Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”

- Alan Watts

I.

Koutarou falls in love on a Monday.

Koutarou falls in love on a moist, foggy September morning, three days before the autumn equinox, and he cries about it. Can you believe it? Koutarou cries about it. He opens mouth for the first time and wails like he just got stabbed or something.

Or so his mother tells him.

Koutarou falls in love on a Monday, and he doesn’t even remember it, which sure feels like a fucking tragedy, but reads like something out of a romcom. For fuck’s sake, they don’t even have pictures. They don’t even have pictures. To be fair, though, it’s Bokuto. His father takes a deep breath, takes one look at him and shouts something so loud he wakes the patient next door, and suddenly it’s Bokuto Koutarou. There’s two, and suddenly there’s three. Suddenly, there’s three.

Oh, it’s not all bad. Koutarou doesn’t mind that he can’t remember the first time he falls in love, because there are times to follow, there will always be times to follow, and even now his chest always feels like it’ll turn itself outward from the gargantuan size of the love tumor clogging his organs. His mother knows this; she pinches his cheeks and musses his hair and paints and paints and paints, and Koutarou learns what joy is when he turns his golden, owlish eyes on his mother’s first portrait of him. He turns his owlish eyes on his mother, and she smiles, and he reaches out pudgy hands for the paintbrush.

When Koutarou is six, he discovers the stars. Bright, diamond-shiny things in the ink-blue ceiling of the world, winking at him from above. When Koutarou is six, his mother takes him to the countryside, and there they are: millions of eyes just a firefly-touch away, just a heartbeat into the next universe. Koutarou’s mother points, and tells stories, and Koutarou bounces across the open field and reaches for them. His mother laughs, and he marvels at the light in her eyes.

He saves the light in her eyes, right then and there. He takes it. Cradles it. A small flame, sure, but toasty, and orange, and soft. Soft.

Koutarou wants to take the flame and set fire to the world.

And fuck, no one’s stopping him. No one’s stopping him.

Me [05:23] :

kuroo

Me [05:23] :

excursin

Me [05:23] :

excursion. excllent

Sweetheart [05:27] :

What in satan's fucking asshole are you doing up so early

Me [05:27] :

excursions

Me [05:27] :

NOW KUROO

Sweetheart [05:27] :

Ok you know when i said sunday all those weeks ago i didn’t mean every goddamn sunday

Me [05:27] :

open door

Sweetheart [05:27] :

Oh for fuck’s sake

II.

Love, Bokuto Koutarou thinks, is not that complicated.

If anyone were to tell Koutarou, thirteen and small and still blissfully stupid, that he would fall in love with a too-serious, never-serious mess of a boy with knives for teeth and stars for eyes, they would likely receive a mouthful of sand before any sort of comprehensible answer. Of course, being small, Koutarou would be quick on his feet, and being stupid, Koutarou would hold on to the idea and chase it instead of forgetting it by the next day. Koutarou would chase it for the next ten, twenty, hundred years.

Of course, no one tells Koutarou this. No one even thinks of it. For thirteen-year-old boys, it’s much more like this: the universe is either permanent and green and forever and ever or it is brittle, like webs of glass, like walking a tightrope when you already know there’s nothing waiting at the other side.

When Kuroo Tetsurou comes to him like a dream, firey and combustible and all sorts of warning labels on the outside, Koutarou is hardly ten, and he doesn’t know how to read them. He remembers thinking, on and on like a record with no one listening, what a strange and funny sort of kid. He remembers thinking, I wish I was as brave as Kuroo Tetsurou, the boy who never cries . He remembers thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and never seeming to be able to form the right words in his mouth.

At eight, at ten, at thirteen, this is enough. Koutarou preoccupies himself with chasing the stars, and if no one’s ever taught him that loving the world takes a lot of time from your day and a lot of calories from your body, and that loving Kuroo takes chipping away at cement walls and exchanging warm hands and blowing hot chocolate that Koutarou’s mom delivers by the fireplace—that’s okay too, and it’s enough.

To Koutarou, love comes easy as oxygen. To Koutarou, thirteen and small and stupid, the world is soft, like clouds, and Kuroo is a dream in its grasps.

III.

“Trampoline,” Kuroo drawls, when they’re holed up in Koutarou’s apartment one day. “Shopping cart. Crossroads. Anything.”

Koutarou lies still, contemplating, with the buzz of the fan in the background; it’s entirely hot to move.

“Trampoline,” he says, and they’ll start with that. “Doable.”

“Yeah?” Kuroo says. Koutarou can hear the grin without seeing it. “And how’re you gonna manage trampoline?”

Koutarou shrugs. “Oikawa,” he says. He reaches for his phone.

IV.

They break the trampoline.

V.

Kuroo Tetsurou is a miracle fucking worker. Sometimes, it is good. Most of the time, it is very, very bad.

For example, it is kind of bad when Kuroo arrives at the cafeteria at eight in the morning only to near-faceplant right into his cardboard-tasting chocolate croissant, tired and soupy like he didn’t get seven hours of sleep the night before. Koutarou knows he lies down by eleven o’clock, and not to be incredibly fucking direct, but unless Kuroo is managing to, every night without fail, erase his entire internet presence after sending the goodnight text, then Koutarou is pretty sure he’s serving up Honesty Cake here. And Koutarou’s pretty good at sniffing those out. (Not as good as Kenma, obviously, but Koutarou likes to think he has his ways.)

It is very bad when Kuroo not only sways like a drunkard with the gravity of his backpack, but also forgets to shave the stubble on his chin. It is very, very bad when Kuroo does all this and develops the apathy-shoulder AND talks like he’s gone to hell to down three shots of the Lethe only to empty his stomach violently immediately after.

“So what’s your deal,” Koutarou says, swinging his backpack around the end of the bench.

Kuroo stretches his arms out above his head and releases a fucking gigantuan yawn, like he’s preparing to swallow the entirety of East Asia or practicing for auditions as a human black hole. Koutarou yawns, too, then. The fucker.

“What’s your deal,” Kuroo murmurs back. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t know what you mean,”   Koutarou sings. “C’mon. Are you not sleeping? Did you fucking eat breakfast? You have, like, three tests today. You can’t be doing this.”

“Whatever. Could do calculus in my sleep.”

Koutarou sticks his tongue out. “And yet you turn down every opportunity to tutor.”

“Tutor who?”

“Me, of course. And your freshman fanclub.”

“Fanclub my ass.”

Koutarou hums, then leans over to squish Kuroo in the cheeks. “Seriously, though,” he says, meeting his eyes. “You okay, bro?”

Kuroo, predictably, looks toward Koutarou’s ears. “Mm.”

“I’ll take it,” Koutarou sighs, after a couple of seconds. “Onto lighter things, then! Extended essays and such!”

“Cool! I want to fucking die.”

“Tetsu. This kind of behaviour will not be fucking tolerated.”

“You will not be fucking tolerated.”

“First of all—”

“First of all, shut the fuck up. Second of all, I have a killer migraine, so like, for real shut the fuck up.”

Koutarou squints at him. “Holy shit. You have a migraine?”

“I just fucking—”

“Wait a second. I’m fucking onto you.”

“You—”

“I’m fucking onto you right now.”

“Yeah?” Kuroo says, placing a hand on Koutarou’s shoulder. “Are you?”

“I’m totally onto you.”

“Tell me about it.”

Koutarou breathes in and releases it in a grand sigh. “You. Work too hard.”

Kuroo Tetsurou is a miracle worker. It’s in his veins, but Koutarou’s not sure if it’s like he was maybe born with it or if he one day decided, hmm yeah I should just fucking destroy my health, and proceeded to inject the very mindset into his bloodstream. It didn’t just begin, of course; nothing does, but Koutarou meets Kuroo when he is ten, and his ten-year-old brain isn’t much for mind games.

