Summary: "I'm here for Aomine-kun, actually," the really cute stranger corrected her. Satsuki's hopes sank faster than her pitiful swimming skills. T.R.C.S. looked past her, to where her best guy friend was glaring obliviously at the ocean's horizon, and added, "His po- people want him to come home." Her hopes for a summer romance experienced a swift and joyful revival. "He's never talked about his family much," she prodded curiously. T.R.C.S. seemed briefly pained, and Satsuki immediately felt terrible for making such a pretty person unhappy. "Well, he did leave us for a reason, I suppose." [merfolk!au] [gen, with hint of momoi/kuroko]
Disclaimer: I don't own KnB or the cover picture.
"He 'left' you?" Satsuki echoed.
She frowned, slightly, and glanced back at the still-scowling and still-oblivious Aomine, suddenly seeing his unwillingness to talk about his personal background in a different light. "As in… he ran away?"
T.R.C.S. sighed, much like a sea breeze, and appeared quite tired all of a sudden, though his air of calm didn't break so much as strain.
"It's… not as complicated as everybody thinks," he explained-without-explaining, leaving out exactly who was 'everybody.' "But that's basically it, yes. May I sit down with you, Satsuki-san? It is not a long story, but I've come a significant distance to find Aomine-kun, and I would like to rest, if I am to tell the not-long story. Aomine-kun was always the one who caused the most trouble, and took the most effort to rein in," he added, fond and a bit wry.
"How did you find him, anyway?" she asked, instead of commenting on his observation. She did scoot over on the scraggly, salt-soaked grass first, however, and Satsuki tried very hard to pay attention to what T.R.C.S. was saying, rather than how soft his hair looked up close, how flawless his skin, how gentle the rise of his throat, how deliberate his every motion. Very hard, though it was debatable whether or not she succeeded to not visibly fawning.
If she did stare, at least T.R.C.S. was polite enough not to point it out.
T.R.C.S. sighed again, watching the waves curl and dissipate at the shoreline, a few dozen yards in front of them. There was a curious lack of body heat coming from him at her side, but to question that would be both rude and revealing of how aware she was of their closeness. Which was… no, not a thing she wanted to acknowledge out loud, in case he didn't notice or was purposely ignoring her infatuation with him.
"That is one of the complicated parts," he admitted. "Suffice to say, we- that is, his friends and family -knew Aomine-kun would not be able to avoid the ocean for long. Three years… we didn't expect, but stubborn as he was, even he couldn't avoid the ocean forever. It is something that… calls us in. For me, finding him was just a matter of keeping an eye on all the coastlines. Of course, we- his friends -couldn't be everywhere, so we split up the coastlines among us and our families. We knew he couldn't leave the country by air travel."
He paused. "As I am telling you all of this, and you'll most likely see me around until I can convince Aomine-kun to come back, you may call me Kuroko. I will trust you with that, since Aomine-kun seems to."
Satsuki immediately pinked as brightly as her hair. 'Way to flatter a girl…!'
"Thank you, Kuroko-kun. Your trust isn't misplaced," she promised, more formally than usual, feeling a little uneasy by his solemnity, but like she had to reciprocate his sincerity.
T.R.C.S.- no, Kuroko, graced her with a very faint uplifting of his perfectly kissable lips.
Satsuki blushed even pinker, whereupon Kuroko graciously and thoughtfully turned away, back to gazing (adorably) fish-eyed at the waves.
After a pause, he continued.
"You must understand, our… neighborhood works differently. Our closest bonds are between families, which are sorted by t- by eye color, not by blood. Aomine-kun is closer to me than my own half-brother is." Kuroko stopped, and his tone brightened slightly with amusement as he confided, "Seijuurou- my half-brother -actually scares Aomine-kun. He has red eyes, you see."
Actually, she didn't see, but Kuroko clearly expected her to, so she smiled and chuckled obligingly. His blank expression gave off a sense of satisfaction, despite not visibly changing.
"Our second-closest bonds, however, are between friends, which can be chosen and exceed the family segregation. We… title friend-groups as 'pods,' as a little joke, since our neighborhood is very involved with marine life. Aomine-kun and I were in the same, rather small pod. Rather exclusive, too. Seijuurou was also in it, as well as three others. Our pod was very talented in a sport popular in our neighborhood."
"Was it basketball?" Satsuki asked, beginning to feel like she was finally understanding her taciturn best guy friend. Then again, Aomine hadn't known how to play basketball when they first met on campus; he'd simply picked it up extremely fast, and extremely well, good enough within weeks to garner sports scholarships, within months for sponsorships.
Kuroko seemed to be mildly confused. (It didn't, Satsuki noticed, detract any from his prettiness.) His facial features soon gently smoothed themselves out, however, like the tidepool's pulses washing away the minute accumulation of debris on stone. "No," he replied, amused once more at an inside joke, "it wasn't the kind of basketball you are referring to, Satsuki-san, but it did involve tossing a ball back and forth into team-guarded baskets. Perhaps the best comparison would be… underwater basketball?"
Now Satsuki was confused. "Wait, like water polo?" She was then distracted by the implications of what he was saying. "Wasn't that hard, if you had to come up for air, and swim against currents in the places deep enough to be fully submerged? Unless you had a pool… And wouldn't the ball and baskets naturally float up?" Wearing goggles for vision was assumed, so she didn't question that.
