Archive of Our Own

i. [Kuro has something in mind.]

A week before spring break finds Kenma in his bedroom, waiting for a certain disaster to crash.

It’s on the last day of his fourth-year’s big exams—though far from the last of it—that Kuroo slips into Kenma’s dorm with the spare key, trips over the mess in the hallway, from the sound of thumps and muttered curses, and invites himself into Kenma’s space wearing the coolest-looking grin he thinks he can muster. He always looks dorkier with it.

Still, Kenma peers up from behind his two-toned bangs and takes in Kuroo’s more ruffled bedhead, the darker circles under his eyes, the tired creases around his smile, and pats the blanket draped over his crossed legs in half-invitation, half-order. Rest here, now. So Kuroo does, climbing onto the bed and plopping his head on Kenma’s lap. He stretches his limbs with a groan, not unlike some languid cat coming home after an afternoon walk out in the sun. In turn, Kenma resumes his game, fingers deft over the click-click-click of buttons.

“—the tests were terrible and the party was worse,” Kuroo says. He rolls over to his stomach and pushes his face into Kenma’s red sweater like usual. Kenma can’t blame him, really; it’s his favorite for a reason. “Bo had makeup tests ‘cus he got sick the other day, so he wasn’t there.”

From there, Kuroo goes on about the day. The katsudon he and his friends had eaten for good luck (and then skimped on the bill as a last act of rebellion—don’t worry, he’d paid his share and bought one for Kenma, too). The waterworks during O-Chem when someone’s sleeve had caught on purple fire (Kuroo’s hair had suffered a few millimeters). All nine mistakes he’d found on the tests, how this professor he looked up to had gushed over his molecular biology paper, and the people who’d tried to give him weird drinks at the party. (“See, that never happens with Bo around.”)

His tone and gestures conjure up an image of a cat batting its paw at someone in demanding a head-scratch. Kenma thinks he’d survive for a couple for minutes. “Hm,” he hums in reply, still going up against the final boss for the third time, as he’d used the first two chances to figure out its mechanics and timings. He does listen and Kuroo’s voice helps him concentrate, too, in a way. It reassures, I’m here with you, as much as it asks for his attention. He never minds either of them.

“I want to go on a break,” Kuroo says, this time muffled against his sweater.

A series of critical hits slams the boss’ health to zero. Kenma lets the cutscene play out. Running a hand through Kuroo’s hair, he wrinkles his face at the day’s worth of greasiness, though it’s nothing compared to high school, when they’d been teenage boys under a powerhouse’s volleyball practice regime, and it’s worth the way Kuroo’s shoulders slump out of tenseness.

Despite going to the same college and the relative leisure of Japanese universities, Kuroo’s major doesn’t allow for much slacking off. Sleep be damned. He’ll drunk-dial Kenma when he’s high on caffeine and energy drinks and all-nighters, because being a medical student isn’t easy even on him and exam seasons are a disastrous catharsis. Getting to Kuroo before he crashes is one of the perks of moving into the dorm—

Oh, he thinks, when the cutscene reveals he’s picked one of the bad endings. This is the last year for such things. Maybe in a long while.

“You don’t have money,” Kenma says. “And you need to show up on your shifts at the café or you’ll get fired this time.”

“Ugh. Why do you always have to ruin my fantasies?” Kuroo pauses. “Wait, no. Bad word choice. That’s not what it sounds like at all.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Exactly. It’s unnerving and I feel judged.”

“I’m always judging you.”

“Kenmaaa. Say that’s a lie.”

“It’s not.”

“It is.”

“It’s not.”

When Kuroo takes longer to quip back, Kenma looks down from reading the subtitles. He’s looking up at him with one of his more serious expressions, the cheesy inspirational speech kind, and Kenma sets his PSP aside, grabs Kuroo’s cheeks and squishes them into ridiculous faces. They’re strangely warm under his palms. He wonders if Kuroo’s had a drink or two at the party, if he’s low on health from all the tests, by the blotches of pink across his nose and tips of biggish ears.

“Vacassion tog’ther,” Kuroo drawls through it, anyway. “I wan’a us gos on a vacassion.”

“I thought the seniors are planning a retreat.”

“Yeeh. Butt.” Gentler than his appearance could’ve ever given away, he pries at Kenma’s hands and settles them on either side of his head, letting him cradle it, thumb against his brow bones, shapes and textures ever familiar after being friends for well around two decades. But Kenma doesn’t want to talk about their next year or things pertaining to that yet, and he just scowls at Kuroo. “It’s you I wanna go with. Why can’t best friends go on a road trip together—don’t make that disgusted face! You love me; you know it.”

“Ugh…”

“Kenma, please.”

Best friends.

Kenma tests the words, when Kuroo’s fallen asleep holding him against his head instead of the usual pillows. Bittersweet. He decides he doesn’t quite know yet where to place it on the board.

It’s never been so warm on a February night.

“Idiot,” he says. “‘Course I love you.”

ii. a. [It sounds tiring, but you’d like to expand your map and level-up.]

ii. b. [And, well. Kuro’s here.]

iii. [Pack some stuff.]

From: Tora
>> Bananas
>> Did u get the bananas

To: Tora
>> yeah

From: Tora
>> Hey im just reminding u cus u get grumpier when u r low on sugar

Kenma squints at the message on the screen, because it’s too much effort to wake up and move and whatnot early in the morning while they’re on a break. Some kilometers away, he can imagine Taketora standing straight, hands perched on his hips in the usual willpower pose.

To: Tora
>> ill send some pics i guess

He might also buy a jumbo yakisoba bread special or two, but leaves that tidbit out for now, tucking his phone between his arm and chest as he folds up the charger’s cable. He completes packing the last of his things just as Kuroo bursts through the door with a call of his name, voice lilted around a grin, and this time he steps over Kenma’s passed-out roommate instead of tripping. He jiggles the keyring to their ride. Whatever it’ll be. “Ready to go, kitten?”

Kenma rolls his eyes. “Gross,” he says, and kicks Kuroo in the ankle at the latter’s smirk. Kuroo chuckles, what scandalous thoughts are you having, Kenma, and waits for him by the threshold. Despite Taketora’s helpful reminder, he’s perfectly capable of packing on his own. With his backpack heavier than he would’ve liked (which is, well, no weight at all), he hoists it up over his shoulders, and gives a small nod to his roommate’s sleepy have fun, you two on their way out.

They navigate out of the dorm in companionable silence. Stepping out the front door, one he’s crossed nearly everyday in these last four years, it’s less of a goodbye and more thanks for the hospitality, because he doesn’t label just anywhere as home.

Tokyo’s already revving up for the day, harried footsteps and low rumble of traffic echoing through the metropolis. Under the streetlights’ glow, as the sun still rises late this time of the year, Kenma watches over his childhood friend. Kuroo’s decked in red flannel over a white T-shirt, dark blue jeans ripped at the knees. Nothing new or for special occasions. Walking side-by-side, Kenma finds himself staring at the stretch of it over broad shoulders that hadn’t been as obvious before.

They round up the campus’ parking lot to find Nekoma VBC’s bus, looking as aged-up as them. “I worked a miracle,” Kuroo proudly declares, before Kenma’s blank stare has him confessing. “Nekomata-sensei let us borrow it as long as it comes back intact. It’s the old bus, so he doesn’t mind—and okay, I might’ve begged a little and he laughed at me, but he laughs at everything.”

At this, Kenma huffs just for the sake of it, just to get the fondness out of his system, and feels a twitchy little scowl come over his face. He tells himself it’s a case of waking up before 10AM grumpiness, or that he’d been too restless to sleep the night before; Kozume Kenma, whose preferred activities include sleeping in and lazy mornings, and he’s got his head full of a certain someone. Like with volleyball, he doesn’t rise up in anticipation just because Kuroo’s obsessed with something. But. Kenma would like to be with him.

“We should thank Nekomata-sensei again,” he says, taking steps to hike on the bus.

“Do I get a thanks, too? Hey? Kenma—”

It’s sort of like reloading an old game file. Turning on the lights inside the bus (just for this while, because they do need to save on pretty much everything), he recognizes Nekoma’s signature red on the seats and in strips lining the upper compartments, colors washed mute. He rediscovers it by disturbing the dust that have taken up residence, the musty scent of time passed, treading past a well-known creaky panel on the floor, and crosses memory gaps by tracing the seam of things with his fingers.

