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When Kuroo realizes he’s in love with his best friend, thing that finally makes it click is completely mundane and insignificant.
They’re on their way back from the Spring High Prelims, and Kuroo is both buoyed by their win against Nohebi and that smug, calculating Daishou, and disheartened by the fact that they’d gotten to the point of playing them at all. The games had run late, and with the bus back to school and the train after, night has cast the whole street in shades of black and blue and grey by the time they reach their neighborhood.
He and Kenma walk side-by-side until they reach their street, the brightness on Kenma’s DS turned up unnecessarily high, adding to the dim streetlights to illuminate their immediate surroundings. It’s quiet. Kuroo’s idle chatter as they walk is the only thing to break the silence, spinning jokes and stories out of anything he can think of but the vague clenching feeling in his chest that says they should never have had to play Nohebi in the consolation finals, that they have to be better if they want to get anywhere at Nationals, that he, as their captain, is at least partly responsible for that.
Kenma is mostly silent except for a few sparsely placed grunts of affirmation. It doesn’t bother Kuroo. He knows Kenma’s listening—no matter how distracted he is with his game or how disinterested in a situation he seems to be, Kenma has always listened to Kuroo.
They reach Kuroo’s house first, as always. Kenma pauses with him at the end of the walkway rather than moving on immediately, not looking up from his DS but waiting patiently for Kuroo to head inside before leaving for home. Kuroo digs through his pants and his jacket, looking for his keys, but comes up empty.
“Sorry,” He says, frowning, “I was sure I brought them. It might take me a minute, you don’t have to wait—"
The light from the DS screen goes off. Kuroo’s head snaps up to see Kenma looking him straight in the face, head cocked, expression smooth as always but with an unusually soft bent to the thoughtfulness behind his eyes. Looking at him, Kuroo suddenly feels strange.
He’s seen Kenma almost daily since before either of them hit double digits in age. He’s had plenty of time to observe and memorize and grow accustomed to his face. But somehow, it’s startling—he can’t remember now, if Kenma’s eyes have always shone like that. If his eyelashes have always cast these shadows in low light, ones that sketch his face into stark contrast, highlighting its angles and lines, pulling Kuroo’s focus like a black hole with Kenma its imploding central star.
Kenma says, “They’re in the front pocket in your backpack. You dropped them in on our way this morning because you were the last one out of the house.”
Kuroo says, “Oh.”
Kenma says, “And we’re going to Nationals, so quit worrying about the Fukurodani match. Wrinkling your face up like that’ll make you look old.”
Kuroo says, “Oh.” He raises a hand to manually smooth out the crease that he’s unconsciously created between his brows.
Kenma nods—as much of a goodbye as he feels he needs, most days—turns, and heads down the road to his own house. Kuroo watches his retreating back, the rhythm of his walk one that Kuroo knows by heart. The wind picks up, and streetlights catch in Kenma’s hair, glinting off the blond strands as they blow back. Kuroo, irrationally, wishes he were near enough to catch them in his hands and twine them around his fingers.
Oh, Kuroo thinks, Fuck.
He calls Sawamura immediately after breakfast the next morning, following a night of restless half-sleep. Karasuno’s captain isn’t a close friend, exactly, but they’re friendly, and he’s got the best handle on his love life out of anyone Kuroo knows. Bokuto had been his first thought, but on further contemplation the possibility of romantic advice from Bokuto—who was only together with Akaashi by virtue of the carelessness and inability to lower his voice that resulted in him accidentally announcing his feelings to the entire lunchroom at training camp this summer—was enough to have him scrap the idea immediately.
Sawamura’s voice is bright when he answers the phone. “So,” he says, “I hear congratulations are in order!”
Kuroo chokes on air. “Wait but—I was just calling to ask about, I didn’t, I just realized and I haven’t even asked him yet so how—sorry, congratulations on what?”
Sawamura’s frown is audible through the phone. “On…Spring High Prelims? Hinata told everyone as soon as Kenma messaged him. We’re all very excited at the opportunity to whoop your asses officially.”
Kuroo breathes out. “Oh, right. Yeah, the first game could’ve gone better but we won’t go down that easy again, so be prepared!”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Sawamura replies.
They talk for a while, Kuroo filling him in on the details of their losses and wins yesterday, Sawamura commiserating on how much of an absolute monster Bokuto can be when he’s in the right mindset. Sawamura floats the idea of another practice game, which Kuroo latches onto immediately, but in the end the logistics of it seem too complicated to swing for the entirety of both teams before Nationals, what with the distance between their schools, the study schedules of their players, and the already chock-full regimen of practices for both teams.
“Some of us could meet up some weekend for an unofficial practice, though. We’d love an excuse to explore Tokyo. And we’re always up for playing with people as good as you guys.”
“Trying to complement your way into another opportunity to scope out the competition before nationals, huh Sawamura?”
Sawamura laughs. “It’s a mutual scoping out if anything, isn’t it?”
“I guess. Your shrimpy number ten will be there either way though, yeah?”
“Now who’s scoping who out?” Sawamura jokes. “I’d assume so. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Hinata turn down an opportunity to play.”
“Hmm,” says Kuroo, “Kenma’ll be fired up.”
Sawamura makes a sound Kuroo can only identify as politely choked-off disbelief. “Kenma will be?”
“Don’t scoff, Sawamura. He seems apathetic, but when he actually gets into something he’s terrifying.”
“We’re gonna have to up our game if the Kozume we’ve met isn’t as even the best that he gets. That guy can out-think anyone on our team.”
Kuroo’s heart floods with pride. “He’s amazing. We’ve been playing together for forever now—I sort of dragged him into it—but I’ve yet to see him put his whole heart into it, and I know he’ll be even more of a force to be reckoned with when he does. Shrimpy seems to be pulling that out somehow. I hope he manages it. Kenma’s—it’s my favorite thing, when he’s completely in love with something he’s focused on.”
