Chapter 6

Daiki wakes up slowly, a narrow slice of sunlight irritating his eyelids through the slatted blinds above his bed. His head is kind of fuzzy, and his mouth tastes sour and feels like he must have brushed his teeth with sand, if he brushed them at all. He's also fully dressed; the outer seam of his jeans digging into his thigh where he put his weight on it through the night. What time is it…?

A glance at his phone screen reveals two things: the battery is almost completely drained, and it's after 10 am. He's supposed to be at work in less than two hours, and he totally forgot to set an alarm, or even charge his goddamn phone, last night.

Last night…

Okay, he's kind of drawing a blank on last night, but he'll worry about that later. More importantly, he has to get Yui up and dressed right now, and should probably change out of his own stale and wrinkled clothes, before he officially starts running late.

He's slouching across the room, stretching his stiff muscles and trying to decide if there's time to squeeze in a quick shower before he leaves, when his eyes land on Yui's crib, and the world screeches to a stop.

It's empty. Yui is gone.

For a moment, he can't comprehend it, and just stands there frozen, staring at the unexplained absence of his daughter; a sudden, gaping void that cracked open in his universe. His heart is pounding, forcing blood to his brain, but he can't fucking think.

Then panic, in no uncertain terms, rushes in, as a hundred horrible scenarios flash through his mind in rapid succession. She got out. She ran away and fell off the balcony. Someone broke in and kidnapped her. What if I left her somewhere - where the fuck would I leave her? In the car? Did I fucking forget her in the car and now she's fucking suffocating - or worse -

An involuntary, animal sound of distress claws out of his throat, and he wrenches himself away from the deserted crib and starts pacing, frantic, nonsensically turning things over and checking every corner and crevice at least twice, until he finally accepts with a sickening plunge in his gut that Yui is nowhere in the room. Swallowing hard, he stumbles to the door and jerks it open, filling his lungs to call for her, or scream to the ceiling, as he skids into the kitchen.

And there Yui is, sitting safe and whole right across the room, rolling her favorite purple toy car back and forth on the floor amid intermittent "vrooms" and "beeps" to herself. She looks up at Daiki with a celebratory noise once she notices him, and he collapses against the doorframe in absolute relief, shaking so bad he can barely stay upright and breathing in tight, irregular gasps. Thank God...thank God…

He spends so long just staring at his daughter as she resumes playing, verifying with his own eyes that she really is there and really is okay, that he doesn't even notice someone else saying his name until a sharp poke in the upper arm brings him back to the rest of the world.

"- omine. Aomine. Hey, don't pass out on me, man, okay?" Kagami says, red eyes coming into focus as he hovers in front of him anxiously, "You good?"

"Jesus fucking Christ," Daiki replies, pressing his forehead against the cool fake wood of the door jamb for an instant, before pushing off and taking a wobbly step away from it. His heart rate is still pretty jacked up, and he hasn't ruled out the possibility that he might puke right there on the kitchen floor, but the roaring in his ears has died down and he's starting to feel almost human again, so that's a good sign.

"Uh...heh, maybe don't say that in front of -" Kagami starts, but Daiki cuts him off as something important clicks in his head, now that there's room in it again for things other than Yui's immediate safety.

"What are you doing here?" he demands, taking a deep, steadying breath and trying to get the rest of this picture to make sense. 10:30 am, Sunday, Kagami Taiga standing in Daiki's kitchen in yesterday's clothes, looking innocently bewildered as if he didn't just take Daiki's daughter while he was sleeping and trigger the biggest panic attack of his life.

"Um...you let me in?" Kagami says, slowly, raising one of his funky eyebrows in evident confusion, "Last night? You said I could stay the night, remember?"

No, Daiki doesn't exactly remember that, but he's still dragging bits and pieces of last night out of a big, drunk fog of obscurity right now. He's not going to tell that to Kagami, though.

"And you actually did?" he says instead, disbelieving. Whatever he might have said last night, Kagami had to have gotten enough of a visual just from setting foot in Daiki's puny, Hasbro-infested apartment to send any reasonable guy packing. And yet he's still here the next morning? Apparently even catering to Yui's needs without having to be told how...

"Wait, back up…" he manages, before Kagami has a chance to reply, "You picked Yui up from Tetsu's last night?"

"Uh-huh,"

"By yourself?"

"Well, you were asleep..."

'Course I fucking was. "Well, you should've -" he begins hotly, breaking off as something else occurs to him, "Where did you sleep?"