And despite his insistence not to mull over it, energy wasted on undoable routes, Kenma thinks of how his game with Kuroo has never been shelved away for too long. Neighbors since childhood. Going to the same school, playing in the same team. Always revisited by frequent meetings or phone calls some kilometers apart.

His heart flutters, like he’s stumbled upon an uncharted territory way above his current level.

(But at the same time, Kenma hates losing.)

He drops his backpack, everything he’s brought for the trip and weighing him down, on one of the seats, walks to the driver’s side, and settles right next to Kuroo.

“Do you even know how to drive this?”

“I used to chat with our old driver. She was a nice obaasan, by the way.” Kuroo smirks, all teeth and crooked. “How hard can it be?”

Kenma peers at him from the side. Kuroo hasn’t changed too much throughout the years. (Maybe because big changes come too slow to rattle, when you’ve always been observing.) When he reconstructs the younger Kuroo in memory, a face comes to mind, sniffling and tear-stained after young Kenma had fallen into a river trying to rescue a kitten.

It belongs to the same dedicated, hardworking kid who’d first picked up volleyball from watching matches on TV, grinning ear to ear as he tried them with Kenma, failed, and insisted they learn to advance, anyway—who’d acted strong whenever he got sick or injured so Kenma wouldn’t worry, and become so dependable before Kenma realized it.

If we practice it a lot, I’m sure it’ll be one of our best moves. It did. Don’t quit the team—you’ll make our team strong. They went to Nationals. Before this boss attacks, its tail lights up, didn’t you notice? Kenma won the infamously difficult game a day after.

“Okay,” he says, and faces the road ahead for now.

iv. [The Golden Route.]

There was little fanfare when Kuroo moved out for college and Kenma stayed behind.

There were text messages and phone calls and video chats; there were all these things at four in the morning as Kuroo adjusted to a new environment and Kenma built new routines, because growing up and separation bring about the tiniest life crises (“Kenmaaa, does anyone I know ever really love me?”), some existential in nature (“There’s a fern with twenty-seven times more chromosomes than us, Kenma—”), and an inexplicable sense of absence (“Eh. I played FHQ-2 and didn’t sleep for three days.” “Why?!” A shrug. “Dunno.”)

You weren’t here to remind me, I guess, he didn’t say. Judging by the sigh Kuroo heaved out on the other side of the screen, non-exasperated by the way it eased into that Kuro smile, he already knew, much in the same way Kenma always listened to him.

But they had lives outside of each other, and the train rides bound for the other’s ward of Tokyo dwindled to every other weekend. Kuroo played on the intercollegiate team for a while, with a lot of new acquaintances and several new friends, though no one closer, and Kenma had his own first-years to yell at—plus an overeager second-year at that, too. Nekoma made it to Nationals by the skin of their teeth; Kuroo and his former yearmates cheered for their matches as often as they could (and he never failed to catch Kenma’s attempts to skimp on better, yet more tiring, plays). Miyagi installed new signal towers so Kenma could use his phone’s GPS to not get lost when he met up with Shouyou. They were back together again after a year.

He can live without Kuroo, and vice versa, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.

“I panicked, okay? I picked the lamest route and, yeah, I know the shinkansen would’ve probably been cheaper and faster—”

Kenma blinks out of his nap, squinting in the late morning sun.

“—but I want this to last.”

With both sun visors pulled down, most likely Kuroo’s doing, he’s spared from the sunlight’s glare when he rights himself in his seat. “Look who’s awake,” Kuroo greets beside him, as Kenma plants both hands on the cushion between his legs and hunches his shoulders to stretch. At the burst of static like someone might be yelling on the other end of the line, Kuroo grimaces, says yeah, yeah—got it, and ends the call.

“Was that Yakkun?” Kenma asks, wiping at bleary eyes. On the radio, one of Kuroo’s English podcasts is playing at lower volume. Something about the new periodic elements.

“Mm? Yeah.” He’s pointedly not glancing at Kenma. “He was just telling me to get my shit together. End of the fourth year and all. Things getting serious by the next term.”

“Hm.”

As they drive on in silence, Kenma opens up Neko Atsume on both his and Kuroo’s phones to feed the cats like others would water their plants first thing in the morning; so far it’s the only game he’s managed to convert Kuroo to, as it turned out the latter likes collecting screenshots of cats in silly poses (current favorite: the faceplant pose), and now he even has some sort of competition against Karasuno’s ex-captain going on. He checks in with Lev at the arcade, having asked the other engineer student to fill in his shifts for the week. I fixed something!!!!! Lev’s texted him with a blurry shot of a pachinko machine attached.

To: Lev
>> did you break it

From: Lev
>> No!
>> Whyd Kenma-san think it was me?????
>> Maybe
>> Yes
>> But Kenma-san your job is rlly cool!!
>> I think im getting the hang of it!!!!

To: Lev
>> its just part time
>> and drop the -san already
>> don’t get electrocuted

“Where are we going?” Kenma asks, once enough time has elapsed for Kuroo to think about whatever it is he’s sorting through. Kuroo’s overthinking is visible by the worrying at his lip, the nodding and head-tilts to some non-existent song beats, and usually the quickest way to shut it down is setting him up with one spontaneous ace player. Kenma lets him gather his words. He knows forming the right words, any kind of words, can be a pain sometimes.

“The notorious Golden Route,” Kuroo announces. “Except we’re leaving from Tokyo, so it’s to Kyoto and Osaka and whatever we find along the way.”

“Isn’t there a lot of stuff between Tokyo and Kyoto? Days’ worth of stuff?”

He also lets Kuroo squirm, sometimes. Often. Just because. Hands glued to the wheel, Kuroo musters up a laugh that almost sounds normal. “Now, I know it’s not much planning…”

“I’m glad we didn’t take the shinkansen,” Kenma says, peering out window when Kuroo jumps the slightest bit in his seat. “It’d be too fast to enjoy the view—makes me feel dizzy—and there would be other people around.”

This, he says without any constructed reassurance. He’s never been good with passing pleasantries and the likes, anyway—they mask others’ opinions of him and worsen his anxiety. Past his avoidance of them in the first place, Kenma keeps to honesty about things that displease him; so when he tells Kuroo this, along with the things he doesn’t need to say—because Kuro knows, just as much as Kenma can read him—it’s only the good and honest truth.

I like that it’s just the two of us.

I like that you’re only here for me.

Thanks for choosing us.

They’re speeding down the expressway, far away enough from Tokyo to notice the absence of its intricate highways and railroads and close spaces. When Kenma looks back, some skyscrapers still tower in the distant cityscape. It’s unfettering to walk away from it all and the metropolis’ thirteen million citizens, in a way, and he remembers how a lot of his games are set in other worlds’ suburbs and countrysides and places left untouched. Maybe he can find inspiration for his own designs.

Kuroo shakes his head, and gets back his trademark grin. “You never really miss anything, do you? Well, however we do it, I’ll make this trip into something you might like. Just you wait.” He looks ahead once more. “So. How much did you hear?”

Shrugging, Kenma opens up a note on his phone and doodles some character ideas. “Nothing worse than when you sleep-talk.”

“I don’t talk in my sleep.”

“You do.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t.

“I do.”

Kuroo groans in despair. Kenma smiles.

“I think we can have some fun,” Kenma says. It’s the good and honest truth, and he intends to make it so.

v. [They go on an adventure.]

Not much planning, Kuroo had said, but along the way there is evidence otherwise.

This year’s spring heralds just the mildest weather, neither hung up on winter chill nor plowing into summer heat, as a quick check on the forecast confirms Kenma’s hypothesis. For all the times he’s complained about seasonal extremities, and Kuroo only encouraged him to persist and practice with Nekoma’s volleyball club, the latter pays attention in his own way. Fresh shaved ice drizzled with candy-apple syrup and a rotating fan always pointed his way. Extra jackets, scarfs, and mittens. Road trips during the mildest season of college breaks.

