dedicated to kite because she's like 80% of the reason i could keep writing it (but also thanks a lot to Ju who held my hand throughout it, and Lys ap Adin who put up with my complicated relationship with tenses)

Warning: this fic is awkward, switches from second to third person systematically and has parts in possibly incongruous tenses.
And I haaaave one thing to say about it.

I took Aomine's unrequited fistbump not strictly as the end of Aomine and Kuroko's friendship. It's obvious that things started going downhill from there but I also think that, however strong the bond between basketball life and normal life is in Aomine's case, Aomine developed a terrible relationship with basketball BEFORE throwing away everything else and I say this because there's a flashback post-fistbump in here and Aomine might sound too happy for some while I personally think it's still doable (…not sure if it was necessary to point this out LOL but whatever).

I've been planning this fic since… 10 months I believe _( :3 gave up on it a long time ago but then I found an aokuro comic from AKE's, "Walking Speed", which portrayed a very similar happening to one that I had planned for this fic SO THE FEELINGS CAME BACK AND SUDDENLY I needed to finish this. Well I finished this.

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It's like gasping for air in a river, lukewarm water splashing against the sides of your face, lingering in the creases of your mouth, and pressing waves down on your body as you try to figure out what you have to do to stay afloat.

There's a mountain away in the distance from where your river stems, standing sharp and lonely on a vast land. It looks beautiful, and never closer each time you glance up to it. But right now you can only pay attention to that transparent touch, of which you can feel nothing but the weight only one moment too late, once it's already rocking on your limbs like an invisible hand pressing insistently against your efforts. It taps your chest, unyielding, until the current drags you under and for a moment, it all disappears.

The mountain, the sky, the soft breeze that had been whispering on the skin of your cheeks that you were still floating over the surface, you were making it—it is all engulfed in a shimmering darkness, blurry blue lines and lights ablaze above you, unwavering even underwater, a certainty in their existence telling you: those ones will always stay there, eternal and unreachable just like the mountain.

But there's another touch now on your skin, and it is a warm one, pushing your shoulder blades up and driving you out of the water once again.

A figure looms over you, an undefined contrast in the blaring rays of the day, and buries you in their shadow. When you look up at them, you know they're smiling at you.

"Isn't it time for you to learn how to do this," they scold you, but the cheerfulness in their voice bans any trace of reproach. They're still holding you gently barely over the surface as you start moving the way you didn't know you could move. A splash of legs, a twist of hands, an intake of breath and step by step you float on your own. You learn.

And you can't be sure—maybe it's just an illusion of your palpitating mind—but the mountain does look a bit closer now.

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Kuroko has a recurring dream, stemming from bittersweet memories: those of an afternoon in middle school when Aomine snuck up on him and slid an arm in the crook of his elbow.

"Hey," Aomine says conspiratorially in Kuroko's recollection of that day, but as his voice cuts easily through the loud chatter of the crowded hallway, it also lacks the usual complacency of mischief. "Come with me."

"Where?" Kuroko asks, dubious.

Aomine shrugs like it's no big deal—looking for a way to kill time when he believes he doesn't have anything better to do. "Dunno. Around."

Kuroko knows what he's about to say. Nonetheless, he's not prepared to hear it. He never is.

"Let's ditch practice today."

He can't bring himself to pull his arm away from Aomine's hold. "I don't know. You've ditched enough practice as it is, Aomine-kun..."

Aomine scoffs in a way that's creeping its path into an unpleasant familiarity. A slow, gradual process Kuroko wishes he wouldn't be witnessing first-hand. "So what. It's not like I need it."

"But I do," Kuroko points out, and Aomine's expression falls for a long second, before he can plaster a lopsided grin on the lying mask that he's been growing. There was a time when Aomine was nothing but honesty and disarming, upbeat simplicity. Now, at least, he still is just as simple.

"Come on, I just want to spend some time together," Aomine tries, forcing the conversation to continue on a lighter tone, but Kuroko's distress must reflect somewhere on his face, because Aomine snorts and backs off quickly. "But if you want to go so bad, then... Whatever. It's okay. See you later, maybe."

