Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the still, quiet air of the hospital room, Aomine could hear the voices just outside the door with weird clarity – the distressed, confused one of a little girl and the calming, nearly resigned one of an adult man.

They were words filled with why's and what's and I don't understand's, but Aomine wasn't giving them much attention, all in all. He didn't want – nor need, really – to listen to that conversation.

Since he had woken up in that too white bed, his head a completely blank slate and too many eyes he couldn't recognize watching him attentively, he hadn't been much in the mood to listen to anything at all, truth be told.

The world was confusing enough when it was silent, in his current state.

----

There had been an accident.

Or, at least, that was what he had been told. He had been driving his car late at night, coming back home from his job, and there had been an accident.

As it looked like, said accident had caused him a broken arm and two cracked ribs, a dangerously serious injury to his head and nine days in a coma – it had been a hard week and a half for his family and friends, from what he understood, but once he had finally woken up it had been soon clear that the worst hadn't passed just yet.

His first set of words had been where am I? , voice a rough, tired whisper and brows drawn in the middle of his forehead, and the deep crimson of the eyes intently staring at him had shone of what Aomine had instinctively recognized as pure, absolute happiness.

Who are you? was his second question, asked only moments after the first one, and the same joy he had seen reflected on the redhead's face had muted in deep hurt and fear in the blink of an eye.

It had been horrible.

Aomine hadn't even known the man – wasn't even sure of who he himself was supposed to be, really – but he had known that, if there was one thing he couldn't bear to see ever again, it was those same features painted with just as much sorrow as he had caused them by simply... not remembering.

He couldn't remember anything at all.

The redhead had made to talk, opening his mouth and closing it again a couple of times, but in the end he'd been stopped by the green haired man that had been standing just next to him.

“Move aside, Kagami,” the deep voice had commanded, pushing away the other with a sure gesture of his hand, and as soon as the scarlet had been out of his field of view Aomine had felt his heart constrict painfully.

He hadn't known why, though.

It was a terrible feeling, like withdrawal from an addiction he didn't know when he'd gotten or how to satisfy – he wasn't even sure about just what he was addicted to, and thinking about it made his head throb painfully.

The green haired man had pointed a light in his eyes, first the left, then the right, and after that he had sighed and asked him do you know who I am?

“A doctor,” Aomine had answered, pointing with his blue irises at the white coat the other had been wearing, and the man had rolled his eyes at him.

“I mean my name, do you know me?”

He didn't. He didn't know that doctor nor the red haired man next to him, he couldn't remember who the peach eyed woman was nor anything about the blond or the azure haired guy.

When asked if he remembered his own name, at last, he had shaken his head as well, and then frowned at the deep nothing that made up his own mind.

----

That he was called Aomine Daiki had been one of the first things he had been informed of – and even then, after four days of waking convalescence, he still couldn't really make those two words and four kanji his own.

They existed in his mind as a concrete knowledge, like how the piece of furniture he was laying upon was called a bed, how the Earth moved around the Sun and seven plus two gave nine – he knew those things were real and true, but they weren't something he felt as personal.

With his name was just the same.

It was a disheartening feeling, the emptiness that pervaded him.

The one to tell him is name – together with his age (thirty-four), his employment (detective) and how he had ended up in that hospital bed with aching body and mind – had been Kagami Taiga, the red haired, red eyed man.

He had sat by his side, hands holding each other as if to stop himself from reaching out towards Aomine, and had slowly told him about the basics of his life – things he should have already known, stuff that should have been frustrating for the redhead to have to explain, but he had been weirdly patient and gentle, in his recounting.

At first, Daiki hadn't really understood why it was Kagami the one taking care of him - where were his parents and if he had any siblings, those were things he really wanted to know, even if having the redhead by his side gave him a peace he couldn't seem to find when by himself or with anyone else.

Everything clicked, anyway, the moment he decided to use a lull in the conversation to ask who are you to me?

Kagami had widened his eyes for a second, his frame stiffening for the shortest of moments, and had then brought his gaze down to his own intertwined hands, moving his right thumb and index to play with the golden band resting on his left ring finger.

“I'm your husband,” he had mumbled, smiling softly and maybe a bit tensely, first at his hands, then at Aomine himself, and everything Daiki could make his own mouth pronounce in answer was a quiet is that so.

To some degree, that their relationship was of that kind had been somehow obvious, considering the type of feelings the redhead could make so easily bloom inside of him.

He wasn't really sure about why he hadn't realized it sooner.

Taiga had asked him if he had any kind of problems with it, tone hesitant and uncertain, and he had replied a strangely annoyed why the hell would I – that earnest sentence had pulled a startled laugh out of the other man, and Aomine would have lied if he had said that he didn't feel proud in a giddy way, about being the reason why a genuinely amused grin was now back on Kagami's lips.

At the subsequent is it fine if I bring the kids here, tomorrow?, though, everything Daiki could do was nod in a surprised haze, wide eyes and jaw slack.

Which brought it all back to him trying to not listen in on the conversation Taiga was currently having just outside the room with his supposed daughter.

----

When the door finally opened, the first thing Aomine saw were piercing chocolate eyes barely visible from behind a deep black fringe – the boy's face held close to no expressions at all and, somehow, it ended up reminding Daiki of that one azure eyed guy he had been informed was his best friend.

(Tetsu, he was pretty sure the name was.)

He raised a brow, a bit unsure, and moved his attention on Kagami in hope he'd tell him what to do or say – the redhead didn't even have the time to open his mouth, though, before the little girl hanging from his other arm detached herself and sprinted towards Aomine's bed, putting her hands on the mattress and pushing her face so close Daiki nearly felt himself go cross eyed.

“Daddy?” she asked, tone a bit wondering, maybe uncertain, and Aomine, even if just a little, felt himself start to panic.

What should he say? Was it okay to tell such a small kid – how old could she have been? Eight? Maybe ten? - that he, her father, had no idea who she was? He wasn't really sure he could go on with this meeting anymore.

This was distressing. And that was just to say the least.

“Uh...” he started, not really sure about how he wanted to continue, when Kagami finally reached the side of the bed and put a hand on the girl's blue hair (blue just like his own, he noticed, and dark skin oh so similar to his as well – he wondered if he was actually her biological father, somehow, and made a mental note to later ask Kagami about it).

“Come on baby, I told you to behave,” he reprimanded, messing up her hair a little and trying to pull her away from Aomine's personal space, but the girl only huffed and pushed herself up on the bed, sitting in front of Daiki's still startled and uncertain frame.

“I knoooow,” she whined, swinging her legs and rolling her eyes at her redhead father – Aomine found it amusing, his lips starting to curve into an involuntary half-smirk, but then the girl's big, black eyes turned once again on him, intense and unblinking, and he started feeling once again under the spotlight in an uncomfortable way.

Her legs were still moving, anyway, and her lips were bended in a nearly maniac smile, so maybe she wasn't as concerned about the whole situation as he thought she would be.

Daiki had no idea how to feel about that, though.

Kagami looked at them for a handful of seconds, moving his attentive and uncertain eyes first on the girl, then on his husband, and in the end sighed and let himself fall on the chair resting by the side of the bed.

“So,” he said, smile a little forced as he moved the boy to sit on his legs, “Uhm. Daiki. Hey. They are–”

“My children,” he cut in, vaguely dazed – he wasn't exactly sure about how he felt, looking at them. This, too, he listed as distressing.

With Kagami, it had been a feeling of belonging since the first moment he had landed his eyes on him – it was a warm sensation enveloping his heart, and a peace he didn't know he felt and needed until the redhead had left him alone for the first time.

He had welcomed that feeling – like finding home in the middle of a city he didn't belong in, and he still didn't know this man, still had no idea about what he really felt for him or if his feeling would ever come back to what they once had been, but it was clear that his before-the-accident self had been in love with Taiga.

He could feel it like muscle memory, like loving the redhead was as normal as breathing, to him.

But with the kids nothing of the like had sparked into him.

The only thing he could clearly feel take shape inside his mind and stomach was a deep, uncomfortable sense of inadequacy. It made him want to hide, or maybe run away.

Kagami locked surprised eyes with him for a second, probably trying to guess what Daiki was feeling simply by looking at the creases and dips on his face, and then nodded once.

“Yeah, they–” he tried again, but was once more suddenly interrupted by a chirpy, excited voice.

“I'm Sakura!” the girl said, starting to jump a little on the spot and keeping her grin pointed towards Aomine's face, “I'm nine! And I'm the tallest in my class! And I can paint my nails without painting on my skin nearly at all! And I play basket and you and papa taught me! And and and it's fine even if you don't remb– remer– remebr– know me because I can tell you everything and you'll know again!” she exclaimed, keeping count on her azure painted nails and smiling all the while, and Aomine couldn't do anything to stop the grin from finally bending his lips.

“Oh, then I'll be in your care,” he said, feeling a bit warmer, a little calmer, and the girl – Sakura – nodded madly at him in answer, sliding slightly closer to him, keeping on swinging her legs to a rhythm that made sense only in her head.

“He's Shiro,” she informed then, pointing a finger towards the boy sitting with Kagami – the kid, at the mention of his name, widened his eyes and stiffened a little, pushing a bit closer to Taiga's chest, and Daiki felt the agitation come back full force.

What if his own son didn't like him? What kind of relationship did he even have with his kids? He probably should have asked Kagami more questions before accepting to meet them, he realized in the end.

He felt his brows furrow slightly, feeling concern and uneasiness as he tried to find the right words to say to a child he didn't know anything about, when Sakura leaned closer to him, a small hand to hide her mouth and mirth in her too big eyes.

“He doesn't talk much,” she whispered, “even if he's already seven.”

Aomine looked at her for a second, feeling his brows furrow further and his mouth set in an uncertain line – he didn't know why, but what she said didn't sit well inside of him. He felt the need to tell her to apologize, even if she had only pointed out an objective truth.

It was weird.

He made to turn around, maybe ask Kagami explanations, but then the redhead sighed and eased Shiro back on the ground, rising to his feet only to crouch back in front of his daughter.

“Sakura...” he started, brows furrowed and lips bent in a light scowl, “how many times have we talked about this already?”

His tone was gentle but stern, somehow, and Aomine, for a second, wondered if he'd always been able to use it or if it was a skill he had mastered thanks to years of fatherhood. He wondered if it was something he himself had been able to do as well, before the accident.

That thought made a now familiar weight settle uncomfortably on his chest – sometimes, not remembering anything about his past became a too heavy reality for him to bear. Sometimes he felt like breathing was too hard and his head too empty.

He wondered what kind of feeling could ever give possessing a mind where thoughts didn't reverberate.

The tightening of a small hand around his sleeve was what pulled him out of his own world, in the end.

He jumped a little, startled at the sudden contact, and then moved his midnight irises on the fingers clutching at the cloth by his wrist – they were light in color, and slightly trembling, and Aomine had to force his gaze away from them to move it on the kid's face, meeting unblinking eyes and a small, barely there frown.

“...dad?” the boy asked, a whisper so low Daiki nearly couldn't catch it, and his hold got a bit tighter around the sleeve, making Aomine swallow without any actual reason.

“Hey,” he found himself answering, keeping his tone just as low, and he was marginally aware of how both Kagami's and Sakura's eyes were now on him, but he couldn't have moved his attention away from his son (his son, he still couldn't completely wrap his mind around the fact that he had children) even if he had actually wanted to, right that moment.

Shiro looked at him for nearly another minute, completely unmoving, and then ever so slowly extended his free hand towards him, making Aomine frown a little.

“Uh...” he started, thinking about asking what was it that he was trying to tell him, when Kagami's soft laugh filled the still air of the room, making Daiki's attention finally shift on him.

“He wants you to pick him up,” he explained to Aomine's confused expression, soft smile on his face and tenderness in his eyes, and the blue haired man felt his heart constrict a little, at the sight.

Sometimes, Taiga could get really beautiful.

In those moments he could easily understand why he had once fallen for the redhead, in that past he couldn't remember anything of.

He moved his gaze back on the boy more to stop looking at Kagami than anything else, to try and ease his heart back into a normal beating pace, and Shiro's hand was still extended towards him, his eyes still just as unblinking and intense; Aomine hesitantly reached his good arm out, cautiously wrapping it around the boy's frame – a chorus of I'm going to hurt him and this is the worst idea ever singing in the back of his mind – and then pulled him up as gently and slowly as he could.

Shiro settled easily in his lap, one side against Aomine's chest and his head resting in the crook of his neck, and the warmth Daiki felt by having that small body pressed to his own was so unexpectedly overwhelming that he could just barely register it, when Sakura started to complain about wanting a hug as well.

----

Most of the times, Kagami held a patience Aomine would have never guessed he could muster up, basing the assumption only on his appearance.

He had mentioned it, once – how his face didn't look just as kind as he actually was, and how sometimes the smile felt a bit off, a little wrong – but Taiga, even though initially startled, had only laughed at him and waved him off.

Isn't always like this , he had said that time, and since then Aomine had been rolling that answer around in his head, wondering about it whenever his mind wasn't otherwise preoccupied (which, considering the deep, dark emptiness that reigned inside of him, was far more often than he would have liked.)

He found himself asking about it in the afternoon of his fifth day of hospitalized convalescence – Kagami was sitting on the usual chair, Shiro sleeping in his lap and hands occupied with peeling what was probably the hundredth orange of the day, and Aomine turned his attention on him, putting down the magazine he hadn't actually been reading and squinting his eyes just a little, before relaxing his back against the propped up pillows and sighing under his breath.

“How long ago did we meet?” he asked, disrupting the quiet Spring air that filled the room, and Taiga hummed low and prolonged in the back of his throat, picking up a slice of orange and eating it before answering.

“How long ago was it, again?” he mused, looking at his left hand as if mentally counting on its fingers, and then tilted his head to the side, considering.

“We were around sixteen so... eighteen years ago? I think,” he concluded, munching on yet another slice, and Aomine found himself raising his eyebrows in surprise, widening his lids just the smallest bit.

“That's more than half of my whole life,” he pointed out, incredulous, but Kagami just snorted and nodded, positioning the plate with the peeled half orange in front of Daiki for him to eat.

“It's incredible how I still haven't tired of you, right?” he joked, shifting Shiro on his lap to make sure he was as comfortable as possible, and Aomine scowled at him a little, made a face at the too sour orange he had just eaten.

Truth be told, though, Daiki was actually impressed by how long this red haired man had been part of his life – and by how he was still there then, taking care of the shell of what once was the man he loved.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if he did it out of obligation, or maybe hope that his husband was still hidden somewhere inside of him. He wondered if he actually still loved him, even after the accident, even like this – and tried asking himself what he'd feel, how he'd react, in case Taiga didn't anymore.

He wasn't sure he knew the answer to that question, and that realization, even if just a little, scared him.

(He shouldn't have really cared all that much about Kagami, after all.

Even if in a life he couldn't remember he had been the man he loved – and of that, too, he couldn't be one hundred per cent sure – the present him had known the other for only five days. Five days weren't enough to form a friendship, let alone fall in love.

Five days couldn't justify the emotions Taiga could make bloom inside of him with just a slight curve of too soft-looking lips.

Not understanding his own self and feelings was tiring, and uncomfortable. It made him want to fall asleep and never wake up ever again.)

“And how did it happen?” he asked then, to try and force his thoughts away from the darkness he could feel wrapping around his heart, and Kagami, even if only barely, flinched at those mumbled words.

He recovered soon enough, though, letting a short, obviously forced laugh leave his mouth and retrieving the plate from Daiki's lap to start peeling yet another orange – Aomine wondered what was up with that reaction, raising a brow and tilting his head slightly to the side, but Kagami wasn't looking at him, his eyes firmly pointed on the fruit between his hands.

“What's with you today,” the redhead wondered after a handful of seconds, voice too cheerful and gaze still on the orange, “usually the less I tell you the happier you are, why are you asking all these questions all of a sudden?”

Daiki, at the words, found himself narrowing his eyes and sitting a little straighter, unintentionally clutching his fingers around the white sheet of the bed.

“Telling me stuff can help with my memory, the doctor said–” he started, tone dry to try and mask just how hard his heart was beating, how fast the blood was pumping in his head, but Kagami's sudden and weirdly harsh words made him stop in the middle of the sentence.

“Midorima, his name is– his name is Midorima,” he said, putting down the knife and clenching his fists on his knees – he still wasn't looking at Aomine, the crimson eyes still stubbornly pointing at the abandoned orange, and Daiki had no idea what was happening, why Taiga had found it necessary to point out that name, but the tension in the room was starting to make him feel alert, somehow, and it was without even realizing it that he let an annoyed so what leave his lips.

“Call him by his name, you– you know him you have to–”

“But I don't,” Aomine harshly interrupted, angry at the other somewhat frantic words, and it was the way Kagami flinched in answer that had him finally understand what exactly was happening.

It was like a punch right in the middle of the stomach, like having a carpet swept from right under his feet.

He felt a little like puking, honestly.

“You still haven't accepted it,” he said, eyes slightly wider and brows furrowed in slowly rising anger, and then he let a bitter laugh leave his lungs when Taiga didn't even try to deny it, eyes still away from Daiki, frame still as tense and unmoving.

Aomine, for a second, felt like the past five days – everything he could remember of his life – had been just some sort of sick joke.

“It was fucking creepy just how well you seemed to have taken it,” he snorted, letting his mind focus on the anger to ignore just how painful breathing felt, right then, “so what, you don't wanna tell me how we met to make it easier for yourself to believe that all that stuff's still in my head?”

“That's not–!” Kagami tried, finally raising his gaze to meet Aomine's, but the blue haired man was too taken by his own rage to notice the pained shade in the red eyes.

“It's gotta be nice for you, being able to just ignore how damn empty my mind is! Jeez, I wish I could do the fucking same!” he growled, forcing himself to not rise his voice too much in the still too quiet air of the room – the way Kagami closed tighter his right arm around the still sleeping Shiro, how his brows furrowed and he bit his lower, trembling lip, his set jaw and straight back, it all made Aomine want to reach out and hold him, and that foreign feeling of deep affection made his rage even deeper, even more painful.

Why did he have to feel like this for a man he didn't even know?

Kagami didn't love him, he didn't even accept he existed – why couldn't he do the same? Why did he have to hurt so much over him? Everything was just so unfair.

It was after nearly two whole minutes of tense silence – seconds over seconds in which Daiki tried to focus on the tick-tocking of the clock on the wall, forced himself not to think about just how much he wanted the redhead to explain himself, to tell him just how wrong he had gotten the whole situation – that Kagami let a defeated sigh leave his lungs.

He pushed himself to his feet, leaving the plate with the peeled orange on the nightstand and making sure to not jostle his son too much, and then retrieved his coat from the back of the chair, everything while making sure to keep his eyes as far away from Aomine as he could.

“I need to go pick up Sakura from practice,” he said in a mumbled whisper, and Daiki couldn't find anywhere in himself the strength – nor the right words, for the matter – to answer before the door could close behind his wide, retiring back.

----

Around an hour later, the door to Aomine's assigned room opened once again.

He hadn't realized just how much time had passed – how long he had been sitting there, eyes set on the entrance and mind replaying the events of that afternoon as if on loop – until the now familiar head of azure hair had appeared in his line of sight.

He widened his eyes slightly for a second, making them then properly focus on the smaller figure right before him, and Kuroko nodded at him with a small movement of his chin, quietly taking a seat on the chair beside the bed.

“Hello, Aomine-kun,” he said, tone just as dry and aseptic as the air filling the whole hospital, and Daiki let a small sigh leave his lungs, made himself fall against the pillows behind him.

“Yo,” he answered, feeling a little uncomfortable under the steady gaze of the other – Kuroko was... strange, in the sense that Aomine still had no idea how he was supposed to deal with him. He still couldn't understand how had they ended up as best friends, in all honesty.

His presence could get weirdly unnerving, at times.

The silence settled around them long enough to have Aomine start feeling at ease again, and then a small sigh left Kuroko's frame, as he intertwined his fingers on his lap in gentle, elegant gestures.

“I heard you fought with Kagami-kun,” he said in the end, making the blue haired man stiffen momentarily at the mention of the name.

“You heard, uh,” Aomine mused, moving his eyes away from the unwavering ones and on the setting sun outside the window – he wasn't sure he felt comfortable, talking about it so soon, but somehow he also knew that it would have been useless to try and make the other drop the topic.

It may have been instincts, or maybe some other weird memory he still held in himself under the disguise of completely unwanted feelings.

Probably a bit of both.

“Kagami-kun sounded distressed when he called to ask me to come and check on you,” Tetsuya corrected, shifting a little on his chair, “distressed in the same way he is when you two have a serious fight,” he clarified further, then, voice just as monotone as when he had greeted him, and Aomine found himself bringing his eyes back on the smaller man, furrowing his brows at him in deep concentration.

“Did he, now,” he wondered, more to himself than to actually request an answer, but Kuroko nodded at him anyway in confirmation.

For a while, Aomine waited for the other to ask about the fight, maybe tell him to apologize to Kagami for the way he had treated him – everything Tetsuya did, though, was sit and quietly wait for him to talk, steady gaze and unblinking lids.

Daiki found himself giving in about three minutes into the staring contest, in the end.

