A/N: this fic (which started out btw as the Woes of the Boardgame Club Members After Aomine Discovered Their Clubroom during one of many convos with jar) is inspired by jarofclay42's "it takes two", and is a sequel of sorts haha, so pls read "it takes two" first or this fic won't make much sense /rolls away
(also, please listen to atsueshi's "It Takes Two" on tumblr! it's so beautiful sobbing)
Reconstruction
In the days following Aomine and Kuroko's discovery of all the little treasures hidden in the boardgame club room, several complaints had circulated regarding the messy state that the room was found in during lunch breaks, when the club members were scheduled to meet for activities.
"It's like a bull went on a rampage." Kuroko remembers overhearing on one particular afternoon from a fellow classmate, after the bell signalling the end of lunch had rang. "I mean, it's worse than usual!"
"More like someone straight-out tried to bulldoze the room," another had snorted in reply.
In his defense, Kuroko did try to clean up, and in Aomine's defense - well.
The predicament at the time had been that the Jenga tower Aomine had insisted on being left assembled had been taken down the previous day by other students, and truth be told, Kuroko couldn't bring himself to blame Aomine for his dismay at the sight of the empty room and bare desks. ("You know what," Aomine had said afterwards, holding tightly in his hands the package of the game that they were both so very well acquainted with. "I'm gonna bring this home.")
The thing is, there is something very tiring about being uncertain and being afraid, about the world doing a one-eighty as sadness sealed his feet to a spot that he had been standing at for far too long, about thoughts molding and shaping themselves around fears and holding back - so really, they did have a somewhat of an excuse.
(But if there was one thing that Kuroko was certain of, it was that there was something waiting for them in the distance, although at the time they were mere pinpricks of what would wash away the guilt and the lingering hurt and the apprehension of everything they had fading away. He remembers, distinctly, thinking: surely, someday, it would all fall into place.)
"It's like an angry ghost flipped their shit in there, to be honest," a third added.
"There are a lot of ghost rumours that goes around in the school," someone else inputted. "Remember? There was one a while back, too, about the basketball playing ghost in the fourth gymnasium."
"Eh? I heard, though, that the sounds of a bouncing basketball has stopped some time ago."
"Maybe the ghost decided to switch over to playing board games," someone joked. The others laughed in response.
There are so many games to play, but there is one that is theirs - though back then all Kuroko could see were the familiar lines of Aomine's back, and the whitened knuckles of his clenched fist.
.
.
.
Winter Cup is still a fresh memory when Kuroko agrees to visit Aomine by Momoi's request, for no reason other than to visit. That, however, is only the two-dimensional aspect of it; there's nothing clandestine about the matter, but it's much more intricate than it appears on the surface. ("There's nothing to fix," Kuroko had told her over the phone, stirring up a whirlpool of protests, although those halted when he added, "maybe, it was never right to begin with; maybe we'll just have to make it right, this time.")
The path to Aomine's house is bittersweet with nostalgia, and it leads him past the convenience store they frequented with the rest of the team back in Teikou, past the old street basketball court, past Kuroko's favourite secondhand bookstore. Although it wasn't uncommon for conversations on walks to each others' houses to be limited, the silence that accompanies him to the front steps of Aomine's house is strange, void of the thuds of Aomine's worn basketball.
Kuroko's fingertip barely brushes the doorbell when the door practically slams open. He tilts his head back to meet Aomine's eyes, and says, "hi."
"Hey," he greets, sounding a little breathless. "Come on in, Tetsu."
"Ah, is that Kuroko-kun?" he hears Aomine's mother say, as she rushes to foyer to greet him. "My, you've grown since you were in Teikou! It's been so long! How are you? I heard from Daiki that you go to that new high school now, Seirin, was it?"
"I'm good, thank you," he tells her, and glances sideways at Aomine, who takes a very loud breath. "Aomine-kun mentioned me?"
His mother ushers him into the house, and he toes off his shoes in the doorway as she replies, "oh, yes! Quite often, actually."
"Tetsu and I are gonna go up, okay?" Aomine interrupts, and coughs. "Don't bother us, okay?"
"Alright, alright," she says, looking amused. "Oh, and Daiki? I cleaned your room while you were out earlier, and I found a tower made of little wooden blocks underneath your bed. How long have you had that there? It looks like one of the boardgames from your elementary school."
Kuroko peers up at Aomine's face, and finds a mortified expression in place. "...what did you find?"
"A stack of little blocks of wood. It was quite cute," she tells him.
"Was it a Jenga tower?" Kuroko asks her, looking at Aomine knowingly.
"Did you by any chance," Aomine says, voice noticeably trembling, "touch it?"
His mother gives him an odd look. "Yes, I put it in the box beside it. I think it did said 'Jenga' on the front."