For a while, like Koutarou, Kuroo chases after volleyball with bruises lining his forearms and a feverish sort of passion. And then it is swimming. And then it is chemistry. And then it is nothing.

It’s not like Koutarou has so much to say for himself, either; it’s a little bit fucking known nowadays that university tends to suck the life right out of your toes. He absolutely adores photography, but that is adoration, and then this is real life. It’s like—he adores Kuroo. But Kuroo is real life.

“I don’t,” Kuroo denies without so much as a breath of hesitation. “I really don’t. I’m lazy.”

“You need to fucking,” Koutarou says, and lowers his voice when he notices a group of freshmen staring, “take breaks. Take care of yourself. Or I’ll fucking do it.”

Kuroo laughs, then winces. “Jesus. Laughing hurts. Don’t say anything funny.”

Koutarou hooks his arm around Kuroo’s neck and kisses him on the forehead. “Sorry, babe.”

“PLEASE,” says Kuroo, sputtering and wrestling out of Koutarou’s grip.

“Work out, then.”

“Alright, FUCK you. For real. Deadass, I’m onto you. Muscled madman.”

Koutarou just smiles, because Kuroo is a little red in the ears, so they’ll start with that.

From: Kuroo Tetsurou <[email protected]>

To: Bokuto Koutarou <[email protected]>

Re: You read this shit too right please kou if you’ve ever loved me help me come up with arguments

Attached (1): [please_fucking_help_me.docx]

[  The Heart and Where to Find It: Critique on Hildebrandt Loeffler's I Saw It At Midnight  

By Kuroo Tetsurou

(Outline)

Notes:

• Summary:
• Dude fucking hates his job and generally wants to die
• Extreme depressive moods but usually sleeps/cries it off and the next day thinks he was probably just being a whiny bitch
• Followed by extreme apathy/dissociation/disconnection
• Some cool and good friends
• Also really shitty friends
• Ok important plot point so he’s out walking one night and meets this fairy dust angel fucking golden girl at midnight and this is when everything goes to absolute shit fuck you Loeffler love is a lie
• Shit girl somehow solves all his shit problems just by “being there”
• That’s literally the rest of this stupid fucking story but at least the guy doesnt kill himself so there’s that
• Ok there’s actually more but i’m literally too fucking mad i’ll finish this later

• Themes:
• Self vs. Self
• I mean the guy fucking hates himself
• Self vs. Society
• Symbols:
• Cats (one thing Loeffler got right)
• Colour/place of origin/traditional purpose reps. stuff research this later
• The train
• Midnight
• Bunch of shit happen at midnight
• According to Sparknotes the girl’s clothes????? I literally just skimmed over those ten billion fucking descriptions
• Other thoughts:
• So the prose is really really fucking good in the beginning like the summary makes it sound like some cliche fucking whiny guy who wants to die but when i actually read the thing i felt an emotion????
• I mean i’m personally really into prose-y poetic symbolic shit cause i’m a fucking sap but it’s really rare to see that kinda good writing in a ~modern novel esp. about this subject
• UNTIL
• THE FUCKING
• GIRL
• FUCKING
• Like we GET it Loeffler i had my doubts when you were describing MC here but now i know for sure you’re a straight german man STOP GOING ON FOR PAGES AND PAGES ABOUT THE GIRL AND WHAT SHE’S WEARING I’M BEGGING YOU STOP STOP STOP ST
• Structure notes
• ~10 paragraphs (intro, ~5 body, interpretation/perspective, conclusion)
• REMAIN IMPERSONAL
• REMEMBER IT’S A CRITIQUE NOT A FUCKING THEMED ESSAY
• Arguments:
• FUCK DUDE LIKE I’M LEGIT GONNA WRITE THIS WHOLE THING ON JUST THE CATS
• FUCK YOU LOEFFLER I TRUSTED YOU AND YOU BROKE MY HEART  ]

From: Bokuto Koutarou <[email protected]>

To: Kuroo Tetsurou <[email protected]>

Re: You read this shit too right please kou if you’ve ever loved me help me come up with arguments

I MEAN IT FUCJING SOUNDS LIKE U ALREADYY HAVE IT DOWN U JUST GOTTA KEEP BEIN ANGRY BUT LIKE. DISCONNCTED ANGRY. WRITE ABOUT THE CATS,,, FUCK LEOFFLER IN THE ASS. WHATEVER. U GOT THIS. I LOVE U.

P.S. BOLD OF U TO ASUME I CAN READ

VI.

When Bokuto Koutarou is five, nothing scares him.

Rather, few things do; the dark little space between the fridge and the cupboard, for example, or the blinking red light on the smoke-detector at night, or the way his talking plushies start to sound different when their batteries begin to die out—but in the grandest scheme of things, five-year-old Koutarou, like most five-year-olds, doesn't know jack shit about fear.

In a way, he knows, it's common sense. Five-year-olds don't know jack shit about the world in general, past eating and shitting and running around and generally having copious and copious amounts of energy completely disproportionate to the probably three things they really know how to do, and then eating and shitting again. It's common sense.

In another way, Koutarou thinks, there's nothing that could have prepared him for the deep, unsettling despair he learns to endure when a friend doesn't call for three weeks straight, or forgets to eat dinner for the fifth night in a row, or answers the door with eyebags for his eyebags and stubble growing like weeds on his chin.

In another way, Koutarou is five.

He's just received his first camera; one of those dingy, plastic toys with an actual roll of film and a battery life of five days, maybe four, and his soft hair’s been pulled into a little ponytail at the nape of his neck, and Kuroo Tetsurou doesn't exist.

VII.

“So it’s all a desperate ploy to—”

“Wipe the president’s ass,” Kenma finishes, sucking on his sourkey to within a millimeter of its life. The poor thing.

Akaashi nods sagely, passing the sourkey box to Kenma. “What he said. But I guess it’ll make more sense when you actually see the manuscript.”

“Fucking sick,” Koutarou says, and he means it. “And that will be released...when?”

“December or something, if we’re being hopeful.”

“We’re being hopeful.”

“Already can’t wait,” Kuroo says, from under the covers. “And ‘m not being sarcastic this time, promise.”

“Thank you,” Akaashi says, smiling like the sun. “It really means a lot that you guys like it so far. Kenma and I have been planning for a really, really long time.”

Koutarou looks, and suddenly Kenma is smiling at something.

And then Kuroo is smiling at something. Koutarou notices right away, because Kuroo doesn’t smile like that for anyone. Koutarou can’t quite explain it; it’s become more of a gut feeling than anything he can describe in words, but Kenma’s probably got it down pat: Kuroo’s Two Hundred Twenty-Seven Different Smiles and What They Mean. Kenma’s probably got it down pat, so he definitely won’t ask.

“Something you want to share with the class, Tetsu?”

Kuroo smiles impossibly wider. “The class? The class already knows.”

Koutarou rolls his eyes, and Akaashi laughs. “So about your asshole publisher—”

VIII.

The first photo that Bokuto Koutarou ever tacks onto the board is one of his best friend.

It’s a polaroid; cute, if anything concerning Kuroo Tetsurou could be possibly labeled as such, and a little yellowed now, but mostly hilarious. Koutarou thinks of it fondly.

Kuroo, no more or less than ten, squatting in a sandbox with one of those striped, cone party hats atop his unruly hair. One hand is wrist-deep in the sand, the other a tan blur. If you squint, Koutarou likes to tell him, you can see how your mouth is kinda open, and the blur is going directly into it. You're eating sand in this picture, Tetsu. Sand. Fuckin’ sand-eater.

Even then, it's something novel: the discovery that the way something feels and smells and sounds and tastes could be snatched right from the second and poured into a glossy little square, to be pinned for god knows how long to a crowded cork-board.

Koutarou fucking adores everything on the other side of the shutter. Adores whoever and whatever came up with cork-boards and cameras and Kuroo Tetsurou and loving without a care in the goddamn world.

