Work Text:
Another Christmas alone in Tokyo. Kuroo isn’t looking forward to it. He sighs as he walks down the streets, past coffee shops decked out in red and green, filled to the brim with grinning couples. Ten million people in this city, and you’d think he was the only one who’s single. He swore up and down that he’d finally have a date on his arm this year, and Yaku laughed so hard soda came out of his nose. Must’ve been a bad omen.
The older he gets, the less acceptable it feels to try and round up the boys to hang out. Not that he wants to deal with the humiliation of being pointed and laughed at anyway. He can already see the smirk on Kenma’s face, biting back his urge to bring up how confident Kuroo had been earlier in the year when he said he’d finally have a date on Christmas. It stings even more when he thinks about how Kenma wouldn’t even show up if he did try to get a group together considering he already has a date of his own.
Kuroo spends most of his walk and train ride and second walk back to his apartment trying to ignore the giddiness surrounding him. He never dreamed he’d be such a scrooge at 26, but it’s hard not to get frustrated when he knows he’s the catch of the year but nobody is fishing. As he walks up the steps to his apartment, he starts daydreaming about the six-pack of beer in the fridge, wondering if he ought to bust it out now or saw it for the holy night itself. The jitter of his phone in his back pocket draws him out of deliberation.
“Hello?”
“Ah, Kuroo-kun.” His boss’s voice is nasally in a way that can sound both kind and unbearable depending on how Kuroo is feeling. Right now, it’s unbearable. “Sorry to bother you after working hours.”
“It’s no problem at all,” Kuroo says through gritted teeth. If he was actually sorry, it could’ve waited until tomorrow. “Is something the matter?”
“Oh, no,” he says, which has to be a lie, because if nothing were the matter, Kuroo would already be in his house opening a can of beer right now. “I just wanted to confirm a minor detail with you.”
“What was the issue?”
“It’s not really an issue.” Kuroo’s blood pressure is rising. “I was just wondering whether you would be able to take a trip next week to make some arrangements for an upcoming event.”
“Next week?” He doesn’t need to look at a calendar. Christmas is next Friday. Kuroo licks his lips. “What days next week?”
“I was hoping you could leave on Wednesday and return on Saturday,” his boss says. Kuroo holds back a sigh of relief. Suddenly, his boss’ voice has started to sound so delightful. “Nakajima-kun was supposed to go, but he’s injured himself, so I was hoping you would be able to go in his stead.”
“I see.”
“I understand you may have plans for Christmas, but it would be really helpful if you could—”
“I can go,” Kuroo says, tripping over his own feet on the way into his apartment. Looks like that case of beer won’t be so necessary after all. He’ll be too distracted doing work in… where, exactly? “Ah, boss, where was the trip to?”
“Oh, I guess I forgot to mention. You’ll be going to Miyagi!” Just the sound of it makes Kuroo’s ears hot. “I hear you often went to Miyagi for volleyball matches when you were younger, so I thought you may enjoy the opportunity to go back.”
“Oh, uh, yeah.” He gulps to keep his heart rate from spiking, but it’s fruitless. Just like he knew it would be. “I’d be happy to go.”
“I was hoping you’d say so!” If his boss notices Kuroo’s change in demeanor, he doesn’t give any sign of it. “Well, I’ll see you at work, Kuroo-kun. Thanks for your hard work.”
“Sure. You too, boss.”
The dial tone still echoes in his ears as he trudges into his bedroom and lies flat atop his bed, eyes raking over the ceiling. Miyagi. It’s been a long time since he’s been back, and equally long since he’s let his mind wander to those childish daydreams he had when he went. He starts to wonder for a second if maybe a certain daydream is still there, if maybe he might get a one-in-a-million chance meeting for Christmas this year, but he stops himself before his heart gets the better of him. After all, it’s not like his life is one of those cheesy Christmas movies.
