Notes: Chapter 2 written for Day 3 of aokiseweek - Learning

The first week of living with Kise is full of surprises.

Daiki's not surprised by the clutter of girly skin and hair products in the bathroom, but he is surprised by the complete lack of ingredients for cooking in the apartment. Kise explains that every weekend he visits his parents at home and they've always over-compensated for their guilt in him having to live on his own at Kaijou, so he pretty much lives on leftovers and goes out for dinner when he doesn't. He eats toast and fruit for breakfast.

Kise has no ingredients for cooking because Kise cannot cook to save his life.

It's not that his cooking is deadly, like Satsuki's, apparently. He just can't seem to get anything to taste right when he tries. Everything always ends up weird in texture and flavour.

Kise is also quieter at home than he expects.

He's never really experienced Kise in anything other than the outside world. Kise in his natural habitat hums cheerful pop songs, leaves magazines and clothes everywhere, but he doesn't constantly bug Daiki for... anything. He doesn't beg for one-on-ones, or for Daiki to clean up after himself (which Daiki would immediately point out as being enormously hypocritical), or for him to cook, since Daiki's got some basic cooking skills, if only so he won't die of starvation or Satsuki's cooking.

The other thing he learns is that Kise is rarely actually home for anything other than the occasional study session, or sleep.

He figures it out about two weeks after moving in. By that time, he has a vague idea of Kise's class schedule, practice schedule, and modelling schedule. And that doesn't include any outings with friends that Kise makes. Kise is busy. With the way they'd been at Teikou, Daiki had never really noticed the way Kise had made space in his hectic life for the members of the basketball team, but it was hard not to notice that Kise often worked after practice now that he called Kise's apartment home.

He'd thought that living with Kise would be like being around Kise was – full of sparkles and tireless energy. This wasn't a bad change from that picture, or even an unwelcome one. It was just odd, something Daiki had never really considered.

Another thing he didn't consider, at least until Satsuki brought it up, was the idea that Kise might run himself into the ground overworking himself.

"Sounds like you don't actually see that much of Ki-chan at home," Satsuki had commented as Daiki walked her home after one of the afternoons she spent with the team.

"Well, sometimes he's there," Daiki admits, "but he's just not as noisy as I expected."

Satsuki hummed. "It makes sense," she said. "Ki-chan needs somewhere to unwind, just like the rest of us."

It's not as if Daiki's thought Kise's a god, but there always seemed something very otherworldly about him – whether it was his uncanny ability to mimic others, down to their littlest mannerisms that Daiki wouldn't have credited Kise with the perception to pick up, or the way he was absurdly pretty for a boy, and the way he managed to grow into a terrifyingly beautiful man; whatever it was there was something somehow inhuman about Kise.

He says as much, and Satsuki laughs.

"Ki-chan's just as human as you are, Dai-chan." She pauses. "Keep an eye on him, okay? Between the training for basketball and his work and socialisation, he's probably running himself a little thin."

"Hah?" Daiki scratches the side of his face. "He's been doing this for years, why would he be running thin now?"

Satsuki must take pity on his intellect – it wouldn't be the first time – and explains it to him. "The demands on Ki-chan in the club are more than at a high school level, and he's only gotten more in demand for modelling work as he's gotten older. He hasn't devoted any less time to either of those, or to his socialisation – Ki-chan is a social creature, after all, and feeds from his interactions with others. I don't know how he's managing to juggle everything."

The answer was that he wasn't, Daiki discovered that afternoon when he arrived home after making the trip to Satsuki's home, stopping by to visit his parents, and then returning. Kise had fallen fast asleep at the small table they had in the kitchen and living space, papers and books surrounding him and laptop open, though the screen had darkened as the device hibernated. A quick look at some of Kise's work told Daiki that Kise's grades were just as abysmal as ever.

Part of him felt like he should shake his friend awake – he seriously doubted that Kise had intended to fall asleep here – but as he looked at Kise, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Instead, he wandered into Kise's room and pulled his blanket from his bed, and dropped it over his shoulders before turning to the kitchen to pull something simple together.

"Still won't make the fucking call," he muttered to himself. There was no reason for Kise do grind himself down so far, to do so much work. He didn't need to stop modelling to maintain the cost of living and still earn money to put away on top of training.