Aomine had been worryingly tense beside him, so it isn't completely unanticipated when the first stream of profanity comes pouring out from his mouth. "Mom! How many times do I have to tell you to not touch my stuff!" Aomine voice cracks, tone indecisively trapped somewhere on the boundary of distress and fury. "Fuck, oh fu - okay, I'm -"
"Daiki, you're overreacting," his mother interrupts, as calm as the eye of a hurricane. "And don't be so crude with your language. Please forgive him, Kuroko-kun, he gets like that sometimes, which I'm sure you know, but I just don't know why he's so angry about the wooden blocks."
"They're not just wooden blocks!" Aomine seethes, and there's a trembling note of desperation in his voice that gives him away. And Kuroko can see, too, the effort of grinding the words that he wants to let spill between his teeth, dust of what could have but would not have made all the difference, dust of the earth in which they left their footprints behind.
His mother then says, crossing her arms, "what are they, if not wooden blocks?"
There is something overly exasperating with logic during an argument about something that contains anything but, and Aomine looks to be on the verge of a violent eruption.
"They're our-" he starts to say, but then stops, and in his scowl is the glaringly obvious - at least to Kuroko - shame and embarrassment and sentiment, that the tower is so much more than what it looks to be in all its apparent simplicity and hidden complexity, holding all that's done and forgiven, hours of sitting in a hushed room soaked in a fading light and its shadows, and you wouldn't understand. "It's just important! Don't just saunter in and fucking break down important stuff!"
"Daiki! Is that how you talk to your mother?" she berates, and turns her gaze to Kuroko, who shifts his weight uncomfortably. "Am I right, Kuroko-kun? You're overreacting! Even Kuroko-kun would agree with me, isn't that right?"
"Um," Kuroko says, awkwardly, under her expectant stare, twiddling his thumbs as he looks to Aomine for a given chance of escape. Unfortunately, rescue doesn't come and instead, Aomine just looks at him, the way he'd used always look at him - not choose me or choose her, no longer choose me or choose basketball. So Kuroko makes his choice - one that holds no regrets. "I... do agree that Aomine-kun should calm down a bit, but the tower is in fact quite important to Aomine-kun, so I can understand why he's so upset."
There's a pause, until Aomine scoffs, "hell of a way to keep me waiting, Tetsu," while his mother just gapes. "Come on, let's go," he says, looping an arm around Kuroko's, pulling him towards the staircase and stumbling up to his room.
Kuroko watches him pick up the box of Jenga pieces from his desk.
"Wanna help me make it?" he asks, though by this point in time, he should already know the answer.
They sit there on the floor, piling blocks upon blocks atop each other, until all the pieces are used up.
Aomine gazes at the completely structure intently for a moment, and Kuroko thinks back to evenings in the boardgame club's room, carefully tugging out pieces and watching the tower wobble and quiver as with his own heart.
"You know, Tetsu, I thought you'd given up on me," Aomine says, then, with a quiet laugh that's more a sigh than a real laugh.
Kuroko blinks. "You're an idiot, Aomine-kun."
"Then what are you?" Aomine says.
It's not to say that they can't be friends without basketball, but Kuroko had known that Aomine loved basketball as much he did, and he loved basketball as much as Aomine did - and in the end, what it comes down to is that hating what he loves will never be as painful as throwing it all away.
So Kuroko sighs, reaches out to grasp the sleeve of his t-shirt, and presses his lips to Aomine's, because, sometimes, wordless exchanges are all that they have for explanations.
Aomine is rigidly still, and there's a flash of doubt in Kuroko's mind. But when he begins to pull away, an arm wraps around him and a hand presses him closer and somehow, he ends up lying on the floor beneath Aomine, gentle nips prying his lips apart. He cups Aomine's face, the clack of wood against wood resounding in his ears, but Aomine either doesn't care or doesn't notice that the tower is falling because this, in a way, contains an element of familiarity, remember when we moved like this, together, across the court?, movements so in sync that it feels to have already been orchestrated prior.
When they break apart, the unsuppressed grin on Aomine's face, veiled with twilight shadows, is all he sees. And looking at him now, Kuroko can finally retrace memory by memory back to the times when things were still right and the realization that the earth they'd walked on was gradually crumbling to dust beneath the soles of their feet had not yet sunken in and think, yes, I know this boy, I know him inside out, I know him like I know basketball.
"We knocked the tower down, Aomine-kun," Kuroko tells him softly, twisting his head to the side to eye the blocks scattered across the carpet.
Aomine glances at the pieces too, for a second, before leaning down to bury his face in Kuroko's neck, and he mouths against his skin a mutual sentiment, trailing fluttery kisses up to the corner of his mouth. "'S okay. We can always rebuild it."
It won't be the same, Kuroko thinks, each tower they build is different - but then, he supposes that that's one of the many beauties of it. "Yes," Kuroko agrees, because if there is one thing that matters in mending this relationship, it would be to have been as stubborn and persistent as they have always been in stacking it back after its collapse.
But at the end of the day, to have had all of what they had and all of this too, neither of them had given up, because it's true: it takes two.
A/N: HAPPY 5/11 AOKURO DAY! thank you for reading huehuehue now I must go the hw is calling me