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The first year that Kuroo and Yaku had known each other had been an undeniable mess.
The way that they both simply seemed to exist to spite the other often pumped the air around them full of nitroxyl gas, volatile and unstable and a definite risk to anyone that had to weather the fallout of their inevitable bickering. Each day felt like walking into a new disaster zone, breath held tight and head filled with a mild curiosity about what they could possibly scrap over this time, what they could possibly turn into a silent competition to best the other for nothing except the chance to lord it over the other.
Over time, however, everyone began to stop keeping score.
Taunts thrown back and forth over the waxed gym floors lost their real antagonistic bite, or, the kind that made the other members of Nekoma Volleyball Club genuinely concerned about the possibility of breaking up a fight. As winter turned to spring and thawed the last handful of months in their first year, so too did the temperature slowly warm on the expanse of sharp icy barbs that existed between Kuroo and Yaku. Though there was still the threat of mud and slush and slippage, at least the distance between them grew more easily navigable, and it slowly made them kind of want to try at being friends.
Their first truce-based outing was to a bakery three stops down from Nekoma on the train, to buy sweets for their graduating seniors in a sincere attempt at an apology for making their lives a gentle, slow-simmering hell for the past year. Even though they argued the entire ride down about what they should pick up from the digital menu pulled up on Yaku’s phone, Kuroo still held every door open for him on the way there and back and carried the boxes and bags while Yaku purchased and handled the train tickets.
Things changed as much as they stayed the same through their second year. While the snide witticisms and exchanged negging remained, it shifted its tune—instead of two parts competing discordantly and all at once, it became a coda tossed back and forth until something greater than the sum of its parts swelled and started to take shape.
Nowadays, a year and a half later, Kuroo’s relationship with Yaku exists in cyclical phases. Following the tumult of first year, things may still be volatile, but it’s now on a schedule, like the moon as it waxes and wanes in the sky or the rainy season that comes and goes in early summer.
Like clockwork, Kuroo starts out thinking that things are cool and fine between them. Then, out of nowhere, Yaku decides to do something to tilt the world just a handful of degrees to the side, and Kuroo is just supposed to figure things out and adjust to a new reality. It feels like while he’s turned away, some unseen forces have come out of the woodwork of his life, moved everything in it three inches to the left, and bolted it back down just to see what happens. Though instead of hitting his shins and stumbling on couch legs and table edges, he finds himself working overtime to adjust. His new tactic in more recent versions of this cycle has been focusing more than ever on the root of the problem, like if it’s all he pays attention to then maybe he can get over it and get back to business as usual.
Though when it’s examined from a different angle, this approach sounds similar to a line of logic that goes something like “If you poke at a bruise, it will heal faster.” But Kuroo is too preoccupied, is always too preoccupied in his times of full-moon lunacy, in the thicket of monsoon season arriving during a random week in March, to consider this.
This particular time his life is thrown into disarray, they are a week into summer practices during their third year and Kuroo starts to notice how Yaku takes care of himself.
It starts off innocuously enough, and with little pretense. The whole team has finished a particularly grueling practice, the last hour focused especially on digging, and their quads and hamstrings all breathe collective sighs of relief as they shuffle into the club room. Kenma’s locker is situated near Yaku’s, and as they all mull about and take their time changing Kuroo catches the thread of conversation that passes between them from where he’s seated on a folding chair nearby.
“I split my nail during practice,” Kenma says, and when Kuroo glances over he sees the second-year holding a half-curled hand closer to his face for inspection.
“It’s not bleeding, is it?” Yaku asks as he looks over Kenma’s shoulder to also assess the damage. He shifts back over to his own locker and opens it, taking a moment to rummage around before pulling out nail clippers and a file and proffers them to the other. “Here.”
Kuroo taps his pen idly on the volleyball log he’s filling out, but raises a curious eyebrow at the amount of products carefully arranged on the shelves inside the other third year’s locker—bottles, packages, little jars. “Are you trying to open your own bodega over there, Yakkun? What is all of that stuff anyway?”
As if the very sound of Kuroo’s voice flicks something on in the other, Yaku turns around and gives him a flat look. “What do you mean,” he replies, looking back at the shelves like he’s evaluating them for the first time. “It’s just deodorant, cleanser and a couple of lotions?”