Sawamura gives a lilting “Hmm.”
“I mean,” Kuroo says, and he knows the trail of the conversation is escaping him now but apparently even the topic of Kenma’s existence is enough to pull his mind off the rails, “sometimes I'll be watching him playing his videogames, and that’s when you mostly catch him at it, obviously. It’s like—it’s like something grabs him, and his eyes will light up and he’ll wrinkle his nose just a little and he gets this scary determined look, like nothing else exists to him until he wins. It’s—he looks—I don’t know.”
“Sounds like you spend more time watching Kozume than his games, Kuroo.”
“Uh,” says Kuroo.
“What was the reason you called originally, again?”
“Huh,” says Kuroo, eloquently.
“Thought so,” says Sawamura. “And you figured out you had feelings for him…when?”
Kuroo sighs. He throws the phone onto his bed and collapses dramatically after it. “Yesterday,” he says into a pillow.
Sawamura gives what can only be described as a cackle, which Kuroo thinks is very rude and unprofessional for someone who professes themself to be the mature and level-headed captain of a high school volleyball team. “What are you going to do about it?”
Kuroo scrunches the pillow up under his chin and squeezes his eyes shut. “I was going to call you. That’s kind of as far as I’d gotten.”
“You’re asking me for advice on how to confess to Kenma?”
“I’m asking you for advice on if I should confess to Kenma. I have no idea how he feels about any of this. We’ve never really talked about crushes. How am I even supposed to tell if he likes me?”
“By asking him?” Sawamura says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Oh sure,” Kuroo grumbles. “I guess that’s how you and Sugawara got together, huh? You just went up to him blind and told him you couldn’t sleep all night because you were thinking about how soft his lips looked?”
A nearly-smothered snort echoes through the phone. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it like that exactly.”
“How would you put it?”
“To be honest,” Sawamura says, “I lucked out with Suga. He’s always been pretty perceptive, so he picked up on my feelings before I could work up the courage to say anything. He just dragged me aside one day and said that if I was going to stare at him so hard he could feel me imagining us kissing that I should just get on with it in real life so I’d finally stop zoning out in practice.”
Something clicks in the back of Kuroo’s head. “Right,” he says slowly, “There’s signs when someone likes you.”
Sawamura laughs. “I mean, usually yeah. I don’t know about your Kenma, though, he’s a quiet one. No one on our team can read him that effectively at least, or we probably would’ve come closer to beating you at least once at training camp. But you know him really well, don’t y—”
“No, no, wait, shut up,” Kuroo says. “That’s not it. I’ve got a better idea coming on. Here, help me brainstorm for a minute, what other things did Sugawara say tipped him off to your feelings?”
“Um,” Sawamura says, puzzled, “Other than the staring, I guess I’d been coming up with reasons to buy him stuff on a whim, whenever something reminded me of him? Oh, and I’d been making a lot of excuses to come into physical contact with him. I made him lunch once, too. And this one time he missed one of our study sessions and forgot to tell me ahead of time, and he said I sounded really hurt—Kuroo, what do you need to know this for? I’m not sure the way Kenma behaves would be anything like this, his personality is very different from mine. And you know him better than anyone. I’m sure you’re the best-equipped person to work this out.”
“No,” Kuroo says slowly, “I’m not. I know Kenma like the back of my hand, but I’m not the observant one here. Kenma is.” A grin is beginning to slide across his face. “So he should be the one to notice these things, right?”
“Oh…” says Sawamura, “Kuroo, I’m not sure that’s gonna work—”
“It’s definitely going to work,” Kuroo says. “And it has the least potential for awkwardly backfiring. It’s the best plan ever.”
It’s the worst plan ever, Kuroo realizes on Monday.
Kenma is out of town for the rest of the weekend, so Kuroo is able to spend a frankly embarrassing amount of time considering the signs of a crush Sawamura had mentioned and trying to determine a game plan before he sees him. He isn’t really trying to fake anything—as he’s come to realize, he’s apparently been boiling the frog in terms of his feelings for Kenma for a long time now—but he isn’t certain about how apparent those feelings are. Kenma is intelligent and incredibly perceptive, but he hasn’t mentioned anything, which could mean that Kuroo has simply not displayed enough obvious interest for even Kenma to pick up on it. Potentially because Kuroo himself had not picked up on it until a day ago.
(The other option—that Kenma is in fact not interested in him in any way—is one that hangs poised at the back of Kuroo’s mind like a knife, point dripping with anticipation and dread. He tries to ignore it as much as he can.)
To remedy this, Kuroo stores the things Sawamura mentioned in his mind and decides to try focusing on them, one by one, in his interactions with Kenma. Staring is easy enough—and probably pretty pleasant, honestly, sometimes he thinks he could watch Kenma all day if he weren’t required to occasionally look away to hit a volleyball—so he decides to start with that.
The difficulties begin almost as soon as the day does. Kenma is waiting for him at the end of his walkway as usual, thumbs poking at his DS with vigor.
“Boss fight?” Kuroo asks. Kenma gives him the slightest of nods as they begin to walk down the street to catch their train. “Rough time for it to come up, on the walk over. I’m always amazed you can focus on that and navigate at the same time.”
“Walking makes it easier to focus sometimes,” Kenma says, eyes still glued to the screen. “And it’s your job to navigate for me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kuroo says. “Who knows how many cars would’ve hit you by now if it weren’t for me.”
Kenma doesn’t dignify that with a response, and they lapse into companionable silence as they walk. Kuroo decides that, since multitasking is clearly so efficient, if Kenma is able to stare at his screen while he walks, Kuroo should be more than capable of staring at Kenma and keeping an eye on their surroundings at the same time.