It seemed like such a simple decision to Daiki, after all. He'd never really considered a future in which Kise didn't play basketball; it had been strange to learn that was Kise actually considering not taking it as far as it could go, especially when Kise was just as ridiculously, prodigiously talented as Daiki was. It seemed the obvious route; and it wasn't as if Kise couldn't capitalise on his old career in sponsorship deals and such, once they actually got into pro leagues.

He had to bring his thoughts back as he prepared dinner – he'd wake Kise up when food was ready. Daiki was pretty lazy all around, and he wasn't shy about admitting it; he didn't like to cook just for himself, on the occasions he bothered to cook at all. It had been no great change in routine to cook for Kise too when he did, since he'd usually only cooked for multiple people anyway.

It wasn't any great culinary feat, but it was edible, which was more than he could say for the food he'd watched Kise make on their first night, when he'd demanded proof of Kise's inability to cook, and so he found the plates (somehow, the way that Kise's kitchen was organised worked for Daiki) and then went to shake Kise awake.

"Hmm?"

Daiki had seen Kise sleeping and sleepy at the back of the bus after a game in their days at Teikou; even then, there'd been something oddly captivating about the way his eyes would flutter as he stirred awake, and the way he would blink his eyes only half open as he tried to make sense of the world again. There was something more striking to it, and less 'cute', now that Kise's features had come into their sharper, adult form.

"I've made food," Daiki says.

"You didn't have to," Kise answers, and as he sits up, he notices the blanket.

"Make sure you stretch," is all he replies with as he returns to the kitchen. "Sleeping that way can't be good for your back."

Daiki's a little bit disgusted by how easily everything becomes so domestic.

He doesn't even really notice it at first. Finding Kise sleeping at the table, surrounded by his study materials, or on the couch where he'd collapsed for a quick rest before moving the rest of the way to his bedroom after practice or work, and crashed out accidentally there instead of in his bed became almost terrifyingly normal. Daiki convinces Kise to invest in a blanket for the couch, for the occasions he finds Kise in these places.

Kise won't make a fucking decision, and it's driving him slowly crazy because everyone seems to know which way Kise's going to go except for Kise. The lack of a decision looks like its driving Kise crazy even faster than it is Daiki, though, mostly because the blond boy didn't seem to have enough hours in the day, or enough energy to do everything.

It comes as absolutely no surprise to Daiki that Kise's body gives up on him and demands rest in the form of Kise getting the flu.

It starts when Daiki wakes up to the sound of Kise stumbling through the house in the early hours of the morning of a day when they do not have practice or class, but Kise has work. But Kise's usually pretty easy to live with – Daiki's neither a heavy nor light sleeper, but Kise always tiptoes around as if the slightest noise will wake him.

He heard a thud which sounded alarmingly like a body hitting a wall, and Kise's not usually so uncoordinated to run into walls, so he groaned and hauled himself up to check on what the fuck's wrong this morning.

Kise's cheeks are flushed and his eyes are bright but the rest of him is shaking. Daiki figured it out almost immediately.

"Are you going to be sick?" he asked. Kise shook his head, so Daiki pointed back towards Kise's bedroom. "Then you're going back to bed."

"But I have work," Kise said, and Daiki stared him down harder than he could remember ever doing off the court, and then said, perfectly flat:

"I will throw you over my shoulder and drag your ass back into that room, don't think I won't."

"If you did that I probably would throw up on you," Kise groaned, seeming to pale even at the thought of being tossed around like that. But he seemed to get that Daiki's perfectly serious, and sighed before slouching back into his room.

"Call your manager," Daiki yelled at his back.

"I don't need you to tell me that, stupid!" Kise shouted, not looking at him.

"Of course you don't," Daiki muttered to himself as he walked into the kitchen. "You just need me to stop you from fucking going to work when you're about to fall over and the moment your stylists saw you they'd send you straight back home anyway making your entire trip a waste of time and energy."

Daiki fetched a glass of water from the kitchen, then made a side-trip to the bathroom for pain-killers before he let himself into Kise's room.

"Here," he said, putting the water on the bedside table with the medicine. "Seriously, what did you do when you got sick living in Kanagawa?"

Kise hunkered down into the blankets and glared at him. "I never got sick," he grumbled. "I'm usually very healthy and don't get sick."