Kuroko doesn't take any satisfaction in the feeling of Aomine's arm finally untangling from his own and dropping away, nor can he stand the sight of Aomine's back turning on him and walking off alone: a déjà-vu with a different setting that he itches to scrub away from his mind in any way possible.

So he glances only once at the stream of students flowing along towards the gyms—away from Aomine—and makes his choice.

Aomine looks down with the tiniest, grateful smile when Kuroko silently bumps into the his side to let him know of his presence, so, Kuroko considers, he might have done one thing right this time.

When Aomine drives him inside the empty board game club room, Kuroko is more than surprised.

"Are we allowed to be here?"

Aomine gives a noncommittal shrug before resuming his evaluation of the room. "I thought we could play something. Don't they keep an awful lot of games packed in here?"

They do, as the contents of the many cabinets prove when Aomine slams their doors open in delight. He rummages through the boxes of table games like a kid diving into the den of presents under a Christmas tree, and resurfaces wielding a very large one as Kuroko's busy moving two chairs around one same desk.

The school is exceptionally quiet if not for Aomine's occasional huffs and snickers during their games, so much that Kuroko believes he can hear the sound of basketballs bouncing far away, echoing among the walls of the hallways all the way from the gyms—a sweet call, but a grimmer weight on his eardrums. But it's a calm afternoon, and with every smile Aomine cracks, Kuroko reckons with growing certainty that it might have been worth it. He wonders whether Momoi will come to look for them—she surely will—if she has already checked the roof, Aomine's favourite patch of grass in the schoolyard, or even the library, Aomine's ultimate hiding spot.

He wins most of the rounds at the games they play, but Aomine welcomes the losses with atypical acceptance. He growls in offense and promises revenge, but whatever comes out of his mouth sounds like the half-hearted and unconvincing emulation of a feeling, to Kuroko's ears, whether that is frustration, or anger—or fun.

Twilight is silently downing on the school in orange shades of light when Aomine eyes something new in the mess of games that the room has become, and lets out a yelp of surprise.

"This game!" he exclaims, grinning excitedly at a long rectangular box. The word 'JENGA' is printed in colorful katakana on the box. "Satsuki had this one. Hah, I hated it so much, you have no idea."

Nonetheless, deaf to his own words, Aomine lets all the wooden pieces roll out of the box in a clatter. In less than a minute, a not-so-carefully built column rises on the desk between the two of them. And from there, one by one, it loses its pieces and shrivels up, approaching the frail instability of no return.

Aomine maintains an uncharacteristic stillness for the entire while. It surprises Kuroko. He would have expected him to become restless and complain about the slowness of the game, about his bones aching for the lack of movement and maybe his head even hurting a bit—Kuroko does have an idea of the reasons why Aomine might have hated this when he was younger.

Instead, when Kuroko glances up, eyes peeking behind his long-banged fringe, he sees an Aomine he's afraid to come to know. Propped on his chair, outline bathed in the violent hues of the last rays of the day, Aomine sits against the window with tense shoulders and covered in stagnant shadows playing tricks on the familiar traits of his face, his frown of concentration and the corners of his drawn lips.

A knot tightens in anxiety inside Kuroko's chest and he has to avert his eyes.

"Will you come to practice tomorrow?" he dares ask at half game.

Aomine's huff is laced with annoyance. And disappointment too, probably, but Kuroko isn't ready to acknowledge that. Aomine's gaze never strays from the more welcoming sight of a falling tower and although Kuroko might not understand Aomine's heart anymore, he still understands his language. "Dunno. Maybe. It doesn't really make any difference, does it?"

It's meant to be rhetorical, but the way his tone rises uttering the last words makes Kuroko wonder whether Aomine is not silently testing him. What difference does it make, indeed?

He follows Aomine's fingers tracing the evened angles of a wooden piece, nails digging it out bit by bit from the structure before pulling it out completely. "Practice is more enjoyable if you're there."

Aomine laughs ruefully, and shakes his head. "Your turn."

When Kuroko too leniently goes for a piece and carelessly pushes it out with his fingertip, the entire tower crumbles down.

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Kuroko dreams of that afternoon in the club room many times. Through middle school, through high school.