“He still hasn't accepted me,” he said, moving his stare once more on the scenery outside the window and keeping his tone just above a barely audible whisper, “I thought he had and instead he only...” he went on in a mumble, trailing off once he realized he wasn't sure about what exactly he wanted to say.

The more time passed, the more his feelings about the fight became unclear – he felt hurt, and pained, and angry at himself and at Kagami, but the only thing in constant perfect focus in his mind was Taiga's face once more painted with sorrow, and everything he wanted to do was yell at him and the world that this wasn't his fault, he didn't want this any more than any of them did.

But everything that left his mouth, in the end, was only a defeated sigh.

Kuroko looked at him for a long minute, hummed to himself in quiet understanding, and then replied with a voice kept low and weirdly soft.

“It's hard being in his position, Aomine-kun. Try and understand him.”

The words made something ugly and painful twist around Daiki's heart and inside his stomach, closed his throat and made it hard to breath for a moment, and for a split second anything he could feel was once again only anger.

“His position?! I'm the one without a past, I'm the one with nothing filling my head, I'm the one surrounded by people I don't know, the one that everyone expect to be something I don't remember ever being, my position is the hard one!” he found himself yelling, midnight eyes once again boring in calm azure ones, and Kuroko only kept his stare steady in answer, waited for Daiki's breathing to go back to a mostly normal rhythm and for his clenched fists to stop trembling in strain.

“I know,” he said then, after the silence had stretched between them for nearly five whole minutes, and his tone was so definitive, so honest, that everything Aomine could do was look at him with uncertain eyes for yet another handful of seconds, and then growl low in the palm of his left hand and once more let himself fall on the mattress in defeat.

He kept staring at the ceiling in absolute silence for what felt like hours – Kuroko, still quietly sitting by his side, didn't give any signs of wanting to leave or talk, and Aomine somehow ended up easing in the peace that his presence offered, calmed his heartbeat and labored breath enough to be able to once more clearly feel just how empty everything inside him felt.

“Do we fight often?” he let his lips pronounce in the end, mind going back to how the other had mentioned Kagami sounding distressed in a familiar way, and he heard Kuroko shift on his seat a bit, cross and uncross his legs, before he gave an answer that wasn't only a low hum.

“Yes. I'd say seventy per cent of your relationship with Kagami-kun is made of fights, if I had to give a vaguely accurate estimate,” he said, and Aomine finally moved his eyes back on him, furrowed his brows at the new information.

“Are we really married?” he asked, skeptic and uncertain but Kuroko only nodded in answer, offering a serious yes, it was a lovely ceremony held on a beautiful beach, and I was your best man; I'm very fond of the memory.

Aomine's scowl deepened at the words, though, as he let his tongue click in annoyance and confusion.

“You just said we do nothing but fight,” he growled, raising a hand to mess with his hair in vague distress – he didn't understand, the more time passed and the less he understood.

It was obvious, to him, that his before the accident self had been in love with Kagami – he could still clearly feel the echos of that love, in the way his heart beat faster whenever the redhead smiled, and how he always felt like holding him, how he clearly missed a touch he had no memory of.

What he just couldn't understand was why he'd fallen for him.

Kagami was beautiful, that was an objective truth, but was it enough to have Daiki devote his whole life to him? It was confusing, too weird to wrap his head around.

Kuroko's lips, at the obvious distress of the other, upturned into the smallest of smiles, and his eyes softened and warmed in a way Aomine hadn't seen before, since he had woken up.

“They're rarely serious fights,” he explained, relaxing his upper body against the back of the chair, “for the two of you it's closer to a sincere and open communication, most of the times. I find it somehow healthy, in your specific case.”

Aomine tried imagining it, a relationship built over banters and arguments – he tried to picture a life made of yelling about silly things, and the way his heart constricted at the thought made him scrunch up his nose, frown in annoyance.

He wished he could just clearly remember those things, instead of having to base his whole life on vague feelings and blurry sensations.

“Hey, Tetsu,” he said in the end, feeling now more than ever tired of not knowing anything about himself, “can you tell me how we met? Not just me and Taiga, with you and Satsuki and all the others as well.”

Kuroko looked at him in silence for a couple of seconds, considering, and then nodded and sat himself more comfortably on the chair.

“If that's what you wish, Aomine-kun, then it isn't a problem for me,” he said, and Daiki nodded in answer, shifting on his bed to more properly look at him as he spoke.

“The doctors– Midorima, he said that telling me about my past may help,” he explained, momentarily moving his eyes away from the other's gaze, feeling the need to give a reason for his request that wasn't a simple I can't stand the void anymore, please fill it for me – even if that was exactly what he felt like, and the biggest reason why he needed Kuroko to tell him about his past.

Somehow, he didn't feel comfortable enough to share that bit of information with the other. Not yet, at least.

Kuroko looked at him with his usual unblinking, unwavering eyes for a handful of seconds still, and then nodded once more.

“Alright. Momoi-san and you have known each other since you were infants, though, and I believe the only one able to tell you that specific story is Momoi-san herself, at this point. But I can talk about everyone else with good enough accuracy; the stories are all tied together, anyway,” he started, eyes still and steady on Aomine – Daiki nodded once more, just to let him know that it was fine with him, and Kuroko took it as his green light to proceed with the recounting.

----

Tetsuya told him about middle school and basketball, and friendships and fights.

He told him about his love for the sport, and about the day the two of them had first met – he talked about Daiki's tight friendship with Kise and his banters with Midorima, the sibling-like tie with Momoi and his strange relationships with Murasakibara and Akashi.

He told him about the pain of losing motivation, of their group dismembering, of a sport that seemed like it could never be fun anymore, that only made his chest ache and his limbs feel too heavy.

He talked about Kagami, and how he'd fixed everything with sheer stubbornness and determination – about how he'd saved him, specifically, offering a rival and a friend, an extended hand and a bright, welcoming smile.

He talked for two hours and a half, stopping only to let Aomine voice his questions and doubts, and throughout the whole speech Daiki could feel his hands itch to hold a basketball, his legs trembling from the need to run and jump and play. He wasn't even sure he remembered how to, truth be told, but at the moment he wouldn't have minded needing to learn from scratch as long as he could hold the ball between his hands.

It was an exhilarating feeling, weirdly warm and welcome. He wondered for how long he'd have to sit still in that hospital bed, how much before his muscles could feel the strain he suddenly so desired.

When Kuroko left, Aomine laid with his eyes trained on the ceiling for even he didn't know how long, rolling the story in his mind again and again, trying to have it spark any kind of memory he may still have left - everything sounded so foreign to him, though, as if Tetsuya had just told him the plot of a movie he had never seen before.

He wished he could make his own that night he met Kuroko for the first time – he wished he could remember what it felt like, and what his thoughts regarding the small, nearly invisible boy had been back then.

He wished he could remember the day he'd first talked to Kagami, how he himself had been the one to go look for the other ace, and know if his heart had jumped in his throat at the sight of the fierce red just as much as it did now.

If Taiga's smile had always been his greatest weakness, if the feelings he held for the other even now were actually his own, reactions and sensations Kagami would have sparked in him even if the morning five days prior had been the first time meeting for both of them, or if they were just an echo of a relationship that didn't belong to him anymore.

What brought his attention back to reality, in the end, was once more the sound of the door opening and closing.

He lazily turned his head towards it, sure that it had to be some nurse or a doctor come to check on him, and found his eyes meeting instead messy red hair and a slightly hunched over frame – he widened his lids, subconsciously stiffening for a moment, and then moved his deep blue irises to check the time on the clock hanging on the wall before his bed.

“It's ten past midnight,” he said, not completely able to hide the surprise tinting his tone, and at the sound of his voice Kagami flinched slightly, kept his eyes away from him.

“I'm... sorry,” he mumbled, curving his shoulders even further, still not moving from before the door, and Aomine furrowed his brows, set his mouth in an uncertain scowl.

“If you had to apologize for coming then why did you–” he started, raising to sit on the bed trying to jostle both his broken arm and cracked ribs as little as he could, but Kagami's suddenly clearer voice interrupted him.

“Not about that,” he said, finally moving his crimson eyes on Aomine just to soon after avert them on the still open window, “I wasn't... apologizing for that,” he specified, and Daiki could perfectly see his trembling, tightly closed fists and set, stiff back – his teeth sinking in his lower lip, the red around his eyes, the waver in his strained tone.

He could see all of that, and everything he could think was just how wrong it all looked, and how much he just wanted to make that pain disappear from Kagami's image.

Taiga's gaze finally moved on him the second Aomine shoved the sheets off himself and pushed one of his feet on the ground and then the other, wobbling a little as his legs tried to hold his weight after two weeks of complete inactivity.

“What the hell are you doing!” Kagami yelled then, panic showing in his now too wide lids as he hurried to close the gap between him and his husband, and Aomine made his tongue click in annoyance, leaned against the nightstand to avoid falling over.

“Coming to you, what else does it look like?” he grumbled irritated, and Kagami's arms were suddenly around his middle, pushing him back down on the bed and complaining that he could have just asked him to get closer, why do you always need to be so damn reckless with your body?!

Aomine found himself, for a couple of seconds, melting in the warmth of the other's careful embrace, and wishing he could live the rest of his life between those arms, immersed and surrounded by that heat.

Then he shook his head to clear his mind, and reached his left hand out to hold Kagami's face and force the red eyes to meet his own stare.

“I'm sorry,” he said, sure and steady, and Taiga's lids widened in surprise as he made to answer, probably complain given the furrowed set of his brows, but Aomine just kept going, “I'm sorry I'm like this. I'm sorry I can't remember. I'm sorry everything I know about you is that you're handsome and make my stomach close on itself, I'm sorry I don't know how to deal with our kids, I'm sorry I lost every single second I ever lived with you or for you or thanks to you, I–”

“It's not your fault,” Kagami stopped him then, jaw set and on hand raising to grab Aomine's fingers, lowering them to hold them tightly between himself and Daiki – he sat on the bed next to him, frown still bending his features and teeth once again biting his lips in distress, and then he shook his head, kept his red gaze on Aomine's midnight one.

“God, I'm– such a fucking idiot,” he said, making his fingers intertwine with the darker ones, stoking his thumb slowly on the other's knuckles, and Aomine found himself snorting a little, letting his lips bend in a crooked smirk.

“That I kind of figured on my own already,” he grinned, feeling something painful start to let go in his stomach, and Kagami raised his free hands to lightly punch him on the good arm and then mumble a reluctantly amused shut up, stupid, you're one to talk.

They sat in silence like that, holding hands and breathing the other's scent in, for what Aomine felt like it could as well have been a whole year – he let himself slowly slump over, flinching and hissing at the pain given by the strain on his ribs, and rested his forehead on Kagami's shoulder, felt the other sigh and start stroking his hair with one of his cheeks.

“You're gonna seriously hurt yourself in this position,” he said, tightening the hold on Aomine's fingers and letting his nose sink between blue locks, and in answer Daiki just hummed, took in Kagami's heat and scent and the feel of his skin pressed to his own – it was all so foreign, every sensation a completely new experience, and yet it felt so nostalgic, so right, that Aomine, for a second, found himself holding his breath without meaning to.

He wished he could live with only that, the nostalgia and the unexplained feeling of belonging, and a deep affection he knew he had nourished and grown, even if he couldn't remember how or when.

He wished it could be enough, for him.

“Please, Taiga, help me remember,” he whispered, though, because not knowing was a condition too heavy for him, a weight he just couldn't bear – he felt his throat go dry, too tight, and Kagami flinched at his pained tone, moved his arms to delicately embrace him and pull him closer to himself.

“Yeah,” he answered, as Aomine's good arm curled around his frame, his long fingers tightening over the fabric of his shirt, “you're gonna be okay Daiki. I swear you will.”

At the sure tone and unwavering voice, Aomine found himself nodding and holding Kagami more strongly, taking in a forced, shuddering breath – the absolute trust he felt for a man he barely knew, a couple of hour before it would have scared him, made him uncomfortable and restless, had him question every unknown and unjustified emotion he was feeling.

But right then Taiga was there, holding him and keeping him upright, warm and steady and so familiar Aomine nearly felt like crying, and everything he could do was lean on him, hoping that that pillar Kagami represented for him in that moment would never leave him, even if his memories ended up never coming back.

That, even if he could never find again what had once filled him, Taiga would be there to help him somehow erase the emptiness anyway.

----

Kagami eased him back in a laying position as soon as he started complaining about the sting in the right side of his ribcage – he grumbled at him for being too little concerned with his own physical health as usual, and then remained seated on the edge of the bed when Daiki glowered at him the moment he tried to move away.

“Where are the kids?” Aomine suddenly found himself asking, furrowing his brows at Kagami in confusion, and Taiga stilled the hand he had been moving between his hair in surprise for the question, smiled at him of a small grin.

“With Tatsuya,” he said, starting to move his fingers once more, but Aomine's frown deepened even more at the mention of the unfamiliar name.

“Who's that?” he wondered, suddenly curious, and Kagami started twisting a blue lock between his thumb and index, humming a weirdly amused my brother. Daiki, at the answer, found himself widening his eyes.

“You got a brother?” he asked, trying to not get distracted by the way Taiga's hand felt between his hair, and Kagami nodded, explaining then that it was more the kind of relationship that there was between Daiki himself and Momoi, actually. Aomine hummed in vague understanding, pushing unintentionally his head closer to Kagami's palm, and then let a sigh leave his lips.

“Do we get along?” he wondered, genuinely interested – the redhead only laughed in answer, though, making the frown once again crease Daiki's face.

“You can't stand each other,” he explained when Aomine started prodding him in the side to have him stop laughing and tell him what was there to laugh about to begin with, and then he smiled more distantly, a bit more softly, “maybe this time around you're gonna like him, who knows.”

Aomine doubted it.

Somehow, the feelings he had once held for the people around him had bloomed again unchanged the moment he had started talking to them – they always were the same he had been told about, been comfortable with whoever had once made him comfortable and hostile to whoever had in the past always rubbed him the wrong way, and he still didn't know if it was just how he was, or if somehow all of his feelings had stayed even when his memories had all been lost.

Still, he let a non-committal sound leave the back of his throat, closing his eyes as Kagami continued dragging his fingers through the blue hair – letting Taiga hope wasn't a problem, after all.

“Hey,” he said after a while, opening his lids just enough to make sure he had the redhead's attention, “tell me something about us.”

Kagami hummed in answer, low and prolonged, nearly pensive, and then asked what he wanted to know, what he would have liked to listen to.

“Tell me how we fell in love,” Aomine answered, pointing his midnight blue irises in Kagami's with now completely open eyes, “tell me how we got together.”

Kagami looked at him with surprise written on his face for a couple of seconds, raised brows and slightly wider lids, and then he let a small laugh leave his lungs, moved his hand away from the blue hair to once more intertwine with dark skinned fingers.

“How we got together, eh? Actually, I kissed you and you kneed me in the stomach,” he said, amused smirk bending his lips and mirth evident in his irises, and everything Daiki could make himself reply was a whispered, shocked ah?

----

Kagami realized he was in love with Aomine at the end of the Spring of his seventeenth year of life.

Since the Winter Cup of his first year of high school, he had started harboring always deeper feelings of admiration and somewhat longing for the other, finding himself often daydreaming about playing one-on-on against him, spending the evening at Maji's between a stupid argument and one too many burgers, playing video games laying on the floor of his own apartment, but it wasn't till that one Spring afternoon that he decided to put the name love on that feeling he associated with the blue haired boy.

(Years later, in the middle a too late baking session during a way too cold Winter night, Aomine would tell him that at that point in time he had been consciously in love with Kagami for more than a whole year already.

You should have seen yourself during that match against Rakuzan , he would say with a smile bending his beautiful lips, it hit me in a very “ah, shit, I love him” kinda way .)

Between the ending of their second year of high school and the beginning of their third, with Seirin having to convince Furihata that yes he was the most apt to be the new captain and no of course Kuroko can't do it, that's too much spotlight for him , and Touou having to deal with adjusting to a still very frightened Captain Sakurai – everything while training for the upcoming Inter High (the last of their high school life) and trying to think as little as possible about the imminent future-after-this, Aomine and Kagami hadn't had the time to see each other and play one-on-one for nearly three whole months.

During that period of forced withdrawal from the other's presence, Taiga had realized just how much he had grown to find normal having Aomine more or less constantly around – and just how much he liked and missed it, his taunts and teasings, his laughing and yelling, his arm around his neck and brushing of shoulders as they walked side by side.

He missed it enough to feel himself nearly vibrating at the prospect of actually, finally meeting Aomine, that afternoon.

Which was the reason why had arrived at their usual court with one hour to spare, and had been now wasting the time shooting hoops alone to warm himself up for an hour and a half, since, of course, Aomine was late .

But what was even new about that.

When he finally heard Daiki call out a greeting from behind him, tired tone and dragged vocals as always, he felt himself jolt in excitement and anticipation, but turned anyway around with angry words on his tongue about the other's habit of never being punctual.

Words that promptly died on his lips the moment his eyes lent on the other's figure.

The first thing he noticed, of course, was the hair – long enough to cover his forehead and end over his eyes, and so silk looking Kagami felt the sudden urge to push his fingers between it, mess it up as much as he could. In the three months they hadn't seen one another, Aomine had somehow gotten even leaner, sleeveless shirt perfectly highlighting the long, muscular arms, and somehow Kagami couldn't stop wondering how they'd feel wrapped around his neck, how it'd be like to embrace the slim waist hidden under the baggy shirt.

He could feel himself nearly gaping, as Aomine got closer in long, elegant strides, and his heart practically stopped the moment tan fingers reached forward to touch his own red locks.

“You cut your hair,” Daiki said, turning a short strand between his thumb and index as his midnight blues studied the new cut with intense interest, and Kagami needed a couple of seconds to understand what he had been told and how to answer.

His mind was in overdrive, at the moment.

“Uh, I– yeah it, it was starting to get annoying,” he replied in the end, shaking his head to clear it from the fog that had suddenly clouded his brain and, as a side effect, making Aomine let go of his hair.

“Eh, you can barely see the darker tips now,” Daiki mused, a smirk on his lips and a single brow raised, and then he reached out to mess the short red locks up a bit.

“Think I like it better long,” he declared in conclusion, amused, and instead of batting his hand away and yelling at him as he usually would have, everything Kagami ended up doing was murmur a dazed yeah, same.

Aomine's fingers between his hair had felt weirdly warm, caused shivers to run along Taiga's back and arms, and as Daiki turned around and moved towards the middle of the court, yelling about needing to start playing already, the only thought running inside the redhead's mind was a very clear, very definitive man, I love him .

It was a very freeing realization, he noticed, finally giving a collective name to the large and diverse number of feelings Aomine could make him experience.

They played for over two hours, sweat dripping down their bodies and concentration in their eyes, swift movements and fast reactions, and it felt so good finally being able to play with his rival that Kagami didn't notice his shoes untying until he tripped on the laces, losing his balance and falling right on top of Aomine.

“Shit!” he said, reaching a hand out to stop his own fall and using the other to cradle the back of Daiki's head, making sure that he didn't hurt himself because of him, and he could feel his heart beating a mile a minute for the sudden fear, and Aomine's lids were opened wide in surprise, one of his hands clutching nearly spasmodically at the back of Kagami's shirt out of reflex.

They looked at each other for a while unmoving, eyes fixed on the other's irises and breath held in, and then a small smile started slowly bending Daiki's lips, until his shoulders were shaking in suppressed amusement.

“Smooth, Bakagami,” he snickered in the end, letting the laughter leave his lungs freely, “really, really smooth,” he repeated, and Kagami would have told him to shut up, probably, maybe, weren't it that his heart was now beating too fast for a completely different reason, and Aomine's hair between his fingers felt even softer than he had imagined, and Daiki laughing like that had to be the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his whole seventeen years and a half of life.

He could feel his heart constrict at the sight, his lungs desperately asking for air he wasn't sure he was in the conditions to provide, and Aomine was still smiling when Taiga's brain yelled oh, fuck it and he leaned down to finally kiss him.

Aomine tasted of chocolate and sweat, and he kissed back and kissed hard as soon as Kagami's tongue swept fast on his lower lip and then slightly bit it – he reached out both his arms to circle Taiga's neck, pulling him closer, letting small grunts leave the back of his throat, and the redhead's left hand was still holding his head up, his fingers still intertwined with soft, long blue locks, and even if he hadn't kissed that many people before that moment, he was more than sure nothing may have made it all any better.

Or may have ruined it, for the matter.

----

“Then you opened your eyes, widened them comically and kneed me right in the stomach while trying to get out from under me and as far away as possible as fast as you could,” Kagami concluded, laughing out a mumbled it fucking hurt, too, and Aomine raised a brow at him in confusion, slightly tilting his head to the side.

“Why would I do that?” he asked uncertain, and Taiga's smirk somehow turned even wider, even more amused.

“There was a bee, just beside my head,” he explained, only barely stifling a laugh, “way to ruin the mood, by the way.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” Daiki deadpanned, letting go of Kagami's hand to push his fingers through his hair – and, for a moment, he wondered why had he ended up cutting it this short, if Taiga liked it longer that much – and then punched the redhead in the side when he stopped repressing the laughter, mumbling at him an embarrassed shut up, asshole.