The bullet train ride from Tokyo to Sendai is only two hours, and it passes before Kuroo figures out a good way to spend his time. It’s pretty crisp in Miyagi, but not much worse than Tokyo. The sky is a blinding spread of white, but it’s not quite snowing yet. Kuroo is just grateful that it waited to start until after he came at least, though he’s not looking forward to the potential of getting buried too much either. At least if he does, he’s already got his bags at the hotel.
It’s familiar here in the way that unfamiliar things can sometimes be, like a friend’s house you stopped by a few times throughout your childhood. Everywhere he looks, Kuroo remembers something he did or saw with the volleyball team. Even now, he recognizes the road they took on the bus to get to Karasuno. What a long time ago that feels like now, but he can still recall the feeling like he’s on that bus right now, looking out the windows and waiting for the school to come into view. He’s certainly got the same sort of jitters.
The real work of the business trip starts tomorrow, going around to a few different schools to confirm details about upcoming camps and events to drum up a little more excitement about volleyball for kids. He’s already checked, and Karasuno’s not on the list. Even if it were, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like he’d walk into that gym and find Tsukishima in there working on his blocks. But god, he’d sure like to.
When he’d told Kenma after graduation in a roundabout way that maybe he’d sort of had something like a crush on that glasses-wearing blocker from Karasuno, Kenma had been nice enough not to laugh at him, but not nice enough to keep from calling him an idiot. “What are you talking about, dude?” Kenma had said, eyes barely flicking up from his phone for half a second. “You were barking up his tree every time he came in a two-mile radius. If you said you didn’t have a crush on him, I would’ve called you a liar.”
“What the hell, man?”
“Am I wrong?”
“I’m, like, baring my soul to you right now.”
“Okay, well, you bared your whole ass to our entire team and Karasuno’s entire team for a year.” Kenma’s phone jingled incessantly with small sounds of victory. “So I don’t know what you wanted me to say.”
If Kuroo could go back in time, he’d rip that phone out of Kenma’s hands and chuck it so far that American football coaches would have been chasing after him. Maybe Kenma wasn’t entirely wrong, but he didn’t have to say it like that. Even thinking about it is enough to make him boil. If the whole team knew, and Tsukishima also knew, then the constant taunts about Tsukishima’s blocks must have been a nightmare to watch. Especially given that Tsukishima never even took the bait.
Kuroo sits upright and smacks his hands on his cheeks. No sense in spending his free evening thinking about how much he may or may not have embarrassed himself in high school. If he’s going to dwell on regrets, he’d rather they be more current, like being single at Christmas. Better yet, he’d rather not dwell on anything. Since he’s in Miyagi for the first time in a while, he may as well go enjoy himself. Or try, at least. If nothing else, he can try.
The good thing about Miyagi is that there aren’t as many people as Tokyo, but the bad thing is that the proportion of happy couples seems to be about the same. Kuroo passes by three overcrowded cafes before sliding into a lowkey little bar and ordering something to eat alongside a tall glass of beer. It’s still got its fair share of diners, but at least most of them look like they’re alone.
As he sips his beer, he peruses the menu, looking for something he doesn’t usually get to eat back in Tokyo, but nothing sticks out. He can’t remember whether he had anything with some sort of local flair the previous times he was here, either. In the end, he just orders a plate of gyoza and hangs onto the menu in case something else strikes him, though that’s not looking likely. Some evening. He almost wishes he were still in Tokyo after all.
A cold breeze whaps him across the back when the front door opens. While he takes another swig of beer, he glances over reflexively at whoever’s walking in. At least, it should have been a quick glance, but the second his eyes lock on, they’re held there at gunpoint. He chokes on the beer in his mouth. Not enough to die, but enough to make a noise, which is unfortunately enough to draw the attention of the man walking through the door. Their eyes meet. Fuck.
“Wow,” Tsukishima says. He shrugs his coat off as he steps inside, leaving room for the group he’s come with to enter behind him. “If it isn’t Kuroo-san.”
