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Aomine Daiki can probably count the number of times he’s been in love on one hand.
Satsuki would tell him that his first love was basketball. She’s probably right, but he thinks that’s a pretty girly sentiment, so he never agrees with her when she says it. Still, he has to admit the way she describes him and basketball is kind of romantic, if you’re into that shit. Spending hours playing, any moment he can snatch, the little hoop on the back of his bedroom door and the plastic ball that accompanied it. The magazines he begged his parents to buy, the way he would avidly watch any game he could, that he would walk around with a ball whenever he could get away with it because he wanted to snatch at any chance to have a game.
First loves are bittersweet and stay with you forever; this is certainly Daiki’s particular feeling towards basketball, though admitting it would be like telling Satsuki she was right, and he hates doing that too, even though he often gets the feeling he should be used to it by now.
If you don’t consider his first love to be basketball – certainly Daiki himself never admitted such a thing – then his first love was a girl who shared his homeroom in his first year at high school.
She was cute and stacked, and really smart. Satsuki laughed until she cried when she figured it out, and then she told him that she was way too good for him in the joking way he understood to mean that she really thought that he was too good for her. He tried hard to catch the girl’s eye - studied his ass off because Satsuki had once told him that a smart girl needs a smart boy to keep up with her, and she would know because she’s Satsuki and the last thing you could ever describe her as is stupid – and worked hard at basketball. He wasn’t the type to be shy about such things, but confessions are kind of awkward and uncomfortable no matter who you are, and most of his experience with confessions were ones made to him, rather than the other way around.
But he did manage to do it at the end of the year. She’d smiled and apologised and she’d told him that she couldn’t return his feelings, and he’d been pretty shocked, because he was tall and talented and he was pretty sure he wasn’t terrible to look at, and Satsuki had gathered information that said she didn’t already have a boyfriend and that she didn’t appear to have anyone she liked, so why wouldn’t she give him a chance?
He and Satsuki spent the break between school years playing video games and eating really junk food, and when the new school year began, the girl wasn’t in his new homeroom.
(At the end of his second year of high school, Daiki discovered he liked men just as much as women when he realised he had a massive fucking crush on his annoying as fuck basketball arch-rival Kise Ryouta.
The realisation that he liked men probably should have been the more traumatic part of the experience, but it really wasn’t.
He put a lot of effort into hiding the crush from Satsuki; mostly because Kise was awful and he’d never fucking live down the stupid thing. Where had it even come from anyway? Also it was a bit embarrassing, because it felt like such a fucking cliché to get a crush on your rival - almost as much as falling in love with your best friend - and it was even worse when that rival was fucking darling-of-Japan-new-girlfriend-every-week Kise Ryouta because fucking everyone had a crush on the stupid fucking airhead. It wasn’t even a special experience. More than half of the guys around Daiki’s age who also liked guys had their first crush on Kise fucking Ryouta.
Daiki was incredibly relieved when the crush went away, even if he did now have to live with Satsuki’s sly digs about it – and how did she even know about it anyway.)
Daiki had had a number of crushes, girlfriends, and one-night-stands with partners of both sexes by the time he reached Los Angeles at the age of twenty three.
He was there because he’d been scouted, of course; he’d visited a few other cities with his agent, and he kept hearing the same things over and over – it didn’t really matter to him who he signed with, honestly, basketball was going to be pretty much the same no matter who he signed with from what he was seeing; he’d find some interesting challenges playing here no matter which team he played for. Which was pretty exciting, actually, but this whole team picking thing was dragging and he just wanted it to be done already so he could play.
He managed to give his agent the slip somehow – he gets really into negotiation conversations, it’s not too hard for Daiki to do if he waits until he’s appropriately distracted – and then he’s off in a cab. He doesn’t really have a destination in mind, but he’s alright with that. The cabbie’s probably not particularly impressed with his instruction to “go somewhere interesting”, but he doesn’t kick him out, so.
The cabbie takes him to a pier.
In fairness, does seem like a pretty interesting place, so Daiki doesn’t mind. He’s pretty sure it’s some kind of tourist trap of some sort; there’s a sign which Daiki’s somewhat passable skill at reading English tells him that the place - Santa Monica Pier – is apparently world famous.
