Archive of Our Own

Kuroo should really have known something was wrong, he thinks to himself in the aftermath. He really should have. 

It should have impressed itself on him as soon as Mika looks up from the textbook where she’s been dutifully color-coding her highlighting of relevant passages. Mika is a better ex than what could generously be called a girlfriend, before she’d reconciled with Daishou and made all right with the world, and now that they’re reunited at the same university Kuroo finds her an even more advantageous study partner. Mika is studious, diligent, unrelenting in her pursuit of one more chapter before we take a break, Kuroo, so he should have known immediately that something isn’t right. 

“Do you need to answer that?” she asks, a little pointedly, glancing at his phone which, now that he thinks about it, has vibrated quite a few times in quick succession. It’s not the rhythmic buzz of his ringtone, which means it’s the pellet gun of repetitive texts. With the messaging habits his friends keep, it really could be almost anyone or anything — Lev getting a little too excited over something that happened during Nekoma’s Thursday afternoon practice, Yaku and Kai chatting amicably in the persistent third-year thread that had lasted well beyond the end of their third year the way they tended to do when they could just as easily use their own one-on-one conversation, Bokuto being Bokuto.

“It’s probably just the general stats group chat talking about the pop quiz everyone thinks is coming tomorrow,” he says, after running through the possibilities. The aura in the classroom the day before had been nothing short of ominous.

Mika rolls her eyes, brown and blunt as her bangs. “You still have notifications on for that?” she asks, and maybe if Kuroo was the type to give a shit about things like unread messages he might not have. But he isn’t, so he just grins at her, shrugging himself back in his seat. “That’s not very productive. Unnecessary notifications can be distracting.”

“Mmhmm, Mika-chan.” Kuroo nods in mock agreement. That nickname only sticks around for two reasons: to piss off Mika and to piss off Daishou. It doesn’t seem to work so well on her anymore but it isn’t for lack of trying. “Look, just for you I’ll put it in my bag.”

Mika actually does look somewhat pleased, or at least placated, settling back into whatever nutritional facts she could somehow give her entire attention to. And for his part, Kuroo does intend to deliver on his promise, reaching out for the offending device without even the temptation to look at the screen, but then as though it can sense his scheme his phone starts ringing. Full on ringing, the sign of someone actually calling.

Mika’s eyes meet his again, and where she looks surprised Kuroo knows he’s resigned, apologetic. In his experience since entering university, there’s essentially two varieties of unplanned calls, the kind that fall outside weekend catch-ups with Toshiko, sometimes with their father along for the ride, or post-match where are yous with Kenma when he can convince him to come to a game: there’s the drunk buddy variety, which seems unlikely but not impossible on a Thursday not-quite-night before most bars start resembling anywhere a student crowd might want to be, and there’s the emergency variety. Kuroo can’t chance it on an emergency, and Mika knows it, earlier irritation reluctantly shelved. She waves her hand at his still-vibrating phone, eyes back to her post-it notes and her neat handwriting, and Kuroo answers the call without looking at the contact info.

“Hello?” His voice isn’t quite a whisper out of deference to the person on the other end of the line, whoever that might be, but it’s quiet enough that he doesn’t catch any irritated glares from the other students around them in his quick scan of the study room, closed off from the rest of the library where he and Mika had managed to grab a table.

That doesn’t last long.

“Bro.” Kuroo holds in an exasperated groan, because the voice is louder than his own despite not actually being in the room and because he’d know it anywhere and it spells nothing but trouble. Mika winces a little. He turns down the volume on the call but it doesn’t do much. Damn Mika for her no-music rule; Kuroo never used to leave his headphones at home before they started studying together, but here they are without a pair between them. “You didn’t look, did you?”

Kuroo feels his eyebrows draw together, and since there’s no way Mika isn’t hearing the other side of the conversation too she doesn’t bother hiding the way she cocks her head in her own confusion. “Look?”

“Oh, thank god.” Bokuto heaves a sigh of relief so close to the receiver that Kuroo swears he can feel it gust over his ear, raising the fine hairs there. The power of Bokuto Koutarou, he thinks to himself. “Listen, are you by yourself?”

“Uh,” Kuroo stalls, looking to Mika for the okay, and she nods without looking up at him, “no. I’m studying with Mika-chan.” He’s apologetic again in the face of the glare she doesn’t bother to make eye contact with him over, but Bokuto won’t remember her by any other name.

“That won’t work. You have to find a guy.”

“A guy?” What the hell, Kuroo mouths at Mika, who seems nonplussed but at least not offended where she’s jotting down something about complex carbohydrates. “What for?”

“Just find one!” Bokuto’s voice isn’t impatient, exactly; it edges into something like desperation. If Kuroo didn’t have a thorough and unfortunately firsthand knowledge of the unplumbed depths of Bokuto’s stupidity, his tendency to blow things immediately out of proportion, he might have been worried. Instead he sighs, not quite exasperated not quite fond, and glances again around the room.

Just as he’d started to hypothesize, there are a few people from general statistics scattered around, escaping the looming aura of Kuroo and especially Mika in their own study spaces, cramming following their own best practices. Harada Ryuuichi at a table three over from theirs is probably the one he’s closest to; they wave at each other on the way into class, share notes once in a while outside the group thread, Kuroo’s almost sure they saw each other at a house party where he half-blacked out and if Harada is still willing to speak to him after that they’re basically bonded for life. Kuroo jerks his head toward the table, Mika nodding, watching him with a gesture of her index and middle finger between her eyes and where his classmate is sitting. Good to know there will be a witness to whatever havoc Bokuto is about to wreak. 