“Tsukki,” Kuroo gurgles. He feels around discreetly for a napkin to wipe his chin, but he knows there’s no way to go about it without embarrassing himself even more. “Um, long time no see.”
A thin chuckle dances its way out from Tsukishima’s lips. Did he get even taller? Kuroo’s face is hot, much hotter than it should be after half of one beer. His eyes are still imprisoned, held captive tight in Tsukishima’s, but it’s torture to look at him. It’s not that Kuroo was expecting anything different, but it sure would have been reassuring if he didn’t look so good.
“What brings you to Sendai?”
“Work.” Kuroo’s normal urge is to talk too much, but it’s failing him right now. His throat is way too dry. “I work for the, uh—”
“National Volleyball Association,” Tsukishima says. “I’m aware.”
“Ah.”
Then they just look at each other. Tsukishima’s company, a group of four other people, fit themselves into a table and look over expectantly, but Tsukishima keeps standing there for a while, eyes sharp, like he’s trying to figure out when Kuroo’s going to jump for the block. So he was aware. Kuroo guesses some of his old schoolmates are on the pro circuit now, so maybe they would’ve told him. It might have been natural to figure he would know, but it’s not. The thought of Tsukishima hearing something about him and hanging onto it, however minute a detail it might be, makes him sweat.
“Well,” Tsukishima says with a hard breath out, “I’m hear with my colleagues from work.”
“Right. I’ll leave you to it.”
“If you’d like, you’re free to join us.”
Kuroo’s lips are already at the edge of his glass, back almost completely turned. “Sorry?”
“Or you can stay sitting alone at the bar.” That smirk is so familiar, different around the edges but so exactly the same at the core. For a second, Kuroo feels 8 years younger. “It makes no difference to me.”
“Extending an invitation isn’t very like you, Tsukki.” He can’t help the grin that creeps into his lips. Tsukishima’s only grows smugger in retaliation.
“You’ve got another thing coming,” he says, “if you think I’m the same person I was in high school.”
Tsukishima’s coworkers are all friendly. Maybe too friendly, considering Kuroo is a complete stranger, but he’s done enough self-reflection to know he doesn’t have much room to talk. They all talk over each other and between each other, and they have more questions for Kuroo than he was expecting to have to answer his entire time in Miyagi, much less outside of work.
“So you were Tsukishima-kun’s upperclassman!” A young woman who calls herself Mamura says. The bracelets on her wrists jingle when she talks, hands flying about yet somehow avoiding catastrophe. “Was he as tight-lipped in high school as he is now?”
“I was worse,” Tsukishima butts in before Kuroo can answer. While the rest of his coworkers drink beer, he sips delicately on a glass of water. “It’s no use trying to get stories out of him. He’s just from another school we used to scrimmage a lot.”
“Not just scrimmage.” Kuroo downs another swig. The tips of his ears are starting to tingle. “We also faced off at nationals.”
“Yeah,” Tsukishima sighs, “I guess we did do that once.”
“So has this asshole always been this tall?” one of the guys at the table says. Kuroo doesn’t remember his name; all three of them have the same haircut.
“Yeah, he was always tall.” Kuroo looks over at Tsukishima while he speaks and finds with horror that Tsukishima is already looking at him. He tries not to cough. “He’s taller now, though.”
“This is so nice,” Mamura says, cheeks tucked into her palms. “Who would think you guys would meet again in Sendai? It’s, like, a fateful encounter!”
“Alright,” another guy says. Kuroo thinks it’s a different one from before, but he’s not sure. “I think you’ve had enough to drink.”
“I’m serious!” She shakes her fists around, and it sound like a middle school percussion section warming up for a Christmas concert. “And it’s right before Christmas, too! It’s destiny, don’t you think, Tsukishima-kun?”
“Sure,” Tsukishima says, breezily enough. “It’s destiny.”