The pier is crowded, and Daiki almost wished that the cabbie had taken him somewhere less busy. But then, less busy is probably also less interesting. He wandered along, skirting around crowds gathered to watch street performers and taking in the sights. There are some guys messing around on surfboards in the water, and Daiki wouldn’t have thought that the waves here would be big enough to be of any interest to surfers, but there you go. It wasn’t as if he really knew anything about surfing anyway. He watches them for a bit; none of them could be described as small, but there’s a big red head, and his smile as the group mucked about was so big Daiki could see it from where he was standing.
(He likes a good smile on a person; it’s very attractive.)
One of the things that Daiki liked about America is that he wasn’t so obviously and noticeably tall all the time. Of course he was still well above average height – well above average – but as opposed to at home, his height didn’t set him apart quite so much. But as he tried to get a look at a particular street performer, he couldn’t help but curse that his view was impeded. And thus he made his fatal – or perhaps fated – mistake.
He sat himself on top of the railing; he had pretty impeccable body balance, so he’d trusted that he’d be fine even as people looked at him like they were a little worried. He glared back at them if he caught them, before looking back at the performer.
This was how he missed the pack of kids that came running past, though even if he had seen the m coming, he probably would have assumed that they would be capable of avoiding him. But as he got knocked by not one but two children racing past in their excitement, he found himself wheeling his arms in an embarrassing attempt to maintain his place on the railing, before he fell backwards towards the water.
His reflexes meant that his hands caught on the wooden slats of the pier, scraping a layer of skin from them, and his legs were dangling, and shit, this shirt didn’t really let him move the way he would need to if he wanted to pull himself back up. It was hard for people to offer him a hand with the railing in the way, too...
“Oi!”
Daiki looked down – oh, that was a bit of a fall. He tried to focus on the location of the voice shouting at him.
The redhead with the grin he’d spotted before had paddled over on his board. “Drop down, I’ll help you back to shore.”
His wallet and phone were going to be wrecked, but Daiki couldn’t really think of a better course of action – he wasn’t going to be able to pull himself up, or get pulled up, and anyway, the redhead with an attractive smile was down there.
It seemed like the most logical decision to make.
(No one ever said Daiki was particularly smart.)
So Daiki let go.
There was a moment of weightlessness, one that Daiki had experienced only a few times, before he hit the water. Fuck, it was really cold, and his shoes and everything felt heavy and this was... uncomfortable. He burst back up from under the water and gasped for breath, the sudden temperature change leaving him breathless, and he noticed his palms stinging where they'd been scraped.
Strong, large hands grabbed him and hauled him so he was half-slung over the surfboard, and then the owner of said hands started kicking them towards the shore.
“Thank you,” Daiki said, trying very hard to get the words out clearly.
Up close, the redhead was bigger than Daiki had expected. He was kind of built, actually, in the same way Daiki was; he was proportioned well, with his largeness distributed everywhere.
“It’s fine. What happened?”
Daiki had to take a moment to figure out words for his answer. “Pushed,” he settled for.
Enlightenment spread across his features. “Ah. English not your first language, huh? Where’re you from?”
“Japan.”
Somehow, this seemed to please the redhead; the reason why was immediately apparent when he next spoke – in rough, but clearly fluent, Japanese. “Oh, I guess you’re lucky then, huh?”
“Yes, I’m so lucky to have been knocked off a pier,” Daiki said, much more comfortable switching back to his native tongue. Now that he could take a better look at the redhead’s face, he could see that he was Japanese, although he had spoken English like a native.
“I’m Kagami Taiga,” the redhead introduced himself. “What’s your name?”
“Aomine Daiki.”
“Nice to—wait, like, the basketball player Aomine Daiki?”
Kagami was grinning now, that large smile Daiki had seen from the pier, and it was much more attractive up close, holy shit.
Well, all those days pretending like Kise wasn’t a big deal weren’t going to go to waste after all – he smirked and arched an eyebrow at him. “That’d be me.”
“Holy shit,” Kagami breathed. “Hey, I’ll lend you some clothes, you should totally play a game with me.”