Kuroo mutes himself for a minute, wincing at the nervous you find one? on the other end of the line, and sits down across from Harada. 

“Hey,” he says quietly, and thanks the lucky star over him fervently when those nice, calm hazel eyes turn toward him behind the lenses of Harada’s glasses with nothing but friendly curiosity. 

“Hey, Kuroo!” It’s a little more enthusiastic than necessary. Kuroo hopes he hadn’t set any kind of unreachable expectations at that house party. “Prepping for stats too? I’m so lost on chapter six.”

“I’ll help you if you want,” Kuroo offers, watching a smile fly across Harada’s face like the dawning sun, “if you wouldn’t mind doing me a very stupid favor.”

Harada is already nodding. What a good guy, Kuroo thinks. Nothing like Bokuto whining in his ear. Kuroo thinks for a minute of how to phrase this but there’s really no winning, so he just goes for it. 

“So my friend is on the phone,” he begins, gesturing toward the mobile held a little away from his ear. “He’s kind of an idiot. It’s where I get it from.”

“You’re not-” Harada is getting kissed if he stays this nice, Kuroo thinks to himself, plowing on. He can almost feel Mika’s curiosity like the heat from a radiator across the tables. 

“I am, because I’m about to indulge him. He wanted me to, and I quote, find a guy. I’m going to give you my phone, you’re going to listen to him and do whatever he tells you to, but if he wants you to hide anything from me you’re definitely not gonna do that because no way in hell am I letting go of potential blackmail material. Okay?”

Harada looks nonplussed for a moment but nods, gamely. Kuroo unmutes. 

“You are going to be very nice to Harada from my general statistics class,” he orders into the mouthpiece.

“Duh, bro,” Bokuto agrees, and then Kuroo is passing his phone off.

Harada listens to the suddenly able to be quiet Bokuto for a moment. “Nice to meet you too.” “Not at all, I’m happy to help.” “It’s really not necessary, Kuroo told me he would—” “Hmm.”

The noise catches Kuroo’s attention, not that his mind had really wandered, and Harada meets his eyes meaningfully. 

“You want me to look at Kuroo’s texts?” Harada repeats, asking Kuroo’s tacit permission, and Kuroo nods to him, replaying Mika’s gesture, fingers between his eyes and the phone. “Okay. And then what?” Harada doesn’t repeat this part; instead, something Kuroo would classify as interesting even in the midst of the entire ridiculous situation happens. Harada’s eyebrows — dark, strong on his face — rise high enough that Kuroo thinks they might hit his hairline. They don’t, not quite, which makes it easier for him to notice the fact that Harada is blushing. Blushing a little badly, in fact. It’s kind of cute, Kuroo thinks. Like Mika used to when he’d do that move he learned from a perfume commercial where he’d push the hair falling from her ponytail behind her ear. That one had lasted him a while. 

In the present day, in the ludicrous present moment, Harada has Kuroo’s phone flat against the tabletop, transparent as he backgrounds the call to open Kuroo’s messaging app, diligently not looking at anything but the unread thread from Bokuto. “Okay,” he says to the phone, eyes on Kuroo whose eyes are right back on him, “I’ll delete it. Anything else?”

Kuroo drops his gaze to the screen then, and it’s upside-down to him where it’s oriented toward Harada but it’s clear as day nonetheless. There among text bubbles back and forth, the kind of consistent and verbose conversations that make Kenma turn off his notifications, there’s an image inline, from Bokuto. This alone wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, Kuroo thinks as his mind slowly absorbs the information in front of him; memes and pictures of animals and occasional group selfies with people they know from high school go back and forth between them pretty often. But this is none of the above — not exactly, Kuroo thinks. It is technically a selfie of someone, or part of someone, he knows from high school. 

He glances up at Harada for a moment, who mouths nice at Kuroo, before looking back down to confirm that, yes, that’s a dick pic. 

He has to assume a few things based on Bokuto’s action and reaction: first, it is not something he sent intentionally. This is not surprising, since they’ve never traded that kind of thing before. Mika says she and her girlfriends sometimes send each other their nudes before they go to their final destination, some kind of group bonding-slash-workshop that Kuroo sometimes feels like he and Bokuto are about a step away from anyway, but they haven’t crossed that line yet. And second, it must be Bokuto’s dick. Something about the thought makes Kuroo more curious, and without raising his eyes he lifts a finger in the universal wait gesture toward Harada, who is now generously and quietly lying through his teeth to Bokuto that, yes, he’s deleting the photo. 

Bokuto is not a photographer. Kuroo can accept this with the somewhat awkward angle, the way that he clearly didn’t think about the background of the photo before taking it; there’s nothing shocking, which is actually something of a miracle, but it’s the rather uninspiring section of his bedroom that doesn’t even show his bed. You have to give your recipient something to work with, something to help their imagination along; Kuroo knows this. Yet, even with those things considered, Kuroo still finds himself looking. Imagining.