He spends five or so minutes attempting to fix his eyeballs to the dark roots of Kenma’s hair with the psychic equivalent of crazy glue when he realizes—if Kenma’s concentrating on the game, he isn’t going to notice Kuroo staring at him.
He frowns. He hadn’t anticipated this. He’s wouldn’t ever try to rip Kenma out of his game for something like this; it would be rude, and it’s not how Kenma operates best anyway. Normally, all he would have to do is to speak up and Kenma’s awareness would shift to place a greater proportion of attention on Kuroo, but right now he needs Kenma’s eyes, and that’s not on the table, so it’s no use.
Unless, he guesses, Kenma manages to register that sixth-sense feeling of being watched. Kuroo’s not particularly in tune with that himself, but especially with Kenma’s discomfort in crowds of people, Kuroo knows it’s something that he feels significantly. Maybe its possible to trigger it with enough effort. It can’t hurt to try, anyway, so he continues to stare, counting Kenma’s flyaways as they walk.
“You’re really quiet today,” Kenma says, “And that’s coming from me. Are you okay?”
“Mmm,” Kuroo says, seven, eight, nine, is that bug going to land on his head, get away, ten, eleven, twelve, god I never really noticed how shiny his hair is, thirteen, fourteen—
“Kuro!”
He’s off-balance for a second, and then he’s yanked back by his sleeve, hard, and slams into the ground. There’s a clamour of voices, and a loud roar that he recognizes as the engine of a train, whipping by on the tracks barely a foot away from where he’s landed.
“Are you okay?” Kenma is crouched on the ground in front of him in a second, game discarded a few feet away where he must have dropped it to bodily haul Kuroo back. His brow is furrowed and his golden eyes are wide and filled with concern. Kuroo wants to melt into them. He shakes his head violently, then nods.
“Yeah! Fine, sorry.”
Kenma doesn’t look convinced. “You almost walked off the platform.”
“I just tripped, It’s fine.”
Kenma frowns, reaching out a hand to drag Kuroo to his feet, and they both rush over to Kenma’s DS. There’s a crack splitting the screen right down the centre, and a few scuffs on the side. Kenma presses the on button and the screen glitches, then flickers to life. They both let out a sigh of relief.
“I’m really sorry,” Kuroo says.
“I mean,” Kenma says, “It’s a tight competition but I guess I would rather have you survive than my DS.”
A gasping, nervous laugh escapes Kuroo. Kenma releases his hand to return to his game, and it’s only then that Kuroo realizes he’d continued holding on until now. The sudden removal feels like a void.
They shuffle over to the side to wait for the train. Kenma’s fingers are moving again, frenetically tapping at the controls, but right as their train comes he pauses with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“You know, you’re kind of a shit navigator today, Kuro.”
The worse blow to Kuroo’s plan comes at practice that afternoon. Because of their being in different years, he has little opportunity to see Kenma all day, but practice is one of the few times Kenma’s eyes are available for things other than his screen, so Kuroo thinks it’s the perfect opportunity.
They’re warming up, practicing hitting with Kenma and their first-year backup setting to two alternating lines on opposite sides of the court. Kuroo starts in Kenma’s line, throwing the ball to him and beginning his run up to hit, when it suddenly hits him that he’s never really considered how beautiful Kenma’s hands are—setter’s fingers, long and slim, frighteningly precise and controlled in their motions. Most people don’t consider Kenma particularly athletic, Kenma himself included, but Kuroo thinks of this morning in the train station, the strength of Kenma’s grip on his arm when he pulled Kuroo back from the tracks, the warmth and surety of his small hand as he helped Kuroo to his feet, and knows they’re wrong.
Kuroo’s fingers tingle, a magnet looking for its opposing half.
He stumbles in his jump and misses the toss entirely.
Luckily, his fall this time isn’t as bad, but he still catches himself awkwardly on one knee and one wrist, slamming into the wood floor. The squeaking and thumping of sneakers comes to a sudden halt, and the gym is silent for a moment except for the thud, thud, thudthud of Kuroo’s missed ball.
He pulls himself to his feet and looks up. Kenma is there already, looking back at him with an slightly inquisitive expression, which he initially marks as a success—His staring has definitely been noticed this time (god, he hadn’t even been trying to and it was enough to throw him off)—until he realizes that everyone’s attention is on him. He shags his own ball, but by the time he’s managed all eyes are still fixed in his direction.
“What’s…ah…what’s up?” he asks.
There’s another beat of silence.
“Oh! Well, we just assumed you had feedback for us on the drill, Kuroo-san,” Lev pipes up from where he’s just collected his own ball, far past the court’s boundary on the opposite side of the gym. “You don’t usually miss like that unless you’ve got caught up thinking something about how we’re playing. Like if Kenma-san’s toss was off?”
Kuroo sees Kenma’s mouth twist in mild irritation, which he thinks has less to do with the possibility that his set was sub-par and more to do with the fact that Lev is the one pointing it out.
“And Lev just screwed his last hit up so brilliantly we figured it could’ve been that as well,” Yaku drawls, pointedly.
Lev flushes. “It was a one-time fluke, Kuroo-san, and I am ready to receive any criticism to improve my ability as the best ace!”
Kuroo blinks, rubbing his elbow. He didn’t see it, but judging by Lev’s position his ball probably landed way out of bounds. “Yeah, for sure, ah—Lev! What was that! You’ve got to make sure you’re snapping your wrist when you hit, or it’ll fly halfway around the world! And Kenma—” Kenma’s eyes meet his and he almost loses track of his thought process in the face of it “—the toss was solid but a little too far left for me. But you’ve been getting most of them dead on.”
Kenma nods, attention still fully on Kuroo. Kuroo indicates for the next hitters to begin the drill again, heads to the back of the line, and tries not to scream.
