On Friday morning, Aomine shows up at Kagami's apartment. It's a pretty simple place, smaller than his, but not one of those tiny apartments Tokyo is known for. Aomine doesn't know why he expected it, but he's surprised to find that Kagami doesn't have any of the special equipment that was in the physical therapy office. Instead Kagami had some weights and bands lying on the floor in the center of the living room.
Kagami leads Aomine into the center of the living room. The red head is dressed down today, instead of the regular polo and khakis he and the other physical therapists at his office wore, he is dressed in basketball shorts and a gray t-shirt.
That's when Aomine notices a patch sticking out from under the neck of his t-shirt.
"Why are you wearing that?" Aomine asks, the question leaving his lips without him even realizing it.
"Wearing what?" Kagami asks, confusion in his voice. He looks over at Aomine, and the other man gestures to his neck. "You're joking, right?" Kagami says.
"Hmm… not really," Aomine says, lips growing thin as he sits down across from Kagami. "You know there's no need right? I take suppressants for these things."
Kagami's eyebrow twitches. He sighs and shakes his head. "It's just part of the arrangement, okay. It's getting close to… yeha, you know what I mean."
And oh… Aomine knows exactly what Kagami means. So this must be why Kagami didn't want to meet today, if their last encounter during Kagami's heat meant anything. But then again… Aomine was able to control himself… back in high school.
"Look should we… I don't know… talk about this?" Aomine tries to ask.
"There's nothing to talk about, really," Kagami says, dismissing him. "Now come on, spread your legs out and let's get started." And under other circumstances those words might mean something completely different, but Aomine is smart enough to know when to drop a subject, so he does.
About thirty minutes later, a knock sounds out from Kagami's front door. It startles both of them out of the focus they had fallen into, but Kagami manages to recover quickly and gets up to answer the door.
When he opens it, the doorway is slightly out of Aomine's field of vision. He leans over to try and see who it is, but by the voice he is able to recognize the voice of the person anywhere.
"Sorry Kagamicchi, but he got sick and can't go to school today, and I don't know who else can watch him!" the man at the door says frantically. And yep, Aomine would recognize that voice anywhere. But what is Kise doing here? And what is he talking about?
Aomine tries to lean over even further, and that must be when Kise sees him. "Oh? Is that the high profile patient you were talking about?"
Kagami sighs and answers the blond, "Yes, that's him." When Kagami turns to walk back into the apartment, Aomine sees a small toddler in his arms. Wait… what? Aomine's eyes grow wide.
"It seems you must have forgotten to tell him some things," Kise says, amusement evident in his voice.
"It's not like it ever came up in conversation," Kagami shoots back. And when Aomine shifts his vision from the sleeping toddler in the man's arms to Kagami's face, he notices Kagami is very stubbornly deflecting eye contact from everyone in the room.
Then Kise must realize why he came to Kagami's place in the first place. "Should I call someone else?" he asks. "You're working with a patient."
Kagami brushes him off. "Don't worry about it, He's sleeping anyway and we're just about done anyway. I can make it work," Kagami looks back over at Kise. "Don;t you have to be going anyway?" he adds.
"Oh right!" Kise remembers just why he came here in the first place. He leans over to place a kiss on the child's forehead then turns to Aomine. "Be nice to my kid, or else!" He yells to Aomine. "His temperature went down a little while ago, he should be okay soon," Kise tells Kagami before he rubs the toddlers head once last time before the blond man makes his exit.
Once the front door closes, both Kagami and Aomine are left in silence.
After a pause, Kagami starts walking down his short hallway, saying, "Just give me a chance to put him down, I'll be right back."
As Aomine waits for Kagami to return, he leans his back on the foot of the couch, questions jumping around his head, one forming right after the other. He is broken from his thoughts when Kagami steps back into the living room.
"So, I guess you've met Koji now," Kagami says.
"I don't know if 'met' is the right word," Aomine says. "But I take it he's yours… and Kise's?" Kagami simply nods in confirmation. "When did you two….?"
"It's not like that!" Kagami is quick to say. He reaches an arm up, scratching at one of the patches on his neck. Is he nervous about this? Aomine doesn't know, but he does know that he really wants to smell the man right now. "It was a … a one night stand. Back during our last year of college … we both had too much to drink one night, you know how things go… maybe we made some decision we shouldn't have… but one thing led to another and now…" Kagami is looking down at the floor at this point, avoiding Aomine's questioning eyes. "We're both parents now… we co-parent… everything's going well," Kagami continues, by now sitting down on the couch next to Aomine, but still stubbornly refusing to look at him. "Kise's dating Momoi now, anyway."
"Really?" Aomine says. And wow, he really hasn't kept in touch with anyone, has he? So much for him choosing Kuroko to be his agent. You'd think he would keep him more informed?
Tentatively, Aomine tries to ask again, "Are you sure we shouldn't talk about this? About earlier?"
That question finally causes Kagami to look at him. "That depends… What exactly did you want to talk about?"
And that is an excellent question. What exactly did Aomine want to talk about? "Why did we stop talking to each other? You know… after that night," Aomine finds himself asking. He turns around to face Kagami. "Did I scare you? I did the right thing after all, even when my body was telling me not to!"
Kagami briefly looked away. "It wasn't you… In fact, I don't even know why I stopped talking to you. I guess… after a while I felt it would just be too awkward to reach out again."
"Well that's stupid," Aomine says. "You could have always reached out to me again, idiot."
"Aren't you a charmer," Kagami says.
Aomine laughs. "You see, it seems nothing has changed after all. "
And that statement causes Kagami to laugh as well.
"After all of this is over and you're no longer my patient, do you want to get dinner?" Kagami eventually asks.
"Why wait that long?" Aomine asks back.
"Because," Kagami says simply as he shrugs his shoulders. "I don't date patients, hospital policy."
"Oh," Aomine responds, then he looks back down at his outstretched leg. "Why don't we get back to this then? So I can no longer be your patient and all."
As the two continue and wrap up the session, Aomine turns to face Kagami. Aomine swallows and looks Kagami straight in the eye before asking, "Before I go, can you take those off?"
The question surprises Kagami, as evident by his eyes growing wide and darkening cheeks. "You want Kuroko to kill me, don't you?" Kagami responds.
"Please," Aomine scoffs. "You know as well as I do that Kuroko did all of this to set us up."
Kagami slowly reaches a hand up to his neck to take the patches off. As he does so, his distinct smell wafts into Aomine's nose.
If asked before what Kagami's scent smells like, Aomine would have said he didn't know, or he didn't get a good enough smell that one night to remember. But smelling it now, it all comes back to him, and the scent smells distinctly… Kagami.
"I've missed you… you know?" Aomine says as he turns to leave through the apartment door, crutches underneath his shoulders.
"Me too," Kagami responds as he walks Aomine out the door. "You wouldn't believe how long I've missed you."
Before he finally leaves, Aomine looks back at Kagami's face. "See you in three days then?" he asks.
"Yep," Kagami nods. "I'll see you then."