Bokuto’s dick is something Kuroo’s probably seen once or twice in the showers at training camps, not that he would have looked at the time in the fumbling nascence of his burgeoning bisexuality, not that he remembers even if he did. It’s been a while, it was an infrequent opportunity in any case, but he’s not really sure that explains how interested Kuroo finds himself. The picture doesn’t show Bokuto’s face, maybe through laziness or maybe for relative anonymity should the photo, say, be sent accidentally to the wrong person. His hand frames his dick, pressed against his crotch at the base of his shaft among the old-man grey tightly curled hairs there. Maybe Kuroo is detailing all the extraneous information to avoid the fact that Harada is right: Bokuto has a nice, to say the least, cock, long but not too long, thick enough to make Kuroo very aware of himself. Maybe it’s a flattering angle. Kuroo is staring. 

“All right,” Harada says then, cutting into Kuroo’s reflection. Kuroo looks up with what he feels like might be a slightly dazed expression on his face. Mika appears to have completely abandoned nutrition at their table, instead watching Kuroo and Harada’s conversation with interest bordering on creepy. “It’s deleted!” And with a couple taps of Harada’s fingers, the hand not holding the phone, and an apologetic glance at Kuroo, it is. “You’re welcome. Yes, nice to meet you too. Well, I’ll have to ask Kuroo—”

Whatever Harada is politely considering Kuroo’s feelings for does not stop Bokuto, who talks over him for a moment, indistinct over the distant earpiece, and then ends the call. Harada looks again at Kuroo, silent for a moment before he laughs, only a little awkwardly. “Not what I expected to happen today,” Harada says, good-natured and good-humored, and Kuroo owes him the study session of a lifetime, he thinks as he takes his phone back from across the table. “Bokuto sounded really nervous about you seeing that.”

“We’re friends, he’ll get over it,” Kuroo explains, pocketing the troublesome device, unable to shake the thought of what he'd seen. “Thanks for fielding that, you never know what you’re getting with that guy.”

“Oh, it was no problem.” Harada's eyes take on a mischievous cast behind those lenses, the glasses that give him the bring me home to meet your mom look that Kuroo is just never going to have. “Is he single?”

Kuroo feels his eyes go wide. “Uh,” he says, which buys him just enough time to realize he doesn't actually know, but Harada is chuckling, still quiet enough that he still hasn’t attracted the glares Kuroo had a moment ago. Life is unfair. 

“Kidding, kidding,” he says, laughing and picking up his pen again. “Must not be looking if he’s sending that kind of thing, huh?”

“Huh.” Kuroo thinks it’s a noise of agreement as he rises from his seat. “Let me pick my stuff up and then we can get to chapter six.”

“My hero,” Harada says, sort of earnest, smiling at Kuroo’s back. 

“What on earth?” Mika asks when Kuroo bends over their table to start packing his things into a carryable arrangement. “That looked…” She trails off, delicate and pointed. 

“Remember Bokuto, from Fukurodani?” Mika hesitates, miming spikes over her head. Kuroo nods. “He sent me a dick pic, very obviously by accident. Sorry,” he adds, when her hand moves to cover her eyes in exasperation. “You asked.”

“I regret it now,” she says, meeting his gaze again between her fingers. “What did that have to do with the phone call, and the… whatever that was?”

“He wanted someone else to delete it before I could see it.” Kuroo lowers his book, mechanically, into his backpack before remembering he’ll need it anyway and stacking it instead on top of the notebook he’d been copying problems into. “So, you know.”

Mika frowns. “I thought you two were pretty close,” she says. “If a friend accidentally sent me something like that I don’t think it would be too big a deal. Embarrassing, maybe, but we’d just laugh about it.”

Kuroo ruminates on that for a moment. Five minutes ago, before the phone call and Harada’s heroic gameness and seeing the fullness of Bokuto’s dick in the act of trying to allure someone, he would have agreed with Mika. It isn’t a big deal. It shouldn’t be, something to maybe tease Bokuto about a little and then let fade into the background. But somehow, while he explains to Mika that his study plans have changed and migrates back to Harada’s table, as the two of them fumble through chapter six like the blind leading the blind, and even as Harada wraps up his neat assessment of the last problem and offers to buy Kuroo dinner as a thank you for his help (which was mediocre at best and had, originally, been a returned favor so dinner would just tip the scales out of balance again but he still agrees anyway), Kuroo finds himself unable to get his mind off the picture, the phone call, the four or five all-caps texts still undeleted in the thread — NO and BRO and PLEASE DO NOT OPEN THAT spaced out vertically in an attempt to get the image off screen by default. The picture, especially, he finds himself still thinking about later that night, alone in his tiny futon in his vaguely shitty apartment, fisting his own cock at the vague thought of whatever the image of Bokuto’s dick conjures for his overactive imagination, no matter how many times the rational part of him tries to bat it away. 

“Huh,” Kuroo finds himself saying, one orgasm later, out loud to himself and the darkness around him and the come already growing tacky around his hand. “This is weird.”

//

Kuroo tries, more seriously after that incident, to forget the dick pic. He manages a decent score on the general statistics pop quiz, a text from Harada after the results go up echoing the nice! he gets from Bokuto at the news. 

Kuroo figures he’ll try to keep it normal between them, the same easy, friendly chemistry they’ve had since high school, summers at training camps, rivalry on either side of the net nurturing a closeness away from it. Being used to separate schools, coming to different universities doesn’t change things; if anything, it had brought them closer without the familial obligations of living at home, the congenial atmosphere of colleges in the same city stirring embers into a consistent and comforting flame.

