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BANDS OF black AND blue
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17 : this saccharine infinity
"Here," he says, after their first official match together. Kuroko looks at him curiously before accepting the ice-cold water bottle. "It's really hot," Aomine says, as a means of explanation, "You look like you're about to collapse."
"...Thank you," Kuroko murmurs, uncapping the water bottle and drinking. When he's finished gulping the whole thing down - and Aomine has to bite his tongue to stop himself from crying out: 'Hey! I want some!' - he laughs, as if surprised. "I guess I was more thirsty than I thought," he simply says.
"...Idiot," Aomine grumbles, rolling his eyes and lightly thumping the other's head, "Bring your own water for the matches next time."
Kuroko pays him back some months later with a hamburger. Well, actually, it's a bag of hamburgers that Kuroko buys on a whim, when they're walking home from basketball practice one day and Aomine is complaining of hunger after having practiced too much. "For Aomine-kun," Kuroko says, taking out a burger and Aomine thinks he means just that. So he reaches for the burger and Kuroko hands him the bag and he feels his jaw drop.
"Uh... Tetsu... you know that I have to eat dinner after this, right?" he asks, even while he's inhaling burger after burger.
"Yes, yes," Kuroko responds, munching contentedly on his own.
"For you," Aomine says, a couple weeks before their middle school team is crowned triple champions. Kuroko takes the popsicle without complaint and the two of them stroll down the sidewalk, chatting about basketball practices and how everyone - along with the other teams - has been doing. Kuroko manages to amble onto the forbidden topic of Aomine's frequent skipping of practice and Aomine merely grunts noncommittally. He does not think Kuroko would approve if he told him that he was just sleeping on the school rooftop, waiting for Kuroko to be done with practice.
So instead, he tells Kuroko another facet of the truth - how the game is getting too boring for him and he's tired of winning without much effort.
Apparently, this explanation does not suffice either as Kuroko - in his typically subtle-until-it's-not manner - pulls back Aomine's collar and casually drops his freezing cold (and no doubt licked) popsicle down Aomine's sweater. Aomine shrieks in a very manly manner and although he hears what Kuroko says afterwards, it's difficult to pay attention when your entire backside is coated with quickly-melting popsicle.
When he walks to his home, he peels off his sweater, extricating the wooden popsicle stick from his shoulder blade (needless to say, whole new levels of uncomfortable were reached) and then, just for the heck of it, running fingers down his back, experimentally licking them.
Then Aomine snickers to himself, because he's a middle-school boy and he finds the idea of sharing an indirect kiss with Kuroko to be hilarious.
The next time anything is exchanged is after the Generation of Miracles, after the miserable Teikou graduation, after that embarrassing match with Kuroko's pathetic new light. They're at an onsen to... he's not too sure why, since no one sure as hell is doing any training (and pretty much everyone else is trying to climb the fence to catch a glimpse of breasts) so he walks around until - but of course - he sees a prone form that he already knows to be Kuroko.
The other could never, he remembers, stand the heat or the cold, always passing out at some point or another.
He wishes it were pity that caused him to pop three coins down the vending machine, placing a can of cold soda in front of the semi-conscious basketball player.
And so they play, not directly against one another (no, it can never be like that - Kuroko can never be like that), and with each second that the match continues, he feels something thudding away at his heart until - in the last few seconds, he realizes that it doesn't matter what the score ends up - he needs to practice like hell and he still needs to improve. And then the game does end and the world freezes in front of his eyes because his team - Touou - has lost and Kuroko's team - Seirin - has won.
Kuroko meets up - free of teammates (namely: Kagami) and titles and somehow, it feels like the past is years behind them. He holds out an ice cream cone (chocolate, even though his own is vanilla) to his old teammate, face as impassive as ever before. Aomine laughs, throwing his head back and not caring when the bruise-worthy pain hits his skull because he was sitting closer to the wall than he thought. He laughs and he laughs and Kuroko just stands there, taking a bite every now and then from his ice cream cone.
"He's pretty good, I'll give you that," he admits, wiping the tears from his eyes. Kuroko continues to prooffer the cone and, after a brief pause, Aomine takes it, mashing it into his mouth, not caring the least on propriety. "He's nothing without you though," Aomine crunches through the bits and pieces of waffle cone that fall through his wide-open mouth. When he's finished swallowing, he tilts his head back up, looking more at the ceiling than the sky. "Oh man," he says in an almost-grumbling voice, "It looks like I'll have to start seriously practicing now!"
"Aomine-kun - " Kuroko starts, but Aomine's better than that; he stands up quickly, brushing off his shorts and pulling the towel from his face to his neck.
"Tetsu..." he starts, and then turns around, grin wide even if he's still smarting from the loss. "Thanks."