Hey everyone, I'm so sorry that it took so long for me to post this chapter up! It's actually been mostly written for a week now but uni is CRAZY and I just didn't have the time to finish that little bit off.
It's a little short but I promise the next chapter will be longer and it should be up before next week! Enjoy!
Chapter 4
If Aomine had expected for things between him and Tetsu to radically change – and he's not admitting anytime soon that he did – then he clearly, definitely, most certainly thought wrong. After that kiss, if you could call such a fleeting press of lips a kiss, Aomine had stumbled home in a cloud of rising hope, elation and pure confusion. It was one thing for him to grudgingly concede, to himself, that he harboured these tender – unwelcome – feelings towards his ex-shadow but it was an entirely different matter for there to be even the slightest molecule of possibility that these emotions were returned in kind. He had spent the week before their next chance encounter replaying the kiss over and over again and so by the time he actually saw Tetsu face to face again, Aomine had unconsciously convinced himself that they were in a relationship of some sort. So seeing the light haired boy gaze back at him with his usual apathy in response to Aomine's admittedly squeakier-than-normal greeting had been like a splash of cold water, jolting him back to reality. And to make things a thousand times worse, the stupid red-haired Bakagami had been right next to his ex-shadow, with an arm slung casually over the smaller boys shoulder and the other in the process of reaching up to ruffle the silky blue strands. Seeing the two together, acting so… couply sent him into a tailspin, left him reeling in shock and inevitably led him to become a total and utter bastard to the phantom player.
It wasn't like Aomine set out with a plan to hurt Kuroko or intentionally throw pointed looks and words that might as well have been barbed arrows dipped in lethal poison. He couldn't control himself. Whenever he set eyes on Tetsu, his eyebrows would come bearing down into a glare of their own accord; whenever the smaller boy greeted him, his lips would curl into a hateful sneer that he couldn't stop and whenever Kuroko bravely soldiered past these strong deterrents to start an actual conversation, his tongue would dry up in his mouth then proceed to hurl curt, barbed words in retort whilst his mind screamed in vain for him to just, "Shut the hell up!".
It was after one of these disastrous confrontations at a chance meeting in Maji Burger's that whilst Aomine stomped home harshly berating himself (really what was wrong with him?! If there had ever been the chance of the phantom player returning his feelings, he had just shot them all to hell, and that wasn't even the worst part. Aomine hated the hurt look that clouded Tetsu's normally blank gaze, the small indent on his lower lip that meant he was chomping down hard in an attempt to hold back tears and the subtle white marks of his clenched fists. And what for, because he had been leaning into Kagami's friendly embrace or was it because he paid more attention to, looked so fondly at, spoke so admiringly of that big lump of an idiot?), Kuroko decided that enough was enough, he had given Aomine-kun more than adequate time to accept the new direction he wanted, had always wanted, for their relationship to go. He had hoped that the kiss after Seirin's game with Yosen would be enough to convey his feelings; after all, even Aomine-kun couldn't be that dense. Kuroko sighed; he had underestimated just how thick and dense his previous light could be. It was time to bust out the big guns, the heavy artillery that he had desperately hoped to never need.
As he slipped his phone out of his school dress pants and flipped it open to press speed dial '1', Kuroko's thoughts shifted to the dramatic one eighty Aomine's behaviour had taken. He had seen the pleased look on the tanned boy before Kuroko had slipped away so he was more than surprised when the next time they met, Aomine had reacted with such hostility that was still present now, three weeks later.
A cool, cultured voice broke through his musings, "Tetsuya. You need my help."
It was not phrased as a question, rather it oddly resounded of command, then again since he was the one on the other end of the line, not so odd. Before Kuroko could respond the authoritative voice continued.
"I assume Daiki has been giving you trouble."
Kuroko couldn't stop the small smile that tilted a corner of his mouth up. Although he had not exactly missed the entirely suffocating and dominative way his captain had ruled all the Teiko first string player's lives, it had also been reassuring that the red head always knew what was going on and how events were going to be played out before they transpired.
"Meet me at the park tomorrow, ten sharp. I will alert the others."
Click.
With Akashi-kun on his side, Aomine-kun wouldn't stand a chance.
As always, I'd be over the moon if you left a short message, telling me what you thought!