Kuroo loves Bokuto, loves him like the singular best friend he didn’t quite have in high school. Kenma is different, always has been, in a class of his own like family but not someone who pushed Kuroo forward; someone he could settle with. Kai and Yaku form a unit with him, neither connection rising above the other. Bokuto stands alone; perhaps it’s unsurprising that a change in the winds or a drop in the bucket between them would make Kuroo feel differently about him.

Thankfully, after the library incident, Bokuto has a run of travel games that keep them from physically seeing each other. Kuroo’s not sure he’d know how to act if that happened before he has a chance to get over whatever the hell is going on with him. Instead it’s excited text exchanges when his school wins, commiserating promises to never visit Chiba again after they lose to a university there that Bokuto grouses he’s never heard of despite his coach mentioning them dozens of times ahead of the match as a team to keep an eye on, intermingled with the standard fare of meme exchanges and stupid conversations. Kuroo lightens up on the group selfies, even though he sees Shirofuku at least twice with Mika now that they’re teaming up over their shared clinical nutrition course, even though he and Suzumeda have managed to strike up a friendship over joint career goals that sometimes superficially irritates Bokuto, which Kuroo usually loves nothing more than to rub in his face.

“Are you going to the Keio party this weekend?”

Suzumeda herself asks the question, cheerfully making conversation while they wait for the students in front of them to decide what kind of salads they want. One of the delightful things Kuroo has found about Suzumeda, besides her incredibly intelligent choice of profession of course, is that she never hesitates over that kind of thing. She always knows what she wants. Kuroo doesn’t feel the same, most of the time, but she’s patient with him over it, mostly. She has at least forced him into a fall-back salad order if he can’t make a call quickly enough without anything else specific in mind.

Right, the Keio party. “I heard about it,” he admits. He’d actually heard directly about it through Harada, of all people — Kuroo’s invitation to these types of things is open, standing, often unspoken until Bokuto is asking him about what he’ll wear and then Kuroo knows he’s not only invited but also expected. Harada, apparently, had been proffered an invitation as a sort of thank you from Bokuto for, at least as far as Bokuto knew, hiding his shame from Kuroo, and asked Kuroo whether he wanted to go along with him. figured you’d know more people and make it easier for me :), Harada had said, the sweetheart. He and Kuroo studied regularly for general stats now, leaving Mika to corral him through the harder classes. He reminds Kuroo of Sugawara from Karasuno, the deceptively sweet surface, the sly underbelly, but it’s somehow charming overall just the way it was and is with Sugawara.

“And are you gonna go?” Suzumeda cocks her head, ponytail tipping accordingly. “It’ll be good to get a break from studying for once, huh?”

She isn’t wrong. Midterms will be wrapped up, the air almost cold enough for winter — cold to the point that it might actually be something like nice to be inside some college students’ small and overwarm house, surrounded by alcohol and dancing and music that’s always somehow too loud. The more he thinks about it, the nicer it sounds. It’s been weeks since Kuroo saw the inside of anywhere besides his tiny apartment, the library, his classrooms, and the occasional jaunt to one of the cafes on campus for a change of prep work scenery.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he admits, then gets a break while they order their own salads, shuffling out of the way of whomever is next while Suzumeda undoes the buttons on her coat in the warmth of their wait. “Okay, maybe I’ll go.”

“It’s gonna be fun!” Her voice is encouraging, enthusiastic, like Kuroo had made a significantly more important choice than attendance at one party, and she explains it as she continues, “I know things have been kinda weird with Bokuto since… well, whatever. Yukie told me what Yamaka told her. Sorry to be gossiping about you.” She doesn’t sound too sorry, though her grin has turned a little wry.

“Just happy to provide so much amusement,” Kuroo replies. He’s not mad, never could be. “Yeah, things are a little weird, I guess.”

“Why, though?” Suzumeda turns her smile grateful and onto the cafe worker passing the stuffed plastic container over the counter to her before reversing toward Kuroo again. “I know Bo pretty well, I’m guessing he probably forgot about it by now.”

Kuroo takes his own salad, follows Suzumeda through the front door out into the cold he’s always somehow only half-prepared for, and wonders if maybe that’s the root of the problem, or at least the stem of it. Kuroo hasn’t forgotten about it, even though he’s done his level best to act like nothing’s changed, like he hasn’t seen Bokuto’s dick, and even though Bokuto as far as he’s aware doesn’t think he’s seen it at all there’s still some strange desire in the back of Kuroo’s skull for Bokuto to wonder about it, but he hasn’t even brought it up in the two or so weeks since that day in the library. 

“Yeah,” he says instead as they cross the threshold into the student center where they’ll, unfortunately, be studying yet again. It’s better than cramming alone, though, he’s sure of that. “You’re right. I’m probably overthinking it.” He sighs a little, scanning for and finding a table that’s relatively isolated, gesturing Suzumeda toward it with a jerk of his head. “I’ll probably see him at the party and everything will be totally cool again.”

Suzumeda is taking out her books, macroeconomics from the looks of it and Kuroo groans internally, when she speaks again, suddenly, like the thought had just occurred to her. “Who was he sending it to?”

“Who?” Kuroo asks, mentally in the middle of a chapter about gross domestic product that’s been giving him no end of trouble. “Sending what to?”

Suzumeda looks at him like he’s been hit on the head. “Bokuto!” She can be louder in the student center, and as Kuroo glances around furtively, apologetically, to the absolutely no one noticing what’s happening he finds himself wishing, for once, for the hush of the library. “Who was he sending that… the picture to?”