In retrospect, Koutarou probably falls in love. Koutarou probably falls in love.

IX.

“See, it’s like this,” Kuroo says, holding his hands up while he speaks, and Koutarou can barely hear it over the sound of rushing wind. He’s absolutely covered in sweat, though the evening is chilly enough. “It’s like—”

He’s going five, twenty, three hundred kilometers an hour and nothing can stop him: there’s a shopping cart in his grip and the world passing straight through his lungs, and there’s Kuroo in the shopping cart, and, like he’s already divined, the stars that make up Kuroo are at an eternal standstill. He’s grounding, that way.

“- I dunno, I guess it makes me some sick sort of masochist.”

The laughter explodes from Koutarou, sudden, and he has to slow his pace to a stroll. “You can’t—you can’t just say that, Tetsu,” he manages between breaths. “That’s gotta be—the worst way to start a story.”

Kuroo catches his eyes, smiles bemusedly. “Or the best.”

“Go on, though.”

“Anyway, so it’s like. I’ve got this doll, right. I mean. It’s me. I’m the doll.”

“Like. A voodoo doll.”

“Like a voodoo doll. So I’ve got this voodoo doll, right, and it’s made of cheap wood and cheap cotton, and it’s, like, kinda rusted at the joints, and pretty old, and it’s got nicks all over the wood.

“I hate metaphors,” Koutarou mutters, parking the shopping cart by a tree and performing some approximation of an acrobatic stunt in order to be as inside of the cart as possible (which is difficult, since the entirety of Kuroo is basically already folded into the space). He gives up and lies on the grass. “Do go on.”

“So this doll, there’s a fuck-ton wrong with it, but overall, it’s got a glossy coat and nice clothes and it can stand up pretty well on its own. Overall, it’s a pretty good-looking doll.”

“Right.”

“Overall, it does its job, right, and so Kuroo Tetsurou takes the doll and lends it to certain people because he’s hopeful, and a little stupid, and he can’t—he can’t trust himself to take care of it. And these people—it’s not like they outright hurt the doll or anything, they brush its hair and they hold it in their arms and they keep the needles far, far away, but eventually, they all kinda just place it on a shelf or something and let it look pretty and collect dust until Kuroo comes and takes it back. And every time he sort of wonders what he did wrong or, like, what was wrong with the doll, why wasn’t it good enough. You know. It’s like that.”

“Okay.”

“And this one time,” Kuroo continues, though his fingers start to tap at the cart like they’re spiders, “when the doll’s a little wrong-looking on the outside now, too, when it slumps instead of standing straight, Kuroo bites his tongue and leaves it next to the garbage can, and he’s really, really ready to be—be throwing it out, when this beautiful, perfect girl. This—she’s soft, and clever, and—and warm, brown eyes and everything—she picks it up, and takes it home, and fixes its clothes, oils its joints, fills in the wood cracks with latex, and loves the—the absolute shit out of it.”

“This is. Not much of a metaphor,” Koutarou says, and his gut twists so hard he thinks it might snap. He knows this part.

“She was… perfect. Just—and I so wanted to keep her—and for once I almost believed—”

“You—”

“And fuck, I’d really thought—I’d thought I could just—”

“You thought you’d never have to take the doll back.”

“I thought—” Kuroo’s breath hitches with frustration— “that if I had just wanted it enough, if I believed it hard enough. I.”

Koutarou reaches up shakily and links fingers with Kuroo through the cart.

“I.” Kuroo sounds small, an empty shell with nothing but ocean water gurgling through. “Got her a ring for our two-year anniversary. It’s still—in my drawer.”

Koutarou swallows painfully.

“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t—”

“It’s okay,” Koutarou says, because he thinks he’ll throw up if he hears any more. “I think I get it.”

“Do you?” Kuroo asks, looking at him through the metal-wired grid of the shopping cart. It’s getting dark, now, the sun having slipped past the horizon and the last of its rays clinging onto the sky. It’s enough to give Kuroo’s hair a sort of red-ochre glow.

“I do,” Koutarou says. He wants to believe it.

“That’s good,” Kuroo says, wiping at his eyes, the tense lines of his shoulders relaxing into a soupy-soft substance in the cart. “That’s good.”

And then, because Kuroo is made of stars and nothing can shake the constellations out of the sky, and because Koutarou thinks that that red-ochre soup makes Kuroo look very here and not there , where he usually is, he opens his mouth again and swallows the sun.

“Would it be so bad,” he starts, and loses his breath. “Would it be so bad to lend me the doll sometime.”

“You?” Kuroo says, turning to face him and smiling like knives.

“Me.”

Kuroo looks at him and looks at him and looks at him, until the knives fall right off of his face, until he’s opening his mouth and laughing, and Koutarou is ready to be at least a little bit offended when all of a sudden Kuroo stops and curls his fingers on the edge of the cart and looks up to the sky and says, so quietly that Koutarou almost misses it—

“You don’t need it, obviously. You’ve had the real thing all along.”

X.

For more than half his life—

No, for nearly all his life, Kuroo is one of Koutarou’s sturdiest constants. Like the sun, he shines hot and bright and doesn’t stop; like the moon, he does anything but. Like the stars, he hangs overhead with a heavy sort of conscience, a light sort of bounce; like the sand he ate when he was ten—he is fine and sinuous, rough and gritty and really just a whole, messy mouthful.

The thing is, the actual thing of it is—

Constants, as Koutarou necessarily understands, are exactly that. Constant .

To shape something as permanent as the celestial bodies, to hold in the heart of your palms something as boundless and meticulous as sand—it’s hard, hard work. It’s impossible work.

And yet—

What must be done—and this much Koutarou knows—will be done.

Me [02:16] :

bro

Sweetheart [02:16] :

For the last fucking time kou we are not adopting a fucking snail

Sweetheart [02:27] :

Goodnight babe go to sleep NOW

Me [02:28] :

nite TRAITOR >:(((

XI.

“Koutarou. This—this isn’t.”

“Isn’t what, dude?”

“It’s not a good. Idea.”

“Yeah, I fucking thought the fuck so.”

“What does—dude, I’m so onto you. You’re totally drunk right now.”

“Actually. Truly. The drunk one is you, and you are the one who is drunk.”

“What the fuuuuck,” says Kuroo, throwing his arms across Koutarou shoulders. “You can’t feel—fool me, bro. You’re not even making sentences right now at the moment.”

“I wish Suga or Daichi were here,” Koutarou says. “They would slap me so hard I’d get sober in one second.”

“I can do that for you, dude. Promise.”

“We need to go to, uh, home. It’s like—fuck—” Koutarou tries to look at his watch, its circular face melting in front of his eyes—“I don’t fucking know. Ass o’clock.”

“Ass o’clock,” Kuroo repeats, and trips over air. “Dude, we should have feelings circle when we get—get back. It’s like honesty hour but it doesn’t have to just be one hour if you get what I’m saying. You’re gonna—pole.”

“I’m—pole?” Koutarou starts, and curses vehemently when he narrowly avoids concussing himself on a pillar of cement. “Fuck, yeah dude. Let’s. That sounds fun. And kinda horrible. Pole.”

“Pole—oh, fuck. Fuuck. I’m so onto you, Kuroo.”

“Are you talking to—did you just call me Kuroo?”

“No, I’m so onto myself right now. I’m definitely,” he says, raising his hands above his head, “a little drunk.”

“I should fucking hope so,” Koutarou says. “This is—god, we should probably call Iwa. Right? Should we?”

Kuroo fishes his phone out of his pocket clumsily. “I’m onto it. I mean I’m on it.”

“Kuroo?”

“Iwaizumi-senpai?”

“I fucking know you did not just call me that. What the fuck is up.”

“I’m—me and Koutarou, we are, I mean, it’s kinda dark outside.”