“So I'm scared of bees, uh...” he said after a while, once Taiga had stopped laughing and had gone back to only smirking at him while once again holding his left hand, and Kagami nodded in answer, properly intertwining his fingers with Aomine's and distractedly playing with his wedding ring.

“Well,” Daiki sighed, moving his eyes out of the still open window and on the night sky outside, “that sucks.”

----

Aomine had been discharged from the hospital one week later – which was a way longer hospitalization than any patient in his same conditions had any right to, but the place belonged to Midorima's family, and just like Kagami had been allowed to come and go whenever he pleased with blatant disregard of the visiting hours, Daiki's friendship with the doctor had ended up giving him a free pass to a too white bed for longer than strictly necessary.

Also, Midorima wanted to keep him under strict observation for as long as possible and, hadn't Aomine started complaining about being confined in that same room for way too long, he would have probably kept him there for yet another week at least.

Daiki had been happy to realize that the doctor couldn't stand his whining at all .

He'd been sent off after a one hour long speech about being careful and avoiding too fast movements and not stressing his ribs and arm too much and for the love of the gods please don't hit or in any way hurt your already too stupid head – Aomine had taken offense to that, Kagami and Momoi had just laughed at him and Daiki was pretty sure a corner of Kuroko's lips had raised in a crooked grin.

He wondered what his past self had done to deserve friends like those.

They forced him to make his way out of the hospital on a wheelchair, because – as that noisy nurse that was Takao chirpily reminded him for the hundredth time once he started complaining about it again – that was the standard procedure for any patient that had been hospitalized there for over two weeks; he made sure to get off of it and up on his feet as soon as he was out of the front door, anyway, and tried not to feel too annoyed when Kagami rushed at his side to make sure he was stable.

“I'm fine, Taiga, my legs aren't injured,” he complained, letting the redhead hold him up with an arm curled around his waist anyway, and Kagami sighed a soft thank fuck for that so low that Aomine wondered if it had meant to be heard at all.

Then he noticed the shining black car waiting for them, Sakura enthusiastically waving from the open backseat window and Shiro quietly looking at them by her side, and he found himself unintentionally raising a brow at it.

“That's the car I got in the accident with?” he asked, vaguely unsure, and Kagami rolled his eyes and snorted in answer, letting go of his waist to then hold onto his hand and start pulling him towards the vehicle.

“No way, that's my own. The accident kinda destroyed yours – sorry about that, by the way, you loved that car,” he explained, opening the door on the passenger side for him and helping him ease in the seat.

Aomine really didn't understand what was the point of him apologizing for that kind of stuff – Taiga had been doing so since he had first woken up, saying sorry for not being able to bring him his favorite food or shirt or apologizing for him missing a TV show he liked to follow. It was weird, for Daiki – he didn't even remember those things, how was he supposed to mourn them?

It wasn't exactly like he minded, though, since knowing what he liked told him more about who he had once been. Only, he wished Taiga would stop apologizing so much.

It was unnerving.

Sakura was on top of him the moment he sat in the car, hugging him around the neck and trying to push her way on the front through the seats.

“I'll sit in your lap!” she exclaimed, nearly elbowing a thankfully swift Shiro in the nose while trying to find the right way to move herself, and Aomine didn't even have the time to decide if he wanted to help her out before Kagami's arms were pushing her back in her seat.

“I'm sorry, but not today, baby,” he said, fixing the belt first on her and then around the boy, and Sakura let a prolonged and whiny whaaaaaat leave her lips in an offended pout.

“I always sit on dad's lap when papa's driving!” she complained, trying – and luckily failing – to undo her belt once more. Kagami only sighed in answer, reaching back to ruffle her hair and then fixing the rear-view mirror.

“I know, Sakura, but it's too dangerous with one of dad's arms being broken,” he reasoned, moving then his eyes on Daiki as if trying to tell him please tell her something when she started whining again.

Aomine had no idea what he was supposed to say, though, and he felt something way too close to panic starting to rise inside of him, gripping uncomfortably at his stomach and throat – he found his eyes widening and his brows frowning, and he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times without being able to pronounce a single word.

“I– uh, I'll let you sit on my lap for the rest of the day as soon as we get home, how about that, princess?” he blurted out in the end, slightly turning around to meet Sakura's black irises with his own falsely confident stare, and she looked at him with wide eyes for a handful of seconds, before her lips split in a wide, happy grin.

“A'right!” she beamed, settling in her seat and moving her gaze outside the window, and both Aomine and Kagami found themselves sighing in relief.

“Sorry about that,” Taiga whispered to him a moment later, starting the car after making sure that Shiro was properly seated as well, “she only really listens to you, when she gets like that.”

Daiki just shrugged in answer, letting himself relax against the backseat and distractedly listening once Sakura started chattering about her morning at school.

For the uptenth time that week, he found himself wondering about his relationship with his daughter and how it came to be, how she had ended up between his arms and how he'd dealt with it at first.

Her hair and skin made it plainly clear that she was somehow related by blood to him, and he found himself questioning who the mother was, and how could he have had a daughter when he had supposedly spent the last eighteen years of his life in love with his very male husband.

He made a mental not to ask Kagami about it as soon as possible, and then grinned at Sakura and told her just how great she was when she started telling them about how she'd passed her last test.

----

“So... this is our house,” Aomine said as soon as his eyes landed on the building in front of him.

Taiga grinned at him happily, moving then out of the car to let open the doors for the kids and undo their belts for them.

“Home, yeah. It's nice, right?” he smiled, telling him to just wait a second, I'll help you out when Daiki started to open the passenger door by himself – he waved him off and got out anyway, grumbling about being perfectly able to walk just fine, and then stared at the building some more, wide eyes and raised brows.

“It's... huge,” he decided on saying after a while, and then turned around towards Taiga as Sakura ran past him and in the front garden with an excited grin on her face, “are we rich?” he asked, halfway between surprised and unsure – why wouldn't have his husband told him they were rich, though, was beyond him – and Kagami laughed at him in answer, took Shiro's hand in his own and started to move towards the entrance.

“Well, we did put aside some money back when we played, and we're still earning more than enough now, but nah. The house was a present from my dad, he bought it for us,” he explained, placing his free hand between Daiki's shoulder blades and gently pushing him forward.

Aomine widened his eyes even more, at the answer, and opened his mouth once or twice without really knowing what exactly was it that he wanted to say.

“So the rich one's your dad,” he settled on in the end, vaguely awed tone and words just a mumbled realization, and Kagami full out laughed at him at that, started rummaging in his pockets in search for the house keys and answered an amused you may say so, yeah.

As he finally let them in, as Aomine made his eyes take in the place that supposedly was his home, had been for he didn't even know how long, a second realization suddenly hit him – he turned around to once more face Taiga and arched a brow, waiting for the redhead's attention to move from taking the coat off Shiro and back on him.

“We played professionally?” he asked once the red irises met his own questioningly, and a weird kind of grin bended Kagami's lips in answer – it was nostalgic, somehow, and also bitter and sad, maybe.

“Ah, yeah, from when we were nineteen up to–” he started, but then Sakura's eager voice interrupted him, made the attention of them both shift on the small girl holding a basketball towards Daiki's surprised face.

“Let's play, daddy!” she grinned at him, and Aomine felt his own lips upturn in an excited smile, reached out to hold onto the leather he had somehow missed so much during the last week, even if he had no memories of having ever touched it before.

Kagami's arm was between him an the ball before he could close his fingers over it, though.

“Don't be silly, both of you,” he said, pointing first a stern glare on Daiki and then an exasperated and somewhat apologetic one on his daughter, “Midorima said no fast movements and no stressing ribs and arm, that means no basket either.”

The first to start whining was of course Sakura, but Aomine felt the complaining settle on the tip of his tongue rather stubbornly as well – how long did he still have to wait before he could find out if his body still remembered how to play? This whole forced inactivity was starting to get on his nerves.

“But papa!” Sakura cried, lowering the basketball and hugging it to her chest – Kagami only shook his head in answer, though, and declared a stern no buts, dad isn't playing for at least another two weeks.

“I can play with you, if you want,” he added after a bit, placing a hand on her head – it was a thing Taiga did a lot, messing her long, blue hair up, Daiki realized then – and the pout on the girl's lip only grew deeper and more wobbly in answer.

“But I haven't played with daddy in, like, ten hundred years!” she whined, eyes suddenly filling with tears, and Aomine felt his heart hurt, at the sight.

It was like a hand was tightly gripping at it, twisting and pulling so much Daiki nearly expected it to just be ripped out any moment, and he found himself sharply inhaling and furrowing his brows at the sensation.

He didn't understand it one bit, just like he didn't get any of the emotions Kagami made him experience every second of his life, but he didn't like it at all, he decided, and needed it to end as soon as possible.

He carefully crouched in front of Sakura, holding out his good arm to slowly caress her cheek in a tender gesture, and swept a thumb just under her left eye to wipe away the single tear she had let loose.

“We'll play soon, alright?” he said, waiting for her to nod before going on, “I want to play with you as well princess, you just need to be a little patient.”

She looked at him with unconvinced eyes for a handful of seconds longer, furrowed brows and frown on her mouth, but then she nodded again, putting the ball aside and holding her hands out towards him.

“Can you pick me up?” she asked, voice slightly back to her usual stubborn tone, and Aomine made to nod, tell her sure thing, but then decided to first check with his husband to see if he had anything to oppose to that.

Kagami kept his scarlet eyes on Daiki's questioning ones for a while, furrowed brows and set mouth, and then sighed in resignation and nodded, grumbling a reluctantly amused alright, okay, get up and I'll ease her in your arms.

“You've always spoiled her too much,” Taiga mumbled as he carefully positioned Sakura in Aomine's grip, and Daiki only grinned at him as he relished the heat of her small arms around his neck, wondered if even in the past it had always felt this nice to hold the girl close to himself.

“Have I, now?”

----

As long as the noises filled his ears, Aomine was nearly able to forget just how empty his mind usually felt.

The way everything around him was new and at the same time familiar, learning and getting used to how his family interacted with him and with each other, their voices and laughter constantly surrounding him and taking his attention away – all of it made it hard, for him, to stop and dwell too much on the negative emotions that constantly swarmed in the corners of his head.

How much he hated having to ask about everything. How he couldn't stand not knowing where his emotions came from. How weak the condition he was in made him feel. Like a burden. Like an unnecessary nuisance.

Kagami's smiles and frowns, Sakura's grins and yells, Shiro's hand in his own, they helped soothing the pain, forgetting the still bleeding wound open in his chest, and for it he was grateful, and he depended on it.

That, too, made him feel uncomfortably weak.

It was during the late night hours, sitting on the couch in the living room or laying awake in his bed next to an usually asleep Taiga, that the stillness and silence of the air reminded him of all those emotions and feelings he tried to ignore during the day – and it was painful, like a tight grip around his throat, like a block of concrete in the middle of his stomach.

It made it hard to breath, and think, and the only things running around in his way too empty mind were why did I have to lose it all and what do I have to do to take it back.

Talking about his past and being immersed in his usual day to day life just didn't seem to be helping, and every time an unexplained feeling took him over everything he could think of was how do I know this is real – was he really still in love with Taiga or was it only his brain making up emotions based on a past he just couldn't remember, did he really still consider Satsuki a sister or was he only relying on feelings that shouldn't hold meaning to him anymore, was it really important for him that his kids were happy or was it just a reminiscence of a father that no more existed, was it only habit or did he actually care for these people – it hurt, realizing just how uncertain and precarious his whole life was.

It was in the middle of his fourth night back home that he found himself talking about some of his worries with Taiga for the first time – he had been sitting staring at the wall for hours, sure that the redhead was asleep, when the other's tired voice reached his ears and startled him out of his thoughts.

“Daiki? Are you okay?” he asked in an unsure, worried whisper, propping himself up on a forearm and reaching out a hand to stroke a tan cheek – Aomine closed his eyes, took a long breath in and then, nearly without really meaning to, shook his head.

“What's wrong?” Kagami questioned, now more awake, more worried, and Aomine could feel how he raised to a sitting position in the way the sheet shifted over his own lap, in the sounds they made sliding over the redhead's body, but he didn't turn around to look at him even once.

“Today Sakura asked me to tie her hair,” he said, keeping his tone as low and as dry as possible, clenching his jaw, tightening his fists, “I had no clue how to do it.”

Kagami moved his hand up to his blue locks, threading his fingers between the strands in long, measured motions, and hummed in the back of his throat of a vague understanding, pulling Aomine's head to rest on his shoulder in a gentle movement.

“You'll learn again,” he mumbled, keeping his fingers between his hair, messing it up as he slowly dragged his cheek on it – at the words and tender gestures, Daiki felt his heart constrict and his throat close, and a dry snort left his lungs, his hands closing more strongly around the azure sheet covering him.

“That's what she told me too,” he said, feeling ridiculous and useless, and he closed his eyes and bit his lower lip as the scene from that afternoon flooded back inside his mind.

The way Sakura had held up brush and hair-ties to him, how lost and panicked he'd felt as he stuttered a mortified I don't know what to do with those – the way the light in the kid's eyes had died for a moment, and how she had obviously forced a smile on her too young lips, had shaken her head and told him it was fine.

We'll ask auntie Satsuki to teach you! , she had told him, and had then trotted away and in her room, closing the door maybe too violently behind her back.

She had been hurt, Daiki had been able to see it clearly – and yet she'd pretended she was fine, that her father not remembering how to function as a normal adult hadn't been a problem in the least, and Aomine just couldn't understand why .

It hadn't been the first time either, that one – every time she asked for his help, whenever she needed a parent and turned to him with bright eyes and a shining smile, he let her down, dimmed the light that shone in her with the void the filled him, and every single time she just shook her head and told him it was okay, forced a smile and ran to her room to hide the hurt.

“She's just nine, Taiga, how can she act like that,” he mumbled, feeling his brows crease and his mouth scowl, and Kagami had hummed again, kept moving his hand and cheek in a calming rhythm.

“It's the way she's always been,” the redhead said after a short silence, a sigh on his lips and his fingers still between Daiki's hair, “she'll throw the biggest tantrums for the smallest things, and then when it's important she'll close in on herself and pretend the problem doesn't exist. That's one of the many things she's got from you, honestly,” he explained, and Aomine could hear the soft smile in his tone, in the way his voice vibrated in amusement as he let out a murmured it's a pain more often than not, really.

He envied it, that mirth Kagami could feel from the memories given by years and years of being a parent.

He envied it and at the same time couldn't understand it, just like he envied and couldn't understand how easily Taiga knew what was going on in Shiro's mind, how instinctual it was for him their daily routine, how he didn't need to ask for help at every turn he took.

He wondered, for the uptenth time since he'd come home four days earlier, how could his family stand so easily to have to deal with someone like him, something like what he had become after the accident.

“How can she not hate me?” he whispered, eyes shut and brows furrowed, and the hand that had been threading through his hair immediately halted in its movements – he could feel Kagami taking in a sharp breath in the way his shoulders suddenly rose, and then two warm, big hands held Daiki's face gently but steadily, having him finally meet Taiga's wide and worried eyes.

“Why would she hate you?” he asked softly, and Aomine shook his head, forced his way out of the other's grip.

“Why wouldn't she? Why wouldn't you? I just don't get why any of you would stick with me in this situation, I have no idea whoany of you are!” he growled, frustrated and distressed, feeling the anger at himself rise with the increasing speed of his own beating heart, and he brought his good hand to mess with his hair, let it slide down to hide his face.

“You'll remember,” Taiga mumbled after a while, tone gentle and careful, “and even if you don't, you'll learn to know us again.”

At the words, Aomine felt the breath hitch in his throat and his lungs constrict – it was painful, those kind feelings the redhead was so casually throwing him were too much for him to take in, too sweet and caring for a man that couldn't even be sure if the emotions he felt for the other were genuine and real.

It hurt.

It hurt so much he couldn't remember how to breath anymore, and when one of Taiga's warm hands closed around his wrist, delicately lowered it and bared his distressed face, everything Daiki could do was look at him with creased brows and clenched jaw, voicing a broken how can you be this optimistic with a tired, defeated tone.

“It's because I love you,” Taiga answered in a whisper, small smile bending his lips and sincerity in his eyes, and Aomine found his lids widening as the words ringed in his ears, settled in the front of his mind and in the middle of his swelling heart.

That was the first time Kagami told him those words.

In the two weeks and a half he had been awake, that was the first time those three words left the redhead's lips, the first time Aomine heard them in Kagami's sweet, warm voice – he had started believing that the truth maybe was that he actually didn't, maybe what he loved really only was the memory of Daiki's self before the accident, maybe Taiga actually did stick with him only in hope of getting his husband back, one day, somehow.

That was the first time Kagami told him those eight letters, the first time he could quench the fears he had nourished in the past half a month, and when strong arms reached out to carefully embrace him, hold him close with a delicacy Aomine had no idea how he deserved, he simply didn't have the strength to resist and hold back.

And, for a second, as Taiga threaded his fingers between his hair and whispered to him sweet apologies he couldn't even begin to understand, he hated how he had to wondered if what he felt right then, the deep affection and relief and peace at being held and being loved by the redhead, could be considered a feeling the Daiki he was right that moment had matured between the short weeks he had existed – or if, once again, it was habit deciding in his stead.

----

The clock on the nightstand read two and forty-three in the morning when Aomine opened his mouth once more, disrupting the quiet of their bedroom to voice the question he had been meaning to ask for weeks, at that point.

He shifted on his spot, careful to not jostle or put too much pressure on his broken arm and the right side of his chest, and pointed his midnight blue eyes on Kagami's relaxed face and semi-closed lids.

“I'm related to Sakura, right?” he asked, tilting his head a little, and once Taiga's eyes were completely open he specified, “by blood, I mean.”

The redhead looked at him without answering for a long time, probably trying to understand the question through his fogged-up-by-sleep mind, and then nodded and yawned, shuffling closer to Daiki and sinking his nose between a tan shoulder and neck.

“Yeah, yeah you are. She looks lots like you, right? It's nice, I've always liked that...” he mumbled, sighing a little and having soft shivers run along Aomine's back because of the sudden hot breath on his chill skin.

Daiki looked at him for a minute – at the way he wriggled his nose and closed his eyes, at his messy bedhead and soft smile on his lips, realizing once again just how beautiful Kagami really was – and then shook his head and moved the tip of an index to sink in one of the redhead's cheeks to get his attention back.

“Are you too tired to tell me about it?” he asked hesitantly, furrowed brows and uncertain eyes, and Kagami hummed again, low and in the back of his throat.

“Nah, what do you wanna know?” he said, opening his lids once more and letting himself fall again on his back, hair tangled on his pillow and a smirk bending his lips – lips that Aomine really felt like kissing, right then and there, and he wondered how much of that wish was born by love and how much by desire for that handsome man.

He hoped it was at least half of each, in all honesty.

“Everything,” he answered in the end, settling down on his own back as well, left shoulder touching Kagami's right, and the redhead laughed a bit, raised a hand to push the hair out of his eyes and then laughed some more.

“Alright. Alright, okay, ah... where do I even start?” he wondered, tone still amused, and Daiki shrugged his healthy shoulder, told him that the start would be the best, right? - that made Kagami chuckle some more, and Aomine asked himself if maybe his husband was actually too tired to properly tell the story.

Taiga had already started talking before he could voice the concern, though.

“Yeah, okay. You remember how I told you we used to play professionally?” he asked, turning his head around to look at Daiki with eyes wrinkled at the corners by the smile still bending his lips, and Aomine nodded, trying to ignore the way his heart constricted at the sight of Taiga's genuinely happy face.

“We played from when we were nineteen until we turned twenty-five, and – ah, from twenty-two till the end I played in the States while you decided to stay here,” he started, smile slowly dimming as the words left his lips – Aomine frowned a little at the loss, tilted his head trying to understand the reason behind it.

“So it was a long-distance relationship for three years,” he assumed, wondering how it must have felt for him back then, not being able to see Kagami every waking second of his life – Taiga shook his head in negation, though, and the smile now bending his lips was definitively more melancholic, probably even sad.

It made something inside Aomine twist in a wrong, ugly way.

“We tried that out for a year, but it just wasn't working,” Kagami explained, slowly moving his eyes on the small space on the pillows between them, “we fought too much and spent most of our time angry at one another, and it just... we thought, you know, that it would have been better to...”

“Break up,” Daiki completed after a beat, surprised in an unwelcome way, once the only thing leaving Taiga's mouth turned out to be a tired sigh – the redhead nodded, moved his right hand to intertwine with the fingers of Aomine's left in small, slow gestures.

“We thought it was the right choice, back then,” Taiga admitted in a low tone, and then a short, bitter laugh left his lungs, “it was the most painful two years of my life. You said it was the same for you, once.”

Of course they were , he thought annoyed at himself, clicking his tongue softly and tightening his grip on Kagami's hand, and his husband laughed a bit more freely at the gesture, pushed his shoulder a little closer to the other's.

“After two years I thought, fuck it, I love him and I can't do this anymore, I resigned from my team and the next morning I put myself and all my stuff on the first plane for Tokyo I could book,” he kept going, fond and happy smile newly bending his lips and lighting up his face, and Daiki found himself grinning back at him, asking in an amused, hushed tone without telling me first?

