(Falling in Love with Aomine went for Kise something like this:

— It was at the beginning of the second year in middle school when Kise was walking over the school grounds, shortly after quitting the soccer club. Back then he still thought there would be no sport or any other activity that would keep his interest for long. He was the best too quickly and he found all those people incomprehensible, who were dedicating all their time to a sport, but didn't manage to beat someone who would only need a little while to copy and surpass them? Maybe the problem was that he couldn't copy their passion. The simple fun they have. Maybe he could never have that.

It was on that day that a basketball hit the back of his head and a weird ganguro guy came running for it, apologizing, but not looking like he was even remotely sorry.

Everyone knows this is the story when Kise fell in love with basketball. But, looking back, it might have been simply the same. Falling in love with basketball and falling in love with Aomine. At least it felt the same as he stood at the entrance to the gym, watching Aomine play. Kise's world got a new sun at that moment, a brand new bright centre and it started with a basketball and it started with Aomine dribbling and jumping and dunking that ball with such an elegance and enthusiasm he didn't possess for anything else.

That might have been the moment Kise fell in love with Aomine.

Doesn't mean he knows it.

— Kise wasn't in love with Aomine. Up to the moment when he very clearly was. There were even times when Kise didn't know if he even liked Aomine very much. After all the other was not really boyfriend material. Not that Kise very often thought about what boyfriend material entailed exactly, but point standing, pressed to it, Aomine would be nothing he would have ever imagined.

Kise went out with girls. All of them were pretty, soft spoken, well mannered, laughed about his antics and blushed easily when he charmed them. Through and through they thought his presence was delightful and they were too shy to complain about anything really, much less the fact that between school, basketball and his model career there was not much time for them left. The funny part was that he was mostly the one breaking up with them. Fact standing was, he liked girls. Growing up with two sisters he was used to having girls around him and while other boys nearly tripped over themselves when they needed or wanted to talk to one, Kise had no problems at all.

Those girls were all nothing like Aomine.

In his own personal way Aomine is handsome. Kise knew, because there were even a lot of female admirers slipping letters into Aomine's locker, secretly. With some of them Aomine even went out for a few days or weeks, sadly the type of girl who liked a ganguro like that doesn't have as much patience with someone as obsessed by basketball and interested with nothing else as Kise's girls.

But otherwise Aomine was rude, always annoyed, competitive, loud, never blushed because of anything, had a one track mind, insulted and made fun of Kise on a regular basis -

Those were all very annoying qualities and not very endearing. In theory. Despite all that - Kise spent a large amount of his free time with Aomine anyway. In school and during club activities they saw each other, they had the same friends and nearly every day they would play some more basketball until the sun went down when they both had time. And they had time very often. Kise would always insist and trail after Aomine until the other finally ended the little dance they would always perform - »Aominechi, please, play one-on-one with me!« »I don't want to today. Go away.« »Just one round! And when you win I pay for dinner, please!« »You are so annoying. Just leave me alone, Kise.« »Please, please, please~!« - because Aomine was unable to say simply yes and Kise was unable to accept anything but.

He went along with all of Aomine's stupid ideas, not because he was too naive to know that they are stupid, but because it was simple fun. No matter how insane Aomine's plans were, no matter how many times they would get a lecture and punishment by their teachers or trainer, Kise went along because… he just couldn't not do it. Days might have been filled with the sound of the wind - but now they were full of squeaking sport shoes, the sound of the ball bouncing back from the gym floor, the voices of all his teammates, their laughter, Aomine's laughter.

That time had been a good time.

— Many things didn't make sense between Aomine and him in middle school. The moment Kise would always hesitate before calling them friends and when someone would ask he would call Aomine rather teammate, because this seemed to be at least always true. Friend wasn't quite covering it. What they were. And when you are not even so sure most of the time if you are friends with someone, then how can you be sure if you are in love with someone?

— »No matter how often I look, I just cannot seem to figure Aominecchi out.«

»Hm?«

Kise tries to avoid looking at Aomine's profile in the setting sun. He doesn't even know why he said it out loud, but after nearly three years it was just a fact he needed to deal with. He cannot figure Aomine out. No matter how hard he tries. The other will always stay a mystery to him. He might be able to pinpoint everything that makes his style so unique and amazing and where Kise was still lacking and unable to cover that. He might be able to scrape over the basics of what makes Aomine Aomine, but he will never be able to figure him out. He won't know if there are friends and what will be coming after they all graduate. They spend so much time together and still Kise will never understand Aomine the way Kuroko or Momoi do.

For quite some time an old feeling had come creeping in again. He feels like he did in his first year again. It is not quite the same, but it's coming very close. It is again as if he doesn't know where he belongs.

