, pushing his glasses up, “it does. I noticed it toward the end of high school, when we were still playing basketball together. We all know that Aomine does not perform well without a challenge; that’s why he stopped coming to practice until Seirin started to go up the ranks.
“But what we didn’t notice— or we did, but didn’t think was important— was that the more challenges he overcame—”
“— the less he cared about overcoming the next one,” Momoi finishes for him, and Midorima nods. She sniffles. Midorima clears his throat awkwardly.
“The point is that every time he showed how little he cared about something, at the same time he would show how much he cared about Kuroko,” he says, looking at Kuroko for confirmation. Kuroko is, suddenly, so grateful that Midorima is quick on the uptake.
“Are you trying to say that Kurokocchi is his life?” Kise ignores Midorima’s quelling glance. “That’s,” he stops, looking for words but not finding them. Kuroko thinks he knows what Kise is trying to say— that’s not fair, or that’s stupid, or that’s just running away. Perhaps everything at once.
“That’s just like Minechin,” says Murasakibara. There is a long silence.
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Today is one of the better days, even though the sun is blocked by clouds and the apartment is dim. Aomine hasn’t left his bedroom all morning, and if he’s awake he should be hungry by now. Kuroko looks at the clock while he’s putting some soup in the microwave; it’s past time for his check-in with one of the team (and he still thinks of them a team, even though they haven’t been a team for four years now). It’s Kise’s turn today, if he remembers right. He sets the microwave for 90 seconds, picks up his mobile.
“Kise speaking!”
“Hello, Kise-kun.” Kuroko leans against the counter, checks to make sure Aomine’s door is closed. Aomine doesn’t like him talking to other people, lately.
“Kurokocchi! Is— is everything alright?”
“Mmn. He’s still sleeping, I think.”
Pause. The weight of all the words Kise won’t say is heavy on Kuroko’s heart. He’s well aware that of all of the others, Kise misses Aomine the most. Kise’s the only one who had in-jokes with Aomine that Kuroko wasn’t privy to, whom even after the relationship started remained friends with Aomine instead of Aomine-and-Kuroko. There’s an oppressive responsibility that comes with being the keeper of someone’s life, and some of it is having to shoulder the pain of that person’s friends.
“Kise-kun… I’m sorry,” Kuroko says. Kise doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what Kuroko means.
“It’s not your fault. I want to say it’s that idiot’s fault, but it’s not his fault either. It’s just,” Kise sighs, heavily, a burst of static in the receiver. “You’d better go. I’ve got a shoot to do, too. Take care, okay, Kurokocchi!”
“I will,” he replies. Kise hangs up. He stands like that for a while, listening to the dial tone, trying not to give in to tears. Everything tires him out. The microwave beeps, door clicking open by itself. He’s reached in to take the soup out before he remembers it’s hot, but by that time he’s already burned his fingers on the bowl.
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The cornflower petals are limp in his fingers. Kuroko sets the wilted bunch on a towel and slips the new bunch into the vase. The blue in them fades so quickly, from Aomine’s colours to his own— maybe he should buy forget-me-not, next time.
He can feel Aomine watching him.
“What’s the point of replacing them every day?” Kuroko doesn’t react to the abrupt question. He fingers the stems thoughtfully.
“They’re not expensive,” he says, after a while, “and besides, it makes your room a little more lively.” Kuroko turns around.
Aomine rolls off his futon and on to his feet in one graceful motion. Thin as he has become, Aomine has lost none of the sleek danger that made him so mesmerizing on the court. He stalks closer.
Thunder rumbles through the floor. It isn’t raining yet, but the air is charged with tension and it lurks heavy in the room. There are mice scuttling around in Kuroko’s chest, pitter-patter hearts aflutter and he has to make a conscious effort to maintain his outward veneer of calm. Aomine’s skin is close to his, now, close enough that it feels like they’re touching even though the only thing touching Kuroko is humid air.
A car alarm rings jarringly outside. Kuroko’s mouth is dry. He doesn’t look up to meet Aomine’s eyes.
Aomine leans down. “Why don’t we,” when Aomine’s lips touch his ear, Kuroko flinches, “make this room livelier by ourselves?”
It’s long become impossible for Kuroko to say no to anything Aomine wants.
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“I can’t find him.”
That’s all he can say, dripping wet in Akashi’s entry hall, it’s all he can do to say those words without collapsing, but Akashi knows. Akashi always knows, and Kuroko loves him so very, very much.
“Sit down,” Akashi says curtly, and he takes out his phone, dials a number.
Kuroko tunes out.
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When he tunes back in, he wishes he hadn’t.
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They say they don’t expect anything from him, but when he doesn’t grieve outwardly, he knows they think it’s strange. The hand-print bruise on his hipbone aches. Kuroko presses it with his fingers until tears spring to the corners of his eyes. He cries like that; they leave him alone. The windows rattle with the wind, and he curls up in Aomine’s bedsheets and imagines he can feel the residual heat.
“Aren’t you going to visit?” Murasakibara asks, when he drops by to give Kuroko food (food is the only foolproof way Murasakibara knows how to cheer anyone up, and he doesn’t realize they’re more cheered by him than the food). He makes himself at home on the futon next to Aomine’s.
“Should I?” Kuroko honestly wants to know what Murasakibara thinks.
“It can’t hurt,” Murasakibara reasons, “and anyway there’s a letter they have that’s addressed specifically to Kuroko Tetsuya so they wouldn’t give it to us.”
He stretches out on the futon, listening to Murasakibara crunch away at his snacks.
It can’t hurt.
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Kuroko almost laughs when he sees Aomine, because Murasakibara was really, really wrong. It does hurt. It hurts to sit at his bedside and listen to the click-whoosh of the ventilator, to watch the electrolytes drip into his veins.
Tetsu, the letter reads, I thought up until today I was going to die alone, but the truth is that no one dies alone. I’m dying with you with me. I wanted to jump from somewhere higher, so I’d really feel like I was flying, but. I think our balcony is good enough.
He’s a little light-headed. He puts the letter down and touches the place where a translucent tube slides into Aomine’s forearm.
I know you were scared. Maybe you still are. I’m pretty sure you’re at Akashi’s place now because you can’t find me. How long have I known you, Tetsu? I can read you like a book.
Am I really dying? It doesn’t feel like I’m going to die. It feels like the end of a long and draggy movie, like the time you made me watch the extended edition of LOTR. That was crap.
Kuroko stops reading and allows himself to feel offended for ten seconds.
Fuck I can’t even get my thoughts straight now.
I’m gonna fly off before you, okay? I want to wake up from this nightmare. Come join me when you can.
“Join you?” Kuroko whispers.
I love you. Seriously.
Daiki.
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. 終局 .