“Without telling you first, yeah. You hadn't been answering your phone for half a year then, and we hadn't been in much contact before it anyway – I spent the whole flight thinking stuff like what if he doesn't want to see me anymore, what if he's got someone else now, it was one of the most stressful two hours of my whole life, believe me” he smirked, moving then his eyes back on the ceiling and sighing deeply.

“I'll let you guess what it felt like when I got to your apartment and you opened the door with a kid between your arms.”

----

When six months prior Aomine had suddenly cut all contacts with him – had blocked Kagami's number or changed his own, he wasn't really sure – Taiga had assumed it was because Daiki had finally decided to move on with his life.

In Kagami's head had taken shape images of Aomine between the arms of someone new, someone that wasn't him, and those simple thoughts had hurt him more than a knife right in the guts; they had kept him awake at night, ruined his performance on court, made his temper worse and his smiles rarer.

The way the idea of having definitely, irremediably lost Aomine made him feel was so painful that sometimes even breathing hurt way too much for him to bear, and after six whole months of feeling like that the only thought running through his mind had been I can't just give him up.

It was that single sentence that had brought him on that plane and back in Tokyo, that single thought that had had him barely leave his stuff in his hotel room before sprinting to the apartment that he had once shared with Daiki, hoping he hadn't changed address, hadn't moved someplace Taiga couldn't reach him anymore.

The fact that Kuroko hadn't heard from Aomine in half a year as well should have warned him that maybe, probably, just showing up at his place wasn't the best plan ever – he should have realized that he was going to end up seeing something he would have much preferred never knowing anything about.

Only, Daiki having a kid was probably the last thing Kagami could have ever imagined finding out as a result of his sudden and instinctive visit to the other.

The baby was so small it nearly disappeared between Aomine's arms – the blue hair and dark skin barely visible through the many folds of a mint green blanket, and those colors made the breath hitch in the back of Taiga's throat because those, those were obvious giveaways of who the kid's father was, and the redhead simply didn't know how he was supposed to react, now.

His mind was a blank slate, every sound turned into a buzzing noise in his ears.

He wondered, for a second, if it all could have been just another one of his always more frequent nightmares.

“Taiga...?” Aomine said after a while, tone dazed and unsure, and his deep, tired voice made Kagami's stare snap up to his face – he took in the bags under his slowly widening eyes, his shorter, messy hair, the beautiful, beautiful smile that was opening on those lips Kagami had missed for so long, and everything his mind could supply was a continuous chant of baby baby baby there's a baby he's got a fucking baby baby baby.

He felt his own scarlet eyes fall back on the bundle between the other's arms, barely registered Daiki repeating his name once more and asking Taiga didn't even know what, and then he opened his mouth, closed it again without uttering a word.

“I was... I thought... I– I'm going away,” he stuttered in the end, turning around and making to start running and probably never stop ever again – he felt stupid, and crushed, and the only thing he could think about was how Daiki really had moved on, forgotten about him and replaced him with something else, something more.

He didn't have a place in the other's life anymore, and that single thought made his heart feel like someone was trying to rip it apart.

Why had he ever thought coming back was a good idea?

A yelled and panicked wait! followed by a definitely more subdued, whispered oh shit had him stop in his tracks, though, and he didn't even have the time to decide if he wanted to turn towards Aomine yet again or not before the wailing started piercing the air around them.

“Fuck, I'm sorry princess please don't cry,” Aomine started muttering, a completely different kind of panic tinting his words as he rocked the kid – his daughter? – between his arms, and Kagami felt his heart constrict at the tired but sweet tone, heaved a sigh and turned around when Daiki started mumbling soft and exasperated how did I even have you fall asleep earlier and please shut up or I'll start crying too.

He was going to regret doing this, Kagami told himself. He had already started to, honestly.

“Give her to me,” he said anyway, trying not to break at the guarded and protective eyes Aomine pointed on him for a moment – Taiga kept holding his arms out towards him a couple of still seconds longer, the kid crying between Aomine's embrace, his expression slowly becoming trusting, more open, and then an exhausted sigh left his tired lungs.

“You know how to hold a baby, right?” he asked as he eased the bundle between Kagami's arms, and the redhead just rolled his eyes at him, shifting the still yelling kid to ease the blanket from around her frame, raise her back to a more comfortable angle.

It took a couple of minutes to try and find the right position – seconds over seconds of that small body's heat seeping into Kagami's arms, making his back shiver and his eyes sting uncomfortably as he tried to just not think about who's that kid was – but in the end the girl calmed down, curling towards Taiga's chest with a gurgled, pleased noise.

The redhead looked at her for a long minute, making sure she was actually comfortable, and when he finally found the strength to move his stare back on Aomine he found him gaping, open mouth and wide eyes.

It nearly made a snort come out of Kagami's nose, that expression.

“How are you this good at that?” Daiki asked vaguely awed, incredulity and something aching to respect in his gaze and tone, and at that point Taiga did snort, rolled his eyes as an amused the real question is how are you this bad left his lips in a barely audible mumble.

“Alex's had a son last year, I've had to take care of him one or a hundred times for her,” he explained then, shrugging his shoulders carefully to not jostle the girl between his arms too much, and Aomine hummed in understanding, let his back relax in a probably involuntary sigh.

Then his lids widened again for a fraction of second, his brows furrowed as his eyes turned again on a suddenly alert Kagami.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, as if he'd only then realized just how out of place Taiga's presence in front of his apartment was, and the redhead stiffened at the words, wondered for a second if he could maybe just go back to the States and pretend the last three days of his life had never happened at all.

Telling Daiki the truth, how much he'd missed him and how intensely he wanted him back, didn't seem to be a good option anymore – if it'd ever been one to begin with.

As he realized just that, the weight of the girl between his arms nearly became unbearable.

“I...” he started, feeling his throat constrict and his voice tremble, and then a sigh left his lungs, taking with it every last bit of strength he still had left.

“I don't even know anymore,” he confessed, the words hanging heavy in the air between them. Aomine looked at him with furrowed brows for a while longer, eyes unreadable and mouth set in a straight line, and then grumbled something under his breath, started to move back towards his apartment's door.

“Let's go talk inside,” he said, and Kagami couldn't do anything but follow him.

----

Aomine's place was an absolute mess – and it wasn't like he had ever been tidy to being with, but Taiga was more than sure that this was a new record for him. Or anyone, really.

“How do you even find anything in here?” he asked incredulous, trying to not step on the stuff scattered around on the floor as he moved in the living room, and Aomine just waved a hand dismissively at him, grumbled an annoyed I was busy with her, alright, no time to clean up.

That answer had Kagami raise a brow, confused, and he stilled in the middle of the room without even noticing he had stopped walking.

“What about your wife?” he wondered, feeling the last word bitter and heavy in his mouth, and the question had Aomine still as well, turn his eyes on the redhead with just as much confusion on his features as Kagami himself.

“What wife?” he asked unsure, furrowing his brows and tilting his head to the side, and then his eyes widened comically, his back straightened as he turned around with a sudden movement to once again face Kagami.

“Oh for fuck sake, Taiga, she isn't my daughter!” he exclaimed, tone vaguely angry, maybe exasperated, “I mean, she is, legally, but she isn't mine – how did you even get that idiotic idea in your stupid head!”

As the words registered in his surprised mind, Kagami felt something painful finally let go inside of him – it was like untying a too tight knot from around his lungs, or lifting a too heavy weight from over his heart. He vaguely registered just how nice it felt, to free himself from those assumption he had made at the sight of Aomine with a kid between his arms.

Only vaguely, though, because right then the most prominent feeling was just deep annoyance and quiet anger.

As usual when it came to Daiki, he noted with a pang of nostalgia.

“Oh I'm sorry, how the fuck could I not realize that this kid that looks exactly like you isn't your actual daughter!” he growled, trying to force his tone as low as possible to not wake the bundle between his arms, and Aomine's eyes turned even angrier in answer, somehow.

Then he took a long breath in, exhaled just as slowly, and let himself fall on the couch at his right with a defeated sigh.

“She's my cousin's, okay? Dropped her on my doorstep three months ago and ran away fuck knows where, the bitch,” he said, whispered tone and angry edges, and then added in a low and tired voice, nearly as if he hadn't actually meant to let his lips pronounce that thought, how could I have a wife when I'm still hung up on you, moron.

By the way his eyes widened just a fraction of second later, Kagami realized that he probably really hadn't meant to say that out loud.

Not that he cared, honestly.

That may as well have been the best thing he'd heard in the last three years of his life.

“Are you, now?” he asked, a smile starting to bend his lips as a weight he hadn't know had been settled on his shoulders finally let him free to properly breath again – Daiki grumbled something incomprehensible under his breath in answer, raised a hand to hide his reddening face behind it.

“Can you pretend you didn't hear that? Exhaustion talking or some shit?” he nearly pleaded, folding a bit more over himself, but Taiga only shook his head at him and covered the space separating them in two long strides, sat by his side on the couch in a careful gesture.

“No way I'm doing that,” he grinned, resting against Aomine's shoulder as comfortably as he could while his smile got even wider, somehow happier, and he let out a content and honest I came back to tell you I'm just the same, after all.

As soon as Daiki lowered his hand from his face, turning around to look at him with wide eyes and slack jaw, Taiga found himself moving forward to press a small, chaste kiss to his chapped lips, lingering for a second to breath in the scent he had so missed in all those years away.

Then he moved back again, smiling with all the happiness he could feel building in his chest as the grin got mirrored on the other's face, and let a relived laugh bubble from the back of his throat.

“I guess I'll help you take care of this small lady, then, since you obviously can't by yourself.”

----

“Wait,” Aomine interrupted, turning on his left side and lifting himself up on a forearm to look at his husband's face with a raised brow.

“What?” Kagami asked in answer with a fond grin, keeping his happy scarlet irises on Daiki's confused face.

“So you just... accepted to rise a kid?” he wondered, unconvinced and uncertain, “decided to become a father in, what, ten minutes of conversation with me?”

It was inconceivable, to him, that a decision as important as that could be taken that easily – it just didn't make any sense. After a couple of seconds of staring at him wide eyed, though, Taiga only started laughing in answer, shoulders shaking and a hand on his mouth to stifle the sound because of the late hour.

Somehow, Daiki ended up deciding that the course of action that made the most sense was to look at him with a frown on his face for as long as it took for him to stop being an idiot and answer seriously.

His brain being too tired to properly reason was probably to blame for that, actually, but he was too sleepy to realize even just that – and after a while it seemed to be working, anyway, so maybe it had been a good idea. He wasn't really sure, though.

“I just– sorry, it's that you said the exact same thing back then,” Kagami laughed in the end, bringing his happy eyes once again on Aomine's surprised face, “got angry and told me to think about what I said, once in a while.”

Daiki kept his doubtful stare on his sincere one for a bit longer, trying to decide why he felt so surprised that his mind seemed to work just like his before-the-accident self's, and then shook his head, put that thought aside for when he was more awake, and instead asked a grumbled well, did you?

“Nah,” Taiga replied with a happy smile, reaching out a hand to gently pull Aomine against his chest and then curling around him, holding him in a delicate embrace, “it was about you, after all. I'd have done anything for you, back then – still would, really. There was no need to think about it at all.”

This man is a reckless idiot , Daiki found himself realizing after that answer.

It was a thought that settled in the middle of his mind, as if it was the most important trait and knowledge about Kagami he had gathered in those past weeks of living with him, and having it solid and clear in his mind made him at ease, somehow.

He couldn't understand what it meant, or why it was so important, but it made his shoulders relax and his lungs produce a sigh, as he pushed his nose between Taiga's neck and shoulder and inhaled deeply in contentment.

Then another thought crossed his mind, making his eyebrows frown in confusion again.

“There's another thing I don't get,” he said, moving away from Kagami's body to once more look at him from above, and the redhead sighed and hummed at him to continue, pointing his half-lidded eyes on his bothered ones.

“Why did my cousin leave her kid to me?” he asked in an unsure and interested tone, wondering how could she have had only him as an option and just how close the two of them had been, for her to decide to leave her daughter to him – Taiga produced a grumbled sound in answer, closing his eyes for a second and then sighing under his breath.

“This is just what I know and it isn't much,” he started, tone vaguely annoyed at something Daiki wasn't really sure about, maybe the memory in itself, “but from what you told me back then, she showed up at your door when she was six months into pregnancy to ask you to ask Midorima to find a backhand way for her to abort our daughter because she had changed her mind,” he said, furrowed brows and set jaw, and everything Aomine could make his mouth answer to that was a dry what the fuck.

“Right? You told her to fuck off and she started showing up at yours every other day to yell at you, then stole your phone to call Midorima herself and threw it away when Midorima told her to fuck off as well – that's why you'd stopped calling, by the way. When she left Sakura to you there was a note on the lines of you can have her since you're the one that wanted her alive,” he concluded, his voice turning more trembling from the rising anger with every new word he let out, and Daiki found himself tightening his fists and clenching his jaw, letting himself then fall back down on Kagami's chest and closing his eyes.

“What a bitch,” he growled, feeling Taiga curl his arms once again around his shoulders and sighing in his hair.

“Same thing I said,” he commented, running a hand down Aomine's spine and letting his nose sink between the blue locks, and Daiki could feel his breath evening out in a slower rhythm as he fell asleep.

“Saku's better off with us anyway,” he mumbled after a bit, just a step away from his dreams, and Aomine found himself smiling at the tenderness he felt unfolding inside his heart at the sweet, whispered words.

----

On the sixth day of his life back at home, Aomine didn't see a ball left in the middle of the living room and nearly broke his neck falling over it – fortunately, Kagami was just a step behind him and was able to catch him before his otherwise inevitable death.

That was about the fifteenth time in less than a week.

“You'll get used to the kids leaving their stuff around,” he had said with a laugh on his lips, and Aomine had scrunched up his nose and decided to not complain.

The evening of the same day, he opened the fridge for something to drink and opted to give a try to the only bottle of juice left in there – Kagami's horrified face didn't register in his mind soon enough to avoid his spitting grapefruit juice all over the counter and then seriously considering cutting his own tongue to get rid of the disgusting taste.

“You hate bitter and sour stuff,” Taiga had explained while pushing a square chocolate in his mouth to help him cleanse it, and said sweet turned out to be the only thing stopping Aomine from grumbling a distressed I'd like to fucking know this stuff beforehand.

The day after that he woke up with a horrible headache and, once the pills Midorima had given him ended up not being enough to kill it, he decided to go rummaging through what he guessed was their medicines cabinet for something stronger – he had just found something that seemed to be what he was looking for when Taiga entered the room, looked at him for a still second with widening eyes, and then yelled a panicked stay away from those!, launching himself forward and forcefully taking the pills away from him.

“You're allergic to these!” he explained to Aomine's confused and bewildered face, and everything Daiki could make his mouth pronounce was a distant wait, was I about to accidentally kill myself?

The morning after that accident was the first time Kagami had to leave him completely alone since the end of his hospitalization – the restaurant can't go on without its owner for too long, you know and wait, you own a restaurant? – and it also ended up being the first time Aomine realized he had no idea where half of his clothes were supposed to be or how to cook for himself something even just as small as a breakfast.

“You've never been able to make anything more than fried eggs, don't worry,” Kagami told him in an amused tone once he decided to call the redhead and ask how was he supposed to feed himself, but that new knowledge didn't really stop the now usual and familiar feeling of annoyance and resignation at his current condition.

Every passing day he realized just how impossible it was for him to easily live his life without any memory of his past – and every day his family and friends reminded him of how he only had to learn again.

He wondered just how long it'd take to re-learn and fill in the void left by the loss of thirty-four years of life.

How long before his patience and strength just gave up on the seemingly impossible task.

----

Sometimes, when the house was empty and he felt calm and collected enough, Daiki would sit on the couch cross legged, close his eyes and try to look inside his head for anything that could be a memory of his time before the accident.

He let his mind roam, thinking back to all the small things his friends and family had told him about his past, and tried to turn it into something personal, something really his, to spark at least a small light that would help him take back what he had lost.

He would frown and force himself to shut off the world outside, clench his jaw, tighten his fists at his sides or in his lap, and hope to recall even the smallest of hints about who he had once been.

Yet, it never worked.

For however much he tried, for however long he spent concentrating on the too deep void completely filling him, he could never catch anything in the absolute darkness that enveloped his whole life before the car crash.

He could feel it all missing, in the same way in which a house owner knows when a piece of furniture suddenly isn't where it should be, could see the empty space where there wasn't supposed to be any, and if he tried hard enough he could nearly feel at the corner of his consciousness that maybe he knew where everything had disappeared to, felt like he only needed to turn around and reach his hand out to unveil the memories of over thirty years of life.

But it never worked.

The only thing he gained from those strains and wasted afternoons was a painful and insistent headache.

It was nearly devastating.

It made him want to just give up.

----

Tying hair was hard.

Aomine realized so the afternoon of three days later, with Sakura sitting between his legs and a way too chirpy Satsuki chattering his ears off and at the same time trying – and failing – to teach him how to properly make a braid without tangling his fingers and the locks to a point where the only solution was to cut everything off.

Hair and fingers alike.

Maybe trying to do this with his left arm still in a cast wasn't the best idea ever, he had to admit.

“How the fuck did I even learn to do this the first time around?” he grumbled under his breath, and then snorted at the scandalized gasp that left Sakura's lips and the muttered dad, that was a bad word coming from Shiro.

Daiki raised his eyes to look at the boy sitting on the floor by his side, pencils in hands as he filled in the pictures of a coloring book, and then he let go of a lock of blue hair to mess the kid's black head up.

“Sorry champ,” he said, ignoring Satsuki's complains about him needing to use proper language around the kids, and then repeated the question once more minus the swear – the way she smiled at him, fond and nostalgic, made Aomine raise an interested brow at her in answer.

“I made you tie my hair when we were kids,” she said, adding a hurried Dai-chan, that lock goes above, not under! when he messed the braid up once again, and then continued, “the first times it was more the hair you pulled out than the ones that actually got in the ponytail, but I couldn't do it by myself just yet and you were the only one I could ask to help when my mom wasn't around.”

Aomine tried to picture it – his small hands trying to handle the girl's long hair, her crying out in pain when he was too forceful, his slowly learning how to tie it without making Satsuki go bald.

It was an image he could construct in his mind pretty easily, but, as usual, it didn't end up feeling like something personal, something he should have smiled or felt a pang of nostalgia over – he was starting to hate having to feel like that, like his whole life was someone else's story, a fairy tale he felt no emotional attachment to.

He realized his face had morphed into a frown and his hands had stilled when Sakura tilted her head backwards, black eyes vaguely concerned pointing in his midnight ones.

“Dad...?” she asked, raising an index to prod him in a cheek, and he opened his mouth and closed it again without knowing what to say, scrunched up his nose as he tried to put order between his suddenly negative feelings.

“But it's not a problem to teach you again, Dai-chan!” Satsuki interjected then, tone maybe a bit too forceful, smile too wide on her face – and Aomine knew, by now, that he was surrounded by people that loved him enough to pretend his condition wasn't as much of a bother as it actually was, but that didn't make him feel any more good about it anyway.

“I just... wish I could remember those things,” he said, starting to thread his fingers between Sakura's long locks to undo the mess he'd made of her hair, and he felt his shoulders hunch over, a long sigh escape his lungs.

For some reason, he realized after a bit, he craved Taiga's arms around him, his voice whispering reassuringly in his ears – and maybe it was because the redhead had always been around whenever he'd gotten into one of those moods, had been close enough to hold his hand and move his fingers between his hair, but he wasn't really sure.

All in all, he was still debating over whether his current self really loved Kagami or his feelings were just something closer to muscle memory – it could be that, even in that specific case, what he felt was only based on something that in a past he had now forgotten had become, for him, a natural reaction.

And even if in moments like those he nearly felt that, in the end, it didn't really matter – like habit or not, the fact that he missed his husband when he wasn't around was an undeniable truth, and maybe also everything he really needed to know – it still hurt to realize that, once again, nothing in his life could be considered personal and his anymore.

Just like his memories of tying his best friend's hair when they were kids.

“Dai-chan...” Satsuki mumbled after a while, tone low and sad, maybe pained, and for a second Aomine fund himself thinking just how much more normal this reaction was, compared to Taiga's smiles and understanding hugs and whispered, annoying apologies Daiki just couldn't bring himself to understand – he was about to voice it, that realization, when Shiro's quiet tone caught his complete attention.

“It's okay, dad,” he mumbled seriously, as he filled with a forest green the stripes on the back of the cat he was coloring, “sometimes bad things happen, and you just have to live with them.”

Daiki felt his eyes widen and his chest fill with something incredibly similar to concern, as the words registered in his mind – those... weren't things a kid his age was supposed to say and think just yet, were they? What was going on in his son's mind?

He made to reach out to him with his good hand, ask him something he wasn't really sure how to properly phrase, but the kid just put down his pencil and then started gathering his things between his arms.

“I'm going back to my room,” he said as he got up on his feet, and Daiki could just watch him move out of the living room in quiet steps, unable to give voice to even just a half of the myriads of thoughts that swarmed in his mind.

----

One of the reasons why Aomine got the most frustrated about his memory loss was that he really, truly couldn't understand Shiro at all.