“Ah, shit—are you drunk? Never mind, don’t answer that. I know you are.”

“Hey, Iwa!” Koutarou crows into the mic. “Babe!”

“Bokuto.”

“Anyway, are you, like, are you busy? Right now? I think I have a chem lab tomorrow.”

“Jesus fucking—tomorrow is Saturday. Do you have any fucking clue what time it is.”

“None,” says Kuroo.

“Probably, like, one,” says Koutarou.

“Let me give you a hint,” Iwaizumi seethes at the other end. “It starts with ‘t’ and ends with ‘e.’”

“Fuckin’ knew it was ten o’clock.”

“You know what. Turn on your location right fucking now. I’m about to throw some hands. My own hands.”

Kuroo swipes his phone back and adjusts his settings accordingly. It takes him a minute; his hands are cold and kinda trembling right now, not that Koutarou would have been able to tell without having his hand wrapped around his. Not that Koutarou has his hand wrapped around his.

Iwaizumi arrives in a matter of nanoseconds. He lugs the two big men into the back of his car, grumbling about I only work out so I can carry my drunk friends and Oikawa better not call me right now or I’ll make Kuroo eat my phone.

“Nice muscles,” Koutarou comments, folded over the glove compartment. Kuroo pulls him back onto his lap.

“Yeah,” Iwaizumi says, and clicks on his seatbelt. “Fucking idiots. I’m keeping you with me tonight or you’ll probably end up in the police department or some fucking river.”

“Thank you very much,” Koutarou and Kuroo chorus together, and promptly pass out on each other.

XII.

When Koutarou next wakes up, he’s buried under soft, unfamiliar-smelling covers. It’s still dark, someone—Iwa, he remembers—is still snoring away on the couch, and Kuroo is sitting up on the edge of the bed, staring out the window. The room colours half his profile a black mass, pillow-shaded around the edges with window-yellow. The stars are out.

“Tetsu?” Koutarou croaks.

Kuroo doesn’t respond for a couple seconds. His shoulders rise and fall like mountains; his breathing is slow and deliberate. There’s a little moonlight balanced on the tip of his nose and spilled across his lap.

When he turns around, the moonlight migrates to his eyes.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Koutarou breathes, unfreezes, reaches for his face. “You okay?”

Kuroo presses his cheek into the cup of Koutarou’s palm, golden eyes flashing like two erratic koi in the dark. He feels cold.

“Kou,” he rumbles. “You think anything is real?”

Koutarou pinches himself, smiles. “I dunno, I think you’re pretty real. And me too.”

“How?”

“Cause I said so,” Koutarou insists, pulling Kuroo to lie down next to him again. “Isn’t it enough to say so?”

“How do I know?” Kuroo raises his voice to an urgent hiss. “I could be imagining you, right now. I mean. Saying this shit to me. I could literally be lying unconscious in a white-walled mental hospital right now and you could be, like, a complete figment of my imagination. You know? I mean—I—would it be better? Would it be better if that was how it is?”

“Tetsurou, do you think it matters?”

“I mean—”

“Of course everything’s real, Tetsu. I’m as real as it gets. I’m really warm, see.” Koutarou pulls the covers over them and clasps Kuroo’s hand underneath them. “How can I be warm if I’m not real.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just cold. If you’re cold enough then everything’s warm, right?”

“That’s okay,” Koutarou says, “it’s okay if you’re cold, because I’m warm, and that’s how it is sometimes.”

Koutarou feels Kuroo full-body shudder against him. “I—I don’t know. You’re just a little too warm. You’re too good.” He breathes a laugh. “It’s like, how can something so good be real, you know?”

Kuroo Tetsurou is staring at the ceiling. He’s so close and he’s somewhere far, far away, and Koutarou only wants to reel him back. Koutarou wants to cast a long, long line, directly at the moon; he wants to find him at the bottom of a crater. He wants to cradle the koi in his eyes.

“Could you imagine,” Koutarou says, watching as Kuroo’s moon-eyes melt into golden pools, “could you really imagine someone who cares about you as fucking much as I do? Could you?”

Could you?

XIII.

When Bokuto Koutarou is twenty-one, nothing scares him. Nothing scares him. Nothing scares him.

If he catches spiders with his hands and climbs mountains like stairs and flirts with cute waiters cold-sober, but flinches when Kuroo so much as hiccups in his sleep or cuts a finger on freshly printed papers, well.

Well.

XIV.

Love, Koutarou thinks as he stares into his protein cereal at five-thirty in the morning, is not that complicated.

What he means to say is that he could go on for hours and hours talking about most of the fucking things in the whole wide universe—stars, for example: and Koutarou still doesn’t know shit about stars except that they burn bright and hot and light up the night sky to keep you company and he thinks they’re maybe made of hydrogen, and he thinks that maybe Kuroo Tetsurou is made of stars, which is saying that he’s made of hydrogen, which is saying that he is a big ball of hot gas which is quite the opposite of what he is (except maybe the hot part) and metaphors really do have a funny way of working out, don’t they.

What he means to say is that he, with his camera clasped in his hands and eyes wide, wide open to catch every passing second of life like it’s his last, can never seem to physically fucking tear his focus from details, and details, and details: Akaashi, with his sharp eyeliner and closet full of dark suits; Kenma, eyes honey like his hair dye and hands soft like his cheeks; Suga, warm and silver and homey; Yachi, quick to laugh and quicker to love, even Oikawa, who captions his daily snaps with biting insults like he doesn’t fucking adore the people behind his phone camera; even Iwaizumi, who is only snappish and serious because he just cares that fucking much about the apocalyptic band of misfits he calls his friends.

Even Kuroo, who isn’t afraid of anything in the world except loud noises, and mirrors, and opening up, and being alone, alone, alone.

Even Kuroo, who won’t think twice about dressing up for Koutarou’s camera but flinches when anyone at the bar makes a comment on how well his t-shirt fits him, a little too well.

Even Kuroo, who loves with only half his heart, with the other half carefully stowed away, like he’s fucking terrified of what it means to be honest with himself.

Love, Koutarou thinks, is not that complicated.

Fear, Koutarou knows, is a different sort of thing.

XV.

Sometimes, Kuroo Tetsurou disappears on his own volition.

Kuroo is smart in the important ways, meaning the ways that allow him to escape school for however long he wants without letting his grades fall out from under his arms, and the ways that allow him to detach himself from the world like a puzzle piece without getting lost in the endless cardboard landscape that grows like a disease beneath his feet. Koutarou hates it.

Sometimes, Kuroo Tetsurou is too fucking smart. Koutarou hates it.

XVI.

It’s not magic, the casual ease with which Kuroo Tetsurou manages to pull Koutarou’s heart in fifty-three different directions in the span of five short seconds. It’s not funny, either, not really, with the way that Kuroo looks right now: six-foot-something in an olive-green military jacket (and really, who knew Kuroo could look so good in green), smashed bottle in hand and smudges of dirt on his face and a dangerous, dangerous fire in his eyes; breathing hard, hardly breathing—with the way that Koutarou hardly finds it in him to get off the couch and approach Kuroo with steady legs—

“What,” Kuroo says, bridge of his nose scrunching with an almost-there recognition, “are you doing.”

“What are you doing,” Koutarou says, and maybe he’s standing now, but really he feels as if he’ll fall, fall, fall any second of any minute. And then, when an eon of silence follows, Kuroo still frozen in the doorway of the dark apartment and Koutarou crossing his arms with his mouth drawn into a line—“Why don’t you put the bottle down, Tetsurou.” He’ll start with that. They’ll start with that.

Kuroo’s fingers untense around the bottleneck; he breathes a little more slowly, crouches down. His eyes don’t leave Koutarou’s. The bottle makes a musical clink when it hits the floor.

“Now take five steps away.”