“And apparently supplies for your manicures,” Kuroo answers, his grin widening into something wry. “You know, maybe if you grew your hair out you’d make a pretty girl.”
“Cutting your nails and taking care of your skin aren’t girly things,” Yaku huffs like he’s already done with this conversation. “Not looking like a crusty caveman is gender-neutral.”
Before Kuroo can manage a pithy reply, Lev cuts in brightly. “Come to think of it, you do take care of yourself pretty well, Yaku-senpai. Is that so the girls will still like you even though you’re—”
The way Yaku closes his locker is two-thirds of the way to a slam, and his glare rounds on the first year next. “Finish that sentence, Haiba,” he threatens, underscoring his words with a finger jabbed in his general direction. “See what happens.”
The backs of Kuroo’s thighs tingle in sympathetic memory of the kicks Yaku has thrown at him over the past two years. Still, he finds himself being a little more free with the snicker that sneaks past his lips now that Yaku’s ire has been redirected. He turns his attention back to the log he’s working on, but doesn’t miss Yaku scrubbing down his face and neck using a package of wipes he’d pulled from his locker out of the corner of his eye, and his fingers running over his skin to rub in dollops of moisturizer with practiced ease.
— — —
The next time Kuroo is confronted with his current problem is on the train to Nekoma for the start of their summer training camp a couple of weeks later. He doesn’t expect to see Yaku tucked into himself on one of the benches since he lives along a different line; but then he remembers the service alert that he’d received via text that morning and also recalls that Yaku is serially early to almost everything, and it makes a little more sense.
He heads over and sits down in the seat right beside his, and grins slightly at the split-second face Yaku pulls at the feeling of a body next to his own, no doubt thinking There are literally half a dozen empty seats around for the love of God—
The other’s eyes actually meet Kuroo’s, flash in realization when he isn’t some weird stranger, and he stops. He tugs his headphones off one ear, and settles on a surprisingly subdued “Hey.”
“Surprised that you’re up and about right now,” Kuroo says, because he is. Despite Yaku’s dogged insistence at arriving prepped and ahead of schedule to almost everything, he really isn’t a morning person. It’s simply another one of the many things they differ on. “Only captains need to show up this early.”
Yaku offers half a shrug and yawns. “Wasn’t sure how long it was going to take since they closed my usual line. I’ll stop off somewhere and get something to drink to kill the time, I guess.”
“Get me something too?” he asks, his voice amused and teasing, and Yaku inches his chin down in the barest hint of a nod.
“I’ll consider it.”
Kuroo hums at that, and feels an inexplicable sense of contentment settle over him at the surprising ease that exists between them right now. Maybe Yaku, half-asleep, is the most agreeable version of himself.
This illusion breaks, however, when Yaku’s eyes slip closed and Kuroo asks a moment later, “Are you nervous?”
He reopens them if only to glare at Kuroo for not catching the hint, and breathes a little sharply out of his nose. He crosses his arms over his chest and sinks a little deeper into the cushioned bench, so the top edge cradles his neck. “Of course not. We’re going to do fine.”
And that’s that, he supposes. Kuroo finds himself smiling, if only to himself. The direct way Yaku speaks makes it seem like their success over the next few weeks is as guaranteed as the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. It is reassuring in a way he didn’t know he needed, to have one of their best players so confident in their ability that the question itself was an affront.
Something about the way he says it also feels special and significant somehow; and Kuroo can almost believe that this sleepy train car at 7:30 on a Saturday, the world has narrowed into such a small place that perhaps he and Yaku are the only ‘we’ he’s referring to.
The thought causes his palms to tingle in the way they only get after a particularly exhilarating spike or damning block, and his heart to kick up like he’s already run half his conditioning laps around the track outside the gym facilities.
He turns to reply, but promptly forgets what he’s going to say.
Yaku’s eyes are closed again, headphones cocked at an angle from where they’re still slipped off one ear. Early morning sunlight streams in through the window and curves over the round shape of his cheek, but causes his thick blonde eyelashes to look heavy from the shadow they’re casting against the delicate, thin skin under his eyes. It glows just a little, looking healthy and plump, and Kuroo remembers all the little bottles lined up inside his locker, and can only think of chemistry lab, where elements have to be combined in specific order to achieve a specific outcome.
