Warnings: heavily implied sex, kissing, minor language

II.

Kise generally attempts to avoid Aomine for the next two weeks that lead up to summer vacation. It's frustrating and annoying that Aomine has to be the one to instigate the one-on-ones if he wants to have any communication with the blond, and Akashi and Kuroko giving him reproachful looks every day was not helping him.

Akashi takes it upon himself as captain to give his ace advice. "You should be more insistent, Daiki," he tells him, when Aomine's just finished a horrendous thirty laps and comes to a stop huffing and puffing next to Akashi, who is cool as ever as he watches the second-string train with a clipboard in a hand and a pen tapping lightly against his lip.

"Hah?"

Akashi turns his red gaze up towards Aomine, although there is a brief frown though when he notices the height difference. Aomine is quick to squat to make up for it, never mind his muscles screaming in protest. "Ryouta is one of those people who don't understand something unless you pound it into his head every day. I don't think I need to elaborate anymore, do I, Daiki?"

Aomine wants to throw his hands up in the air and scream, 'yes, yes you do Akashi you bastard! Aren't I insistent enough already with my constant pestering for one-on-ones that Kise just blows me off on? What more do you want from me?' Fortunately, though, he's not that stupid and at least possesses enough self-preservation skills to grate out an, "I'll work on it."

This seems to please Akashi enough because the redhead dismisses him with a wave of his hand. Aomine turns and stalks away, although his exit is nowhere near as grand and menacing as he would have liked it due to his shaking legs—the hellish laps and squatting horror are taking a nasty toll on his knees…

…which was probably exactly what Akashi was gunning for in the beginning. That sadistic jerk.

Aomine is not a man with eloquent words and he knows that.

That was why he sought help from his teammates in order to get some insight about Akashi's order to be more insistent. He's hit a wall, and he doesn't know how to climb over it.

However, he regrets his decision from the bottom of his heart when all he gets are useless answers. Looking back on it, they were entirely reasonable pieces of advice given who he had asked, but Aomine is still stuck at the base of the wall and it's frustrating.

"Give Kise-chin fruit baskets," Murasakibara suggests, crunching away on some chips with his cheeks puffed up like a squirrel.

Aomine shoots him a glare. "Do I look like I have the money for so many baskets?" he snaps, and the giant gives a lazy shrug of his broad shoulders, popping another chip into his mouth.

"You should give him his lucky item every day," Midorima offers, and Aomine resists the urge to slap a hand to his face.

"Hell no!"

"Perhaps you should write him letters," Kuroko offers, causing them all to start. No one had noticed him standing there by Aomine's elbow, although the boy assures them that he's been there since the very beginning.

Aomine gives his partner a blank look. "Tetsu," he says slowly, "do you seriously see me writing lengthy flowery letters to anyone, much less Kise?"

Kuroko blinks up at him. "No, I don't suppose so," he finally says. "I apologize that I have nothing better to offer."

In the end Aomine spends three sleepless nights concocting his plan, vehemently cursing his teammates for being so useless.

He successfully corners Kise after a one-on-one that they have one fine Tuesday afternoon. It's only the two of them in the locker room; everyone's already gone home so the gymnasium had been just for them for the last hour. Which is all the better, because there was no way Aomine planned on starting his 'insistent phase' with a lively peanut gallery on the sidelines.

Kise shrinks away from him, pressing into the lockers at his back with nowhere to go. Aomine's hands are planted firmly on either side of the boy, effectively pinning him in place, and there's a look in his eyes that Kise finds absolutely terrifying. Even though they are roughly the same height, Aomine still has a three centimeter advantage and it's enough of a difference.

"Aominecchi?" the blond squeaks out, clutching his shirt to his bare chest as he looks up with wide eyes. He wracks his brain—wracks it hard—but he can't come up with anything particularly out of the ordinary that could have peeved off the tanned male. Didn't he give his all in their one-on-ones? There was no way Aomine could find fault with him there.

Aomine heaves a great sigh before knocking his forehead against Kise's, earning him another squeak. Blue eyes bore into honey amber and Kise swallows nervously, unsure of what to expect.

"I love you."

Dropping those three words, Aomine releases Kise and turns to his own locker, slamming it shut. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he gives Kise a wave without looking and leaves. The door clicks shut after him.

Kise just sinks to the ground, clutching his shirt like it's a million dollars. He manages to hold himself together for roughly fifteen seconds before he bursts into tears, shaking like a leaf.

"No," he chokes out, "No no no no no no…"

Every day following that, without fail, Aomine tells Kise that he loves him. He's completely serious every time he says it, just like how Kise is completely terrified and runs without a second thought whenever they leave his mouth.