Kuroo follows Koutarou’s instructions in a trance. “What are you doing,” he repeats, in a whisper, “in my apartment.”

Koutarou bites his lip, shakes his head. “You wouldn’t—you didn’t answer your phone. It’s been—” and when he breathes in it hurts —“a week, Tetsu.”

Kuroo relaxes, if a bit. He takes a step forward, lets out a hoarse laugh. “Who would have known—”

“You can’t—”

“I had a bad couple of days, alright?” Kuroo snaps all of a sudden, throwing his arms up. “What, I can’t have bad days?”

Koutarou swallows. “Kuroo, you don’t—I rung up Kenma and he didn’t know where you were, you had me worrying fucking left and right for a fucking week—”

“Worry my fucking ass,” he snarls, taking another heavy step forward. “If you just used your brain for two fucking seconds you’d know exactly where to find me.”

“Oh,” Koutarou says, and now he’s angry, too—“so now you’re saying that I’m supposed to go looking all over the fucking place for you when you don’t answer your phone and you’re not in your own damn apartment? Now we’re pretending that you—you want to be found?”

Kuroo recoils, almost violently, which hurts like pins to watch, but really —“Kou, I—”

“Do you not,” Koutarou interrupts desperately, and it’s too late, it all tumbles out, raw, unadulterated, painful: “do you really not think that I—that we care about you? Do you ever think about how much you fucking mean to me, Tetsurou?”

“I didn’t—it’s not—”

“And the bottle.” Koutarou isn’t finished. “What are you doing coming into your own apartment with a smashed fucking bottle.”

“I,” Kuroo starts, and Koutarou already knows he’s lying, “got into a fight.”

“Cut the bullshit, Tetsu.”

“FINE,” Kuroo bites, and just like that he’s all firecrackers and flashing claws again. “I was going to smash the damn mirror in again. So fucking what.”

“So fucking what,” Koutarou repeats, exasperated.

“SO FUCKING WHAT,” Kuroo’s voice wavers, and belatedly, Koutarou notes that his golden eyes are a little too liquid under his eyelids. “Kou. You know. It’s nothing goddamn new.”

It’s nothing goddamn new, and Koutarou hurts something nasty when he thinks, back to square one, ocean floor, icey moon; when he looks and sees where Kuroo has eyebags for his eyebags and stubble growing like weeds from his chin, lips pinched together and trembling like he’s still sixteen and heartbroken, honey eyes searching and flickering and pleading come find me come find me come find me. Koutarou shuts his eyes and grasps blindly and feels nothing.

He swallows, opens his mouth, says “Tetsurou,” like a prayer, and when Kuroo pitches forward in the dark like he can’t stand to hold his own weight up anymore and Koutarou pitches forward to catch him, it’s really no wonder—

And it’s okay that Kuroo is cold as a broken lamp, because Koutarou is warm. Koutarou is a fire that won’t go out.

XVII.

“Let’s suppose,” Kuroo is saying, and Koutarou just barely manages to catch the quick flick of his wrist to laugh at him, “that you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to dream.” He pauses. “And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could possibly think of. And after several nights of however much pleasure you wanted you would say, well that was pretty great.”

“What the hell does this mean,” Koutarou says.

“He’s reciting,” Kenma hisses, with the tone of a man who wants nothing more than the sweet touch of death. He’s sprawled upside-down on the back of the couch with the seats under his head.

Kuroo ignores them. “But now, let’s have a surprise,” he continues, pacing. “Let’s have a dream which isn’t under my control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it's gonna be. Bokuto Koutarou, you laugh at me, but you’ll weep oceans when I become a famous philosopher to rival Alan Watts five years from now.”

“Okay,” Koutarou says, seriously. He pulls his hair to cover one side of his face, closes his eyes halfway, and meows.

Kuroo palms his face and drags it down. “Alright, fuck you. I’m going to see Angelface.”

“No, you’re not,” Kenma says.

“I am.”

“You are not.”

“Am too.”

“Are not.”

“I’m a little afraid I’m being forced to watch some kind of fucked-up courting ritual,” Koutarou interrupts, snatching the gameboy out of Kenma’s hands in his brief moment of distraction.

Kenma is a little different now. He’s up to Kuroo’s shoulders and twice as nasty, and sure, he still holes up in his apartment on his devices during most of his time off, and he probably still hates people like Koutarou with a calculated passion, and to Koutarou, Kenma will always be Kenma the Observer, or Kenma the Quiet, or Kenma the Rogue (even if, maybe, outside of games, the only thing he steals are hearts). He’s still more soft than loud, and he still hangs closer to the perimeter of a room than the center.

In light of recent events, though, Koutarou also comes to know Kenma as Kenma the Boyfriend. So that’s something.

(Kenma won’t give a proper answer when anyone asks, though Koutarou is sure it’s either Shouyou or Yacchan.)

“I’m a little afraid,” Kuroo says, “of your mom.”

“Oh,” Koutarou says, pausing the game to look up. “Well I’m afraid of your mom.”

Kenma clears his throat, and grabs the gameboy back in a blur of motion. Koutarou pouts at him. “I think you’re forgetting that both of you piss yourselves whenever you try to talk to my moms,” Kenma sniffs.

“I would never forget about your moms,” Kuroo says, smacking Kenma with the back of his plastic folder. “Not when they raised me to be the handsome, gentlemanly, and well-groomed boy I am today.”

Kenma emits a noise that sounds like choked laughter, and Koutarou takes the folder out of Kuroo’s hands and smacks him again. Kenma attempts to dodge in futility.

“I’m being attacked in my own home,” he wheezes, jumping to his feet and scooping up his backpack. “Bye. Resolve your issues while I’m gone.”

Whatever that means.

The door closes with a rattle, and one of Kenma’s succulents threatens to fall off the shoe rack.

“Whatever that means,” Kuroo complains, lying on the floor. Koutarou takes the opportunity to lie directly on top of him, to the immediate displeasure of the man underneath.

“I think,” Koutarou mumbles into Kuroo’s shoulder, “that probably, this is the dream of life.”

Me [14:26] :

WHATEVER THAT MEANS

SWEET HONEY NECTAR BABY [15:47] :

both of you are hopeless

Me [15:48] :

why did it take u that lon g to anwser what r u doing at akaashis

SWEET HONEY NECTAR BABY [15:51] :

“resolving our issues”

Me [15:51] :

HAHA !! PLEASE Die

XVIII.

It’s nice, which is a severe fucking understatement, like most things tend to be, but Koutarou can’t put it past his last two remaining brain cells to make any more comment on the actual thing of it.

What he means to say is: if there’s one thing that he knows, it’s that Kuroo and sunrises go together like the stars in the sky, and yet he still manages to surprise himself every time when he manages to clamber, one-handed, onto the top of the watchtower with his camera on his neck and Kuroo on his arm; he still manages to surprise himself when Kuroo, breathless and laughing, on the grey cement with little pebbles stuck to his legs and stems folded into his hair, pulls laughter with zero effort from his own mouth; when the sun crawls over the horizon and colours the world undaunted like it does every fucking morning and yet he still manages to surprise himself—

Well, it’s no surprise, he really means to say, but it’s six in the morning, and Kuroo’s all laughed out, and Koutarou’s finished off the last of the space in this SD card, and they haven’t even had coffee yet.

It’s nice.

“I haven’t even had coffee yet,” Kuroo says, staring up at the sky, “or finished my essay.” Koutarou knows he’s only saying it to say it. He doesn’t say I’ll finish it in three straight hours tonight like a miracle fucking worker, but the sentiment is there, and Koutarou knows.

“I know,” Koutarou says, grins. “So we’re going to do extortions today.”

Kuroo makes an affirming noise. “Excursions,” he corrects.

“Hell yeah,” Koutarou enthuses, then stands up and cups his mouth just to let the universe know, too. “HELL YEAH.”