Daiki rolled his eyes hard and sat himself down next to Kise. "You're overworked," he told his friend. "You need to make a decision. Your body won't put up with this shit anymore."

"You're picking now for this talk?" Kise whimpered. "Aominecchi..."

Daiki scowled. "Well, it's not like you listened to me last time." Okay, so it wasn't nice to beat on people who were already downed, but Kise was as stubborn as they came; he needed ammunition.

Kise made a wailing noise and let himself fall face-first into his pillow.

He's too soft. He'd never admit it, but he's too damn soft, and he can't do it. He sighed as he stood. "I'll check in on you later," he muttered. "I have better things to do than this."

A muffled humming noise is all he gets from the pile of blankets on the bed.

What Daiki really wanted to do was play basketball or sleep. Neither was really an option if he wanted to keep an eye on Kise in case the idiot tried to do something stupid.

Really, he was so troublesome. He was really lucky Daiki liked him.

Well, if he was going to be up and about, he might as well make breakfast. He busied himself in the kitchen, and if he cut up an apple for Kise, well, it wasn't like he'd gone out of his way.

When he wandered into Kise's bedroom again, he was relieved to see he'd taken the medicine and drunk the water.

"Are you up to eating anything?" Daiki asked. When he didn't get a response from the pile of blankets, he pulled them back from where he figured Kise's face was. The idiot was asleep, lines pressed into his skin from the fabric. It was so mundane Daiki couldn't help the smile that tugged at him.

Ah shit. Kise was too pretty by far.

Sometimes, Daiki thought, it was a shame he'd never worked up the courage to confront his blond friend about his obvious massive crush in junior high. (Honestly, the fact that Daiki had known had little to do with his own powers of deduction, though he tended to ignore that fact – Satsuki had simply requested he be gentle on Kise's heart, and it had been difficult not to figure it out after that, which was probably the intention) Daiki had always been kind of fascinated by how pretty he was, since it seemed kind of unreal. Daiki had once seen an old modelling picture of the sister who'd gotten Kise into the business, and she'd looked so much like Kise. After seeing it, he'd caught himself thinking about Kise's pretty face more than a handful of times afterward, wondering if he'd blush like a cute girl if Daiki kissed him, or if he'd challenge him in return the way he always did in a game, and the weird mixture of thoughts and emotions had confused him until he'd stopped caring about everything.

He'd thought it was just a phase – it wasn't weird that he fixated on Kise, he was pretty sure everyone had a phase where they found themselves caught up in Kise's pretty face and sparkles and shit; Daiki knew that Midorima had gone through it (stumbling through a few drills when Kise had first joined the first string, and the way he'd watched Kise with a hilarious expression which was the combination of pained - as if asking why his god had forsaken him - and longing), that Tetsu had gone through it (Tetsu had always had such a soft spot for puppies – and the way Tetsu would pick on Kise had been brutal for a while, the way it always was with his favourite people), that Akashi had, for a short while before he'd gone all psychopath on them (he'd looked at Kise as if he was an expensive piece of artwork); Satsuki'd sighed over Kise before the crush on Tetsu, before Kise had joined the team – he could remember the magazines she'd collected with him in it, and it had been how he'd recognised the blond boy when the ball had gone sailing out the door and straight into Kise's skull.

(Daiki wasn't sure about Murasakibara – that kid was a full on mutant, but judging by his partiality to his pretty friend with the hair, Daiki wouldn't put it past the tall boy)

So he'd thought, and then... then they were here, they were playing basketball together all the time, and Daiki had managed to badger his way into Kise's apartment and life and...

Well, he was pretty sure if he'd just kissed Kise in junior high to rid himself of the curiosity of what it would be like, then he wouldn't be so caught up in the idea of it now.

(Now that he knew Kise was real, now that Kise had lost that edge of ethereality that had made him seem less human and more like the image he projected for the world to see – it was dangerous, to know that Kise was human.)

He settled the covers back around Kise, and wandered back to the living room, eating the apple pieces he'd cut up as he went.

It was, however, only the beginning of Kise's illness. While watching old basketball game recordings on the TV later that day, he heard Kise's rapid footsteps and then the sound of retching in the bathroom. Thanking whatever gods existed that Satsuki's early experiments in cooking had left him with a stomach which was almost unflappable, he hauled himself up from the couch to join Kise in the bathroom.

