x
BANDS OF black AND blue
x
x
x
15 : what distance makes
"I miss you so much," Aomine whispers into his shoulder. Kuroko's hands are stuck - like glue - at his sides and he has no idea how to respond, what to do, anything, really.
...This is, after all, the first time he's so much as seen Aomine after having quit the Teikou Drug Cartel. When Akashi had asked for an excuse, he had given something about timing and location and having 'new goals' in life. The truth of the matter was: he was sick to death of watching people crawling, begging, screaming, crying; eyes red and tears flowing like rivers because they just needed those drugs.
He's tired of that, and although Midorima is the only one he's confessed such thoughts to, the other is nothing if not professional - slicked hair and unblinking gaze. It had been, he remembers, a uniquely drunk night; one of the sweet little girls who was freaking fourteen when she lost her virginity at Momoi's brothel was now just barely sixteen years old and a blood splatter on the second floor because of a cocaine deal gone wrong.
Kuroko remembers being unable to think, unable to work, unable to kill, for weeks after that. Aomine punches him on the shoulder; tells him a life is a life is a life and of course his partner in crime can say that - he's never had tea served to him on trembling hands and a weak smile, he's never had to tell another human being that they were just too fucking pitiful or please just let me buy you for the night so you can get some godforsaken sleep. He's never had to do any of that, so he doesn't know how Kuroko feels - cannot begin to comprehend how Kuroko feels.
"You know I won't let you leave like this," Akashi murmurs, taking a dip in his stash of ground tobacco. Kuroko continues walking forward, knowing that he is the first person to leave the cartel alive - know that somewhere, deep down, Akashi is scared of him (why, he does not know - does not want to know; his hands are just as bloody as Akashi's after all) because that's the only logical explanation Kuroko can give for Akashi allowing him to pack up his things and leave.
It hasn't even been two nights in his new apartment in the southern district of Tokyo when the first murder attempt comes. He should've expected it, he knows that Akashi will not let him go - will not let anyone go - alive. Kuroko knows far too many secrets of the organization and even if they changed every single security combination and password and passphrase in the whole of the central building, he would still be able to glide in by the nature of being the maker of all the locks.
"Come back," the first attempt at murder clutches at his wrists. He blinks, feeling flattered for the worst reasons possible because of course Akashi would send Kise after him first - Kise who thrived in the sun and sky, who lived on crushing little girls' dreams and crying himself to sleep at night - lonely and alone. "Please come back to us, Kurokocchi - Aominecchi hates it when you're not there, you don't belong out here, you're much better than this." He's motioning to Kuroko's decrepit little flat at the edge of the red light district where he drinks tap water and eats cup noodles straight from the water heater.
"You may be right, Kise-kun," Kuroko admits, "I do not think I belong here either," and the other relaxes and that's his mistake and Kuroko knows - when he hits the other in the temple and watches his old friend crumple to the ground - that he's not like anyone in the 'outside' world, the 'above' world. He's still got his reflexes, he has not given up any of his knives or guns or explosives and no one has asked for them back so he thinks that he will keep them.
He observes, in the dead of night, someone cloaked in black coming to take Kise's unconscious form away. For this, he's grateful, because for him, some lives are worth more than others - and he wonders if this is supposed to be the first step to being a 'human'.
Midorima-kun comes two weeks later - well, he assumes it's Midorima, because the bullet grazes his cheek and shatters his balcony window and he needs to remind himself to reinforce those windows with triple coats of Kevlar as well. Midorima, like Kise - like himself - is also prone to silly little things like emotion, even if the other is not happy about admitting it. His fault lies in waiting two weeks to prepare, because that gives Kuroko ample time to prepare as well. There is a tiny trapbomb in the perfect location for shooting out his window; he detonates it two seconds after he hangs up the phone, giving no response to a muffled: 'You picked the wrong road'. It's not fatal, but he's certain that Midorima will have been wounded, to say the least.
Aomine comes third, apparently of his own volition, as - for once - he's without any sort of obvious armament, no automatic rifles or pistols digging into his wrists. He's even passed down his most treasured inlaid dagger. He comes in a t-shirt and shorts, looking more like a tourist than the best hitman of the Teikou Generation of Miracles.
"Aomine-kun," Kuroko greets, nodding his head and preparing himself to break for a sprint out the window (he can survive, but that's because he's planned on going up, as opposed to down). And then the other does something that Kuroko could've never predicted: he grabs Kuroko's shoulders and brings him close for a rib-crunching hug. This is where Kuroko finds himself at the moment, crushed between Aomine's capable arms, coming to the terrifying realization that he is not the one trembling - that it is Aomine (Aomine who was all smiles and laughter and blood and murder - reeking of the kill and loving it) who is burying his head in Kuroko's blue polo, wetting it with tears.
"I'm sorry, please come back," Aomine whispers, and Kuroko does not know for the life of him what Aomine is apologizing for. And then Aomine explains, still clutching him close - it's ridiculous but he feels his blood run cold even as his heart thumps in-rhythm with Aomine's - because he does not understand. "I killed that girl," Aomine confesses, dark-blue hair obscuring Kuroko's vision, "I was jealous of her because I thought she had slept with you. I'm sorry, I won't do it again, please come back, please come back," and the memories of the sixteen-year-old prostitute race back into his vision and he remembers crying over her death, remembers Aomine playfully punching him on the shoulder.
"No," he gasps out - unable to process, unable to comprehend, and are his eyes crying too? He pushes the other away, wrenching himself out of the chokehold that Aomine has always been well known for. "I can't." he says, "Not anymore - never again."
"Tetsu - I don't want to - " Aomine tries, and his eyes are still flooded with tears and that's the only explanation Kuroko can give for the next chain of events. "I don't want to - you have to come back," he childishly insists, tugging on Kuroko's sleeve. Kuroko bats it to the side. "Please come back," Aomine tries again, and Kuroko shakes his head; his heart is racing and he wonders if this is 'endgame' and, if so, endgame for who? "I don't want to lose you to anyone else," Aomine whispers, even as he's cocking the gun Kuroko accidentally left on the floor.
If I can't have you, no one can.
He's vaguely aware that Aomine pulls the trigger - he can see other bullets failing to make it past his thrice-reinforced window panes - and he knows that Aomine wasn't aiming at him - wasn't aiming properly at least. And in that second, he grabs the other's hand and twists until the gun that was his own falls to the floor again. There's no time to think in situations like this, so he doesn't.
Later, much later, when he's resting on a rooftop and self-medicating his single gunshot wound (it's grazed his ankle; crazy luck, Aomine would've muttered, laughing and joking and thumping fists with him), he examines his wrist in the moonlight, taking note of how, somewhere in the midst of the shootout, Aomine managed to leave a blood-red imprint of his own hand while leading Kuroko to safety.
He raises his head to the night sky, laughing pitifully and wondering why it is that living like a human manages to be so bittersweet, so painful.