Chapter Text
Despite the way in which Kise managed to con the people around him into paying for his coffee, or his meal, or whatever, and despite his general whining about being a starving artist, he somehow had the nicest place out of all of them. There were large windows, natural light (apparently important to a photographer, despite the fact that he did no photography at home), and comfortable furniture (which he insisted had been pilfered from various stage plays) draped in white sheets so it looked kind of like the whole thing matched.
So of course Aomine, Momoi, and Kuroko treated it like a second home, and felt free to roll themselves up in the sheets when sitting on the couch or the arm chairs, exposing the gross tartan. Kise would always try to fix it for about the first hour of their visit, before eventually giving up, and leaving it until they left.
Murasakibara used to hang out with them too, but he’d always been difficult to drag out of his own space. Since he’d started dating that boutique owner, it had been near impossible.
Akashi, being that he already had a second home, and also a third and a fourth, probably, treated it more like a fifth home － he theoretically lived full time in Japan, but he travelled internationally frequently enough that stopping by to visit them wasn’t uncommon.
Midorima, despite living in the same city, always claimed that his work at the hospital kept him too busy to hang out anything more than occasionally, but Kuroko privately suspected that Midorima just found them a little exhausting to be around as a group. Kuroko could understand that. He also found the Generation of Miracles exhausting to be around.
He just did it anyways.
So the four of them － Kise, Kuroko, Aomine, and Momoi － scattered across Kise’s apartment in the early evening wasn’t an uncommon sight. Aomine was on the couch. He’d brought a SNES and had it hooked up to the TV, playing NBA Jam. Momoi was working at the kitchen table on her laptop, probably doing something work related, and Kise was sitting across from her on his own, sorting through the photos he had taken that weekend of Kagami at the beach.
Those photos were why Kuroko had power walked to Kise’s as soon as he had released his class for the day, stopping only briefly at his apartment to pick up Nigou. He had really hoped to beat Aomine and Momoi there, but no such luck.
He joined Aomine on the couch, and Nigou hopped up to join him.
“Oi, Tetsu,” Aomine greeted, “you want in? I brought another controller.”
“Thank you Aomine-kun, but no,” Kuroko said. He leaned his head back on the couch, eyeing Kise out of the corner of his eye. “Kise-kun, how did the photos turn out?”
“Nigou looks charming as ever, Kurokocchi,” Kise said, voice bright but distracted, “thank you for helping out.”
At least he didn’t seem to be holding a grudge about the wet-willy thing.
“Nigou and I are always happy to help,” Kuroko said. He hesitated, loath to bring up the subject in company, but finally, he said, “do you know much about Kagami?”
“Oh, the model? No, I didn’t even do the calendar last year, we only met the once. Aside from being a firefighter, all I know about him is that he has amazing abs,” Kise said, glancing up at Kuroko.
“Kagami? Firefighter Kagami?” Aomine asked, pausing his game to look over.
“Yes,” Kise answered, “do you know him?”
“Yeah, we ball every Tuesday-Thursday, why you asking?”
“No reason,” Kuroko said, pulling out his phone to avoid eye contact while mentally ticking off a little box labeled, ‘common interests?’
Aomine resumed his game, and the room was briefly silent but for the various clicking of keys and buttons, but then Aomine paused again, and looked suspiciously over at Kuroko. Kuroko stared at his phone.
“Oi, Detective,” Aomine called to Momoi, who sighed heavily, “does Tetsu look squirrely to you?”
Momoi looked up from her laptop, and over at Kuroko. Her expression melted from exasperation to devilishly inquisitive. “Officer, I believe you may be onto something.” She leaned over to try and get a view of Kuroko’s face, and grinned, “Oh my god, Tetsu-kun, are you interested?”
Kuroko hummed, and realized he wasn’t going to avoid this. “He does have amazing abs,” he said, echoing Kise’s words.
“Tetsu, you have a type,” Aomine laughed. Kuroko gave him a dirty look. Tall, well-built guys was a broad category, and Aomine might have fit that except that Kuroko had added ‘not an asshole’ to his requirements after Aomine had necessitated that in college. By being an asshole.
“Aomine-kun, you’re familiar with Kagami-kun?” He asked.
“Eh,” Aomine shrugged and unpaused his game. Kuroko counted to ten silently, then back down to zero. After a moment, Aomine said, “though, for what it’s worth, we do have the same shoe size, and you’ve all seen－”
“No,” Momoi shouted and Kise let out an anguished groan.
“－my dick,” Aomine said, with satisfaction. There was a thunk as Kise’s head hit the table, and an aborted honking noise as Momoi’s chair scraped along the linoleum when she got up to pace into the kitchen for a drink.
Kuroko remained silent and blank faced. He’d rather not encourage Aomine. Aomine also tended to volunteer information if one just stayed quiet. Probably a contributing factor to his remaining a patrol officer.
“But yeah, I don’t know him,” Aomine said.
“Helpful,” Kuroko said, “thank you Aomine-kun. For the record, I have always found the foot proportion rule to be a myth. It has struck me, however, that there is a strong inverse correlation between dick size in personality and actuality.”
Momoi laughed from the kitchen, but Aomine just looked perplexed.
Kuroko reminded himself that sometimes for a punch to connect, you had to aim low.
“You’re an asshole, and you have nothing to brag about,” Kuroko said.
“Oh,” Aomine said, “psh. Like I haven’t heard that before.”