Keeping Faith [Romantik/Intimität - Joker - für mich]

[rolly-chan.livejournal.com]

Titel: Keeping Faith
Team: Weiß (Titanic)
Challenge: Romantik/Intimität: Joker [für mich] - "Einsamkeit" aus der Angst-Tabelle der 2017-Bingo-Tabellen
Fandom: Kuroko no Basuke (Monster-AU)
Charaktere: Satsuki Momoi, Daiki Aomine
Wörter: 1.052
Sprache: Englisch
Warnungen: alles tame hier :)
Inhalt: Satsuki visits an old friend.
Anmerkungen: Dieser Teil hat nicht mal ansatzweise irgendwo Femslash drin, aber er ist notwendig für den Plot (im nächsten Teil gehts dann nämlich richtig los :D) und ich wollte Aomine mal mit reinbringen.

Satsuki pushed Aomine’s door open more forcefully than she had intended. It bumped sharply into the door stop and she allowed herself to flinch. Regardless, she was full of intent and wouldn’t be stopped, not even by her own self.

“Aomine-kun! Get up, we’re going out!” she called and peeked into the living room.

She was lucky. This time, she didn’t have to look any further as Aomine was sprawled on the couch with a magazine square on his face.

“Ew, stop calling me that already.” Aomine’s deep voice sounded hoarse with sleep, which was noticeable even more due to the magazine muffling the sound.

Satsuki ignored him and the dull ache it caused to be reminded of their past. “You should get up sometime soon before I also make you clean up.”

Aomine groaned when Satsuki mentioned the state of his living room. There were boxes all around, magazines and socks on the floor, and other clutter Satsuki didn’t bother with identifying. He hadn’t even retrieved his TV from one of the boxes yet, the space on the cabinet at the far wall still empty.

Usually, Satsuki didn’t make him clean up because she knew he’d inevitably move to a different apartment soon. It was his thing. Moving every couple of months. He seemed to be in a perpetual state between inertia and unrest. Not much different from a big cat pacing the length of its cage, and at another time sleeping in a corner, dead to the world.

“Don’t make me take a closer look at the mess,” she said cheerily.

Aomine’s black jaguar ears that peeked out from under the magazine twitched and he finally, though reluctantly, dragged the magazine from his face, revealing his whiskers.

At the moment, he seemed to have decided on a more human look. Aside from the structure of his cheek bones, the whiskers and the ears, everything else looked human. Sometimes, Satsuki wished she could hide her mutant features like that, too.

Aomine took his time, stretching his body just like a cat. Then he sent Satsuki a bored look from orange eyes. “I’m gonna hit the shower.”

Satsuki unabashedly followed him right up to the bathroom door, which he slammed shut behind him in annoyance. Good. An annoyed Aomine was an Aomine more likely to go out with Satsuki. Having grown up together, she knew him better than anybody, and she wasn’t beneath utilizing all the leverage she had to get him out of his laziness.

Somebody had to, for his own sake.

When she heard the water run in the shower, Satsuki pulled out her pink phone and checked her LINE messages again, but her text to Kuroko remained unread.

She leaned her head against the door. “Aomine-kun?”

There was an affirmative grunt, and so she pressed on. “Have you heard from Tetsu-kun lately?”

“Don’t think I’ve talked to him since the whole Monster debacle,” was the careless reply. It hurt, somewhere deep down, to see her friends so torn apart from each other that they didn’t even text each other anymore. That they didn’t even care. Sometimes it felt like she was the only one still holding onto their past. The only one that still cared about them all, about the bonds they shared. She was trying so desperately to believe that they were still there, their bonds. Because they couldn’t have just disappeared. Not after everything they’d been through together.

But sometimes it was a little too hard to keep faith. And every time she felt another piece of herself break away. And every time, she felt a little bit more alone.

Satsuki swallowed down a sigh. “Maybe you should text him sometime,” she suggested airily, hoping against hope that Aomine would overcome his issues and pick their friendship back up. They used to be so close.

She only got a grunt in reply and knew Aomine wouldn’t bother, just as he didn’t bother with most other things. Like a proper job.

“Tetsu-kun isn’t picking up his phone, you know. I’m worried. I just though, maybe he’d pick up if it’s you…” she finally admitted. It’d been a couple days since she first tried to get into contact with Kuroko again, and usually, he would reply within a day. But this time, he hadn’t, and Satsuki was beginning to imagine all sorts of horror scenarios.

Not to mention that her new team wasn’t exactly welcoming her with open arms, which only added to her worries about her friends. She knew Kuroko changed careers and became a firefighter, and judging by the way her own new teammates were wary of her, didn’t trust her, she was wondering how much trouble Kuroko was getting for having been one of them, like Satsuki.

She heard the water stopping and took a step to the side.

“Tetsu is a big boy. You shouldn’t worry so much.”

Satsuki let the sigh slip this time. “Are you all right? You’re not getting trouble for being an ex-Monster?”

There was a brief silence before the door was pushed open and Aomine peeked out of it, his pupils narrow and slit-like. “No. What’s this about? Are you getting trouble for that?”

“Oh no! I’m fine!” Satsuki lied, waving that question away with her hands, as she always did. “I was just wondering if you’re doing okay.”

Aomine furrowed his brows and regarded her with a doubting expression for a moment, before he sighed audibly and scratched the back of his head. “I’m doing fine.”

Satsuki knew that would be all she’d get out of him today. They never really talked much about their actual lives. She was happy enough that she managed to get him out of his apartment. It would have to be enough for now.

She put on a bright smile. “Are you getting dressed or will you go out like this?” she asked, pointing down to the towel around Aomine’s waist.

He cursed something along the lines of “Damn woman, always so bossy” and stomped past her into his room, where she could hear him rummage for clothes.

At least he wasn’t completely lost. Or so Satsuki told herself. She had to believe in it.

If she didn’t, she wouldn’t know what to do or how to be.