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Kozume Kenma was absolutely, 100 percent certain that the sun was a malicious force of nature specifically designed to ruin his day. No benevolent fire orb could ever be so rude as to burn into his retinas with that much intensity. It had to be the work of some evil spirit; maybe a demon, maybe a homophobic ancestor, who could say? Definitely something out for vengeance, because whatever was coercing the cosmos to shine all their light directly through his window at all hours surely sought his demise.
He scrunched his nose, wincing, and tried to explain this phenomenon to the lanky lump of messy black hair and volleyball muscle beside him. Tetsurou would understand.
Unfortunately, between the sun and the pillow and the muscle, the best language he could manage was “Time s’it?”
Beside him, the lump moved. A long arm reached over Kenma, fumbled, and grabbed a phone. Kuroo Tetsurou, in all his bedhead glory, blinked blearily at the screen. “Eight.”
Kenma groaned, turning onto his stomach and burying his face in his pillow. “S’too bright.” He heard Tetsurou yawn, and selfishly peeked one eye open to catch a glimpse. His boyfriend was sitting up, shirtless and glowing in the early morning light, all tousled hair and red lips. Kenma hid his smile in the pillow.
“Need coffee,” Tetsurou grumbled. “Want any?”
Kenma shook his head, pulling the blankets further up around his shoulders. Artificial energy was the last thing he needed; what he really wanted was more sleep. He was dimly aware of the weight next to him on the bed disappearing and soft footsteps making their way out the bedroom door, accompanied by mumbled words that sounded suspiciously like “More for me.”
With a sigh, Kenma relaxed into the plush sheets. Mornings, especially mornings after he’d been up late playing games, were never his thing. Bright mornings like this one were extra trying on his vision, which was nearly nocturnal after years of gaming. Still, the prospect of being able to fall back asleep and wake up later to a hot breakfast from Tetsurou was too delicious to resist. Already he could feel himself drifting off, slipping back out of consciousness and into the soft embrace of sleep.
It didn’t feel like a moment had passed when something was shaking his leg. Somebody was speaking, but it didn’t really matter who, not when his bed was as warm as it was. Just a few more minutes, he thought to himself.
“C’mon, kitten,” Tetsurou insisted, sounding equal parts annoyed and fond. “You got an extra two hours, it’s time to get up.”
“Mmf,” Kenma grunted eloquently, shoving his face deeper into the pillow. Another shake of his leg made him squirm, irritated. “Little longer.”
“You’ve had long enough; our breakfast is cold.”
There was a brief pause as Kenma formulated and internally executed an elaborate multi-pronged argument, which ended up finally exiting his mouth as “Microwave.”
“Okay, fair,” Tetsurou replied, and damn him, Kenma could hear his smile. How dare he tease when the stakes were this high? Extra sleep was pretty much a matter of life and death. “Guess I’ll have to make you.”
Kenma still wasn’t entirely conscious, but some tiny alarm went off in his sleep-addled brain. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make him furrow his brow and curl his toes beneath the sheets. “…Can’t make me.”
“Oh?” There was something in Tetsurou’s tone that Kenma couldn’t put his finger on. Amusement, maybe? Mischief?
Suddenly, he felt the warmth of the blankets tugged away, leaving only Kenma in his pajamas on the bare mattress. He curled in on himself, whining in protest. “Hey!”
“See?” Tetsurou teased, holding the bedding teasingly out of reach. “This is how your breakfast feels. Cold, sad…”
“Give em back,” Kenma groaned, aware of how petulant he sounded but too exhausted to care. “Lemme sleep!”
“Sleep is for the weak.” The mattress creaked, and Kenma felt a soft weight settle on his legs. “And you’re strong, aren’t you, kitten?”
Before he could reply, Kenma felt Tetsu’s presence on his legs shift and move closer to the head of the bed. Cold fingers snuck under his hoodie and waltzed up his spine, sending goosebumps racing to follow. He tensed, clutching the pillow. Oh.
“Tetsu—”
“Mm?” Tetsurou replied, all innocence. His strong body slid up Kenma’s, easily slotting into place on top of him and letting the weight of his body drape over his boyfriend. Kenma twitched as Tetsurou’s strong legs straddled his hips – soothing as the feeling was, he was also hyper-aware that he couldn’t squirm away. The fingers on his back spidered back down, effortlessly light in their touch.
Kenma took a shaky breath. “W-what’re you—”
“Told you I’d make you.” Tetsurou’s smirk pressed up between his shoulder blades, and Kenma had to stifle a gasp. “You’re not ticklish, are you, sweetheart?”
“I—” The fingertips changed direction again, trailing back up his back, but skating dangerously close to his sides this time. Kenma gritted his teeth, fighting an inevitable smile. “You – you know the answer! Tetsu—”
This time, when the touch on his spine reached the nape of his neck, it stayed there, circling the soft part of his back where his neck met his shoulders. With a squeak, Kenma’s shoulders hitched up by his ears.
“Don’t you dare,” he hissed.
Tetsurou’s reply was so close to his ear that it was barely a whisper, ruffling his hair and making Kenma absolutely shiver. “You brought this on yourself, kitten.”
