Aomine was racking his brain for something to do. Something that didn't cost much, because he wasn't doing so hot on money right now. The life of a broke college student.
Not that Kuroko had much money either. He might be a bit wiser with his spending –"I don't buy magazines just to look at boobs. I don't see why you do either when Google is free." Kuroko liked to remind him when he questioned the amount of coffee Kuroko started purchasing when he got stuck in a morning class.- but that didn't make him any less of a broke college student.
So, Aomine knew that Kuroko wouldn't mind them not doing anything super special to celebrate a year together. He'd even told Aomine that he was fine with just curling up on the couch at either of their places to watch a basketball game. But Aomine wanted to do something nice. Kuroko was always doing things for him. Little things, but they were still pretty great.
Aomine only had one morning class, and he had it twice a week. It might suck if he didn't have it with Kuroko. About two weeks in the coffee that Kuroko kept bringing in became two coffees, one placed in front of Aomine. "Now you don't have an excuse to fall asleep." Kuroko had told him simply, and had continued to bring him coffee in the mornings. Kuroko didn't even like coffee. Hated the stuff, actually, but kept drinking it to stay awake. Aomine loved coffee though, so he didn't really mind when he started being able to drink some without Kuroko giving him a look promising death for trying to steal a sip of his. How someone so small could be so scary was beyond Aomine, but he supposed seven AM calculus classes could bring that out in anyone.
Then there was the drawer. Kuroko and Kagami's shared appartment was an interesting thing to look at. One could very clearly see that two people lived there. Their living room walls looked like they'd had a war of colors. One of them had wanted to paint it red, the other blue. It made a lot of purple with blue and red streaks coming out of it. The higher the wall went, the more red seemed to appear. The living room chaos aside, the rest of the place they seemed to divide pretty well. The kitchen was full of Kagami's things while Kuroko had claimed a corner of the living room as his own. He'd put a desk there, home to pictures and random knick knacks, a printer, sometimes a laptop, and neatly organized papers. There was a bookshelf with eight shelves. The top four where filled with Kagami's mystery books while the bottom ones were populated by Kuroko's fantasy novels. Text books were banished to the space next to the shelf, apparently not worthy of calling themselves books or sharing a living space with the books deemed worthy of shelf life. If the war of colors weren't constantly raging, Aomine would wonder about a textbook revolution.
And, of course, there where the two bed rooms. Aomine had familiarized himself rather well with Kuroko's bedroom over the past year. Considering the struggle for blue in the living room, Aomine had been surprised to find the walls of Kuroko's room painted a very light yellow. Not long after Aomine had started staying the night at least once a week a drawer had been cleared for him. Kuroko had taken the liberty of buying a t-shirt and sweat pants in Aomine's size so he didn't have to keep leaving with the same clothes on. Aomine suspected part of the motive behind Kuroko doing this was to steal some of Aomine's clothes. Ones that Kuroko liked seemed to go missing in the washing machine only to turn up on Kuroko latter, far too big for him. Aomine didn't really mind. It was still nice that Kuroko had taken the time to think about making space for him, even if it was just to steal from him. He'd even gotten Aomine a spare tooth brush in the bathroom.
Said bathroom had clearly been compromised in the fight over blue and red as well. A red pokadotted blue shower curtain hung on the shower. The bottle of shampoo was red, and the conditioner blue, the regular soap seemed to have been won by the blue team. There were red and blue toothbrushes and combs. Aomine's tooth brush was also blue, just a different shade. He figured that made him part of the war effort. And there were blue and red towels. Aomine supposed there were worse things for flat mates to fight over. After all, Aomine didn't get along with the guy who he shared a dorm room with.
His favorite thing that Kuroko did for him was the little notes he sometimes passed Aomine or put into his bag for him to find later. That was how the two had started talking, actually. Aomine had just had a fight with Satsuki that morning, so he imagined he wasn't looking too happy. And then, seemingly out of no where, there was a folded up piece of paper in front of him.
Aomine blinked at it a few times to see if it was just a figment of his imagination, but when the note remained in front of him, he looked around to see who had given it to him. He was surprised to find a set of blue eyes trained on him, and he had to wonder how he hadn't noticed the guy before. He was sitting right behind Aomine, and he could have sworn no one sat there. Aomine raised an eyebrow at Kuroko before turning to the note and opening it.
I can feel you frowning from back here. It's worse than your snoring. Please stop.-Kuroko Tetsuya
Aomine had very nearly laughed at that.
I don't snore, Tetsu. I've slept in enough classes that I would have gained that complaint already if I did. –Aomine Daiki
He had scrawled out and passed back the note. They'd gone back and forth until the end of class, and then they had actually started to talk to each other.
Now, whenever Kuroko thought Aomine looked like he needed some cheering up, or if Kuroko just felt like it, he'd slip Aomine a little note reminding him that Kuroko loved him.
And it wasn't like he didn't do anything for Kuroko in their relationship, he just wanted to do something nice to show Kuroko that the year they had been together had been important to him too.
Satsuki had suggested he make a nice dinner for him and Kuroko, but Aomine didn't think his cooking skills would allow for that. Satsuki thought he was an amazing cook, but that was in comparison to her own skills. He had learned how to make vanilla milkshakes because of Kuroko, and he was pretty good at that, but he did that often enough as it was.
It was as they were sitting on the red couch in Kuroko and Kagami's living room that Aomine got an idea. He figured that red had won out with the couch because Kuroko couldn't do the heavy lifting required to bring up a blue one.
"Hey, Tetsu, I've got an idea for what we can do this weekend. I'm going to need you to get Kagami out of here for the day though."
Kuroko had complained about being left out of the loop for what was happening, but ultimately agreed to make sure Kagami wouldn't be home.
Saturday found Aomine dressed casually, standing in the living room of Kuroko and Kagami's appartment. The majority of said living room was covered in plastic tarp.
"Daiki, I'm back. Are you finally going to tell me what we are doi-" Kuroko stopped mid-sentence as he walked in and took in the scene before him.
"We are winning this war!" Aomine declared, holding up one of the cans of blue paint he'd brought.
Kuroko and Kagami never talked about the war over red and blue that they were very clearly waging. If someone asked about it they just kind of glared at each other, or at the nearest object of the color opposite theirs if the other wasn't in the room, before shrugging and saying they had no idea what the asker was talking about.
"It's not a war. It's just a small dispute over if the living room should be blue or if Kagami is wrong." Kuroko said, but there was a small smile forming on his face that let Aomine know he'd made a good decision on what to do for their celebration.
When they were finally done, both of them covered in almost as much paint as the walls were, they opened up the windows in the kitchen and living room and retreated to Kuroko's room to avoid the paint fumes.
After a shared shower they curled up on Kuroko's bed, with his laptop, to pull up a movie. "We are not watching Die Hard again." "I just helped you paint a living room, Tetsu." They ended up watching Die Hard, Kuroko distracting Aomine with stolen kisses whenever he got bored. Which was quite often. All and all, Aomine thought it was a pretty good way to spend their one year anniversary.