Chapter Text
"Who's the boy with the plastic bag that always wonders the neighborhood?"
"I don't know but his fucking music sure makes a racket. We have another day of working hard at training camp and I wish he'd keep it down until after everyone wakes up."
"Yeah. Literally no one is awake at 4 am, aka the crack-of-satan's-ass-o'clock."
"He sure is weird. What do you think he carries that plastic bag around for?"
"I'm not sure, but I overheard one of the locals say that he kills cats and practices devil worships."
"With that cute face? No way," Nekoma's captain murmured, stretching as he continued to watch the teenager - a tallish boy about his age, maybe a year or two younger - saunter out of site, ever present plastic bag gripped in a pale, bony hand.
"Pale and bony is your type?" one of his teammates raised an eyebrow. Kuroo laughed but there was little to no humor in it. The captain was silent for a long moment as the rest of his team began to stir, the rise of the sun beckoning Nekoma to wakefulness, eager to direct them to a new day of hard work and dedicated training. Kuroo let out one more soft chuckle, and without replying followed a few peers to the showers.
--
Lunch was being held outside on account of the nice weather, which included a pleasant breeze that helped dry the sweat off the teenagers, a reward for their intense workout.
And that was when Kuroo saw him again. Bokuto, a rival captain but also a close friend of Kuroo's, was talking with his mouth full and spraying crumbs everywhere when the olive-haired boy appeared out of the woods a distance from the outside lunch. Kuroo leaned around his stocky friend to catch a glimpse of him, but he never looked back in his direction. Once again, he was holding his trademark plastic bag, the dirty white edges rippling at his side in the wind.
"Whatcha lookin' at Kuroo?" Bokuto asked. He leaned so he was blocking the captain's view once again, but instead of being irritated Kuroo just shrugged and grinned, covering up his foolish intrigue at this stranger.
"You seen that kid that walks around the neighborhood all the time with the plastic bag? He just stepped out of the woods. Wonder what he was doing in there."
Bokuto stopped chewing and turned around to face the woods in question. "Huh. I've seen him around before too. Konoha said he talked to him a couple days ago when he wandered near the outside beach volleyball nets." He paused. Waggling his eyebrows, Bokuto added, "but I gotta admit, even with how pale and bony he is the kid's got a pretty face."
--
"Hey buddy. Whatcha up to?" Kuroo said casually as he approached Fukurodani's vice captain. Konoha unintentionally narrowed his eyes, face opposite of his calm nature. He never did quite get that smiling thing right, but for some reason people really seemed to enjoy his sly-looking smirks. He personally thinks they make him unique.
"Chillin'. Reading. Trying to make myself tired so I can sleep for once in the past three days. What are you up to, Nekoma's captain?"
Kuroo scoffed at lack of use of his name. Regardless he continued. "I wanna ask you about that kid that walks around with a plastic bag everyday. Bokuto said you talked to him the other day."
Konoha's face paled. "What-what about him?"
"What's his name? What's he like? What's his plastic bag for?"
"His name is Akaashi, and he's weird as fuck. He carries dead animals around in his plastic bags." Konoha suddered, and Kuroo was taken aback, genuinely shocked.
"He has /what/ in his plastic bags?"
"Dead animals. I'm serious. I looked into one when he started to walk away and there was half of a dead squirrel in there." The Fukurodoni player paused in thought. "But I don't think he killed it. It looked like it had been ran over by a bike or small vehicle. Maybe a moped. Still, it was...fucking weird."
"Huh," was all Kuroo said, rubbing his chin. "Thanks, Konoha-kun. I'll see you around, okay?"
"Sure."
--
Now, most people would perhaps be a little shaken after finding out the object of their distant affections was carrying around a plastic bag full of roadkill.
But Kuroo Tetsurou was not most people.
"It's Saturday. It's fucking Saturday you bitch. I'm supposed to be sleeping in, what do you want Kuroo?" Kenma hissed as the captain roused him from his sleep. Kuroo smirked, amused at his long-time friend's ever present early morning chronic case of the grumps.
"I need you to come with me to the 24-hour corner store. It's important."
"Go get Bokuto to go with you."
"Hm." Kuroo considered this for a moment. "You're right, Bokuto should come too." Kenma groaned and half-heartedly threw his pillow into Kuroo's face.
"What do you mean 'too?' Why can't he go with you /instead/ of me?"
"I need a squad, man. I need protection."
"From what?"
/From my crush, who is a mysterious young man that walks around the neighborhood with a bag of dead squirrel parts,/ Kuroo thought. But honestly, the captain wasn't afraid of what - what was his name? Akaashi? - may pose as a threat physically, but more so what kind of threat he could be to his confidence. That is, the emotional damage of rejection. He thought for a moment of explaining this to Kenma, and ultimately decided if anyone was going to judge him about it, it would definitely be Kenma, who would also ultimately be the only one to disregard these judgements and let himself be dragged along on his adventure nonetheless.
--
This is how, at 5 am, Kenma found himself standing behind Kuroo in a short line for instant corner store coffee, already brewed and ready to consume. Once he received his drink and paid for it, Kenma joined his two friends on the bench outside the corner store.
"Why, of all places are we at a corner store waiting for him?" he asked.
"I talked to Konoha again yesterday about where he saw Akaashi and he said it was at this store really early in the morning while he picking up some painkillers for his back. He said he saw him in here buying in a toothbrush." He had also said that Akaashi was probably a gross hobo who didn't brush his teeth and maybe sold dead animals to witches to finally get enough money for a toothbrush, but Kuroo didn't want to relive hearing that sentence about his mysterious little crush.
"You're going to be waiting a while," someone said, words slightly muffled by the tinkling of the store bell attached to the door.