Suzumeda isn’t a shy girl — far from it, in fact, it’s one of the things Kuroo likes about her — so the leftover high school deference to Bokuto as the ace of the team she managed is almost funny in the stutter over, and conscious omission of, dick pic. And this, too, Kuroo hasn’t really thought about, hasn’t come to a conclusion on, and isn’t sure he wants to, so he says the only thing that he has decided and can be certain about.

“Well, it wasn’t me.”

He knows immediately it’s a little too petulant, a little hurt which is also too much, because Suzumeda’s eyes go wide where she’s watching him flip pages across from her. He doesn’t look away, thinking that might be worse, and maybe it would be but it does mean he has to see something like understanding cross her face and then be hidden from it, smooth enough that it’s almost imperceptible, and he doesn’t even really know what she could have realized but he doesn’t like it one bit. “Right,” she says, hesitantly. The lid on her salad is loud when she pops it off, trying in vain to stir in the dressing that always seems to congeal on one side of the container no matter how hard you try. “Sorry if it’s too personal to ask about, Kuroo. I just figured he would have mentioned it to you.”

Now that she mentions it, maybe it’s a little strange that Bokuto hasn’t mentioned it. No sorry dude that was for a guy i matched with, you know how it is or something similar in the aftermath. An excuse might not have salved Kuroo’s wound, whatever wound it is, but it might have help smooth over any awkwardness Bokuto was feeling.

But that's half the problem, right? Bokuto didn’t seem to feel anything of the sort in the aftermath. Kuroo pictures himself across from Bokuto in someone’s darkened living room, trying to act natural, knowing all the while that there’s this gigantic something between them that’s built up in his head and his alone and somewhere below his sternum aches.

“Maybe he’s shy,” is all he says out loud, and Suzumeda laughs at that because they both know nothing could be further from the truth. “I’ll ask him about it at the party. Seems like a good icebreaker.”

Suzumeda shakes her head, still laughing. “Only for the two of you,” she chuckles.

//

Kuroo survives the study session, and he survives the macro midterm, and he even survives what had started to feel like a blossoming cold on Thursday morning that by Saturday night has faded to nothing. He even finds, toweling his hair off after his post-gym shower, that he doesn’t feel like using its memory as an excuse.

He and Harada had agreed to meet up at the train station, whenever we’re both ready, both of them caught in the curious dance of the unintimate where neither wants to be the more eager party while making plans. Kuroo figures he’ll probably end up throwing him a bone, since out of the two of them Harada is less familiar with making his way around the Keio-adjacent neighborhoods. Kuroo’s even been to the exact house where the party is tonight, which isn’t always the case.

When he picks up his phone, hair as done as it’s going to get and outfit selected with some semblance of giving a shit how he looks, there’s an unread image message from Bokuto which Kuroo is somewhat proud to realize only stirs the slightest churn in his stomach at the memory of the library. He feels nearly totally normal as he opens it, leaving Harada hanging for another minute or two.

getting ready for ya ;) is the accompanying text, along with a photo of Bokuto, Suzumeda and Shirofuku striking ridiculous poses in someone’s mirror. Suzumeda has a straightener clamped around a section of her hair. Shirofuku is balancing admirably on a very high pair of heels. Kuroo’s mouth dries out slightly at the gap where Bokuto’s collar hangs, letting his collarbones poke out. Kuroo swallows. Maybe he’s not totally normal.

my girlz <3 harada’s not gonna know what hit him

It’s a good response, Kuroo thinks. Praise for Shirofuku and Suzumeda (and Bokuto if he’s open-minded enough to understand it applies to him too, which Kuroo’s sure he is), light change of topic if Bokuto will take it, absolutely no indication of thirstiness. He nods to himself in the tiny mirror over his dresser, which also serves as his vanity since he’d come to the unfortunate conclusion that the skincare he and Kai had gradually gotten each other into as a kind of boiling-frog joke become serious, to the betterment of his face’s texture, took up too much counter space in his tiny bathroom to allow for his one or two hair products.

you ready? he asks Harada then, figuring he’s close enough to done that he can get them started toward the train station, and when he receives the affirmative a moment later Kuroo performs a keys and wallet patdown on the jacket he’s wearing and heads out.

Harada waves to him at the station. He’s surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly; Kuroo supposes he hasn’t seen the guy in too many settings yet that aren’t math-related) relaxed, looks casual; Kuroo appreciates the mellow energy.

While it lasts.

After an approval of Kuroo’s outfit which goes right to his ego, plus some minimal small talk about what stop is closest to their destination, Harada goes to what Kuroo supposes is unfortunately the natural next topic between them. “So,” he begins, and Kuroo can almost feel the miasma oncoming, enveloping the car of the train they’re on, but he does nothing to stop it — masochism, maybe, “it’s gonna be kind of weird meeting a guy in person for the first time when all I’ve seen of him is his dick. And not in the fun sexting way.”

There’s a couple punches in that salvo, and Kuroo dodges exactly none of them. “Ah,” he says, to kill time, to think of something, to get that picture out of his mind yet again, “well, he’s got a personality that’ll make you forget all that pretty quick.” This is patently false; Kuroo is probably second to Akaashi in depth of understanding of Bokuto Koutarou and he has not managed yet to forget that image. But Harada has a chance; Kuroo doesn’t want to really think about the fact that maybe it’s because he knows Bokuto so well that the picture hasn’t been so quick to leave his mind.

