Aomine Daiki was routinely one of the worst students in class, but he liked to believe that he made up for his apparent lack of intellect with a fierce overload of justice. Certainly, things weren't always black and white, but if someone had been tricked, they ought to have the thing swindled from them returned. If someone had been harmed, their harmers ought to be responsible. Momoi had always shook her head in school and told him he was a special brand of Randian hero, to which he never understood. "Stay pure, Dai-chan," she wished.

He supposed it was a little fairy tale-esque that he chose to enter law enforcement, but at the same time he also supposed if he were really to pursue childish dreams, he'd enter the headquarters of the Japanese Police Forces and persecute hardened criminals, but he was happy patrolling local neighborhoods and working police boxes. There was just something so incredibly daunting about being a hard-knuckled officer that didn't sit well with him - and anyway, someone had to be the one to help people live out their lives and that pleasant business.

"You'll need someone to watch over you," Momoi decided, so she joined the force with him.

Aomine never understood Momoi's choice to follow him - once he fancied she fancied him but both agreed such a notion was almost too off putting to consider. She was a woman of money, born to a father who owned a big, successful business, and even her friendship with such a simpleton as him - who thought bread for lunch was ideal and bicycling was the greatest way to travel - amazed him sometimes. Obviously she excelled in her field over him, working hard to be promoted to sergeant of their little station, but still she refused a position with the national police force. It boggled Aomine, and quietly he was happy she wanted to be around him. He was glad that she went to his middle school and he was glad she possessed a commendable chest which was how he broke the ice. She slapped him.

Still - Momoi insisted on patrolling in pairs, which gave her an excuse to follow Aomine around the neighborhood and chat with him about her life and her father and her apartment in the city, thirty minutes away from the police box by car and forty minutes away from Aomine's tiny house. So he learned that she was to be engaged - or at least, destined to marry.

"Who is the man?"

"His name is Akashi Seijuro. His family owns..."

"...Akashi Corporations? That's pretty huge. I think that company has made at least half the appliances in my house."

"Yep," Momoi agreed, nodding. She had her long hair up and pinned to a neat bun, peeking girlishly from behind her officer's cap. She was so respectable and quite a woman. She was his best friend. "My father wants this because it's beneficial for the family. Our marriage is a symbol of an alliance between the companies, stronger than anything just on paper, and would pool our resources in the interest of the people and the economy." Sometimes she was talking way over his head.

"Is that okay," Aomine asked. "Such a thing like...getting married. Is it okay to go that far?"

Momoi beamed. "It's fine. As a cop, I'm not rolling in the men anyway. And didn't you know, Dai-chan, that everyone with money and a spouse also have secret lovers? Not saying that's what's going to happen, but you know, it could." She laughed, though Aomine didn't find it funny. "My family was very surprised when I chose this life instead of being a businesswoman so I guess this is my way of appeasing them."

There were a lot of things wrong with this situation, but Aomine could not place his finger on just one. "I hope he's a nice guy," he settled with, grumbling and unenthusiastic.

"He's very nice," Momoi insisted.

Before them a few feet away was the very thing Aomine loved about being an officer. A teenager, probably in his early teens fresh out of adolescence, was pestering one of the elderly women in the neighborhood. Of course, it wasn't youth harassment that meant so much to Aomine - but the fact that he could do something about it. In the city, he'd be dealing with insolent punks who needed more than a stern scolding once in a while, or with adults that did not think they needed guidance; but here, he could solve problems, make a real difference in the community. And perhaps from here, he could change the world. It was a simple ideal, but it motivated him nonetheless. "Excuse me, is there a problem?" he called, striding up to the two.

The youth took a step back and made up a flimsy excuse about fundraising when Momoi finally fell in step with Aomine. "I'm certain your father or mother would be more than happy to discuss your fundraising activities with us! It isn't everyday that someone as young as you participates to improve society!"