Though instead of reagents and substrates to generate products, the only thing he can focus on right now is the sheen on the smooth, blemish-less planes of Yaku’s skin. It’s something translucent and delicate while he naps here like a cat in the morning sun; but seems like a softer reprise of something more powerful, like the hard-earned film of sweat that gleams under fluorescent gym lights paired with a wide grin, all sharp edges, and wild and competitive through the grid of a net after digging a nasty block Kuroo thought was done for in practice scrimmages.
Yaku’s hair spills in waves from the crown of his head, and some tufts of it are bathed in summer sun which turns it into spun gold. It’s a little longer than he usually keeps it, a few locks grazing his eyebrows where he parts it over the middle of his forehead—a haircut was probably low on his list of priorities right now, Yaku has always had a talent for being especially busy during breaks—and it looks so luxuriously soft that Kuroo has to remind himself he shouldn’t reach out and touch it.
His head lolls to the side in light sleep, and Kuroo catches a scent that’s warm and sweet, and thinks of a Yaku he only knows in the early morning hours, before laundry detergent and the soft smells of home are covered over by athletic tape adhesive and Salonpas. It’s familiar, and Kuroo’s spent all this time luxuriating in the smells and tactility that make them feel the same, but now he wonders if it’s a barrier, concealing the parts of them that are different and rendering him complacent with the things that are instead of considering the things that could be.
He blinks, suddenly feeling particularly warm and exposed to the weight of the sun streaming over them. The train lurches at the same time he sees his world tilt a little more to the side in slow motion.
— — —
The last time Kuroo pokes at this Yaku-shaped bruise that’s been growing rather than healing happens accidentally on purpose. It’s late September and classes have only just resumed, but Kuroo is already feeling a thorn in his side, and it’s called English.
This is another entry on the long list of ways he and Yaku are different—Kuroo has always excelled in science and math, where Yaku is working on applications for universities that have strong international relations and business management reputations. Languages, history, and literature are some of his best subjects, and Kuroo has caught him in the volleyball club room explaining lessons to their kouhai and sharing his old class notes with them on a fairly regular basis.
He ignores the funny thing his heart does in his chest when he dwells lightly on how the other can be so generous with his time and possessions like it’s nothing at all. Some demon senpai he turned out to be.
So it’s with this graciousness in mind and only a little chip on his pride that Kuroo strides up to Yaku at the end of one of their practices when he is bent deep into a butterfly cool-down stretch. He prods his knee with the toe of his sneaker (and swallows down the traitorous part of his brain that marvels that his shoe is almost bigger) and says, “Help me with English.” When Yaku peers up at him dubiously from the gym floor, raising a single blond eyebrow, he adds, “Hironaka-sensei is kicking my ass.”
The other’s large eyes flicker through a couple of different looks as he turns around Kuroo’s request, and Kuroo is a bit distracted by them so he almost misses when Yaku says, “Fine.”
Though the outright competitions have simmered down between them, he knows there is a part of Yaku that’s smug at the thought of Kuroo asking for his help like this. But Kuroo also knows Yaku, trusts him enough to know that he wouldn’t purposefully let him fail at anything if there was something he could do to help. He knew he was going to say yes.
They decide since it’s a bi-week and they don’t have any games, that upcoming Friday will do just fine. Yaku mentions off-handedly that they can just go home to his place after practice, and it’s all Kuroo can think about from Tuesday night right up until the end of practice three days later.
Kuroo is always the last to leave, after conversations with Nekomata and Naoi, filling out the club journal, and locking up their facilities once they’d cleaned up. When he gets back to the club room, Yaku has changed back into his school uniform shirt and slacks, and is perched on a chair thumbing at his phone keyboard. Normally, he is one of the first to head out if others don’t need extra help, but now he is bidding the last handful of their teammates goodbye as they are heading out the door. Yaku manages a smile and an especially warm “Good work today” at Shibayama, who gets a bit flustered but also seems to preen at the praise. Kuroo makes quick work of changing, but finds it difficult to stop thinking about the sincere encouragement on Yaku’s face when he’d peeked over his shoulder in the middle of the prior exchange.
“Does it always take you this long to leave?” comes the other’s voice after a couple minutes, but there’s a distinct lack of an edge to it that makes it sound playful.
Kuroo tugs on his own pants and shirt after wiping down his sweat with his gym shorts, and packs his things up. He is definitely doing laundry this weekend with the amount of shirts and shorts that have piled up at the bottom of his locker.
