Chapter 3

Kuroko couldn't honestly say that he was surprised when he saw the state his locker was in the next morning.

Someone had the bright idea of painting the word faggot across it in big, all capital, red letters. He ignored it, opening the locker to get out his books, and found a couple of slips of paper that had been shoved into the open slits of the locker at some point. He didn't read them, just simply threw them away. He had a pretty good idea of what they would say, and had no desire to see if he was right.

Akashi walked over and assessed Kuroko's locker with a look of distaste. "I thought something like that might have happened. If you've gotten all of your things out, let's start fixing it." Akashi said, holding up a can of paint, similar in color to the lockers, and two paint brushes.

Kuroko gave the redhead a small smile of appreciation. "Thank you, Akashi-kun." It seemed that not everyone was against him then.

"Don't waste your time thanking me, Tetsuya. We'll be late to class if we don't start right now." Akashi replied with a shrug, handing Kuroko a brush and getting to work on opening the paint can so they could get started.

"Hey, Kuroko, did you suck his dick to get him to help you?" A kid passing them asked. His face went pale when he realized just who was helping Kuroko.

"Haizaki, I look forward to seeing you in third period." Akashi said with a smile that promised retribution. After that no one messed with them while they worked.

Kuroko couldn't say the same for Akashi, whose class was only a few paces away from Kuroko's locker, but Kuroko barely made it to his own class on time. He steadfastly ignored Aomine, who had made an appearance that morning. Probably wanting to see the fallout that his little stunt had created.

"Kurokocchi! I think you forgot that you promised to have lunch with me today." Kise said with a bright smile that didn't falter in the slightest as he harshly, borderline violently, shoved a few guys who had been surrounding Kuroko away from him.

"You're eating with the fag, Kise? Or is he eating you? You always did strike me as a bit too flamboyant."

Kise's elbow shot out and hit the guy in the face without even looking at him, bright smile not faltering for a second. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I guess my body just reacts negatively to people acting like idiots." Kise said, his smile getting a bit of an edge to it. "I suggest you back away and shut the hell up if you don't want it to happen again." Kise finally looked at the guy, who was now clutching his nose, his tone a little too friendly to be genuine.

Kise then turned back to Kuroko. "Come on, Kurokocchi~ It looks like you forgot your lunch box too. I think I saw it up in a tree. What a silly place to leave it. No wonder you forgot. Kasamatsu and I would be happy to share though." He grabbed Kuroko by the wrist and pulled him towards his and Kasamatsu's table.

One of the guys, the same one that Kise had elbowed, grabbed the collar of Kuroko's shirt to stop their retreat.

There was no smile this time as Kise spoke to the other boy. "I'd let go of Kurokocchi if I were you. I don't want to get in trouble for fighting, but if you think I won't you're very mistaken." He said coldly.

"Honestly, how long does it take to get Kuroko?" Kasamatsu said, having walked up behind them, apparently in search of Kise and Kuroko. His eyes quickly assessed the situation and he didn't look too pleased either.

Kagami was right behind him, and looked ready to start a fight when he saw the hand balling up the collar of Kuroko's shirt.

"Six against two doesn't seem very fair, but I'll happily kick all of your sorry asses by myself if you don't get out of here right now."

"Kagamicchi, that's not fair! You can't do it all by yourself! I want to beat them up for messing with Kurokocchi too!" Kise whined.

Kuroko could feel the hand on his shirt loosening. It seemed the other boys were losing their nerve in the face of opponents bigger than them.

Kasamatsu decided to take the more direct wrought, apparently tired of standing around. He stepped forward and yanked the boy's hand off of Kuroko. "If I see this hand on him again, I'll break it." He said, grip so tight it looked like it would surly leave a bruise. "Get lost." He said coldly, letting go of the boy and then shoving him into one of his friends. They scattered. "Now, we've already wasted enough of our lunch period here. Can we go eat?"

"You didn't actually do anything to Haizaki, did you? I didn't see him after this morning." Kuroko asked Akashi in their shared class as he put the lamp that was apparently his lucky item onto their lab station. He wasn't sure how a lamp was supposed to bring him good luck, but Midorima had insisted on giving it to him and Takao had suggested he just not question it, and Murasakibara had offered to carry it for him as he walked Kuroko between classes. Kuroko didn't believe in luck, but he supposed it was a nice gesture on Midorima's part.

"If you're asking for Daiki or Kazunari, I can assure you he is not dead, so neither of them are getting money any time soon." Akashi replied.

