Aomine reflects a bit on on the effect Kuroko’s had on him, and where Kuroko has brought him to by the season’s end. Spoilers for anime-only fans.
Looking back, he’d felt it first during the Interhigh preliminaries when he’d seen, when he’d experienced, Tetsu’s fierce rejection of despair.
After the finals of the Winter cup, Kuroko finds Aomine waiting for him. They finally have a long-overdue discussion about what happened in their third year. Implied spoilers for anime-only fans.
Kuroko Tetsuya walked the last bit of his way home alone, after Kagami turned off onto his own street, letting the quiet settle over him. As the echoes of his team’s voices, of exultation and disbelief and, really, quite a lot of screaming died away, they left one thing behind.
They had won.
Upon the retirement of the third years, Kise gets a bit of a shock over his captain’s plans for his future.
Kise Ryouta stood rooted to the polished floor of Kaijou’s locker room, staring at his captain and coach. “You… but…”
Kasamatsu-senpai gave him faint, tilted smile. “You think maybe Hayakawa is a better choice?”
After the Winter Cup, Kuroko is still dealing with old anxiety about his new team, and needs to be reassured that he isn’t the only one watching over his partner.
The feeling of familiarity was back, but it wasn’t pleasant this time. It felt more like something smothering him.
Aomine is straying. Kagami is enthusiastic. Momoi has a plan. And Riko is going to make this all come out right, no matter how many basketball idiots of either gender she has to wrangle to do it.
Riko rubbed her forehead. “Both of you shut up!” she barked. “Kagami, get back to work or I’ll triple your training drills! And you,” she rounded on Aomine, who had the good sense to look just a little uneasy as she marched towards him. “If you want a match with any of my players, you can just get your coach to set it up with me. Now out!” She body-checked him out the door, ignoring his squawk of protest. “You have your own practice to be at.”
Kiyoshi is recovering from surgery and now comes the hard part: making him take it slow. In the process, Riko decides it’s time to deal with the things she and Kiyoshi and Hyuuga haven’t been talking about.
Almost two months after the Winter Cup, Riko gathered her club around her at the end of practice, grim and serious. “All right, everyone, listen up. We have a problem.”
Sometimes, Kise just wants to feel the edge of how far he can go. Sometimes, he wants that off the court, too. Sometimes, Aomine agrees.
And sometimes staying later meant moments like this one, meant the warm steam of the showers around him and the cool of the tile wall under his palms, and the lean weight of Aomine against his back.
Imayoshi decides to return Riko’s favor by throwing Aomine, Kuroko, and Kagami together in a match. It’s a different kind of revelation for each of them.
Aomine Daiki was a cynical sort of guy these days, so he wasn’t really surprised when Imayoshi-san started showing up at club practices as soon as the national exams were over. Imayoshi-san was a bit like Daiki, really; he got bored without a challenge. Besides, Wakamatsu seemed happy enough to have his ‘advice’, so who cared?
At least that was what Daiki thought until Imayoshi-san decided his next challenge would be Daiki.
Aomine decides that, if Kagami isn’t going anywhere, he has to be included. This gives Kuroko a moment of uncertainty, but the direct approach might be the best one after all.
Aomine Daiki loved a really good game of basketball. As far as he was concerned, it was the best thing in the world, even better than sex.
He actually spoke from knowledge, there.
It’s the end of the year, and Kise gets another shock from his captain, this one considerably more pleasant.
Kise Ryouta was feeling absolutely pathetic.
What else did you call a team captain who, instead of going directly to practice when classes ended, loitered around the doors waiting for one particular senpai so that they could walk to the school gates together, before the captain in question sprinted back to make practice on time?
Aomine, Kuroko, and Kagami finally all wind up in bed together. Aomine thinks he knows how this will work, but when there are actual emotions at stake he’s probably the one with the least idea what’s going on.
“So.” Daiki flexed his foot and stretched his leg over the length of Seirin’s changing room bench, working the threatening cramp out of his calf. “New school year. Seems like the kind of thing we could stand to celebrate a little.”
Three moments in the developing relationship of Kagami, Aomine, and Kuroko as they all try to find a balance with each other.
Taiga had resisted for a long time, because there was such a thing as going down fighting, but the plain fact was that Aomine was cute when he was snitching food off someone.
