Chapter 1

He was never happy to see him. It was certainly something he'd had to get used to, and Aomine had learned by now that Kagami was going to show up anyway whether he wanted him to or not...but it was never a pleasant occurrence when he did.

It had scared the living daylights out of him, the first time he'd seen the familiar apparition of blazing red hair and eyes waver into the living room - his living room now - standing there, clear as day, casually in the threshold as if he had never left it. As if he belonged there. Aomine had damn near killed himself tripping over the coffee table as it hit him unexpectedly in the shins, and he'd had to flail and scramble to catch his balance as he stared, openly; the raw, agonizing, infected wound that had barely had a chance to close, let alone heal, tearing wide open and starting to bleed afresh as those bright crimson eyes danced to life with achingly familiar laughter.

Kagami had approached him with an outstretched hand and a fondly amused smile, as if to steady him, and he'd immediately thrown out an arm, either to grab onto him and never let him go or push the disturbing, impossible image away; he hadn't decided which...and it hadn't mattered either way, because as soon as they made contact, his fingers had just passed through Kagami's hand like smoke.

It had taken every single, solitary, frayed ounce of his self-control not to break down completely into near-hysterical tears and loud, wrenching, probably screaming sobs right there, but he thought Kagami - or his ghost, or whatever the hell had decided to appear in front of him a moment ago and rub salt into every bleeding, festering facet of his being - must have seen the look cross his face, because his beautifully odd eyebrows had drawn together slightly with concern.

"Daiki?" he'd asked softly, and fuck, his voice...hearing his voice had made everything so much worse, and Aomine thought he might have made a pained, strangled sound in his throat, involuntarily, as his shaking legs suddenly felt unable to support him.

Sitting heavily on the sofa that was still more than big enough for two, even if its other occupant would never be joining him on it again, he'd found himself unable to tear his eyes away from that face that seemed as real as it had been a few days before, as bright and unmarred and expressive as it had been in the moments before it had disappeared from view in a shower of falling debris, only to resurface as a deathly pale mask, battered, burned and melted beyond recognition. Those beloved, deep red eyes that had pierced his own as Kagami had desperately shoved him out of the way, an instant before an enormous, crumbling beam had crashed down on him from the ceiling and ended his life, had never opened again. …Until now.

"Taiga..." the wavering voice that left his unbearably tight and closing throat was not his own; it was too wrecked, too strained and hoarse, too heavy with a horrible mixture of fear and grief, "You're dead."

Kagami blinked at him, uncomprehending for a moment, and then slowly seemed to become troubled by this news, bringing his hand up to rest his knuckles against his lips, like he had done the few times Aomine could ever remember seeing him uncertain. The scarred and splintered seething mass of pain and regret that had replaced his heart after the fire squeezed viciously in his chest at the reminder.

"...Oh. I'm sorry," he said at last, looking at Aomine with sincere regret in his frighteningly familiar, certainly dead but nothing if not alive eyes, like it was his fault; like he had any right to try to take on the blame for what had happened when all of that blame rested - like it should have - entirely on Aomine's shoulders.

It had been their fifth anniversary. Five years since they'd taken their cataclysmic, sparking synchrony and chemistry off the basketball court; flung out of their young, hotheaded rivalry and straight into each other's arms. Five years since Aomine's fingers had tentatively linked with Kagami's for the first time; since he'd pressed the first, shy, fleeting kiss of countless deeper ones to come to his slightly parted lips. Five years since he'd considered that there might actually be bigger, more important things in the world than winning a game, or even playing against a person who was in every way his equal, every time he had that very person in his arms. For five years, he'd looked into Kagami's burning crimson eyes and saw the future. And in one night, when he'd tried to seal it, he'd only ended up bringing it crashing to the ground in a thousand, smoldering pieces.

It was rare that they had dinner at Aomine's apartment instead of Kagami's, but from time to time, the redhead would come over and cook for him, saving him from a fate of slowly dying by cup Ramen and freezer burn, supposedly. But that night, while Kagami was working late, Aomine had gone all out. He'd bought ingredients for all of his boyfriend's favorite dishes, in bulk to account for his insane appetite, and was attempting in earnest to bring them together into something resembling a home-cooked meal. It shouldn't have been so difficult; Kagami had done the same for him countless times before, surely it was about time he returned the favor? Besides that, there was one major, other reason he put in the effort instead of just ordering in or taking Kagami out to dinner. A small, but extremely heavy, enormous reason that rested in his pocket like a lead brick, instead of a tiny velvet box.

