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Kuroo has a problem. Well, to be honest, he has several problems, ranging from the fact that Kenma is Internet famous to the terrible, horrible, no-good schedule he signed himself up for.
Last year wasn’t too bad since he erred on the side of caution, took exactly the number of courses his counselor recommended, and participated in the volleyball club as much as a first year could (which meant chores, so many chores, nevermind that he was captain of a team that made it to Nationals—making it to Nationals in high school was hardly a feat when it came to university-level volleyball). This year, however, Kuroo threw caution to the wind and piled as much as he could on his plate with the glorious mindset: suffer now, reap the rewards later.
It’s hard to remember that when Bokuto’s newest teammate, Miya Atsumu (one of the best setters in high school, most likely going to be one of the best in the pro leagues, though Kuroo personally still prefers Kenma), hasn’t gotten the memo that Kuroo does not need any distractions right now.
Kuroo has wasted an embarrassing amount of time scrolling through Miya Atsumu’s latest pictures on social media because a surprising amount of them feature Bokuto: smiling wildly, flexing stupidly, just standing around being effortlessly charming. They’re nicer than the blurry pictures Bokuto posts to his own social media, and so Kuroo…admires them when he should really, really be shoving his nose into a textbook and catching up on reading he needed to do yesterday (a month ago, really, but who’s keeping track?).
(Kuroo does not choke on a mouthful of rice one day, after practice, as he lazily scrolls through Miya Atsumu’s Instagram and spots the newest picture, featuring the man himself front and center but more importantly, Bokuto in the background lifting his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.
There’s no one around to see it, so it didn’t happen.)
(Kenma is the devil incarnate. Kuroo did nothing to deserve this kind of public humiliation.)
“You’ve been thirst-texting me about him every day. It’s worse than it was in high school.”
God, Kuroo wants to argue with that, so he will, but. Kenma just has to make it hard, doesn’t he? “C’mon, that’s a stretch. I haven’t been thirst-texting.” Somewhat of a lie, which, of course, means that Kenma is going to—
“‘Ahhhhhh, Kenma, I’m dying. Have you seen the latest—’” Kenma’s monotone does not properly convey Kuroo’s all-caps mess of a text message at all, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing.
“Okay, okay,” Kuroo cuts him off. At least Kuroo can comfort himself knowing Kenma is probably dying inside, having read that out loud. “I get it, you’ve proven your point. But, did you really have to let your fans know about my stupid crush?”
“It’s ridiculous,” Kenma says, a non-answer. Kuroo can just imagine the eye-roll that statement’s accompanied with, and he’s hit with a wave of nostalgia. He misses seeing Kenma everyday; they live right next to each other, but between Kuroo’s commute and dismal lack of free time, they don’t even get to take advantage of that as much as Kuroo would like. “I don’t understand why he doesn’t just confess.”
Kuroo frowns. “Are you…talking about me in third person?”
“I’m streaming,” Kenma answers, and Kuroo resists the urge to throw his phone out the window, and maybe himself as well.
“Please don’t tell me all your fans can hear everything I’m saying,” Kuroo does not squeak, but it’s a near thing. Kenma, devil incarnate, please have mercy on your poor childhood friend.
“I told you that you were on speakerphone,” Kenma says. Kuroo hears the unspoken you’re an idiot loud and clear.
“I can’t believe you!” Kuroo does not throw his phone, but he does collapse on the textbook in front of him.
“You should have.” Kenma is being obtuse on purpose, something Kuroo takes great joy in when it annoys other people.
“Do your…fans have any advice at least?” Kuroo asks because he might as well. His workload is rising, about to wash over him like a tidal wave. The last thing he needs is for this crush, this stupid little thing he’s nursed for a while, to cause problems now.
“Confess,” Kenma snaps.
Kuroo groans. “You’ve told me that.”
“And my fans agree,” Kenma says, decisive.
So, Kenma wins that argument, but at least Kuroo totally crushes his quiz the next morning.
Take that, Kuroo thinks viciously as he struts out of the lecture hall, you multi-millionaire living your best reclusive life. I got at least a 90%. Who’s winning at life now?
There is a problem with Kenma’s advice, and it is this: the perfect time to confess was over a year ago when they were graduating and moving on to bigger and better things. Ideally, it would’ve been after Fukurodani won Nationals. The fact that this didn’t happen derailed Kuroo’s plans so thoroughly that he just…never confessed.
The backup plan would’ve been to confess anyway, and it would’ve worked because Bokuto found him after the game, and they were all alone in a secluded corner. Perfect opportunity to spill his guts to Bokuto with no one around to witness him embarrassing himself.