The kid barely talked, he was more than sure he'd never seen him openly laugh or get angry, didn't complain and didn't cry; when Taiga was home, he preferred sticking to him – watching him cook or helping him with small chores, sitting by his side reading and coloring or silently resting on his lap or close to him on the couch – and Daiki wasn't sure if it'd always been like that or Shiro was actually more bothered by his condition than he let on, but either way he didn't like one bit just how distant he and his son seemed to be.

He envied the easy way in which Taiga just knew what he was thinking about – how the boy only needed to look at him for the redhead to start moving to satisfy whatever need he may have had, and how natural it seemed to be their interacting with one another, how more often the smile would bend Shiro's lips if it was aimed at Kagami.

Most of the times, the kid was a mystery Aomine didn't seem to have the right means to solve or even begin to understand, and it made him feel uneasy and inadequate, the wall that always seemed to surround his son whenever they were side by side.

Even when he decided to sit by Daiki out of his own volition, quietly hold his hand or ask questions way too complex for a kid his age, Aomine always had the feeling that it was more because Shiro didn't like to be alone, than because he wanted specifically his company – it made him wonder just what kind of relationship he had had with the kid before the accident, and just how he was supposed to build it again from scratch.

He didn't even know where to begin.

And the fact that Kagami seemed to be succeeding so effortlessly where he couldn't even understand where to start, for some reason it made Daiki wriggle his nose and furrow his brows, stubbornly refusing to ask for his help in finding a solution to the enigma that was his son.

It probably was pride, and a vague sense of absolutely not wanting to lose against his husband, but it mostly came from the single, deep fear that, if he'd ever asked Kagami why his relationship with Shiro seemed to be that strained, his answer would have been a shrug and a vague I don't know, it's always been like that.

Were that to actually be the truth, he really didn't want to know about it.

Or, at least, that was what he had thought at first.

His change in mind about asking for help came during the sixth week since he'd woken up, in the form of a call from the school both his kids were attending – Daiki, before that moment, hadn't known that a single, sterile we'll need you to come as soon as possible could make him as nervous and panicked as it did.

He wondered if it was yet another thing he had forgotten, or if it was the first time it happened in general.

Whichever the case, anyway, he kept on feeling like puking and yelling for the whole of the ten minutes it took to walk the distance to the school building – all the while trying to convince himself that he could deal with this, there was no need to call Kagami, he didn't need his help.

He really didn't.

Sooner or later Daiki was going to have to learn to take care of this kind of stuff by himself, he couldn't have Taiga hold his hand and guide him through life for the rest of his existence – just how ridiculous and pathetic would that have been? He seriously couldn't let himself fall that low.

So he had to deal with that call by himself, because it was the first step; also because he was definitely able to do it, once he thought about it – after all, how terrible could it ever be?

It was just a call from school, why would he even need Kagami's help for something like that?

And the fact that he nearly felt like passing out for the sheer relief once he saw his son idly sitting on a chair with his hands folded in his lap, usual plain expression on his face and seemingly unscratched body, didn't change absolutely anything.

Thank fuck he's fine , he found himself thinking with a sigh on his lips anyway.

He walked up to him, crouching down in front of the chair and reaching out a hand to caress his light, warm cheek, and Shiro batted his lids at him a couple of times, mumbled a barely audible hi dad.

“Hey champ. Everything's alright?” he asked, an uncomfortable gut feeling still not making him get completely over his worries, but before his son could answer a way too high pitched voice called for him from behind his back.

“Aomine-san!” the woman started, getting closer as Daiki raised to his feet and turned around to inspect her small, frail looking frame; for a second, he wondered if he was supposed to already know this woman, if he should tell her about him not remembering a single damn thing to avoid problems, but she just launched herself in a rant, pointing her steely eyes on Aomine's bewildered face.

He didn't like her, he realized – and then asked himself if it was yet another feeling based on lost memories, or if he simply couldn't stand that kind of people.

As she kept on talking, anyway, he decided that it was probably a bit of both.

“I find regrettable and unpleasant, not to say outright disrespectful, just how often we have had to hold this kind of meetings because of your son's irresponsible actions and behaviors, and I find myself forced to ask you yet again to educate this child at least on the proper way of–”

“Uh, yeah, right, okay, what– what is it that he's done?” Daiki found himself cutting in, bored and annoyed by the way this woman was talking about his son, and she seemed to turn slightly redder in the face, before turning to point an indignant index toward a kid Aomine hadn't noticed was on the other side of the room till that moment.

“He has made Hino-kun trip and hurt his nose,” the woman said with a tone that could only be described as insulted, and Daiki found himself raising a brow at her accusation, turning around to look at his son – who still held his usual, impassive expression – and then back on her still fuming face.

That was... unexpected. Kind of hard to believe, actually.

“Has he really?” he asked, starting to feel fed up with the whole situation, and when the woman replied with an offended of course he has, he only added in a monotone voice, “so you got proofs about it being my son's fault.”

As the woman started sputtering and trying to point out that it wasn't about having profs or not, Daiki just rolled his eyes and checked if Shiro had his bag with himself, before taking his hand and declaring that they were heading home.

“Don't talk about my kid like that when you got no proofs to back up what you're saying, ” he grumbled as he moved past her, feeling irritation and annoyance rise inside of him, and he ignored her complains and warnings as he kept walking out of the building and then the yard, moving for five minutes straight without stopping as he tried to calm himself down.

That was a new kind of feeling for him, the deep protectiveness that gripped at his heart and clouded his mind in annoyance, and coming to terms with it, with how intense that emotion could be for him, ended up being not as easy as he would have imagined – he hadn't know he was that kind of person till then, and it felt weird having to assimilate that new part of himself while his brain was a mess of mostly unjustified angry thoughts.

It took him a lot of mental strength, for some reason.

Then he slowed to a halt, taking in a breath, sighing deeply, and turned around to look at Shiro's small frame next to his own, examining his still serious and calm face, trying to understand what was it that had ticked him off about it since the start.

He sighed again, feeling his brows furrow and his nose wriggle for a second – it felt like there was something different about the boy's expression, something not quite right, but he just didn't seem to be able to put his fingers on it, and that bothered him; he crouched down in front of his son, moving his midnight irises on his features for a while longer, and then reached out a hand to mess up his neatly styled hair.

The more he looked at him, the harder it became to convince himself that he could deal with this situation without having to call for Kagami's help.

“Hey boy, if I promise I won't get angry will you tell me a thing?” he asked, forcing out a crooked smile through the uneasiness and waiting for a calm nod before continuing, “did you really trip that kid?”

Against his every prediction, Shiro nearly immediately answered with another nod – looking at him from such a close distance, Aomine could easily notice the way in which his mouth set in a slightly tighter line, though, and it was with a worried tone that he asked his next question.

“Why did you do it?” he wondered, and yet again the answer came faster and more sincere than he would have expected.

“He said bad things about my mom,” Shiro explained, quiet voice only barely trembling, the way his brows slightly furrowed close to invisible – and it was as he scooped him up with his good arm and carried him the rest of the way home, that Aomine decided he was done with trying to deal with this by himself.

He needed to know more about his son, and the only one that could help him was Kagami. It was useless trying to convince himself otherwise.

----

In the end, he found himself broaching the subject that same afternoon – he was sitting at the kitchen table as Kagami dried and put away the plates they had used to have lunch, and he kept his eyes on the redhead for a while, listening to the sounds of cars speeding on the road outside coming in from the open window, trying to decide what he wanted to know, how he wanted to ask.

He wasn't sure he was ready to have answers about his past relationship with Shiro, not yet at least, but not understanding him was starting to be a problem he couldn't ignore any longer: it worried him, made him overthink every word he said to the kid, every small gesture and expression the boy made, and the more time passed the more he realized that, when worse came to worst, he simply had to work harder and build with him a better relationship than the one they had had in the past.

For however scary the thought may have been.

He sighed, resting his chin on his right hand and pointing his eyes on Kagami's wide back without really seeing it, and Taiga turned around with a raised brow and a confused expression, putting then the dishcloth away and sitting on the chair next to his.

“Alright, spit it out. What is it?” he asked, crossing his arms on his chest and mumbling a barely audible your sighing is starting to be annoying, you know.

“I–” Daiki tried, furrowing his brows and scowling a little – then he made his tongue click and let himself fall against the back of the chair, moving his eyes away from Taiga and out of the window.

“It's about Shiro,” he admitted in the end, vaguely noting how Kagami shifted on his seat in his peripheral vision, “I don't... get him.”

Which may as well have been the understatement of the year, but the redhead didn't need to know that. For now.

For some reason, Aomine really didn't want Taiga to know just how big the wall he had found himself in front of was – not when the redhead seemed to be able to climb it with his eyes closed and using just one hand. It was infuriating.

Kagami just smiled crookedly, though, tilting his head a bit to the side and shrugging a little.

“Yeah, I don't either,” he said with a sigh on his lips, and Daiki's eyes snapped back on him the moment the last word left his mouth, wide eyes and raised brows – he hadn't been expecting it, not in the least, and a small voice in the back of his mind whispered an annoyed he's lying, he's lying to make you feel better.

He did his best to ignore it, anyway.

“Doesn't look like it,” he said instead, narrowing his eyes once more – Taiga curved forward, resting his chin on a hand and crossing his legs with an ankle over a knee, and then smiled a bit distantly, maybe sadly.

“But I really don't – I mean, I'm learning, and having known Kuroko for so long kind of helps, but three fourths of the times I have no clue what's going on with him,” he explained, keeping his tone soft, his eyes unfocused, “sometimes I feel like you get him better than I ever did, really.”

“Got,” Aomine corrected instinctively, his mind stumbling over Taiga's confession, trying to take in the surprise and relief those last words had made him feel, “got him, not get, I don't...” and Kagami's eyes widened for a second in answer, a small yeah, sorry leaving his lips as he scrunched up his nose, bit his lips uncomfortably.

“Anyway what I mean is, it's already been three years and I still don't get him most of the times – it's normal for you to need time to adjust,” he completed then in a sigh, uncrossing his legs and letting himself fall once again against the back of his chair, and Daiki felt surprised as the words three years left his husband's lips.

It was way less than he had expected – for some reason he had assumed that, just like Sakura, Shiro had been part of their family since he had been only a newborn. It felt weird, somehow, knowing that they hadn't been part of their son's life since its start – even if that did explain why Shiro had talked about a mom, that morning.

Aomine rested his healthy arm on the table's surface, curving then forward to let his head fall on it and look at Kagami with set mouth and interested, curious eyes.

“Are you up for telling me that story?” he wondered, vaguely hopeful, and Taiga raised a brow at him in confusion, widening then his lids once he understood what Daiki was asking him to recount.

“You mean how Shiro ended up with us?” he asked anyway, probably just to make sure, and Aomine nodded as much as his position let him – then he grumbled an annoyed what? once Kagami's face scrunched up in an uncertain expression, and the redhead looked at him for a second longer unmoving, considering. Then he shrugged, and let a resigned sigh fall from his lips.

“I don't know, it's just... it's a pretty sad thing,” he said, leaning forward on the table and resting his chin on his crossed arms, “you sure you wanna hear it now?”

As Aomine nodded again in answer, an uncomfortable feeling taking shape in his stomach and his face frowning in something similar to worry, Kagami sighed once more, closing his eyes for a couple of seconds and then opening them again, pointing them somewhere undefined on the wall in front of him.

“That time... I was closing up the restaurant, it was eleven at night, maybe later, I don't exactly remember, but I was closing up, and when I got out to lock the backdoor and head home he... he was there,” he started, stare still unfocused and distant quality to his voice.

When Daiki raised a brow at him, asking a confused what, alone?, Taiga sighed and nodded, finally turning his scarlet eyes on his blue ones, biting his lips in concentration.

“Yeah. Yeah he was alone.”

----

The kid was sitting by the side of the door, head resting on his crossed arms and said arms held on his knees, and Kagami had nearly tripped over him with how little noticeable he was in the dark of the alley.

He was wearing a too big coat and too long scarf, and once Taiga was able to calm his heart from the shock of suddenly seeing him there – and he should have been used to it, considering who his best friend was – he raised a brow at the small bundle of too large clothes and black hair, and then crouched in front of him with an unsure smile on his face.

“Uh... hey,” he said, waving a hand in front of the boy, hoping he didn't look too threatening, and, when the kid raised his big, brown eyes to meet the scarlet ones, Kagami realized just how young he was.

He was most definitely younger than Sakura, and Sakura was only six – what was that kid doing alone in a back alley in the middle of the night?

“Are you okay?” he asked, trying to keep his face as nice and gentle as possible, and the boy only nodded in answer, moving his stare towards the entrance of the alley without saying a single word.

Kagami tried again.

“Are you waiting for someone?” he said, letting himself fall to sit on the ground in front of the kid, and the boy hummed and nodded in answer – Taiga smiled a little, glad that at least he wasn't lost, and then went on with a careful mind telling me who it is?

“My mom,” the kid answered, keeping his eyes on the road and his voice just a mumbled whisper, and Kagami wriggled his nose, asked him if it would be okay to wait with him, and then took the lack of response as a yes.

“Around what time did your mom say she'd come?” he wondered after a bit, taking in the cold looking cheeks of the boy, asking himself what kind of parent could leave their son alone in a back alley in the middle of the night. To him, it was simply inconceivable – the sole idea of Sakura in the same situation made a distressed shiver run down his spine, bent his mouth in a worried frown.

When the boy mumbled a soft 4pm, anyway, he realized that maybe the situation was a bit more complicated that he had initially imagined.

“How... how about we go wait for her inside?” he proposed, trying to not make the shock and worry too visible on his face and in his voice, “you're probably cold, right? And hungry, too, I can make you something to eat.”

“Mom said not to follow or accet things from stren– starn– you,” the kid only answered, though, still not moving his eyes from the entrance of the alley, and Kagami just sighed in answer, started to look in his coat's pockets to try and find his phone.

It was probably better to call Daiki and tell him he'd be home late, he guessed.

----

Daiki's answer to the phone-call ended up being a worried wait there, I'm coming right away, and Taiga didn't even have the time to tell him that it definitely wasn't necessary before he hung up on him – which was just typical Daiki, he told himself.

He was the kind of idiot to worry way too much about even the most stupid of things, after all.

As they waited for Aomine to get there, Kagami was able to have the kid tell him his name, age and favorite food and drink; he was also able to convince him to eat something once his stomach started to make noises way too loud for such a small frame, and had had him laugh a couple of times as well.

He was an adorable kid, bright eyes and big smile, and when Daiki finally arrived – sleeping Sakura between his arms and a worried line to his eyebrows and mouth – Taiga had actually found a way to have the kid, Shiro, sit between his legs to shield him at least a little from the always rising wind.

“Hey,” Aomine said as he got closer, smile a bit tense and shoulders too stiff, and Kagami smiled up towards him warmly, told the boy not to worry because Daiki's really nice, you'll see – Shiro nodded at him, then turned around and smiled at Aomine just like Taiga himself had just done.

“Hey to you too, kid,” Daiki said, crooked grin a bit tense on his lips, and Kagami had to raise a brow at that, a feeling of uneasiness slowly growing in his stomach as his husband just kept going, eyes still steady on the boy's face and tone weirdly worried, “you're waiting for your mom, right? Is it okay to tell me, uhm, how your mom looks?”

“She's very pretty,” Shiro answered at the exact same time as an uncertain Daiki? left Taiga's lips, but Aomine turned towards him only for a short second, weirdly apologetic smile on his face and worry obvious in his eyes – it made something painful twist in Kagami's stomach, had him subconsciously curl around the boy in a protective kind of way.

Daiki only kept on asking questions, though, and once Shiro had given a clear enough image of how his mom looked he rose to his feet and looked seriously at Taiga, asking in a quiet tone to move inside.

“He... he doesn't want to get in– Daiki what's happening?” Kagami said, a quiet sort of panic starting to rise in the pit of his stomach, but before his husband could answer Shiro's soft but happy voice interrupted them both.

“In is okay,” he said with a smile, pointing his brown eyes on Taiga's face, “you're not weird.”

Kagami would have seriously liked to grin at him, maybe laugh even, but everything he could do was offer a tense smirk and a nod, before getting to his feet and guiding everyone back in the restaurant.

----

“I think his mom's dead, Taiga,” was what Daiki told him as soon as they were alone, Shiro and Sakura playing together at one of the tables and kitchen doors making sure they couldn't hear a word of what was being said – as soon as the sentence registered inside Kagami's mind, he felt his own eyes widen and his back straighten, and a barely audible what left his mouth without him even really realizing.

“We found a woman today – she didn't have documents with her so I can't be sure, but there were toys and kid stuff in her bag so we'd assumed... and the way he described her fits, Taiga, it's– I'm not sure, but it's probably his mom,” he explained, keeping an eye on the children through the round glass window on the door.

Kagami found himself opening and closing his mouth, no sound coming out from his too tight throat for nearly whole minute, and then he let out a strangled how do we know it's her.

“I don't know,” Daiki answered with a distressed sigh, pushing a hand through his hair and then sliding it over his face, “she didn't have a record, so in case he doesn't have another parent I guess the only way would be–”

“We're not letting him see her, Daiki!” Kagami snapped suddenly, feeling irritation rise inside of him at the sole idea, and Aomine hissed at him to keep quiet in answer, told him a distressed I'm just warning you that it may end up being necessary showing him at least a pic, you idiot!

Taiga made to protest again, point out that the boy was just four and in no way old enough to see a dead body – in the end he just sighed, though, and moved his eyes on the kids slowly falling asleep on the table's surface.

“Alright,” he said, and then breathed in, out, and repeated it again. Alright.

“We're taking him home with us for tonight, I'll... I'll leave a post-it note on the backdoor with our number in case anyone shows up and– I– we, we're taking him home, Daiki, we–”

“Yeah,” Aomine interrupted him, wrapping his arms around his frame and pulling him against his chest in a tight embrace, mumbling soft it'll be okay and it's gonna be fine, and the only thing Taiga's mind could think about was Shiro's bright smile as he told Daiki about how pretty his mom was not even fifteen minutes prior, and what was going to happen to him in case he really was alone, now.

----

“And in the end he never left,” Aomine let out after a couple of minutes of silence, tone dazed as he tried to take in what the redhead had just told him, and Kagami shrugged and raised his body to once more sit upright, moved his hands on his face in a tired gesture.

“Not exactly,” he said in a sigh, reaching out to move his fingers through Daiki's locks in slow movements – Aomine, for a second, let his mind wonder if it was a tic Taiga had always had, the one of so often touching his hair, but then shook the thought out of his mind and asked a soft what do you mean when the redhead didn't seem to want to keep going.

“We– ah, we couldn't simply keep him. He isn't a cat, you know,” he explained, shrugging a little as a small smile bent his lips and something way too close to sadness appeared in his eyes.

Daiki didn't like that expression at all, and he let a frown show on his face, reached out to hold the hand his husband was moving through his hair and intertwined his fingers with the lighter ones – Taiga's eyes turned surprised for a second, and then a more genuine grin shone on his mouth, his shoulders relaxed a little.

(Aomine was starting to love it, how he could make that smile appear so easily on the other's face, how he could calm him down by simply touching him.

It felt nice, knowing that it wasn't true only the other way around – that he had on Taiga the same effect that Taiga had on him.)

Kagami let his thumb slide over Daiki's knuckles for a while, keeping his eyes on the tan skin in silent concentration, and then a small sigh lightly shook his broad shoulders.

“As soon as it was official that he was an orphan he... he was in the State's hands. We had to leave him in a orphanage until we could officially adopt him,” he went on, tightening his hold on the tanner hand a little, furrowing his brows in an unhappy scowl, “we tried to visit as often as possible to not leave him alone, but... he's been this quiet since then,” he concluded in a grumble, whispering a soft he was too young to not be affected by all that in a small pout, and Aomine let a low humof understanding leave his closed lips.

He rolled the whole story around in his head for a while, thinking back to things Shiro had said that hadn't made much sense till that moment, small acts and gestures he was just then starting to understand, and then felt a deep sigh leave his lungs in a tired breath.

This whole having-to-be-told-his-own-past thing was starting to become annoying. And hard to live with.

He wanted to remember those moments he was being told about, wanted to know exactly what he had felt and what he had said, what he had been thinking as everything unwound before him – he was grateful to Taiga for the patience he was showing in telling him about everything he asked for, but his stories could help only up to a certain point.

He wanted to know these things.

How he had dealt with Shiro becoming part of his family, how it had felt to hold his daughter for the first time, or his feelings when he first realized he was in love with Taiga. He wanted to remember the night he met Kuroko, his first encounter with Kise, all the stupid things he did as a kid with Momoi.

He wanted to remember.

And the fact that his mind kept on being barren of even only the smallest hint of memory was starting to make him believe that he was never going to get anything back. Thirty-four years of his life completely lost, forever.

He wasn't sure how long he'd be able to live with it, truth be told.

----

The texture of the ball felt comfortable under the palm of Aomine's left hand.

When he'd picked it up half an hour earlier, weighted it carefully and looked at it with a raised brow and tight lips, he hadn't been sure he still remembered what to do with it – he had been feeling the need to play for over five weeks, then, but feeling like he knew how to play and actually playing were two very different things.