Kuroko ignored the pang he felt at the mention of Aomine. He wasn't the subject at the moment. "You know about their bet?"

"Of course I do."

"You didn't answer my question, Akashi-kun. Did you do anything to him?"

"Well, nothing that anyone can prove was on purpose. My hand simply slipped and the scissors I was holding just so happened to embed themselves into his hand. A few stitches from the gym teacher and he'll be perfectly fine. Although, I suppose since he's right handed, and it was his right hand that happened to be stabbed, this will make it just a bit harder for him to hit you like I overheard him planning to do."

Kuroko made a mental note to never get on Akashi's bad side. For the first time since moving to the town, he understood why there was a bet running on Akashi killing someone.

Not many people actually had the balls to directly mess with Aomine. They'd seen him in fights before. He mostly just heard muttered comments from people in the hallways, and found death threats, that no one would follow through on, in his locker.

He did notice that Kuroko seemed to have gathered his own personal guard team, which was good since Kuroko was probably considered to be the easier target. Although, when it came to a real fight, Aomine was still betting on Kuroko.

Aomine watched as Riko and company lead Kuroko away from the school, probably heading to Seirin. "Why the fuck do you have a lamp?" He heard Kagami asking Kuroko as they passed by. Aomine could already guess that the answer to that question had something to do with Midorima and lucky items.

"You're not hanging out with Tetsu-kun today?" Momoi asked, walking up beside Aomine. It probably said something about how good of a friend she was that she didn't even question what had happened the day before.

"He's not really talking to me." Aomine said with a shrug. He recalled how Kuroko hadn't so much as looked at him in first or third period.

Her friendliness seemed to disappear pretty quickly. "What did you do?"

"What do you mean what did I do? Why couldn't it have been something he did?" Aomine asked indignantly.

"Did he do something?" She asked, putting her hands on her hips and raising her eyebrows at him.

"No." Aomine muttered.

"That's what I thought. So, what did you do?"

"I unlocked a stupid door."

Momoi's eyes narrowed at him. She was smart. He could see her figuring out just why Kuroko was upset. "Why did you unlock the door, Aomine-kun?" She asked slowly, and she only ever called him Aomine-kun instead of Dai-chan when she was pissed at him.

"To be seen, of course." He said, feigning indifference.

"Aomine-kun, how could you do that to him? Tetsu-kun has been nothing but nice to you! He likes you! And you did that to him! He almost got beat up today! Did you know that? There were six guys, and if Ki-chan, Kasamatsu, and Kagami hadn't found him he might have had to go to the hospital. Who knows if he would have even made it there? It's not exactly close. The nearest one is two towns over." She was getting emotional, he could see tears pooling in her eyes as she thought about what could have happened to Kuroko. "Do you ever think about anyone else when you do things or is it all just about you breaking the rules all the time? No wonder Tetsu-kun isn't talking to you. I don't want to talk to you right now either!"

She stormed off in the direction of Kuroko's group, probably planning to go to Seirin with them.

"For someone who doesn't want to talk to me you sure just said a whole hell of a lot, Satsuki!" Aomine called after her. He was a bit surprised when she just flipped him off without even looking at him.

Kuroko wasn't sure what to make of it when he heard a knock on the front door at nearly ten thirty, and opened it to see Aomine standing there, hands shoved in his pockets, eyes downcast, and dripping wet from the rain that had started about two hours after school.

"Can I help you?" He asked when Aomine didn't say anything.

"Look, I know I don't really have a right to ask, but Satsuki's not even answering when I knock on her door. Do you think I could crash here for a night or two?"

Kuroko merely raised his eyebrows, waiting for some kind of explanation to the request.

"I just need a place to stay until my mom gets her job back. It's not the first time they've fired her for something I've done, which is stupid because she has nothing to do with any of that shit, but they always realize they can't afford to not have her, and she gets her job back in a few days. I just don't like to hang around during those few days. I usually go to Satsuki's or Kise's, but neither of them are speaking to me."

There was a long silence as Kuroko debated on what to do, Aomine getting more and more uncomfortable the longer he stood there, before he finally stepped aside and opened the door wider for Aomine. "Mother, is it okay if Aomine stays here for a little while?" He called into the house.

A woman, with Kuroko's eyes and hair, poked her head out of the kitchen and looked between her son and Aomine.