“You think so too, don’t you, Kuroo-san?”
Kuroo’s mouth opens and closes. The room around him is spinning just fast enough to make him antsy. Before he can get a word to come out, Mamura claps her hands together, eyes wide enough to swallow the sun.
“Oh my gosh! You should come to our Christmas get-together tomorrow night after work!”
Alarm bells. “Oh, no, I couldn’t.”
“It’s fine,” one of the men says. “Friends and dates of employees can come, our boss said. She wants it to be fun.”
“But I don’t really…”
“You should come.” Kuroo’s neck snaps turning to follow the sound of Tsukishima’s voice. There’s something a little less than benign in his gaze, but he smiles all the same. “It’s Christmas after all, Kuroo-san.”
“It would be so sad to spend it alone!” Mamura reaches across the table to grab Kuroo by the wrist. The tips of her fingers are cold. “You’re all the way here, and you two happened to meet again.” Her voice verges on teary. “And it’s Christmas!”
Kuroo sighs. A hand pats the small of his back and stays there. The arm snakes back to Tsukishima, smile somewhere in the territory of a smirk but not quite at the epicenter. “We’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”
All day, the threat of snow looms in the sky, but nothing falls until the sun has begun to set. Never in his life has Kuroo had to ask so many people to repeat themselves. He can’t get Tsukishima’s work Christmas party off his mind for long enough to do his job right. The whole time he spends speaking to the coaching staff at Shiratorizawa, his pulse is elevating. Snowflakes hitting his cheeks are the first thing to help him cool his head all day.
As he changes out of his suit at the hotel room, he decides that it would be better to skip it. Obviously, Tsukishima’s coworkers were only inviting him to be nice and because he was there, so there’s hardly anything to feel bad about. Even though he knows this, he keeps getting ready. Maybe it’s because he heard Mamura say destiny too many times. Maybe it’s even because he heard Tsukishima agree with it. Whatever the reason, he’s back out of the hotel before too long, standing on the train as it heads toward the Sendai City Museum.
Another employee arriving with a guest guides him to the room where the party’s being held. Kuroo hadn’t thought he was early, but as he walks in, most everyone seems to still be busy setting up. Two of the three men he met yesterday spread a tablecloth out and stretch it across a too-long table toward the center of the room. A large tree stands in the corner, a ring of people arranging ornaments on its branches. Kuroo expects Tsukishima to be among them, given how hard it’ll be for everyone else to reach the upper boughs, but his eyes find him on the opposite wall, hanging little clusters of leaves with red berries at intervals beneath a banner.
Kuroo walks over to him, nodding in passing when Mamura spots him and waves, and stops just short of the ladder Tsukishima stands on. A demon must overtake him sometime on the walk, because as soon as he comes to a halt, he says, “Looks like I’ve caught you under the mistletoe, Tsukki.” His instincts are telling him to bail, but he’s already trapped as soon as Tsukishima peeks down at him.
“So you came after all,” he says, and Kuroo can’t figure out whether that’s supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing. “Sorry to disappoint you, but this is holly.” He pinches a clump in his fingers and wiggles it around over Kuroo’s head. “Mistletoe has white berries.”
“Oh.”
The corners of Tsukishima’s lips turn up, eyes crinkle. “Besides, this isn’t that kind of party.” He jerks his chin toward a box on the floor beside the ladder. “Could you hand me a few of those bows?”
“Uh, sure.”
Maybe he should go back outside and run around in the snow a little more. He’s letting the season get to him a little too much. When he hands the bows to Tsukishima, their fingers brush, and he feels like screaming. Hopefully Tsukishima doesn’t notice how his blood is running at its boiling point right now.
“More bows, please.”