He switched from emanating amusement to understanding; since the invisible cues were very useful for gauging his otherwise emotionless face, she also didn't question how she could feel them.
"Ah, no" Kuroko corrected, "We were… essentially raised in the ocean our entire lives. Breathing wasn't a problem, and we were all strong swimmers. Yes, even me," he emphasized, apparently deducing what her instinctive look at his outwardly frail body meant. Luckily, he didn't seem offended, and the embarrassed relief from that kept Satsuki from noticing that he hadn't answered her questions about the equipment buoyancy.
Taking a longer breath, Kuroko began to say, "The reason Aomine-kun left us had to do with-"
He was cut off, when Aomine, up on the balcony, inevitably turned his head from a view of the sea to a view of the lawn, and caught sight of their surprise visitor.
Well, he caught a glimpse of him, anyway, and seemed to squint and focus until he was certain that he was who he thought he was. Either way, Satsuki saw the expression of genuine, unfaked shock on his face when Aomine confirmed it was Kuroko. She also saw the expression of genuine, unfaked resignation.
"Oi, Tetsu!" he called, wary, as if marking his own fate. "You're here for me, aren't you? Quit bothering Satsuki and get up here, then! We can talk well enough away from the tide!"
Or was he wary for Satsuki?
'But no,' Satsuki reasoned, 'that couldn't possibly be it. Why would Aomine be wary of Kuroko spending time with me? Kuroko is so polite and darling and- and utterly harmless. No, maybe Aomine's just trying to keep his old friend- his brother, actually, or something like that according to Kuroko -away from his new one. Embarrassment, like telling baby stories of somebody. Yes,' she decided, growing more confident in the likelihood of this version of things, 'that's just it.'
Then Kuroko, by her side, sighed for a third time, drawing her attention.
He looked right into her eyes.
Satsuki noticed, distantly and dreamily, how perfectly captivating they were, despite their distinctly fish-like shape.
.
.
.
"Why don't you watch the pretty ocean for a while, Satsuki-san?" Tetsuya suggested softly, his voice a silken surface upon which the urging to agree was sewn. "Watch the pretty sea. It's you, not me. Nothing else around here but you, Aomine-kun, and, oh, a bunch of fish. You may as well sit here and watch the pretty waves as you wait for Aomine-kun to come back…"
His words faded away.
'I'm sorry about this, Satsuki-san,' he mentally said instead, for she really was an alright human. 'It won't last long, though. You'll see me again soon. And for that, I'm sorry once more, but I need to talk to Aomine-kun now without you interfering. At least, until I come back.'
And then Tetsuya allowed himself to fade away as well.
… Nothing so dramatic as what that phrasing brought to mind. He simply looked apologetically at the pinkette, who was too entranced by the waters ahead to notice his attention, before walking away.
Aomine-kun's scowl of disapproval from the balcony was noted, of course, but Tetsuya had done what he thought had needed to be done, just like always.
The scowl was exasperated, too, because Aomine-kun undoubtedly knew that by now.
"We need to talk," the darker bluetail- bluenette was the human term, he supposed -stated grimly when the lighter bluetail finally reached him.
Tetsuya smiled faintly up at his scale-brother, who he had finally reached.
"You haven't lost that talent for stating the obvious, I see," he observed neutrally, and it was almost like they'd never parted.
Almost.
.
.
.
Satsuki quickly forgot the faintly ethereal, evanescent boy she'd talked to on the lawn of her jointly-rented beach-house, and stayed out watching the waves with a niggling sense of melancholy, though she wasn't sure why, until Aomine passed her on the pathway and called her in as well.
She wasn't aware that he'd ever left the house, but assumed she'd just missed him while she'd been focused on the ocean.
"Have fun looking at the sea?" he grunted, with a strange tone in his voice. Before she could answer, he added, "was it just you?" with the air of expectancy that clung to those who knew what was coming.
Frowning, and a little irked by how he acted like he was just asking the questions for some other confirmation, Satsuki bit out, "Well, who else would be with me? It's just me and you for the next mile and a few cliffs. Me and you and a bunch of fish, Ahomine. And for your information, the sea was very pretty today. I did have fun looking at it," she repeated, defensive despite not knowing why, and only getting more annoyed by that.
"Yeah," Aomine said, still strangely, and now with a dash of frustrated fond weariness, "I bet you did, Satsuki. C'mon, let's just get inside and eat something. This is going to be a long vacation."
Still frowning, but out of covered-up worry at how her friend was acting, the pinkette grudgingly flounced inside.
The bluenette entered a few paces behind her, glancing back suspiciously at the grass beside where she'd been sitting, staring almost hypnotized at the roiling waves.
If there was an ident, it'd long since sprung back up. And he just knew that he definitely wouldn't have felt any lingering body heat there, regardless of what time after the suspected occupant had left.
"Damnit, Tetsu," he muttered under his breath.
Aomine firmly closed and latched and locked out the ocean behind him.
.
.
.
~What do you think Kuroko did?
~What do you think Kuroko and Aomine discussed?
~Do you think Satsuki really just missed Aomine leaving the house?
-Please review.-
Next chapter is an interlude, told from Aomine's viewpoint. Satsuki's narration is the default.