Breakfast had been Kuroo’s grilled and salted mackerel pikes with rice, mandarin slices on the side because Kuroo’s a firm believer in staying healthy, athletes or not. It’d probably been their last proper meal on this trip, though, before they’d start to rely on the cheapest konbini dinners and snacks. While college life has taught them the art of improvisation and instant ramen, survival games are not Kenma’s favorite.

They stop for lunch at a foreign place Kenma then identifies as a bakery once he translates the katakana. Kazakhstan’s Apple Pie. He lets Kuroo brag about it, for now, and doesn’t point out that Yokohama is only an hour drive from Tokyo and they’d wandered around for twice as long to find this off-road bakery some kilometers off course. He can embarrass Kuroo after he eats.

“Did you know that apples for apple pie came from Kazakhstan?” Kuroo drops the trivia later. Of course he can’t help it. “Though the first recipe was printed in England.”

Mouth full with the best apple pie he’s ever tasted, Kenma listens to him ramble away and laugh at his own jokes, drinks in the quiet atmosphere of the bakery, and only feels his heart swell in response.

(He shouldn’t expect any less from Kuroo, really.)

So maybe Kenma forgets to tease him, if only because Kuroo drags him along and back into the bus after they pay the bills. When they arrive at Yokohama by 10:30AM, he mourns the thought of lazing around or playing hermit or anything peaceful today—still, Kenma’s filled his sugar quota enough that he just grumbles at minimum when Kuroo pulls him forward once more. So that’s what the apple pie was for. Sneaky jerk.

Walking down the sidewalk, Kuroo keeps to the roadside so Kenma’s field of vision won’t be too wide, and Kenma can’t help but notice it, these habits and antics they’ve collected over the years. When Kuroo startles at some loud car alarm or tire screech, no matter how good he’s gotten at hiding it, Kenma takes his hand and gives it a squeeze all without glancing. In turn, Kuroo navigates them in such ways that there’s the least chance of people bumping into Kenma, whether Kenma’s paying attention or has his gaze fixed onto a screen, and he does so even in the crowded streets of Yokohama Chinatown like it’s instinct.

Maybe because it’s just the two of them in a stranger’s city, with no new releases or post-practice fatigue clouding his head, that Kenma’s become critically aware of them. He’s got a turn in the game, and he doesn’t know how to play it within the time limit.

Caught in a daze by the monotone of walking, the normalcy and anomaly of having Kuroo so close beside him, he wanders back to the one-year separation. It’d been on graduation day when Kuroo caught him slipping away from the packed school grounds, because nothing like this ever escaped Kuroo, either, and walked alongside him anyway until they reached the grassy hillside the team would pass during runs. Kenma had sat down. Kuroo had kept standing and staring off the distance like he was a romance film’s leading actor, or something, and asked if Kenma would continue with volleyball.

From there came the expected answers. “No.” They’d had their Battle at the Trash Heap and played until game over. He wouldn’t make a good senpai. He didn’t have his heart in it.

Kuroo hadn’t refuted. “Did you have fun?” he’d asked, instead, and Kenma had pulled him down to sit beside him because this had started to feel really cheesy, caught Kuroo in a slight surprise, and said it to his face—

“Sort or. Our team was good. I made friends, I guess.” At the admission, Kuroo had blinked out of widened eyes and closed his gaping mouth. He’d smirked, that Kuro smirk, all sly and crooked like they’d just slipped past an opposing team’s guard and won the match, his eyes half-shut as ever, and Kenma had remembered the hands they were still holding. When keeping them connected had burnt like the worst of fireworks—the dizzying flash, the awful explosion that sneaked up on you, the singe of getting too close—he let himself slip away, measured up the first of many distances that’d come between them, and stayed on his end of it.

Kuroo was right so many months ago. When you get fired up, sometimes you forget your surroundings. On his final year at Nekoma, when Kenma had stayed on the team, too, he convinced himself that he wanted to help his friends clear the stages and play another game with Shouyou.

He comes back to Kuroo’s call—oi, Kenma—the weight of his arm around his shoulders, trusting to lean a part of himself on Kenma’s smaller back, and Kenma just shrugs the other off as much as he wants to lean back into him. They’ve been window-shopping for superstitious Chinese mementos. “You’re heavy.”

Kuroo peeks over Kenma’s head, at the phone in his hands. “This level really got you, huh? Though you’re almost there. If you wanna sit around and people-watch while you’re at it, I’ll cover you.”

Kenma frowns up at him. It’s the kind that fails to be anything more deciding, not unlike the trouble of forming the right words.

Saving his progress on the game, he puts it away for now. Remember the time limit, because after this it won’t just be one year. And so he asks Kuroo where they’ll go next.

There’s too much of the city for them to complete everything, and here they are part travelers, part wanderers.

Street cats, Kenma thinks. Ambling down the roadside and checking out points of interest. Following the rumors they’ve come across, and making their own discoveries by luck and chances. They linger at such places, quaint corner-shops and parks and food vendors, things to do in Yokohama, but never do they stay for too long. When they make a stop to people-watch, Kenma scribbles more ideas on his notes, Kuroo chiming in from time to time. And as they walk, without a device in his hands, he finds that it’s almost too easy for their fingers to graze.

Sometimes, they try to give back what the city has to offer—

“It’s not even New Year’s,” Kenma says, when Kuroo slips in a 100-yen coin for the omikuji stand at a shrine.

Kuroo quirks a brow at him as he takes out a numbered stick from the box. “Do you want to be here for hatsumode with three other million people? On second thought, that’s still better than in Tokyo. You always got lost even with the whole team surrounding you.”

With a sigh, Kenma follows suit, shakes the wooden box after him, and finds his own fortune.

“Besides,” Kuroo continues, his omikuji in hand, “it could be good luck for our journey…I got future curse.”

“Pfft.”

—and other times they’re freeloaders, like when they visit the free-entry Nogeyama Zoo. Fondly, Kenma remarks how the red pandas remind him of Shouyou. Kuroo laughs at a clumsy lion cub he’s dubbed Lev, garnering himself a few weirded-out looks at the hyena-like noises he makes, (including from the animals themselves). And while Kenma isn’t good with animals, Kuroo gets the spotlight in the petting zoo as everything climbs him like a tree. Kenma gets to watch him, at least. He keeps watching, somehow.

He sends pictures to an old group chat.

Kenma
>> tiger is tora
>> the penguin is for shouhei but kuroo said giraffe
>> kagu bird is for shibayama
>> lion cub is lev
>> still looking for the others

Taketora
>> What about it that reminded u guys of me
>> Bravery and courage?

Kenma
>> your hair

Shouhei
>> ( •̀ᄇ• ́)ﻭ✧

Kenma
>> also your name

Yakkun
>> Kenma you’re a gift

Kuro
>> Update: yaku’s the giraffe ‘cus giraffes kick lions

Lev
>> But Yaku-san isn't tall??

They have to leave when there’s an announcement of a snake escapee. Kenma might’ve suffered a mild sunburn, and Kuroo’s clothes are still damp from when the lion cub had jumped into a pond and splashed him. Even though they stink a bit like the zoo, Kenma refuses to go into a sento, or a public onsen, or whatever it is that involves getting almost naked around strangers. Kuroo proposes they go later at night, the less crowded hours.

“You won’t really go a week without a bath, right? Kenma—?”

As the Minato Mirai district lights up in spectrum against the approaching darkness, they sit at the pier for a moment to rest—mostly due to Kenma finally digging his heels in. Over this side of the ocean, the water sings in blue waves and casts breeze that tastes of salt, though not the unpleasant and cloying kind, and they let themselves breathe.

He’s tempted to ask, how is this different, because they’ve had their fair share of excursions via school trips and the volleyball club’s outings (even if Kenma had to be dragged into them), before deciding against it.

“This is where that Pikachu Parade is held in summer, right?” Kuroo mentions, leaning back on his palms and craning his head skyward. “I remember that’s something you might like. Sorry you won’t get to see it this time around, though.”

“‘S okay,” Kenma mumbles in reply.

Because for all the extra arguments they’ve had today, the aches setting in his legs, the many times they jostle shoulders and lean against one another that he’s never realized to count until now, it’s nice to know they can still be them no matter where they go. Kuroo and Kenma. Sitting together at the pier, watching the waves and lights dance under a spring night, Kenma leans into Kuroo once more, hands daring to be held by the graze of pinky fingers, and thinks he might be okay with this kind of peace, too.

vi. [Sometimes Kuro is embarrassing.]