"Is this the boy I've been hearing so much about? The town can't seem to stop talking about you two. Of course you can stay, dear. You'll have to take the couch though. It would be pretty irresponsible for me to let Tetsuya and his boyfriend share a room." She said with a friendly smile. She didn't seem to care that the town was not talking about them in a positive way, or that Aomine was a boy.

"He's not my boyfriend, but thank you, mother." Kuroko said.

Aomine thanked her as well before Kuroko started walking further into the house.

Aomine trailed after Kuroko as he walked to the hall closet to get some blankets and pillows for Aomine.

"I'll be honest. I didn't think you would let me in." Aomine said casually as Kuroko opened the closet door.

"Neither did I." Kuroko said simply. He pulled out a fluffy blanket and passed it to Aomine, and then stacked two pillows on top of it. Apparently he was sentencing Aomine to the, not so, heavy lifting.

"Why did you then?" Aomine asked, curiosity clear in his voice.

"It seemed rude to just leave you out there in the rain with nowhere to go this late." He said with a shrug. "Do you have anything dry to wear? I don't think any of my clothes are going to fit you. You're free to use our drier though."

"I'd gesture to my book bag, but my hands are a bit full. I'm not sure how dry the stuff in there is though."

"I think I still have some of my dad's clothes that he forgot to take. Those might be big enough for you. They're certainly too big for me, but I didn't want to throw them out."

Aomine dropped the blanket and pillows on the couch and then followed Kuroko to his room, where Kuroko started digging through one of the few boxes that hadn't been unpacked yet. Aomine was rather impressed at how neat and put together the room was considering the fact that Kuroko hadn't been there for very long.

Kuroko seemed to find what he was looking for, and tossed Aomine a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. "Thanks, Tetsu." He offered a small smile that Kuroko didn't return.

"The bathroom is two doors down." He said, before going to his dresser to pull out a pair of pajama pants and t-shirt for himself. "Our dryer is in the room connected to the kitchen. It still has instructions on how to use it written on it for when my mom was teaching me. She didn't know she was writing in sharpie." He added.

It was the middle of the night, Aomine had gotten his clothes dried. Which was good, because Kuroko's dad's clothes weren't big enough for him. The pants cut off at his calves and he couldn't even be bothered with the shirt. He'd switched out to a pair of pajama pants as soon as they were dry. Now he was lying on the couch, legs dangling over the edge, waiting for sleep to come to him.

Which was the position he was in when he heard noise, and saw light, in the kitchen. "Tetsu?" He called questioningly.

Kuroko poked his head out of the kitchen doorway to look at Aomine as well as he could in the dark of the living room that Aomine was residing in. "Did I wake you up?" He asked quietly.

"Nah, I couldn't sleep. What are you doing up?" Aomine sat up and turned on the lamp on the table next to the couch, blinking a few times to adjust his eyes to the new light.

"I couldn't sleep either. I was getting a glass of water." Kuroko said, holding up the glass as he spoke. Aomine didn't miss the way Kuroko's eyes flicked down to his bare chest before returning quickly to his face. If he didn't think it would make things worse at the moment, he would probably smirk and make some comment about that.

"Since neither of us can sleep, do you wanna hang out?"

"Not particularly, no." Kuroko said flatly. Which, okay, it was fair, but it was still a bit harsh in Aomine's opinion.

"Come on. You can't be pissed at me forever." Aomine tried, not really expecting much.

Kuroko sighed, thinking through his answer. "It's not that I'm not mad at you. However, I don't see a point in being around you any more than is absolutely necessary. It doesn't feel good to be used like that, Aomine-kun. To be nothing more than just a rule to break. It felt like this after barely knowing you for a week. I'm not in love with you or anything like that. It's way too soon for those kind of feelings. But, I do like you, and it's just going to get worse the more I'm around you. I don't want to find out what it feels like to have this kind of thing happen again with stronger feelings involved."

Aomine seemed to consider Kuroko's words for a moment before scooting over to make room on the couch and patting the seat next to him to indicate that Kuroko should sit with him. "We'd better get to figuring this out then, because it's going to be a pain in the ass liking you if you're busy giving me the cold shoulder all the time."

Kuroko hesitated a moment, but finally went and sat beside Aomine, albeit looking pretty reluctant to do so.

