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Aomine Daiki was pissed. He couldn’t help gritting his teeth as he waited impatiently for the blond boy beside him to finish fiddling with his phone. The blond in question bit his lip, swiped, then bit his lip some more. Daiki wanted to rip the blond hair right off his head.
“Oi! If you don’t want to go, you can just say so y’know!” He growled, unable to control the anger and the growing heat rising in his cheeks.
The blond blinked at him and tilted his head slightly, and for a moment, Daiki was glad to finally have his attention. Then he turned back to his phone, and Daiki felt the rage resurface.
“Hmm,” Kise hummed, swiping left and right repeatedly on his phone as he checked his calendar, “It’s not that I don’t want to go. I mean, I’m just a bit busy on June 18th. It’s my birthday. Do you have spare tickets on any other dates?”
Daiki clenched his fists. He’d heard from Momoi that Kise was free on June 18th, the day of his actual birthday, so he’d bought tickets for a popular movie that he knew Kise’d like to see. He’d meant to be straightforward about it, but somehow he’d ended up telling the Kaijo ace that his mum and dad didn’t want to go anymore so had asked him if he knew anyone who wanted to use their spare tickets instead. He really had meant to be honest about it—had meant to ask Kise if he’d wanted to go, and nothing else—but something about the eagerness in which Kise anticipated his story—the sparkle in Kise’s eye as he listened attentively to every word the moment Daiki had started speaking—instinctively made Daiki want to lie about everything. The tickets, his motives, his feelings. Everything.
Kise laughed slightly and sighed, putting his phone away at last.
“Ah, that was a stupid question, sorry. They were spare tickets right? There’s no way you’d have tickets for any other night! Sorry, sorry. I had a moment there.”
Kise looked bashful as he laughed at himself. They strode on in their grey and navy uniforms, their ties blowing in the wind. Daiki stuffed his clenched fists into his pockets.
It wasn’t meant to be this hard. For one thing, he’d checked the date with Momoi and she’d confirmed Kise was definitely free—she was never wrong, so what was this thing Kise had to do instead? And more importantly, what should Daiki say now so that he didn’t lose this chance?
He and Kise had just started being on friendly terms again. They’d just started hanging out with only the two of them, having been reliant at first on a third person, whether it be Momoi or Kuroko or even Bakagami at times, and Daiki had just started to think that maybe he and Kise had a chance at being together again.
Middle school had been messy, and they weren’t exactly together back then, but that was mostly Daiki’s fault, and he was pretty sure that Kise’s feelings for him hadn’t changed. So now that Daiki had come to terms with his own emotions...surely, he’d thought, Kise would be receptive, and then they could do a bit more than fiddle with each other’s private parts in the dark after a game together? Surely, they could be together properly now?
Daiki thought he should play it safe.
“So, what are you doing on the 18th then?” He said, sounding bored and disinterested.
“Hm? Not much, just hanging with some friends.”
Daiki raised an eyebrow. “Hanging with some friends? You’re missing a free movie because you wanna hang with some friends?”
“Well, they did ask me first and y’know, if I can’t make it you can ask someone else right? They’re just spare tickets after all.”
Daiki stopped staring hard at the road in front of him and turned to stare hard at Kise’s face. They boy was smiling slightly, one hand on the bag swinging from his shoulder, other hand casually in his trouser pocket. He looked far too relaxed. Something was up.
“Are you serious? It’s a free movie.”
“They’re spare tickets. Ask someone else.”
Despite sounding more assertive than necessary, Kise was still smiling. It was irking Daiki. How could he reject Daiki so easily? What was—
“You know they’re not just spare tickets,” Daiki said through gritted teeth. He must have been beetroot red because when Kise glanced at him sideways, he laughed. The little shit.
“I don’t know unless you tell me, Aominecchi!” He grinned, his pace suddenly quickening. Daiki sped up to match Kise’s strides.
“What do you mean?! You know they’re not spare tickets—you just don’t want to go with me!”