He knew it. And, for some reason he couldn't fully understand, he feared it.

Somehow, he felt like basketball was the only thing that could help him calm his nerves, right that moment, and in case he really had forgotten how to play he wasn't sure about what he would have done.

But the texture of the ball felt comfortable under his right palm.

It bounced easily, nearly with elegance, and dribbling came naturally to his feet – like breathing, like smiling, like longing for chill water when his skin was way too hot – and he had reached a speed that felt just right to him after stumbling only a couple of times.

Everything he needed to do, he realized, was shut his mind off and let his body work on its own.

The right way to hold the ball, the perfect movements of his wrist, the position of his feet as he got in the most comfortable shooting form – his fingertips grazing the leather surface as the ball left his hands, the nice arc it drew as it rose and fell in the chill afternoon air, the reassuring sound it made as it went through the hoop, it all came naturally to him as soon as he stopped thinking about it.

And, at the moment, Aomine really needed it.

Both the basketball and to stop thinking – or better, to occupy his body with something comfortable and easy, so that his mind could roam freely for a while. Try to put order in what he was feeling to stop overthinking his current situation.

He felt incredibly under pressure and weirdly unbalanced, at the moment, and feeling like that was uncomfortable to say the least, he needed it to stop as soon as he could make it.

So he had picked up the ball from the middle of the floor of the living room. And so he had moved to the backyard, right arm still in the cast be damned, and had started dribbling and shooting as if his life depended on it.

Really, if he was being honest with himself, after the talk he had just had to go through he kind of felt like his life did depend on the movements of that orange ball.

If he had known answering the phone would have ended in him feeling so wrong, so upside-down, he would have probably left it to ring – instead he'd grumbled to himself, got to his feet and reached out to answer with an annoyed, half mumbled greeting.

The man on the other side had introduced himself as Kasamatsu – even if, more than an actual introduction, it had been an angry is that you Aomine? Kasamatsu here, yelled over the voice of someone Daiki was more than sure had to be Kise.

“Kasamatsu?” he had asked, a raised brow and confusion in his tone, wondering why he should have had already known this guy, why no one had talked about him yet, and the man had grumbled an annoyed add a senpai to that, brat.

As it looked like, the obvious question of what, did we go to school together only ended up in the other yelling some more – Daiki had no clue what was so offensive about him assuming the man had been once an upperclassman, and he kept on not understanding the problem even after the guy yelled at him that he was his senpai at work.

“I'm your partner, hasn't anyone been telling you anything about your damn job, kid?” the man had grumbled some more, and Aomine had shrugged in answer, remembered that this Kasamatsu guy couldn't see him, and then voiced a bored and disinterested not really.

“Whatever, listen up – you got a cast on your right arm, right? When is it coming off?” the other had asked, voice still too loud, too annoyed – Daiki had clicked his tongue at that, had replied with a short mah, next week I think.

“Good, then next Friday I'm coming to get you to see how much you remember of your job and how much I need to teach you from scratch. Again,” was Kasamatsu's brisk answer, and, before Aomine could even completely register the whole sentence in his mind, the line had gone dead.

That was the first time Daiki was forced to realize that, memory loss or not, sooner or later he was bound to start dealing with his job again.

Which was what had gotten him to play ball in his backyard, all in all.

The idea of going back to work, somehow, had been incredibly distressing – he had only then really realized what kid of job he had, what kind of things he had to deal with every day of his life, and, for some reason, the first thing his mind had produced as a result of said realization ended up being a dark going back to work may mean dying.

He wasn't sure about what had pushed his past self to become a detective, out of everything he could have done, but after the accident the occupation sounded too much like a suicide wish – actually, he found it kind of ironic how his current state had been caused by a stupid car-crash when every day he risked his life with a job that, at the moment, he couldn't find any worth in practicing.

Maybe as soon as he got back to work, another accident would happen and his already distressed mind would end up losing those little memories he'd made anew for himself.

Maybe his head would go back to being a blank slate the moment he started his first shift – Midorima had said to be careful with it, after all. Maybe a simple hit could make him lose it all once more, how could he know.

How was he supposed to have the certainty that it wouldn't happen.

The sole idea made his shooting form falter for a second, and the ball left his hand in an awkward movement, hitting the rim of the basket and falling with a dull sound on the backyard's concrete.

He clicked his tongue, moving with slow steps towards it and picking it up again, making it spin on the tip of his right index with instinctive balance – he wasn't sure he could take losing his memory again. He wasn't sure his family could take it.

Rolling the possibility in his mind was starting to make his head hurt and his breathing feel painful, his heart beat weirdly and his limbs feel numb.

This whole thinking-about-his-future thing had to seriously stop, he decided.

Making a distressed sound in the back of his throat, he let the ball hit the concrete once more, dribbled it for a while and then stopped with a fluid movement. He held it in his left palm, feeling it heavy and solid in his hand, and then bended his legs to prepare for the shoot – it felt perfect, every gesture of a unique precision.

So, when the ball left his fingertips once more awkwardly, hit the basket's backboard and bounced back to hit him right on his forehead, he gave the blame completely to the yelled what the fuck are you doing! that startled him exactly in the moment of the release.

There was no way it was going to miss, otherwise.

----

“Shit! Are you alright, Daiki?” yelled Kagami as soon as the ball was once again on the concrete, and Aomine could hear his hurried steps getting closer to him, his big frame settling in front of him as his hands reached for his face, but Daiki was too taken by the dull pain at the front of his head to really register anything of all of that.

“Take your hands away, let me see your face,” Taiga was saying, distressed tone and worried eyes, “Daiki, hey, are you okay? Do– do you know who I am?” he asked, tone nearly scared, and somehow Aomine found himself rolling his watery eyes at his stupidly overbearing husband.

“I'm fine, jeez, that ball is just heavy as hell, calm down,” he said, moving the heel of his hand in circular motions on the spot that had been hit, and Kagami looked at him for a handful of seconds still, sighing then in relief as soon as he was certain Daiki was actually alright.

Then the light in his eyes turned aggressive, deeply angry, and Aomine took a step back without even realizing.

“Then what the fuck do you think you were doing!” he yelled, heat in his tone and voice nearly a growl – Daiki felt his eyebrows draw in annoyance, settled his face in a stubborn scowl of his own.

“What did it look like, idiot? I was playing ball,” he grumbled, feeling angry in answer to the other's anger, and Kagami let a distressed noise leave his throat, pushed both his hands to mess up with his already tangled hair.

“You have a broken arm! You can't play it's too fucking dangerous – are you really this stupid?! What if that ball just now had seriously hurt you!” he accused, pointing an index towards the tan man and moving once more to stand just inches away from him, and Aomine replied with an irritated I said I'm fine! to which Taiga answered an enraged but you may have not been!

“I needed to fucking think, okay?!” Daiki yelled, anger filling his chest and making breathing hurt, and then he let himself fall to sit on the ground, curving on himself and pushing the fingers of his left hand through his blue locks in a distressed motion.

“I needed to calm down and basketball seemed like the only good option,” he explained, voice a low whisper coming rough out of his too tight throat, and Taiga's mumbled Daiki only made him take in a sharp, involuntary breath and fold more on himself.

He felt his heart beat weirdly in distress, as Kagami slowly sat in front of him, reached out a hesitant hand to loosen the hold Daiki's fingers had on his own hair, and the fact that everything he wanted were those strong arms around his frame made him ever more agitated, even more distressed.

“I can't go back to work,” he let out in the end, soft and barely audible, and he felt Taiga's hand still as it lowered his tan one, heard clearly the way he inhaled sharply and suddenly.

“I just– I can't, I can't lose it all again, I can't lose the little I have, I just can't,” he kept going, feeling the words heavy in his mouth, his right hand tremble in Kagami's hold, and the redhead's fingers tightened around his as Daiki's name left his lips once again in a worried, soft whisper.

Aomine could feel himself break more with every passing second, the possibility of feeling his head once again completely empty so heavy it was close to unbearable, and the blood was rushing loudly in his ears, his throat was hardly open enough to let in the air he needed to fill his suddenly too small lungs.

“I'm scared, Taiga,” he mumbled defeated, the admission weighing on his shoulders, making it impossible for him to look at his husband directly – he felt so pathetic, right then, and somehow the redhead was the last person on Earth he wanted to be seen in that state by.

It nearly made him want to laugh self-deprecatingly, the condition he was finding himself in.

Kagami's hand on his tightened at the confession, a hold so strong it nearly hurt, and Aomine could easily catch the sound of his heavy, distressed breathing even between the noises of the city around them – he wanted to raise his eyes, check Taiga's expression and posture, but the strength simply wasn't there, in him.

At the moment, what he was the most scared of was to find pity and disappointment in the usually fierce scarlet eyes.

It was something he simply wouldn't have been able to stand, he knew that for sure.

What Kagami said next, though, tone wounded and openly distressed, maybe even guilty, had him snap his head up towards him, brows furrowed and wide, incredulous eyes.

“I'm sorry, Daiki.”

----

“Why the fuck do you always say that!” Aomine growled, pulling his hand free from the other's hold and getting back to his feet, taking a couple of steps away from Kagami's startled frame.

“You're always apologizing about everything, why the fuck are you always apologizing about everything!” he kept going, feeling the anger rise inside of him once more, and as Taiga pushed to his feet as well, frowning as a worried Daiki, wait left his lips, he just shook his head and pushed his hand between his already messy hair, felt his heart beat so fast it may as well have been about to jump out of his chest.

“You keep on saying you're sorry, you always say you're sorry, but what are you even sorry for!” he yelled, watching Kagami's eyes widening in surprise without really seeing it; the habit the redhead had of apologizing every other moment had been getting on Aomine's nerves since the first time he'd heard him do it – he hated it, because he felt like the biggest burden for his husband, a pain no one should ever have to deal with at every hour of the day, but Kagami just kept on smiling and helping him out, held him when he needed it and pushed him when he was too scared to take the first step, and every single one of those action was punctuated by a mumbled, sincere I'm sorry and Daiki just couldn't understand it.

“I'm the one that needs your help every second of my life, I'm the one who should be apologizing, why the hell are you always saying that you're sorry, why are you alwa–”

“It's because it's my fault!” Taiga interrupted then, voice loud and obviously distressed – his brows were furrowed in the middle of his forehead, lips nearly trembling around the scowl that was bending them, and everything Aomine could do in answer was open his eyes wide as his head suddenly emptied of every thought he'd meant to yell.

Somehow, the boiling anger he had started to feel in his chest at himself and the other had quieted down the moment the pained words had reached his ears – they ringed in his mind for long seconds, as Taiga's eyes filled with something way too similar to sorrow, his frame slowly closing on itself, and the only thing Aomine's mouth was able to articulate in the heavy silence that suddenly fell on them was a quiet what?

“It's my fault,” Kagami repeated with a tighter, lower tone, avoiding his stare and biting the inside of his cheek, fists held closed at his sides, back straight in an uncomfortably looking way, “it's my fault you're like this to being with, this is all my fault,” he said, his pained voice turning into a barely audible whisper with every new word he pronounced, and when the usual apology left his trembling lips Daiki found himself being the one reaching out to hold the other's hand, for once.

“How... how is it your fault?” he asked, feeling his throat too tight, his lungs nearly useless – it pained him, seeing Kagami like this. He looked small, nearly frail, and it made him feel at loss of what to do, how to react.

“Taiga, how is it your fault?” he pressed when no reply came, taking another step towards the redhead and tightening his hold on the lighter fingers, and Kagami kept his stare steadily and obstinately on their feet, biting his lips, furrowing his brows.

Then he sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat, and he started talking in a tone so quiet Aomine had to struggle to properly hear him.

“That time I said... I had just been on a business trip for a week, you know? And then you ended up with this case and, we... we hadn't seen each other in so long I thought– I didn't think– and it was so stupid, so so stupid, why did I even– ”

“Taiga,” Daiki interrupted, making the breath in the other's throat hitch, his shoulders stiffening again for a small second – then a new sigh left Kagami's lips, as he closed his eyes and tightened his hold on the tan hand and, when he started talking again, his whole posture looked as if he was physically forcing himself to push those words out of his mouth.

“It was late, and raining, and you hadn't slept in over two days, and I should have told you to wait there and rest and instead I told you to hurry,” he completed, voice so guilty and pained Aomine could feel it hit his ears like a knife in the middle of his heart – it hurt, and it hurt even more once Taiga's lips started mumbling broken apologies once again, and the only thing Daiki could do was think back to all those similar times during the last weeks, at the patience he'd shown even when he should have probably been yelling, at his smiles and the gentle caresses of his hands on his cheek, between his hair, along his back.

He thought about it all, wide eyes and slack jaw, and everything his mind could formulate was a shocked has he been feeling like this the whole time?

Aomine had no idea about how to feel regarding the new realization – he felt angry at himself for not understanding sooner, hurt by Taiga's tone and expression and trembling frame, irritated by his husband's decision to keep that particular information to himself – and the more he thought about it, the more the scowl took shape on his face, bending his lips, furrowing his brows.

It was infuriating.

So, he hit Kagami's head with the side of his right hand in an annoyed smack.

“Ow! What the hell was that for!” Taiga complained, halfway between shocked and angry as he reached upwards with both his hands to hold the spot where he'd been hit, and Aomine just scowled at him deeper, kept his annoyed eyes on him for a while longer.

“Why didn't you tell me that I married a complete idiot?” he asked, irritation dripping from his tone, and then kept going before Kagami could interject, “how the hell does that make the accident your fault, you moron!”

“I told you I'm the one who told you to hurry!” Taiga yelled in answer, vaguely affronted, completely annoyed tone tinting his voice, and Daiki just clicked his tongue in answer, replied with an angry and I'm the one who hurried!, which made Kagami growl an irritated but if I hadn't told you to–

“I would have hurried anyway,” he cut in, reaching then out with his right hand and placing it on the redhead's cheek, holding his face to have him meet his steady stare.

“If there's one thing I know, it's that I loved you enough for me to want to see your face as soon as possible as well,” he said, sure tone and steady voice, and Kagami looked at him with wide, surprised eyes for a second, let his expression morph in a pout a moment later as a mumbled how do you know that left his stubborn lips.

“I just do,” Daiki answered, a certainty in his voice even he didn't know where he was finding, and then moved his good arm to embrace the redhead's shoulders, pulling him against himself and grumbling right in his ear, “so stop apologizing already, idiot.”

It took nearly a whole minute, but in the end Aomine felt Taiga nod slowly, reach out to tangle his fingers on the back of his husband's shirt – and those simple gestures were everything Daiki needed to let a small, relived sigh finally leave his parted lips.

----

“You don't have to go back to being a detective,” Kagami said half an hour later, as they sat side by side on the back porch and watched the sun set behind the buildings in front of them.

“If you don't want to, you can find something else. We'll call Kasamatsu and tell him not to come, if you don't want him to,” he added after a while, reaching out his right hand to tangle his fingers with Aomine's left, and at the words Daiki felt his own shoulders suddenly relax, a heavy burden he hadn't realized was there finally being lifted from above his heart.

“Okay,” he said, a soft whisper mostly directed to himself, and then nodded more firmly, repeated the same word a bit more strongly, “okay.”

He hadn't realized just how much he had wanted, needed for that option to be made available for him by someone else – how much he needed someone to acknowledge for him that that possible choice did actually exist, that he wouldn't be a coward if he decided to choose it.

It was liberating.

He felt like he could easily breath for the first time since the phone-call.

“Your head's really okay, right?” Taiga asked after a short silence, turning towards him with worried eyebrows and lips – and even if Aomine could still feel the dull ache in the front of his skull, he nodded at him anyway, said that he felt fine, he didn't need to think about it too much.

Kagami looked at him for a second longer, biting his lips, tilting his gaze a little – then he smiled, nodded and raised a hand to move it towards his face, stilling for a second too long close to his cheek before raising it to tangle between short blue locks.

And, as those now familiar fingers brushed slowly through his hair, as his head tilted towards them now nearly without him meaning to, that was the moment when Aomine, after close to seven full weeks of living with that man, finally realized it for the first time.

Just how much he – the current him, the one with no memories of before the moment he woke up in the hospital – was actually in love with Kagami.

It wasn't about muscle memory or force of the habit anymore, he knew that for sure.

The warm feeling that enveloped him whenever the redhead was close to him, the peace his hands were able to make him prove, the way his heart swelled when Taiga smiled and his soul cried whenever the other wasn't completely alright, those couldn't be anything but genuine feelings.

He loved him.

He was in love with him.

----

The second most important realization he reached in the span of two months hit Aomine about a week later – and it was weird, how he hadn't really noticed till that moment.

Somewhere inside his mind, he was going to give the blame of the late realization to the mess his feelings had been making of him and his brain: not being sure of what he felt, how true and his own his sentiments had been, had probably put a screen over his awareness of that specific happening.

As if, for as long as he couldn't be sure of what he felt, how real his emotional state actually was, his brain had decided to conveniently ignore that same action that had been repeating itself every day of his life, far more than just once a day.

It was some sort of self-preservation or security system, he guessed.

So, now that he had finally decided what was it that he was feeling, had put the label true love on the emotions that had been chaotically swarming inside his mind, the calm that had been born from it had turned out to be enough to clear his vision of that specific problem.

Which, to put it as simply as possible, was the absence of any kind of kiss from Kagami.

Taiga, since he had woken up, hadn't kissed him even once.

Daiki had no idea how it felt like to be kissed by his supposed husband.

It was ridiculous.

And probably he had subconsciously welcomed it, at first – the absence of overly intimate physical contact kind of gave him the space to think about his uncertain feelings, offered him the time to put order in his too empty and yet too crowded mind.

Now that he had finally decided what it was that he was dealing with, though, the whole thing was turning unacceptable way faster than he would have imagined.

He just couldn't help noticing it, at that point.

He noticed it in the mornings, when Taiga bent down to kiss Shiro's forehead and Sakura's cheek goodbye before heading to work, and then looked at him with a soft light in his eyes, reaching out a hand to thread through his hair and whisper a happy see you later.

He noticed it in the late afternoon when he came back home, tired and in need of a shower, but reached down to pick his children up and kiss them both anyway, wide grin and small, happy wrinkles at the corners of his eyes – and then smirked a kind I'm home towards him and hesitated a second before stretching out a arm to caress him on a cheek.

He noticed it just before turning off the lights at night, when he whispered a fond goodnight at him, eyes soft and voice sleepy, and then moved towards him just to brush a strand of blue hair away from his forehead.

He noticed it with every aborted gesture and too soft touch, every uncertain smile and way too delicate embrace, and it was starting to feel a lot like torture, not knowing the reason why Taiga was putting so much space between them.

Every time he found himself ready to reach out first, the crushing image of Kagami flinching away made him stop mid motion – Taiga did see him as his husband, right? He had been sure of it until a week prior, but the doubt was starting to grow in the back of his mind once again and it was incredibly terrifying just how fast it was taking new shape.

The redhead had only told him he loved him once, after all.

Could he really be sure he hadn't been lying?

----

Somehow, Daiki had found himself asking about that problem without really understanding how the conversation had ended up turning in that direction, one late evening of the week just after he had first started having those kind of thoughts again.

The two of them were sitting side by side on the couch in the living room, house quiet now that the kids had fallen asleep, and Daiki was gazing at Kagami's tired eyes for even he didn't really know just how long, feeling his own lids heavy because of the dull headache that had now become somewhat of a norm.

Their hands were clasped between them, fingers intertwined in a lazy hold as Aomine let his thumb slowly trace Taiga's light knuckles, made his irises slide over the perfect line of his nose, the curve of his semi-parted lips, his jaw and Adam's apple.

“How come we still got different surnames?” he asked out of the blue, letting a question he had been thinking about for a while now roll off his tongue without moving his eyes away from Kagami's nice neck, and Taiga hummed for a bit, made his throat vibrate with the sound.

Aomine wanted to bite it.

“We married in the States,” the redhead answered after a while, turning his head to point his half-lidded stare on Daiki, and the tan man forced his eyes away from the line of the other's neck, made himself meet Kagami's gaze with a vaguely less tired one.

“Back then, ah, it was seven years ago – back then we still couldn't marry here in Japan,” the redhead explained, keeping his lips bended in a warm smile, making Daiki wonder just what they could taste like, how soft the could ever be, “it was recognized once done, but we couldn't do it here, that kind of thing. Anyway, since we married over there we could choose if we wanted to change surnames or not, and my dad really wanted me to keep the Kagami,” he shrugged, letting his eyes fall completely closed for a second.

The way his lashes fell on his cheeks, scarlet over light skin, made Daiki want to reach out and brush a thumb over them, drag it along his beautiful cheekbones and then down to his jaw and chin – he let a hum of understanding leave his own barely parted lips, half of his mind still counting his husband's eyelashes, and then shook his head, bit his lower lip.

“So why didn't I change in Kagami, then?” he asked, rolling in his brain the sound Kagami Daiki a couple of times, deciding that after all he really did like it, the way it ringed.

And, going by how they hadn't showed their faces in over two months since he had woken up, Aomine felt pretty safe in assuming that his parents weren't the reason why he had decided to keep the name – there didn't seem to be any problem in changing, all things considered.