He had only stepped away from the practical chaos he was wreaking on the kitchen for a few minutes, to tidy up a little and take a shower before Kagami showed up. If he had been there he might have nagged at Aomine to turn off the burners while he was away from the stove, but he wasn't. In fact, if he had been there he might also have, at some point, reminded Aomine to change the batteries in his smoke detector - he'd been pretty fussy about little safety tips like that ever since joining the fire department - but he wasn't. And by the time Aomine had stepped out of the strangely steamier than usual shower in some fresh, clean clothes, the entire kitchen and most of the living room was already engulfed in flames. After only a few seconds of freezing where he stood, the damp towel falling from his hand, forgotten, and taking in the scene with equal measures of shock, anger, and a rapidly surfacing clamor of fear, the apartment door burst almost off of its hinges as one panting, panicked Kagami Taiga staggered through it, looking around the burning, smoke-filled room with chestnut eyes gone wider and more fearful than Aomine had ever seen them. From the smudges of soot he hadn't cleared off his exhausted face, Aomine guessed he'd already been fighting another blaze that very evening, and yet he didn't waste even a second before rushing into Aomine's apartment as it was gradually swallowed by more tongues of angry, ravenous fire, this time without his protective gear, or the assistance of his team.

"Daiki!" he'd shouted desperately, voice rasping slightly but still carrying even over the roar of the flames, "What the hell happened - ? Wait, never mind!" Shaking his head quickly before he could say a word, he extended an arm toward him with implicit urgency, "Never mind, just grab onto me and keep low, I'll get us out of here!"

Aomine didn't hesitate before doing as he asked, responding to the honed note of authority in his otherwise worn out voice and the insistence in his gaze. But despite his apparent certainty of his ability to do as he said, Kagami hadn't followed through.

The fire had crawled up the walls to the ceiling by now, and chunks of wood and plaster rained down on them as they both stumbled to the open door. Aomine could barely see through the haze and the glare and the stinging of his eyes, could barely breathe without choking and coughing on the smoke and ash that rushed into his lungs with each inhale, and couldn't hear at all over the deafening smolder all around and the incessant ringing in his ears. He held onto Kagami's arm like a vise, following blindly, lightheaded from oxygen depletion and so unbearably hot that he wondered how his skin wasn't melting off his bones. He was only jolted out of his stupor when Kagami suddenly stopped, causing Aomine to bump into his back, and his red head jerked up to look above them, where the ceiling was stripped to its bones and blazing, dropping scorching pieces of itself on them and seeming to sag dangerously.

"...Shit," Aomine didn't hear him, but saw his mouth shape the word, an instant before he was being shoved aside roughly by the very arm he'd just clung to, and he staggered back in surprise, losing his balance and hitting the floor hard as he instinctively whipped around in time to see a sizeable chunk of the ceiling collapse in a spray of live embers and flying shrapnel, burying Kagami in an instant.

"No -! No…" A broken, discordant gasp that barely passed for a shout issued from his lips, a moment before his upper arm was seized by another hand, just as rough and strong as the one that had pushed him out of harm's way, but this one was shrouded in a thick, fireproof glove. The firefighter hauled him from the building, deaf to his hoarse protests and pleas to go back, to save him too… By the time the cold air outside hit his singed, inflamed flesh, he'd completely lost his voice.

After his burns had been attended to and an oxygen mask had been fitted over his face - his resistance almost completely drained by exhaustion and numb shock - the fireman that had dragged him out of the burning apartment returned carrying another body of similar build and stature over his shoulder. But as Kagami was laid down on a stretcher that had been rushed out for him by his fellow officers, the man was already shaking his head. Throwing the oxygen mask aside, Aomine jumped down from the back of the ambulance, disregarding the shooting pain that jolted up his legs and the reprimanding of several voices that sounded like garbled nonsense in his mind, and rushed to his lover's side unsteadily.

What he could see of Kagami's face, in the glimpse he caught before he was harshly grabbed and steered away, was pale in places, and burnt pitch black in others, the skin fused like wax here and there and stripped away completely, horrifyingly, from his temple and the side of his jaw. One of his ears was just a dark, empty hole, entirely melted away.

Aomine's own ears - now wide open and straining, listening desperately for any explanation - caught the fragmented, morose murmurs of "Kagami-san," and "structural support beam," and "killed instantly," as the firefighters spoke to each other. Swallowing down the bile that rose in his throat and the feeling like he'd been kicked hard in the stomach, he struggled futilely against the hands that held him, fighting to get back to Kagami's side, refusing to believe it.