“If I answered every challenge from every guy who thinks he’s half-decent with a ball, I’d never sleep. Why should I play with you?” Daiki asked. It wasn’t like he was actually wholly opposed to the idea, in truth – there’d been a stunning lack of basketball on these trips to visit teams, and considering Kagami was built a lot like he was, he probably wasn’t actually that bad – but he kind of just wanted to see how Kagami would try to convince him.
“Come on, I totally saved your ass,” Kagami said, and he was still grinning, like he knew it would be Daiki’s weakness, the asshole. “I bet I can surprise you.”
Daiki snorted. “You’re a bit full of yourself, aren’t you?”
The fucker laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t get anywhere by saying that I’d suck, would I?”
Okay, Daiki had to admit, he had him a little cornered on that one. Thankfully, they seemed to be reaching the shore; Daiki’s feet touched the ground, and he felt mildly vindicated that he seemed to do so before Kagami did – he was taller, even if it was only by a tiny little bit.
He pulled a face as he felt the sand sink into his shoes. God this was uncomfortable, and cold. And he was probably going to get an earful about his phone, and about disappearing and then becoming unavailable to contact while wandering around a foreign city with barely passable English, but right now he didn’t care.
“Come on,” Kagami said as they exited the water. Daiki pulled off his shoes. “I have spare clothes. Hell, I have spare shoes. Would it help if I bought you lunch?”
It was kind of flattering, the way Kagami was so excited just by the idea of getting to face off against him. Daiki looked him over again now that he could get a better look at Kagami. With his build and height, he’d probably actually be alright to play against, so long as he had some little talent for basketball.
And, well. He wanted something hot to eat to warm him up, and all the money in his wallet probably needed to dry out.
“Yeah, alright,” he agreed, though he sighed as if it was an enormous inconvenience. “But food first.”
Daiki tried to tell himself that his heart did not leap in his chest as Kagami’s grin turned just a little bit feral. He probably shouldn’t have found the expression that hot.
“My car’s this way,” Kagami said, and if there was something almost gleeful about his demeanour, well, Daiki wasn’t going to say anything.
He didn’t ask Kagami why he appeared to routinely keep a second set of clothes in his car when they reached it; usually being rude didn’t bother Daiki, but he was way too uncomfortable in his wet, freezing clothes to be okay with offending the source of new ones.
(Daiki was abnormally self-aware as he stripped down and tried not to watch Kagami peeling out of wetsuit he’d been wearing, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Kagami was taking a look at him as well. And if maybe he liked what he was looking at, because Daiki definitely liked what he was looking at, and he also knew that he was easy on the eyes too.
Somehow, this felt different to getting dressed in the change room with his teammates.)
Daiki’s dripping clothes were stuffed into a plastic bag, and Kagami grinned at him again as he slid into the passenger seat.
“Ah, I’m kind of hungry too, now that I think about it,” Kagami commented as he started the car. “You want anything particular?”
“As long as it’s not shit, I don’t care,” Daiki said, stretching out his arms as warmth began to seep its way back into his body.
Kagami laughed, and Daiki decided that he liked the sound of it almost as much as he liked his smile.
Kagami, as it turned out, had a monstrous appetite.
Well, it wasn’t as if Daiki didn’t also eat a lot of food, but Kagami at a lot. He probably should have found it disgusting, but instead it was endearing.
(This probably should have been Daiki’s biggest warning sign; however, he pretty much ran straight past it without a second glance.)
It was almost fascinating, watching the other man eat so much. Where did it all go? He wasn’t fat, not even close. He’d have to do a lot of exercise on top of having an insane metabolism...
“You don’t want more?” Kagami asked, his words muffled around a mouthful of food. Daiki pulled a face, and then threw a packet of sugar at his face.
“I’m feeling sick just watching you.”
Kagami laughed, and yeah, this was probably a pretty normal thing for him.
“So, I guess I should have asked before,” Taiga said between bites, “but don’t you have somewhere else you should be, or something else you should be doing?”
Daiki shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Not really. I don’t really get much out of the meetings with the scouts, so I leave most of it up to my agent. They’ll probably be annoyed that I haven’t been in contact, but I can take care of myself so it’s not like they’ll be worried.” Probably a lie – Satsuki worried like she was getting paid for it and Daiki wasn’t even sure what he’d have done with himself if Kagami hadn’t spoken Japanese.
