Chapter 5
Kuroko awakened to the sounds of muffled voices and the feel of soft, downy blankets on his skin and relaxed in contentment. His relaxed state did not last long when he realized that his room did not have soft mattresses or such gentle lingering warmth. The shock of actually being allowed to sleep on a bed pushed his mind from drowsy sleepiness to a wide awake state in less than five seconds.
He scrambled quickly off the bed, nearly spraining his ankle in his haste to get to the floor. On the familiar safety of a hard floor, he stood up and edged his way towards the bathroom, making sure to keep the door to the room constantly within his eyesight. After using the lush facilities of the bathroom he hunkered down in the corner of the room and curled on the floor next to the bed hoping to get some more sleep. He must have fallen asleep sometime in his contemplation of the odd situation he was in when he was jerked awake by the stare of a stranger on his skin.
On his hunkered position on the floor, Kuroko observed a young man slowly step into the room. In his hands he held a strange pink blob and on the other hand he held a first-aid kit.
The young man had striking green eyes with dark, deep forest green hair. His gait was a little bit stiff and he was quite tall, but not as tall as Murasakibara. His eyes were the intense under the wire rims of his sleek rectangular glasses. His gaze was serious and penetrating and his facial features gave nothing away. The sharp intelligence and wit Kuroko could see in his eyes contrasted with the odd presence of the strangely shaped pig toy he could see in his hands.
Kuroko could not help but chuckle at the strange quirky way he appeared to be and decided to hesitantly introduce himself.
"Sorry about that. You just looked so oddly quirky like that I couldn't help myself." After saying that Kuroko felt oddly nervous and he started to fidget.
"My name is Kuroko Tesuya...wh-what's your name?"
He received a short and efficient reply, "Midorima Shintaro"
After a few beats of awkward silence he glanced at the door wondering if Kise and Murasakibara were going to appear, but his musings were halted when Midorima slowly walked forwards towards him.
Glancing uncertainly at him Kuroko shuffled backwards a bit but to his surprise Midorima proceeded to kneel down near him. He was starting to suspect that the people living here were his bond mates, and were surprised again by the kindness these people constantly offered him.
Midorima sat down and offered him a barely perceptible smile but he felt a bubbling warm sensation when he saw it and ducked his head in embarrassment.
"How do you feel? Is there any pain?"
He gave a shake of his head and replied no, when in truth his body was still black and blue from his father's beatings. Before, Kise and Murasakibara could feel the echoes of his emotions he created a block in his mind that stopped any emotions related to any abuse or pain locked away in his own mind, making sure that none of his bond mates would be burdened with his reality.
Midorima gave him a small packet of pills with a cup of water to relieve his headache. After treating him, Kuroko thought that Midorima was going to leave but a question was asked instead,
"Ryouta said that you're our bond mate. Is that true?"
Kuroko gave a tentative but hopeful nod of his head, and Midorima reached out a taped hand to his face with the soft murmur of, "May I touch your cheek?"
Kuroko surged forwards and grabbed the hand reaching for him and pressed it to his cheeks in comfort. The feeling of the bonding this time was so different from his first two encounters when he suddenly realized why. It was different because people were so inherently different.
Midorima's presence felt like the echo of a forest and the ebb and flow of waves on the sand. It felt like moonlight on darkened pathways and the rain on a humid summer day. It was refreshing in its unassuming nature but it holds within the wild presence of a tsunami and the stone cold ruthlessness of the earth.
A few hours passed when he became aware of his body again and not just captivated by the vastness of the pulsing bonds in his mind. He was brought to alert when he felt Midorima tense up beside him. Seconds later the door burst open revealing a pissed off and annoyed person.
A blur of dark impacted Midorima's body and a rather loud voice all but yelled out,
"Shintarou, I heard you've been in here for hours. I've just come back and no one is explaining what the hell's been happening around here. And it's about damn time I hear it from a reliable source...!" When the dark skinned man noticed that there was a new person in Midorima's arms, he abruptly stopped his irritated babbling to narrow his eyes in suspicion.
Leaning towards Kuroko with an arm slung around Midorima's shoulders, he bluntly said, "Oi! Who are you, chibisuke?"
Kuroko's head spun with the whirlwind of sudden activity the dark skinned man brought in his wake and huffed but he still replied amenably with a "Kuroko Tetsuya, nice to meet you..."
After assessing him with dark onyx eyes the man gave him a sharp smirk full of teeth and wild danger.
"Name's Aomine Daiki, but you can call me Daiki."
Aomine Daiki turned towards the captured Midorima in his clutches and proceeded to mercilessly interrogate him about the events that had been transpiring in the hours that he had been absent for.
Kuroko leaned against Midorima's side in drowsiness when the feeling of two pairs of eyes watching him registered and he looked at them questioningly. Only to be met with Midorima's fond gaze and Aomine's speculative one.
As Aomine stood up to move to his side, the light of the sun rising caught on his hair and Kuroko realized in awe that his eyes were not only onyx but his hair was also a deep obsidian-blue colour that contrasted nicely with his tan skin.
Undoing his own golden wrist cover, Aomime sat down next to him and simply said, "welcome home, Tetsu" before gently petting Kuroko's hair. The feeling of a bond link snapping into existence was overwhelming but it was tempered by the warmth that the words "home" evoked and the lingering joy he felt in his chest. He welcomed the raging storm that he knew was Aomine's presence in his mind and basked in the safety of its wild unpredictable nature.
