Chapter Text
After Kuroo’s Graduation Dinner
The rooftop is quiet, wrapped in the kind of stillness only a warm night in the city can hold. Lights blink in the distance, and the wind carries a hum of passing life from below.
Kuroo shifts his weight beside me, his fingers brushing mine but not reaching. “Hey,” he says, like he’s afraid I might disappear again. “I’m really glad you came.”
“Of course,” I say, looking at him. “You earned it.”
He lets out a quiet laugh, almost incredulous. “Somehow… it doesn’t feel like it matters unless you saw it.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just give him a small, lopsided smile. One he’s seen a thousand times before. One that still makes his gaze soften.
There’s a beat of silence. Then, he runs a hand through his hair, letting it fall back with a sigh. “Can I be honest?”
I nod, a little guarded, my chest already tightening.
“I’ve tried,” he begins. “To move on. To love someone else. She’s... great. Smart. Kind. She doesn’t deserve to be anyone’s second choice.”
I blink, my throat going dry.
“But I couldn’t give her all of me,” he continues. “Because you still have that part. Even after all this time. Even when we weren’t talking. Even when I tried to forget.”
“Kuroo—” I start, voice barely above a whisper.
He shakes his head, not to dismiss me but to press forward before he loses the nerve. “I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty. And I’m not saying it to ask for anything. I just need to stop pretending. I can’t keep building a life around someone who only ever had half of me.”
I look at him, this version of Kuroo who’s more grown up, more tired, but still has that same light in his eyes when he looks at me. “I don’t even know who I am to you anymore,” I say, honesty slipping out like breath.
“You’re still the person I imagined every version of my future with,” he replies quietly. “Even when we were falling apart. Even when we were pretending to be strangers. Even when I was trying to love someone else.”
There’s silence between us again. A gentle, aching kind.
Then he says, softer now, “Close your eyes.”
I raise an eyebrow, wary. “Why?”
“Just trust me,” he says, the corner of his mouth tugging up like old times.
I do.
I close my eyes, feel the breeze against my skin.
“Picture it,” he says. “Our apartment in New York. The kind we always talked about. You’re working on a new manuscript. I’m burnt out from meetings and come home with takeout. You complain that I’m eating all the fries before we even sit down.”
I chuckle.
“We argue about paint colors and coffee brands. I leave my socks everywhere. You threaten to throw them out.”
“I would.”
He grins. “There’s a dog. Maybe two. They bark when we get home, and you act like you’re not the one who spoils them the most.”
“And we go to the same ramen place every Friday even though you say it’s overpriced,” I add.
His voice dips, steadier now. “And we get married. Finally. Something small. Just people who know what we’ve been through. You wear white, I forget how to breathe.”
“You’d cry.”
“You’d make fun of me.”
“Only for the rest of our lives,” I whisper.
I open my eyes.
He’s already looking at me. That same look he gave me when we were seventeen and he first told me he loved me.
And somehow, I know. I know I could still have this, we could still have this. If we’re both brave enough to reach for it.
Kuroo inhales slowly. “I want that life. I want you. Still.”
I bite my bottom lip, the weight of every fear, every hope, every aching what-if gathering in my chest. “So do I.”
And then I’m in his arms before I know it, his mouth finding mine in a kiss that tastes like coming home. Familiar, steady, full of every moment we thought we lost and every future we still get to build.
He laughs softly when we pull apart, forehead resting against mine. “We should really start looking for that apartment.”
“I’m not letting you pick the couch.”
He smirks. “We’ll compromise. You pick the couch, I pick the dog.”
“Deal.”
And this time, we don’t have to pretend.
This time, we get it right. We will. I know we will.
It started with a message thread titled: Apartment Hunt NYC (Let’s Not Kill Each Other Again).
Three months after the rooftop, we found ourselves doing the thing we said we’d never do again; looking at Craigslist listings and arguing about closet space. But something about it felt different this time. More grounded. More grown.
We signed the lease on a fifth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn with peeling walls, one stubborn window that wouldn’t open, and floors that creaked like they had something to say. But it was perfect—not because it was shiny or new, but because we chose it. Together. This time, without the desperation of trying to salvage something broken. This time, we knew what we were walking into.
We’d done this before, lived together in a city far from home, shared bills, built routines. But now we were older, softer, more intentional. It didn’t feel like a gamble. It felt like a promise we were finally ready to keep.
Instead of dogs like we used to daydream about, we adopted two cats: a sleek black one who liked knocking glasses off the table with startling precision, named him Tetsu (which I regretted immediately but it got used to it so it was too late to call it a different name) and a calico with sleepy eyes and an unnervingly human level of judgment, especially when we forgot to feed them on time, I named it Ken, obviously. We settled on calling them that after a short and admittedly dramatic naming debate over takeout.
Kuroo landed a job at a research lab, working with a chemical engineering team he admired. His hours were long, but he came home smelling like antiseptic and coffee, always with a new idea or a weird science pun that he thought was hilarious. And me? I finally got my foot in the door at a small literary magazine. Nothing major, but it paid enough, and more importantly, gave me the time and space to write the way I used to. Freely, for myself.