“Didn’t know you were in such a rush to get to our study date, Yakkun,” comes out of his mouth before he realizes what he’s saying. There’s a beat of silence, and Kuroo feels the tips of his ears tingle because now he can’t take that back. When he looks up because Yaku hasn’t said anything, the blond is gazing pointedly out the club room window, his neck looking considerably pinker under his shirt collar than Kuroo last remembers it.
Huh.
“Don’t forget that you’re the one that asked me for help,” the other shoots back, a little quick like he realizes he’s forgotten to reply. He stands and stretches his arms over his head, and sighs a little as he slackens his body and heads for the door. “If you’re done, we should go. It’s supposed to rain tonight and I’d like to get home before we get caught in it.”
Now, with the club room really empty all around them and the late afternoon sun streaming in through the windows casting everything in a warm glow, Kuroo knows this ‘we’ is only about the two of them. What he doesn’t really know is why it feels like his heart is thudding out of rhythm.
“Yeah,” Kuroo says, a little absent as he picks up his bags and throws them over his shoulders. He spends the short walk from the campus to the train station feeling a little out-of-body, and he only really comes-to when something thwacks him squarely on the nose.
Yaku is holding a train ticket inches from his face, his gaze upturned and impatient.
“You do know how to ride the train, right?” he asks.
“Obviously,” Kuroo can’t help but grumble back at the low bait. “But I have a pass. What’s this for?”
“If it’s the student one, then it won’t work,” Yaku reminds him as they approach the turnstiles. “My place is on a different line, remember?”
“I have a Pasmo,” Kuroo says, and Yaku turns around to look up at him once he shoves his wallet back into his pocket.
“Oh,” he answers. “Well I guess you didn’t need me to buy your ticket for you, then.”
“I guess not,” is the only thing Kuroo finds he can reply with, and he fists his own hands in the pockets of his pants because they’ve gone all pins-and-needles again. “But thanks anyway.”
“You’ll just have to buy snacks on the way home,” Yaku decides, and Kuroo nods as they board the train, thinking to himself that he probably would have done that even if Yaku hadn’t said anything.
— — —
They do not buy snacks on the way home.
By the time they get off at the station closest to Yaku’s house, the heavens have opened and unleashed a torrential downpour on the streets of his suburban neighborhood.
“Shit,” Yaku says, peering out from under the cover of the station along and watching the rain come down in sheets as thunder rolls overhead. Kuroo doesn’t disagree with him.
“How far is your house?” he asks, glancing down at him and ignoring the realization that this is definitely the first time he has come over.
“Like a twenty minute walk.” Yaku’s shoulders sag, and he scuffs the toe of his shoe against the ground in agitation. “Shit. I didn’t even bring an umbrella today because it was supposed to come later.”
“Neither did I,” Kuroo sighs as he pulls his blazer out from where it’s been hanging off one of his bags and holding it over his head. “Should we get ready to run?”
Yaku throws in another ‘dammit’ for good measure, but mirrors Kuroo. He looks up at the other from under the flimsy protection of his blazer, the expression on his face already equal parts horrified and resigned to their fate. “Do we even have a choice?”
They make it to Yaku’s house in twelve minutes by sprinting, but are thoroughly soaked to the bone and breathing hard. Once inside, they spend another handful of minutes flooding the genkan by attempting some semblance of drip-drying.
“You can leave your stuff here,” Yaku says between pants as he toes off his sopping shoes and sets them beside his bags. “I’m gonna go grab some towels.”
When he returns, Kuroo is about to step over into the house and announce his intrusion, and Yaku shrugs as he begins mopping up the water. “There’s no one here, no need to bother.”
Kuroo’s curiosity is piqued at that. “Do your parents work late?”
“They’re on business trips,” he answers, and Kuroo watches a drop of water slide down the side of Yaku’s neck as he’s bent double arranging their school bags on a towel to let them drain a little. “They do multi-national consulting.”
“No wonder you’re so good at English, you’ve had a leg up from day one,” he says wryly. “Is that why you’re applying to schools for the same sort of thing?”
Yaku’s cheeks are a bit pink and he blinks a couple times in what looks like surprise. He straightens back up into a crouch, and tilts his head to the side. “I guess it is. I don’t really know if I ever thought about doing anything else.”