"On the couch," Kagami says breezily, "You kept trying to get me to take your bed, but you really looked like you needed it." His eyes cut to the side, and that could mean anything.

Great. Just fucking great.

"You didn't have to -" Daiki starts, pinching the bridge of his nose as a wave of irritable mortification sweeps over him, "I was drunk, I didn't know what I was saying -" God, what else did I say to him? He doesn't even want to know the damage he might have done, to his reputation if nothing else, in a matter of just a few hours. All he does know is the last time he drank to the point of memory inhibition, he was falling all over Kise's lap, rambling ad nauseam about the cultural impacts of Space Jam. Again - high school, and parties. Back when life made fucking sense. "You really didn't have to…"

"It's fine," Kagami says, looking at him in all seriousness, "What was I supposed to do, leave you like that with Yui all on your own?"

So...he just felt obligated to stay, then. Out of concern, or...a sense of moral responsibility, or something. Honestly, Daiki doesn't know if that makes it better or worse.

"If...you say so," he gets out, awkwardly avoiding his gaze as he decides to just drop the issue and push ahead. Moving on. "I uh...I've gotta get ready for work now, but I can give you a lift on the way if you still need a ride. D'you want breakfast?"

"I was just trying to make some, actually," Kagami says, "But I couldn't find any pots or pans, and also...don't take this the wrong way, but you really need to buy some groceries, man."

"I just did," Daiki says, drawing up indignantly and setting the rest of that bizarre statement aside for now, "You were there, remember?"

"Really? 'Cause..." Stooping to casually open Daiki's fridge, exposing mostly-bare shelves save for a few stray jars and bottles and half a carton of milk in the door, Kagami levels him with a reproachful look, "That doesn't look like groceries to me."

"There's stuff in the freezer," Daiki retorts, crossing his arms over his chest in defiance, "And the cupboards over there."

A curious expression crosses Kagami's face, and he unlatches one of the cupboard doors and swings it open to inspect its contents. Daiki waits impatiently while he takes down a box and turns it over.

"Pop-Tarts?" he says, a note of pity in his voice, "Dude…"

Before Daiki can summon up a scathing enough response to that, Yui decides to interrupt, loudly, from her stakeout on the floor.

"I want oatmeal!" she yells, launching a toy car clear across the kitchen for emphasis, "And juice!"

Daiki glances at Kagami doubtfully, wondering if it's worth the effort to try and wring a "please" out of her, at least while they have company. It's been so goddamn long since he's had...a guest that isn't Tetsu or Kise that he's honestly not sure what the protocol is here. He supposes it would mostly come down to what Kagami is to him, but right now, he doesn't have a clear answer for that either. After everything he did last night, can they still be called strangers?

"Well..." Kagami says at last, drawing it out with an air of attempting to compromise, "I guess oatmeal is better than Pop-Tarts?"

"How do you figure?" Daiki snorts before he can stop himself, "Never mind. Do you want bananas in your oatmeal, Yui?"

"Strawberry!" Yui demands. Daiki sighs.

"We used up all the strawberries, remember? How about -"

"Blueberry!"

"It's not even blueberry season yet,"

"How about," Kagami interjects, still peering up into Daiki's cupboards thoughtfully, "Peanut butter and bananas?"

Daiki starts to scowl at him mockingly, because what kind of Americanized excuse for oatmeal has peanut butter in it, but apparently, Yui is all about this idea. Though to be fair, it might just be the mere concept of "and" that she's excited about.

"Fine, sure," he says over her insistent exclamations of "Juice, too!", before reaching up into the cabinet for the instant oats and gesturing with the bag at Kagami, "It should only take a minute, but if you wanna shower or something while - "

"I've got it," Kagami interrupts, inciting Daiki to raise his eyebrows at him, because what kind of audacity…? In the same instant, though, Kagami shuts his mouth and shuffles his big socked feet in embarrassment, seeming to realize the same thing, "That is...um…you said you have to get ready for work, right? I can handle Yui and breakfast while you do that."

For a moment, Daiki is about to argue. It's instinctive for one thing, and for another, it's his house, and Yui is his daughter, and the very idea of letting some random guy he just met like, last week putter around his kitchen like he owns the place is crazy on so many levels… But that moment passes, and then another, and Kagami still looks flustered but he sure doesn't seem to be joking, and time is still ticking, so at long last, he finally just heaves a put-upon sigh and gives in.