Kise was sweaty and pale, except for his cheeks which were flushed. His hands were shaking as he leaned his head against the floor.

"Any more coming?" Daiki asked, leaning against the doorframe.

"Maybe," Kise muttered. "Give it a few minutes."

Daiki sighed as Kise sat up again to lean over the toilet bowl, and moved to rub his back as he heaved.

"I feel awful," he admitted.

"You look awful," Daiki told him. "If you're not doing any better tomorrow, I'll take you to the doctor."

Kise slumped back against him, and Daiki let him, brushing his sweaty hair from his face.

"I need to brush my teeth," Kise mumbled. "Ugh."

Daiki helped him stand, and hovered as he brushed his teeth.

"Thank you, Aominecchi."

Daiki shrugged. "I'm not doing this all for nothing," he said. "I'll collect on the favour later."

"I'll tell my agent about the decision," Kise said as he walked back to his room.

"Basketball?" Daiki asked.

Kise laughed quietly.

Daiki collected on the favour about two weeks later.

He'd been thinking for a while about what he was going to collect from Kise for the favour of taking care of the idiot while he was sick.

"I've decided," Daiki said as he lounged on the couch. Kise looked up from where he was looking through his portfolio.

"Hmm?"

"The favour I want," Daiki clarified. "I've decided."

Kise closed the folder.

"I want you to kiss me."

The effects of the words were almost instantaneous. Kise's face went rapidly red, and his eyes widened.

"You're not serious," Kise said, but it wasn't a question.

"Come on. I'm curious." Daiki leered at him, grinning. "When else am I going to get the chance to kiss a famous model?"

"You understand that I'm a man, right," Kise continued. "Like, I know I'm pretty, and I know more than a few girls who'd be pretty happy to inherit the contents of my bathroom, but I am actually a man."

"Are you scared, Kise-kun?" Daiki teased. That ought to do it – and it did, the iron of a challenge settling into Kise's eyes.

"Never," Kise told him, and stood up. Daiki waited on the couch, watching.

The fact that he didn't sit up was, in hindsight, a gross miscalculation that Kise took great advantage of.

Kise moved with all the unconscious grace he carried himself with on a basketball court, and without hesitating, he swung a leg over Daiki's hips. Then he leaned over him, and Daiki's vision was filled with Kise, with his ridiculous eyelashes and pretty face and pink lips.

Kise's face hovered just a few short centimetres away, and Daiki's breath caught involuntarily – and then Kise kissed him, hard and demanding and it left Daiki breathless and reaching, and—

Kise caught his wrists as his hands moved to touch him, and he pinned them above his head.

"You," Daiki said, "are fucking amazing."

Kise bit Daiki's lip in retaliation. "Are you satisfied with that, Aominecchi?" he asked.

"No. Do it again."

Kise hummed. "I don't think that's a good idea," he said, though he leaned in close to Daiki's face anyway.

"Don't be a tease, Kise," Daiki murmured.

"Aominecchi is the one being a tease," Kise complained. "It's not nice to toy with people's hearts."

"Yeah, so why don't you stop teasing and kiss me already?"

Kise let go of his hands as if he was burned. "That's not funny, Aominecchi."

"Wasn't a joke." Daiki sat up, and it was his turn to catch at Kise's wrists, so he couldn't run. "Don't go."

Kise's eyes wouldn't land on Daiki's face. "Aominecchi..."

Daiki let his arms slide from Kise's wrists – one hand went to touch Kise's pretty, handsome face, and the other curled around his solid, powerful body to press against Kise's back. "Don't run."

The kiss he initiated was gentle and slow and not half as long as Daiki would have liked, but that hadn't been the point. The point was to reassure Kise.

"Are you sure?" Kise asked, and he looked kind of vulnerable, kind of like he was praying for the answer he wanted, but afraid to hear the answer in case it wasn't the one he wanted.

"Are you?" Daiki counter-challenged.

"Yes," was Kise's answer; and then Daiki showed him exactly how sure he was.

Living with Kise, Daiki learned, was nothing like he'd expected it to be.

But, he thought, it was probably better than anything he'd thought it could be.