Fanfic: "Arrival" (Daiki/Satsuki, Kuroko no Basuke, T)
Title: "Arrival"
Fandom: Kuroko no Basuke (The Basketball Which Kuroko Plays)
Status: Complete; one-shot.
Pairing: Aomine Daiki/Momoi Satsuki.
Rating: T.
Word Count: 1,446.
Summary: It's only been ten months, yet it feels like an eternity to her.
Challenge: 100 Situations.
Prompt: 029: Arrive.
Written on: 11th Novermber, 2014.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
It’s only been ten months, yet it feels like an eternity to her.
It’s been ten whole months since Dai-chan went to the States for some on-site training, but she can still see his smug, smirking face perfectly in her mind’s eye.
Of course, she’s been talking to him on Skype and on the phone the entire time-she’d been sure he would be hopeless without her (and he’d proved her right to an extent)-so there was no way she could just leave him fending for himself over there. She had reminded him constantly of things he had to do, things he’d mentioned to her in passing, and things she was sure had fled his mind immediately upon getting back from practice the previous day.
What surprises her is the revelation of how much their little chats end up structuring her entire day.
She has always said that he’d be a lost cause without her, but finds much to her surprise that she’s just as lost without him to order around and whip into shape as well.
Her days at college and work feel bleak and uninteresting. She catches herself often wondering what he’s up to, if he’s eating right without his mother to cook him meals and if he’s remembered to do this or take that with him, like she’d warned him the previous night.
It’s not until Kagamin laughs at her and tells her she looks like a young wife missing her husband that she realizes how all her ponderings look to people around her.
And, no, it’s not like that, idiot Kagamin, you don’t get it at all.
It’s just that she worries, you know. She worries because Dai-chan has always been a momma’s boy. He’s never gone much further from home-in the vast sense of the word-than the next town over. Whenever he’s been around the country, it’s always been with all of his schoolmates as entourage, which sort of negates the feelings of newness.
And she worries, because she feels it in his voice the first few times they talk after he arrives, that he doesn’t feel quite well there, but he’ll never breathe a word of those feelings aloud.
Regardless of how infuriating he can be at times and what a hopeless fool he is almost 24/7, she hates it when he’s in pain and bottling his feelings up simply because he wants to put on a brave front - for his parents, for his friends, and most of all for her. He doesn’t want to worry them so he keeps his mouth shut. He smiles and pretends like everything is fine just to lull them into a false sense of complacency that everything is fine.
For ten months, her mind constantly strays to him, and that is the reason she blames it on.
Of course, Dai-chan is a pretty flexible person, so at one point things really do become fine. She can feel it in his voice when they talk. He tells her excitedly about the things he’s seen and done, the people he’s met and made contact with and there’s no longer that sense of pained melancholy hidden behind the words.
Trust Dai-chan to start believing himself after repeating the same thing over and over again.
That’s how it’s been since high school, wasn’t it?
But, regardless of the adventures that have come to pass in these ten months (especially the ridiculous comments from Kagamin and Ki-chan, those dorks), the day of Dai-chan’s return finally arrives.
She knows weeks ahead of the date-ever since he first books the plane tickets, in fact. He tells her with just as much hype about it as he tells his family.
So she circles the date on the calendar atop her desk with bright red, and puts an exclamation mark on it.
Auntie and uncle take a day off from work when Dai-chan is due to arrive. Satsuki smiles demurely to herself as she rummages in her closet for something to wear. No wonder Dai-chan turned out such a spoiled brat-with such devoted, loving parents, who wouldn’t be?
(She also thinks kind of grudgingly that if the situation was turned around, and she was the one coming home from her first trip abroad on a work day, both her mother and father would leave her to deal with that on her own.)
She’s brushing her hair kind of meticulously, taking care that she looks her utmost best when she realizes she feels just a bit nervous. Why, she can’t possibly explain, even to herself. It’s an odd feeling. It’s just same old Dai-chan, the good old Aomines, so there’s no reason to be nervous. Right?
