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When Aomine found him running a little flower shop by the sea, Kise's first thought was, Ah. I should have known.
Besides Kuroko and Momoi, Aomine was the first person from 'back then' to visit him.
Back then.
Another time, another place, another life.
It was a weekday morning, and Kise didn't get many walk-in customers on weekday mornings. Some locals visited in the late afternoons or evenings to purchase bouquets for their partners or parents or themselves, and Kise always liked working on those spontaneous orders. But they weren't his main source of income.
The coastal town he'd retired to was a fairly popular tourist destination, with several scenic spots that were booked year-round for weddings. His biggest orders were typically for those weddings, though he also worked as a regular supplier for several of the local inns.
In the seven years since he moved to that town, he'd done well enough to hire two full-time assistants at his shop. But neither of them were there that morning. Neither of them would be there all week, in fact. Kise had just attended their wedding, and the pair of lovebirds were off on their honeymoon.
So when Aomine walked in through the front door, Kise was alone in the store.
Aomine looked like he hadn't aged a day. It wasn't that he looked much younger than twenty-nine; it was more that, seven years ago, he'd already looked nearly thirty. Kise had always teased him about his grumpy, 'old man' face. If there was any noticeable change in him, it was the way he dressed. His outfit was still simple—black shirt, dark jeans, no accessories except a classy watch—but his clothes actually fit him now.
Kise instinctively glanced at Aomine's knee. He'd heard the news. But of course, there was no glaringly visible sign of injury. Neither Kise nor Aomine wore their scars over their clothes.
Between the two of them, Kise was the one who'd changed more noticeably since they played together on the national team. He'd grown out his hair. It was tied back in a small ponytail, high enough to keep his nape cool in the pre-summer heat. He'd lost some muscle mass and gained another two piercings in his left ear.
Ironically, he'd been in the middle of clipping a bundle of red carnations when Aomine came in. It was almost enough to make him laugh.
"Welcome in," he greeted warmly. It was how he would have greeted anyone else. But Aomine wasn't just anyone else. Seven years was a long time, but Aomine would never be just anyone else. So Kise smiled and added, "Aominecchi."
Aomine hadn't moved away from the door. He stood with the sun behind him, casting shadows over his face. He didn't smile. His expression was deep and inscrutable. For the first time, Kise didn't know how to read him.
"Isn't this…" Aomine finally moved, turning his head this way and that to take in the vibrant blooms displayed all around him. "Kinda morbid, Kise."
Kise did laugh, then. He lifted one of the carnations on the counter in front of him and brought it to his nose, breathing in deeply. The familiar scent no longer made him nauseous, as it once had when he’d been sick.
"They owe me," he said. It would have been a cryptic answer to anyone else, but Aomine would know what it meant. Because it seemed Aomine knew everything.
He wouldn't have shown up here, in a sleepy little seaside town, if he didn't know. How had he found out? Momoi, probably. Perhaps Kuroko.
"They're making a documentary," Aomine said unprompted, as though reading Kise's mind. He finally made his way to the counter, moving slowly as though afraid his presence alone would crush the delicate flowers surrounding him. He was like a particularly conscientious bull in a china shop.
Kise hummed. "Are they?"
"About us. About the miracles." Aomine reached the counter and stopped there. His hands hung at his sides. "Tetsu's working with them to keep them from digging too deep, but…"
Kise could more or less put the rest of the story together on his own. He wasn't surprised that a documentary was being made now. The most impressive member of their generation, Aomine Daiki, had just been forced into early retirement. Professional basketball in Japan wouldn't be the same without him. Media companies were surely vying for the rights to his story, and it was only natural that the fierce rivals he'd grown up playing with and against would also fall under the spotlight again.
Fierce rivals like Midorima, like Akashi.
Like Kise.
When Kise retired, even earlier than Aomine, he'd only left the world with some vague claims of an ankle injury. There had been no reason to doubt those claims, but the truth wouldn't have been hard to uncover. All it would have taken was one nosy reporter with the right connections and a deficit of journalistic integrity.
"I'd prefer not to talk about it, Aominecchi," Kise interrupted somewhat brusquely. He gathered up the carnations on the counter and put them back in water. "I'm sorry you wasted a trip out here. You could have asked Kuorkocchi for my number instead. Or you could have called my work number, if you knew about my shop. It's listed on my website. I would have told you over the phone that there are no hard feelings."
