It was plain that Aomine wanted this night to just be over, or at least the part of it involving Himuro, and it’s not like Himuro could blame him. Unfortunately it was a matter of safety that he see Aomine off (not to mention paying for the cab), so they were stuck together a bit longer. And regardless of how he played it off, it wasn’t like those poker games were stressless events, especially when he was playing a close shave on the edges of cheating (had any of the others brought in someone for the purpose of losing, it would have been fine, but he was the new kid, young and too sharp for their liking).
He considered the breeze and crossed in front of Aomine to be a few feet downwind before he fetched a cigarette from his jacket’s inner pocket, along with the lighter to light it with a satisfying click. This made two tonight, a good bit more than usual, but the weight in his pocket said he deserved a little deadly indulgence. And the words next from Aomine said he needed the nicotine.
He gave a withering look at what amounted to a threat. “You wouldn’t, Daiki. After all we’ve been through together?” The sarcasm was potent, but the hope remained. It’s not like he could put any measure of trust into such a casual acquaintance, even if he did feel he had a general understanding of Aomine. He’d been wrong before. Had to adjust his feelings on the fly. Put simply, it wasn’t hard to fuck up reading a stranger when you kept them at arm’s length, and as reckless as Himuro had been with the sides he let (or had to let) Aomine see, that’s what they still were.
He took a moment, punctuated by a particularly slow drag, to take weights in his mind. Word-against-word, of course Taiga would trust Himuro first -- they were brothers, and Aomine was, as Taiga told it, kind of a dick. But considering the subject, were Aomine to play tattle-tale and Himuro not be there to make a show of laughing it off... well, it wasn’t that hard a tale to believe. And if that was true, what other dangerous rumors was Tatsuya a part of? How much should Taiga be worrying? It lead to too many questions.
Maybe it was bullshit, baseless words purely to get under Himuro’s skin. Maybe he shouldn’t let them do their job. Maybe he should, as it were, call Aomine on his bluff. But this wasn’t Himuro’s world anymore, the rules no longer applied, and the cards wouldn’t be on the table unless it was too late. “And how would I buy your silence? Figuratively, if possible -- my winnings are already thoroughly spoken for.”