Chapter Text
Crimson leaves flutter in the circling wind outside of Kenma’s window. Nature breathes a balmy soft layer of frost on the windowsill, melting slowly as the sun rises and lights the world in effervescent and warm autumnal hues of golden yellow and ambered orange.
Kenma lies asleep in his bed, though slits of sunshine scatter his creamy duvet and his cheeks from the adjacent window, its curtains posing half open. The clement air of wind caught in the trees and the early sounds of Tokyo traffic are the only noises that keep his unconscious mind occupied as he rests, breathing slowly as his body sleeps in tune with the wind.
That is, until the cell phone on his bedside table begins to ring harshly, promptly jerking Kenma awake and nailing his body upright. The wind stops whistling in the trees and their warm-toned leaves.
“It’s so early…,” Kenma mutters, looking at his clock and groaning. His phone continues to abrasively ring, the deafening sound of Nyan Cat blasting through his apartment. He idly turns his head down to rest his eyes on his phone, nose scrunching as he reads the name splayed in big letters (adorned with heart emojis, but nobody can know that) across his phone screen. Kenma groans loudly, flopping back onto his pillow before grumbling, “What the fuck does he want?”
Kenma sighs and rubs his eyes as the call dissipates. He relaxes his shoulders and sinks back into his very nice, very expensive pillow with a hand tangled in his hair. He brushes out a few knots with his fingers before snuggling back under his blankets and completely forgetting the call.
Until his phone rings again.
“Ugh!” He yells, throwing off his covers and very intensely ripping the charger port from his phone. He picks it up and answers Kuroo’s call quickly, sneering as he does so. He snaps, “What do you want?” as he pushes his body out of bed and stands up, his knees cracking as he does so.
Kenma is not a morning person. But do not be fooled by his grouchy demeanor in the early hours, he definitely cares more about Kuroo than he does about his beauty sleep.
That’s why when Kuroo cries into the phone, “I can’t find Bastard!” Kenma throws on clothes, puts his hair up, brushes his teeth, and hightails it to Kuroo’s apartment a few miles away in under half an hour.
He locks his car as he approaches the apartment complex Kuroo lives in, immediately finding Kuroo waiting in the stairwell with tears staining his cheeks and eyes puffier than the piles of leaves that sit in the grass outside. “Shit, Kuro, are you okay?” Kenma coughs, throwing himself forward to embrace his best friend (and maybe crush) with both arms outstretched. Kuroo finds himself inured to dig his face into the nape of Kenma’s neck--but what Kenma doesn’t expect is to feel the sensation of Kuroo’s hot tears as they fall from his darkened eyes.
“I lost Bastard, Kenma. I can’t find him. I looked everywhere.”
“Did you look in the mess of blankets on your bed?” Kenma asks, running a hand through Kuroo’s hair with a soft sigh. He leans into Kuroo’s touch and smiles into the air, enlightened with some sort of effusive bliss to be as close as he is to the boy he loves so dearly. But Kuroo doesn’t see him as he grins, and he will never know how intoxicatingly pleasant his touch can be. At least, that’s how Kenma sees it.
“Yes!” Kuroo sobs, holding his arms tighter around Kenma’s abdomen. He grabs ahold of Kenma’s hair with one hand and uses the other to keep Kenma’s waist beside his. “I don’t know what to do... I’ve been looking since midnight.”
“Since midnight! Kuroo, it’s nine!” Kenma jerks his head to see Kuroo’s face, but immediately faces the consequences as his hair is pulled back by Kuroo’s unsuspecting hand, tangled up in the mess of his brunet tresses. He yelps in pain, but is quick to put his head back where it was, hoping that Kuroo will keep himself in the same position. Kenma would rather wince at the pain than have Kuroo’s soft fingers stop playing with his hair, and that’s how most of his pining shenanigans go.
“Kenma, I need your help.”