It comes in bits and pieces, in different words and sounds, but the scene is always the same. There's the room colored in pink and orange shadows and there's the two of them sitting at the desk, divided by a tower of Jenga built anew for the umpteenth time. Sometimes he can see Aomine's eyes studying the dismantled wooden column and the contours of his body teetering on the edges in the sunset, threatening to fade into thin air; sometimes the contrast with the window behind his shoulders is so strong that it shrouds Aomine's face with a dark inscrutable mask.

"Your turn," Aomine's voice repeats in the dream when he discards another piece.

"I don't want to," Kuroko usually tries weakly, fingers stalled by a crippling anxiety seizing his mind, fogging his concentration.

But Aomine insists every time, doesn't show any hesitation when his hand opens a new hole in the wavering tower. "It takes two to play this," he says as he gestures him to make his move; it's with a lump in his throat and a foreign force moving his hand that Kuroko finally yields and by the end, the tower once again collapses unbearably loud by his own hands.

The first thing that comes to his mind when he wakes up from those dreams is always the memory of the day after that afternoon—and the days after that too, when Aomine kept sliding an arm in the crook of his elbow and trying to pull him out of his way.

But in those next days, Kuroko had asked himself which choice was better for the both of them; if following Aomine in his loneliness would have brought any good—choose Aomine or choose basketball and a lasting promise with a friend, all the while wondering if choosing basketball couldn't also mean choosing Aomine, in the long run.

In the end he had made one, and so he had watched again and again Aomine walking away from him in the school hallways, quiet and alone, until Aomine had stopped coming to him at all.

If he looks back now, what Kuroko sees is an endless string of mistakes and wrong answers to unsaid questions; too many occasions spent yearning to be something he was not, for himself or for someone else. I should have said that, he tells himself while thinking of nothing and everything, I shouldn't have done that; and he knows it's true—that Aomine's words are right. It takes two to break a friendship.

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The continuous flow of time and water moves around you and yet, you don't learn enough.

Just enough to be able to stay afloat when you distinctly feel those warm hands leave you. You wait, expecting them to reach you again at some point, sudden and humble like the first time.

What you did not expect, though, was for the tepidity of the water to be so insidious, to leave such impalpable feeling of its movement on your skin that you don't realize it's been invading your mouth and dripping down your throat until it's too late, until your ribcage aches and your lungs constricts with the need to cough it all out. But there's no chance of that anymore, it's down too deep and too abundant for you to resist it further.

So you become the river—you become the current, and you can't tell if you're still floating or if you're drowning, can't know where you're going anymore, if you're even moving in any direction beside up and down with the waves, which stir in a slowly-building turmoil, rippling the surface—the only tale-telling sign that something is happening underwater, where not every eye can see.

When the turmoil ends—because it does end at last, although you could have sworn it was bound to go on forever—and you can spare a moment to notice the mountain again, never farther from you than now, and discern the stream of the river from yourself, it takes all of your effort to find an equilibrium again on the surface, to pace your floating and laborious swimming again, but you manage.

The water remains in your lungs.

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What his new teammates and Kagami don't understand is that Kuroko never truly held it against Aomine.

When Kagami speaks of Aomine, he also speaks of rivalry, of ideals to prove and words to forgive but Kuroko isn't certain he's ever been in the place to be the only one forgiving.

Indeed, his comprehension of Aomine comes with a dichotomy. Aomine's reality is one too far from his own to be easy to accept as it is, without feeling hurt, anger and frustration, a need to prove things wrong—but which things exactly, Kuroko couldn't tell at the time. Because objectively, he understands that what Aomine—all of them—did was a consequence of circumstances, naive idealism gone awry, and youthful mistakes; that there's logic, lying underneath it all. Another thing Kuroko knows is that a too huge difference between two opposing situations can lead to unfair judgments. What Kuroko would have done had he been in Aomine's place, what Aomine would have done if he had been in Kuroko's, aren't questions as easy to answer as when it all started.

For this reason, he's tried hard to picture the world through Aomine's eyes, to see it as Aomine sees it—and somewhere along the endless attempt to accept what had been then and what is now, he's convinced himself that Aomine might have simply done the most natural thing.