At the end of practice, they play three-on-three king of the court. Kenma’s team starts on, and Kuroo sits on the bench waiting for his turn. He grabs his bottle and squeezes a stream of water into his mouth, then turns his eyes back to the game. Kenma’s in perfect form again. Kuroo is amazed at how easy it is to get lost in his efficient, conservative movement, in the dart of an eye or the nod of a head, in the steady, steady flexing of his fingers.
Has he always watched Kenma this intently? It doesn’t feel like anything new, when he really considers it. He thinks back over the years and years he’s played volleyball for, and Kenma’s always been there, been a part of the game that he in equal parts looked to and looked out for. It almost feels as though he’s doing the same thing as normal, only now he’s aware of another reason behind it.
He groans, and slides over to Kai.
“Hey,” he says, “do I normally stare?”
Kai looks at him sideways. “What do you mean?”
“Like…okay, let’s narrow it down to volleyball. Do I normally stare during volleyball matches?”
“Yes?” Kai answers, an utterly bewildered note in his voice. “You’re the captain. I’d be worried if you didn’t stare.”
“If he didn’t stare at what?” Yaku slides over to sandwich Kuroo from the other side. “’Is Kuroo trying to shirk his duties as captain? I knew it’d happen eventually. I’m ready to step in as your Vice when you’re promoted, Kai. We’ll be running things differently when I have a say.”
“You know that’s illegal,” Kai says, “And anyway, the only changes you want are for Lev to have a required maximum number of words per day and for us to remove all fish options from the menu for any team events.”
“Well I don’t think even Kuroo would object to Lev having a required maximum number of words,” Yaku grumbles. “practicing with him is like having a radio turned to the news channel on at full blast in the background.”
Kuroo buries his face in his hands in despair. “I mean, do I stare more than normal? At anyone in particular?”
“I mean you stare at Lev a lot but I also stare at Lev a lot because we really need a way to get him into better form before Nationals, and also, I repeat, a daily word maximum—”
“Kenma,” Kuroo grinds out. “Do I stare at Kenma a lot?”
“Oh,” says Kai, frowning, “I mean yeah, of course.”
“Of course?”
“Yeah, I don’t know why you’re asking all of a sudden but it’s not like it’s weird or anything? It’s good that you do. He’s the centre of the game, we structure our whole strategy around him, in a way.”
Yaku nods slowly. “I mean I hate to inflate your already-large head with unnecessary praise, but if you’re worried about not paying enough attention to him, you’re…fine. And you’ve always got a good grasp on what’s going on with the team as a whole.”
“And besides—“ Kai starts, then comes up short. Kuroo’s head pops up.
“Besides what?” He prompts.
“Never mind,” Kai says, “It’s not relevant.”
“Everything’s relevant,” Kuroo says.
Kai sighs. “Besides, you’re…you! Part of your focus is always on Kenma. It’s always been like that. Just like part of his focus is always on you. It’s like you’re perfectly in tune with each other. I guess that’s just what happens when you know someone that well.
“Honestly,” Kai continues, “you probably make a better captain than I would be because of it, in terms of your ability to suggest adjustments to our play. It gives you a totally different view of the game.”
“So you’re saying that Kenma is the real Vice Captain here,” Yaku says.
“Don’t challenge me, Yaku,” Kai says, smiling sweetly, “My staying neutral in your and Kuroos’ arguments may be the only reason either of you is still alive.”
Yaku shudders, and jabs back, but Kuroo’s mind is distant. This is…not promising. He hadn’t anticipated his closeness with Kenma being an obstacle to Kenma’s picking up on his feelings, but the more he thinks about it the more it makes sense.
He and Kenma don’t have the natural separation points that most casual friends do. The two of them sort of flow together, their boundaries indistinct and unspoken and established in flux over a decade of knowing one another, wet ink bleeding freely to a stop without regard for established outlines. There’s things that are normal for them which are probably not normal for friends who have known each other only a short amount of time. Things that are probably more normal for couples. And there might be no way for Kenma to tell the difference.
Damnit. There has to be some workaround. He wracks his brain.
He could just try to be even more obvious about everything. He and Kenma have an ingrained awareness of each other, but if he continues with his plan, increasing the amount of time and the intensity with he does each romantically-tinged action, surely Kenma will pick up that something’s different.
It has to work. There’s differences in how they act normally to how people in love act, Kuroo is certain. And if anything can pick up on the slight alterations, its Kenma’s brilliant mind.
He sighs, flicks his eyes back to the court, and spends the rest of three-on-three trying to stare a laser beam into the back of Kenma’s skull.
Over the rest of the week, Kuroo continues to try and ramp up his staring, but the more he does the more he becomes unsure that such a thing is even possible because the truth is, he already watches Kenma a lot. He decides to try the next suggestion he’d picked out from Sawamura’s list—impromptu gift-giving, which he hopes will be a lot more successful since there’s no way he spends nearly as much time buying Kenma things as he does watching him. And, since he basically owes Kenma a new DS anyway, he’s got the time to go shopping for other things as well.
Unfortunately, Kuroo is seventeen and jobless, and buying a DS costs a decent amount of his personal cash. He’d hoped to be able to get a few things—more than one new game, maybe some kind of trinkets from his favorite franchises—but what he ends up with other than the DS is a second-hand version of an older game Kenma hasn’t been able to get his hands on yet, and a backpack charm with a teeny, fuzzy Pikachu dangling from it. Plus, a couple of bags of snacks that he knows are Kenma’s favorite—overly sweet things which his parents put a hard limit on having in their house because “you’ll die of a sugar overdose if you eat those for breakfast lunch and dinner.”
He gives Kenma the DS on Wednsday. Kenma receives it with a solemn nod, saying, “I knew you wouldn’t take my immense sacrifice in saving your life for granted.” Kuroo responds by reaching down and scooping all of Kenma’s hair forwards into his face, so Kenma spends the next minute grumbling and trying to brush it all back into place.