This time, when he raises his hand, Tsukishima catches it entirely, fingers nestling in the ridges between Kuroo’s knuckles. His smile is somehow both smug and warm looking down from the top of the ladder. The callouses on his hands fill Kuroo’s mouth with sand. He wets his lips, wanting to break off eye contact but pressed flat beneath that gaze. Tsukishima is an anvil and he is a cartoon coyote and the whole audience is laughing.
“Relax, Kuroo-san,” Tsukishima says, releasing his grip and leaving every last bow behind. “It doesn’t suit you to be so stiff.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m sure you’re sad your Christmas plans got ruined by work,” Tsukishima says, descending three short steps to stand flat on the ground again, “but we’ll try to show you a good time anyway.”
“Actually, I was glad to come,” Kuroo says, “since I didn’t have any plans.” Tsukishima raises his eyebrows, and Kuroo regrets being born with a tongue. He presses a hand to his forehead and closes his eyes. “I even talked a big game about having a date this year and all.”
For a long moment, there isn’t a sound in any corner of the world. Then Tsukishima laughs. It starts quiet and stays that way, but it’s got more mirth than any laugh Kuroo’s ever seen come out of him before. Not that the list is long, but it still has to count for something. “That’s so like you,” Tsukishima says after he’s finished.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” Tsukishima folds the ladder and lifts it to rest one rung on his shoulder. “Could you help me carry that box back to the storage closet?”
Unsure how he got roped into decoration duty, Kuroo picks up the box and follows Tsukishima down a hall and into the storage closet. He waits until the ladder is stowed to hold the box out to Tsukishima, but instead of taking it Tsukishima opens it up and starts rummaging through. A full minute passes with nothing but the quiet noise of his hands picking through its contents.
“Um, Tsukki?”
“Found it.” Slowly, he draws his hand back from within the box, and in it he holds a small sprig of green with no more than 5 white berries clinging to it. It’s a little dark in the storage room, but the reflection of the berries glimmers in his glasses. Degree by degree, Kuroo’s body temperature is rising. “I knew there was some in here.”
“Ah.”
“Something interesting about mistletoe,” Tsukishima says, bunch still firmly held in his hand, “is that it’s actually a parasite.” With a grin, he drops it back into the box and grabs the whole thing, hands dragging across the backs of Kuroo’s wrists. “Pretty romantic, hm?”
It takes all the strength in Kuroo’s body just to keep him standing, eyes following the curve of Tsukishima’s back as he turns to place the box on one of the higher shelves. With every passing second, Kuroo wants more and more to fling himself out into the snow and lie face down on the concrete, but Tsukishima is already walking back to the party, and he hasn’t got much choice but to follow.
All in all, it’s a fun party. Everyone is friendly and accommodating, and there’s plenty of food and drink to go around. By the time it’s over, Kuroo is feeling a pleasant warmth in his chest, and he’s forgotten all about the mistletoe incident, as well as the snow falling outside. When he steps out into the night, though, he remembers with dizzying clarity.
“Oh, god.”
What had begun as a light dusting in the late afternoon has now progressed into a full blanketing, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down much. The buildup crunches down under his shoes, not nearly the right kind for snow, and as he looks around at everyone else’s receding feet, it seems he was the only one who missed the memo on footwear. Surely the trains are still running, right? He pulls his phone out of his pocket to check the time, but he drank just enough that he’s having a hard time making sense of the numbers.
“What’s wrong, Kuroo-san?” He can’t tell whether the smile on Tsukishima’s face is evil or kind. As far as Kuroo’s concerned, it doesn’t make much difference. Snowflakes stick all over his eyelashes.
“Nothing,” he says, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “Just wasn’t expecting it to snow this much.”
“Didn’t check the forecast?”
“Of course I did.” He didn’t because he was too distracted in the morning to be bothered, but there’s no sense in admitting that to Tsukishima. “I just, you know. Didn’t expect it to be quite this bad.” He breathes into his hands, but it’s not warm enough to bring them up to temp. “Well, I’ll be heading over to the station. It was great seeing you, Tsukki. Keep in—”
“Kuroo-san.”