And Bokuto wasn’t sad, necessarily, not in the only-Akaashi-hyping-me-up-will-improve-my-mood kind of way. He was smiling, eyes bright, maybe a little too bright. It would’ve just been rude to interrupt Bokuto’s messy feelings about losing at the final stage with a confession.
Instead, Kuroo performed the role of best friend ever, comforted Bokuto about proving himself in the future, and did not confess.
So, graduation came and went, and he still didn’t confess. (Kai and Yaku took it upon themselves to peer-pressure Kuroo into confessing, which hey—the bullying is expected from Yaku, but Kai, too? They should appreciate that Kuroo’s spending time with them because they’re never going to see each other again, guys, I’m serious!
“Sure,” Yaku said, and it was the most insincere “sure” Kuroo had ever heard in his life. “Just say you’re too scared, and stop making up excuses.”
Kai, the traitor, nodded in agreement, and the worst part: all the underclassmen sided with Yaku as well.)
And now Bokuto is off being a successful professional volleyball player while Kuroo is a struggling college student (“no one asked you to take so many classes,” Kenma comments, unsympathetic), and they barely ever see each other anymore, not that they even saw each other much as high schoolers. But still, it’s strange to see Bokuto on the TV and in the papers more often than he sees him in person, and there’s this immature part of him that wants to cry, wait, no, go back, let me do this over. Because Kuroo’s not afraid of confessing, it’s just never been the right moment. The right moment would’ve been back then when Kuroo could’ve made sure that they wouldn’t drift apart, if it went wrong. If it goes wrong now, how is he supposed to fix it when they barely see each other?
“You think too much,” Akaashi says, fiddling with his glass of water, the perfect picture of boredom. “You and Bokuto-san are still extremely close.”
Kuroo slams his hands down on the table, possibly wrinkling the pages of his chemistry textbook, but he chooses to ignore that and the looks from the people around them. “But will we be, even after I confess?”
Akaashi looks into his glass of water, as if he’s willing it to turn into liquor, and sighs. “If you confess.”
Kuroo splutters. Everything about this meeting has gone terribly wrong from the start; instead of leaving with a plan to confess, he’ll be leaving with a bruised ego.
“What’s the worst that could go wrong?” Akaashi asks. The casual way he tilts his head is mildly terrifying.
“Uh, Bokuto and I never talk again, and I die, old and alone, in a ditch somewhere?”
There is a pause in which Akaashi stares Kuroo down, and the bustling sounds of the cafe fill the void between them. “I see why Kenma-kun has given up on you.”
Akaashi-1, Kuroo-0. (Akaashi and everyone else argues that the score is much more skewed than that, but Kuroo refuses to acknowledge their complaints.)
The thing is, it only took a month for Akaashi to lose his patience. At first, he was nice and understanding, after the initial heart-attack of a text: “So you like Bokuto-san?”
(It was the first of many, many messages Kuroo received about his not-so-secret crush thanks to Kenma’s stream.
“I should’ve murdered you in the womb,” Kuroo hissed after Shibuyama of all precious underclassmen teased him about his crush.
“I’m streaming right now,” was Kenma’s response—words that will continue to haunt Kuroo’s nightmares.)
The gibberish Kuroo sent to Akaashi was not quite coherent, but it suckered Akaashi into listening to Kuroo explain his confession woes over and over again.
He should’ve known Akaashi would reach his limit sooner or later.
“Why are you so mean now, Akaashi? What did I do to you?”
“Kuroo-san.” Akaashi takes a deep breath, a foreboding sign. “You just told me that you and Bokuto-san call each other babe now. This is getting ridiculous.”
“That’s what Kenma said!”
“And Kenma-kun is correct. How can you possibly be afraid that you and Bokuto-san will drift apart when you call each other babe?”
“I don’t know! By the way, you got that problem wrong—”
“Thank you, Kuroo-san,” Akaashi says, correcting his work. Unfortunately for Kuroo, it does not prevent Akaashi from roasting him. “You can’t use academics to distract us from talking about—”
“Oh, would you look at the time, time for me to be a good student.” Kuroo buries his face into the textbook in front of him and pointedly does not look up even after Akaashi resorts to kicking him in the shin.
“Am I going to have to confess for you?” Akaashi mutters, which actually does get Kuroo to sit up.
“Would you do it if I asked?”
Akaashi’s silence is sufficiently judgemental.
“Hey, babe.” Bokuto has taken to answering the phone like this, that word slipping into their conversations so casually that Kuroo swears the heart palpitations will kill him one day. And they’ll write on his gravestone “killed by ‘babe.’”