He participated in a practice race once, when he had just been promoted to first string—when the training had still been almost too taxing and the annoyance in the eyes of his new teammates had yet to settle down to a cautious re-evaluation. He doesn't remember why at some point it had become so important for him to finish it—it was hardly a matter of getting disqualified from the string, as he hadn't even had the occasion to prove his worth in a real match yet. But he remembers the judging glances of the regulars thrown in his direction. He remembers the doubt and the resigned sighs of the coaches as, one by one, everyone finished their laps and sat down on the ground waiting for further orders, until Kuroko remained the only one running, alone on the large circular track.

The piercing sting inflicted to his lungs by every wheeze feels like only yesterday—his stomach turning upside-down from the exertion at every step forth in the direction of the finish line.

He had been just about to surrender, his legs shaking tiredly under the weight of his skips, when a warm hand rested on his shoulder blade and the soft nudge almost made him stumble forward.

"You okay?" the still fresh memory of a happier Aomine asks, short-breathed, but easily keeping up with Kuroko's lagging even when he's already completed his own laps and placed first.

Kuroko gulps down the nausea and tries to look as neutral as possible. "I'm fine, Aomine-kun. Thanks for your concern."

Predictably, Aomine doesn't buy it, and pulls a face. "You look like you're on the verge of death."

"Maybe, yes," Kuroko admits laconically. "What about it."

A blaring sunray keeps barging in his line of vision. When he squints his aching eyes, another wave of nausea hits him and his knees wobble dangerously.

"Hey," Aomine calls, hand supporting him upright with more urgency. "Hey hey, stay in this world, please. If you see a light at the end of a tunnel, tell it to come back another time, gotcha?"

"Aomine!" One of the coaches yells before Kuroko can retort something about lights with hearing. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing!"

"Kuroko has yet to finish his laps. No need to babysit him. Come back here and do your stretching!"

"I'm not doing anything!" Aomine yells back innocently, comforting hand leaving Kuroko's back to rise in a gesture of surrender and just like that, Kuroko falters in his next step. "I just feel like I could use some more running!"

Kuroko finally gives Aomine a long, wary stare. "Aomine-kun..."

Aomine doesn't answer right away. Instead, he jogs a bit ahead of him and then turns around, smiling as he runs backwards. "When you run, it's easier to keep going if you have someone to set your eyes on. You wanna finish this, don't you?"

Kuroko inhales slowly, welcoming some strength back in his body as he nods resolutely at Aomine, who grins dazzlingly at him in reply. "You don't have to."

"I know," Aomine shrugs. "But we're partners, right? Just follow me. We'll finish in no time. A piece of cake." Then he turns ahead again, always keeping no less than two meters' distance from him, and Kuroko follows.

In the end, under the scrutinizing stares of the coaches and the stupor of the regulars, Kuroko collapses on the finish line.

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Sometimes Kuroko wonders when was it that they stopped running side by side—if they ever ran that way, or if instead it was always just an endless chase, with Kuroko following Aomine steadily when at some point, Aomine ran too far ahead and Kuroko strayed too behind, until they couldn't see each other anymore on their path.

When Kuroko tries to imagine what Aomine sees in his own running, he imagines a race of breathy sprints and exciting challenges, a heart beating wildly with every new overtaking.

But then, Aomine had found himself alone, with no one in sight anymore, everyone having stopped running once fallen too far behind and after a while, even the ones who still ran, whose silhouettes Aomine could only barely discern behind him, looking more like mocking puppets than anything else.

What's the point, Aomine must have asked himself, of a race where everyone drops out halfway? Should one keep running for the sake of running, or drop out themselves and leave for good?

In retrospect, now that all is said and done and time has washed away the impulsiveness and the anger, Aomine's actions look so instinctual to Kuroko's eyes, under a certain light.

Aomine had stopped, and slowly sat down on the track. He had leant on his arms and lolled his head back to look up at the sky; then, he had closed his eyes, and had waited.

And Kuroko had done the same, in the back—had gasped raggedly with hands on his knees and eyes turning to the hard ground, and then paused, believing himself too far from anyone to ever catch up.