"No feelings at all," Aomine said. "Right?"
Kise looked up. His hands stilled against the neck of the vase. "What did you come here for, Daiki?"
Aomine opened his mouth just as the front door opened again.
It was a delivery for Kise. He got up from behind the counter to open up the back door for the driver. The kid making the delivery couldn't have been older than twenty, and he clearly recognized Aomine with the way his jaw dropped.
"Since you're here anyway, don't just stand there," Kise called out. "Give the poor boy an autograph, then help me move these boxes."
It was scarring on the lungs. That was what really did in Kise's pro career.
Truth be told, it had been perfectly avoidable. Hanahaki surgery had come a long way in recent years. Even seven years ago, the surgery had been reasonably safe and straightforward. Complications were rare. If Kise had agreed to the surgery as soon as the condition began to take root within him, he may have gotten away with only the typical aftereffects.
He could have lived with some of those aftereffects. If only his feelings of love for the object of his affection were excised with the disease, he wouldn't have hesitated to agree to the surgery. The presence of the disease in his lungs was proof that those feelings were unreciprocated. But the consequence of hanahaki surgery was typically the loss of all feelings towards the person who didn't reciprocate the victim's affections. In many cases, the victim lost even the ability to feel for the person who'd caused flowers to grow in their chest.
Kise hadn't wanted that. Losing an unreciprocated love was hardly a big deal, but losing the ability to admire Aomine Daiki—
To Kise, who'd followed Aomine to the pinnacle of Japanese basketball, that was akin to losing his driving force in life.
He probably would have lost basketball either way. Even if he'd gotten the surgery before the disease progressed to the point of permanently scarring his lungs, he would have lost his will to play along with the feelings of admiration that had first driven him to the court.
Aomine actually stuck around and helped Kise unpack and put away the shipment of vases he'd gotten. Kise would be using them to fulfill a few upcoming wedding orders. It was a busy time of year for him; everyone wanted to be a June bride.
"Do you have plans for Friday?" Aomine asked out of the blue.
Kise had just put away the last vase. He didn't have to think about it to know what Friday was.
The 18th. His birthday. His thirtieth, in fact.
"No, I'm afraid not. I've become a poor, friendless recluse whose thirtieth birthday will go completely unacknowledged by every soul in the universe," he lamented. Catching sight of the pinched look on Aomine's face, he grinned. "My sisters are flying in the day after tomorrow, and the local aunties fought fiercely over who would get to host my birthday party this year. Good lord, Amoinecchi. You didn't come all the way out here because you thought I would be spending my birthday alone, did you?"
Aomine didn't answer that. He hooked his thumbs into the back pockets of his jeans and looked somewhat at a loss, like he hadn't come out here with any plans or even clear reasons in mind.
Kise wouldn't have been surprised if that were the case. He'd once adored Aomine's impulsiveness.
"Can I come?" Aomine asked.
Kise blinked. "What, to my birthday party?"
"Yeah. I'll bring a present."
"Well, then how could I say no?" Kise snarked.
Aomine nodded. He either missed the sarcasm or deliberately chose to ignore it. "Then I'll be there."
That night, after closing, Kise stayed in the shop and put in some overtime. With his assistants off on their honeymoon and several big orders coming up, he had plenty of work on his plate.
He put on his wireless earbuds and called Kuroko while he worked.
"Aominecchi showed up and invited himself to my birthday party today."
Kuroko sighed. "I'm sorry, Kise-kun. He said he would hire a private investigator to find you if I didn't tell him where you were, but I didn't think he would actually do it."
"Wow," Kise droned. "A private investigator? I feel so special. But you didn't have to make him go to the trouble, Kurokocchi. I'm not hiding. You could have told him where I was."
"He'd just found out. About the real reason for your retirement. He overheard me talking to Akashi about keeping the details out of that documentary," Kuroko explained. "I didn't want to encourage him to do anything rash."
"Has Aomine Daiki ever needed encouragement to do something rash?" Kise teased.
"Would you like me to talk to him?"
"No need for that. He's not… not allowed to attend my birthday party. He even says he'll bring a present."
Kuroko sighed again. "I'll talk to him."
They stayed on the phone for a while longer, just to catch up. Kise was still in touch with Kuroko, but it was the sort of 'in touch' where they called each other once every few months. So it was nice to chat for a while.