At first it's annoying, seeing the blond bolt the minute the last word leaves his lips. Having someone run away from him like all of hell is running loose ready to eat people when he confesses was the single best way to kill all of his self-confidence and considerable ego. Nevertheless, Akashi's voice reverberates inside of his head:

"Be more insistent, Daiki."

He hates how Akashi is like this omnipotent god, but grits his teeth and continues doggedly forward.

And gradually, he sees progress. Kise is slower to bolt, edging a little closer to him. On extremely good days he'll even crack some pathetic excuse of a joke after he confesses and then turn tail and flee. Aomine sees a light, faint as it is, at the end of the tunnel, and that's good enough motivation for him to keep going.

Kise finally breaks exactly two months since the start of Aomine's relentless attack. They've concluded another one-on-one session, and are changing in the empty locker room in preparation to go home. Rain drums against the roof, and when Aomine sees that all of his stuff is packed and ready to go, he grabs Kise's wrists.

"I love you."

He releases the other boy and expects that he's just going to leave and prepare for the next day and same routine, but he is pleasantly surprised when Kise snaps around and grabs his hand. The tanned boy glances over his shoulder and almost dies of a heart attack. Kise is red enough to put a fully ripe tomato to shame and his flush extends all the way from the tip of his ears to the base of his throat. This was why Aomine had purposely tried not to look at Kise whenever he drops his confessions; Kise is seriously too cute for his own good—especially when combined with those gorgeous watery honey eyes—and the fact that it had been Haizaki looking at this beautiful figure puts him off to no end.

"What?" he asks, turning his head sharply so that Kise can't see that traitorous flush on his already dark skin.

Kise's voice is so soft that he almost misses what he says, and he has to lean in. The blond jumps a bit, biting his lower lip, before whimpering out, "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you say… do you say…" Kise falters, looking more and more anxious as the seconds tick by. "Why do you say that. Every single day? Why?"

The urge to punch something floods through Aomine. He knows Kise is stupid—he understands very well that the model's fluffy head is generally empty and floating somewhere high in the clouds—but this just pushes every limit out there. He groans, removing his hand from Kise's so that he can plant them on his shoulders. "Because it's true," he says slowly. Insistent, insistent, the Akashi in his mind chants. Gentle, gentle, the Aomine that wants to be a different kind of lover than Haizaki was chants. "Every word—every word for the past two months—was true. What I told you that day was true, too."

Kise continues to gnaw on his lip, and this is when Aomine realizes that words alone are only going to take him so far. With a sigh, he pulls Kise forward, so that the boy stumbles a bit into his chest. When Kise opens his mouth to protest he places a soft kiss on them instead, shifting back and down until he can sit on the locker room bench, Kise on his lap. Kise trembles as Aomine moves up, planting soft kisses on his forehead and moving along: temple, brow, corner of the eye, cheeks, jawline, chin.

His efforts award him a small moan; Kise shifts slightly and stares at him, eyes wide and beautiful. "..chi?" he breathes out, and Aomine hopes, increasing the intensity of his kisses and the touches on Kise's creamy skin. Aomine's ministrations are working wonders; Kise's face continues to flush and there's a dazed expression coming along. "Shogocchi?"

The offending name rolling off of Kise's tongue effectively puts a stop to Aomine's nasty primal instincts that are trying to surface. He fumes, easing back into little ghost touches. "No, not him. Not that bastard," he murmurs into Kise's ear, and the boy lets out a hiccupping shudder, just as Aomine spies something delicious out of the corner of his eye. Excellent; he can use this. His mouth forms a pleased smirk as he moves to reposition himself.

"Look down at yourself," he instructs, gently prying Kise's shirt from his clenched hands and tossing it away somewhere. "Look, Kise." The model obeys, peering down at the tell-tale bump in his shorts. Normally, it would have been difficult to notice given how baggy basketball shorts were, but Aomine had remedied that with his prior repositioning. The tanned male prides his genius as he smirks up at Kise. "See that?" he whispers, voice dropping to a sultry hum (as Satsuki puts it, it's his marketing voice that reels in ladies before they realize his less-than-desirable egotistical nature, one that works every time he uses it). It's unfair, he knows, but Aomine is beyond caring, especially when Kise gives him such beautiful results, bucking weakly against his hips and trying so hard not to moan.

"See that?" he asks again, "Who did that to you? Not Haizaki, right?" He stops Kise's hands from trying to reach at his arousal and pins the slim wrists together in a tight hold. "Tell me, who did this to you?" he asks over Kise's whimper. "Look at me, Kise. Be a good boy."