And in the end, they return to the bus to unpack and organize their belongings.

“Why,” Kenma asks flatly. “It’s only a week.”

“We’re not turning this into your nest,” Kuroo says, putting away Kenma’s clothes once he’s run out of his.

“I don’t nest.”

“Uh-huh. Your room was only immaculate up to grade school. Everything since is a disaster.”

“I hated getting sweaty from practice, so I still did my laundry. You’re the one wearing yesterday’s underwear.”

“Kenma, how—?!”

After that, they try to come up with ways of using the portable stove inside without setting everything on fire, and sort of fail. This old model of Nekoma VBC’s isn’t so much a bus as an elongated car, sitting between ten to fifteen people in close spaces; with the club’s popularity rising since Battle at the Trash Heap, Kenma supposes it’s now obsolete for a reason. There’s little floor space to lay out their sleeping bags, much less side-by-side, and they settle with the four-seater backseat and the space right in front of it. Most of their luggage goes inside the upper compartments, with some of Kenma’s strewn about the seats for easy access. Dust hides in the nook and crannies, like someone had done a quick sweep, and he cleans up the remaining cobwebs.

They do end up lying across the backseat, Kuroo curled up on top because he’s too tall and prone to falling asleep on Kenma, anyway, and just bask in the last few minutes of dusk. Kenma begrudgingly thanks those years of playing volleyball so he can better withstand Kuroo’s seventy-five kilograms sprawled on him, and keeps his hands from brushing against Kuroo’s skin.

One of them has a revelation.

“You can drive?” Kuroo asks him again.

Kenma frowns. “I’m not incompetent. Driving is a pain and I avoid it when I can. This trip is supposed to be your break. I can drive while you sleep.”

“Of course I know that,” Kuroo says, every bit of confident about it. “When you put your mind into it, you’re the most determined and capable person I know. It’s just that you haven’t told me this before.”

“Taketora taught me. Back in our third year,” Kenma says, ducking behind his phone, before staring back at Kuroo a second later to tell him, “You’re embarrassing.” Because Kuroo’s said a lot more of such things before, so why should this feel any different. He watches Kuroo rotate about his usual responses, the mock-affronted look before a clever smirk takes up half of his face, one corner of his lips higher than the other, and then the crinkles around his eyes that might be carved out of something fond. There’s never been any need to hide from Kuroo.

“You’ve got a little mean streak, don’t you know?” Kuroo asks. Something about his eyes, his smile, feels more like gazing than merely looking.

“You still smell really bad,” Kenma says, switching to Kuroo’s phone. “Also, Whiteshadow’s in your game.”

Kuroo falls off the seat in his hurry to catch a sight, and a picture, of the Rare Cat.

“I won.” Wide-eyed, Kuroo hurries to tell him this, his triumphant grin all too smug. “I got Whiteshadow before Sawamura did. Ha!”

Yeah, Kenma thinks, dazed by Kuroo’s most trivial win and his too-wide smile. In some ways, this feels different.

They sleep through the hours—

Close to midnight, there are still a few people in the cheap 24-hours public onsen they’ve found, though Kenma can’t say he would’ve avoided it at all cost. As he sinks deeper into the warm water, the soreness in his muscles start to ease, and the night’s chill—along with the place’s poor maintenance, probably—keeps everything from being too hot for him. He closes his eyes and sighs. Two seats beside him, he can hear Kuroo’s grin.

But Kenma isn’t good with people.

“So why did you dye your hair?” asks a college-aged guy. Along with his two friends and an older man dozing off in the corner, they’re the only other people still here in the onsen.

Kenma averts his eyes. “Eh…just because.”

His friend perks up. “Is it for a cosplay? Are you going to AnimeJapan?”

“‘M not.”

“Oh, well—that’s okay, too. Is it okay if I touch it?”

“Are you a girl?”

“Now, guys,” Kuroo drawls, sliding closer to Kenma. He leans back with his arms on either side on the backrest, smirks abound, and all in all, it screams asshole. Half-naked or not, Kenma’s about to draw blood and he doesn’t care whose. “We’re on a road trip and my guy here is a bit tired after walking all day. We can give him a break, can’t we?”

And somehow, from there, Kuroo stirs the conversation to another topic. The three friends are not on a road trip, but there isn’t a shortage of questions to ask about it. Kuroo’s answers are polite and clinical. Kenma listens, picks up subtle changes in his tone as he retells moments with Kenma in the picture, and saves them to dwell on later. 

When they’ve left shortly after to catch the last train, and it’s just the two of them once more, he huffs, rising up a little from the water. “Did you have to tell them everything? It’s kinda embarrassing.”

“Hey, I saved them from you,” says Kuroo. “Heard from Lev that you were a strict senpai.”

“That’s just Lev. We needed the future ace to be in sync with the future setter. I still skipped practice sometimes.”

Kuroo looks rather proud when he grins this time. “And went to Nationals,” he reminds Kenma, and, well, sometimes Kenma does recall other achievements better, like when he’d found all the shrines in Breath of the Wild without any outside tips. Dropping the last of his bad boy act—if he was ever playing in the first place—Kuroo stretches out his legs and tips his head back to the ceiling. “I was surprised, ‘cus you said you weren’t gonna stay on the team.”

One hundred and eighty-seven centimeters, Kenma recalls the stats, when his eyes stay on Kuroo once more. Kuroo is tall. Where the water reaches up to Kenma’s chin when he hunches over, it climbs only as far as Kuroo’s clavicles at most. Drops of it pool in the hollow of his collarbones as Kuroo shifts to sit higher. His hair’s wet and down, sticking to his skin, trickling more water down reddened cheeks. The lines of his throat strain from the angle he’s tilting his head back.

And for all the way he slinks like a cat, Kuroo is seventy-five kilograms of bones and muscles shifting underneath his slender frame. Kenma watches the waterdrops trail down his sternum, making rivulets out of the defined lines on his chest and abdomen before submerging with the rest of them. Under the water, hipbones peek out from under the towel he’s got wrapped low on his hips, and a fine trail of black hair…

“—Kenma?” Kuroo calls after him, as Kenma makes to stand.

“Water’s too hot,” Kenma just says in return, gripping the too-worn towel around his own waist, and doesn’t look at Kuroo any longer than that. He grabs a stool by the far wall, hopes it’s not as disgusting as the floor or every other questionable stain in this place (because even if he’s went days without a bath once or twice for a game, there’s a limit to it), and settles down with his back to Kuroo.

“Wash each other’s back again?” Kuroo asks, and Kenma gives a small nod. “Okaaay—whatever you want, kitten.”

“Gross,” Kenma says.

It might’ve not been the best route to choose, in hindsight. Sitting right behind him, Kuroo’s much closer, fingers deft in kneading the shampoo into Kenma’s hair and massaging the aches from his back—the latter of which a skill he’d learned back when Kenma often got joint pains after gruelling volleyball matches. He wishes there’s something for his own hands and mind to play, like old time’s sneaking his games to the bath and impressing Kuroo, but here he’s left alone with his thoughts and curled-in fists.

“You’re really tense,” Kuroo says, matter-of-fact, and doesn’t seek eye contact yet. For all the strength bundled in the weight of him, the absolutely suffocating way he clings when they sleep, his razzing and pushing Kenma forward, he’s always been patient when it matters. “Did those guys really bother you?”

Kenma snorts, at that. “Not really…”

“Hey,” Kuroo calls, anyway. “You know I’m glad you’re here with me, right? I mean, sure, you got sunburned a bit and I think I stepped on some animal poop, and sometimes we have to bathe with naked weirdos, and we might starve a little and get all cranky because we have no budget—if I didn’t crash the bus and get us killed first—but I’m glad we’re here together.”

At this, Kenma heaves in a breath. He unclenches his hands, lowering his shoulders out of their hunch, and peers over at Kuroo, anyway. “We’re in a public onsen,” he says, somewhat breathless (and not from the steam), because what the hell is he supposed to say to that, anyway.

“Uhh…yeah.”

“We’re naked.”

