Chapter Text
Although Bokuto seemed extremely enthusiastic about his story, the one that Kuroo has heard practically ten times, he just couldn’t seem to pay attention. Bokuto’s deep voice sounded muffled in his ears as he caught a glimpse of bright blond hair entering the cafeteria. His eyes followed the tall blond as he gracefully made his way to the table and delicately plucked the cookies onto his plate. Kuroo bit back a smile as he saw the way the boy relaxed as the heat from the hot chocolate flowed into his hand.
“Hey Kuroo! Kuroo!” Bokuto’s face suddenly appeared in front of him. Kuroo’s knee jerked and hit the tabe roughly, coaxing a loud groan of pain. Heads turned towards their table in surprise at the sound. He felt his ears grow red as a pair of golden eyes flickered in his direction. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that by some miracle he would disappear into thin air. He opened his eyes again to see the blond settling into a lone table, dispersing all of his study material around the table. Bokuto gave him a sheepish smile and waved to people who were staring. Kuroo glared at his friend and rubbed his shin before flipping him off. “That wasn’t my fault, you weren’t paying enough to me,”
“That’s because his attention was on a certain someone about five tables down,” Kenma mumbled as he mashed a button on his game. He smiled as the victory tone rang through and looked up to see Kuroo’s narrowed eyes.
“It was not,” Kuroo said indignantly as he crossed his arms around his chest.
“Was too,”
“Was not,”
“Was too,”
“Was not ,”
Bokuto and Kenma looked at each other exasperatedly before simultaneously flicking the middle of his forehead. Kuroo scowled and batted their hands away.
“You were staring so obviously,” Kenma rolled his eyes and pressed start on his game again. Kuroo blanched and opened his mouth to retort when he heard footsteps from behind him.
“Alright I’m here and I managed to snag some of those cookies from the table over there,” Akaashi smiled as he set down a paper plate. “I took all the good ones before anyone else could,”
“Nice Akaashi!” Bokuto beamed before immediately digging in.
“What did I miss?” Akaashi said offhandedly as he nibbled the last chocolate chip cookie.
“Kuroo is still stalking that poor guy,”
“It is not stalking! I’m admiring from a distance!” Kuroo rebutted instantly. His lips formed in a pout as he looked at the exhausted faces of his friends.
“That’s something a stalker would say,” Bokuto sang as he munched on a snickerdoodle.
“It’s almost amazing that he hasn’t caught on yet,”
“Maybe you should just try talking to him? He seems normal,” Akaashi suggested as he stole a glance of the blond. He was sitting by himself at a small table with a plate of cookies and a small mug of the complimentary hot cocoa. His shoulders were hunched as he diligently worked on his homework, his pencil flew across the page as he wildly scribbled. His eyebrows looked furrowed with frustration as he bit down on his lip. His signature white headphones were perched delicately on his head as he bobbed his head to the music. Akaashi looked at the blond with approval, “He seems like he needs some help anyways,”
“Yeah, yeah! You got this bro, go talk to that cutie,” Bokuto cheered him on, slightly shoving him off of his seat.
Kuroo took a deep breath and looked at the amused faces of his friends. He ran his fingers through his hair and slapped his cheeks. Kuroo smoothed out his shirt, silently wishing that he hadn’t chosen one with so many wrinkles, and stood up. It wasn’t a terrible outfit to introduce yourself in, it was college casual. Kuroo looked down at his plain black shirt and hiked up his red sweatpants.
“Alright, how do I look?” Kuroo asked as he patted down his hair again. Bokuto pretended to fan himself with his hand and swooned dramatically, draping himself over their sticky cafeteria table. Akaashi gave him a soft smile and a big thumbs up as an encouragement. Kenma managed to pry his eyes away from his game for a second before returning but Kuroo caught the content twinkle in his eyes when he looked at Kuroo.
He tentatively stood up and took one step forwards before turning his head towards his friends. Bokuto, who was not one for subtlety, made a dramatic gesture of shooing him away while Akaashi shushed him. He gave them a queasy smile and turned back around. He didn’t even feel like he was moving; it was just one step after another until he found himself two tables down from the blond. He looked over his shoulder one more time and caught Akaashi’s commanding stare. He took another deep breath, his legs felt like jelly as he slowly made his way up.
He looked up from the ground to see the blond still focused on his homework. His headphones were so loud that he hadn’t heard Kuroo arriving, barely noticing the dark shadow that covered his paper. Kuroo looked back at the table, his face contorted in a silent what do I do now?! Only to get a meager shrug back. He turned back around only to meet two frigid eyes that looked as though they wanted nothing more than for him to turn around and leave. For a second, he almost complied. Instead he flashed what he hoped was a convincing grin, and not a shaky grimace.
“H-hi,” Kuroo stuttered out. He immediately regretted opening his mouth. He felt the urge to dig a hole right there and slowly suffocate himself. Kuroo resisted the need to whack himself in the face. Instead he risked a look back down at the blond who had an annoyed yet amused smirk on his face.