For his part, Kise struggles as valiantly as he can, but Aomine's grip is like iron and every now and again the boy gives a teasingly cruel buck of his own hips, which makes it press tantalizingly against Kise's member. He looks, and his mind wants him to see Haizaki because he still attempts to cling to his little bit of crushed love, but Haizaki wouldn't be doing this, and even Kise in his current mindset knows this. Haizaki was the kind of person to get in, get out, and get it over with. He never says anything to Kise when they do it.

Aomine nibbles along his neck, slowly losing his patience. "Kise," he calls out softly, in that same voice, and the blond screws his eyes shut. This is not Haizaki, and his heart still manages to break a little.

"Don't tease," he says haltingly, and he pushes his luck a bit, attempting to nuzzle against the broad shoulders in front of him. It's as if he's trying to solidify the idea that this was not Haizaki; part of him almost wishes that he'll get shoved down, roughly, just like the silver-haired boy does. "Ao…" he stutters a bit, but presses on as he starts to cry, no hard shove in sight, "Aominecchi." The grip on his wrists is released and he's allowed to wrap his arms around Aomine, is actually pulled into doing so when Aomine's arms wrap around him, and he sniffles into his shoulder. Every few sniffles a halting, muffled, "Aominecchi," escapes him, and each time it does Aomine murmurs back a soft, "Yeah. I love you."

When Kise seems comfortable with identifying him Aomine reluctantly peels the clingy blond off of his shoulder. "I love you, Kise, what about you?" He's operating under the hope that his straight-up confessions for the past few months have somehow managed to make an impression on the boy in his arms. He's fairly certain it will—Kise's a pretty simple guy.

The question takes a few moments to register in the blond's mind but when it does, absolute terror takes a hold of him. He puts in a renewed effort to escape, twisting and thrashing as best he can, and Aomine grabs him in alarm before he can go crashing to the floor. "Oi, Kise, calm down!" Aomine snaps, but Kise is still struggling, babbling incoherently about how he can't, he won't, no no no.

"Damn it, Kise, aren't they your favorite words?" Frustration laces his words. "You can even use 'like' if you have to, because I know for certain that you at least like me to a certain extent as far as basketball goes."

Kise twitches, and a choked sob reaches Aomine's ears, followed by more incoherent babbling. Aomine catches some form of the words 'broken record' though, and a string of curses leaves his mouth. It was all that Haizaki's fault that he was in this mess; he promises himself that he's going to go through with his threat when he sees him again.

"I'm not him!" he says, twisting Kise around so he can look directly into terrified amber eyes, the previous frustration being replaced by something akin to desperation. "I'll say this as many times as I need until I get it through that stupid fluff in your stupid head. I am Aomine Daiki. I love you. I want you to tell me you do too with that beautiful voice of yours." He hugs the boy to him, suddenly feeling very much exposed with all his feelings laid bare on the table. "I can even wait if I seriously have to, but I'd rather not. Just look at me Kise. Only me. I'd never tell you that you sound like a broken record, because you don't. You never have. You never will."

He cups the tear-stained face and brings it up to his. "Your face is beautiful. Your voice is beautiful. You voice saying my name is beautiful. Everything about you is beautiful. I want you. God, Kise, I want you. I want you to love me. I want you to tell me you love me." He feels very undignified, but figures he's probably lost most of his dignity way back when he first fell for the model.

Kise reaches shaky hands upwards to grasp at his. "You won't… tell me I'm a nuisance?"

"No. Wait, you are a nuisance—"

Tears and a slobbery whimper. Aomine hastens to correct his stupid mistake.

"—not like that, you oaf. You can be the biggest nuisance you want when you ask for one-on-ones or other things. That's OK. Please be that nuisance." He nervously scans Kise's face to see if he's repaired the damage.

"You won't… leave me… all by myself?"

"Hell no!" Leave him alone and let him get snatched up by the next Haizaki? Never.

"You won't… dislike it when I say my feelings?"

"No. What fool do you think I am?"

Kise suddenly flings himself at Aomine and he loses his balance, falling backwards to catch himself awkwardly with a hand. "Aominecchi!" Kise cries, tears spilling all over. "Aominecchi, Aominecchi, I… I…!" Aomine waits with bated breath.

"I'm looking at you!" Kise wails, "So please look at me!"

"I'm always looking, you dork."

"I… I…" he stumbles, and Aomine rubs soothing circles on Kise's bare back. "I love… love you," Kise chokes out, "so please… please… love me too."

Aomine wonders what kind of fool Kise is, but he gives the boy a mighty hug anyways and he's grinning from ear to ear. "Always, always," he says, and it's all he can do to stop himself from laughing in sheer triumph. He settles for kissing him senseless instead. "Always, so just keep repeating your favorite words."

And Kise does.

A/N: OK... got this off my chest now so I'm going to go write that paper I've been neglecting. T.T