Me [00:23] :

tetsu u like salmon. right

Sweetheart [00:24] :

Yes???

Me [00:24] :

good cos we’re goign to the acquarium sunday

Sweetheart [00:25] :

Are you asking if i want to go to an aquarium to look at fucking salmon

Sweetheart [00:25] :

As in specifically salmon

Me [00:26] :

yeah bro

Sweetheart [00:26] :

Ok

Me [00:26] :

unless u wanna look at like. lionfish or whatever thats cool too

Sweetheart [00:27] :

Ok sweet

Sweetheart [00:45] :

Did you know that i fucking love you

Me [00:46] :

gros s

Me [00:46] :

jk i love u too please sleep u have a sumative or whatever

Sweetheart [00:47] :

I’ll ace it bro

Me [00:47] :

i know. goodnight ♡♡♡

Sweetheart [00:47] :

Night ♡

XIX.

It's hard work to keep a relationship with the universe, sure, but Koutarou knows that. Koutarou knows that. It's the least he can do to keep it in check, picking out its beautiful parts and its ugly parts and saying look, this is you, and this is you, and this is you, too, and that's okay.

Koutarou is twenty-one, and he wields his camera like Kuroo wields his smile.

In retrospect, Koutarou has always, always, always been in love.

XX.

Sometimes, everything is kind of good. To support this argument, for example, Koutarou has rather good news to share, and it goes as such:

“Dude, we should move in together.”

Koutarou says this when they're cleaning out Kuroo's apartment one day, by some miracle of a miracle. In actual fact, Kenma had shamed them into doing so, but that is actual fact, and this is Koutarou's reality.

Currently, they're battling a heavy, glass table with a million scratches and rusty metal legs long past their prime. Kuroo had been dissociating on the couch the whole morning while Koutarou sorted out his photos, and Kenma called to speak sternly at Kuroo, and then again to speak sternly at Koutarou. Resolve your issues. Sort your shit out.

That’s mom-talk for ‘clean your fucking apartment,' Kuroo had explained breezily.

So they clean the apartment. Only the apartment’s almost completely clean now—Koutarou thinks it’s kinda amazing how he can dedicate hours and hours to such mundane work, but of course that’s probably one part having no other shit to do, two parts photographing towers of household objects in the sunny squares that lay across the floor, and three parts Kuroo Tetsurou —and the glass table is propped against the wall, ready to be taken out next week, and Koutarou is rapidly, rapidly running out of excuses to continue holding off stirring up some good shit.

When he says dude, we should move in together, Kuroo doesn’t respond until they’ve finished throwing out the soiled paper towels and other garbage littering the floor. He does smile, crookedly, so Koutarou knows he heard it, and raises an eyebrow before settling back onto the couch. It’s a nice eyebrow. He has nice eyebrows.

“You mean it, bro?” Kuroo says, still smiling in that way that completely prevents Koutarou from guessing what he’s thinking.

“Dude, I totally mean it,” Koutarou says, and of course he fucking does. “I mean—I honestly probably should’ve thought of this a really, really long time ago, but I guess we didn’t really think it through when we were like ‘oh let’s find you an apartment here and let’s find me an apartment like, a three-minute walk away.’ Instead of being like ‘hey, let’s just literally live together.’ You get me? It’s like, way more convenient, you know? What better way to strengthen our impeccable broship. Akaashi taught me that word yesterday.”

“What, broship?” Kuroo’s laughing now.

Koutarou grins. “Fuck, dude. This is a broship we’re sailing on. I asked Akaashi about this too and he totally agreed.”

“I see.”

There’s just one condition, dude. I’m serious about this.”

“Yeah?”

“You can’t smash in my mirrors. I mean, you can’t smash anything, but, like, I know you’re kind of glass-inclined. I get it.”

“I like how you think we’ll move into your apartment.”

“I mean? We could totally stay here too, if you want? But we literally just cleaned everything out, like, it would actually be kind of… convenient… if you just sold it now… if you catch my drift…”

“I just think it’s hilarious,” Kuroo starts, softening a little, “alright, no, I think it’s fucking adorable, that you think you have to convince me to move in with you, Kou.”

Koutarou turns so fast to grab Kuroo’s hand that he almost snaps his fucking neck off. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“I mean I’ve been waiting for you to ask. Jesus.”

“JESUS IN-FUCKING-DEED,” Koutarou shouts gleefully, and everything is good. Everything is good, it’s a soft, sunny day, Kuroo’s laughing again—that’s twice now—and Koutarou is bursting at the seams.

XXI.

Koutarou is twenty-one when he figures it out.

XXII.

“You've adopted a snail,” Akaashi says, like he's making a comment about the weather.

“I have.”

Akaashi crouches to the table’s height, taps the side of the glass jar, peers inside. “And Kuroo-san?”

“Out. Groceries. Not here to stop me.” Koutarou’s stacking books on top of a chair, hissing when he moves too fast and his ankle catches on one of its legs, jostling the whole tower. “Motherfucker.”

“Bokuto-san. Your tripod is—”

“Don't,” Koutarou interrupts, almost urgently, moving to place his camera on top of the precarious mess. “Just don't even try.”

He manages to snap a few shots before Akaashi grows restless again.

In a funny way, Koutarou thinks as he rises and stretches and shuffles around to draw the curtains and turn on the fairylights, Akaashi is like a bright, down-to-earth mirror of Kuroo Tetsurou. Clear and crystalline and young and studious and hopeful and maybe all the things Kuroo could have been, or once was, and the thought makes spiders do strange acrobatics in his chest.

Even Akaashi’s mannerisms are hauntingly similar—under Kuroo’s snark and snide and several layers of steel and then some, the two of them are both, fundamentally, chemistry nerds with an affinity for getting by with calculated remarks and passive-aggressive everything. An affinity for attracting people like Bokuto Koutarou like a goddamn magnet.

Akaashi clears his throat, then. “Are you going to take him out?”

Koutarou’s hands stutter and then still. “Who?” he says, too-quick, mind struggling to catch up so suddenly. He turns to look at Akaashi in confusion, only to be met by a confused expression of his own.

There's silence, and Akaashi stares, and Koutarou swallows. His throat, suddenly, is inconceivably fucking dry. “I. I mean—”

I mean—

“The snail, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says, finally, and his mouth looks like it's moving but he’s also squinting just a little bit like he's trying to see behind Koutarou’s fucking eyes. “The snail. Out of the jar.”

“The snail,” Koutarou repeats, pretending like he didn't just have the epiphany of his life. “Right. The jar.” He shakes his head. “The jar is. Part of it.”

“The jar is part of the photo.”

“That—I—yes. Exactly.”

“The—the snail,” Akaashi says again, and starts to laugh.

Koutarou lets the laughter ring, like bells; he can't much hear it over the buzzing in his head anyway.

Me [21:27] :

tetsu

Sweetheart [21:27] :

I’m literally cleaning your fucking kitchen

Me [21:27] :

yah and im in bed

Me [21:27] :

my th roadt hurt

Sweetheart [21:28] :

Your WHAT

Sweetheart [21:28] :

Throat ?????

Sweetheart [21:28] :

Better not be getting sick dude aquarium TOMORROW

Me [21:28] :

im cold >:((

Sweetheart [21:29] :

Are you serious right now

Me [21:29] :

serious as seirous can ,be

Sweetheart [21:30] :

Alright fuck you

Sweetheart [21:30] :

Fuck you I’ll be there in five actual minutes

Sweetheart [21:30] :

If you get me sick you’re telling my chem prof why I’m not here monday

Me [21:34] :

TETSU DON’T BE MAD

Sweetheart [21:34] :

WHAT

Me [21:34] :

I LIED I MNOT ACTUALy SICK JUS WANTED 2 TEXT U

Sweetheart [21:34] :

FUCK OFF

Sweetheart [21:35] :

I EVEN MADE YOU TEA AND SHIT. FUCK YOU

Me [21:35] :

I LOVR U IM SORRY

XXIII.