Even three days later, when he'd walked on numb legs like an animated corpse up to the closed coffin that hid that mangled, desolated face from view, he hadn't believed it. Even when he'd watched that coffin being lowered into the ground, and heard the first smack of a shovel beginning to fill in the hole, to the tune of condolences from friends and acquaintances alike, all strangers to him at that moment, he still hadn't believed it. He couldn't.

Ironically, it had only sunk in, and he'd only been able to voice the fact out loud, that Kagami was dead, when he was looking into the resurrected mirage of his face that had sprung up in his old home, a few days after Aomine had moved into it, just to be close to him. Just to be surrounded by the memories that were all that remained of the man he loved.

He was presently looking at the very manifestation of those memories, personified. Over a month had passed since the fire...over a month of yo-yoing between extremes of rage and sorrow and self-loathing and grief...and Kagami still appeared sporadically, in the rooms and halls of his apartment, and sometimes on the streets outside it, almost every single day. Aomine had gotten so accustomed to it that he didn't even flinch at his arrival anymore, though he did look over his shoulder much more frequently now than he ever had before.

The same conflicted, visceral mess of emotion would descend on him every time those familiar red eyes would pop into view, every time those silent footsteps would cross the floor of the home Kagami had once lived in. He wanted the persistent, restless but always kind and smiling ghost to disappear, to stop tormenting him and reminding him of his devastating mistake that had cost his lover's young, vibrant life. At the same time, he didn't want to be abandoned, didn't want to have to face the world with the knowledge that he would never see Kagami again; never share a glance or a conversation with him, like he did so frequently now. It was cowardly and pathetic, but he couldn't banish the desperate need to look at him just one more time, to hear his voice just once more and imagine it was real. ...Nor the crushing guilt that told him he deserved this; he deserved to suffer through every reminder, every moment of agonizing, hopeless despair every time he reached out to touch, only to see his hand go right through Kagami, feeling no solid, steady warmth, and leaving no influence on his image that was even less than mist, even less than air, nothing more and nothing less than a vivid, lifeless illusion. A hallucination to remind him of how he was slowly, gradually falling apart and losing his grips with reality, a little more every day.

Turning away from the familiar ghost that had stepped into the dining room, lifting his nose slightly as if he could smell the plate of food clutched in Aomine's hand, Aomine barked a strained, shaking order over his shoulder, one that tore him in half to have to keep repeating, but he still always tried.

"Go away, Taiga. Just leave me alone."

He could feel the reproachful gaze warming his back, and crumbled just enough to shoot a glance at the redhead, seeing him looking back with a forlorn, but gentle smile.

"Oh, Daiki…" he said sadly, approaching him without the sound of footfalls or creaking floorboards or shifting fabric, like a passing shadow. "You know I can't do that."

Sighing deeply with defeat, Aomine lowered his gaze and sat down at the table, and after a moment, Kagami joined him there, sitting across from him without a plate of his own, an image that wasn't getting any more normal, no matter how many times Aomine was forced to see it. As he picked absently at his food, remembering a time when he and his lover had raced to see who could finish first, stolen morsels off each other's plates, and sometimes, occasionally, fed each other pieces, he lowered his head so as not to look at the pale imitation, the ghost, the empty shell of his partner that was often his only company, these days.

"Yeah…" he said softly, hating how choked his voice sounded no matter how he swallowed, "I know."

TBC

((*dodges pitchforks and torches* I don't know what keeps leading me to create these fics that just get more and more brutal and sad the further I go...but when the angst monster calls, I must answer.

Also, couple things. This chapter was a lot like a summary-type thing, but the next ones should be more in-depth, with more characters involved besides these two. Also, it's kind of up to y'all's interpretation whether ghost Kagami is really there or just a figment of Aomine's poor tortured imagination. Either way, if he seems a little out of character, it's deliberate, as either dying put a shift on his personality, or Aomine's perception of him got pretty drastically skewed after his death. The whole point is that ghost Kagami is not the real Kagami and never will be.

And I'm not sure why they call each other by their given names in this, that's not very normal for me, but I think the implied closeness makes the emotions a little more hard-hitting, don't you?

Just a reminder that reviews give me life, feed the author! (Or you know...beat him up, considering how this fic is shaping up).))