“Heyyyy,” Kuroo responds completely naturally. He pointedly ignores Kenma’s scathing, judgemental glare. At least Kenma isn’t live streaming this time; Kenma’s fans have heard more than enough about Kuroo’s love life. “What’s up, Bokuto?”
“I don’t know, you’re the one who called me,” Bokuto says, and Kuroo can hear the bemused laugh in his tone of voice, can almost imagine the way Bokuto would’ve tilted his head in confusion. He probably looks adorable, and Kuroo is simultaneously grateful and upset that he isn’t talking to Bokuto in person right now. On the one hand, Bokuto in arm’s reach; on the other, less chances to embarrass himself.
“Right, right. Yup, I called you.” Kenma, aware that Kuroo is stalling, elbows Kuroo hard. “I called you because you are my best buddy, pal, except for Kenma, of course—” It is insanely endearing how Kuroo can tell Bokuto’s smiling wildly on the other end of the phone. “—um, and I was hoping we could hang out sometime.” Kenma elbows Kuroo again. “Because! I have something important to tell you.”
“Oooh, what is it?” Bokuto sounds way too excited, and Kuroo feels, for the millionth time, that perhaps he shouldn’t confess. It’s most definitely not the ‘something important’ that Bokuto is expecting, and he’d be disappointed, and a disappointed Bokuto—
Kenma steals Kuroo’s phone, says, “He’ll tell you in person,” and hangs up.
“I—we didn’t even settle on a date, or a place, Kenma!”
“It’s fine. We can just…” Kenma opens up Kuroo’s messages with Bokuto before Kuroo can even interject. “…text him…the details.” Kenma looks back up at Kuroo, even as he’s typing out a message to Bokuto. 100% would-be intimidating, if Kuroo hadn’t grown up with Kenma. “I see you guys have progressed to platonically sending each other hearts, in addition to platonically calling each other ‘babe.’”
“I know how it looks!” Kenma maintains his unimpressed stare, which, okay, valid. “It’s all platonic, but trust me,” Kuroo continues on despite Kenma’s clear desire to start arguing with him, “once I start romancing Bokuto, we’ll be romantically sending each other hearts and romantically calling each other ‘babe.’”
“You could barely talk to him over the phone just now, and you’ve known him for years. Exactly how are you planning on romancing him?”
“This is why I don’t go to you for romantic advice.”
Kenma rolls his eyes and hands Kuroo his phone back. “You don’t go to anyone for romantic advice. That’s why you’ve gotten nowhere.”
“Harsh!”
“But true.”
It’s the first time in a while that Bokuto’s back up in Tokyo, and he’s chosen to spend most of it with Kuroo. Because Kuroo asked with (some) help from Kenma. It is very, very important that Bokuto enjoys their time together and that Kuroo at least partly confesses by the end of it, so maybe he spent too much time on the Internet looking for advice when he should’ve been studying for exams.
(A lot of the advice he had to throw out because Kuroo isn’t meeting Bokuto in-person for the first time, or trying to get the interest of the stranger, or anything like that. It’s not quite getting out of the friend-zone either; it’s getting out of the bro-zone, and there is a saddening lack of that info online.
So, maybe, that time would’ve been spent better studying, but Kuroo refuses to regret his choice because he will succeed at this sort-of-but-not-really-date. And no, Kenma has not jinxed it by texting him a very lackluster “good luck” minutes before he’s heading out to meet Bokuto at the train station.)
Kuroo is somewhat dressed to impress, but not to the extent that Bokuto would notice (he hopes, or maybe he does want Bokuto to notice?). His hair is a lost cause, as always, but there’s not much he can do about that, especially since he keeps running his fingers through his hair as he waits for Bokuto to arrive.
“Kuroo!” Bokuto yells the moment the train doors open and beelines straight towards him. Kuroo has enough time to run his fingers through his hair again before Bokuto wraps him up in a crushing bear hug. Makes him feel like he’s being squeezed to death a little bit, but in a good way. “Missed you a lot, babe.”
Bokuto is still hugging Kuroo, so luckily he can’t see the way Kuroo turns tomato-red, but he might be able to hear the way Kuroo’s heartbeat skyrocketed, a thousand times faster than Bokuto’s steady, comforting heartbeat, and it means that Kuroo can’t see Bokuto’s face as he says babe— what does it all mean?
“Thanks, man,” Kuroo manages to say, patting Bokuto on his very nice back. “Missed you, too.”
Bokuto finally lets go, but it’s to look Kuroo in the eyes with the most adorable pout in the universe and demand that Kuroo “say babe instead of man!”