He plans to shell out the rest of the stuff bit by bit over the week, to ensure that the message isn’t muddled again and that Kenma is clear on them being gifts, rather than an extension of Kuroo’s replacing his DS. Thursday, he clips the Pikachu charm on Kenma’s bag when he isn’t paying attention, and Kenma only notices when they reach Kuroo’s house on their way home.
“Did you do this?” He asks, holding it up between two fingers.
“Maybe,” says Kuroo.
“It’s cute. I guess.”
“It’s face reminded me of you. It has that furious expression you get when your rage finally bubbles over. Like when Coach Nekoma told you its your turn to run extra practices with Lev this week.”
Kenma’s lips twitch in what Kuroo clocks, victoriously, as a supressed laugh. “Does it,” he says, dryly.
“Mhm!” Kuroo says, unable to stop his own grin.
“Well,” Kenma says, “Rage Pikachu and I will see you tomorrow morning for practice. Brace yourself in case we don’t get enough sleep.”
Kuroo shudders in jest. “The horror. Two sleep-deprived morning Kenmas. I’ll be ready.”
He turns to head inside, giving himself a mental pat on the back for his success.
It’s only the next afternoon, when Kuroo is at Kenma’s house after school, that he realizes things have not gone exactly as he’d hoped. Kenma receives the game with copious thanks and same the understated joy and excitement he’d given off the day before, but there’s still no undercurrent of puzzlement or interest at the concept of Kuroo buying him things. To Kenma, it seems, this is nice, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Things get even less promising when Kuroo, flopped halfway across Kenma’s bed, arms stretched out to the ceiling holding the book that he’s reading while the beep! beepbeep! beep! of Kenma trying out his new game echoes around the room, remembers the snacks.
“Oh! I brought these!” he says, pulling them out from his bag. “They’re your favorite, right?”
Kenma’s eyes light up ever so slightly. “I didn’t know you wanted to do movie night, Kuro,” Kenma says. “I got some stuff for you too. It’s down in the cupboard beside the fridge.”
Kenma is apparently in the middle of a level and makes no move to get up, but his house is as familiar as Kuroo’s own, so Kuroo goes down the stairs. He can feel the frustration painting itself across his face. He should’ve known with the snacks, it’s not like he’s never picked up Kenma’s favorite foods before to surprise him. And for movie nights, it’s basically a regular thing on both their parts.
This won’t work if Kenma is buying things for him right back. His actions will blend into the general back-and-forth of their friendship even more. Not that they were ever standing out in the first place, because apparently they’re so used to each other that unexpected gifts are also not a sign of something unusual.
Kuroo returns, clenching the packages of snacks in curled fists. He plops back down on the bed just as Kenma turns off his DS.
“Also,” Kenma says, not looking him in the eyes but turning in his direction, so that Kuroo catches the way he bites at his bottom lip just slightly, “I got something for you. I mean, it’s mine, but its for you, mostly. Kind of. I finally went got a second controller for my new system, so we can actually play two-player. Sometime. If you want.”
Even the dismay of seeing his efforts whirlpool steadily down the drain can’t stop the a smile from overtaking Kuroo’s face. “Yeah,” he says, “definitely. I’d like that.”
But as Kenma moves over to grab his laptop for the movie, Kuroo can’t help but slump down the piled pillows and curl up awkwardly on the bed, utterly lost as to how to proceed.
The next week progresses with a similar, dismal level of progress. Kuroo continue staring at Kenma, who takes note of it only one time, to ask if he has something on his face. Kuroo amps up his campaign, bringing an extra lunch to give to Kenma, who accepts it with a soft, almost exasperated “So you’re finally paying me back for all the times you forgot your lunch and stole mine?” Kuroo insists on paying for their shared after-practice snacks, but since they normally buy their snacks together anyway and alternate days for paying, all it does is set their schedule off by one.
By the next Friday, Kuroo’s ideas are dwindling, and his time to think of creative ways to go about implementing them is limited as he and Sawamura have set this weekend as the time for their drop-in practice session, and have spent the last days frantically working to coordinate things. Thinking about what could be easiest and most effective, he lands on trying to initiate physical contact as a last-ditch effort. Not anything as blatant as kissing—that would defeat the entire purpose. But he thinks something like hand-holding or hugging might work as an obvious enough hint.
Unfortunately, yet again, the extent and frequency of physical contact which he and Kenma are accustomed to is already disproportionately high for platonic friends their age. Kenma, normally reserved in this among other things, has always been light-years more comfortable accepting things like hugs and casual touches from Kuroo than other people. Making anything clear in this way is going to be difficult once again, and despite their existing closeness, Kuroo wants to be careful that in pushing things he’s not running up against any of Kenma’s boundaries. He runs scenarios in his mind all day preceding their regular after school hangout, but comes up empty of ideas other than hug Kenma, just, so much.
They end up on Kuroo’s bed, buffered by pillows and covered in a mountain of blankets, Kenma’s laptop—with it’s infinitely better screen resolution than the old dinged-up model Kuroo uses for school—spread across their laps, resting on one leg each. They sit close, as they always have, thighs and arms touching, and Kuroo can feel the heat bleeding from Kenma’s body into his own. He’s aware of everywhere they make contact, but it’s not electrifying or keeping him alert. Instead, it’s comfortable, relaxing. Safe. He feels lulled, drowsy like some combination of being on cold medication and curling up right next to a heating vent, except if the vent was a person you desperately wanted to hold in your arms.
God. Plan or no plan, he wants to always be as close to Kenma as he can.
Shuffling inch by inch in a failed attempt to be unobtrusive, he slides himself down from the collection of pillows at their backs and rolls, gently, so that his head is hovering over Kenma’s chest. He looks up.
Kenma is looking down at him, and his eyes are so soft that Kuroo feels like he might not even have a choice, anymore, that if Kenma keeps looking at him like this he might crack open under it, fall apart right here and tell him everything he’s feeling.