Kise found out then that it was indeed some curious, unscrupulous journalist who'd managed to dig up his medical records. Kise didn't actually care all that much about Aomine finding out, if only because he was physically incapable of caring, but he didn't exactly want the gory details of his retirement to become a headline—Kuroko knew that.
"Pass along my thanks to Akashicchi," Kise said as they started wrapping up their conversation. "And please tell him not to have anyone killed."
"We're negotiating," Kuroko said dryly.
Two days later, Aomine turned up at the shop again. Kise raised his eyebrows at the sight of him. Aomine was wearing sandals, baggy capri pants, and an ugly short-sleeved button-up shirt this time, with a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head. He looked like an exceptionally handsome douchebag, and like he was really embracing the whole seaside town vibe.
He was also holding two thermoses. He offered one to Kise and said, "Coffee."
Kise's eyebrows climbed even higher. Homemade coffee, when there were coffee shops on basically every street in town? Had Aomine developed some sort of phobia of or vendetta against coffee shops? Or was he just supremely impressed by whatever cheap coffee maker had come with whatever room at whatever inn he'd booked?
Well, coffee was coffee, and Kise had had several long nights in a row. He took a sip. It was astonishingly good for hotel room coffee.
"This is great," he blurted out. "You made this?"
The typical furrow between Aomine's brows grew a little deeper. "I know how to make coffee, Kise."
"I wasn't trying to imply you didn't," Kise stated. "It's just surprisingly good. Is it the beans? The grinder? The machine? Where are you staying?"
Aomine described a location by the beach, but Kise wasn't familiar with any of the inns in that area; Aomine must not have been staying at one of the places Kise worked with.
That made sense. Kise's contacts were usually very friendly and chatty when he delivered their arrangements, and they surely would have mentioned it in passing if their inn had gotten new coffee machines or fancier beans.
Kise made a mental note to look that place up and ask how they offered such good coffee while keeping costs low enough to supply every guest. If it was their beans, he would buy some. If it was their machines, he would get one for himself.
Of course, the coffee—though good—wasn't the important thing here.
"What can I help you with today, Aominecchi?" Kise asked. "If you're looking for your party invitation, you'll have to take it up with Auntie Nakamura. She's in charge of the guest list."
Before Aomine got a chance to answer, they were interrupted by the chime of the opening door again. This time, it was one of Kise's sisters who wandered in. Both his sisters had flown in from overseas, so they were still suffering some jet lag. They were the sort to sleep in late anyway; the jet lag just didn't help.
"Morning!" Kise called out sharply, with a forced sort of cheer. He cut off anything Aomine might have tried to start to say and quickly came around the counter, grabbing Aomine's wrist and tugging him into the back of the shop while shouting to his sister that they would be right back.
He moved so quickly that his half-asleep sister only had time to say, "Hey, is that Dai—"
Once they were in the back, with the door to the front of the shop tightly shut, Aomine blinked. "What the hell was that all about?"
Kise realized belatedly that he was still holding onto Aomine's wrist. He let go and started to take inventory of his ribbon stock, just to have something to do with his hands. "She doesn't know," he said. "Neither of them do. They think I retired with an ankle injury. Don't tell them."
The back of the shop wasn't as brightly lit as the front. Towering shelves cast long shadows across the floor. Aomine seemed to almost melt into those shadows, like an eerily silent predator stalking its prey. But Kise was perfectly aware that Aomine was simply like that. His occasionally menacing aura wasn't a threat; it just was. Kise had no reason to feel menaced.
Nor did he have the ability to feel menaced.
After a moment, Aomine lifted a hand and scratched at the back of his own neck. He still wore his hair short; it didn't reach his nape.
"Do you want me to leave through the back or something?"
"Huh?" Kise lowered the tablet he was holding. He'd long since lost track of the ribbons. He was pretty sure he'd counted the ivory ones three times already. "Don't be silly. You're not forbidden from talking to my sisters, Aominecchi. They've known you since we first played together. Just… don't tell them. That's all."
He could feel Aomine's eyes on him. He was pretty sure he knew what Aomine wanted to ask.
What don't you want them to know?
Which part?
That you loved me?
Or that I didn't love you back?
Kise cleared his throat and pointedly steered the topic in a different direction. "You're not here to buy flowers, and you didn't drop by just to bring me coffee," Kise ventured. "So…?"