There’s nothing romantic about it.

There’s nothing romantic about it, so can someone please tell Bokuto Koutarou why he feels his insides being emptied through his toes when he sees Kuroo lying, stomach-up, arms pillowed behind his head, on the conveyor belt with the water reflections swimming over the bridge of his nose.

There’s never anything romantic about it, anyway, the way that Bokuto-and-Kuroo sounds when it comes out of anyone’s mouth, like they’re a set, like it’s some sort of inconceivable for their friendship to be anything other than easy. The casual slinging of arms across shoulders, across seas, the fond pinching of red cheeks, kisses buried into hair-gel. It’s not romantic; it can’t be, with the way that Koutarou is staring at Kuroo and Kuroo is staring at the back of his own eyelids and the hammerhead sharks are passing overhead like they have absolutely no damn clue what is going on.

“This is super romance,” Koutarou says, out loud, snapping a picture of blue-green-tinted Kuroo just as he shows the beginnings of a smile. He looks good like this: blue, green, tired, a little less sharp, a little more blurry. Koutarou smiles, too. His camera is warm in his hands and the conveyor belt is warm under his behind. “I’m totally fucking romancing you right now, dude. Watch this.”

Kuroo cracks an eye open. “I’m watching.”

“You are not.”

“Am too.”

“I feel like,” Koutarou waves his free hand dramatically. “You don’t wanna be romanced right now. And, like, I mean, I’m totally cool with that, too. I’m saying, like, you can just give me the word and I’ll stop romancing you right a-fucking-way.”

“God. I’m just,” Kuroo says, “so comfortable.”

“So predictable.”

“Mmf. Could lie here and do nothing forever.”

“I hope you get stepped on, Tetsu.”

“Kou. Play nice.”

Indignant, and the nonexistent mood having been decidedly shifted in favour of being actually kind of hungry, Koutarou stands up and steps on Kuroo very, very lightly, in the general area of his stomach. Kuroo squawks, his arms flying up to remove Koutarou’s leg.

“Koutarou!” he hisses, folding into a sitting position. “I just said! Play nice!”

“I hate this,” Koutarou complains. “I mean the fact that we have to go all the way to the opposite end of this damned building to get food. And I still want to finish this ultra slow belt-thing, too.”

“Just,” Kuroo says. “Just why don’t you relax a bit. Fucking sit still and I’ll hold you.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Kuroo insists, and he’s already turning toward him and holding his arms open, backpack hanging off of an elbow.

Kuroo...looks good. Koutarou’s already thought about this, but it’s honestly as if he can’t fucking stop. It’s not that he looks any different today, with his goodnight-hair and his highlighter-eyes, the stupid green military jacket that honestly has no right looking as hot on him as it does. In the first place, there’s nothing that makes Kuroo particularly outstanding, overwhelming, not like how Akaashi bites his lip when he does his makeup or how Kenma tries his damned best not to be noticed but still sticks out like a sore red in a sea of blue, anyway. But with Kuroo, and with Koutarou, it’s like—it’s like—

Heads turning because you feel like there could be something in the corner of your vision, and when you look, it’s already gone, it’s already moved into the next room. With Kuroo, it’s like stuffing handfuls of cotton-candy into your mouth, continuously, because the whole lot of it melts in zero-point-two seconds, because you can’t get enough. With Koutarou, it’s like he can never get enough.

It’s not romantic, not in the least bit, and Koutarou will not fucking make it that way. When he says it’s super romance one second and i love you so goddamn much the next, he doesn’t mean it’s romantic, of course not, he just means that he’ll scoot closer and fall into Kuroo’s arms every time that he asks him to. He just means that Kuroo looks kinda really good today.

“Bo,” Kuroo says, waiting.

“Yes,” Koutarou says, scoots closer, and falls into his arms.

Probably, the food could wait. Probably, he could stay like this for fucking ever.

XXIV.

They almost kiss. Koutarou is certain, if he’d just move a couple of millimeters forward, if he’d just keep pressing circles into the dips at the bottom of Kuroo’s thumbs instead of staring dumbly at his stupid, handsome face, they would kiss, but of course they don’t. Kuroo is laughing in front of the moon jellies, with that one dimple that Koutarou wants to put right into the constellations, and the pink-purple hues of the display that fall over them like a blanket. Koutarou stares, and they don’t kiss, but they almost do.

They don’t kiss, but Koutarou is certain that they do, in some far-away universe, they just happen to not kiss in this one. That’s okay. Kuroo is laughing in front of the moon jellies, so they’ll start with that. Kuroo is smiling with all the knives removed, so they’ll start with that.

XXV.

Kuroo comes back with a smile like he never does, twelve a.m. on a Sunday night. He also comes back without the ring box.

Koutarou’s almost asleep on the couch when the keys jingle in the door. Then he’s up, lightning-fast; checks the time, rubs the black dots out of his eyes.

“Almost went back to my place again,” Kuroo says, teeth flashing in the dark. Koutarou knows he says my place like he hasn’t already purged the whole unit of any traces of his previous habitance, okay, but it’s cute, and kind of familiar to hear. He kind of gets it, he thinks, like Kuroo can always have some space if he really needs to. He kind of gets it.

“You’re in a good mood,” Koutarou says directly, and yawns. “So it went pretty… okay?”

“She’s dating Shimizu,” Kuroo whispers fiercely, which hurts Koutarou’s brain instantly to think about. Shimizu? Untouchable, reserved, Shimizu? “Did you know that? Were you aware of this?”

“I was not. Shimizu Kiyoko? Holy shit.”

“Holy shit.”

“I mean—”

“Yeah, it makes sense. Shimizu’s honestly too good for any man. Should’ve known.”

“Wait, wait— she? As in Michimiya is dating Shimizu?”

“Uh, yes? Thought we were on the same page here.”

“This is the best day of my life,” Koutarou says, and makes the sign of the cross on his chest. For all that is good and holy, notwithstanding how Kuroo looks kinda equal parts delighted and torn open, Koutarou would absolutely die to see the two together. The photos he could shoot.

“Earth to Koutarou?”

“KUROO WHAT DID YOU SEE EXACTLY, TELL ME EVERYTHING. AND I MEAN EVERYTHING.”

“Well,” says Kuroo, relaxed and playdoughy, one of the three thousand twenty-five ways Koutarou likes him, “you see—”

XXVI.

You see, it’s like this. It's like—Koutarou has never really gotten over anything that’s ever happened to him in his fucking life.

Kuroo eats sand on his tenth birthday, and Koutarou never gets over it. Koutarou discovers cameras when he is five, and stars when he is six, and fear when he is twelve, and he never gets over the way his hand feels plastered with cold, hardened playdough, the way his mother chides him gently with a soft, melodic voice but lets him keep playing anyway. He falls in love ten thousand times with ten thousand people and he never gets over a single one of them.

When Kuroo arrives in a hurricane of red-orange-yellow leaves, Koutarou is not prepared to fall. Koutarou is not prepared to collide, head to head, grating wheels and flying sparks and wild, whirling dandelion seeds.

He is not prepared for anything, actually, except for afternoons adventuring in the brushes, collecting sweat on his back and rocks in his pockets, and easy laughter, and fresh, sharp air.

Kuroo is none of these. Oh, he is fresh. Oh, he is shiny and sharp, certainly, but. But.

But Kuroo hides, most days, and Koutarou is the one who adventures to retrieve him, and it's a sort of game, you see. It's a game where Kuroo runs and climbs and hides and Koutarou cries looking for him until dark or laughs finding him, after all, in an entanglement of tree roots.

Its like this: Koutarou and Kuroo collide. And collide. And collide. And Koutarou never gets over him. Koutarou never gets over him.

XXVII.

Happy birthday.