Kuroo wiggles his brows. “It’s romantic?”

Kenma sighs. “Why’re you like this…”

Still, he tucks a smile behind his bangs, the rapidfire of a blood-red heart in his chest, and wordlessly offers to wash Kuroo’s back.

vii. [Look for the signs.]

Back in their bus, it’s Kenma who drags Kuroo along, pushes him down on the backseat, and throws him the sleeping bag and pillows. Kuroo’s study doesn’t end with the big exams at the end of his fourth year, and he’s got two more years of poly-curriculum ahead (and whatever hell or highwater that’ll come after). He must’ve run himself ragged overthinking about this trip, too, and there would be nothing left if the dark circles overtake his one uncovered eye.

Memorizing the geography in games he likes is instinct, at this point, but here Kenma turns on the GPS and sets their next course. Driving games aren’t his favorite, either, but he’s willing to give it the benefit of the doubt when it’s paired with an adventure. They exit through Tomei Expressway and drive along the route, leaving the Kanto region, crossing into Yamanashi Prefecture. When most of the urban lights have faded into the distant night, Kenma looks up past the slight condensation on the window, past a cloudless sky, and finds pixelated-like stars.

Halfway, he pulls over at a parking area after Kuroo makes some distressed noise when a passing truck blares its klaxon. (Kenma flips its driver the middle finger.) He digs past the pillows and bedhead to wrestle his headphones over Kuroo’s ears as a last line of defense, hits his own head against the ceiling while he’s at it, mutters a few curses, and resumes driving after a bathroom break. These things he does just to glimpse Kuroo’s restful face, really.

Kenma knows he doesn’t need to do anything grand. Sometimes Kuroo would just wake up with a stupidly happy grin, when he got the chance to tease Kenma first thing in the morning. And it’s troublesome because there’s nothing to act as comparisons; when Kenma plays those dating sims or any game where his character can build relationships, there’s always a clear point between the stages, enemies and acquaintances and friends and beyond.

He might not know what to do around people, or how to form the right words, but like a boss fight’s mechanics, he’s learned to analyze them by constant vigilance and a tad of repetition. He knows when Kuroo’s lying or circling around conversations or trying to get a rise out of people, the same way Kuroo knows Kenma’s own tells. With this, when he’d researched it, or asked Shouyou, or followed those tutorials, what to look for, he was stuck at the same level.

He thinks back to his last year at Nekoma, Kuroo’s first year in college, the sense of absence in the new routines he’d built. Kenma had attributed it to having more alone time in hand, with no Kuroo Tetsurou, skipping a few more practices, and no upperclassmen ordering him around to clean up the gym afterward. He thinks of Shouyou, invited over for a day around Tokyo and gaming sessions and a sleepover, when he’d called Kenma out on losing for the tenth time.

“You looked lonely,” Shouyou had said, with the intense expression he’d sometimes wear during a serious match, facing bigger and stronger opponents, let’s play where there’s no second chance—until it’s Game Over. At this, Kenma had sighed around the smallest smile and told him about it, in jumbled words and long pauses, and they’d begun their awkward research.

“We’ve just always been like this,” was Kenma’s response to most of the signs they’d found. You’re happy just seeing each other; you put effort into making one another happy; you like to be in close contact with each other, and hate being separated for too long.

Undeterred, Shouyou still chimed in to the bullet list they’d covered. “Most importantly,” he’d added, because dating his setter for a year-and-a-half had given him a tad more wisdom, “when you’re with them, you feel like—like bwah! And guwah!”

“Why does it sound like a volleyball spike...”

“Kageyama’s a volleyball-head,” Shouyou had said, scrunchy-faced and hands squeezing an imaginary ball in the air. “But! For Kenma, it might be like your favorite game? Like, it’s comforting to play it over and over again, and listening to the soundtrack makes you go all—wham!”

Kenma tightens his grip on the wheel.

Sometimes it happens, at the most random moments in time and in the smallest gestures, these things he’d noticed before but didn’t pay so much attention—like when Kuroo navigated them so people don’t bump into Kenma as much, not because Kenma couldn’t do it himself but so he could focus on his phone and/or game; when Kuroo told him endless trivias about apple pie and laughed in his ugly, snorting, hyena laugh; when Kuroo said that Kenma’s the most determined and capable person he knew—and while Kenma worries about other people’s opinions of him, he’s never had to worry about Kuroo’s. Kenma trusts him, except now he doesn’t know this and he can’t figure it out. And the way Kuroo had acted and looked tonight…

It’s never as loud as Shouyou had made it sound, nothing clear or defining, or screams, I love this guy. Maybe it’s the deal with childhood friends, or because they’re different and they shout in different ways.

But, maybe—

He squints at the road ahead, when the brake lights of a car in front flares red at the right angle to blind him for a second. Red. Kenma blinks his sights back and thinks of the color. His favorite sweater. Nekoma. We flow like the blood in the body. Kuroo’s cheeks, blush-red from the bath.

“Oh, that was for you, though,” Shouyou had continued. “If you want to see how he feels, you can always just hold his hands, or kiss him. Kageyama always gets flustered.”

“You can’t just do that, Shouyou...”

Still.

When he’s behind on Mario Kart and the likes of racing games, with only so much time left before crossing the finish line, what else is there to do to win other than to catch up?

viii. [So show him some affection.]

He wakes Kuroo up some time before sunrise and shoves a thermos of fresh coffee at him.

The trip is bound to mess with their sleep schedules a little. It’s nothing Kenma isn’t used to, but Kuroo doesn’t have much time or energy for 5AM runs anymore and has since been waking up at latter hours.

Kuroo squints at it, weary, as he takes the offered drink readily. “Is it poisonous?”

Kenma rolls his eyes. He sits down on the seat in front of Kuroo, facing sideways and leaning his side against the backrest. “I can make coffee just fine. Brewed it outside with the stove.”

“It’s cute how you do that, you know,” Kuroo says in-between sips, smirking. “‘Brewed it’, like, uh, brewing potions or whatchamacallit.”

“Isn’t that a word used with coffee often?”

“Yeah, but you also do it with other stuff. Like some kind of nerd lingo. Except when you don't feel like it and you shorten words to within an inch of their syllables.”

“I don’t think those count as lingo… And it doesn’t stand out, anyway.”

Kuroo’s grin holds its place, but his eyes soften and crinkle at the edges. “I guess it’s kinda endearing.”

Humming, Kenma keeps his sights on the screen and directs his character to wipe out the enemy’s party in one last stand.

“Do you like it?”

“Eh?”

“I added some of those salt-caramel candies from the konbini here,” Kenma informs. “Since you like salted mackerel pikes.”

A few seconds of silence feel like tens of minutes. Kenma’s tempted to peer discreetly from behind his bangs, but at once, Kuroo breaks into a laugh.

“I don’t think you can convert a fishy taste like that to a drink,” he says. When Kenma pouts at this, Kuroo’s smile just widens. “But it’s good, yeah. I like it. Thank you. That’s also kinda creative, by the way.”

At 6AM, by the middle of March, the sun has yet to rise and predawn cobalt blue still shrouds the skies, lightening up by the minutes. It tints the bus’ red-white-black interior in blue, contrasts against the red of Kuroo’s old Nekoma jacket and the warmth of his smile. When Kenma’s entire party dies an explosive death, he decides this might be both easier and harder that he’d thought, tells Kuroo they’re in Fujikawa SA and the sunrise he wants to see will come up soon, and lets him guide the both of them outside with held hands.

“Heh. Look at that,” Kuroo says, tugging his arm and pointing at an emerging pink sky beyond the snow-capped mountaintops.

“You’re hopeless,” says Kenma.

“What’s wrong with a sunrise over Mount Fuji?” asks Kuroo, and Kenma lets himself watch in place of words.

Right here beside Kuroo, mornings have never been so warm, either.

He still holds his hand.

ix. [There’s a cat.]

They eat Taketora’s recommended bananas for breakfast, raid the konbini for cheap snacks, and at the souvenir shop, Kenma buys a grilled mackerel keychain for Kuroo.