Kuroo shifts, taking his hands from their respective places on Kenma’s head and waist and moving them to sit atop Kenma’s shoulders. He takes his head from where it lies on Kenma’s collar to stand up straight and create a somber, yet lukewarm eye contact between the two.
Kenma can’t help but feel hotly flustered as Kuroo stares into his eyes, creating not only intense eye contact but an intimate moment that only plays out in Kenma’s fantasies, or so he thought.
“What do you want me to do?” Kenma breathes, albeit awkwardly. He attempts to keep his suave, careless manner in front of Kuroo, but often finds himself failing and becoming just as geeky as the aforementioned boy.
“We need to find my cat.”
And so Kenma, who is undeniably allured by Kuroo’s ‘irresistible manner’, agrees to go on a journey with Kuroo to find his stupid cat, Bastard, and (as Kenma dreams) to have Kuroo fall in love with him.
It’s dumb. It’s a stupid idea. Kenma is supposed to have a livestream at 4 today, but he’s already cancelled that and tossed his phone aside to focus his full attention on Kuroo and finding Bastard so Kuroo will stop crying and stop looking like one of those sad cat memes. It is completely, and utterly, the weirdest thing Kenma has agreed to do just because he’s in love.
“So what’s the plan again?” Kenma asks aloud, now sitting on the thick comforter of Kuroo’s bed as Kuroo puts on clothes that aren’t his pajamas (right in front of Kenma, that is, which the latter finds kind of sexy if he’s being honest with himself) and overall just tries to make himself look not like shit. He doesn’t really succeed in that endeavor, but Kenma lies to him and says, “You look great.”
Kuroo sighs, shoulders drooping to the floor as he does so. Kenma wants to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t. He knows better than anyone how important and special Bastard is to him, of course Kenma knows. Bastard has been by Kuroo’s side since he was a small child. He’s been with him for as long as Kenma can remember. He’s never seen a Kuroo without Bastard, and he doesn’t want to.
“The plan is to check out the streets nearby and the park across the road. If we can’t find him at any of those places, then we can go a little further and cross the bridge over into the next subdivision over and check the parks and streets around there.”
Kenma nods his head and slides his warm hand into Kuroo’s, squeezing it tightly before letting go. “We’ll find him, Kuroo. I promise.”
From where he stands in front of his dresser, Kuroo turns his head and gazes lightly at Kenma, standing a few feet away. “Okay. I trust you.”
With that, the two venture out of the apartment and into the surrounding city now lit up by the sun’s early morning blush.
Kenma wears a Bouncing Ball hoodie with sweatpants and sneakers, and Kuroo’s attire isn’t much more elegant. Combining their lazy outfits and both with scraggly hair, they look kind of like thugs. Which, to be fair, isn't a normal sight to see at ten in the morning on a Thursday.
Kuroo leads Kenma towards a line of shops, some of which emit the aroma of food. Kuroo is soon to stop in front of one, leaving Kenma to crash into his back. After a minute of profuse apologizing and a silly grin peering into Kenma’s heart, the two decide to enter the shop they stand in front of.
Kuroo asks the owner if he has seen an obese cat running by or pawing to get into the store, the owner says no and offers the boys pastries and coffee. Kenma, after realizing the sleep-deprived and half delirious state of his best friend, decides to buy a large cup of coffee for Kuroo alongside a sweet danish, which Kuroo doesn’t even eat because he feels bad for eating when his cat might not be. Kenma eats it instead as Kuroo thanks him for the sweltering coffee by pressing a gratuitous kiss onto Kenma’s temple.
The two look further. Around shops, in bushes and in tall grass, under piles of reddened leaves and on storefronts. They call around for Bastard, clicking fingers and whistling and shaking treats, but to the boys’ chagrin, they come up empty handed as the sun slowly falls and its beams become weaker. Kuroo checks his watch at three in the afternoon.
They stop at a park and Kenma sits Kuroo down on a bench, soon placing himself close beside. Kuroo sighs, shaking his head and placing it in his hands.