“Sakura was already an Aomine,” Taiga answered, though, a small shrug and a smirk still on his lips, and Daiki found himself letting out a soft oh in reply – he let his irises linger over the white teeth barely visible through Kagami's smile, had them drag along his tongue when Taiga let it swipe fast over his lips, and he found himself swallowing without a reason, wondering how long he could still take that situation before going out of his mind.

At the moment, Kagami was like his favorite food laid upon a silver plate, his name neatly written over it to denote its belonging to him, and still he couldn't reach out and just eat.

It felt like someone had picked that dish and put it inside a locked glass case, and Daiki could see his own name carved over it, knew that he was the one it was destined to, but couldn't do anything about it beside feeling the hunger grow inside of him.

And the more time passed the more he felt himself begin to starve.

It was maddening.

He let go of Kagami's hand nearly without noticing, slowly raising his arm to brush a strand of hair out of the other's forehead, and the feeling of the hair's texture, the warmth of the redhead's skin, made the tips of his fingers tingle pleasantly – he held still for a second, watching Kagami's eyes flutter open in uncertain surprise, and then he pushed his hand through the red locks, widened his lids as Taiga pressed instantly closer to his palm, let a soft sigh leave his parted lips.

“Daiki?” he asked unsure, eyes still just tired slits, and Aomine shuffled a little closer to him on the couch, made his brows and lips turn into a small frown.

“Hey, Taiga...” he said, moving his fingers slowly and calculatedly, “you do love me, don't you?”

The effect of the question was more or less immediate: Kagami's eyes snapped open, his relaxed posture straightening as he turned around to properly face his husband, and a hurried of course I do! left his lips in a nearly panicked reply. Daiki only shook his head lightly, though, and let his hand slide from the red hair to a light cheek.

“I mean me,” he specified, letting a thumb run along Kagami's cheekbone in a slow motion, “the me right now. The one with no memories older than two months.”

As he waited for Taiga to reply – watched his eyes get back to tired slits, his shoulders relax as he let his side rest against the back of the couch – Aomine felt his heart beat so loud he'd have been surprised if the redhead had told him he couldn't hear it. His throat felt tight, his lungs too small, and every second he felt closer to puking, the air nearly impossible to properly take in.

Then Kagami smiled and raised a hand to hold the tan one still resting on his face, and that smile and warm touch made Aomine's breath hitch and stop in a second of complete stillness.

“Of course I do,” Taiga repeated then, his grin turning soft as he rubbed his cheek against Daiki's palm in a content, kind gesture, “I love you. All of you, every you. I always have and always will. It's not important if you remember me or not, you're still you, you're still my Daiki. I could never not love you.”

Aomine let those words sink into him for a while – their meaning and the sweet tone Taiga had used to pronounce them, the feeling of his light fingers still holding onto his tan ones and how warm and soft his cheek was, his smile and content eyes, his relaxed posture and honest stare.

As they took place in his mind, as they became clear and doubtlessly true, he found his own lips stretch in a happy, open smirk.

“That was the sappiest thing I've ever heard you say,” he pointed out, tone relaxed and amused, and Kagami rolled his eyes at him, mumbled a soft shut up, idiot.

“Then why don't you ever kiss me?” he asked then, feeling himself frown as the doubt came back to his mind – he'd thought it was because maybe Taiga didn't really love him, but if he did, then why wasn't he being kissed?

He should have been kissed weeks prior already, that absence of kisses was starting to be seriously ridiculous.

Kagami just widened his eyes at him again, though, a surprised expression tinting his face while he registered the words that had just left Daiki's mouth.

“I... thought you didn't want me to?” he replied, uncertain edge to the answer as his brows drew in the middle of his forehead, and when Aomine let out a surprised what?! he continued, somewhat hurried, “I thought you'd be uncomfortable with it! I mean, you don't even know me!”

Daiki looked at him for a handful of seconds.

Frown on his brows and lips, eyes as slits and his hand still on Kagami's cheek, he looked at him and considered his reply for a time that may have been a minute top.

Then he clicked his tongue in an annoyed sound – annoyed at that reply for being so rational, at his husband for thinking things through the one time he really didn't have to, at himself for having overthought the whole situation instead of just acting on his instincts – and used that same hand that still rested on Taiga's face to pull the redhead towards himself, bent forward to finally push his lips against Kagami's open in surprise ones.

----

Taiga's lips were soft and tasted of chapstick, and Daiki felt a sigh leave the back of his throat the moment he was finally able to touch them, feel them against his own.

He waited a second, taking in the texture and scent and taste for as long as he could, and then he let his tongue slide on the redhead's bottom lip in a slow, calculated gesture – at the movement, he felt Kagami's breath hitch, his shoulders tensing for a second, and then his strong arms wrapped tightly around Daiki, one hand between his hair and the other tangled in the back of his shirt.

He pushed closer to him, opening his mouth to let Aomine's tongue in and suck on it lightly, and Daiki felt a groan leave his lungs, crash against Kagami's lips and make his frame shake a little – feeling the redhead so close, his firm hold on his body and the hunger with which he was pressing in the kiss, made him feel like a hand was grabbing and twisting at his stomach, like his heart was pumping blood in his ears a million miles an hour and his lungs couldn't have taken in enough air even if he had been breathing, at the moment.

Which he most definitely wasn't. Kissing Kagami was the most exhilarating experience ever.

He pushed harder against the redhead, raising both his hands to hold onto Taiga's face and pull him in, letting a grunt leave his throat as the other bit onto his lower lip – he could feel Kagami's small sighs and groans in the way his chest vibrated against his own, and the only thing running through his mind was a defined I don't want this to ever end.

And then Kagami pulled away.

And Aomine swore under his breath.

“Why the hell did you stop,” he complained, feeling the air come out of his lungs in small pants and his chest heave with the need to take more in – Taiga's lips were red and shiny, slightly parted, and Daiki had to force himself with all the strength he had to move his eyes away from them and up to Kagami's concerned irises.

“Are you sure this is okay?” the redhead asked, frown bending his brows and front teeth worrying his lower lip, and Aomine couldn't stop himself from groaning, at the sight.

He wanted that mouth back on his own. He wanted it right that moment.

When he tried to pull Taiga once again towards himself, anyway, the redhead only pushed back more, frown deepening and stare hardening a bit.

“I'm serious, Daiki,” he said, loosening his hold on the blue hair to move his palm on a tan cheek, “are you sure about this?”

“I love you,” Aomine answered nearly immediately, feeling his heart jump a beat as he voiced that thought and then trying his hardest to ignore it, to just keep going, “I'm in love with you, I love you. So yeah, I'm pretty damn sure I want to kiss you. Possibly do more than just that, actually.”

The words hung in the still air around them for nearly a whole minute – it felt awkward, somehow, with Daiki's hands still holding Taiga's face and the redhead pretty much completely wrapped around Aomine's frame.

Then a wide smile opened on Kagami's lips, a soft and happy really? leaving his throat in a warm whisper, and Daiki just rolled his eyes, bended forward to leave a small peck on his silly, adorable grin.

“Of course, idiot,” he said, letting a smirk turn the corners of his lips upwards as well, and the strength with which Taiga pushed against him in another kiss was enough to have Aomine topple over and fall on his back with a soft oof.

Kagami's mouth was still stretched in a smile as he left small pecks at the sides of Daiki's lips, on his chin, along his jaw and close to his nose, and the tan man had to force a laugh down and harden his hold on the redhead's face to stop him for long enough to properly kiss him – he pressed against him with strength, closed eyes and insistent lips, and everything he could feel was the sound of Kagami's breath, the scent of his shampoo and body soap.

It was intoxicating, it, somehow, made him feel more alive then ever.

The way Taiga let his forehead rest against Daiki's after a bit, eyes wrinkled at the corners and big smile splitting in two his beautiful face, made Aomine feel his heart too big for his ribcage, his lungs too small for the air he was trying to force in.

Then a small laugh shook Kagami's wide shoulders lightly, and he left another peck on Daiki's lips just before holding himself up on his forearms and grinning broadly down at him.

“I got to be your first kiss, this time around,” he said, happiness dripping from every syllable that left his mouth, and Aomine widened his eyes at him in surprise, moved a hand to lightly touch his own lips as a mumbled you're right got voiced without him really noticing.

“And guess what,” the redhead went on, lowering himself once more until the space between their mouths was so small that every word he pronounced had them graze each other in barely there touches.

“What?” Daiki asked, smirking a little, raising his arms to curl around Taiga's neck and pull him a little closer still.

“I get to be your first time all over again.”

----

They moved up to the bedroom, slow and careful steps on the stairs as Taiga's arms kept on embracing Daiki's middle, his nose nuzzling behind his right ear and his lips leaving kisses all over his neck – and when Aomine had asked a vaguely annoyed why can't we stay on the couch? Kagami's only answer had been a grim one time with the kids walking in is more than enough, believe me.

Aomine had decided to trust him on his word, on that.

As soon as the door was closed behind them, Taiga turned Daiki around in his embrace, leaning on the wooden surface and sliding one of his palms under his shirt, dragging it along the tan, built back, tracing his sensitive spine and quivering muscles.

Aomine felt the shiver run along his arms and neck, arched in the precise touch with a moan that stopped just past his throat, and then pouted a little, kissed Taiga on the jaw and bit him just under his ear.

“This is kind of unfair,” he mumbled, licking a stripe right along Kagami's pulse – and smirking at the mewl that left the redhead lips in a trembling whisper.

“What is?” Taiga asked, tone falsely innocent and grin obvious on his lips, as he pressed his thumb in the middle of the small of Daiki's back, dragged it upwards as his other hand pushed between blue locks, his teeth grazed a collarbone lightly.

Aomine could feel himself coming undone under those touches, and he still had all his clothes on – and that was what was unfair.

“You– ahn, you already know how to touch me,” he grumbled, pushing both his hands between Kagami's hair and pulling until they were once more face to face – then he licked his lips, watching the smirk on Taiga's turn even wider, more amused, and leaned forward to properly kiss him.

He let Kagami's lower lip slide between his own, sucking lightly on it and then biting it, and the redhead hissed and moaned at the feelings, pushed his tongue next to Aomine's as he dragged him forward with the hand he still held between blue locks.

Daiki groaned at the sting of his hair being pulled, moaned at Taiga's taste filling his mouth and his scent enveloping him, and when his husband moved away with half-lidded eyes and a smile still on his face, Aomine could feel his own heart beat way too loudly, the air coming out from his mouth in hot puffs.

“I can teach you how to touch me,” Taiga mumbled with a way too low and rough voice, making the already short breath hitch in his husband's throat – he took hold of one of Daiki's hands, dragging it down along his neck and then on his broad chest, and his eyes got watery as Aomine moved experimentally his fingers along one of his pecs, a mewl forced its way out of his throat as Daiki let a thumb glide over a still covered nipple.

He widened his eyes at the needy sound that left Kagami's lips, moving then his fingers more purposely, pushing harder and dragging them with more decision, and he felt Taiga's fingernails dig slightly in the skin of his back as another moan came out of his parted lips.

“Really?” Daiki smirked, lowering his head to suck a bruise on the side of Kagami's neck as he let the hand on his chest slide under the shirt, and Taiga groaned and held on Aomine harder, moving an arm to circle his shoulders, pulling him close enough to pant directly in his ear.

“It's your fault,” he said in a sigh, biting on Daiki's pulse and then dragging his wet tongue along the red spot, “I wasn't– nh like this at first,” he groaned, bucking his hips forward as Aomine took a hold of the nipple between his thumb and index and twisted, used his free hand to guide Kagami's face once more before his own.

The sudden, involuntary thrust made Taiga's crotch brush against Daiki's in a stumbled movement, pushing sighs and moans out of both men's mouths, and Aomine felt the fingers Kagami had on his back shift to hold onto his shirt, pushing it upwards as a mumbled, strained take this off reached his ears in a warm, wet breath.

He nodded dazed, moving his hands down to hold at the hem of Taiga's shirt and dragging it upwards to remove it before doing the same with his own – his lips were on one of Kagami's nipples as soon as the clothes had been left to fall on the floor, licking and sucking in experimental motions and smirking whenever a hitched moan left the other's throat, and Taiga let his nails drag along Daiki's shoulder-blades nearly desperately, holding on and pulling closer.

Aomine's fingers were splayed on both sides of the redhead's hips, pressing their still clothed crotches closer, dragging his thumbs along his navel in insistent, slow gestures, and he found himself relishing the way Taiga's muscles shivered under him, trembled with every touch and every kiss.

Kagami's skin pressed directly on his own felt hot and sweet, his body burning wherever the two of them collided, and when one of Taiga's hands moved to grab at his hair, pull until their faces were close enough for him to bite and kiss at Daiki's parted lips, while the fingers of his other moved slowly and teasingly just above the edge of the back of his pants, Aomine couldn't avoid the loud groan that left his throat in a strangled, needy noise.

“Shhhhh,” Taiga smiled, mouth barely an inch away from Daiki's and a small smirk playing on his red, shiny lips, “you'll wake up the kids.”

Then he moved both his hands on Aomine's ass, grabbing it and pulling closer until their crotches brushed against each other with a firm thrust, and Daiki had to cover his mouth with a palm to stifle to moan that the gesture pushed right out of him.

“Asshole,” he grumbled after a second, fingers still splayed over his lips and eyes watery from the unexpected, sudden shock of pleasure, and a small laugh left Kagami's chest in answer – he pushed closer and bit at a dark collarbone, licked just around the base of Daiki's neck, and then whispered a soft take off your pants and let's get on the bed.

Aomine really didn't have to be told twice.

As he freed his legs from the cloth, feeling Taiga doing just the same at his back and turning around just to stifle another moan at the sight of his husband's pretty much naked body, Daiki gave himself a moment to realize he was about to have sex – and even if technically he'd already had countless times before then, even if at moments the movements and feel of Kagami's body over his own felt familiar and right, he still had no concrete memory of ever doing anything of the kind.

He felt a bit lost, vaguely apprehensive, and he didn't notice his back had stiffened until the feeling of Taiga's arms embracing him from behind made him relax once more.

“Are you okay?” the redhead asked, leaving small kisses and pecks on his nape and shoulder-blades, and Daiki hummed low in the back of his throat, closed his eyes as he raised a hand to intertwine with Taiga's hair and pull him forward into a slow kiss.

“How do we do this, usually?” he asked then, freeing himself from the other's hold and sitting on the edge of the bed, and Taiga shrugged and smiled crookedly at him, climbing on the mattress and then pulling Aomine over his chest as he laid down.

“It depends,” he answered in a mumble, trailing his hands along Daiki's spine and placing kisses on his jaw and neck, under his ear and on his cheekbones, “how do you wanna do it?”

Those words, murmured quietly and with absolute simplicity, made something loosen inside of Daiki's chest, something tight and somewhat threatening, maybe even scary, painful.

Being given the choice to make, a choice that somehow he hadn't really realized was a possibility, felt nice and calming, made some of the apprehension leave his still vaguely stiff body – being between Taiga's arms, right then more than ever, felt safe.

Taiga could make him feel safe so easily, it was nearly laughable.

He felt Kagami's hands run slowly along his back, fingers grazing at the hem of his boxer briefs and then sliding lightly along the small of his back – with every careful movement he felt shivers shake his whole body, his dick twitch every time Taiga's touch edged too close to his ass, and a moaned sigh left his mouth as he let his hips buck towards Kagami's, licked the other's lips as the redhead grunted at the movement.

“I think I wanna bottom,” Daiki said in another sigh, eyes closed as he let himself feel the shape of Taiga's dick pressing in his hip, of his hands once more grabbing at his ass, fingers digging in his cheeks, and the way Kagami moaned at the words made him smirk a little in self-satisfaction.

“Are you sure?” the redhead mumbled after a while, pushing his hips up in a steady rhythm, trailing wet kisses along Daiki's jaw and chin – Aomine moved a hand to grab at Kagami's red locks, feeling his own breaths become closer to labored pants with every thrust of Taiga's crotch, and then shifted to position his shins at the sides of his husband's hips, using them as leverage to press down harder, more decisively.

The movement made another moan come out of Taiga's lips, sudden and barely contained, and Daiki leaned down to press a wet kiss on his husband's mouth, let his tongue glide inside in messy motions – as Kagami's hands moved inside his boxers, as both his thumbs slid between his cheeks and lightly grazed his hole, Aomine's breath hitched in his throat and his back arched, pushing down harder against Taiga's hips and pulling moans and groans out of both of them.

“Yeah, yeah I'm– I'm sure, come on,” he nodded, feeling the air stutter inside his chest and throat, and Kagami nodded back at him as he trailed small nibbles along the tan neck and shoulder, pushed himself upwards to bring both of them to a sitting position.

“Alright,” the redhead whispered, moving his hands up to hold onto Daiki's hair and pull him down in a heated kiss – teeth biting at lips and tongues sliding against one another and pants and moans mixing in the nearly nonexistent space between them – and Aomine curled his arms around his neck and subconsciously ground his ass on Taiga's crotch, making a hiss and a mewl crash against his still parted, wet lips.

“Get– get up on your knees, let me take off your boxers,” Kagami sighed in something close to a daze, disheveled hair and half-lidded eyes, and then reached out to ground the heel of his hand on Daiki's dick as soon as he was up in a kneeling position, making him double over in a hiss and bite at the redhead's shoulder to stifle the moan he'd just punched out of him.

“Taiga...” he groaned, turning his head slightly to the side to sink his nose under Kagami's ear, and his husband's hand curled around his length through the material of the boxers, slid tentatively up and down a couple of times and then moved away to pull the underwear to Daiki's knees.

His wide palm was once more on Aomine a second later, fingertips smearing the precome over the head and along the shaft in slow, teasing movements, and Daiki pushed his hands once more through the red locks, pulled down to bare Kagami's neck, and then bit and licked and his throat, let his fingers slide to the broad chest to pull a needy mewl out of the other.

Taiga pumped at his length in a steady rhythm for a while, grip tight and hand steady, making excited shivers run down Aomine's bare chest, the muscles in his abdomen tremble and quiver, and then let the hold go as he left a peck on the underside of Daiki's chin, told him to get off of his lap so that he could take off his own underwear.

As he pulled to his feet to stand on the mattress and take off his boxers, Aomine let his eyes roam over Kagami's naked body – took in the way his back arched as he pushed his briefs down and off himself, how his spine curved as he reached in the drawer to take out lube and condom. He made his mind memorize every inch of the broad chest, the exact line of his biceps, the shape of his legs, the length of his red, leaking dick as it rested against his navel.

Taking in the scene made the breath hitch in his throat.

Taiga really was handsome – the more he looked at him, the more obvious it became; thinking that he was his, his own and no one else's, made a smirk bend his still bruised lips in weird satisfaction.

It felt sweeter than any possible kind of victory.

Once the scarlet eyes were again on his tan body, Kagami let them roam over it for a handful of seconds, mumbling a groaned fuck, you're such a damn sight under his breath with need and want so obvious in his tone that made Aomine's breath catch in his throat and his dick twitch slightly; then Taiga extended a hand towards him, sighed a soft c'me here, and guided him till he was once more kneeling over his lap.

“Am I gonna ride you?” Daiki asked with a smirk on his lips, feeling his heart beat way too fast, and Taiga replied with the same kind of grin, nodding lightly as one of his indexes traced a wet trail along his hip and then down his crack, sliding over his hole so slowly Aomine found himself moaning in a long, drown out noise.

“Yeah,” Kagami said, pushing the tip of his finger inside and then moving it out again, circling his hole a few time and then repeating the gesture, making the breath in Daiki's throat hitch repeatedly, “I don't wanna strain your ribs and arm now that they're kinda fine.”

Then he let the finger slide in, slowly and steadily, moving in a circular motion once it was completely inside and then gliding out once more – and everything Aomine could make himself do was nod at the other and bite his own lips to not let any too loud noise leave his mouth.

He could feel shivers run along his spine, and the weight of Kagami's member resting against his tight, the dull sting of the finger gliding in and out of his ass as Taiga's other hand reached for his dick, pumping it steadily, dragging the thumb along the shaft and over the head in a way that made Aomine buck his hips forward, push himself further down on the now two fingers that were penetrating him.

He let his forehead fall on one of Taiga's shoulders, felt his breath turn into heavy pants and always more desperate moans, and for every sound he made Kagami moved his hands in a different way, let his own voice break into chants of you're so beautiful and I missed this so much.

The moment Aomine's grunts and mewls turned into a needy I'm– I'm gonna come, Taiga, come on, the redhead let a groan leave his throat and pressed a hard kiss on his panting lips, taking away his fingers to put the condom on with stuttering motions – he moved his hands on his husband's hips, holding tightly, skin so hot it felt like burning, and guided him over his member with careful gestures.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he said, placing another hard kiss on Aomine's lips as soon as he nodded a hurrying yeah, yeah okay, go on, come on.

Then Taiga started pushing the head in, and the breath in Daiki's lungs hitched and stopped – he didn't even realize how much he'd tensed up until Taiga's forehead was resting against one of his pectorals, one hand running up and down along his back as the other closed once more around his dick and a murmured, kind relax, Daiki, relax left his lips soothingly.

Aomine nodded – took a breath in, nodded again, and then mumbled a short it's fine, I'm fine once Taiga started suggesting they switched.