“Fair enough,” Kuroo says.
Yaku stands back up fully once he’s finished doing what he can with the water on the floor, and looks down at his soaking uniform with an uncomfortable grimace. “Ugh. I think I want a bath.” He glances over to Kuroo, whose brain is coming back online after seemingly short-circuiting momentarily at his words. “You can take one, too. You don’t have anywhere to be tonight, right?”
“No,” Kuroo manages, his voice coming out more steady than he feels.
“Good. I’ll make something for dinner, and throw your clothes in the wash with mine.”
Even though it’s unfolding in front of him, none of this quite feels real. It hasn’t all week—maybe it’s still Thursday night, and he’s fast asleep in his own bed as his brain works double-time to drum all of this up.
“Come on,” Yaku says, and gives a slight shove to his shoulder to move him along into his house.
Kuroo feels a bit guilty for the wet footprints he trails all over, after Yaku directs him towards the bathroom and his own room just a couple doors down a hall off the living room and kitchen. The whole house bigger than he expected, definitely too big for one person alone, and he sneaks curious glances at the pictures lining the walls. Unfettered delight fills him when he catches sight of a few of Yaku’s baby pictures.
“You’re dripping water on the floor,” Yaku says as he suddenly passes him by with a hip check, but pauses to look up at him curiously. His face falls when he realizes what Kuroo’s looking at.
“You’re cute in these,” Kuroo says in reply, pulling his eyes away from a set of pictures where a toddler-aged Yaku is wearing a pair of teddy bear overalls. His grin widens when Yaku sputters and looks visibly flustered.
“Shut up,” he huffs. “This is not the bathroom. Or my room for that matter. Do you want to bathe first, or should I?”
“You can,” Kuroo says noncommittally, and the way Yaku looks at him looks like he’s reticent to let Kuroo sit around in wet clothes, but he insists with a slight grin. “You’re smaller, so you’ll probably catch a cold quicker.”
That earns him another jab in the side, but Yaku tells him in the meantime to at least change into his least-smelly gym clothes so he’s dry. He furnishes him with a couple of towels and pushes him into the bathroom to accomplish this, and when Kuroo steps out he pokes his head into the open door around the corner where Yaku is grabbing his own clothes to change into.
“I’ll be quick,” Yaku says as he brushes past Kuroo in the doorway. “If you decide you’re more hungry after you bathe I can make dinner before we study.”
Kuroo shakes his head dismissively in response. “Take your time, it’s no trouble,” he says, and with that, Yaku gives a little nod and disappears into the bathroom. Kuroo steps into the room more fully and sits down at the desk tucked in one corner by the window. A Pocari and a glass dish of melon has been left on top of it, and Kuroo’s stomach flip-flops against his will as his brain catalogues it with all of the other effortless thoughtfulness Yaku doles out in times that catch him the most off-guard. He uncaps the drink and takes a swig, and swivels on the chair to take in the rest of the room.
It’s surprisingly tidy. His bed is made and the floor is clear, though it still looks lived-in with the amount of books, DVD’s, and CD’s packed onto a bookcase against one wall. Unable to keep from being just a little nosy, he walks over and reads some of the spines. Books he recognizes from school required reading lists are interspersed with fantasy and science fiction novels, and there are even a handful of weekly shounen magazine issues dated a couple years ago. Movies appear much in the same pattern with the notable presence of The Lord of the Rings boxed editions and an impressive amount of Alien sequels. Though there’s also a distinct presence of old horror movies and more recent, laughably bad ones sprinkled in too, and that both makes complete sense and is actually somewhat surprising.
When he turns, a couple of floating shelves on the opposite wall catch his attention. Kuroo strides over and sees trophies and plaques, and medals hanging on hooks in between the ledges. He scoffs a little on instinct when he sees a small, first-place trophy from the metropolitan tournament dated from their first year of middle school—a holdout reaction on behalf of his still-smarting twelve-year-old self. There’s also a Best Libero award from his third year. Plaques for good teamwork, ribbons and certificates for outstanding sportsmanship. Tucked in between the awards are wallet-sized portraits of Yaku through the years in different colored jerseys, volleyball tucked against his hip or between his hands and a broad, megawatt smile on his face that says there was nowhere he’d rather be than on the court.