“Yeah?” Harada seems genuinely curious, and Kuroo is reminded once again that he is a good guy who essentially because of that goodness has been mixed up in this ridiculousness. “What’s he like?”

“Bokuto,” Kuroo replies, before he can really think about it because what’s easier to discuss than one of his best friends, “is like if a ray of sunshine made a wish to be a person, and got that wish but in the process of making something that hot into a guy any brain cells got baked out.”

“What?” Harada is laughing, and the word sounds like it’s been startled out of him.

Kuroo nods, emphatically. “Just picture it. Smile like those American actors. Ass out of this world. Body built for professional athletics. Louder than hell. Complete idiot.”

“But you like him though,” Harada says, tilting his head as they sway with the movement of the train. His laughter is still written across his face. “He can’t be that bad.”

“I have awful taste,” Kuroo replies. This is not strictly true, at least not in the most general sense; most of the people he’s friends with are pretty great, and the people he’s been with otherwise are by and large good enough, good enough for an overnight at least. Harada doesn’t know that, though, so his lips stretch around his teeth again. He really does look nice. Kuroo really does have awful taste. “Bokuto and I have been friends for years, maybe it’s like a Stockholm Syndrome thing.”

“Didn’t seem that way when I was talking to him.” Kuroo raises an eyebrow as what feels like a tiny jolt of electricity snakes down his spine. Harada still has an easy smile on his face; they still have a couple minutes before their stop and then a walk to the house to fill. “You know, he told me he thought you’d make me let you look at it.” Kuroo sputters, but Harada’s expression hasn’t changed; in fact he laughs a little more. “He wasn’t mad! I didn’t say one way or the other. It’s just funny how well he knows you, I suppose.”

“Ugh.” Kuroo’s laughing a little too, he realizes. “Well, we have known each other since high school.”

“Not to make assumptions,” Harada says, as their stop is announced, caught in the small crush of people entering and exiting as the doors open beside them, “or pry, but… it was a pretty nice picture. He didn’t seem that excited for you to see it, though.” Harada cocks his head in the cold. “Anything there?”

Maybe it is prying, a little, but Harada is on his way to a party where he knows exactly 1.05 people (Kuroo’s not great at math but that seems like a reasonably possible estimate), one of whom will almost definitely either ditch him or force him into the kind of friend group conversations that are the bane of strangers at house parties everywhere because that's just the way drunk Kuroo is, and so he finds it in him to be generous, steering him out of the station in the right direction with a quick hand to the small of his back. “No,” he replies, and then without self-preservation he adds, “not really.”

“Ooh,” Harada pounces with another gleam of that Sugawara sensation in his eye, the way he used to somehow know all the gossip without ever giving the impression that that’s what he wanted, “not really?”

“I do not know why I’m telling you this, especially right before we’re about to hopefully get blitzed enough that we have to have someone else help us find our way back to campus,” Kuroo mutters, “except that it’s been driving me crazy otherwise. But I kinda think that picture made me… realize some things.”

“No way,” Harada gasps, a completely captivated audience.

“Way. Unfortunately.” Kuroo shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, like that’ll stand a chance against the way his fingers are always cold. “I don’t know, man. Like Bokuto’s always been hot, right? Objectively.” Harada nods, obligingly, considering that he’s never actually seen Bokuto unless he’d been paying a lot more attention to Kuroo’s lock screen than he’d expected. And actually, now that he thinks about it, maybe it was already a little weird to have a selfie they’d taken together on an alumni trip to a Nekoma-Fukurodani game as his lock screen. So maybe the dick pic wasn’t exactly the start of all this. But Harada doesn’t need to know that; he plows on. “He was pretty popular in high school. And I know he’s interested in guys too, or maybe he just doesn’t care, whatever. But we’re friends. If he hasn’t gone for my good looks or my incredible charm or my sparkling wit by now he’s never going to.”

“Right?” Harada chimes in enthusiastically. He really is good at this. “I bet you two would look great together.”

Kuroo considers it. “Probably.” While the lock screen is on his mind, he pulls out his phone and turns it on, showing Harada who looks very approving. Nice to put a face to the dick, Kuroo thinks, pocketing it again. “But anyway, I don’t know. Something about seeing that… well, you know. Seeing it. It was like I started thinking about if I’d ever want to be getting that kind of thing from him for real. Like, more than friends I guess. But,” he finishes, the thesis statement of this rambling argument, or realization, or whatever, “it’s stupid. We’re friends. I’m not about to throw that away. Right?”

Harada watches him for a few steps, their faces in shifting shadows as they pass under a streetlight, evaluating whether Kuroo wants an answer or not. “Well,” he says eventually, when Kuroo isn’t forthcoming — and even he’s not sure if he’d like input, “I mean… I don’t know him, or anything, but you seem like a catch.” He smiles a little. “And he really didn’t seem mad that you were going to look.”

Kuroo throws an arm around Harada’s shoulders, tugging him near until their warm sides are touching. “You are way too nice,” he sighs, and Harada laughs. “Anybody you even look twice at at this party, I am putting in the best of words.”

“I’m not sure I could handle that much press.”

“Well, who knows what my endorsement is gonna do for you after all?”

They make it to the house easily, front door unlocked and music loud within. Kuroo thinks he remembers the bedroom designated as coat check from last time and drops his and Harada’s off on the already-crowded futon. Harada is still in the entryway when he returns, although he’s being talked to by a girl Kuroo hasn’t seen before, drink pushed into his hand.