"Oh." Aomine seemed to remember only then that he had indeed come for a reason. "Yeah, I didn't know what to get you for your birthday. But I got it now."
It was weird. Seeing Aomine again, knowing Aomine was in town. Not good, not bad. Just weird.
Neither of them really talked about the obvious elephant in the room. After warning Aomine not to say anything unnecessary to his sisters, Kise didn't bring up the matter again. He didn't see any point in dredging up old history now.
The surgery had been a success. Kise had survived, and he was no longer in love with Aomine Daiki.
So, why talk about it?
Aomine hadn't brought it up either, but he surely would. There was no other reason for him to be there.
Would he try to apologize? Out of, what, pity? Or guilt?
There was no need for that.
But if Aomine had to get it out of his system, Kise supposed it was no skin off his back to listen.
Before Kise got a chance to look into Aomine's mystery coffee, his birthday arrived. He closed up shop at five in the afternoon and feigned surprise when Auntie Nakamura's nephews came to 'abduct' him. His party was a surprise in name only; no one could keep a secret in that town.
Kise's birthdays weren't always celebrated like a national holiday, but seeing as it was his thirtieth, it had been turned into something of a big deal. Everyone in town had been invited. People dropped by throughout the night—some bringing food, some bringing presents, some bringing just themselves and their well wishes, which really was plenty enough for Kise.
Aomine appeared out of seemingly nowhere at one point, close to seven. The party was being held at a beautiful house by the beach. The owners were a lovely old couple who'd moved out to Tokyo some weeks ago to help raise their newborn grandchild, and their house had already been on the market for a while. Kise had briefly entertained some delusions of putting in an offer, but he didn't do that well at his shop.
"Hey, stranger." Kise was in a good mood, and he was half a drink on the wrong side of tipsy, so he wandered up and greeted Aomine of his own volition when he spotted his sisters surrounding the man in the kitchen. He did trust Aomine to keep his mouth shut about the past, but as the man of the hour, Kise figured he had an obligation to greet his guests.
Aomine was wearing that pinched expression again. The one that seemed to imply he either didn't know what to say or didn't know how to say it. In all honesty, it was a ludicrous look on him. It made him seem like he was trying to be tactful, and Kise had never known Aomine to be tactful.
"Happy birthday," Aomine said after a moment, once Kise’s sisters had drifted away. "You look awful."
Ah, there it was. The Aomine he'd once known and loved.
Kise laughed and dragged his fingers under his eyes. He really hadn't been getting enough sleep as of late. Even with his late nights, he was cutting it close on a few upcoming orders. He was almost tempted to ask his sisters for help with a few arrangements, but the two of them had four brown thumbs between them, and Kise wasn't quite that desperate yet.
"Being thirty will do that to you," Kise joked.
"Working yourself to the bone will do that to you," Aomine shot back. "Your sisters just told me you're slammed 'cause you let your assistants take off during your busiest month."
"I can manage," Kise said. "Who would I be to stand in the way of true love?"
An awkward pause descended. That had perhaps hit a little too close to the elephant they weren't talking about.
"Here." Aomine grabbed a box from behind him and presented it to Kise.
It wasn't wrapped, but a big red bow did sit on top. The packaging identified the contents as a very, very nice coffee maker. Kise's eyebrows jumped up at the sight of it. He'd seen the same model on one of those 'Top 10 of the Year' lists before, and he'd briefly lusted after it before deciding his trusty 12-cup machine was still perfectly serviceable.
He didn't remember the exact price tag, but it had been astronomical.
"Remind me, where are you staying?" Kise asked, baffled. He couldn't imagine any inn keeping one of these in every room.
"Huh?" Aomine blinked, then gestured around himself. "Here."
Kise blinked back at him. "This is a house."
"Yeah, it's my house. I bought it. They'd actually asked me if they could still host some event here, and I said sure before I knew it was going to be your party. Funny coincidence, huh?" Aomine nodded at the box in Kise's hands. "There's a card for a one-year subscription for the coffee beans I use in there. You just get online and put in your address, and they'll deliver once or twice a month depending on how—"
"Aominecchi!" Kise interrupted sharply. He turned to set the coffee maker down on the kitchen island, where he did in fact see a matching machine sitting, unboxed. He didn't turn back to Aomine right away. His mind was spinning. "What do you mean you bought this house? You live here? You moved here?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Aomine opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked past Kise's shoulder, into the living room, where various other guests—including Kise's sisters—were mingling.