Kuroo doesn’t really know why it’s this that does it. Maybe it’s the fact that this shelf is a testament to the ferocious drive that makes Yaku work to succeed every day, and it makes his heart swell to know that it’s paid off for him so far, but that he also continues to work hard every day in the gym even now. Maybe it’s the way Yaku’s eyes are shining in every photograph he’s seen in the house and makes him figure out that he’s always had this vivacious tenacity that rivals the sun, that he probably always will. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s been allowed into a space that is all Yaku’s own and here his smell lingers in all its soft intricacies, and his interests and passions are all laid out for him to see in an act of trust that was both unthinking and maybe a little deliberate. (He could have just as easily told Kuroo to wait in the kitchen or living room.)
But here, standing in the middle of his bedroom, Kuroo recognizes that maybe he has a little bit of a crush on Yaku Morisuke. He takes another drink from the bottle in his hands when his throat goes a little tight and a sense of warmth floods his body.
Either Yaku really did mean it when he said he was going to be quick, or time is compressed somehow, because he is back in the doorway with wet hair and a towel around his neck far sooner than Kuroo anticipates. He’s standing kind of cluelessly in the middle of his bedroom, eyes not really looking at anything, and realizes his situation. He isn’t sure which would be more embarrassing—Yaku seeing the crater he’s sure exists after the meteor of Kuroo’s feelings has careened into the world in his own head; or Yaku looking at him the way he is right now, which reads that he believes very intently that Kuroo is a weird dumbass standing kind of cluelessly in the middle of his bedroom.
“Your turn,” he says, and sounds a bit hesitant about it, like if he phrases it in a question that it will goad Kuroo into explaining himself. But Kuroo takes that opportunity as soon as he extends it, and squeezes past the other and beelines for the bathroom.
But the bigger problem here might actually be the bathroom. Because when he enters, there is steam hanging hazy in the air, thick on his tongue and in his nose and fogging up the mirror, and Kuroo is wrapped in a scent that he’s only ever captured delicate whiffs of, and it’s a bit overwhelming in its intensity. He looks around and finds that like his bedroom, this space, too, is filled of Yaku, the neatly-groomed pieces of himself that exist in moisturizer jars and face cleanser and shampoo. A moment later he realizes how stupid, how weird it might be for his heart to be quietly thrilled over things like this, and recognizes that maybe he has a lot more than a little bit of a crush on Yaku Morisuke.
When he takes a deep, steadying breath and looks over to see the shower and bench are still dripping from its previous occupant, and tub is still filled for him. He makes quick work of stripping down and stepping into the shower first, and actually luxuriates in the hot spray—it’s a blessedly welcome change on his practice-worn muscles, and from the wet chill that still tries to cling to his body. It gives him something else to focus on, but only for a moment.
He picks up a bottle from the ledge under the shower knobs and inspects it critically. This is definitely the culprit of the sweet, fresh aroma that clings to the bathroom tile now, but has maybe been on his mind for a lot longer than that. He lathers the almond-scented shampoo into his hair, and remembers their train ride to spring training camp and feels a part of himself unravel.
The cycle of problems he’s had with Yaku have never been problems at all—they’re symptoms of a much larger, systemic whole, and parsed in those scientific terms, Kuroo thinks that maybe he has half a chance at figuring all of this out.
Kuroo’s first order of business in Figuring This Out is to pick up the matching bottle of conditioner, decide why the hell not, and run it through his hair too. The easy slide of his fingers through his hair is a bit unusual as he works to rinse it out, and he finds he can’t stop running his fingers through it even when he finishes washing and settles in the tub for a soak.
He allows himself about ten minutes to simply drift, trying hard not to let his brain break with all the thoughts humming around in it and instead focusing on the steady susurrations of heavy rain and rolling thunder outside. He doesn’t even realize he might have dozed off until there’s a knock on the door beyond the shower alcove.
Kuroo’s voice sounds thicker than he means for it to, choking on almond blossom and shea butter soap when he calls out, “Yeah?”
“Is dinner now okay with you?” Yaku’s voice calls back, muffled slightly through the closed door. “I’m hungry.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’ll be in the kitchen, then.” There’s a beat where Kuroo contemplates the saccharine domesticity of all this, thinks it’s maybe still all a dream, and then Yaku says, “Make sure you don’t drown.”