"Fine…" He glances at Yui, happily playing with her cars on the floor, and swallows past his reluctance to let her out of his immediate line of sight ever again. "I'll uh...be right back, then? So I can like, get her dressed and stuff..." Which, he thinks as he sweeps his gaze over his daughter, is definitely a must before he takes her to daycare, because it honestly looks like her current clothes were picked out by someone blind. Or blind drunk, as the case may have been; he's fairly sure her nightshirt is on inside out and it's half tucked into pants that it does not match.

Turning back to Kagami, he jerkily hands over the bag of oats, and then hesitates, feeling like the gesture is somehow incomplete...like something is missing. A "thank you" is in order, that's what it is. That's what proper adults do, right?

"Hey, don't worry," Kagami cuts in, before he can struggle one out, tilting his chin in Yui's direction meaningfully, "I'm watching her. So if you wanna shower or something in the meantime, go ahead."

That does it.

"Thanks - thank you," Daiki stammers, in a rush that probably betrays some of his staggering disbelief, and Kagami's face contorts with surprise. He feels a strange, sudden urge to laugh at it.

Hell, he doesn't expect Kagami to realize that for him, the concept of a private shower - one that doesn't involve corralling Yui in the bathroom with him so she can remain supervised while he rushes to get clean - is a huge novelty all on its own. It's a giddy, almost whimsical thought, it feels like fucking Christmas. No, of course he wouldn't get that; the magnitude of the gesture is totally lost on him.

"Uh...sure thing," Kagami says eventually, probably going for noncommittal, but he still looks confused, "Don't mention it."

Only when he shuts the bathroom door behind him does Daiki realize what a crime it is that Kagami opted to let him shower first. It results in five whole seconds of him standing there, staring at his shower curtain and remembering that it is covered in hundreds of brightly-colored, creepily grinning cartoon fish. Thinking hysterically of tearing it down and pitching it over the balcony railing. Thinking of Yui with a crown of lather in her hair, naming every one of the vile things in a sing-song voice and splashing bath water all over his shirt. Thinking fuck my entire life.

Pushing down a couple horrifying thoughts - such as, what if Kagami got up to take a piss in the night and flicked on the light to see that monstrosity? - he shakes his head and cranks up the water, strips out of his wrinkled, sweaty clothes and steps under the spray. There's an awfully kid-friendly bath mat under his feet and a procession of rubber toys along the rim of the tub, but nothing trumps the fucking fish.

Now that he has a minute to himself, while he soaps up and lets the jets rinse off the lousy, grimy feeling that's hung over him since waking up, he can't seem to stop thinking about how Kagami actually ended up staying the night. Really, just doing the gentlemanly thing and taking Daiki home after paying witness to his laughably poor alcohol tolerance would have been remarkable enough; that he went out of his way to pick up Yui too is downright shocking...and anything beyond that is just overkill.

I mean, who even does that? What the hell does he think he's gonna get out of sticking around? The casual charade has been blown, Kagami has the full picture now, and he has to see all the complicating factors that would come with getting involved with Daiki, so why bother wasting any more of his time? Why keep being so patient and agreeable when it must be clear as day that this isn't going to be an easy hookup, and he's going to have to work around Daiki's fucking schedule to get even a sliver of his free time to himself? Why not just cut his losses and try his luck somewhere else?

The technicolor cartoon fish staring him in the face don't seem to have any ideas, and though he racks his brains until the last bit of sudsy water has swirled down the drain, he still doesn't either. He shuts off the water and shoves the fish aside, no more enlightened than before.

He pauses while getting out of the shower, in the process of reaching for a towel, because he swears he can hear the muffled sound of distant music drifting toward him from the other side of the bathroom door. He shakes his head quickly, tipping it from side to side, in case it's just water in his ears, and frowns at himself in the steamed up mirror when the faint baseline and indistinct vocals don't seem to dissipate. After quickly scrubbing his hair dry, he throws a clean shirt over his head and yanks on his jeans, so he can cautiously ease the door open and investigate.

The music is immediately louder and clearer outside the bathroom, and as he crosses the threshold barefoot and peers into the kitchen, the source becomes obvious. Kagami is there, looking entirely too comfortable standing over Daiki's stove, and he must have found a pot after all because he's stirring something, presumably oatmeal, hips swaying slowly as he mouths along to a vaguely R&B-sounding English song playing through the tinny speakers of his phone on the counter beside him. And next to the phone is -

"Nope," Daiki says, shaking his head and dislodging the...weird jumble of feelings that image evoked in him a moment ago as he stalks over with a purpose, because - "Nope, she cannot sit on the counter, dumbshit!"

