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BANDS OF black AND blue
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takes place in dreamsofdestiny's fantastic "The Age of Champions" (shootswishscore livejournal) universe
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18 : where all roads lead
Three things occur to Aomine Daiki the first time he thinks - quite seriously - about quitting basketball. The first is that he would suddenly have a huge gap of time with which he would have nothing to do. The second is that by the nature of being the Ace of the team, there is no way in hell Akashi would allow him to quit the team. The third is that if he managed to overcome the first two difficulties, without basketball, he would have absolutely no way to interact with Kuroko - they do not have any classes and they do not have any other shared interests.
And so he stays.
The tables turn after he has just chased Kuroko across the streets of downtown Tokyo, having spent a good half hour of his night running until he cannot feel his legs anymore and then, even after that, still pushing onwards. He has no idea how to react when the other is crying and he cannot say anything in-response when his fellow teammate tells him that he hates playing basketball; that he hates playing basketball with Aomine.
His initial knee-jerk retort would be that he hates playing basketball with Kuroko too - and he can't even get his mouth to form the first syllables because it's such a spitting lie.
Somehow, he manages to get himself home - from a distance, he thinks that someone might believe the two of them to be two classmates who are walking the same way home. He knows the truth though: this is a build-up to a good-bye and he is helpless in stopping it.
Surprisingly, time manages to fly by (or perhaps the days are just bleeding and melting into one another - he can hardly bring himself to care) and he keeps himself busy replaying Kuroko's confession - "I hate playing basketball with you" ; "I hate playing basketball with you" ; "I hate playing basketball with you" - and subsequently falling asleep in class, caring about grades and tests and high school applications less and less as the weeks move at a steady rate around him.
It is Akashi - of course it's Akashi - who ends up orchestrating everything; he is just the idiot who stands moping in the corner. He knows that he is the one who begged the other to convince Kuroko - through whatever methods possible - to attend the same high school as the other members of the Generation of Miracles and all the same, he is jealous because at the end of the summer, the reason why Kuroko comes to Rakuzan is because of Akashi - not himself.
The Kuroko that answers the doorbell that summer afternoon is someone he knows all too well and yet, ultimately, not at all. He wants to make like Kise and convince the other to play basketball again - to at least think about playing basketball again (he wonders if this is how far he has come: to go to the same high school as Kuroko and be unable to play basketball with him) - but his brain is still running a loop of Kuroko telling him how much he hates playing basketball with Aomine. Just like that, their fourty-minute subway ride to the Rakuzan campus passes through in complete silence.
Rakuzan is, ultimately, a dream that is perpetually two feet away from arm's length. He is roommates with Kuroko (who doesn't say a word to him for the first three weeks of school and only after begins monosyllabic conversations which last a couple seconds at best) and he is made a regular on the basketball team without even legitimately trying out (Akashi smiles and continues pulling strings in the background, no doubt) and the dorms are good and the food is fine and - he admits this to Kise after a particularly strenuous practice session - he's happy that Kuroko is at the same school, even if he's not playing basketball.
Still, the dream is so close that he wants to just reach out and drag Kuroko out of his chair, pulling him to the basketball courts and shoving a ball into his open arms. Somedays it hurts, looking at the court and realizing that Kuroko is not on it - has not been on it for months and what if he's rusty and what if he really won't ever play basketball ever again?
This is Aomine Daiki at the metaphorical crossroads of life: Kuroko Tetsuya, the only person he'll ever be able to call a 'partner' in basketball, has just showed up out of the blue for practices in the Rakuzan gym after having skipped them for almost two months and he is stuck between being furious and being ecstatic. This is what Kuroko Tetsuya manages to always elicit, without hesitation, without fail: he doesn't need to think about it because already he feels his feet pounding against the floorboards, running towards the other the only way he knows how.