He doesn’t. Instead, he holds himself steady in the gravity of that gaze and asks, voice barely above a whisper, “Is this okay?”
That tiny, tiny smile that Kuroo has been noticing more and more these days tugs at Kenma’s lips. There’s a beautiful, light pink flush in his cheeks that Kuroo wants to believe is a blush, but could just as well be due to the warmth of the blankets and their shared body heat.
Kenma doesn’t answer, but stares at Kuroo a moment longer with that strange, quiet look in his eyes. Then Kuroo feels a hand on his head, moving it down to rest against Kenma’s chest so gently that something in Kuroo’s heart twists into a sweet, soft ache. The movie is running still, laptop somehow now situated fully across Kenma’s knees, but Kuroo can’t hear anything except the pounding of his own heart in his ears, and Kenma’s echoing back from under his thin nightshirt, a thrumming call-and-response of a lullaby. Kuroo forgets to think about the movie, or the volleyball practice this weekend, or his floundering plan, or anything. He finds himself falling, slowly, into a peaceful and dreamless sleep.
As he drifts, he thinks he feels sure, unwavering fingers running lightly through his hair, and a quiet voice saying fondly, “Sometimes you’re so dumb, Kuro.”
When Kuroo wakes, it’s to golden light spilling across the bed, and to Kenma’s strong, thin arms coiled tight around his torso.
He thinks of Kenma’s gaze falling so softly on him last night. He thinks of Kai saying that part of Kenma’s attention is always with him, and he thinks of how much that means both everything and nothing compared to the gaping vaccum of want that has engulfed Kuroo’s heart when it comes to Kenma. He thinks of Kenma’s keen awareness and sharp mind and two weeks of Kuroo pushing and pushing and pushing something that he isn’t even sure Kenma wants.
Kuro buries his face in Kenma’s shoulder, takes two long, shuddering breathes, and realizes he can’t do this anymore.
That Saturday feels like one of the longest of Kuroo’s life. He holds it together until Kenma leaves, behaving civil and kind but holding himself at a distance both physically and emotionally.
This, ironically, Kenma does appear to pick up on, turning back his way out the door with a quirked eyebrow accenting his otherwise impassive face. “Is everything okay, Kuro?”
Kuroo nods, and platers on a smile. “Just stressing about tomorrow. This is hard enough to coordinate, and it’s pretty informal. I never thought about the effort the coaches put into pulling together those practice matches, you know.”
Kenma rolls his eyes lightly. “You’re all such perfectionists. Try giving less than 100% and maybe you won’t be on the verge of passing out constantly.”
Normally, Kuroo would snap back—something about Kenma’s own increased intensity when the games got going in Prelims, the way that he cares more than he lets on, but everything feels too fragile and his heart feels raw in his chest. He holds the smile on his face instead, and tries to push out a short “I guess so!” with the same brightness as normal.
The eyebrow melts into an expression Kuroo definitely reads as displeasure. “Are you sure—”
“It’s all good, Kenma. I’ll see you at the joint practice.”
He closes the door quickly, and leans heavily against it, listening until Kenma’s soft footfalls begin and finally recede.
The rest of the day crawls by. Kenma messages him three times in the afternoon, small things that they’d normally pick at until they tugged each other into an hours-long conversation, but Kuroo ignores the first two and answers the third with a cut off response that leaves no room for discussion. Kenma doesn’t message him that evening, and Kuroo is equal parts relieved and sad for it.
He busies himself with preparations for the joint practice the next day instead, calling Sawamura to nail down the last minute details. The Karasuno players have arranged their own accommodations for the night and are arriving in Tokyo this today, carpooling into town with some of the neighborhood association’s members as drivers and chaperones, as well as the older siblings of two of their players—that second year, Tanaka, and Kuroo’s own grumpy blocking apprentice. The prospect of dragging Tsukishima through another set of blocking drills lightens his mood considerably. He shouldn’t be giving intel to the enemy, maybe, but honestly the better Karasuno is the more interesting the game will be when they finally meet each other at Nationals. Plus, Kuroo has never been one to let promise go to waste.
The next morning, Kuroo’s ability to distance himself from Kenma dissolves. Kenma meets him at the end of his walkway as usual, painfully early since the Karasuno team should ready to go around eight and they need to be there first to set up. They head off to the train. It’s a different line from normal—the school gym is usually booked a month in advance minimum, so they’re playing at a community centre instead. Kuroo has no problems with the tracks this time. He checks his gaze when it lingers too long on Kenma, fixing and re-fixing his eyes firmly on the path ahead of him.
He sees Kenma pull his attention fully from the game to look at Kuroo a few times as they travel, but staunchly ignores it. The train ride passes in silence.
A decent proportion of the Karasuno team has shown up. The second years apparently have a test Monday, so they’re absent with the exception of Tanaka and Nishinoya, who are here in full force despite Sawamura’s conviction that they’re the ones who needed to stay home and study the most. Tsukishima’s jump-float serving friend is also conspicuously absent—a pre-planned family obligation, he tells them, looking somewhat disjointed and out of place without his shadow. Kuroo takes the opportunity to pounce on him before he can protest, dragging him off to practice blocking along with a few others.
The day is a welcome distraction. They do free practice for a few hours, then run some drills that the third years from both teams, spearheaded by Kuroo and Sawamura, have organized, and finally have a short scrimmage with mixed teams. The neighborhood association members even join in for some of it. With the size of the gym and the number of players, there’s more than enough room for Kuroo to keep himself away from and his eyes averted from Kenma.