"You know what I thought the first time I saw you, Tetsu? After the initial, 'Holy shit! There's a person sitting next to me! How the hell did I not see them before?', that is." When Kuroko shook his head to say that he did not know Aomine continued. "I thought, 'Hey, this guy's cute. Let's see how this town handles homosexuality, I haven't messed with that rule yet, and if I can get laid in the process.' Which, by the way, is totally still on the table if you want to just bang instead of talk. I mean, we should still talk at some point, but we can put the talking on hold." The look Kuroko gave him suggested that wasn't happening, so Aomine shrugged and continued. "Then, when I found out that you helped Satsuki, I thought that you were nice as well as cute. Talking with you just reaffirmed that. It didn't really make me reconsider what I was doing, after all, I love doing anything that upsets this town and shakes things up around here, but it did make me interested in actually perusing something with you instead of just doing something to piss off the town with you like I initially planned on doing."

"What about the people you hurt when you try to upset the town? You're over here because your mother lost her job, and it's not even the first time. We're having this talk instead of sneaking into my bedroom because you hurt me. You're not at Momoi-san's house because you upset her enough that she's not talking to you. The same is true for Kise-kun. It's like you're trying to push everyone away from you."

"Exactly."

Kuroko tilted his head and gave Aomine a questioning look at that response.

"It's not permanent damage. My mom will get her job back, Satsuki and Kise will start talking to me again, you'll get over this, but no one's going to try to convince me to stay here when the time comes to leave. I've seen plenty of people who talked a big game about leaving this town, but then couldn't bring themselves to leave their friends and family. They're still here, working their jobs, raising their families, and never getting out. Of course I don't want anyone getting close. How the hell am I supposed to leave if I want to stay with them? Satsuki became friends with me before I could come to that realization, there's nothing to be done about it, and my mom's going to love me no matter what. But my mom's not going to stop me from leaving. Satsuki wants out of here too. Everyone else, none of them are going to try to keep me here. I'm not tempted to stay for any of them. I don't do anything to intentionally hurt anyone, unless they deserve it like the guys who think it's just totally cool to touch Satsuki when she's not interested, but I am keeping them all at arm's length. I get to leave without hassle, they get interesting stories to tell their kids later. It's a win win situation."

"I think what you did to me constitutes as permanent damage." Kuroko said flatly. "These people aren't getting over it anytime soon. It's good that I was already planning on leaving for college, because I'm pretty sure I'm never going to be able to get a job here. Unless I'm working for one of my friends here, but it would probably take a while for any of them to be in any kind of position to hire me."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I guess I didn't really think that one through. But it's not such a big deal if you're leaving too."

Kuroko leveled him with a glare. "It is a big deal, Aomine-kun. It's a big deal because you're okay with doing something like that to someone. That's not okay."

Aomine sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I know that. What about a second chance? I'll try to keep from causing any trouble that gets other people in trouble. I mean, I'm not going to stop pulling shit around here, but I can try to keep from pulling other people into it without at least letting them know what the plan is. If I fuck up at that you can feel free to drop me, but in the mean time we can try and see how this thing with us goes. What do you say, Tetsu? The town already thinks we're together, so we can't make it much worse by proving them right." Aomine suggested.

"What about keeping people at arm's length?" Kuroko asked, raising his eyebrows at Aomine.

Aomine waved the comment off. "I don't need to do that to you. You aren't planning on staying, so how would you hold me here? I'm pretty sure I've effectively gotten most of the town to not want anything to do with me, if they didn't feel like that already, by getting caught with you."

The long silence that followed as Kuroko thought out his answer made Aomine start to fidget as he tried to figure out what Kuroko was going to decide.

"Okay. One more chance, but I expect a vanilla milkshake for this." Kuroko said, leaning over and pecking Aomine on the lips.

Aomine gave him a blinding grin. "Deal. So, what was that you were saying about sneaking into your bedroom earlier?"

"Not tonight we aren't. It's going to take a bit longer than five minutes after we make up to get me in bed."

"Haven't you ever heard of makeup sex?" Aomine complained.

"I've heard of it. You just aren't getting it." Kuroko ruffled Aomine's hair as he got up. "I'm going to bed."

He was about to turn to leave, but Aomine caught his wrist and pulled him into a kiss. "Night, Tetsu." He said when he pulled back and let go of Kuroko.

"Good night, Aomine-kun." Kuroko gave him a small smile and then started walking back towards his room.

"You know, you could call me Daiki now that we're a thing." Aomine called after him.

"Good night, Aomine-kun." Kuroko repeated over his shoulder.

Aomine rolled his eyes, and settled back into laying on the couch. "I'll get you to call me that eventually." He said, just loud enough to be heard before the door to Kuroko's room closed.

He found sleep a lot easier after their talk.