“I’m such a bad cat owner, Kenma. No wonder Bastard ran away,” He chokes, sniffling as he does so.
Kenma watches the pitiful sight with an empathetic frown, taking his hand to rub Kuroo’s back under his jacket as Kuroo weeps. Kenma whispers, “We’re going to find him, Kuroo. Don’t give up just yet, we still have all day.”
Kuroo shakes his head. “He could be in the next town by now, Kenma!” He sobs, looking at Kenma helplessly as his body racks and his breath trembles. Kenma, burdened by the sight, wraps Kuroo in his arms once again. Kuroo mumbles into the younger boy’s long hair, “He could be alone… scared… starving… hurt… cold ... ”
Kenma sits stagnant, rubbing Kuroo’s back still as he listens to Kuroo continue on with potential situations that his cat could be in. Kenma feels like shit, obviously. This isn’t the romantic fun day he imagined it would be, and Kuroo is starting to lose hope.
The wind has stopped, the leaves sit still and the world is silent aside from the nuances of Kuroo’s weeping. Kenma’s mind races, coming up with dialogue and solutions and plans, but his lips fall quiet and his actions remain undone. He doesn’t know what to do.
Kuroo whispers, “I think we should call it qui--”
The tree hovering over the bench the couple (or, at least they look like one) occupies rustles loudly, leaving Kuroo to halt his words. The two jerk their heads up to see a flash of fur, though the creature in the tree is too quick to be specified. Kenma squints, he knows it’s impractical for a cat as fat as Bastard to run that fast in such a tall tree. But when his gaze moves from the tree to Kuroo--Kenma sees the boy’s eyes are starry and he’s regained hope.
Kenma knows what comes next, but he tries to deny it. Even when he’s sitting atop Kuroo’s shoulders in the busy park, attempting to crawl into the tree to catch the animal who was making noise.
“Kuro! Stop moving! Hold my legs!” Kuroo awkwardly bends to the side as he tries to grab onto Kenma’s ankles and leaves Kenma to almost fall over. “For fuck’s sake! Stop moving! Even Lev is better at this than you!”
Kuroo yells, “Hey! Don’t compare me to that lanky bitch!”
“Then stop! moving! I need to get into the tree and I can’t stand up on your shoulders if you keep moving them.”
Kuroo sighs loudly, but follows Kenma’s instructions. At one point he has to literally grab Kenma’s ass to help him off his shoulders, but Kenma is too focused on not falling out of the tree onto the hard ground to even notice where Kuroo’s hands are going. (But unconsciously? He kind of likes it. Of course he does.)
Once Kenma is ‘safely’ in the tree, he pushes leaves aside and looks into the branches. He straddles a thick branch (which gives him an uncomfortable wedgie) and stays quiet to listen for more rustling. As far as the two know, the animal hadn’t escaped the tree yet. And if it was Bastard, they would know if his body had fallen out of the tree.
Kenma sighs, about to call down to Kuroo to get him out of the tree, when he hears a small noise and sees a few leaves shaking.
With a devious grin, Kenma slowly extends his hands and quickly attacks the leaves, pushing them aside to reveal the animal.
He sees brown fur, which ignites a light of hope and relief inside of him. Thank God , Kenma thinks as he reaches his hand out to grab the cat. But what he grabs (or, rather attempts to grab) is most definitely not a cat. But most definitely a giant flying squirrel, which speeds past Kenma and out of the tree.
Kenma looks down at his hands with a sigh, then turns his head to look at Kuroo who stands on the ground beneath him with pleading eyes.
“...It’s not him, Kuro.”
Kuroo furrows his eyebrows, confused. Kenma bites his lip, heartbroken to know how devastated Kuroo is going to be.
Kenma takes a deep breath as a cold gust of wind flies through the trees. “It’s just a squirrel, Kuro, he’s not here.”
He’s not here .