The boy flushed and his guilt-ridden face was enough. "Run along," Aomine dismissed. "Don't bother your elders; there are so many more worthwhile things to do and you don't look like a bad kid." The boy gave them a grateful look and scampered off.

"That should hold him off for a few weeks," Momoi chirped. "Good work, Dai-chan! You make a great bad cop."

"Thank you," the old woman says, bowing to Aomine, then to Momoi. "Both of you. You two make a fabulous team, you and your girlfriend."

"I'm not his girlfriend," Momoi laughed. "I'm engaged to someone else, practically!"

"We're practically family," Aomine agreed, the uncomfortable feeling returning whenever he thought of Momoi getting married, having a family, and he would be the stupid little brother at home waiting for his turn.

"Oh! My apologies." The woman beamed at them, infected by Momoi's good nature. "Indeed, you two seem extremely close, like siblings." She seemed to hesitate, then pushed on with a shamelessness that Aomine did not expect of someone probably born during the Meiji Period. "I have a daughter, very pretty. If you are single, at the moment..."

"You ought to have gotten her information!" Momoi insisted after they had bid the old woman farewell and continued on their patrol. "God knows how long it's been since your last relationship, Dai-chan. Even I have to be worried for you, a young man like you who isn't even looking for someone to spend some time with alone!"

"I'm not interested," Aomine sniffed. "I've got no time for a relationship." In between his shifts and playing basketball afterwards and going out for drinks with his colleagues, he was in the peak time of his youth. The few girls he'd dated in high school, he remembered being tired - kissing was nice, and having a beautiful girl at his side was pleasant, but it was all so temporary. He supposed he might not need to enter a relationship to find a nice person to be with in bed, but sex friends left a bad taste in his mouth. His parents had written themselves into his psyche well and he had vowed for their sake that he'd treat whomever he was to be in a relationship with the best he could. He liked security and a sense of stability.

"Sure," Momoi sighed. "I suppose your little friendly talks with the girls you meet at the bars are just you being social."

"There's a difference," Aomine insisted. "I mean nothing by it, and they don't mean anything by it either, and I never bring any of them home."

"Rarely, that's true. You really ought to settle down, then, Dai-chan! You seem like a perfect married man."

"Are you really going to get married? Like, you're really going to go through with it?"

"Yes! Why do you sound so surprised all the time? Do I not seem like the type?"

[=]

There had been a new face at the basketball courts just around the corner from the firehouse that Aomine liked to frequent around eight at night when all the teenagers bored with the afternoon finally left to go home or wander the streets. He had been the only one for a long time, and he liked it that way, mostly. Occasionally he asked a coworker to come along for a one-on-one, but sometimes he liked to be by himself, dribbling and shooting layups against invisible enemies. He could play against himself. One night, he found someone else, ducking like a madman and throwing around basketball talent like he didn't have a care in the world.

"Let's play," Aomine had said, by way of introducing himself. They played until a standstill and Aomine was feeling hungry, so he proposed they continue later and went off for a late dinner with the feeling of impressed exhilaration at such a rival.

It wasn't until several long, sweaty nights later that Aomine learned the name of his new basketball acquaintance, a firefighter at the fire station around the corner. "Kagami Taiga," Kagami said, bringing his hand out for the first handshake between them. "Pleased t' meet you!"

With the exchange of names and numbers, as Kagami was not always at the basketball courts when Aomine was, they had dinner once and went out for drinks three times, and Aomine was around when Kagami mumbled awkwardly after a particularly rousing game how he ought to go about tactfully asking someone out. For a moment, Aomine was a little shellshocked, remembering all the terrible romance novels Momoi had read excerpts to him during middle school; but Kagami confessed, very quietly and almost endearingly youthful, to falling in love with someone he'd met when a local kindergarten took its class to the fire station as a field trip. He was tripping over his words, almost as nervous as if he were in front of the person himself, that Aomine felt sorry for him and resisted teasing him. Though, as a police officer, he had to confirm -

"No, it was not a child!" Kagami protested, so alarmed all the fear had drained out of his face momentarily. "It was one of the teachers. I can't believe you'd think I'd go for a kid!"