“Hm?”
“I doubt the trains will be running right now.” Light from Tsukishima’s phone screen illuminates him from below, makes him look even more daunting than usual. God damn, did he get tall. “The site is reporting pileups and outages along the line.”
“Oh. Huh.”
Before Kuroo even has time to think about what he should do, Tsukki, tucks his hands in his pockets and takes a step closer. The cloud of his breath hanging in the air obscures his face. “If you don’t mind,” he says, “my place is only a few blocks away.”
“You really,” Kuroo exhales, “have changed a lot.”
“I told you so, didn’t I?”
“Why are you so nice all of a sudden?”
“You were always saying I should be nicer, and now you’re complaining?” Tsukishima rolls his shoulders back, stretches his neck to the side, then starts walking. “Well, come on if you’re going to come.” He glances back. “Or you can sit in the train station all night. It’s your choice.”
Against his better judgement, he trails along behind, footprints weaving between Tsukishima’s as he walks ahead. If he’s going to make a fool of himself anyway, he may as well be warm while he does it.
Tsukishima’s apartment is clean but clearly lived in, its most charming detail the small white Christmas tree perched on the windowsill. As soon as they arrive, without even asking, Tsukishima sets a pot boiling on the stove and drags out a small bowl of sweets from the depths of an otherwise scant cabinet. Kuroo tucks his legs under the kotatsu and watches him busy himself at the kitchen counter. It dawns on him as Tsukishima sets a steaming cup of tea in front of him how strange his situation has become in the past 24 hours alone. He tries to bite it back, but a giggle ekes out through his lips.
“Something funny?” Tsukishima asks.
“Yes and no,” Kuroo says. He wraps his hands around the tea but doesn’t drink yet, lets the heat soak into his fingers with a sting. “I mean, isn’t it kind of ridiculous that I’m at your apartment right now?”
“Ridiculous how?”
“Well, I haven’t seen you since high school,” Kuroo says, “and then I met you yesterday, and now I’m at your place on Christmas eve. Plus, I always…”
“Hm?”
“Nothing.” Close call. He blows on the tea a few times, but it still singes his tongue on the first sip. “Anyway, I just feel like the protagonist in a Christmas B movie.”
Tsukishima snickers just a little, and he looks like a kid again when he does. “I guess,” he says, “but I think you’re more suited to be the small-town hunk than I am.”
Piping hot tea nearly erupts through Kuroo’s nostrils. “Sorry?”
“I think you heard me.” Tsukishima drinks his tea like it isn’t even hot.
“Are you,” Kuroo croaks, lips numb, “calling me a hunk?”
Tsukishima takes another long drink like he isn’t in the middle of conversation. Against the pressure of the ensuing silence, Kuroo lifts his own cup to his lips as well, acutely aware of Tsukishima’s eyes on him as he does so. The suffocating air from the storage closet is coming back, only this time it’s worse, because he knows he can’t run.
“I’m just saying,” Tsukishima says at last, “that if it were between the two of us, I think I’m a better fit for the cold city businesswoman who has no interest in Christmas.” His eyes glitter behind their lenses.
“Ah.” Kuroo’s breath rattles like a can of gravel on its way out. “So that’s what you meant.”
“What do you think, Kuroo-san?”
“Huh?”
Tsukishima rests an elbow on the table and leans his cheek into his palm, gaze long and heavy, unwavering in its weight on Kuroo’s face. There is the very slightest pink in his cheeks, around his knuckles, dancing on his lips. “Do you think I make a good small-town hunk?”
Everything that has ever happened to Kuroo in his life flashes by like evidence slides in a criminal trial. He is a baby crying, he’s a child picking up a volleyball for the first time, he’s a grade schooler dragging Kenma to practice, a cocky high schooler teasing some string bean from a rival school, a crying mess on graduation day, a new employee walking in on the first day of work. He is an adult standing alone with a guy he used to and might still have dreams about, staring at a sprig of mistletoe on Christmas eve.