Kuroo grins. “I’m gonna treasure it,” he says, and he looks at it like when Kenma spent his saved-up game money for the new volleyball Kuroo had wanted back in middle school. At sunrise, hands all too purposely held, the pink-orange sky had made it a challenge to discern the colors overlaying Kuroo’s face. Now, Kenma watches his hazel eyes as he’s distracted, the sharp quirk of his lips and dimpled cheeks, the way his fingers play with the keychain—how his amusement softens at the edges more than some-years-ago-Kuroo—and thinks he wouldn’t mind collecting all sorts of weird things for him.

...But maybe not something alive yet.

“No,” Kenma says, when Kuroo finds a calico cat on the streets of Nagoya. After a four-hours drive to Aichi, during which he’d been jolted out of sleep by insensible drivers who then also slowed them at the toll, he’s still quite irritable.

Kuroo and the cat look back at him in sync.

“She has a collar, so if we’re taking her in, it’s just to find her owner,” Kenma says.

This is how he ends up carrying an old feline around in the pouch of his hoodie. He doesn’t dislike cats in particular, and he’d befriended one back in his childhood home, but this one sucks up to Kuroo by being all good and proper, somehow, and it annoys him to no end when Kuroo falls for it. So Kenma offers to carry her, ignoring her dissatisfied stare with an internal smirk.

While the address on her tag is farther away, it sort of works for them as they don’t have a concrete schedule of places to visit, and there aren’t many events and festivals in March along their route. Sort of like déjà vu, Kuroo holds nothing back, and they first arrive at an arcade which specializes in out-of-production and nostalgic video games from all over the world. Still, Kenma can tell he’s a bit nervous, probably questioning his lack of knowledge about games, but Kenma doesn’t hold back, either, and lets most of his fascination show. It’s also a distraction from the wow, Kuro must be really in love with you his mind is playing on repeat.

It’s like those things you can never unsee—that even though he loses every time and grumbles about it, Kuroo’s quite bad at fighting back his smile when he thinks Kenma isn’t looking; that he still doesn’t go easy on Kenma and plays the best he can; that Kenma really, really likes his genuine grins and terrible bedhead and ugly laughter.

So tell him, the voice in his head says, sounding bored more than anything. Isn’t it the good and honest truth? And you’ve never needed to hide from him.

Not now, Kenma muses. Because they’ve got a couple of days left on this trip before Kuroo will be diving back into his study, getting his medical degree, and tackling all the boss fights spread across the years to come (and he’ll play his best at that, too, because that’s just the kind of person he is). He thinks of their one-year separation, how lonely and unsettled he’d felt when they were just childhood best friends, and decides this isn’t the right timing for such a move.

And how long have you been in love with him again? the sarcastic voice then points out.

Kenma looks down at the cat they’ve smuggled in his hoodie. “I remember now. You’re sort of like Keiji-kun, aren’t you?”

Somehow, she meows wryly at him.

They’re thrown out of the arcade some time later for ‘cheating’, as Kenma has robbed them of all their high scores and prize tickets. Kuroo joins the cat by laughing at him.

For this stop, the cat is their guide.

It’s not much trouble following her, when she jumps out of Kenma’s hoodie-pouch and lands perfectly on her feet. With looks over the shoulder, steps halted in waiting, and a swishing, tri-colored tail, she insists on them following her. She tours them around Japan’s third-most populous city, its backwater alleys, past the Nagoya Castle and cherry blossom trees in early bloom, and other whimsical parks and shrines that linger in another period of time. Kenma lets himself slip into a daze, Kuroo walking right by his side and grasping his hand every now and then to pull him back on track. And, oh, does it snap Kenma out of it pretty fast—

—until they clash into an argument.

“It’s a fucking three-and-a-half hour walk,” Kenma points out, on the subject of the cat’s home in a town inside Ama District. “Why aren’t we taking the bus or train?”

“That cancels out the point of a road trip,” Kuroo argues.

“Railroads are roads.”

“We’re currently leading a frugal existence.”

“This is stupid. Road trips are stupid. I’m not gonna walk seven hours back-to-back.”

“Not even for her?” Kuroo picks the calico cat up and dangles her in front of his chest. She’s lost respect for Kuroo pretty quickly. “She came all the way here by herself.”

Are you gonna lose to her?

Kenma’s eye twitches.

He hates losing even more.

“Fine,” he begrudgingly concedes, “but only if we stop by the science museum in Sakae first.” Because if Kuroo insists on spending their oh-so-precious budget into making this trip something Kenma can enjoy, Kenma will do just the same for him. Kuroo isn’t the only one who has done their research. Past the millisecond surprise flitting past his features, Kuroo bites his lower lip like he’s holding back a beaming grin.

As it turns out, Kuroo’s just as, if not more, engrossed by the museum’s exhibits as Kenma had been by the arcade. (And it’s killing two birds with one stone, isn’t it, if Kenma’s heart swells with happiness as well by proxy?) Also like in the arcade, they’re kicked out, too, after Kuroo provokes another guy into some intellectual debate, smiling all passive-aggressive and rising up a minor ruckus when those who understand the subject divide themselves into two factions.

And in the end, Kuroo apologizes to the rest and vice versa. They’ve exchanged phone numbers, because this isn’t over yet, and become okay enough acquaintances.

“They think all those things were invented by Edison and not Tesla.” Kuroo scoffs. “Can you believe that, Kenma? Kenma, don’t run—”

From there, after a late lunch and rest, they let loose the cat once more, only once in awhile nudging her back onto the routes their GPS shows. In turn, she leads them through alleyway shortcuts and behind-the-scene passages with quite the views. Her supposed home is on Ama District, in the rural town of Kanie. Kenma thinks of it as an escort mission.

He is back to over-awareness, with the fleeting but heavy glances (because all the words unsaid can be heavy sometimes), the shoulder bumps, these hands close enough to hold—maybe asking to be held—and the widening of distances only for them to fall back into it as easy as breathing. It’s just as natural to settle into their usual pace again, when Kuroo baits him into another conversation—even if Kenma’s side of it mostly consists of facial expressions and lazy hums—and when Kenma resumes his game with Kuroo chipping in his observations.

On a quiet street, without much sudden loud noises or similar distractions, Kenma takes Kuroo’s hand in his as the latter is in the midst of talking; Kuroo stutters, just the slightest but noticeable to his best friend, and continues on when Kenma keeps staring at the road ahead. He might’ve held back, too.

Kenma persists on not complaining all the way to Kanie, helped along by the temperate weather and spring breeze, though mostly by some weird sort of competitiveness. Always only a few steps behind the cat, he glares at Kuroo when the latter offers to carry him by second hour. They’ve been walking around the city for too long. Now, as the sky is fading into black, they’ll have to take a train ride back, anyway, and they might as well hold hands through all this.

They knock on a few wrong doors before finding the cat’s owners, a grateful family of seven who confess they’d lost her just this noon, really, while visiting a relative in Nagoya. “Oh, she’s usually always at our heels,” the grandmother notes airily, as she hands them each an umeboshi onigiri in gratitude.

Kuroo and Kenma glance at each other, bow to the family, and excuse their way out.

Both hands shoved into his jeans’ pockets, Kuroo whistles. “So…”

“Not. A. Word,” Kenma growls.

At 8PM, it’s started to rain in drizzles.

Below a store’s awnings, Kenma sits down on the street curb and refuses to move.

“What are you, a cat?” jokes Kuroo.

Still, Kuroo crouches down in front of him, and after glaring at Kuroo’s ever-reliable back some more, Kenma climbs on. His jacket goes over their heads like a makeshift umbrella. With Kenma holding on like a lifeline, Kuroo begins their sprint to the train station, splashing past streetlight-glistened puddles and cities at night.

Standing out by the platform, they’re surely a sore sight.

“Did you know some Nordic countries have a wife-carrying competition?” Kuroo says. A tad out of breath and drenched in rain, he gives Kenma a grin over his shoulder. “Since the winner gets the wife’s weight in beer, you’re gonna have to carry me for max profit.”

Kenma tightens his hold around Kuroo and buries his face in the crook of his neck. It’s raining, and he’s never been so warm.

He’s really, really so fucking in love with him.

x.

“Why did you pick the Golden Route?” Kenma asks.