Kuroo somehow does not perish on the spot, Bokuto’s golden eyes piercing him to the core as he says: “Missed you, too, babe.”
They swing by a restaurant after casually tossing around a volleyball for an hour or so, and it takes Herculean effort for Kuroo to stop thinking about how attractive Bokuto looks now that they’ve worked up a light sweat.
Aside from that, it’s comfortable, though, the way they settle into easy conversation about what they’ve been up to, the new sights Bokuto’s seen and the new friends Kuroo’s made. Both of them ramble on, Bokuto especially, catching the other up with the detailed stories they never have time for when Bokuto’s busy practicing and Kuroo’s busy studying.
Kuroo hears a lot about the shenanigans Bokuto gets up to, this time with Miya Atsumu as his partner-in-crime, and Kuroo is not jealous. Not exactly. He never intended to become a professional volleyball player after high school, but it also means that this is their relationship for now and possibly forever: meeting up during the lulls between their hectic schedules. It might’ve been like this anyway, even if Kuroo went pro, but it doesn’t stop him from wondering sometimes anyway.
“I think you’d like Tsum-Tsum,” Bokuto concludes and pauses, waiting for Kuroo to respond.
“Really.” Kuroo plays with his chopsticks, avoiding Bokuto’s intense gaze. “I’m not sure about that.”
“You totally would,” Bokuto insists. “Akaashi’s one of my best friends, and he likes Akaashi, so of course he’d like you, too!”
Kuroo can’t help his smile. “Feels like you’re missing a couple steps there.”
Bokuto frowns, expressive as always. “Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not!”
This exchange went on much longer than it should have, considering that they were adults now, but with all of Bokuto's attention centered on him and only him, Kuroo couldn't bring himself to care.
(“You two should not be allowed in public,” Kenma comments later, as Kuroo’s regaling the whole tale to him.
“Rude!” Kuroo shouts, feigning offense, but he’s in too much of a good mood to really sell it.)
It’s dark out by the time they even think of parting ways, and even then, Bokuto chose to walk Kuroo all the way home.
“I have to!” Bokuto insisted, and Kuroo relented, considering he won the earlier “argument” they had during dinner.
The thing is, Bokuto also insists on holding hands. Which, okay, but the problem is, Bokuto’s hand feels nice: warm, solid, dry, whereas Kuroo knows his hand is clammy and definitely uncomfortable to keep holding. In fact, their hands slip a couple times, especially since Bokuto likes to swing their joined hands aggressively as they walk, but every time, Bokuto simply readjusts his grip.
They end up outside Kuroo’s house all too soon (Kenma should know that Kuroo can see that his curtains are open, he’s not even trying to be sneaky about his spying), and Kuroo can’t decide between being disappointed and grateful that they no longer need to hold hands because Kuroo’s heart wasn’t built for this.
“Awww, we’re here already!” Bokuto says, echoing some of Kuroo’s sentiments. He does not let go of Kuroo’s hand, even as he turns to face him. Bokuto takes a steadying breath, licks his lips—and Kuroo’s eyes catch that movement, remain glued to Bokuto’s mouth, which is why he’s caught off guard when—
When Bokuto leans forward and crashes their lips together, one hand supporting Kuroo’s neck, the other squeezing the life out of his hand. They don’t stumble and fall over because of sheer luck.
The kiss ends all too quickly, Bokuto pulling back to look Kuroo in the eyes. Kuroo sees his own insecurity reflected back at him, the same emotion he’s seen in the mirror for the past year or so whenever he talked himself out of confessing to Bokuto.
“Oh no,” Bokuto says, the slightest hint of hysteria creeping into his voice. He starts pulling away, but Kuroo stops him before he lets go completely. “I forgot to ask if it was okay first. I mean, I thought it was ‘cause Akaashi told me this was a date, but—”
Kuroo’s brain feels like it’s short-circuited two times in as many minutes. “Akaashi told you this was a date?”
“Uhhhh,” Bokuto stalls, clearly trying to think of a lie. “No?”
“What if I told you this is a date?”
“Uhhhh, well, then you told me it was, not Akaashi!”
Kuroo suppresses his automatic desire to start a pointless argument with Bokuto and focuses on the important part: “So, if this was a date, mind giving me another kiss?”
“Yes!” Bokuto frowns. “I mean, no!”
Kuroo’s the one who initiates this time, his mind blank except for the small voice that’s screaming, “this is happening!” Even the thought that Kenma may or may not be spying on them barely occupies space in his brain right now, and when they pull apart for air, he definitely asks, “will you be my boyfriend?” and not “is Kenma watching us right now?”
(As it turns out, the answer is yes either way.)