"Can we talk?" Aomine said, in the end. "Later?"
Kise supposed he appreciated the effort to keep his sisters in the dark about this aspect of his past, as per his request. But he was almost too baffled to wait.
Ultimately, he did nod.
"Later."
Later wound up being just past midnight. Most of the families with kids and older folks headed out earlier, but some of the townspeople closer to Kise in age stuck around to drink and chat.
Aomine didn't actually hang out at the party for long. He disappeared at one point, possibly going upstairs. He was allowed to do that, apparently. Because this was his house, apparently.
Kise had confirmed the story with Auntie Nakamura while thanking her for planning all this. She hadn't been able to stop raving about the lovely young man who'd been so kind as to allow them to use the place even after he'd closed on the house and started to move in.
Kise's own place was a few blocks from his shop. He'd inherited it from his grandparents shortly after his surgery and subsequent retirement from professional basketball. He sent his sisters back and said good night to everyone else before going upstairs to look for Aomine.
There were no signs of it downstairs, but Aomine clearly had just moved in. Boxes were piled up all over the place up there, mostly labeled in a blocky scrawl that Kise recognized as Aomine's handwriting. He spotted a few labeled in a neater script as well; Momoi must have helped him pack.
Before making his way upstairs, Kise had texted Kuroko to thank him for the birthday wishes and to ask, You didn't know Aominecchi had moved out here, did you?
Kuroko had answered with a string of ellipses, followed by an echo of what he'd said some days earlier: I'll talk to him. Again.
That had been nearly an hour ago, and it seemed Kuroko was still talking to Aomine when Kise got upstairs, because Kise was able to find Aomine in the master bedroom by following the sound of his voice.
"It's like I said, Tetsu, I want to talk to him," Aomine was saying. There was a pause before he continued, "If he's got a problem with it, then I'll just move again. No big deal."
Kise knocked on the doorframe. Aomine glanced up from where he was sitting on a bed. Just mattresses, really. No frame, not yet.
"I'll call you back," Aomine said into the phone. "Unless you want to chaperone or something."
He hung up without giving Kuroko a chance to answer that, and Kise didn't bother waiting for an invitation to take a seat on the bed. There was nowhere else to sit in the room. Besides a dresser, which might have been left behind by the previous owners, the place was unfurnished.
"This is super weird, Aominecchi," Kise started. He crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. "You know that, right?"
Aomine had been leaning against the wall behind him. He sat up straighter and pulled his legs in too, mimicking Kise's pose. His gaze bored into Kise's for a long moment before he finally said, "You never told me."
There it was. They would have to get into it now.
"What would have been the point of telling you?" Kise shrugged. "And when should I have told you, anyway? After the surgery when my career was over, so that you would feel bad? Or should I have told you earlier and begged you to love me back? I didn't want your guilt or pity, Aominecchi. I still don't, so—"
"I don't feel any guilt," Aomine interrupted. "I didn't do anything wrong."
Kise blinked. That—well, yes. That was true. He would have argued the same thing if Aomine had tried to apologize to him. Kise had decided not to tell him about his feelings and his disease. He'd deliberately hidden it from Aomine and the team. He was living in a bed of his own making, and he didn't actually mind that bed.
He liked his life. He'd made his peace with the decisions that had led him there, and he didn't want anyone else feeling bad on his behalf.
"It's not pity either," Aomine continued. The crease between his brows was growing deeper again. "I found out over a month ago, and I've spent most of that time trying to figure out how it made me feel. Tetsu and Satsuki both told me not to dwell on it, because it isn't about me, and how I feel doesn't matter.
"And I get that. I get that this is your history, I get that it isn't actually about me. But I was feeling something, whether it mattered or not. I didn't know how to put that feeling into words, but after seeing you again, I think I know now."
"Great," Kise said. He was pretty sure he'd never heard Aomine talk about 'feelings' so much. "How do you feel, Aominecchi?"
"I'm fucking pissed, Kise."
A full minute passed in silence. Then another. And another.
"You're mad at me?" Kise finally blurted out. "For, what, for having a crush on the great Aomine Daiki? Only Aomine Daiki can have a—"
"You didn't just have a crush on me, Kise. You were in love with me, to the point that it was killing you, and you never told me. You never gave me a chance to love you back."