“Ah, so you don’t need me after all?” he calls from halfway down the stairs, and Harada glances up at him, smiles charming, and the girl meets Kuroo's eyes too with clear intention. Harada really didn’t need him. “I’m going to find the girls, come get me if you need anything or want me to introduce you.”

“Will do!” Harada waves him off, cute little thing, and Kuroo moves further into the house, waving to a few people he’s seen or played volleyball with before. Bokuto, no surprise, had joined a university that tended to attract the players Kuroo had gone up against in high school; he thinks he sees Ojiro Aran in a corner talking to some people from the soccer team. He manages to make it most of the way to the kitchen before he hears that familiar sound, the kind of voice that feels like it would be audible halfway around the world. It’s certainly audible over the music, as he pushes through the swinging door into light that’s surprisingly bright.

Shirofuku and Suzumeda are there, thankfully, catching sight of Kuroo and waving him over to them before he can actually catch sight of Bokuto, wherever he is. Shirofuku pushes a drink into his hand and Kuroo swallows it indiscriminately in hope of some soothing for the nerves and rickety heartbeat he’d worked up talking to Harada; it’s strong, and it works a little, warming his stomach and spreading.

“How are you feeling?” Suzumeda asks. Kuroo has to assume everything she knows Shirofuku knows too; he’s sure they’re closer to each other than he is to either of them, so he’d never ask one of them to keep his secrets from the other. They crowd him with expressions that are far too serious on both their faces.

“Fine. Good. Yeah.” Kuroo takes another draw from his glass. “Yeah. I worked everything out with Harada from stats class on the way over here.”

“Really?” Shirofuku asks, disbelief obvious in her voice. She crosses her arms, one hand full of a half-empty cup. “Men never solve anything that easily.”

Suzumeda laughs. “I thought you’d figured everything out with me in line for dinner the other day,” she says. “Remember? It was gonna be your icebreaker.”

Shirofuku’s eyes roll so hard Kuroo thinks they might get stuck. “Icebreaker,” she echoes, flatly.

“Right, yeah.” Kuroo finishes the last of his drink, a little too quickly, almost coughs on it. “Both are true. I’m just gonna… talk to Bokuto about the whole thing, get it squared away. Everything’s cool. Harada and I figured that part out.”

“Everything doesn’t really seem cool,” Suzumeda says. There’s actual concern in her eyes, just a little; it’s touching. “I mean, even with Bokuto earlier—”

“Something happened with Bokuto?” Kuroo knows the question spills from his mouth too easily, but this has been the colossal question mark in the whole ridiculous equation he’s been trying to solve with one hand tied behind his back and his calculator batteries about to die: what Bokuto thinks. If he’s thinking anything. “Is everything okay?”

“I mean, okay? Yes.” Suzumeda shakes her head, the ponytail she’d done even after all that straightening waving like a mace. “But like… cool? I don’t know. It didn’t seem like anything was really wrong. He was just acting weird. Right, Yukie?”

Shirofuku nods, seriously. “Weird,” she confirms. “Nervous. For a party.”

“Maybe he got his midterm grades back early?” Kuroo offers, which is a little harsh but seems unfortunately plausible and likely to throw off Bokuto’s mood.

“I don’t think so,” Shirofuku says. “I didn’t get mine yet.”

“Well,” Kuroo begins, but he finds the fount of ideas running dry. “Well. Maybe there’s gonna be someone here he didn’t want to see?”

Suzumeda rolls her eyes this time, not quite as dramatic as Shirofuku but certainly as impactful. “Uh, maybe,” she says, Shirofuku nodding emphatically along with her, “or maybe he was nervous to see the guy he’s known for like five years that he accidentally sent a dick pic to. Come on, Kuroo.” She punctuates the sentence with a rap on the top of his head.

“Hey, my hair took forever today,” he lies, rubbing the area nearest the spot that won’t actually muss his already unfortunate look any further. “Okay, fine, but that doesn’t change anything, right? I’m still gonna talk to him about it, smooth everything over, tell him everything is cool and we can stay normal and everything is fine.”

“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself that everything is cool,” Suzumeda says.

“And that everything is fine,” Shirofuku adds.

“Everything is cool and fine!”

Kuroo knows his voice is a little too loud, but when an unfortunately familiar hand lands on his shoulder he knows it is way too loud. “You are cool and fine!” Bokuto’s agreement is booming, even though it’s not especially more noisy than his usual voice, because it’s right in his ear, because as always, in a way that’s never bothered Kuroo before, Bokuto is in his space, draped over him as an extension of that arm around his neck. “Okay, yeah that was lame. Sorry, just wanted to come say hi.”

Bokuto grins at him and Kuroo feels probably eighty percent of his anxiety melt away immediately. It’s Bokuto, he thinks. Bokuto would never let stupid shit get in the way of their friendship, he’d never push Kuroo away. They’d talk about the stupid dick pic and clear the air and this would all be a funny memory that they’d laugh about together at parties like this in the future. “Hi,” Kuroo says, just as lame, but he smiles too. “Speaking of cool and fine, you look nice.”