His face is so hot he can’t help but wonder whether the tea Tsukishima gave him was poisoned. It wouldn’t be entirely out of the question. Everything in the room is moving except for Tsukishima, and he’s taking up so much more space than he used to. It can’t just be because he’s gotten a few centimeters taller. When Kuroo gulps, it feels like magma going down.
“Yeah,” he whispers, and watches the corner of Tsukishima’s mouth twitch.
Tsukishima hums. “So you do,” he says like it doesn’t matter at all, then pushes himself up from the table and walks away.
Kuroo’s about to suffer hearing loss at the hands of his own heartbeat. He squeezes his eyes shut to try to get it to calm down, but no dice. Not that he had any reason to believe that would help, but when he doesn’t want to leave the warmth of the kotatsu, his pickings are slim. Maybe, if he’s lucky, the snow has stopped and the trains have miraculously started running again. He opens his eyes, prepared to make a break for his shoes by the door, but his breath stops in his throat when he sees Tsukishima in his periphery, seated beside him instead of across the table.
“Tsukki?” he yelps.
“Hm?” Tsukishima’s face is already too close, and he’s leaning in further. There’s a faint vanilla smell coming off him that makes Kuroo’s stomach heavy.
“What are you doing?”
“Well, you said I made a good hunk,” he says. The shape of his lips is mesmerizing. “Isn’t this what any Christmas hunk would do in this situation?”
“Well, I did say that, but—”
“But what?” A hand finds its way to Kuroo’s arm, creeps up to his shoulder, his neck. “You don’t want me to?”
“I mean,” Kuroo says, narrowly avoiding choking on his own tongue, “are you saying you want to?”
“I’ve wanted to since high school.” Tsukishima’s breath is warm where it brushes Kuroo’s cheeks, hand ablaze on the back of his neck. The thumb resting behind his ear is bound to leave a burn scar. “Besides, we missed out on the mistletoe earlier.”
There are thousands of different words Kuroo would like to scream, but he opts instead to lean in toward Tsukishima and press their lips together.
Countless times he fantasized about what this would be like, how it would feel, but never in those fantasies did he dream that they’d be adults, in Tsukishima’s apartment, on Christmas eve. The real thing is so different from what he used to think, but then again, his frame of reference is 8 years overdue for an update. When Tsukishima’s tongue sweeps over his bottom lip, his heart pounds like he’s a kid again, hands shaking with the desire to grab hold and not let go.
“Tsukki,” he says, heaving for breath. If Yaku saw him so ragged after just one little kiss, he’d never let it go. “Hold on.”
“Really?” There’s a devilish wash to Tsukishima’s face that even his red cheeks can’t dissipate. “I didn’t think that would be enough for you, Kuroo-san.” He should’ve known that Yaku wasn’t the only one whose jabs he has to worry about.
“Shouldn’t we talk first?”
“Haven’t we been talking?” Their noses bump into each other while Tsukishima speaks.
“I mean, we have, but—”
“And we can talk more later.” The fingers on the back of Kuroo’s head sift through his hair, a rhythmic combing motion that makes him shiver. “Look, it’s not every day you have a fateful reunion.”
“I mean…” Little by little, his grip on reality is loosening. He’s still desperate to ask about Tsukishima saying he wanted to do this since high school, but he’s transfixed completely by Tsukishima’s lips so close to him, the pale stretch of his neck, his eyelashes and breathing.
“This is destiny,” Tsukishima whispers. “Let’s just enjoy it.”
The first order of business upon waking up is Kuroo’s phone call with his boss. It’s short but long enough, and he’s overly conscious of Tsukishima watching him over the rims of his glasses as he sips his morning coffee. He tells his boss about the snow that didn’t stop falling all night, the roads that are completely covered, the schools that he’ll contact to rearrange meetings over the next few days. It goes without saying that he omits the part about Tsukishima. When he hangs up and turns around, Tsukishima’s eyes on him are expectant.