"Daddy, Uncle Taiga!" Yui says happily, pointing him out to Kagami before allowing him to scoop her off her perch and set her down safely on the floor. Once he does, he can suddenly breathe a little easier, but his shoulders are still tense. He's letting "uncle Taiga" slide entirely for the time being, but he's totally gonna bring it up later because what the actual fuck?

Kagami blinks at him, looking genuinely startled, the long spoon in his hand hovering over the pot as Daiki continues to glare at him until he formulates a response. He vaguely registers that in the background, the song has faded out and the first notes of a new one are starting up.

"Um...sorry?" Kagami tries eventually, "I-I didn't know."

"That's common sense, moron!" Daiki hisses, "Do you want her to break her neck falling from that height?"

"I was watching her," Kagami argues, setting the spoon down.

"Bullshit you were."

A separate, interjecting thought seems to cross Kagami's face, and he glances at Yui, who is now clambering around Daiki's ankles asking when breakfast will be done, a furrow coming between his split eyebrows.

"What?" Daiki demands, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Is the...swearing around her a regular thing?" Kagami ventures, and he doesn't really sound judgmental, but… "It's just, Kuroko said -"

Daiki holds back an irritated sigh, tipping his head down to look at Yui, who is now bracing a hand on his knee so she can crane her neck to try and see the stove.

"When Tetsu has his own kid, he can make whatever rules he wants," he says, with finality, and Kagami must be better at taking a hint than he thought, because he lets the subject drop.

.

.

"I want to make it very clear," Shintarou said, for probably the third time, "That this is not an ideal situation for me."

This time, Aomine didn't ignore him, but his muffled reply was far from reassuring.

"Yeah, I got it. Welcome to the club," he grunted from where he was lying prone beneath the front of his vehicle, so that only his legs and feet were still visible. Shintarou's eyebrow twitched, but Aomine seemed to sense that he wasn't done talking yet, because he beat him to the punch, rolling out on the skateboard supporting his back so that he could meet his eye, his face illuminated by his phone's tiny flashlight.

"Trust me, Midorima, you're not my first choice for a babysitter." He huffed a laugh, "Hell, you're not even in the top three, but I'm kinda out of options at this point." And with that, he disappeared back under the car again, "Just hold her for like...five more minutes, okay? I'm almost done."

"What are you even looking for under there?" Shintarou scowled, adjusting his grip on the squirming infant in his arms, who insisted on repeatedly reaching up to attempt to dislodge his glasses from his nose.

"Fluid leak," Aomine said shortly, sounding irritable, "That's usually what's wrong when transmission cuts out like this, if I could just fucking find it..."

Shintarou sighed. While it was a certainly rather odd to see Aomine show knowledge or interest in something completely unrelated to basketball, in some form this was still very typical of him. An admittedly impressive depth of expertise, in an absurdly narrow field...to the point of shutting out everything and everyone else.

Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but right now, Shintarou didn't appreciate being shut out. Nor did he appreciate having a restless, violently teething baby dumped into his lap without warning, all because Kuroko apparently had a conflicting night class and Kise was indisposed with the flu.

"You should count yourself lucky that Oha Asa predicted a beneficial interaction between Cancers and Leos today," he said.

"Thought you said I was a Virgo," Aomine muttered disinterestedly, reaching for something on the ground beside him and scooting the skateboard further up.

Shintarou glanced ruefully at the child in his arms, who was currently chewing on today's prescribed lucky item - a large, yellow rubber duck - while looking up at him with wide, guileless eyes.

"I am not interacting with you."

He thought he might have heard Aomine laugh in response to that, "Well you should count yourself lucky she's being quiet right now," he replied grimly, "She was a nightmare the past couple of days - even Kise said he was gonna go deaf if she kept it up."

As if on cue, Yui chose that moment to pull her mouth off the duck's tail with a pop and give Shintarou a wide, gummy smile. He considered grimly that she might have been the culprit behind Kise's illness, and made a mental note to disinfect the duck and anything else that might have come in contact with her germs as soon as he got home. Assuming he did return home from this encounter in one piece.

"Right," he said at last, "Lucky me."

A moment later, Aomine eased himself out from underneath the raised frame of his vehicle, sitting up and tossing a dirty rag onto the pavement in defeat.

"Well?" Shintarou prompted.

"Nothing," Aomine scowled, shoving off the skateboard and onto his feet, "No gaps, no spotting, everything under there looks fine."