Kagami hummed. Daiki almost wished that he would stop eating, since he was full himself, and watching Kagami eat made him feel like he was going to either burst or throw up.
“So, are you actually any good at basketball, or was that just a thing you said to get me to play? I’m going to be angry if you’re shit.”
Kagami shrugged. “I’m good enough. I play as much as I can, and there aren’t a lot of guys out there that can beat me.”
He sounded so matter-of-fact about it that Daiki kind of felt suspicious on principle. “Whatever. I’ll find out soon enough.”
Letting their meal settle seemed to be the best course of action, and as Kagami finished devouring the contents of the table, Daiki wondered what to talk about. It’d been a while since he’d tried to pick someone up, since usually he didn’t have to. Plenty of people fell over themselves to get into his pants, so there was rarely situation in which he needed to work to get into someone else’s. Besides, he wasn’t entirely sure about Kagami. It was just a feeling, though his instincts had rarely led him astray in the past.
“So, obviously you know what I do,” he said, “but what do you do?”
“Nothing that interesting,” Kagami answered, shifting a little in his seat to stretch out his legs. His feet knocked against Daiki’s under the table, which was pretty inevitable with their heights and lengths, but Daiki still tallied that away under the column marked ‘probably be into me’. “Definitely nothing that’s as interesting as being a professional basketball player.”
Daiki rolled his eyes, but could pick up a hint when he saw one. Usually. “How long have you been surfing, then?”
Kagami launched into his story and explanation; and then somehow it moved to basketball, because all things in Daiki’s life inevitably did (first loves never really leave you, after all); and Daiki was talking about actually not knowing how he started playing, or even when or why in return, and his favourite opponents so far in his life, and Kagami seemed to get it, the way someone strong got you fired up, the way a true challenger could make your blood sing, and Daiki wanted to ask how or why, but then Kagami stood up.
“If we don’t go soon, it’s going to get dark before I get a game out of you,” Kagami said. “Feel free to let yourself into the car while I pay.”
He lobbed his keys at him – snatching them out of the air was child’s play. Daiki absently wondered as he walked out if Kagami was an idiot, to trust him with the keys to his car. Probably. It seemed likely.
Daiki probably shouldn’t throw stones though, since he seemed to like stupid guys, which probably made him the bigger idiot.
He chucked the keys onto the driver’s seat and settled himself into the seat. Kagami returned a few moments later, and Daiki could almost feel the excitement radiating from him.
“Do you have a ball?”
Kagami laughed. “I have two in the back seat.”
...yeah, this really was Daiki’s kind of guy.
The ride to the court wasn’t long, and Daiki was shaking out his limbs and following Kagami to the blacktop before he knew it. He didn’t need to get too serious for this, but injuring himself when he was still negotiating a contract would be dumb even by his standards.
“I’ll let you take first ball,” he announced, “since you’ll need the handicap.”
Contrary to his expectations, Kagami didn’t laugh at the jab – instead he frowned, and he knew, rather than felt, that he was serious. “You know,” he said as he bounced the ball at the half court line, “you said I was full of myself before, but I’ve got nothing on you.”
Daiki shrugged, and settled into a comfortable stance. “We both know I’ve got the skill to back it up.”
And then Kagami moved.
He was fast – Daiki had to give him that, Kagami was a great sight faster than most people were, even a few of those people he played with and against – but he had nothing on Daiki’s speed, even when he wasn’t warmed up. Daiki kept with him easily, though he was surprised when his attempt at a steal was thwarted.
And then Kagami stopped and jumped for a shot. Daiki jumped in return for the block, but.
But.
Giddiness rushed to his head as he felt himself fall before Kagami did, as his hand missed the ball by the tiniest margin – he felt the air move, but knew he hadn’t touched the ball, knew it the way he knew the game and the way that the ball was going to go into the net, removing a chance for Daiki to take the rebound.
“Not bad,” he said, and he knew that a real smile was edging through his attempt at a smirk. “But is that all you’ve got? You won’t get me like that again.”