With that, Tetsurou’s fingertips curled, prodding carefully into the sides of his ribcage, and he began to press smiling kisses all over the back of Kenma’s neck. Kenma, for his part, did not fall into laughter immediately; rather, he let out what could only be described as a squeal and began kicking wildly. Fortunately, his ribs weren’t so bad that he couldn’t hide the laughter building in his chest. Unfortunately, the sleepiness that still clouded his mind had left him weak, soft, and seemingly even more ticklish than usual. Still, it wasn’t until the kisses migrated north to his ears, nosing into the gaps in his hair, that his squeaks turned into real giggles, high-pitched and sweet and absolutely delightful to Tetsurou.
“You’re so cute when you laugh!”
“Please, please, I – enough with the ears!”
“You have the cutest ears; I can’t not kiss—”
“You—” Kenma snorted into the pillow— “you obsess over ears?”
“Hmmm…” The kiss that Tetsurou pressed into the nape of his neck was whisper-soft. “Only yours.”
Kenma could feel his face burning, but didn’t dare lift his head lest Tetsurou see the redness on his cheeks and tease him about that, too. His concern didn’t last long, though, as the tickling in between his ribs moved to become squeezing at his sides, and he nearly gave then and there.
“Monster,” he gasped through his laughter, trying to kick. “Absolute menace, truly–”
“Now, Kenma,” Tetsurou chided, giving Kenma’s hipbones a squeeze and relishing the cackles that the action produced. “I don’t think you’re really in a position to be throwing around insults, are you?”
While his point certainly held up, Kenma wasn’t exactly in a rational place mentally. He was lost in laughter, hardly able to think through a haze of ticklishness, and his usual line of defense against attacks such as these (wild thrashing) was being significantly hindered by Tetsurou’s presence on his back. He tried kicking once more, but it was more of a flailing than anything else, and his boyfriend’s strong legs easily countered the attack.
“Careful,” Tetsurou teased, reaching back to give one of his knees a quick squeeze (and producing a delicious howl).
“I cahahan’t,” Kenma wailed, burying his face once more in a pillow that was now wet with tears of laughter. “Please, Tetsu, please–”
“Are you going to get up?” asked Tetsurou, who had just found a wonderful spot on Kenma’s waist that made him hiccup.
“I—I—” Kenma giggled helplessly. He could feel his cheeks started to ache from smiling, but something in his pride kept him from giving in. “You’re teasing, I—Oh, not there, Tetsu, plehehease!”
“Please what?” came the reply, but Kenma was laughing too hard to answer. “Please tickle you more?”
“Wahahait, I can’t—”
“Can’t what?”
Kenma snorted, twitching under his boyfriend as a rogue fingernail found its way into his underarm. As merciless as the tickling was, the relentless teasing was almost infinitely worse.
“You’re—that tickles, Tetsu—”
“Does it?” asked Tetsurou, amused. “Almost enough to make you come have breakfast with me?”
“I—ugh, fine, yes!” Kenma finally shouted between bouts of giggles.
Grinning triumphantly, Tetsurou pressed one last ticklish kiss to his boyfriend’s ear and rolled off him. Finally, Kenma turned over, blinking in the morning sun, face flushed and streaked with tears of laughter. His ribs heaved with the effort of replacing the lost oxygen, but he couldn’t seem to wipe the smile off his face.
“That… that was rude.”
Tetsurou reached over to boop his nose, earning a swat and a weak chuckle. “Just be glad you surrendered when you did, kitten. Your toes were next.”
Kenma tried his best not to curl his toes at the thought, but Tetsurou’s knowing look told him that he’d failed. “You can’t—stop making fun of me, alright, I was asleep and you practically tortured me.”
Tetsurou hummed thoughtfully at that, brushing some of Kenma’s hair out of his face. “Never told me to stop, though, did you?”
Crap. Kenma froze, face burning. Tetsurou, on the other hand, burst into laughter.
“Aww, does my little kitten like being tickled?”
“Shut up,” Kenma hissed, but Tetsurou was practically rolling with giggles.
“That’s so adorable—”
“Enough teasing!”
“Oh, come on,” Tetsurou smiled, giving his boyfriend’s forehead a quick kiss. “You’re just bitter that I won.”
“M’gonna get you back, you know,” Kenma grumbled, rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes and revealing a competitive shine. “Except a billion times worse.”
Tetsurou snorted derisively, but Kenma would have to be blind to miss the way his eyes widened. “I’d like to see you try – hey!”
The finger that had wedged itself just south of Tetsurou’s ribcage gave an experimental wiggle, and Kenma’s lips quirked at the sound his boyfriend made. Flushing, Tetsurou wrapped a hand around the intruding touch and pushed it away, playing up his puppy eyes to his full ability.
“Can it at least wait till after breakfast?”
Kenma raised an eyebrow. “You have two minutes.”
“Two?!”
“Better be quick, sweetheart. One Mississippi… two Mississippi…”
Tetsurou was out of the room in a second, socks slipping on the hardwood and leaving Kenma snickering into his hoodie. After a moment, he plucked a blanket from where it had been discarded at the end of the bed and pulled it up over him, sighing and wiggling his toes in the warmth. Hmm.
Maybe three minutes.