Most nights, he’d come home, shrug out of his lab coat, and sit on the kitchen floor while I typed away at the dining table. Sometimes he’d fall asleep there, arms folded under his head, the black cat curled at his side. Other times he’d read my drafts aloud in the worst British accent he could muster, and I’d threaten to delete my manuscript out of spite. But mostly, it was quiet. And safe. The kind of domestic peace I never thought we could have without losing ourselves.
A few months later, he proposed. Unplanned, messy, and painfully on brand.
It was almost 2 a.m. We were in the kitchen surrounded by cat toys, empty tea mugs, and a very failed attempt at banana bread. He was still in his lab scrubs, flour on his cheek from when I accidentally smacked him with the mixing spoon.
“There’s no ring yet,” he said, twisting a red twist tie around his finger. “But I’ll get you a real one if you say yes.”
I laughed. I cried a little. I said yes.
And in that small, slightly chaotic apartment, where the ghosts of the younger us stood in quiet corners and smiled. We began again.
Not because we were trying to get back what we lost, but because this time, we were building something new. Something better. Something that fit.
It was supposed to be just another dinner.
Kenma had flown in from LA for a rare break between game dev crunch and streaming obligations. Akaashi booked the dinner reservation weeks in advance because he didn’t trust any of us to be on time. And Kuroo, well, Kuroo was suspiciously quiet the whole evening.
We sat at a long wooden table at a cozy place in Williamsburg. String lights dangled above us like stars frozen mid-flicker, and a live band played something jazzy and low in the background. The conversation jumped between old memories and new ones: chaotic high school games, drunken karaoke in college, Kenma’s surprising hatred of sparkling water.
Bokuto showed up late, still in his pro team’s warmup jacket, hair flattened from his headband, sneakers scuffed with dust from the court.
“Practice ran long!” he shouted, already drawing attention before he even sat down. “Coach said I had too much energy! Can you believe that?”
We could.
He flopped into a seat beside Kuroo, grinning and sweaty, launching into a story about a ridiculous save he made during training. Kuroo laughed, easy and real, the kind of laugh I hadn’t heard in years when we were apart. Kenma looked like he was regretting every life choice that led him to this table, and Akaashi just quietly sipped his wine, used to the noise.
The night was warm, and the breeze felt good against my skin. I remember thinking, This is nice. This is enough.
But Kuroo had other plans.
He stood up midway through dessert, clinked his spoon against his water glass, and took a breath that made my chest tighten. My fork froze midair.
“Before anyone says anything,” he said, eyeing Bokuto with a warning glance, “let me get through this without someone yelling ‘YEAH BOY!’ in the background.”
Bokuto immediately slapped a hand over his own mouth.
Kuroo turned to me. “You once said we didn’t need to start over. Just… keep going from where we left off. I think I finally know what that means.”
I blinked. The restaurant fell quiet around us.
“I know what it’s like to live with you. The good, the hard, the stupid, the beautiful. I know how you organize the books by mood, not title. I know you steal the blankets even in summer. I know how you cry when you read something that moves you, and how you hold back when you’re hurting because you don’t want to be a burden.”
His voice cracked, just a little. “I also know I don’t want to keep imagining a life with you anymore. I want to live it.”
He reached into his pocket, no rubber band this time, just a small black velvet box, shaking in his hand.
“I’ve loved you in all the wrong ways before. Let me love you right now. Let me grow old with you, with our black cat who knocks everything off the counter and our calico that judges us like Kenma. Let me be your husband.”
The ring sparkled in the candlelight.
I didn’t realize I was crying until Bokuto whispered, “Is this it?!” in the most obvious stage-whisper ever, then stood up and raised his fork like it was a damn championship trophy.
Kenma didn’t flinch. Akaashi sighed like this was a Tuesday.
“Yes,” I whispered, laughing through the tears. “Of course, yes.”
And somehow, in that moment, surrounded by mismatched chairs, string lights, and the family we chose — it all made sense.
We were home.
We flew back to Japan the next spring for it. A small garden wedding in Kyoto, surrounded by plum blossoms and people who had loved us at every stage of who we were.
Our cats weren’t there, we’d left Ken and Tetsu with Akaashi’s sister back in New York. She sent us updates almost hourly, including a video of Tetsu knocking over a vase and Ken meowing at a bag of rice like it insulted her. I missed them, but it was kind of fitting. This moment wasn’t about the life we were already building , it was about the promises we were finally ready to make.
The morning of the wedding, I woke up in a guesthouse near the venue, my heart beating faster than it should. Kenma’s girlfriend handed me a cup of tea and told me I looked like I was going to throw up. I laughed through tears. Maybe I was. Happy crying. Nervous crying. It was hard to tell the difference anymore. All I knew was: it felt like I was walking into something I’d waited years for and somehow still wasn’t ready for.
Bokuto burst into the room with flowers in his hand and his tie crooked. “IS IT TIME?!” he shouted, earning a loud “No!” from Kenma down the hall. Akaashi followed behind him, calm and composed as ever, already holding a travel steamer like he knew I’d forgotten to iron something.