It’s well into the night when they’ve stumbled into their bus and changed into a fresh set of clothes. Lights are turned on, and the rain seems keen on falling for another while. Despite everything, Kuroo still ends up with his head on Kenma’s lap as if his thighs are the usual pillows, and Kenma lets him be like always. He’s picked up his game again, one he’s played over and over through the years, muscle memory and reflexes unfazed by all his inner conflict. It’s not as fun when it’s too easy to beat, but it has its moments.

“Well…” Kuroo scratches the back of his head. “It’s kinda embarrassing.”

“I wouldn’t be too surprised, then.”

“I just closed my eyes and pointed at a map,” says Kuroo, with all the seriousness in the world.

“Eh. Really?”

“Yep.”

Lazily, Kenma pulls at the other’s hair. “Kuro.”

“Ugh. You’ll laugh.”

Kenma looks at him questioningly. How’s that any different than the usual? At this, Kuroo’s eyes widen and he falls into a momentary hush. Head turned in a thoughtful look out the window, he lets out a chuckle when he catches Kenma’s gaze once more.

“It’s you, okay? I was thinking of you, because you were going with me and all, and your face was always in the back of my mind and your eyes are gold, so”—Kuroo flourishes his arms—”the Golden Route.”

Kenma stops. Actually, physically lifts up his thumbs from the buttons, even as his sight doesn’t stray from the battle playing out on the screen, his mind whirring.

“Pfft…”

“I knew it,” Kuroo mutters, letting his arms fall with a thump against the backseat. “What, is it lame that I think of my closest friend?”

“No,” Kenma tells him, in all honesty. Peering down, finding Kuroo’s gaze tilted up to meet him right back, Kenma gives up a small smile. Feels it more in the way all of him warms up against the night and eases out of tenseness, really. He knows it doesn’t have to be anything grand.

This is when Kuroo’s cheeks tint in pink, and not the fact that he’s been draping himself over Kenma’s legs so casually.

“So what’ll happen after this? Next term?”

“How unusual of you to ask so many questions,” Kuroo says. “Not a bad thing, though,” he adds with a chuckle, when Kenma scrunches up his nose a him. “You mostly just make it obvious when you don’t like something. Other than games or Chibi-chan, I’d have to guess the rest, and you have no enthusiasm for most thing.”

Has he ever guessed that Kenma might be in love with him, then?

“But, yeah. I suppose I’ll be busier,” he continues. “I’ll need to rotate departments with a practicing physician, attend conferences and research studies and stuff, and maybe pay affiliated hospitals some visits—so, yeah.”

Kenma hums, and resumes his game.

“We’ll still be friends, of course,” Kuroo says.

Click, click-click-click, sounds the press of Kenma’s fingers on the buttons, the pitter-patter of rainfall against the bus’ windows.

“Still best best friends.”

Click-click-click.

“—or anything we want to be, really.”

Click-click.

“Even if this timing isn’t the best, we can always wait for each other. You know, like, for the official stuff. ...And date later, I mean. If that isn’t clear.”

Click. Click-click.

“Kenmaifyoudon’tsaysomethingI’mgonnadie.”

So Kenma does, in his own way. Kuroo’s rolled over and pressed his burning-up face into Kenma’s knees like he’s muffling a scream. His game placed to the side for now, he tips Kuroo’s head up, hands cradling pinkish cheeks and fingers slipping into messy hair, and hunches over to meet him. Fuck it, he thinks. All this separation crap. Kuroo’s bangs out of the way, Kenma watches his eyes widen, hazel as ever and speckled gold from cheap overhead lights, and dives in to kiss the daylight out of him.

It’s still more of a light kiss, despite the initial crash-land. Badum, badum, counts his rapid-fire heart. Eyes closed shut against it all, Kenma feels Kuroo reciprocate a few beats later, kisses all patient and urgent and relieved, in the way he sighs and leans into it. Time stretches on between them, as it’s bound to do in giddiness and first times, and this is when he rediscovers some things he’d noticed before but never dwelled on, treasures hidden in the dunes—

That Kuroo’s lips are softer, because somehow he remembers to drink enough water. That for all the volleyball-made callouses along his arms, the skin of his face is smooth under Kenma’s palms, cheeks blush-warm, and Kenma takes care to just hold him like so. That there are some acne scars left along Kuroo’s hairline, when he thumbs against them in the lightest graze. He smells the remnant of rain and tastes the umeboshi they had for dinner today. He shivers, when Kuroo tucks two-toned strands behind the curve of his ear and lets his hand stay.

They bump noses and foreheads too often, with the awkward angle, and Kenma’s back starts to protest a little. Parting from the kiss, he holds Kuroo’s shoulders down so the latter won’t sprain his neck chasing after him. Long hair curtains his field of vision to Kuroo only.

“You’re staring,” Kenma half-says, half-breathes out.

“I don’t get to see your eyes like this often.” Kuroo’s voice is raspy from such a simple move. Kenma can’t really blame him. “You aren’t exactly a fan of eye contact, you know.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Well, I like them. They match your hair. And I really like you.”

He cards his hand through Kuroo’s hair, damp from the rain but still so familiar, waterfall of black strands between his fingers. On the corner of this backseat, his game resumes unpaused—he’s losing the level, from the sound of it.

“I wanted to make you happy, on this trip,” Kuroo confesses, resting a cheek on Kenma’s knee, “‘cus I thought I’d be too busy to be a good partner. Figured we could spend time together before the next term started, and see if maybe there’d be a chance you liked me back. That sounds kinda selfish, doesn’t it? You don’t like this kind of thing.”

“I don’t like volleyball, either,” says Kenma. “And yet I spent six years and some more playing. I got sick often.”

“You don’t have to be so blunt, ya know?”

He huffs. “You didn’t make me do anything, so why do you think I still did it?”

Kuroo blinks up at him. “…because you wanted to level-up? And you loved the team?”

“Even before we had a team.”

When Kuroo proves he can really blush, Kenma is glad he resisted averting his eyes. “This isn’t fair. I was supposed to, like, win you over with my charm. What happened?”

Well, you already did it years ago, I guess.

“Were you and Yakkun talking about that, the other day?”

“He might’ve known about my crush on you, yeah. And burned me mercilessly. And told me to brave up.”

“Hmm,” Kenma hums, with his fingers tangled in Kuroo’s perpetual bedhead, and he’s already braided a small part of Kuroo’s bangs using the tips and tricks the Hinata siblings had shown him. The sheer rush from the kiss fizzles down, but ever-lingering. They’ll have so much more to discuss, of course—but it’s a new gravity just acknowledging this between them, and there’s lightness in his chest instead of cumbersome weight. “I don’t mind waiting.”

“Yeah?” Kuroo lets himself ask again.

“Mm-hmm.”

Because he’s not alone, really. They’re both players in the game, and it takes two to make the choice.

“You’re hopeless with dating, anyway,” Kenma adds. “It’s not like you’d date anyone else in the meanwhile.”

In turn, Kuroo gives up one of his best grins. “I’m definitely still the better kisser. And you don’t get to judge me about social interactions in general.”

Kuroo’s still looking at his eyes, when Kenma lifts his gaze back up. Kenma knows he doesn’t talk as much, and he has no intention of forcing a change anytime soon, but Kuroo might’ve always been listening, grasping at every word and silent hint like he’d like to treasure such a privilege. Arms perched on Kenma’s either side, Kuroo rises up on his hands to meet him.

“Hey, Kenma?” he calls, steady and dependable as ever despite his earlier fumbling. With the rain keen on falling and further cooling the night, he is a warmth Kenma welcomes. “Can I kiss you again?”

“…Idiot,” Kenma mumbles, and smiles, when Kuroo just laughs and leans in to kiss him.

xi. [We’re still awake.]

Neither of them can really sleep, despite the forehead kisses and hand-holding and midnight conversations—so much embarrassing as they’re exhilarating. Sort of calming, too, even. By 2AM, Kuroo paws at him until they switch up positions. With Kenma now leaning back against his chest, he wraps both arms around Kenma’s waist, tucks his chin over Kenma’s shoulder, and peers at the game he’s playing.

“See—there,” Kuroo points out in the shadows, the overhead lights traded for the darkness and gentle streetlamps glow outside. “Right after that blast, your shield guy isn’t being targeted anymore.”