That sounded like good news, but Shintarou had a sinking feeling that he shouldn't start rejoicing just yet. Aomine looked frustrated, his forehead pinched with annoyance, and he was starting to roll his sleeves up to his elbows.

"So what does that mean?" he finally dared to ask.

"It means the problem's probably under the hood," Aomine grimaced, bending down to lower the jack suspending the car off the ground, "Can you hang onto Yui for awhile? This may take longer than I thought."

Shintarou started to open his mouth in protest, and promptly found a rubbery duck bill being thrust up against it instead. It was alarmingly, unacceptably wet.

"Longer?" he sputtered, "How much longer?"

But Aomine had already turned his back and was heading out of the apartment's garage without another word.

"Aomine, how much longer?"

Resisting the urge to go after him and demand an answer, or shove his daughter back into his arms where she belonged, he stayed put, trying to ignore the uncomfortable chafing of the baby's diaper against his inner arm, and the copious amounts of saliva and bite marks she was inflicting on his sacred item.

He had explained, at length, to both Kuroko and Aomine, that while he didn't necessarily mind being in Yui's proximity as long as she was supervised, he himself did not care for children. Let alone babies, which were loud and messy and often prone to destruction of personal property, in his experience. He didn't know the first thing about handling them, or otherwise interacting with them beyond acknowledging their existence, and he did not want to know. He had thought by now there was an understanding in place: he would tolerate Kuroko looking after Aomine's daughter once a week, and allow Aomine to parade her through the common living area of his shared apartment whenever he so chose, provided she was kept a healthy distance away from him.

So much for that assumption.

He wasn't even sure how he had wound up standing in this garage, holding onto this wriggling, slobbering by-product of his former teammate's genes, in the first place. Perhaps some unlikely combination of the downright civil manner that Aomine had asked over the phone, and the resulting incessant prodding of both Kise and Kuroko, urging him to do his part and lend a hand, just this once. Shintarou didn't quite understand the logic behind that. To his mind, there wasn't a single aspect of the situation Aomine had landed himself in that he should be held responsible for, and even if there were...for goodness' sake, not even Kuroko made house calls.

He glanced at the inert, heavily dented black car resting on its jack beside him, and admitted that Aomine may have had an actual, viable reason for not bringing his daughter over this time, but it was still a highly unreasonable demand for him to make, all the same.

A tiny hand on his face incited him to jolt in surprise, and he turned his attention reluctantly to look at his current charge. Yui had been silent all this time, wearing an expression that he could only adequately describe as a frown, her cheeks puffed out in displeasure, but her face lit up as soon as she regained eye contact with him, and she burst into rapturous giggles, reaching immediately for his glasses again. Craning his neck back in order to evade her, he tried to push her hand down with his much larger one, and her stubby fingers clasped around the base of his thumb instead, her intent, round eyes never straying from his own.

Shintarou blinked in surprise.

She didn't seem to harbor any strong opinion of him - or, indeed, any notable insight or intelligence that he could see - but there was some sort of strange gravity to her stare, just the same. Something about her alert curiosity and apparent desire to understand that for the first time made him consider, perhaps, making an effort to understand her as well.

"Alright," Aomine interjected from the doorway, walking right past where Shintarou was...possibly about to have a moment with his daughter, to stand in front of his decrepit car once again. He was clutching a daunting array of mechanical tools, including a wrench, pliers, and several long, metal rods in one hand, and a wad of clean white cloth in the other. "Gimme fifteen minutes, tops. If I can't sort it by then, I'm taking the goddamn train."

Shintarou didn't say anything, and merely side-stepped out of his way, inclining his head assent to show he understood. He watched Aomine pop the hood and proceed to survey the engine underneath, with the same kind of single-minded focus he had seen so many times before, on the basketball court.

"Can't believe I have to resort to the fucking dipstick," Aomine grumbled absently, and Shintarou snapped to attention at that, his mouth falling open of its own accord.

"I-I beg your pardon?" he squawked indignantly, scandalized.

Aomine blinked at him over his shoulder, one of his tapered metal tools already poised in his grip, looking nonplussed for an instant.

And then he burst out laughing.

It was, of course, much rougher and deeper than his infant daughter's high-pitched, gurgling giggles, but Shintarou could have sworn there was still some odd similarity there; in the breathless gulps between bouts, perhaps, or the way his eyes crinkled almost shut but still remained locked, unwavering, on Shintarou's own. Shintarou continued to stare at him, open-mouthed and oscillating between confusion, and anger that was mainly a product of said confusion, as he waited for an explanation.