Everything felt like chaos and comfort at once.
The ceremony was held in a quiet clearing, with woven lanterns hanging between the trees and low tables decorated with white magnolias, a nod to the ones that bloomed outside our childhood homes. A live quartet played softly in the background, and before I walked down the aisle, someone cued a soft instrumental cover of Iris by Googoo Dolls, I nearly cried just hearing it.
I clutched my bouquet tighter and smiled through tears. Because yeah. We did move fast. Then we broke. Then we found our way back, slower, steadier.
Bokuto cried before I even turned the corner, and Akaashi had to grip his arm like a leash. Kenma stood beside Kuroo as his best man, looking almost bored until the vows started — and then, I swear, he actually smiled. A soft, real one.
I wore a minimalist silk dress, simple and soft, with a row of buttons down the back and a veil I didn’t decide on until that morning. Kuroo wore a dark suit with a maroon tie I picked. When I reached him at the altar, he leaned in and whispered, “You’re late.” I rolled my eyes and whispered back, “You’re lucky I showed up.”
Kuroo cleared his throat first.
“I used to think love was about certainty, finding someone and never doubting it. But we’ve doubted. We’ve broken. We’ve left and come back, and still…”
His voice caught, so he took a breath.
“You wrecked every blueprint I had. And I loved you for it. Because you didn’t just change my life, you became the reason I wanted to build one.”
He glanced down, thumb brushing the back of my hand.
“I promise not to run away this time.”
A soft laugh rippled through the guests. But his gaze stayed steady.
“Even if things get loud, or quiet, or terrifying. I’m staying. You’re it for me.”
I nodded slowly, eyes shining as I began.
“I always thought I had to be the strong one. That needing someone meant I was weak. But you... you never asked me to be strong. You just held space for me in the silence, in the mess, in the days I didn’t know how to love myself.”
I smiled through my tears, voice soft but unwavering.
“I promise to always come back home to you, even when I’m stupid.”
A laugh escaped him, even as his eyes brimmed. The guests smiled knowingly.
“And I promise to keep choosing you, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.”
I reached out and placed my hand over his heart.
“You are my once-in-a-lifetime. And my every day after that.”
The vows weren’t perfect, but they were honest. They carried years. Bruises and bandages. Late-night phone calls and quiet dinners. Inside jokes and aching apologies.
And when we kissed, everything else fell away.
Because this was home.
And we were always meant to find our way back.
The reception was just as imperfectly beautiful. Long tables under string lights. Peach wine and sticky rice and Kuroo getting sauce on his collar before the toasts even started.
Kenma gave a short speech — short, but surprisingly heartfelt. “He’s annoying,” he said, looking at Kuroo. “But he’s always been hers. Even when he didn’t know it.”
Bokuto’s speech had the entire crowd cheering. “I’M JUST REALLY HAPPY!! I LOVE LOVE!!” he yelled, tears streaming down his face.
We laughed so much that night. Danced barefoot in the garden until the lights blurred. When it was time for the bouquet toss, I turned around and saw Kenma’s girlfriend elbow Akaashi on the rib. I threw the bouquet without looking. I think Akaashi caught it. Or maybe it hit Bokuto in the face. Honestly, who knows.
Later, we sat on a bench just outside the garden, barefoot and flushed. The music had softened, and Kuroo slipped his arm around my shoulder.
We danced under strings of golden lights in the garden, lanterns floating like little moons. The plum blossoms rustled in the Kyoto breeze, petals sticking to my hair and the back of Kuroo’s suit.
After dinner, quiet laughter, clinking glasses, Bokuto’s thunderous toast that somehow ended with a volleyball metaphor, the DJ gave a subtle nod.
And then the first notes hit.
And I'd give up forever to touch you...
My breath caught. I hadn’t heard this song in years. But I remembered. The way it played one night on the floor of our my bedroom when we just started dating, back when we were 17 and stupid, half in love and too afraid to name it.
We sat cross-legged, eating instant ramen, talking about the future like it was something we could catch in our hands.
Now, we were here.
Kuroo stepped forward, gently offering his hand, and she took it, already crying.
He pulled me close, swaying slow, forehead resting against mine.
You're the closest to Heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't wanna go home right now
We barely moved. It wasn’t a performance. Just the kind of slow dance you only ever give someone who’s seen every ugly part of you and stayed anyway.
The world blurred.
Guests faded.
And all I could hear was the song and the sound of Kuroo humming softly along, off-key but real.
When I looked up, his eyes were wet.
And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
He kissed my forehead like it was the first time. My arms curled around his shoulders. I whisper something that caught in his collarbone.
“I knew it was you. Even when I tried to un-know it.”
He pulled back just enough to say, “You’ve always known me better than I knew myself.”
And when the final chorus played, we weren’t just dancing. We were remembering. The rain-soaked fight, the cats curled between them on nights we didn’t speak, the silence, the coming back.
I just want you to know who I am
And he did.
I did.
We always had.