alright. here goes nothing. kagami walks into the gym alongside sakurai, and is noticed instantly by aomine. he’d been standing near momoi putting up a fuss about something, but his head was turned before they even walked in, like he’d been expecting it. he looks like a cornered animal; his snarling stops, eyes searching for an escape. he can see there’s no way out but through and he resents everyone for it. momoi says something else and he turns to her, says something that looks similar, if kagami’s lip reading is any good, like fuck off, and saunters over. aomine is obviously extremely pissed off. anyone else would see this guy approach and cower away. ( well, anyone else other than kagami, kuroko, sakurai, and momoi -- but that’s neither here nor there. ) kagami breaks eye contact to glance over at wakamatsu. hey, it’s a good sign that they’re in the same room, right! and look, aomine’s still in the gym where he was left. good. this is all salvageable.
“oh boy,” aomine drawls, but his teeth are set together to betray his anger, “the cavalry’s been brought in. pa-thet-ic.”
“come on,” kagami keeps it cool, keeps it breezy. he doesn’t know wakamatsu that well, but he thinks he can see a note of gratitude from his nod before kagami’s attention is stolen away. oh, man, this situation is about to call for so much maturity and level-headedness! he’ll do his best. there’s a lot on the line, and a lot has been lost already.
“this is fucking embarrassing,” aomine hisses when he’s close enough that only kagami and sakurai can hear it. he is glaring terribly at his teammate and it doesn’t soften when he looks at his boyfriend. kagami doesn’t know what to say, so he just nods, and it’s enough. aomine huffs, buries his hands in his pockets, and stalks out of the gym. kagami knows to stay hot on his tail or he’ll disappear. they leave.
it’s not cold today, thankfully, so they’re alright with just their hoodies on. the silence is tense and awkward. kagami can sense that aomine’s act of going on this little walk is him saying see, i’m not that bad with his whole chest. he could have easily refused to come with, or have ditched, or have walked in the opposite direction. or have dipped from practise, or not even come at all! is it fair to make all these excuses for him, when he’s been a real shitbag? ah, damn it. this sucks. he feels like one of them should have spoken by now, but neither has! kagami glances over and aomine is predictably sulking. if it were up to him, probably they wouldn’t say anything at all, then aomine can return and claim that the walk sorted him out, everyone can stop fussing now!
“so,” aomine says, “this is stupid. i’m at practise. i don’t get why he dragged you out here.”
“talk some sense into you, i guess,” he replies sullenly.
“great,” aomine doesn’t question why they chose kagami of all people, which, honestly, he’d kind of been anticipating. in fact, he doesn’t say anything else. then kagami doesn’t. then aomine starts talking again, “spit it out, then, fuck. i ain’t gonna wait all day.”
“sakurai told me you didn’t go to the game the other day,”
“nope,”
“why?” let’s give him the benefit of the---
“because it was against a shit team and they didn’t need me for it. ryou’s making a big deal of it to make a point about teamwork, but fuck that, it’s a waste of my time.”
yeah... it sucks, but kagami doesn’t really know how to argue that one. “yeah, he said you said that.”
“they won, anyway, so...” he trails off, as if that’s point enough.
“they’re pissed ‘cuz you backed out of a commitment, daiki,” he says quietly, “i wouldn’t ditch the guys even if we were playing against a team of middle schoolers.”
“we’re not the same,”
“i know that,”
“they’re depending on me too much, it’s pathetic.”
“that’s what a team does, dude. i don’t know ‘em that well--”
“no, you don’t,” daiki grumbled and is ignored!
“but i know them well enough to know they’re not relying on you to carry the games. they pull their own weight and they’re strong as shit in their own right.”
“okay, so they don’t need me. what’s your argument s’posed to be here?”
kagami clamps his mouth shut and, for a moment, he is fucked pissed off. shut up! this guy is such a dickhead? he has to hold back the desire to smack him over the head or something. that wouldn’t help, and kagami is actually on his side? aomine’s an idiot and he’s in the wrong, and kagami would fucking NEVER do any of that shit, but kagami is always going to be in his corner???
“i know you’ve been benched, dumbass. what the fuck were you thinking? now we won’t get to play each other at the winter cup.”
“they’re not gonna bench me, they just said that so you’ll get me to think i am benched, and apologise.”
“you haven’t apologised?”
“this is stupid as fuck,” aomine raises his shoulders in a drawn-out shrug, “so i let them down once, they can’t get over that?”
“man, i’m glad we ain’t on the same team.” okay, that sounds mean now he’s said it, but it just slipped out! he’s sorry! looking at aomine and how surprised he is to have heard it, he’s extra sorry!
“fuck you?”
he’s about to apologise when he recognises the learning experience! “look,” he says instead, “i meant what i said, but that doesn’t make me less of an asshole for saying it, right? so you should get over it already.”
he’s riled up! aomine’s aura changes, he feels as though they are not on the same side and this is just another lecture. he is seconds away from walking away.
“i just meant i’d be pissed off too if you ditched like that,”
“you should mind your own business,” aomine doesn’t look at him, “we’re not on the same team so this doesn’t concern you.”
“yeah it does, you’re benched and we won’t play. i already said that.”