“Hi,” The blond said, still studying Kuroo. He didn’t blame the blond for being wary or the way his eyes stayed glued to the top of his head. That day had been a particularly bad hair day and Kuroo wished he remembered that sooner before going up to him.
“I’m Kuroo, Kuroo Tetsurou,” He recovered with another smile. He felt his heart leap when he saw the way the corner of the blond’s mouth quirk upwards stealthily.
“I know who you are,” His golden eyes matched his with an impish delight. Kuroo’s grin widened exponentially and he rocked back and forth on his feet. Then the blond opened his mouth again, “You’re the guy who was moaning earlier,”
All of a sudden Kuroo’s smile felt way too tight and he felt the back of his neck grow searing hot. His lips parted to say something but no sound came out. He just stood there with his mouth gaping open and close like a fish. The blond snickered and went back to his homework without a second glance. Kuroo fiddled with his jacket hem for a couple more seconds before turning on his heel.
“Wait Kuroo,” He stopped mid step and twisted his torso. The blond teasingly took a bite of his cookie, his pink tongue darted over his lips to catch the crumbs. Kuroo’s mouth ran dry and he kept staring until he realized that the blond had more to say. “Your fly is down,”
Kuroo had to stop himself from sprinting all the way back to his table, ignoring the cackle from the blond that should’ve been way too cruel to be cute. He dove to his seat and shifted his body so he wouldn’t be in the blond’s eye line. He avoided the questioning gaze from Akaashi and instead moped to Bokuto.
“Well, you lasted pretty long up these, better than last time,” Bokuto tried to cheer him up, only causing Kuroo to whine louder.
“He looked like he was smiling, or about to,” Akaashi supplied as he sipped his water. Bokuto stuck his tongue out at him and patted Kuroo’s arm comfortingly.
“He called me the moaning guy,” Kuroo wailed in despair, being sure to keep his voice low enough so it wouldn’t attract more attention.
“Yikes…” Bokuto cringed as he looked behind him.
“Don’t look,” Kuroo hissed but it was already too late. Bokuto was already fully turned around. Whatever expression that his face had only seemed to make things worse. The tips of Kuroo’s ears flushed a crimson red as the loud sound of the blond’s laughter reached the table.
“How hard could it have been to talk to Tsukishima?” Kenma sighed as he finally pocketed his device.
“Extremely, his eyes are terrifying. It’s like he was sucking out all my secrets with his glare,” Kuroo said dramatically, his hands lightly slamming against the table. He suddenly stopped and narrowed his eyes at Kenma. “How did you know his name?”
“Oh he’s in my art class,”
“You’ve known who he is the whole time?” Kuroo exclaimed. His head swiveled as he looked back at the blond. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw those headphones back over his ears.
"Just goes to show how merciful I can be,"
“Wait, can we just celebrate the fact that Kenma willingly made a friend?” Bokuto interjected as he shook Kenma’s shoulders. Kenma pushed his hands off and blew the hair away from his bangs with a huff.
“No, because Kenma,” Kuroo shot him a glare, “Has been torturing the friend he already made,”
“He’s Shouyou’s friend. I say friend lightly because I don’t actually think that Tsukishima likes him,” Kenma said as he ignored Kuroo’s pouting.
“Wait there’s actually someone on this planet that doesn’t like Shrimpy?” Bokuto wondered incredulously. He looked at Akaashi who simply shrugged and shook his head.
“I don’t think he doesn’t like him, but I don’t think that he does like him,” Kenma said carefully. All three boys looked at each other in confusion. Kenma groaned as he saw the look on their faces and stole a cookie from Bokuto’s hands.
“Oh! He’s a tsundere!” Bokuto shouted. This time his voice echoed throughout the whole cafeteria, heads snapped in their direction once more. Akaashi pulled him down and gestured an apology to the onlookers. Bokuto gave him an embarrassed grin and looked back at Tsukishima’s table only to find it empty.
“Pretty much? I know that he likes to tease and rile people up, maybe that’s all he was doing,” Kenma said as he plucked the nuts out of the dough.
“Kenma,” Kuroo suddenly spoke up, his voice was low as his face contorted into a serious expression, “Give me Shrimpy’s number,”
“No way! You’ll scare him off again and you’ll do something weird,”
“Please?!”
“No! Just be a normal person and talk to him here,”
“Kenma...” Kuroo drew out the last letter while batting his eyelashes at him.
“No, just go up to him,”
“I can’t!”
“Why not?!”
“Because...he saw me with my fly down,”
“...What?”
“It was so embarrassing! He called me back and I turned around and he just saw it ,”
“Just now?”
“No, like a couple of minutes ago, you saw me leave,”
“You mean right now, in the outfit you have right now, in present time?”
“What do you not understand about right now?”
“Kuroo you’re wearing sweatpants,”