Aomine and Kuroko have more things in common than his teammates might think. Kagami would probably complain that he's too sympathetic when it comes to certain people, but this is the transparent truth: they both sat down and surrendered, and Kuroko is just lucky he was the first one to stand back up. Because Aomine was right once again—Aomine had been right about many things, in the past: it's easier to keep running if you have someone to follow.

Whether the hand comes in the form of trustful words, a growing partnership, or even a small back in the distance, Kuroko has learnt that it takes two to stand up again, and that the simple difference between them is that the ones who will be able to offer Aomine that hand have yet to reach him.

But after all, since Aomine is still waiting and Kuroko is still walking, one day they might meet—and maybe, from there, they will be able to run together once again.

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The sun's still blaring its light down on your face, in surroundings that look familiar but not quite. You've found your own pace now, a steadfast determination to remain afloat that, although frail, doesn't feel like it will ever die out. Still, nothing much has changed and—why is that, you wonder. Then again, everything has a rhythm now, why would you change it? It has always worked, so probably it will keep working forever.

But then there's someone looming over you against the sunlight, and when warm arms slip against your back and hook under your armpits you think, yes, I remember this. There's a far-off familiarity in the feeling of someone holding you up that is not lost on your skin, nor on your heart. Yes, you think, this feels familiar. It takes two for this too, you should know already. That's how it's supposed to be, you tell yourself, until you feel those hands hauling you up, out of the water.

You're disoriented, heady and fuzzy as the person beside you says, "Didn't you know you can touch the bottom with your feet?"

No, you didn't know. You've never thought there would be another way, that touching the ground was ever an option. But it must be true, because now your soles slip a bit on wet rocky pebbles but they do touch. The ground is a welcome presence because when you take a tentative step in the water, every movement feels exhausting already, but the ground is there for you to plant your heels into it.

You don't depend on the current anymore, and bit by bit, the water leaves your lungs and this time you're sure.

The mountain is getting closer.

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Kuroko can't know whether there will be a happily ever after. But he's stubborn and not one to settle for once upon a time and some things, like a tower of Jenga—like Aomine and himself—are made so that when they crumble, they can be rebuilt.

But if it takes two to be helped, it also takes two to help someone because Kuroko could struggle to reach out to Aomine as many times as he wants and always just as uselessly, if Aomine doesn't reach back to take his hand.

Finally standing in front of Aomine in the middle of the court, with Kagami's arm against his back holding him up, what he wants to say but can't is 'I refused to give up on you. Did you give up on me?'

But he muses, as he raises his fist and offers it to Aomine: isn't the fact that they're both here, standing in front of each other and still playing basketball, the proof that Kuroko isn't the only one who didn't give up?

So, when Aomine does bump fists with him, no words are needed for Kuroko to know all that matters.

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Kuroko still dreams of that afternoon in middle school, after the match.

It's still the same scene, and yet different from the previous ones. The sunlight isn't of a violent orange anymore; on the contrary it holds the bluer hues of a dawn as they collect the pieces of the Jenga tower and put them back together.

But when the tower is finished and Aomine's fingers hover over it in search of his first move, Kuroko slowly opens his mouth and asks him to stop.

Aomine raises his head from the game to look at him and this time, his face too is fully visible, along with an innocent confusion that halts his gestures.

"Let's leave it like this," Kuroko urges him, and Aomine gazes at the wooden tower between them as if he's seeing it in its entirety for the first time. "Let's play another game. Something we like."

The hand still drifts indecisive over the top of the tower as Aomine considers it, but then he smiles, looking contented and peaceful like Kuroko hasn't seen him in a long time, and says, "Okay. We could do that."

The fic where Kuroko develops an irrational atavic fear of Jenga et board games and no one knows why. Seirin stops inviting him to gaming nights.

This is the last time I write introspection about transitionary teikou-highschool aokuro lol. There are so many fics about this in the fandom already I'm sorry to be repetitive orz bUT AOKURo.
Also I'm a bit sad I didn't get to insert Ogiwara's influence if not in two implicit sentences here and there POOR BABY so neglected bUT AOKURo.