“he was bluffing, idiot.”
“he wasn’t, idiot.”
“he was,”
“no, daiki,” kagami grabs his wrist and they stop walking, but aomine snatches himself free again in a moment. “you’re benched. he was serious. it’s important you pull your weight too or they’ll kick you off the team.”
this acts as a stick prodding the cornered panther, and aomine reacts as anyone could imagine. he starts by saying, again, that kagami should mind his own (fucking) business and that sakurai shouldn’t have done this, it’s stupid and fucked up to make such a big deal of it. wakamatsu already burnt that special edition issue as punishment, which itself is sick of them to inflict for something like this. kagami asks him who the fuck he thinks he’s yelling at and aomine shuts up for a second, then starts up again but directs it solely to his team. he’s pissed off and insulted and he hates that kagami got involved. that much is very clear. this is stupid, fuck this, he wishes everyone on his team would drop dead. the idea of him being benched is idiotic, they’re too weak and then they’ll lose. aomine won’t get to go up against any other of his old teammates, which he gets worked up about. he should just quit touou before they get rid of him, and move schools. fuck momoi, fuck wakamatsu, fuck imayoshi for giving wakamatsu the ego trip of being made captain. fuck their coach, fuck this, fuck that, another fuck you. kagami lets it slide. he’s grinding his teeth to dust, but aomine doesn’t seem to notice.
he starts ranting about how unfair it is that he should be expected to go to the shitty games, and kagami tells him to go and wipe the floor with them.
“so the game lasts ten minutes,” kagami says, “big deal. they’ll give up, you can get subbed, and the other guys can take over without you. if that’s what the shit games look like, then it can’t be helped, right? you warned them.”
“lame,” aomine grunts. he doesn’t like watching people give up, kagami knows that. but if that’s what it takes to be a member of the team, is that the worst?
it takes some convincing, but aomine finally realises that sakurai was serious about being benched for the next touou x seirin match. it starts him up again, and he tries to shake kagami off him ( figuratively speaking ). fuck you for getting involved, why don’t you fuck off back to your own team? et cetera. don’t be fooled, kagami is not level-headed in these heated moments. he returns the points he made earlier and aomine being shitty to his team, and he tells him to quit telling him to fuck off because it’s not happening, and he tells him that he’s being an asshole. which he is. whenever kagami bites back, aomine backs off a little and redirects the anger elsewhere. he does mean it that he is mad that kagami got involved, but he’s more pissed off that his team asked him to come out here, and not that kagami himself is actually here.
eventually they both simultaneously realise that they’ve inadvertently arrived on kagami’s street. which one of them was driving the chaos bus which led them here? well, this is no good! kagami’s got to get back to practice! and aomine, too, though he doubts whether or not aomine would actually go back. he’d probably go off and sulk somewhere. in the cold. aomine, who has fallen silent as they stand on the corner between the direction of seirin, and the direction of the apartment, glowers at the pavement. it’s cold. he’s cold. aomine will be cold, too. he can make it up to his team for abandoning them, can’t he? kagami, that is. god knows how aomine can recover from any of this, but then-- sakurai did say that he had done worse. much worse. and they still liked him. hell, it had been totally ignored at the time given the circumstances, but sakurai actually said that he loves aomine! good. good. he should love him. thank fuck he does love him.
kagami has made the decision. he plucks at aomine’s sleeve to pull him into walking again, heading towards the apartment. “come on, dumbass. we may as well go back to mine, i guess. you’re kind of a bad influence on me, ‘cuz now i’m playing hooky.”
aomine doesn’t say anything.
he isn’t sure if it’s the right thing to say, and probably aomine isn’t even thinking about this, but kagami voices what he’d last been thinking about. “they care about you a lot, y’know. your team. that’s why they care so much if you’re there. if they didn’t, what difference does it make to them if you participate, as long as they win?”
“i’m done talking about it, taiga.”
“okay, sorry.”
the next few declarations of man, fuck those guys were significantly calmer than before. they get to the building, and aomine tells him to go back to practice. it’s not a fuck off back to your own fucking team like earlier, but considerably more mellow. kagami puts up a fight about it, until he realises he doesn’t have his keys and that they’ll both have to go back to seirin before they can make it any further home. aomine really doesn’t want to go too, but he is tired and easily convinced that he can just wait outside while kagami gets his keys. they compromise. aomine will come with, if kagami will stay at practice. it’ll be nearly over, sure, but aomine wants some alone time. he could go somewhere else, but aomine doesn’t suggest it and doesn’t seem to want to.
so they fuck off back to kagami’s own fucking team. aomine stays at the gate, well away from the gym, and kagami rushes inside to get his keys. he goes through the gym for ease, and doesn’t explain what he’s doing ( not that he’s asked ). he’ll get the keys, say i’ll be right back, then delivers said keys to said boyfriend. he’d half expected aomine to disappear, but he’s still standing in place when kagami returns. aomine sure looks deflated, he hates to see it. but maybe that means kagami got through? he can’t really tell. they bump knuckles. aomine goes home. at least, kagami considers as he returns to practice, he really hopes aomine decides to go home. and he doesn’t, say, throw the keys off a bridge for kagami’s involvement in the disaster of an afternoon.