And he tries, he really does. Because really, it hurts to look at him. It hurts to keep pushing for something that probably doesn’t even exist. Kuroo isn’t even sure he wants Kenma to pick up on his feelings anymore—he’d almost rather that the feelings themselves would disappear, evaporating on command like snow under the hot sun for too long. But as they filter out of the gym for a late lunch before the Karasuno team heads back to Miyagi, Kuroo catches himself drinking in the shift in Kenma’s expressions as he watches him walk alongside Hinata—the way his small mouth curves and his head tilts up in the afternoon sunlight in response to one of Hinata’s excited exclamations, his game all but forgotten in his hands—and Kuroo knows he can’t win this one that way.
Kuroo doesn’t even have to try to limit his access to Kenma over lunch—that shrimpy kid is a hurricane given human form, and once he’s decided to monopolize someone’s attention there’s no arguing with it. Still, Kenma looks up towards him a few times, clearly at least bordering on content with the current situation, and Kuroo has to tear his eyes away because the happiness he feels at Kenma surrounding himself with new friends has collided with the jealous desire to remain the most important person to him, creating a chemical explosion that is rending his heart to shreds.
He excuses himself after only a few minutes, and pushes out the front doors of the restaurant, finding a nearby bench to collapse onto. Squeezing shut his eyes, he tries to focus on the ambient chatter of the city, the rumbling of passing cars and the honking of horns, instead of the longing he thinks must be swallowing his entire chest cavity.
“It’s going that well, huh,” says a voice over his shoulder. “Thought you said this was the best plan ever?”
Kuroo groans. “Please, Sawamura, don’t hit a guy when he’s down.”
“Okay, okay,” Sawamura says, raising his hands in surrender as he rounds the bench to sit beside Kuroo. “What happened? Did he turn you down?”
“He didn’t…exactly. He didn’t say anything.”
“Did you say anything?” Sawamura asks.
“No.”
“Ah. Do you maybe think that’s why?”
Kuroo sighs heavily, pushing the air from his lungs in a rush. “I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just…I’ve been telling myself for the last two weeks that it’s because there’s so many factors. That maybe he can’t tell what I mean when I try to show it because we’re close, and we do so many of these things together already.
“But either he hasn’t picked up on any of it, or he’s ignoring it on purpose because he doesn’t feel the same, and I’ve never known Kenma to miss out on anything I’m feeling this completely and I—” he laughs sharply and without humor, the sound stinging in his throat like bile “I can’t do it anymore. I like it too much—watching him and holding him and being around him all the time. It’s not fair to either of us.”
Sawamura is silent for a long moment. When Kuroo finally looks over at him, there’s a distant, thoughtful look in his eyes.
“Have I ever told you about how Suga and I got together?”
“Yup,” Kuroo says, “On the phone two weeks ago.”
“Okay, so maybe not how we got together so much as…how we didn’t?”
“Riddles are fun, Sawamura, but I’m not really in the mood for them right now.”
“Okay, sure. All I mean is…you know Suga and I only started dating this year, right? And it played out mostly how I told you, me bleeding my feelings all over the place, Suga picking up on them and shoving them back in my face along with his own.”
“It’s a good story,” Kuroo says, “But your successful love life is pretty irrelevant to my current situation.”
“Not quite,” Sawamura says, and Kuroo thinks, strangely, that he can see a hint of regret playing at the edges of Sawamura’s smile. “Here’s the thing—I’ve been in love with Suga since around a month into our first year. And I found out after we got together that it’d been the same for him, too—from so early after meeting each other.
“But we weren’t sure. Suga picked up on my feelings halfway through our first year, and I suspected something by at least the end of that year too. But both of us, even Suga—we were scared. We spent two years as the closest friends, both of us loving each other and skirting around each other and holding onto our hearts and hoping, but we were both completely unwilling to take that last jump—to just say it. I’m lucky that Suga is more impatient and impulsive than he comes off, because I don’t know if I ever would have taken that step.”
Sawamura glances over his shoulder into the restauraunt, and Kuroo follows his gaze to where Sugawara is talking and laughing with Azumane, his face scrunched up in reckless enthusiasm. Sawamura’s expression is fond, fragile. “We wasted a lot of time, Kuroo. And of course, we’re young, there’s always more, of course we still want to stay together through college and beyond that, but…It’s a year and a half at least. A year and a half I could’ve had loving him completely, with everything out in the open between us.”
He turns to Kuroo then, and looks him straight in the eye, imploring. “We’ve got half a year until high school’s over. Are you actually going to waste it?”
Kuroo’s chest feels like a vice around his heart. He wraps his fingers together and unwraps them, almost wishing for one of Kenma’s games.
“Okay, he says, finally, “You’re right. But I’m worried about it still, the way I’ve been reaching out to him if he isn’t interested. I don’t want to force something on him if he’d be happier if I let go. And telling him might only make it worse. We could lose even the connection we have now.”
Sawamura sighs. “Look,” he says, “Has Kozume said or done anything to make you think the things you’ve been doing have made him uncomfortable or upset?”
Kuroo remembers the careful press of Kenma’s fingertips into his hair the other night, the way he’d joked back with Kuroo about the Pikachu charm, the way he’d been looking out for Kuroo enough to catch him when he stumbled into the train tracks, enough to be the first pair of eyes on him when he fell during practice. Sawamura had a point. If anything, Kenma seemed to be returning most of the gestures rather than shying away from them.
“No,” Kuro says. “He hasn’t”
“Then what’s the harm?” Sawamura says, raising his hands in a shrug. “Even if he doesn’t have those kinds of feelings for you, he’s probably still okay with the expression of yours for him. And you can always ask him that directly, too. If he’s happy with things the way they are, you don’t have suddenly to constrain or cut off your interactions with him without explanation. If anything that will probably hurt both of you more than anything you do to express how much you care about him.”