“I won’t,” he promises automatically in return, like he would ever fold under a challenge from the other, and finds himself laughing at Yaku’s blasé tone.
He remains in the water for another ten or fifteen minutes until a second drowsy spell threatens to pull him under and he reckons he really should get out. He drains the bathwater and as he towels dry he pointedly ignores the way he now smells like Yaku because he still has some sense of self-preservation and decides he would actually like to survive the night. As he rubs most of the moisture from his hair, he gazes in the fogged-up mirror and marvels how it lies flat and loose around his face. He reaches up and runs his fingers through it, and feels a little amazed at how soft it feels.
Even though he’s changed into a shirt and gym shorts, he steps one foot back into the shower and commits the shampoo and conditioner brand to memory for good measure.
When Kuroo enters the kitchen, Yaku does a double-take in the middle of making what looks like fried rice. He must feel as surprised as Kuroo, because when he steps close enough to peer over his shoulder at what he’s cooking, he says, “Your hair.”
Kuroo snorts, and looks down at Yaku from where he’s leaned against the counter beside him. His body is still suffused with warmth from the bath, skin a little soft and pink, and seeing Yaku in much of the same state only goes the extra mile in melting his insides. “I know,” he says amusedly, and the compliments come easier. “Your shampoo is like magic. I really haven’t seen it lay this flat in a while. Probably since I last got it cut.”
Something about what he says apparently strikes a nerve in Yaku, because he goes red from his cheeks to his ears to the back of his neck, and it’s nowhere near as warm in here, even next to the stove, as it was in the bathroom. A part of Kuroo secretly hopes that maybe it’s the way he smells like Yaku now, having co-opted something that belongs to the other so uniquely that neither of them really know what to make of it.
“I-It’s really nothing special,” Yaku says as he uses a pair of chopsticks to swirl the rice, meat, veggies, and eggs around in the pan he’s working. “You can just get it at the store.”
“Noted,” Kuroo says, passing the bowls on his other side over to Yaku when he wordlessly gestures with an elbow. He watches Yaku scoop rice into each one, making sure the portions are about equal. “I’ll have to try it once my bar runs out.”
That, it seems, is enough to get Yaku to stop what he’s doing rather abruptly. He looks up at Kuroo with a supremely perplexed expression. “What?”
“Bar soap,” Kuroo clarifies, enunciating the words like Yaku hadn’t heard him.
“You use bar soap,” Yaku deadpans, still looking up at him, though his face takes on a slightly-horrified look. “On your hair.”
He shrugs, and plucks one of bowls from Yaku’s hands to start eating when he makes no clear move to go to the kitchen table. “It’s convenient. And not that messy.”
Apparently, that’s also the wrong thing to say, because Yaku blinks once in shock. “You’re serious,” he says, disbelievingly. “You’re not fucking with me.” He scrubs his now-free hand over his face and lets out a mortified, “Oh my God.”
Kuroo frowns as he plucks the cooking chopsticks from Yaku’s lax fingers and starts eating with them. “You’re being such a drama queen,” he chides. “I fail to see why you’re making a big deal about this? I’d say it’s moisturizing enough.”
“That’s probably why your hair is so fucked up all the time,” the other surmises as he pointedly reaches behind Kuroo’s ass and drags the drawer out enough to hit him and knock him off his ledge against it. “It’s probably dry as hell and covered in buildup.”
He spits the last word like it’s poison, and Kuroo actually feels a little affronted. “It is not,” he says defensively.
“It definitely is,” Yaku shoots back, pointing his chopsticks accusingly at him. His frown deepens into a scowl like he’s apparently come up with some other way that Kuroo has offended him.
“God,” he huffs, marching over to the kitchen table and settling down at a space where a glass of water is already waiting. Kuroo strides over and sits down in the spot beside his, though he isn’t sure he wants to be around someone throwing such unwarranted critique at him right now. Crushing on Yaku or not, he’s not going to take this poisonous slight on his personal grooming habits.
“You,” Yaku says bitterly, stabbing into his rice with far more force than seems necessary, “are definitely one of those assholes that washes his body, hair, and face with bottom-shelf grocery store soap, but still manages to look annoyingly gorgeous with perfect skin and hair.” He pauses only to throw out a scoff. “Unbelievable.”
Now it’s Kuroo’s turn to blink once, his chopsticks stilling against his own bowl. Did Yaku just.