“Tank,” Kenma corrects. He adjusts his party’s strategy accordingly. “You remember more about this one.”

“It’s kinda like volleyball, no? You have the attackers, the decoys, the blockers—and, hey, you’re like the control tower. No wonder you were a damn good setter.”

“‘M not really. It was the team that was strong.”

“It was all of us,” insists Kuroo.

Kenma glances over at him, finds his half-lidded hazel eyes and his full conviction in them, and peers around anywhere else. “I like you, too,” he mumbles, just because. To Kuroo, in this space shared just between them, and a declaration for whatever else that might overhear.

At the confession, Kuroo makes a strangled sound and tightens his hold around him, nestling his face into the crook of his neck. “You could’ve said it louder, don’t you know.”

Kenma gives him a peck on the cheek, just as a final blow.

xii. [Adapt.]

“…yes, Murai-sensei. When is it due?”

It’s the mere start of their third day when Kuroo’s molecular biology professor, one of the several contacts he never puts on vibrate or silence, calls with news that has Kuroo chewing on his lips as they’re driving to Nara. Sitting up beside him on the passenger seat, barely awake at all, Kenma would’ve liked to lie on him until they’re asleep again.

“Something bad?” Kenma asks, processing the gist of it. Something about Kuroo’s latest research paper and an important name in the field wanting to peer review it.

Ending the call and tucking away his phone, Kuroo shakes his head. “No. No, it’s—good. It’s too sudden, but a good thing. Definitely not an everyday opportunity. It’s not right now sudden, but if I take it, we won’t be able to continue the trip.”

“She’s the professor you look up to, right?”

“Yeah,” Kuroo says, knuckles turning white around the wheel. “I might’ve ruined this, didn’t I?”

“Kuro.”

“I was selfish. This could’ve been better for you. Like, back in Yokohama, there’s a Pikachu thing in August, isn’t it? You’d like that. We missed it and others things you might like and probably wasted a lot of time—”

“Kuro,” Kenma hisses. “I know we’re putting things on pause but if you don’t shut up, I’m gonna kiss you until you pass out, crash this bus, and then kill you myself.”

With a heaved breath, Kuroo breaks off his slightly ragged breathing. Hands still white-knuckled around the wheel and eyes wide in staring at the road ahead, he musters up a chuckle. “I’ve never heard you dress-up your sentences so much.”

“August is summer. Too hot to be outside.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want to see everything.”

“Okay.”

“Road trips are stupid,” Kenma says again. “I don’t like that everything here is a pain—driving, cooking, sleeping, even the bathroom and whatnot. I don’t like public baths. I don’t like walking, and my legs still hurt from yesterday. But don’t you dare say this is a waste—

“I like you. That you were excited and nervous for this trip, that you put in a lot of effort into this. I don’t regret anything we’ve done in these last two days. And I like that we get to have a bit of an adventure.

“I would’ve told you if I hate it.” He looks at Kuroo to his side. “You know that.”

And Kuroo laughs, then, shoulders easing out of stiffness, as he exhales a sigh in fondness. “Yeah.”

“Anything you need before we get there?”

“I should review the materials,” Kuroo says, back to what might be his captain mode. “There’s a copy of them in my e-mail—in my phone—and I need to let my colleagues know.”

“Switch up,” Kenma mumbles, lazily unbuckling his seatbelt. “‘M driving.”

At the parking area they stop by, some kilometers after, Kuroo stays on his seat while Kenma makes to stand. “I’d really like that,” he tells him. “The kiss offer. One more time.”

“Not an offer,” Kenma mumbles, but he leans down and gives him one on the lips. Kuroo slips his arms around him in a hug, nuzzles into Kenma’s jacket, and lets them stay just like this for another while.

“Promise me you won’t kiss anyone else?” asks Kuroo, cat-like eyes and a hidden grin peeking up from his nestling. Kenma rolls his eyes all too fond, and pats him on the head. He lends Kuroo his own tablet (“Easier to read on that. Just log into your account…”) before shoving him toward the back of the bus with his blanket, a thermos of coffee, and more bananas.

It’d take six hours to reach Tokyo, give or take another depending on fickle traffic. As they take to the road once more, Kenma dubs it Operation: Home and cringes at himself for such sentimentalities. But Kuro’s here, and he doesn’t need any other name for it.

xiii. [EXP.]

On the last day of spring break, Kenma sticks inside his room in the dorm, a hand-me-down knitted blanket over his knees and a pillow to rest his head on, and plays his game as the city drones on outside.

“That’s all the stuff I have,” his new roommate, Haiba Lev, announces after setting down the last of his boxes, because sometimes a new year means departures and other arrivals. “Thanks for having me, Kenma-san!”

“You just arrived…” Kenma trails off. Still, he can only be glad to have a friend for a roommate. On his first week in college three-and-a-half years ago, Kuroo had slept over in his room without prompting, before Kenma could text him and admit his anxiety was acting up. His previous roommate would somehow find excuses to leave when Kuroo had given him a look, a certain smirk, and keep getting flustered until Kenma cleared things up about what was going on between Kuroo and him. Lev will be a different sort of misunderstandings, at least.

“The old team is going to the mall tonight. Shibayama and Inuoka, and Yamamoto-san, and Fukunaga-san,” Lev says, wringing his hands and shifting from one leg to the other. “Does Kenma-san want to come with us?”

He thinks about it, because he hadn’t lied when he told Kuroo he made some friends. He’s read the messages in their old group chat. During their road trip, they’d bought mementos for their friends—a second-hand but rare book for Shouhei’s family library, Taketora’s jumbo yakisoba bread special, and a Russian good-luck charm for Lev (in the hopes that he’d be less accident-prone in the future) are the ones Kenma has with him, while Kuroo’s taken custody of the rest as he’s more likely to cross paths with the others. Now will be a good time to pass them along.

“I’ve got to meet with Kuro,” Kenma says. “But. Maybe next time, sure,” he adds with a shrug, when Lev’s opened his mouth to ask all the why’s. Climbing to the edge, he reaches down and under the bed, and drags out his chest of miscellaneous things. He retrieves Lev’s gift and, past the latter’s endless questions and commentaries, sends him on his way with the charm.

“And drop the -san already,” Kenma calls after him. When he returns to his game to while away the minutes, he thinks how it looked like he’d just sent Lev on a quest or something.

Kuroo crashes in not too long after that. (Kenma even got up to make sure the door was unlocked for him.) He plops on to the bed face-down, crawls his way toward Kenma, and shoves his head inside the circle of Kenma’s arms because he refuses to let go of the game.

“How did it go?” Kenma then asks, tucking Kuroo’s head under his chin to see the screen.

“Not good,” Kuroo says against his chest.

“That bad?”

He just hugs Kenma, snuggling further. “I might or might have not lost a chance at a really good internship.”

“Hmm.”

They stay like that for another hour, as Kuroo picks himself back up and Kenma makes sure he does, however aching his limbs are starting to feel under Kuroo’s weight. Eventually, as the night sets in, Kuroo moves to settle beside him, closer than ever, and watches him play. On his PSP’s screen, Kenma can glimpse their reflections, the determination in Kuroo’s eyes, and asks, anyway—

“Do you want to level-up?”

“Yeah,” Kuroo tells him. And for now, there’s not much they can do, but it’s a promised quest all the same.

They don’t need each other to gain experience points and level-up, but that doesn’t mean Kenma likes it. He wants to be together with Kuro. All the puzzles and boss fights they might encounter down the road.

It’s 2:30AM when Kuroo pries the game from Kenma’s grasp. Already drowsy from his warmth, the lack of distances between them, Kenma spills a lingering thought. “I’d like to go on another trip like that again,” he mumbles in-between a yawn, in the darkness, as Kuroo turns off the light and draws the blanket over the both of them. “Together.”

Kuroo grins, a black cat in the night. “Sure, kitten.”

“Ugh. Stop. That’s embarrassing.”

“But it makes you do your scrunchy-face thing, except with a lil’ more fondness than exasperation.”

“I don’t do that.”

“You do.”

“I don’t.”

Leaning close, Kuroo plants a kiss on Kenma’s forehead to stun him into silence. “You do.”

(“I don’t.”

“You do.”)