"No, oh God, okay -" Aomine gasped, once he'd recovered from his moment of hilarity, brandishing the rod in his hand at Shintarou like a sword, "This. Is a dipstick, it's literally called...shit, I didn't think you of all people…"

Shintarou felt his face start to heat up.

"I… Well. How was I supposed to know that?" he sniffed, pushing his glasses up his nose haughtily with his free hand, "If your usual manner of speech weren't so uncouth to begin with, I might not have assumed -"

"Yeah, yeah, I really don't need the lecture right now," Aomine waved him off, rolling his eyes. Then he paused, in the process of inserting the dipstick into one of the engine's reservoirs, and looked at Shintarou again. "Hey...thanks, by the way."

Shintarou looked up, taken aback, "What?"

Immediately, Aomine smirked, all sincerity gone, and raised his voice deliberately, "I said thanks! Get some hearing aids, old man."

Shintarou scowled, "I'm literally a month older than you."

"Yeah, and you literally look it," Aomine shot back, seeming delighted that Shintarou would rise to his absolutely childish bait. Shintarou drew up to his full height, pulling Yui closer to his chest.

"Well if you're so young and immature, maybe you should have your parenting license revoked," he retorted facetiously.

A pause. Aomine stilled, but his daughter did not, squirming in Shintarou's grasp and babbling something that was mostly consonants.

"Since when do you need a license?" Aomine asked finally, dragging his metal rod through the cloth in his other hand without breaking eye contact. He had responded to the usual unserious banter readily enough, but all of a sudden his voice had turned cold, and he was no longer smiling. It occurred to Shintarou that he may have reached for a touchy subject; one that had honestly been hovering on the tip of his tongue for the better part of six months, whenever he saw Aomine.

They had never discussed it. Never been in the same room long enough to acknowledge the enormous, diaper-clad elephant in it. Not even Kuroko was willing to bridge that gap. And while having Aomine's illegitimate child thrust into his arms didn't necessarily make it any more of Shintarou's business, at some point it was human nature to speculate.

"You -" he began.

"Whatever you're gonna say," Aomine interrupted warningly, "I've probably heard it a million times by now."

Shintarou's lips thinned into a frown, and for a moment he said nothing. Aomine reached for one of his tools and turned around before continuing.

"So either tell me something I don't know or shut the hell up, alright?"

Normally, Shintarou would be appalled by that, and might shoot back with something like "I could stand here all night listing things you don't know," but Aomine's tone was tired now, no longer fishing for a reaction, and he sensed that continuing the conversation would require...a more delicate approach than that. The warning was clear; if he jumped down Aomine's throat with all his questions and accusations now, he would be shut down, and depending on where he chose to strike, he might not be forgiven for a lack of tact either.

In the end, he decided to opt for the latter option, falling silent and ruminating over what might be safe for him to say. He didn't have a very clear frame of reference here, and Aomine's actions had always been rather difficult for him to predict. Now in particular; he honestly hadn't expected his unserious remark to trigger such a strong, defensive response from him. He had gathered from Kuroko and Kise and even Momoi that Aomine as a parent was a very different creature from the Aomine they all knew from school, but that may very well have been the first concrete proof he'd seen of that.

For awhile, he just watched Aomine work, allowing Yui to continue mutilating his lucky item while her father dug around beneath the hood of the car, until his shirt became stained with grease and oil and chalky, white dust, and his face and neck were glistening with exerted sweat. Yui was nodding off, and Shintarou's feet were starting to ache from standing for such an extended time, so he picked a spot in the garage that was free of clutter and debris and sat down gingerly against the wall, settling the infant in his lap while she put two fingers in her mouth, content to cozy up to his chest.

Aomine's fifteen-minute deadline came and went. Then thirty minutes. Then an hour. And finally, Shintarou found himself being shaken none-too-gently awake by a large, sweaty hand on his shoulder, having drifted into a doze right where he was sitting. He blinked, and Aomine's blurry, frowning face jumped into view. He was squatting in front of him, holding his glasses in the hand he wasn't bracing against his shoulder.

"Don't poke your fucking eye out, stupid," Aomine said simply, handing his glasses back before standing up straight and stretching his spine, twisting from side to side.

"What time is it?" Shintarou asked, replacing his glasses on his nose and finding that he was still holding Yui, now fast asleep in his lap.

"Time for you...to get a watch," Aomine grunted, lifting his arms over his head and flexing them outward, "And go home so you can get some beauty sleep, or...whatever the hell you're going for, I really can't tell."