What a funny thing to say, what a strange thing to see that someone’s lights can shine right out of their skin when that simple phrase is directed at them.

Koutarou steers Tsukishima Kei away from his corner and toward the couch. “Tsukki, say happy birthday.”

“Happy birthday,” he chokes out, throwing a box of new headphones at Kuroo.

“Tsukki,” Kuroo says, fucking appalled. “These are Dr. Dre.”

“I am aware.”

“I mean these are Dr. Dre I can’t possibly fucking take them.”

“They’re the joint effort of the first-years,” Tsukishima says, indignant, “and I was just unlucky enough to be the delegate. Take them or I’ll set Hinata on you.”

“Tsukki,” Kuroo repeats, watery. “Hinata, Kageyama. Kyoutani. My children. Fuck, tell them thanks. Fuck.”

“Oikawa’s children,” Tsukishima corrects, pointing at the kitchen, where Oikawa has poor Iwaizumi trapped against the fridge. Akaashi spawns like the devil behind Tsukishima, covers his eyes, and speeds him to the corner where Kenma is tapping at a breakneck speed at his phone.

“Anyway!” Koutarou says, turning back to Kuroo. “So this one’s from Yachi.” He produces a fucking adorable stacked lunch box with cats imprinted across it and a classic red ribbon looped around its square faces. “She says hi from art college, that she’s dying, and that she knows you’re dying, and that she hopes these will make you feel a little less like you’re dying.”

“God I fucking love Yachi,” Kuroo mutters, pulling the red ribbon at its end. The lunch box looks hilariously small in his hands.

In its compartments are cupcakes and brittle and other colourful wagashi arranged in neat little concentric circles. They look very squishy. They look very delicious. Koutarou whistles his appreciation.

“Shiiiit,” he says.

“God,” Kuroo repeats, and immediately assembles the pieces back together. “I’m saving these for later. God, I need to call up Yachi.”

Kuroo sets the box down and proceeds to stare holes into his thighs. If Koutarou didn’t know better, he wouldn’t think that at this very moment his best friend was trying very very hard not to cry, but he knows better, so that’s okay.

“Hey,” Koutarou says, suddenly dead-sober. Kuroo’s eyes look kind of shiny when he sits down and pulls him over onto his lap. In fact, if Koutarou didn’t know better, he would even go so far as to say that they looked a little less like cold moon-pools and a lot more like—

More like—

When Koutarou saves the light in his mother’s eyes at the wise age of six, he means to do something with it. Something big. Something of the firework-whistling sort.

When the fire lights up in Kuroo’s eyes, the world holds its breath. It is not the firework-whistling sort of fire. It is not the soft-orange-lick sort of fire. It is something fucking else entirely.

“Thank you,” Kuroo says, shaking. “For this. For everything.”

Koutarou cups Kuroo’s angular jaw in his hands and leans down and feels his heart lurch like he’s just jumped from a launched spaceship.

“Happy birthday, Tetsu,” Koutarou says, a nanometer away from Kuroo’s lips. A universe away.

And then time and space cease entirely to exist. Kuroo’s mouth curls into a smirk against his, and they collide.

And then they pull away, and collide again. And again. And just as Koutarou pauses to breathe, they collide again. And—

“Akaashi, at least pretend to look away,” Kuroo stops to call, laughing. Laughing. Koutarou turns. Akaashi is red in the face, still with his hands over Tsukki’s eyes. Kenma looks ridiculously scandalized for someone who was supposedly playing games.

A sharp rapping on the door shakes the apartment. The door bursts open without waiting for a response, and in spills winter; Suga, and Daichi, wrapped up warmly, who had come all the way from Miyagi just to see Kuroo. Koutarou’s heart begins its familiar, intricate race.

“Where’s the party?” Daichi says, like a true dad, grinning and spreading his arms wide as the fucking universe.

XXVIII.

If anyone asks about what happens next, Koutarou will say this:

Koutarou will say that Kuroo presses one last kiss to his cheek and leaps off of him and directly into Daichi and Suga’s strong, parently arms. Koutarou will say that Kuroo falls into an easy banter with his old friends and Oikawa removes himself from Iwaizumi and Tsukishima and Kenma come out of their corner to gather in the kitchen, where they pour each other glasses of cheap beer and talk about the new species of giant plant-eating dinosaur found in South America like the children they are. He will recall how Kenma makes a strange face at Kuroo’s comment on his closeness with Akaashi, how Tsukishima folds the napkins with an unexpected gentleness, how Oikawa picks on Iwaizumi like they’re already married or something. He will say that he takes at least seven hundred photos and promises to print every single one of them and make an album out of stars. If anyone asks, Koutarou will tell them that.

Koutarou will not tell them this:

That in fact, Kuroo does all this and more with a new fire in his eyes, leaving a carbon trail where his gaze travels; that when he stands up to make his toast his arms are a little too shaky. Koutarou will not say that Kuroo sits down afterward, and buries his face in his arms, and forgets how to speak. He will not say that everyone gets up with their chairs scraping and crowds around Kuroo like he’s the center of the universe.

Koutarou will not say this:

When they are twenty-one, when Kuroo feels warmer than the sun and twice as bright, Koutarou hears him cry his heart out for the first time in his fucking life.

XXIX.

If there's one thing that Koutarou knows, it's this: the universe has been in love with Kuroo Tetsurou for as long as he can remember.

If there's one thing that Koutarou knows, it's the way the starlight falls on one side of Kuroo’s face and highlights the hard edges of his nose and cheeks and jaw something fierce, golden-something eyes glowing like fireflies; soft, too, impermanent, almost, like liquid gold. He's this way now: under the window under the blinds under the infinite sky, dark-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, one strong hand in the mess of his hair and the other holding up a leather-bound book to his chest, picture-perfect and painting-perfect and everything-perfect. Koutarou can hardly stand to just keep looking, never mind keep a steady hold on the camera in his hands.

He raises it up, shaky, breathes, shaky.

Kuroo lifts his gaze from the book, eyes soft, heart soft. “Hey,” he says. Easy, familiar.

“Hi,” says Koutarou, hoarsely, getting the strange feeling that he's invading his own privacy. The camera returns to his lap. “Hello.”

“You okay?” Kuroo asks. He’s smiling a little, now, and Koutarou can only think of course I fucking am, you're right here, you're with me, thinks it with such conviction and fervor that he almost forgets to answer the question out loud until his eyes catch movement from Kuroo’s brow, beginning its slow ascent into his hair.

“I am,” he says, and clicks the camera off. “I am.”

Kuroo smiles, then, a whisper of a thing, moves to put his book down and fold his glasses and open his arms and it's all so carefully powerful, like how the pieces of a frozen lake crack apart at the first call of spring, like how your birthday candles go out in wisps after you make a wish on them. Like bonfire, like honey. Like love.

“C’mere,” Kuroo says, closing his ambrosia-soft eyes, and Koutarou catches fire.

XXX.

[transcript]

[08/23/2018]

dear uhhh diary

i mean ive been meaning to write stu ff down for a while but things just keep on happening and happening and my brain is a littl bit kinda wonky you knw what im saying

anyway i know what your e thinking and im just gonna say it now: this isnt a love story

becos

that would be saying that not every story is a love story and that just aint true yo

so that being fucking stated

i just wanted u to know that im in deep fucking love

and that if you think something will make your life better fuckin go for it fuckin,,, do it u know like get pumpd up about ur fuckin self

guess i just rolled a fucking, 20 on this life dude this some real shit like can u believe:

[image description: a tall, young man, asleep on a bed with his black hair over one eye and lips slightly parted; his limbs are splayed wildly over the covers and pillows. there is an aloe plant on the bedside table. the photo has a dark blue hue, interrupted only by the yellow squares of moonlight that fold over the man’s body. it is peaceful. it is quiet.]

with love from my whole entire heart

bokuto koutarou