»I just do it. There is no technique. I play like I play.«

Kise smiles, because of course this would be Aomine's answer. For a fleeting moment he wants to stop and dare to kick the basketball away, take that out of the picture and just ask Aomine. What am I to you? What are we? Where are we going? Why do you sometimes look at me as if there was something you wanted to do nearly as much as play basketball, but you never ever dare to?

But they have been both stupid boys back then.

— »Is your girlfriend texting you, Kise-kun?«

»My what?«, Kise look up from his mobile and turns his head even though he knows he technically shouldn't or there was a very real chance of messing up his make up and hair.

»You keep smiling down at your phone like that. Looks like you are texting with a cute girl that makes you very happy.«

Kise blushes violently and tries to stammer an answer. In truth he had been texting with Aomine since he knew when he would be finishing the shooting for today and it was early enough to still meet up afterwards. By now the whole conversation had turned into a ridiculous sticker and emoji war, mostly led by Kise and it was clear that he was winning. He hadn't even realized that he had been smiling all the time. How weird would it be now if he said that he was actually texting with his very male, not-cute teammate. Before he knows what else he could do, he says: »Yeah. Something like that…« He rolls that thought around his head a little bit longer, the little lie he told just now. Aomine. His girlfriend. Or no, of course, boyfriend. What a weird thought and still his heart was picking up with speed. His eyes flick to the blue ring lying secure on the make up table, currently he was just having a silver stud in, because the blue was too eye catching. His stylist raises an eyebrow, a knowing smile forming on her face. »Ah.«, she says like she has figured it all out. »Guessed as much.«

Kise would have really liked to ask her what she has figured out, because he feels like he doesn't know anything really, but he doesn't dare to ask. There is a word circling in his head and with fourteen it sounds still too scary to even utter out loud.

The shoot still lasts longer than he would have expected and he was running half an hour late. Kise tries his best to get his things together as fast as possible, tomorrow he will be here again anyway and he just grabs one of the make-up remover tissues on his way out, scrubbing it hurriedly over his face. When he comes out of the building, Aomine is sitting on the stairs in front of it, basketball between his legs and mobile in his hands. He turns around and gets up when Kise approaches.

»Oi! You are late!«, Aomine calls out and Kise all of a sudden feels very hot and very embarrassed. He remembers what a lie he had told his stylist - the very stylist who was leaving the building behind him and was not very subtly checking Aomine out, but Kise doesn't dare to look how her face looks and if she is grinning or frowning or shaking her head.

»You look ridiculous with all that junk in your hair.« Aomine is now close enough to reach out and ruffle through his hair, completely messing it up and with the left over product in it, it stays sticking out in weird angles now.

It was that day that he became hyper aware of what potential they had looking like for an outsider. He remembers all the times Aomine eats away half his lunch or they stand in the doors of the other's classroom or how Aomine always touches him so casually or how they always end up hanging out. Kise never saw them like that. Kise never saw Aomine like that. Some stuff starts making sense, and other stuff just turned more confusing.

Kise pushes Aomine's hand away.

— One year later Kise leaves the building where his latest shooting was held and no one is waiting for him. He should have been at practice, but he didn't go. He hears the sound of the leaves when he walks to the next convenience store and buys himself a popsicle, because he feels like it. He forgets all about it until he passes the streetball court, where they used to play and throws it in the next trashcan before walking home. He forgot about a lot of things in the last year of middle school.

— They have been all cruel to each other. They have been so cruel that they forgot that they had been friends. They separated so naturally and on most days Kise didn't even waste a thought on it. There seemed to be a big black, empty gap between middle school and high school.

But in a way there was nothing to miss, because they have all changed. The Aomine from now had nothing to do anymore with the Aomine who accidentally threw a ball against Kise's head, or the one whom he spent his afternoons with, or the one whom he played basketball with. But neither was he that Kise anymore. He wasn't in love.

— It was not only Aomine who needed to learn a lesson.

— Kise cries over a lot of things after he lost against Aomine. It is not simply the lost game. He wished it could have been so easy. Kise cries because he let go of something that may have set him free and live up to his true potential, but he needed to give up on something that had always been precious to him - he let go of late, warm summer evenings playing one-on-one with Aominecchi, he let go of what those evenings meant to him, he let go of and he lost the Aomine he created in his head - the idol, the one he admired, the one he never wanted to lose - and it didn't seem worth it, because Aomine was turning his back on him and nothing, nothing changed at all. He cried for Aomine. And he cried because of the lost game. And he cried a little for himself. He was not thirteen and full of wonder anymore.

— He hears that Aomine punched Haizaki. He heard that. But he didn't say anything, just kept smiling through the day though he knew the reason was horrible.

— Aomine kisses him on a warm day in spring. Kise hadn't been in love with Aomine. That's a lie, he realizes, that's a damn lie.)