Shintarou hung his head and sighed deeply against his own chest, reluctantly acknowledging this as a return to the norm. He started to shift so that he could adjust the slumbering baby in his arms and get to his feet, but Aomine was there in a flash, stooping down to hoist his daughter out of Shintarou's lap, and fit her securely against his own shoulder.

"Were you able to resolve the problem?" Shintarou asked as he stood, regaining his height advantage.

"Yeah, I guess," Aomine shrugged, the shadows under his eyes and the sweat standing on his brow putting paid to the indifferent act. It was obvious from his exhaustion and the jet black backdrop of the sky outside that it had been a struggle. A long one. "It'll do for now. Thanks...again."

He must have really been wiped out, to not even put up an attempt to tease this time. Shintarou supposed he ought to respond in kind, then.

"You're welcome," he said, "Have a good night, Aomine."

Perhaps the others had been right after all, he thought as he prepared to leave; perhaps Aomine really had changed radically since becoming a father.

"Yeah, loads better now that you'll be out of my hair," Aomine scoffed, hitching his daughter up a little higher against his shoulder. Shintarou made sure he turned away from him fully, before he allowed a very, very small smile to touch his lips.

Then again, perhaps not.

.

.

By the time he gets Yui fed and dressed and out the door, with Kagami in tow and still trying to be entirely too helpful, Daiki has started to realize that not only is he in deep shit, he's well and truly fucked.

So it turns out, Kagami can cook like a wizard, magically transforming Daiki's bag of instant sawdust, discount peanut butter and overripe bananas into a legit pot of porridge that was...easily a contender for the best breakfast he's had all year. Also, Yui seems to adore him, chattering on and off about "uncle Taiga" (again, what the hell) in the same tone that she talks about stickers while Daiki manhandled her into her overalls. And, on top of that, while they all bolted down the glorious concoction of sweet and savory that Kagami somehow produced from Daiki's stove, Daiki couldn't seem to get the mental image of slowly swinging hips and half-lidded eyes, and lips shaping soundlessly around memorized English lyrics, out of his fucking head.

So it turns out, Kagami's a catch. His life might as well be over now.

It's not a long drive to daycare, but while he and Kagami don't say much, and haven't since breakfast, Yui talks the entire time, making up stories with the stuffed animals Daiki put in her lap, and occasionally singing something to herself that sounds just similar enough to whatever Kagami was playing earlier to make Daiki - in a passing moment of insanity - actually consider asking him what it was called. Probably not such a good idea, if he wants to sleep again sometime this century.

Kagami finally makes eye contact with him when he pulls up at the daycare, wearing a question on his face as he turns in his seat.

"Should I just stay here, or…?" he trails off, but the implication is obvious.

"Sure," Daiki says, and almost adds 'for fuck's sake, you've done enough,' before thinking better of it.

To make matters worse, after he helps Yui out of her carseat, he almost, almost lets slip something along the lines of 'say bye to Uncle Taiga, okay?' before thinking better of that too. Old habits die hard, he thinks, and wonders for a second if Yui might say it on her own anyway, even without the reminder. She doesn't, but probably only because she's distracted by her animals at the moment, trying to fit them all under one arm so Daiki can take her other hand.

"One second," he says, unnecessarily, rather than leave Kagami hanging, and then shuts the car door with his free hand, linking his fingers more securely around Yui's so he can lead her up the walkway.

Daycare is bustling, as it often is in the morning, with swarms of kids sprinting with safety scissors and glitter glue and harried parents trying to shove their belongings into cubbies so they can get to work, often amid clingy and sometimes tearful protests on the parts of their children. Some days Yui tries pulling that card too, but most of the time she's too excited to get away and find her little circle of friends to even let Daiki take off her shoes first. Such is the case today. She rockets away the second he untangles her from her jacket, arms overflowing with stuffed animals that she can't wait to share and/or show off to the others. He sighs softly and takes the opportunity to hang up her things, waiting for the moment she realizes.

"Wait, Hitoka, I forgot something!" she yells over the usual din, easily one of the most vocal toddlers in the room, and then she hurries back, considerably unburdened by animals now that she's passed some off to her shy little blonde friend.

"What did you forget?" Daiki asks upon her return, stooping down to her level with a knowing grin.

As an answer, she stands on her toes to quickly throw her stubby arms around his neck, "Bye, Daddy!"

"Bye, sweetheart," Daiki murmurs into her hair, squeezing her back once before standing up straight, "See you tonight."