Yet she strangely keeps hearing the rather uneven thumps of her heart as she puts the finishing touches on her appearance with a pair of the cutest earrings she has.
Auntie and uncle drive her to the airport, and all three of them wait impatiently to see the number of his flight in the arrivals.
Not too long after, they see a familiar silhouette approaching through the arrival gate. He’s lumbering along slowly, as though held back by the huge luggage back he’s carrying along.
The closer he gets, the louder the ringing of her ears gets. She’s grateful that auntie and uncle intercept him first, raining kisses on his face and patting him like they have since he was little. Satsuki doesn’t hear what auntie asks him, because for some reason there’s a rush in her head. It makes her draw blanks in the thinking department - something she’s not used to at all.
But gradually, it settles down the longer she watches the Aomines interact with one another, and the sense of familiarity settles in as well.
Dai-chan hasn’t changed at all. It hasn’t really been that long, but he’s still the same old Dai-chan she knows. He still messes around with his mom, looks at his dad as if he’s some sort of god, and has the same aura of unshakeable certainty around him.
And although she’s sure as hell that he hasn’t changed at all, there’s something different about him. Something in his face, perhaps. She’s not sure, but he feels slightly different. Perhaps he’s lost some weight or put on a little?
Her musings are cut short when he finally turns to address her.
She still doesn’t know what it is, but the way he looks at her, the way his gaze softens a little when he lays eyes on her, makes the thrum of her heart in her chest intensify.
They merely look at each other for a few seconds, wordlessly.
Then, he speaks.
Not through the cracking sound of the telephone, not through the microphone that puts an annoyingly metallic quality to his voice. But he speaks, directly, to her.
“I’m home.”
It’s all he says, but coupled with the soft smile on his face and the meaningful look in his sharp cerulean eyes, it sounds like so much more.
A rush of exhilaration courses through Satsuki’s veins as she grins back, and says:
“Welcome back!”
For a while, it feels like they are in their own little world. For all she knows, they may as well have been. The moment feels perfect. Despite the thundering of her pulse in her ears, she feels blissful, just like this.
But there’s so many things she wants to say, so many questions she wants to ask. She can’t allow herself to stay quiet like this forever.
“So, how was it?” she queries merrily. Upon noticing Dai-chan’s confusion, she elaborates. “Riding on a plane. You never told me.”
True to his non-committal, not easily impressed nature, Daiki merely shrugged.
“Not all it’s cracked up to be. For all you know, you could be riding on a bus with a really great road ahead of it.” He makes a grimace suddenly, recalling something. “Well, except during take-off and landing. Now that’s some pretty cool shit!” he says excitedly.
“Watch your language, young man!” his mother reprimands as though on cue, giving him a stern chop to the head with her hand from behind him.
Daiki growls in pain and turns to engage his mother in an argument. Something about what kind of welcome that is and how she makes him despair-just their usual mom-son comedy act.
Satsuki can’t tell because she isn’t really paying attention. She’s still completely entranced by the way Daiki’s eyes sparkled when he talked about flying.
And for that moment, she wonders.
Perhaps Kagamin and Ki-chan weren’t as clueless and as big idiots as she’d thought them to be.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
A/N: Yes, it’s my favourite Simply Hinting At Things drill. But, give a girl a break, I’m trying to make some steps back into writing, alright?! xD;; Ehh, not sure how good this is, but yeah. There it is. My first work in-checking timestamp-eight months. Charming. Simply charming. :D
(To anyone who didn’t get the drift of my way too subliminal messages: Japanese folk really love this “I’m going”, “Have a safe trip”; “I’m home”, “Welcome home” exchanges, so it was a must, but I tried to put more meaning into it. Daiki says he’s home only once he starts talking to Satsuki. Meaning, she’s the person he mostly wants to come back to.)