Kise swerved around a corner, narrowly dodging a bicycle that was turning at the same time.
“I thought I already said, it’s not that I don’t want to go. I just have other plans.”
“Other completely unimportant plans! You see your friends all the time!”
“I see you all the time!”
They reached a rail crossing as the red light began flashing, signalling an approaching train. Kise stopped and turned to face Daiki straight on. His smile was measured; his posture calculated.
“Why would I blow off an arrangement with friends I see all the time, just to go see a movie I can see later with another friend I see all the time? You both mean a lot to me—my other friends just happened to ask me to hang out first. You have to give me a better reason to break my ‘first come first serve’ rule.”
Kise tilted his head slightly in that endearing way he used to do back in middle school, when Daiki wouldn’t let him play as Yoshi on Mario Kart. Back then, Kise used to go round Daiki’s house all the time after school and they’d play video games, eat dinner, then go out and play basketball. When Kise was acting like a goof and trying to manipulate Daiki into doing what he wanted by doing ‘cute’ things—including that annoying head tilt—Daiki’s reaction was always the same. He’d tackle Kise to the ground, tickle him, and then—eventually—he’d kiss him: on the lips, and then on his neck, blowing raspberries just by his ear and making Kise squeal until his mother banged on the ceiling with a broom and told them to settle down.
Daiki caught the shine of Kise’s golden eyes as a memory passed through his synapses—caught the hint of a mischievous smirk on the corner of the blond’s lips—and making an executive decision (considering the high-speed train whirring past them), Daiki skipped the part where he tackled Kise to the ground and went immediately for the kiss.
The Touou ace stepped forward into Kise’s space, watched as Kise closed his eyes in anticipation and pressed his lips onto the blond’s.
They hadn’t kissed in years. But Kise’s lips were exactly as Daiki remembered them.
When they broke free, Daiki didn’t forget to blow raspberries by Kise’s ear, making the blond laugh loudly. Kise swatted him away with protests that they were in public, but that didn’t stop the wide grin that spread across both their faces.
When the train had passed and their hands were still entwined, Daiki felt a sense of relief.
“So, you’ll come to the movie on the 18th then right?” He said, smiling confidently.
“Hm? Nah.”
Daiki felt rooted to the spot, but Kise continued striding forward, pulling Daiki along by their linked hands and crossing the train tracks.
“W-What do you mean ‘nah’?! We—I mean—aren’t we...?!”
He gestured desperately to their linked hands.
“Yeah, we are,” Kise grinned, squeezing Daiki’s hand before he let go and backed away towards the ticket barrier. They’d arrived at the station, and there was only one minute before Kise needed to catch his train back to Kanagawa. “Spare tickets though, remember? It’s true that it’s not that I don’t want to go with you Aominecchi—but I definitely don’t want to go with you if it’s just because you have a spare ticket.”
Daiki was shocked. Should he blurt out that he didn’t mean it? That he’d bought the ticket with the intention of going with just Kise, but that his stupid brain had malfunctioned and he just couldn’t ask him outright? His brain said yes; his heart panicked and buried itself in the sand. Daiki tried to force some words out of his mouth but Kise was already through the ticket barrier. Just before he started down the stairs, however, Kise spun around and looked Daiki in the eyes.
“Even if they’re not spare tickets, Aominecchi, you need to tell me they’re not. I’m not the voice in your head or your heart. I don’t know what you’re thinking or feeling if you don’t tell me.”
Kise smiled, gripping the strap of his shoulder bag with both hands. His cheeks flushed a little as he shouted above the sound of the stationmaster announcing the arrival of the train bound for Kanagawa.
“I love you Aominecchi!”
With that he fled down the stairs.
Daiki felt like he was going to have a heart attack. A pair of teenage girls was staring at him, their eyes wide after having witnessed one of Japan’s rising stars confess loudly to this apparent nobody so indiscreetly. Furious, Daiki put his hood up, hoping that no one managed to capture what had just passed on film (though if someone had, he sort of wanted a copy).