The next hour of Daiki’s life was nothing but ball and net and red; and when he came out with more wins than losses, a languid, satisfied feeling seeped into his bones, and made his stomach flutter when he looked at Kagami, who didn’t look discouraged in the slightest that for every point he’d made off Daiki, Daiki had taken at least two, if not three, in return – in fact, he looked every bit as satisfied as Daiki felt as they both dropped to sit on the bench at the side of the court, sweating and breathing hard.
“Shit,” Daiki breathed, tipping his head back to face the sky and look at Kagami from the corner of his eyes, and laughter bubbled from his chest that he couldn’t quite follow. “Where the fuck have you been all my life?”
It wasn’t a question Daiki expected an answer to, and Kagami didn’t bother. Instead, he leaned forward and pressed his fingers into his right knee. Daiki had noticed that he jumped higher from it, but also that he’d been much more calculative about when he used it.
“Injury?”
Kagami pulled a face. “Yeah.”
It was a shame, really; Kagami had all the natural talent and the build for a professional career, his abilities equalling the other prodigies Daiki had been teammates, then rivals, with during his school days.
“Sucks,” he said instead. “Do you regret it?”
He shrugged. “I can still play better than most, and I surf.”
There was something wistful about his expression, though, that made Daiki think that Kagami probably would have loved to stand on the court the way the he did, that he would have charged headfirst into battle the way Daiki did, and he didn’t even notice that he was staring at him until Kagami was staring back at him, and the electric current that had been thrumming between them since the moment they’d started playing had shifted altogether to something just as familiar to Daiki.
Daiki’s instincts were rarely wrong, after all, and they weren’t wrong today.
"You were checking me out at the beach."
He didn't know for sure, but he was pretty sure. Kagami grinned at him.
"You weren't being very subtle either."
“It's not my style. Come on, if you’re gonna,” Daiki goaded. He could do it himself, of course, but there was no fun in that; and besides, he'd won, so he wanted a prize. And a kiss from the mouth that smiled just how he liked it was exactly what he wanted to claim.
“God, you’re an ass,” Kagami muttered, but it was a good natured comment, so Daiki didn’t mind too much; and he minded even less as he was manhandled a little into the kiss. He didn’t let him control it for too long, though; he’d won fair and square, after all, and he bit into Kagami’s lip when he tugged on his hair a little harder than was probably necessary.
They were both just that little bit too out of breath to breathe through their noses to prolong the kiss, but that didn’t matter all too much. A break for breath was taken, and then they were lip locked again, and Daiki’s tongue was in Kagami’s mouth because like hell Kagami was going to take back the ground Daiki had won on the court in this battle.
Of course, like all good things, it came to an end, and Daiki almost sighed at the disappointment of the realisation that the day was ending, and that he probably couldn’t really afford to be out of contact with his agent for that much longer. The day was already starting to take on a surreal tinge, like one of those stories you tell that no one really believes even though there’s no reason for you to have lied.
Kagami seemed to have reached the same realisation, because he stood up. “Come on, I’ll drive you to your hotel,” he said.
The ride back was quiet, and Daiki fiddled with his ruined phone, wishing that it wasn’t wrecked by the seawater so he could get Kagami’s number. It felt so very final as Kagami pulled up near his hotel, and he was kind of disappointed as he unbuckled his seatbelt and moved to get out of the car.
“Oi, Aomine.”
He paused to look at him. (He refused to believe there was a hopeful look on his face, even if one day in the future, Kagami would gleefully inform their friends that he did.)
Kagami pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and chucked it at his face. “If you’re ever back in town, or you decide on a team here,” he said.
Daiki didn’t have to look at it to know that Kagami’s number would be on it, and he scoffed as he pushed the door open, and tried to ignore the way he suddenly felt lighter.
“No way,” he answered, but the expression on Kagami’s face as he left the vehicle was contained no disappointment whatsoever.
After all, they both knew Daiki was going to call.
(Satsuki had yelled at him for ten minutes straight when he got back, about the stupidity of trusting strangers so much ["I don't care if your instincts told you he was safe, despite your best efforts you are not an animal and it is not okay just because everything worked out!"] and being out of contact with her and his agent, but she still took him to get a new phone the next day, and when his old SIM card was put in and the device came to life, the first thing Daiki did was open up the New Contact page.)