Kuroo turns his gaze back to the restauraunt. On opposite side of the table, Hinata is swinging his arms wildly, and Karasuno’s permanently-scowling setter is yelling something at him, their noses inches apart. Kenma sits on Hinata’s opposite side, his chin resting lightly on his hand, eyes flicking between the two of them, looking settled and ever so slightly amused by the chaos. As Kuroo watches, something—maybe that sixth sense he is certain Kenma has—draws his attention to the window, and his eyes flick up to meet Kuroo’s. Kenma smiles that small, joyful, real smile that always hits Kuroo like a shock, restarting his heart to beat in its truest rhythm, and anything that remains of Kuroo’s fraying resolve is lost.
“Okay,” he breathes, “okay.”
It’s early evening when they step off the train, and the sky is a canvas of yellows and pinks and golds. Kenma is playing his game again—another boss fight, Kuroo thinks, based on the dramatic music quietly emanating from the device—and Kuroo doesn’t try to break the silence, doesn’t make an effort to either stare at Kenma or to drag his eyes away from him. He just walks, glancing at Kenma every so often, marking the familiarity of his steps, the tight press of his lips that gives away the extent of his concentration. Kuroo walks, and revels in the feeling of just being near him. Of having Kenma close by his side, hand inches from his own, the imaginary magnet in his palm flickering to life in proximity to its opposing pole.
When they reach the walkway to Kuroo’s house, Kenma stops as usual. Kuroo stops too, doesn’t look for his keys, doesn’t tell Kenma to go on ahead.
“Kenma,” he says, and feels the shift in attention that always comes whenever he asks for it. He stands there another moment, collecting himself, breathing. Kenma’s hands are still on the controls, and he looks up, fading sunlight glinting off his lashes.
Kuroo stops trying to restrain the magnetic force tugging at his hand, lets it drift towards its fated destination. It lands, covering Kenma’s gently, just over the controls, and Kuroo follows its lead, bending to Kenma’s upturned face and carefully, carefully, pressing their lips together.
Kenma’s lips are soft. Kuroo feels, rather than sees, the beginning of that smile.
He pulls back. “Kenma,” he says again, feeling suddenly like his lungs don’t possess the air to give the statement the gravity it deserves, “Kenma. I like you.”
The words barely have time to stretch their wings and fly from his mouth when they are replaced by Kenma’s lips on his. This kiss, too, is soft, but insistent, determined, like the focus Kenma puts into defeating the most challenging levels, like the intensity with which he scrutinizes the strategy of opposing teams. Kuroo feels Kenma’s hand turn upwards, releasing the controls. Feels small, sure fingers lace tightly with his own. Feels the thrumming of his pulse and of Kenma’s in their hands, blending, indistinct from one another, beating as one.
Kenma pulls back, but only slightly. Their foreheads press against each other and they breathe together, as though this synchronicity is something that was always supposed to happen, something they were made for.
“I like you too,” Kenma says, words ferried across the inches between them on shared breaths, “I like you too.”
“Oh,” Kuroo says, quietly.
They stay there for a moment, both in awe, Kenma with something akin to smug satisfaction peeking out from the edges of his smile. Finally, Kuroo feels him drop down off his toes. Kuroo lets out another breath and it turns into a laugh halfway, airy, spiralling into the sky on feathered wings.
“I’ve been trying to show you,” Kuroo says, “I was so scared to tell you, and I thought you’d pick up on it, because you always pick up on things, but there were so many complicating factors, we know each other so well and we’re comfortable and we do so many of the things I tried already anyway and I—"
“I know,” Kenma says, and that edge of satisfaction takes full charge now, an honest-to-god smirk curling across his mouth.
“You—What do you mean you know,” Kuroo says, incredulously. “You—all this time I—since when?”
“Mmmm…” Kenma says, “I mean my suspicions hit “probable” when you almost fell on your face in practice, and I was pretty much certain by the time you brought me lunch? And when you fell asleep on me. That definitely clinched it. I don’t think you’ve done that since you were like, eleven? I’d kinda missed it, though.”
Kuroo sputters. “What—why didn’t you say anything?”
The smugness dissipates, and is replaced with a sheepish look. “I…I didn’t want it to end. At first, I mean, when I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. You were being so much more obvious about things than normal, and I…I really liked it. And I didn’t want it to stop. And then, once I was sure, I realized that I’d never even thought about telling you before and…” Kenma looks down, twists their still-linked fingers together nervously, “Saying things is…really really hard. Even when I know what the answer will be.”
Kuroo can’t stop the smile that spreads across his face. “I guess I can’t argue with that one. Given the hoops I jumped through to try and avoid saying anything at all.”
Kenma nods, and just like that the smile is back.
“Hey,” Kuroo says, his own smile breaking across his face with absolutely uncontainable joy, “You like me. You liiiiike me” He pokes Kenma in the chest with his free hand. “I can’t believe you like me. How embarrassing.”
Kenma rolls his eyes, and swats at Kuroos hand with his DS. “Whatever. I’m not the one who spent at least two weeks tripping over his feet in order to make his crush even more blindingly apparent than it already was.”
“You said you didn’t pick up on it until after I started emphasizing things!”
“I said I picked up on it as “probable” when you started. It’s been at “possible” for basically forever.”
“Oh, shut up,” Kuroo says, laughing, squeezing Kenma’s fingers tighter to his own. “Do you wanna come over for a bit?”
“Are you going to use me as a glorified body pillow again?”
“Did you mind me using you as a glorified body pillow?”
Kenma’s cheeks turn pink, and this time Kuroo is certain it’s a blush. “No,” he mutters, “I liked it.”
“Then its settled,” Kuroo grins. “You can be the body pillow, and I’ll supply the snacks. I stashed another two bags so I could give them to you later.”
Kenma sighs deeply, and Kuroo can feel his eyes rolling, but he can also hear the affection in it. Kenma’s head lands gently on Kuroo’s shoulder, and as they both start up the walkway to Kuroo’s house, he can’t resist turning his and whispering it again into the shimmering strands of Kenma’s hair.
“Hey, Kenma. I like you.”