"'Kay!" she agrees, loudly, and promptly scrambles back into the fray with her velcro shoes still on.

Slipping his hands in his pockets, Daiki watches her go, and then turns his head to check the analog clock on the wall behind him. He's cutting it close now, and he still has to drop off Kagami before he can even head to work. At this point, it's just a matter of how late he's going to be.

Kagami is right where he left him, leaning one elbow on the passenger side windowsill and resting his cheek against his fist. He doesn't say anything, and only raises his head slightly as Daiki gets back in the car and slings his seatbelt across his chest. He twists the key in the ignition, clicking his tongue impatiently as he listens to the motor struggle to turn over. He imagines he can feel Kagami's eyes on him, watching, thoughtful.

Then the car shudders to life, and finally they're on their way. With Kagami's address already plugged into Maps, he just has to pull out onto the main road and allow himself to be guided this time.

For the first few blocks, neither of them say a word, but Daiki is still extremely conscious of the space that remains between them, the awkwardness of it, the occasional tiny movements of the figure beside him responding to bumps in the road.

"So you're a dad, huh?" Kagami prompts at last, popping the bubble of silence but doing nothing to ease the tension. Daiki's eyes cut to him briefly. He'd expected the question, but not right at this moment.

"Oh, now we're going to talk about it?"

An almost silent sound, rather like a laugh, expels from Kagami's chest.

"Yeah, sorry...I didn't get a chance to ask you before, and last night you were kind of…"

Daiki hunches his shoulders against the reminder, and the implied embarrassment, "Right...well, I'm all ears now," he says, going for sarcasm in the face of uncertainty, "Ask me what?"

For a few seconds, Kagami doesn't reply, and he wonders fleetingly if that might have come across as too harsh. That worry proves to be unfounded, though, when Kagami does open his mouth.

"Can I ask...why?"

Daiki scowls down at his turn signal as he flicks it on. Like he hasn't heard that one before.

"Why what?" he retorts, and even he can hear the underlying sneer in his own voice, "'Why am I doing this?'" When Kagami doesn't respond immediately, he presses on, "Why didn't I just ditch my best friend in high school after I found out I knocked her up? Do I really look like that much of an asshole to you?" A beat, then, "Don't answer that."

"No," Kagami says, neutral, when he could probably be forgiven for snapping back just this once, "That's not what I meant, it's just...you were only seventeen... you couldn't have known what you were signing up for, so…?"

"It's really not that complicated," Daiki sighs, not bothering to ask where Kagami got the specifics. Tetsu or Kise exacting their revenge on him, no doubt. "And if it wasn't Satsuki, hell, maybe I wouldn't've."

He lets that thought flutter briefly, almost amusing in its hypothetical absurdity, across his mind. If it had been someone else, literally anyone else...would he have done anything different? Thoughts like that have become increasingly uncommon for him over time, and they're just as pointless and irrelevant now as ever before, so he only ends up waving them away.

"She's…" he hesitates, tripping over the words for an instant. She's too goddamn smart for this... "She's going places now, and she totally deserves it. I thought, then, that she probably could have a really great future, if she didn't -"

"So could you," Kagami interrupts, and Daiki blinks, more at the matter-of-fact tone than the statement itself.

"What?"

"I saw the letters," Kagami says, by way of elaborating, "Nippon, Chuo, fucking Meiji? You could've gone anywhere...but you gave it all up for her."

Daiki shrugs, with his hands still cradled around the steering wheel, hell-bent on avoiding his gaze, "I guess so. So what?"

"Do you ever...regret it? Anything?"

Daiki finally shoots a glance at his dead serious face, and then turns back around as he laughs it off, short and derisive, "I don't know who the hell you think I am, Kagami, but I really ain't got that kind of time."

TBC

"Let Me" - ZAYN

(If Aomine had asked what that song was called, he really never would have slept again.)

You guys, I finally got this chapter done and it turned out LONG! I've honestly been working on it from the minute I posted chapter 5, I'm really sorry it took so long, but I kind of just found out my long-standing problems with my wrist might actually be a result of a bigger issue with my spine, so I've been seeing a chiropractor to try and sort that out. I'm so glad I did get it done, though, because there are some things I meant to put in waaaaay earlier in this fic that we can finally get into now! I'm so excited you guys you have no idea. Holy shit.

This fic is still my baby, and rest assured, I do have a plan for it, but you know what really helps? Feedback!
Comments honestly give me life, and make my day, feed the author!))