“I'm– okay, you can move,” he said, concentrating on Kagami's scent and breath and hand on his member pumping just in the right way; he tightened his arms around the redhead's neck, felt the wet of his drenched in sweat hair on his skin, and forced himself to breath in and breath out slowly and steadily, as the other lowered him on his dick with careful, practiced motions.

“Are you alright?” Taiga asked once he was completely in, and Daiki could hear the strain in his voice, feel the way his hips were trembling to stay put, the hand on his hip holding so tight it may as well be leaving bruises – he concentrated on the movements of the other one's fingers, sliding up and down his dick in a quivering, slightly stuttered way, and tried to think about the sting as little as he could, let his body try and remember that this wasn't new, he should be used to it.

He took another deep breath in, let it out, and then nodded; he opened his mouth, trying to voice his assent with a short I'm fine, but had to close it again to stifle a groan as Kagami twisted the hand on his dick just right, circling his hips at the same time and sending shivers of pleasure running down his spine.

“Taiga–” he found himself moaning, moving his hands to hold onto the red locks and tilting his husband's head enough to be able to kiss him, making a mewl leave the other's throat and his hips buck up, causing Daiki to hiss and push back on his lap and into his hand.

“I'm– going to seriously move,” Kagami warned, only waiting for a short nod before pulling out and slamming back in in one single, fluid motion – the noise that left Aomine's lips was only barely stifled by one of his own palms, and Taiga let go of his member to reach forward to blue locks, pulling Daiki into a panting kiss and keeping him there.

The sting of Kagami dragging in and out of him, the feeling of his own dick pressed between their abdomens, long fingers pulling at his short hair and Taiga's tongue and lips on his mouth – it made Aomine's muscles tremble and his breathing halt and hitch, made him push harder against the other's steady chest, hold him closer to himself as his nails dragged over his scalp and along his broad back.

“Daiki,” Kagami moaned in his mouth, a needy sigh accompanied by a bite on Aomine's lower lip, a more forceful thrust upwards, and when his husband's response was only a nearly too loud groan and a stuttered grinding of his hips, Taiga let out a pained growl and a hissed sorry.

Daiki didn't even have the time to wonder what was he sorry about now, when Kagami suddenly shifted his arms on his lower back and swiftly turned them around, making the tan back hit the mattress and then bending over to kiss the breath out of his surprised lungs.

Somewhere in a corner of his mind, Aomine took note of the excited shiver running along his arms and chest, the way his dick twitched at the other sudden movements, and realized just how much he seemed to like being manhandled by his husband.

Then a short, stuttered laugh left his mouth, and he brought up a hand to stifle the noise in his palm.

“What happened to not wanting to strain my ribs and arm?” he asked in a panting breath, amusement filling his voice and pulling a smirk from Kagami's own lips – lips that soon after were once more on Daiki's, licking and biting and pulling barely suppressed noises out of his throat, as his hips slowly moved in a circular, precise motion and one hand moved back to Aomine's dick.

“I'll be careful,” Taiga whispered then, pulling out of his husband only to swiftly push back in, and Daiki's back arched in surprise, his arms tightening around the other's back and a way too loud groan moved past his parted shiny lips.

“Taiga–” he moaned, eyes half-lidded and breath hitching in his lungs, feeling Kagami settle in a fast rhythm with both his hips and hand, and the redhead mewled his name in answer, kissed his jaw and chin and the corner of his lips and his throat in stuttering motions.

Daiki could feel the heat rise in his crotch, his muscles trembling and twitching more with every pull of Taiga's fingers, every thrust sending sparks of white to blind his eyes, furrow his brows – he could feel Kagami mumble hitched words in the crook of his neck, his own fingers digging in the skin of the wide back as his legs raised to cross behind the other, pulling him closer, holding him harder.

The orgasm came to him as if dragged right out of his spine, making his hips raise and the muscles of his legs and abdomen tense, the breath die on his parted lips and white noise fill his ears – he felt Taiga's stuttering hips drag inside of him like something happening far away, as if his mind had been suddenly filled with cotton, and, as he pushed his hands up to thread through drenched red locks, pulled his husband down to kiss him messily on the lips, the only thing he was able to think about was ah, we should have done this sooner.

“I love you,” he mumbled after a while in a sigh, once Taiga's movements had halted and his heavy body had fallen to rest on Daiki's chest, breathing hard, holding the tan body against his own in a tight embrace, “I really love you.”

“Hm,” Kagami let out, a soft laugh shaking his tired shoulders for a second, “I really love you, too.”

----

“Why did you want to bottom?” Taiga asked later, once his breathing was back to a normal pace – his hands were still resting on Daiki's back, running up and down in slow and careful gestures as the tan man laid half on top of him, and Aomine hummed a bit as he placed a kiss on a white collarbone.

“Was it weird?” he wondered in answer, crossing his arms on Taiga's chest and looking up at him through the lashes of his half-lidded eyes – Kagami shrugged a bit, shook his head in negation with a small smile and a sigh.

“Nah, it's just... our first time – I mean the first first time, that time you wanted to top,” he said, lightly shaking his shoulders again, and Aomine let a soft oh fall from his lips in a hushed sound.

Somehow, when he really thought about it, it kind of made sense – after all, until the moment he'd actually had to choose, before his mind had been filled with the feeling of Taiga's hands running along his back and his arms holding him and pulling him in, Daiki had been sure he would have preferred to top.

But Kagami's embrace had felt safe, his fingers expert, his kisses sure – it had made him feel like he only needed to let go and let Taiga hold him up, guide him in the right direction.

“You seemed to know what you were doing,” he just answered in the end, though, closing his lids and feeling the way Kagami laughed in answer through the vibrations of his chest under him.

The heat of the redhead's body was comfortable around him – it made breathing easy, and his mind relax in ways he wasn't used to; when he thought about it, since the start Kagami had always been like that, for him.

A safe place.

A warm home to come back to.

On one side, Daiki loved how in every memory he had of his life his husband had always been there to keep him up and support him, hold him when he needed to be held, yell at him when all he wanted was to yell back at someone. It made him feel somewhat ill, the fact that there had been a time, in a life he couldn't remember anymore, when just reaching out to hold Kagami's hand hadn't been an option – like Taiga was the only light in his world, and the idea of not having him with himself was just like being surrounded by the deepest, thickest darkness.

It felt a bit like suffocating. Like dying while his body refused to stop moving.

And, on one side, Daiki loved how he couldn't remember those times.

But yet.

“Hey, Taiga...” he said after a while without opening his eyes, disrupting the quiet of the room and making a low, tired hmmm leave Kagami's throat in answer; he sighed, shifted a little to sneak his arms around the redhead's chest as he bit his lower lips in something close to distress.

“I still... can't remember anything,” he mumbled, feeling his chest weirdly heavy – Taiga stiffened under him for a couple of moments, sighing then in a pained breath, and moved them both to lay on their sides so that he could properly curl around his husband.

“I know,” he said, pushing a hand through his hair and the other along his spine, and then repeated it again, I know.

“You'll get through this, Daiki,” he mumbled, keeping his body pressed close to the other, and Aomine nodded and sighed, his teeth still sunk in his lower lip and eyebrows furrowed in a frown.

His mind wasn't just as empty anymore, he sometimes reminded himself.

Even if he could still feel the scary emptiness that made up the first thirty-four years of his life, his mind was slowly starting to fill with new memories, clear and precious and his, and he knew that if he just waited, if he just lived, he could stop feeling the void as if constantly looming over him.

But he wanted to remember.

He still wanted to remember.

It hurt, knowing how much he had lost – if those past two months were filled with so many important memories for him, just how much could the accident have taken away? He wanted it back.

“I want my past back,” he growled, his throat tight and his heart heavy, putting more strength in his embrace as Kagami curled more forward, held him closer still.

Daiki really wished he could just give it up. Even if it seemed like such an impossible thing to do, right then.

----

And yet, when two weeks later, during the periodic check-in with Midorima, the doctor sat him down and let out a grave you should start considering the possibility of never recovering from your memory loss, Aomine only felt weirdly empty.

Midorima's voice was hard, the expression on his face making it obvious just how much it pained him to give that news to one of his oldest friends, and Taiga's hand resting on his shoulder was heavy and strong, holding so tightly Daiki could feel his fingers tremble for the strain.

But he only felt empty.

Nearly at peace.

Ah , he thought, I guess it's time to give up, then .

Just as if the diagnosis were a pair of perfectly sharpened scissors, it cut that last strand that still tied him to his stubborn need and desire of remembering what he had now long lost – it felt as if a decision about his condition had just been made, one for which his opinion hadn't been asked nor taken into consideration, and somehow knowing how powerless he was made him accept it all way more easily than he would have thought possible.

It was somewhat freeing – put a peace between his mind and body he couldn't remember ever feeling before, and he ended up just sighing and letting his shoulders slump, raising a hand to hold Kagami's and declaring that they were going home.

“I'm fine, Taiga, stop looking at me like that,” he said later on to his worried husband, keeping their fingers intertwined in a soft hold, and he really was.

Once the kids assured him that it was okay, they loved him anyway – Shiro's small arms around his neck and Sakura's kisses all over his cheeks – he felt even better.

Which somehow made it all even more annoying, once the memories actually did come back.

----

It happened three months and nine days after the day of the accident – the sun was low on the horizon, Sakura and Kagami playing basketball on the backyard in the chill afternoon air, and Aomine's head was hurting so much he felt like it was nearly about to explode.

That had become somewhat of a normal occurrence for him, in the last month or so; he was starting to find it incredibly annoying, truth be told.

Mostly because it prevented him from properly playing basketball, which was an absolute pain.

He moved in the kitchen with a hand resting on his forehead, thumb and middle finger slowly rubbing over his temples and murmured swears falling from his lips – he opened the cabinet over the sink, bringing his eyes to check if the bottle with the pills was still on the counter, and as he pulled out a glass a fumbled movement of his hand knocked over one of the mugs in the front row.

He watched it fall with widening eyes, cringed when it hit the counter and smashed into way too many pieces, and then clicked his tongue and frowned at it.

“Shit,” he said, reaching out to start piling the shreds in his open palm, “why did it have to be the one the kids gave me?” he kept on complaining, picking up the piece with the blue cat on it and sighing once more.

He loved that mug – it was the first present Shiro had ever given him, he still rememb– he remembered.

He remembered it.

The way Shiro had smiled shyly next to the giant grin on Sakura's face, the way he'd felt his heart swell at the boy's mumbled happy birthday, dad – how he'd scoped him up and hugged him with all the strength he had because he'd called him dad and that was the first time , how Sakura had complained that she wanted a hug too, how Taiga had told him to stop trying to crush their son with that beautiful smirk he always had when he wasn't actually angry and, oh , he remembered that smirk, too, every time it had shone on Taiga's face, how it had been reluctant at first, how proud it had made him, back when he was just a kid with a giant crush, to be able to make it appear on Kagami's beautiful lips, and how it had then slowly started to turn wide and bright, so warm and only his .

He remembered it all.

Every single second of the past his family and friends had told him about, every emotion he'd for so long wanted to know, every thought he'd longed to recall, he had it all back.

The mug had broken and he had remembered everything .

He felt like laughing at how ridiculous it really was.

“Had I known I'd have smashed it sooner,” Daiki mumbled to himself, feeling a smirk start to press at the corners of his mouth – and then he felt a small hand close on the cloth of his pants, moved his surprised eyes on Shiro standing by his side with a worried expression on his face.

“Dad?” he asked, usual quiet voice and impassive face, but, ah, he could see it, now – the small wrinkle between his brows and the slight downturn of his lips, how he always closed one of his hands around the hem of his shirt when he was distressed, the way his back was slightly too stiff, Aomine could see it, he didn't need to rely on his instincts anymore to know that something was off, he knew what wasn't right.

He felt the grin pull even wider, as he realized.

“Hey little demon,” he said, crouching down in front of his son and messing up his neat hair, and the kid's eyes widened at the way he'd been called, and Daiki felt a small laugh shake his own shoulders at that expression.

He could remember the first time he had called him that – the first time he had had to pick him up from school because he had kicked another kid in the shins and had had him fall flat on his face, how surprised he had felt that Shiro actually had it in him, the laugh that had broken past his lips as the teacher recounted the happening.

How he had reached out to mess his hair up and then called him that, little demon , and how insulted the woman had been by Aomine's attitude, how little he had cared.

“I didn't mean that just now, you know. I'm sorry it broke, I loved it,” he said, reaching out his arms to hug Shiro close to his chest, rest his chin atop his head as the smile stretching his lips only grew wider, and his son's hands hesitated for a moment before closing on Daiki's shirt, pulling him a bit closer.

“Dad...?” he asked again, uncertain edge to his voice as clear as the day, and Aomine laughed and hugged him tighter, answered a warm yeah, yeah it's me.

It felt nice, finally feeling his mind full – he could remember the night they found his son and the worry over him, the day he'd opened the front door to his old apartment and had nearly tripped over Sakura, how angry he'd felt then; he could remember the day of the wedding and all the tears he'd cried as Kuroko patted him on his back with a small, amused smirk on his lips, he could remember the night he'd met Tetsu back in Teikou – and his first meetings with all the other guys as well, the times he'd tied Satsuki's hair and all the afternoons spent with her running around trying to catch cicadas – there was so much to think about, so many memories he thought he'd never miss, but oh , he was so happy to have them all back.

And then Shiro yelled.

Right next to his face, startling him so much he lost the balance of the crouch and fell to sit on the floor for the surprise, the kid yelled a papa! so loud Aomine felt the sound ring in his ears for at least thirty seconds straight, trying to understand what exactly had just happened as the kid's small arms reached out to hold tightly onto his neck.

“I... didn't know you could be that loud,” Daiki said with a laugh just as Taiga ran into the kitchen with a worried frown, Sakura trying to keep up just behind him.

“Fuck, Shiro are you–!” he started, voice just high enough to cover the scandalized papa, bad word! leaving their daughter's lips – then his eyes fell on the two of them tangled around each other as they sat on the floor, big grin on Daiki's face and Shiro's head hidden between his dad's neck and shoulder, and Taiga raised a concerned brow in answer to the image in front of him.

“What are you two doing?” he asked, worry still not completely gone from his tone, and Aomine only smiled brighter, wider.

“Hey Taiga,” he said, opening up an arm to let Sakura tumble onto his chest as she cried a no fair, I want a hug too!, but Kagami only kept his eyes narrow, inspecting the scene, trying to understand what was going on.

“Why did our quiet kid just yell his lungs out?” he asked in the end, taking a careful step towards the tangle of limbs that was the rest of his family at the moment, and Daiki made to open his mouth, still not exactly sure about what he was going to say, when Shiro's muffled voice cut him out.

“Dad remembers!” he said, tone wobbly as the hot tears started to sink through Aomine's shirt, and Daiki turned towards him to pat his head, tell him not to cry, while Sakura let out a long whaaaaaaaaaat!

“Do you really?” she asked, excitedly starting to jump on the spot, and Aomine answered with a happy yep,raised a hand to mess up her hair and pull her closer.

“Do you remember when I won my first match?” she wondered, wide grin only a couple of inches from Aomine's face, her small hands holding his cheek tightly, and when his reply was yet again an amused yep, you were awesome she just kept on asking questions.

(Do you remember when we went to the lake and I caught a butterfly?

I sure do!

Do you remember when you bought me the best present ever for my birthday?

Doesn't that happen every year?

Do you remember when we went grocery shopping and I asked you the candies with the bear and papa said no and you said if papa says no then no but I really wanted them so you promised you'd buy me next time?

Didn't that happen yesterday?

I'm just making sure you remember! )

As the girl kept on rambling about her sweets and Shiro's hold on Aomine's neck gradually turned tight enough for him to have problems breathing, Kagami just stood in front of them with wide eyes and slack jaw, his shoulders slumped, his arms hanging at his sides.

“Daiki...?” he asked in the end, voice just above a whisper, and his husband's smile got a bit wider, somehow warmer, as he fixed his hold on his kids and got back to his feet, bringing them both up with him.

“Hey,” Aomine answered, tone sweet and low as he took a long step to close the distance between them, and Taiga's hands twitched at his sides, his eyes still too wide and unblinking.

“Are you–?” he started, breath hitching in his throat, and had Daiki had his arms free he would have reached out and held him tight against his chest, whispered soft words in his hair and ears – instead he only mumbled a warm, happy yeah, and Kagami's breath stopped once more, his mouth opening and closing a couple of times without letting out any kind of noise.

“But how...?” he settled on in the end, carefully raising a hand to touch one of Aomine's cheeks, and Daiki let himself revel in the roughness of that familiar palm – so, so, so familiar, he had known it for eighteen years, had held it as it changed through too much basketball and cooking, and he remembered how it was when they were sixteen, how it had turned after three years of not feeling it when they were twenty-five, its touch when scraped up or covered in sweat, hard skin because of the cold and soft for the warm weather, he could remember them all, he didn't even have to try.

“I broke a mug,” he answered in the end, smirking madly once more and tilting his head towards the counter – Sakura complained about that being the mug, why did you break it! – and Taiga furrowed his brows at him in a moment of confusion.

“You... broke a mug,” he repeated, uncertain, and Aomine laughed and bent down to put the two kids back on the floor, answered an amused yeah, I broke a mug.

“You broke a mug and you remembered,” Taiga summed up, eyes still unsure, and Daiki watched Sakura grab onto Shiro's hand and pull him out of the kitchen, laughed as she mumbled auntie Satsuki said that you need to leave two people alone when they start getting all mushy and bleh.

“Yes, Taiga, I broke a mug and I remembered,” Daiki answered in the end, once Kagami started repeating that same sentence under his breath as if trying to make sense of it.

It made no sense, Aomine knew that much. Thinking about it was totally useless.

So he reached his hands out, placing them softly on Kagami's cheek to have him meet his stare, whispering an amused stop repeating it, idiot , and Taiga looked at him unsure for a couple of seconds still, furrowed brows and teeth biting his lower lip.

“So you–”

“Remember, yeah.”

“About–”

“Everything. I remember everything.”

It took a handful of seconds more – moments of Taiga looking at him uncertain and Daiki's grin turning wider as the other's wild brows slowly evened out in realization – and then Kagami's arms were around him, warm and tight, holding him strongly and pushing his nose in the crook of his neck, and Aomine could remember that same type of hug happening so, so, so many times before then.

He remembered it happening just after their first kiss, when he'd been yelling at Taiga to stop laughing about him being scared of bees, and Kagami had wiped the amused tears from his eyes, had reached a hand out to grab him from a shoulder and crush him in a warm embrace as his chest still trembled with laughter.

He remembered it happen just after their first time, laying in bed with their arms around each other and their legs tangled under the mess of sheets and duvets, mumbles of I love you 's falling from their lips as their hands ran along each other's spines.

He remembered it happening at the airport just before Kagami left for the States, crushing and warm and tinted with desperation, and Daiki didn't even care who saw or what they thought, all he knew was the I'll miss you and I'll call you every day whispered right into his ears in wet mutters.

He remembered it happening the day Taiga came back, Sakura miraculously asleep in her cradle and warm I'm sorry and I'll never leave again and I love you so much falling in rapid succession out of both of their mouths.

He remembered that same hug happening the day of their marriage and every other after that, warm in the mornings and tired at night, between the sheets and on the couch, while Kagami was supposed to be cooking and as one – or both – of them should have been getting ready for work.

He felt so nice, so complete , realizing that he could remember all of that.

“Daiki,” Kagami said after a while, halting his husband's thoughts, keeping his tone low and close to hesitant, and Aomine started moving his hands up and down his spine in slow gestures, hummed in his throat as he let himself take in Taiga's familiar scent.

“Did you really love that mug so much that breaking it pulled your memories back?” the redhead asked in the end, his shoulders starting to shake in silent laughter as his fingers closed on Daiki's shirt in trembling gestures, and Aomine rolled his eyes and turned one of his arms around to hit him in the side, let a grumbled shut up leave his lips in an reluctant smirk.

“But, I mean,” Kagami kept going, the giggles now openly falling from his lips, “it's been over three months–”

“I know–”

“And then you broke a mug and–”

“Will you shut up already–”

“We told you your whole life's story and then a mug–”

“For fuck sake, Taiga, shut up,” Daiki said in the end, holding his husband's cheeks with both his palms, the other's eyes still wrinkled at the sides from the laugh still shaking his shoulders, and then pressed a kiss on his lips to stop him from saying anything more – and grumbled an annoyed stop laughing already and let me properly kiss you once Kagami didn't stop grinning and giggling at all.

The feeling of Taiga's lips on his own was just like the countless times he'd been kissed during the last month – soft and warm and gentle, and still insistent and demanding and firm – but feeling them now, with the memories of way more than just a month of touches flooding in his mind with every shift and press of tongues and teeth, made it feel a lot like coming back home after the longest trip he'd ever taken.

So, when once they pulled apart Taiga looked at him with the softest, warmest smile on his lips and tears glistering in his eyes and mumbled a genuinely happy welcome back , Daiki didn't even think about pointing out that he had never left, not really.

He just let his forehead rest against his husband's, pretending not to see his kids' eyes looking at them from behind the frame of the door with big, goofy grins on their mouths, and mumbled a sincere and relived yeah, I'm home .