Kise threw his hands into the air and leapt off the bed, starting to pace around. "You didn't love me back! That was the whole damn problem, Daiki! My lungs wouldn't have filled up with carnations if you'd felt anything for me."
"I didn't love you," Aomine agreed. He had moved as well, but only to the edge of the bed. He remained seated. "Seven years ago, I didn't. But weren't we friends? Couldn't we have tried? Wouldn't that have been better than coughing that shit up on your own? Why didn't you tell me?"
Kise opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He'd asked himself that question countless times throughout the years. Why hadn't he told Aomine? Hanahaki sometimes worked itself out that way. The victim confessed their feelings, and their unreciprocated feelings became reciprocated. Happy ending for everyone.
So why hadn't Kise tried? And after deciding not to try, why hadn't he gotten the surgery sooner?
Because he'd been scared. Of losing Aomine, one way or another. Either through his confession or through the surgery, which threatened to strip him of his ability to feel anything for Aomine ever again.
In the end, he'd lost Aomine anyway. Through his inaction.
He sighed and shook his head. "I don't know what to tell you, Aominecchi. I was twenty-two when it started. Twenty-two-year-olds are idiots. What's the point of bringing this up now? Why are you here? Why did you buy a house here? Why—just, why?"
"Because I wanna try." Aomine finally stood up. He didn't move far away from the bed, only taking one step forward to turn and face Kise. "You didn't give me a chance, back then. I want a chance. With you."
Back then.
Another time, another place, another life.
That was how Kise had started thinking of his life as a basketball player, standing on the same court as Aomine Daiki—sometimes with him, sometimes against him. But now Aomine was here, in this time and this place.
Aomine had walked right back into this life of his, like he belonged there.
"You…" Kise faltered. This wasn't how he'd planned on spending the first night of his thirtieth year. He felt a bit like he was having a midlife crisis, but wasn't it far too early for that? He swallowed the lump in his throat and continued, "You want to date me?"
Aomine nodded without hesitation. "Yeah."
"Why?" Kise had been asking that question an awful lot lately, but he still felt it was a damn good question. "You do feel bad, don't you? You say you don't feel guilty, but you do. Kurokocchi must have told you that I haven't dated since my surgery, and you feel it's your fault that I've become some lonely spinster, so—"
Aomine was already shaking his head.
Kise cut himself off, paused for a moment, then exhaled sharply. "Well, why else would you suddenly want to date me?"
"It isn't sudden," Aomine said. "I like you. I miss you. I hated that you just disappeared, but I thought it was because we still had basketball when you didn't. I thought you didn't want to see any of us because we were reminders of what you'd lost, but that wasn't why you were avoiding us, right? That wasn't why you were avoiding me."
"I wasn't avoiding you," Kise said. "My grandparents had a house out here. I came out for a change of scenery and just happened to stay."
He'd also changed his number and ditched all his old social media accounts. He was lying, and they both knew it.
Kise cleared his throat and steered them away from those crags. "You're too late, anyway," he stated matter-of-factly. "I've had the surgery. I'm incapable of loving you now."
"Maybe," Aomine said. "But maybe not. I've done the reading. That surgery usually cuts out your ability to feel anything towards the person you loved, right? Hell, sometimes when it goes really sideways, it cuts out your ability to feel anything for anyone at all. But sometimes it goes real well, and they manage to cut out all the roots and shit without damaging anything else. They take out the love that's hurting you, and everything else stays. Including your ability to love that same person again."
Kise sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Do you have any idea how rare that outcome is, Aominecchi? In most of those cases, the ability to feel remains intact because the doctors failed to excise the entirety of the disease. Either it comes back and kills the patient, or they have to operate again. I'm sorry to inform you that I've been perfectly healthy since then. They didn't leave any 'roots' or 'shit' in me."
"How do I make you feel right now?"
"Honestly? I feel confused, and—and I feel pretty damn irritated!"
"So you do feel something."
Again, Kise opened and closed his mouth without making a sound. His hands flew up to his own face, feeling around as though in search of physical proof of his confusion and irritation. The confusion simply stemmed from the situation, but the irritation—
Was that a feeling? For Aomine?
After a long moment, Kise breathed out slowly and said, "I'll think about it."
"You'll think about it?" Aomine echoed.