"Huh?"
"I said you're going to be waiting awhile. I heard you were talking about Akaashi, the taxidermy kid." A tall man with chestnut hair, rosy cheeks, and sharp brown eyes that were caught in a somewhat daunting place between alluring and charming was leaning up against the cinder block wall of the corner store. He side eyed the trio as he took a sip from his Redbull. "You know? Akaashi?" He said this slowly when no one responded, as if he were talking to the biggest morons in Japan. "The taxidermy kid?"
Bokuto looked over at Kuroo. "Well that explains why he carries a plastic bag full of dead things."
"What the fuck? Why are we waiting for some early bird asshole at the fuck dawn of Lucifer's ballsack who collects dead animals?" Kenma grumbled.
"I dunno, why are you?" the brunette said after taking another swig of his drink.
"Me and Kuroo think he's cute and want to talk to him," Bokuto said innocently. Kuroo smiled in agreement. Kenma pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Goddamn. There's no reason for me to be here. I could have been sleeping."
"So why won't Akaashi be here this morning?" Bokuto asked, circling the conversation back to the snobby stranger with his potential knowledge of this vexing Akaashi.
"It's Saturday. Akaashi doesn't come to the store until the evening, at around 7 pm. Sundays he doesn't come at all. But every day during the week he's hear at 4:30 am, like fucking clockwork."
"At the very least right now if I were awake I could have been playing Neko Atsume. Or KH Unchained. Or, for fuck's sake, Tetris if my fucking phone wasn't charged." Kenma's head fell into his hands. "But it's not. Because I'm an idiot. An idiot who's about to get tangled up in some kind of sacrificial satanic mess," Kenma continued softly.
"You're here for emotional support," Bokuto reminded. "Kuroo would be hurt if he got rejected by Akaashi and he needs his best friends to be there."
"I won't get rejected," Kuroo muttered. The momentarily forgotten stranger scoffed.
"With a face and body like that? No way any sane person would reject you." He winked. "But with Akaashi? If you want to go after him you're going to need all the emotional support you can get." He sighed. "That kid is a real bitch."
Kuroo opened his mouth to inquire further but was cute off by the X-Files theme blaring from the brunette's pocket. "Hey Suga," he answered cheekily. "Did you get my text about covering my shift tonight? I pulled a fucking all nighter taking care of Tula and my knee is killing me, please babe I can't do any more work." There was crash and yelling on the other end of the phone, then a voice saying, "no way. Iwaizumi's going to kill you if he finds out you've got me covering your last three Saturday shifts. And I'm not your 'babe,' Oikawa."
"Hmph." Oikawa sighed in frustration and sauntered away as his phone conversation continued.
Kuroo turned back to his friend. "Well, now what do we do until 6 o'clock? We're already up."
"Go back to sleep," Kenma said without hesitation.
Bokuto opened his mouth to comment, but was cut off by a body crashing through the door of the store. The three of them startled in surprise, hopping up and following a thin trail of blood inside.
--
"Percocet," Akaashi whispered to the cashier, not so much because he was trying to keep cover but more so because of the immense amount of pain he was in. "Please."
"Not while I'm on shift, Akaashi," the blond said. "But meet behind the store at 10 and I'll hook you up."
"Need it now. Pain."
"No."
"Please, Tsukki. I'm in so much pain," Akaashi croaked. Tsukki's eyes shifted through the store, scanning the aisles for any loiterers.
"Come behind the counter. You can rest here for a while."
--
"Come behind the counter. You can rest here for a while," is the first thing Kuroo heard when the trio stepped back into the store. His eyes grew wide as his sight fell onto a hunched over figure in a bloodstained hoodie. When the teenager glanced out of the side of his eyes at Kuroo the captain could see his cheek and right eye were marred with black and blue. Blood was caked around his mouth, but despite the incredible pain he must be in his green eyes were dry.
"What did they do to you today? What is Yukito?" the cashier whispered as he gently helped Akaashi onto a chair behind the counter.
"Oh shit, your tooth!" Bokuto tactlessly cried, noticing a bloody tooth lying on the ground close to the register. "Dude are you alright? What happened?!"
The blonde worker glared over his shoulder at the athletes. "Pick out something to buy or get out. Now." He turned back to Akaashi and offered him a wad of paper towels to stick in his mouth to stop the bleeding from the hole his tooth once was.
"Hey," Kuroo started gently. This is not how he picture his and Akaashi's first meeting. This was not going according to his plan. "Hey, what happened to your mouth? Maybe I can help, I took a college level med class this year, so there might be something I can do-"
"Get. Out." The cashier was dead serious. Akaashi studied Kuroo up and down and shrank back into the wall behind the counter. Kuroo's heart sunk, not because he was disappointed about this disaster of an introduction but because it pained his so fucking much to see another human being in this state.
"Listen, he's trying to help. Kuroo is a science-y guy, and he's good with medicine and shit because he's a chemistry nerd too. Just give him a chance to check you out, Akaashi," Bokuto interjected.
"Get out or I'll calling the fucking police."
"Come one," Kenma said from behind them, grabbing there sleeves. "Let's go."
--
"We can come back later and ask that guy how Akaashi is doing," Kenma said gently, pulling the shellshocked Bokuto and distressed Kuroo away from the corner store. "I'll come back with both of you to make sure everyone is okay." Kenma could be kind and generous when it counted, especially for his friend.
"Yeah. Sure," Bokuto said absently. Kuroo nodded in agreement.
And the three of them went off to follow in the mainstream relaxation everyone else participated in on their day off.
Kuroo joined, but barely with half a heart. His mind was still on Akaashi.