“Looks like I’ll be in Miyagi a few days longer,” he says, shuffling toward the kitchen.
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Tsukishima says. He hands Kuroo a mug of coffee, cooled down almost to room temperature by now. “Disappointed?”
“Not really.” The last shreds of warmth in his coffee fade away as Kuroo takes his first few sips, leaning against the counter. When he looks at that little tree on the sill, he can’t help the leapfrogs he feels in his gut. “I wouldn’t mind to stay a little longer.”
“Freeloader,” Tsukishima scoffs.
“Hey.”
“What, I’m not allowed to make one joke?” Tsukishima sets his empty mug in the sink and crosses his arms, eyes Kuroo sideways. “You know, if I were a real small-town hunk, I’d be begging you to stay here forever right now.”
Kuroo sputters. “Well, Tsukki, I mean, I’d like to, but—”
Tsukishima’s laugh cuts him off, loud and cheery. If his laugh from last night was a shock, this one is the electric chair. His eyes crinkle shut, shoulders shake. Kuroo can feel the movement in his ribs through the countertop at his back.
“That’s so adorable, Kuroo-san,” Tsukishima says, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “You think I’d actually tell you not to go back to Tokyo?”
Kuroo sighs. “I should’ve known better than to take anything you say seriously.” Before he can set his coffee down and walk off to brood, Tsukishima catches him by the wrist.
“Don’t be so moody,” he says, tugging at Kuroo’s arm. “I’m not a kid anymore. Of course I don’t expect you to drop everything to stay in Sendai with me.” The tugging persists, but Kuroo fights it. “I’m a realist.”
“A realist, huh.”
“And the reality is,” Tsukishima says, grip tightening, “that the bullet train is only two hours between us.” One good yank, and Kuroo is spinning around to come face to face with Tsukishima. He’s smiling, eyebrows arched high. “So you’ll be back to see me all the time.”
Kuroo sighs. Leapfrogs and butterflies and all manner of noisy, embarrassing things stir in his stomach. He hates feeling like a lump of clay spinning in circles on Tsukishima’s wheel. “You really know how to toy with a guy’s feelings.” Tsukishima breathes out a laugh that dusts across his cheeks.
“Maybe if you didn’t make it so easy.”
“One joke, you said.” Kuroo glares up at him, those few frustrating centimeters between them all the more infuriating when Tsukishima is this entrancing while he looks so slightly down. “This is no way to treat your precious upperclassman, Tsukki.”
“Look on the bright side,” Tsukishima says, cupping one of Kuroo’s cheeks in his hand. “At least you turned out to be right about having a date on Christmas.”
“Well, I guess.”
“And next year,” Tsukishima continues, closing the small gap between their lips while he speaks, “you can brag about your Christmas date all over again.” He pecks a quick kiss on Kuroo’s lips that turns him embarrassingly red, then releases Kuroo from his clutches. Kuroo stands perfectly still for an endless moment, toes numbing on the cold kitchen tile.
“God,” he says at last, “you drive me just as crazy as ever.”
Tsukishima grins as he walks away, shuffle of his slippers on the floor echoing off the walls. Just after he steps into his bedroom, he pokes his head back out. “Oh, before I forget.” A smile spreads across his face. “Merry Christmas, Kuroo-san. Let’s get along over the next year.”
“Merry Christmas to you too, Tsukki.”
After he watches Tsukishima disappear again around the corner, he sinks to the floor and buries his head in his hands. His cheeks are so hot he’s afraid it might be a safety hazard just to touch them. The next year, huh? Just thinking about it is making his heart race. Even if there’s no way in hell it could possibly top this year, he’s never been more excited in his life for Christmas to come back around.
Maybe all those couples in the cafes were onto something. It just might be a worthwhile holiday after all.