"Yes, Aominecchi, I need to think about it. I'm not in love with you right now. I'm not leaping at the chance to hop on your dick. You asked me out. I want time to think about it. Not like you're in any rush, right? You bought a house here."
Out loud, that still sounded so absurd that Kise had to laugh. "My god," he added under his breath. "You bought a house here, you lunatic."
The lunatic said nothing in his own defense. He just stuck his hands into his pockets and, after a moment, nodded.
"Okay. I'll wait."
Aomine waited, but he didn't just wait. He dropped by the flower shop again and started helping Kise with his orders. Even after Kise's two assistants returned from their honeymoon, Aomine stuck around to help. He was surprisingly not awful at everything, and Kise was busy enough to be grateful for the extra set of hands.
The rest of June passed in the blink of an eye, and Kise did think about… well, he did think. About a lot of things.
"You could die, you know," Kise said one night. "I could kill you."
Aomine was helping him close up. Most of the lights in the shop were already off. He stopped in the middle of sweeping and blinked at Kise in the near-dark. "I guess you could try?"
"That wasn't a threat, Aominecchi. I just meant, if you fall in love with me, and it turns out I'm incapable of loving you back, you could get it. You could get sick."
"Oh." Aomine started sweeping again. Either that wasn't a concern, or it was one he'd already thought of and made his peace with. "I'll be careful. It's not like everyone who loves someone who doesn't love them back gets it, right? You'd have to catch it like a cold."
"Exactly! You could catch it like a cold!" Kise peered at him from behind the counter as he turned off his laptop for the day. "That doesn't concern you?"
Aomine shrugged. "Anything could kill me, Kise."
Kise instinctively glanced at Aomine's knee again.
"You wanna see?" Aomine asked. He finished sweeping, emptied the dustpan, and put everything away. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
They wound up on the beach by Aomine's house. It was still weird to think of it as Aomine's house, when it was no more than a twenty-minute walk from Kise's place. But it was indisputably his. He'd wandered in to grab a couple beers from the fridge before joining Kise on the beach.
Aomine rolled up one leg of his pants first. The scars were visible, but not especially gruesome. It had already been a few months since his last surgery. Physical therapy had clearly gone well; he didn't walk with a limp. He looked like he could return to the court any day now, but everyone knew that wasn't the case.
No coach or doctor in the world would clear him to play professionally with that knee.
They talked for a while with the sound of the tide all around them. About everything, about nothing. About why Kise had opened a flower shop, of all things, instead of going overseas to model with his sisters—
"I like it here," Kise said. "The flowers… that started out as petty revenge, I suppose. But then I came to like them too."
About why Aomine had turned down several coaching positions and suddenly decided to move across the country to ask Kise out—
"I'd be an awful coach. I can't explain half the shit I do on the court. And, like I said before, it wasn't sudden," Aomine said. "I realized I missed you years ago, when I watched tapes of our old games and read our old texts and looked at our old photos. I realized I wanted you in my life. I just thought it'd be crass to pursue you when I still had basketball and you didn't."
"Since when does Aomine Daiki worry about being crass?" Kise muttered against the lip of his beer can.
Aomine reached out and pinched his cheek. "I was worried about you, asshole."
Kise finished one can before unbuttoning his shirt to reveal his own scar. It had faded considerably with time, but it was massive. It was obvious at just a glance how invasive the surgery had been. Aomine must have seen typical hanahaki surgery scars before, if he really had read up on the subject. His expression didn't change much when he laid eyes on Kise's chest. There was maybe a flash of sympathy that passed through his eyes, but it was fleeting. There one second, gone the next.
Neither of them said anything for a moment. The tide continued to roll beneath the waxing moon. Even under the moonlight, the sand was somewhat warm.
Kise scooted closer and bumped Aomine's shoulder with his own. Finally, he said, "Okay."
"Okay?" Aomine echoed. He seemed to get Kise's meaning; he was already smiling.
"Yes, you egomaniac. Okay. Date me. But if you get sick—"
"I'll get the surgery," Aomine promised.
Kise didn't know if that was the truth. He didn't know if his ability to love Aomine was still intact. He didn't know if this was just some whim for Aomine. He didn't know if this would work out.
But he remembered what it had felt like to be with Aomine. To stand on the same court like twin suns in the sky. The court was out of their reach now, but they still burned. And maybe, just maybe, they could burn together in a brand new sky.