It has been quite an event in Aomine's life, so much that Momoi had suspected that Aomine had found a woman for himself when he answered a phone to talk to a frantic Kagami who was calling him from a restaurant's restroom, demanding how he ought to go on now that he'd accidentally blurted out his feelings over dessert. Aomine had promised to take him out to get smashingly drunk in the event of a refusal, and when Kagami did not call back later that night to take him up on that offer, he smiled to himself.

It had been a while since he'd finally met Kagami's paramour, an unsuspecting-looking older man who preferred to sit on the sidelines of the court to smoke a cigarette and looked at Kagami with something warm in his eyes when Kagami wasn't looking, and even he was feeling something wasn't right when Kagami opted not to go for a dunk despite given the opening. "What's wrong with you?" Aomine shot, when Kagami scuttled off to get the ball after it bounced pathetically against the backboard. "You're not like yourself lately. What the hell happened?"

"Nothing," Kagami huffed, scowling, and they went up against each other again, and after Aomine easily stole the ball from his hands and went for an easy charge, he said, "Kuroko broke up with me."

"What? Why?"

Kagami shrugged, wiping himself with his shirt. "He called me out one afternoon after his class was out and told me we were done. I don't even remember saying anything wrong or doing anything wrong; he kissed me the time before that."

"Why did he say you were done?"

"I don't know. He told me he was tired of us and that he was older and I shouldn't be limiting myself anyway, so we should split up. I told him I didn't mind and I liked him all the same but he said our schedules conflict anyway and I guess it was true that we weren't spending as much time together as we used to, but - is it just me? Or is it weird to you too?"

Aomine dribbled thoughtfully. "He's not that older than you."

"Yeah, right." Kagami sighed. "I thought maybe he was insecure that there was an age gap between us but he said he wasn't and he never once doubted my fidelity to him. So I have nothing left to go on beside..." He hesitated. "...maybe the idea that he doesn't feel the same way anymore."

"Maybe something happened, that you don't know about."

Kagami was distracted. "Maybe. But he won't meet with me when I just want to talk to him, so I don't know what else to do." He was still very much in love with Kuroko, that much was clear. Aomine did not know what to do, as a casual basketball friend. He guessed Momoi might know, and she knew Kuroko almost as well as he did, but he wasn't sure if Kagami wanted the world to know of this.

"Maybe you should give him space," Aomine offered weakly, hating the theoreticals in his mouth. Kagami did not seem to hold this against him, giving him a shining smile.

"Don't worry about it," Kagami laughed. "It's my problem. I didn't mean to unload on you. I mean, I already complained about it to his roommate and I guess if I can't get through to him at that level, I should maybe reconsider."

"Wait," Aomine rushed. "If you wanted to talk to him, maybe I could - ask him to come see me and you could just...happen to show up. Could that work?"

Kagami raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that kind of sneaky?"

"You want to talk to him and he's resisting. Anyway, if Tetsu really doesn't want to stay, he'd leave no matter what we'd do, right?" He wondered if he ought to have reconsidered his nickname for Kuroko; he'd used it once during an argument with Kagami about the best professional basketball team and Kuroko had sided with him - though he doubted Kuroko had wanted to rile Kagami up to kiss him quietly afterwards - and it had stuck. But Kagami did not seem fazed. "Maybe we can even bring the roommate, to make it less obvious and weird."

"That sounds like we're ganging up on him."

"No. I'll take the roommate and graciously take my leave and you two can duke it out." Aomine shrugged. "It's your call, though."

"I..." Kagami was a good guy. He was a little simple-minded and a lot gullible, but Aomine thought he was alright. "I'll give Kise a call."

[=]

Note: yerp