“You think I’m gorgeous?” he blurts, and Yaku’s eyes go wide as saucers. He keeps his gaze fixed down, like he suddenly finds the caramelized chicken thigh pieces in his bowl to be the most fascinating thing in the world.
A long moment of what feels like stilted silence lapses between them, but Kuroo can’t tell over the roar of blood in his ears.
“Yaku,” Kuroo tries again, and Yaku’s hands slide up to his face and he lets out another “Oh my God.” This one is smaller, but probably even more mortified than the first.
“Forget I said anything,” he manages to say after another beat, and rakes a hand through his half-dry blonde curls.
Kuroo’s heart suddenly feels like it’s in the back of his throat, and if he opens his mouth too wide then it will come tumbling out and spill onto the table in pieces, laid bare and open for them both to see. So he keeps his voice quiet when he asks, so very slowly and cautiously, “What if I don’t want to?”
The words fall onto the table between them, and spell out what Kuroo hopes is enough to get the point across.
Where time had felt compressed in this house before, now it feels stretched long, thin, and tenuous, because Kuroo doesn’t know how many seconds or minutes have passed when Yaku opens his mouth to speak.
“Tetsurou,” he says, and Kuroo thinks it sounds like the way a cat lashes out when it’s cornered and intensely vulnerable. There’s an unspoken undercurrent to his words—for all their teasing, for all their back-and-forth over the years, Yaku is asking him, just this once, to please, please don’t fuck with me.
Not on this.
So he doesn’t.
Kuroo reaches out and carefully, carefully touches his fingers to the inside of Yaku’s wrist, the sliver of soft skin between where his palm starts—his small, impossibly powerful palm that builds mountains on their side and levels them on their opponents’—and the loose edge of his long sleeve shirt ends. Yaku starts to pull away, but he stays steady, and his own heart stutters on a beat when he realizes why Yaku had tried avoid this.
Beneath Kuroo’s long, strong fingers, his pulse is hammering wildly, hard and fast under the thin delicate skin like the frenetic flutter of bird wings against a cage.
“I like you,” Kuroo declares quietly, because it feels like the only right thing to say in that moment.
His own heart rate has quickened to match Yaku’s, two instruments meshing and blaring in their ears in staccato, subdivided time. He clears his throat, and tries again when Yaku doesn’t say anything after a moment. “I like you, Morisuke.”
“Kuroo,” Yaku breathes on a shaky exhale that would make his blood run hot in any other situation. When he finally, finally looks up at him, his eyes seem too bright, like a crystal glass glinting as it’s poised on the edge of a table, about to fall and break. A heartbeat later, his cheeks flush an even deeper rosy tone than they already are and his eyebrows pinch together, traces of split-second delicacy gone and replaced with threatening indignation. “I swear to God, if you’re saying that just to screw with me right now—”
Kuroo slides his hand up his wrist to his shoulder, turns him ever so slightly closer to his own body, and presses his lips against Yaku’s.
Yaku is still for a moment, lips slack and hands immediately flying up to fist in Kuroo’s shirt, coiling in their power to push him away until Kuroo finds his head again and whispers urgently, “I’m not, I’m not, I swear to God I mean it.” His mind is racing the way it does when he makes the split-second gamble on a saving play on the court, and he prays this time it lands.
But then a thought occurs to him, and it’s like he’s back outside again, icy sheets of torrential rain beating down all around him. He feels soaked to the bone and sickened, shut out in front of Yaku’s house with flooded train lines and nowhere left to go.
Maybe he read this wrong. Maybe he made a mistake. Maybe he went and royally fucked this all up, because his heart is running four steps ahead of his brain which is already lost and trying to navigate the bewildering, labyrinthine twists of this crush to begin with. Maybe—
Slender fingers card through his hair with a silky ease that’s still so foreign to him, and he smells almond blossom and shea butter soap as it envelops him again.
Except this time, Kuroo’s in a kitchen and not a bathroom, not even on a train to Nekoma or in their club room. And Yaku’s small, impossibly powerful palms are cradling the back of his head like he’s holding one of the trophies displayed proudly his bedroom, like Kuroo is another prize he’s won. His carefully-manicured fingers are tugging him close, he can feel the gentle brush of soft, clear skin on his own, and Yaku is kissing him back.