This is unnecessary; Bokuto always looks nice. He’s mastered the art of making his lived-in athletic wear look like photoshoot material, maybe because he seems to fill it out so unfairly. Nevertheless, the hand on Kuroo’s shoulder squeezes a little. “Did you look in the mirror before you got here?” Bokuto asks, giving Kuroo a very generous once-over. Kuroo preens a little under the attention, miming a hair flip around the weight of Bokuto’s arm. “Nice doesn’t cover it, dude.”

“Yeah,” Shirofuku says, and Kuroo’s eyes snap back to her in time to catch what looks like minor disgust crossing her expression. “Everything is totally cool.”

“And fine,” Suzumeda agrees.

“He’s like this,” Kuroo protests, and Bokuto nods, letting his chin bump Kuroo’s shoulder each time his head drops. “You know this.”

Shirofuku turns to Suzumeda, like she could somehow block out the other two people in the conversation through sheer force of will. “You want a refill, Kaori?” she asks. “I am not hanging around for this.”

“Me neither,” Suzumeda says, linking one of her elbows through Shirofuku’s. “I’ll go with you.” She looks at Kuroo for a moment that has the intensity of a thousand suns, all compressed into one glare. “Don’t mess this up,” she says, pointing at Kuroo, and then they’re disappearing toward what looks like a liquor store’s worth of stock on the counter.

Bokuto sighs, and Kuroo hears it because he’s still directly beside his ear. “I will never understand why they like you more,” he says, incomprehensibly. “I mean they were my friends in high school.”

“You are out of your mind,” Kuroo offers, shaking his head, brushing their temples together.

“You know it, baby!” Bokuto finally pulls back, just enough to keep Kuroo held by the shoulder, like he might fly away otherwise. “You’ve been here before, right? Have you been up on the roof?”

Something inside Kuroo starts ringing a little alarm bell; Bokuto almost never leaves the center of a party, not unless he’s ready to go go, certainly not when it seems like things have gotten started reasonably recently which is definitely the case here. Only a few people are dancing, even. But this is an offer if Kuroo’s ever heard one, such a non-sequitur that it has to be motivated by something else. Maybe the smoothing-over-until-everything-is-cool-and-fine would come sooner than he expected. “Nah,” he says, “but dude, it’s cold outside.”

“Yeah,” Bokuto agrees, “you’ll see. What are you drinkin’, dude, I’ll fill you up?”

Kuroo laughs with him at the innuendo, because it’s what he would have done before he knew exactly what Bokuto might have looked like doing exactly that in another context entirely. When they get to the makeshift bar, Shirofuku and Suzumeda aren’t even there anymore for them to bother.

//

It turns out the stairway to the roof opens up to a nice little skylit room, half-attic half-makeshift smoke space from the ashtrays scattered around. There’s a door that Kuroo assumes leads to the roof proper; they have to come through a hatch in the floor to get in. Bokuto winks at him and drags one of the impermanent chairs scattered around over it after he closes it behind him.

Oh. So it’s going to be one of those conversations. Kuroo braces his hand around his refilled glass, pulls another chair over so he’s sitting right across from Bokuto in the light of the moon above them. It’s Tokyo, so there’s not much in the way of stars, but it still has a very isolated feel. The music thumps, muted, below them to hurry silences along.

“So,” Kuroo says, ripping off the bandage just like he’d mentally promised himself and, obliquely, verbally promised Shirofuku and Suzumeda, “I came here with Harada.”

“Harada?” Bokuto looks confused over the rim of his cup for a moment before realization dawns. He swallows his mouthful of liquor. “Right, from the phone.” He laughs. “I bet he’s probably not that excited to actually see me in person.”

Kuroo laughs too. “Nah, he’s pretty cool, actually. He wanted to meet you for real.” Kuroo takes another sip to keep that warmth in the pit of his stomach going, not sure if it will really help or not. “I, uh. I figured I should probably tell you I saw it.”

Bokuto groans, throwing his head back dramatically. He doesn’t look angry but the conversation is just starting, so Kuroo stays a little stiff, braced. “I knew it,” he says, forearm coming to rest over his eyes. “Dude.”

“Harada told me you asked him about it.” Kuroo rubs the back of his neck a little awkwardly, suddenly feeling, strangely, that it might be actually less weird if Bokuto would look at him again. “He was saying we must know each other pretty well because you already knew I wouldn’t let you keep it from me.”

“Yeah, Kuroo, I know you pretty well at this point, I think,” Bokuto agrees. “I know you well enough to know you’re nosy and pushy and you wouldn’t let a nice guy like Haruka—”

“Harada.”

“—Harada just delete my dick pic off your phone.” Somehow, he still doesn’t sound mad. Barely even irritated, really. Nevertheless, Kuroo gets the distinct feeling in the moment or two of silence that follows that he’s walking through a minefield. “But,” Bokuto says after a minute, and then he pulls his chin back down so he’s looking at Kuroo again, that honey eye contact slipping down Kuroo’s spine like molten glass, “I guess I shouldn’t really give you a hard time about it.”

Kuroo takes another sip. Somewhere in his brainstem he wants to set the cup down, wants his hands free, but he can’t make the connection on why so he holds on tighter instead, rushing through the liquor left. “That’s cool of you, Bo,” he says. It’s more than cool. It’s exactly what he’d wanted, right? Bokuto to forgive his antics the way he always does, things to go exactly and immediately back to normal, the whole interaction swept under the rug the way Kuroo could lock that lonely orgasm away in a corner of his mind that Bokuto never needs to know about. It’s not like it will happen again. Exactly what he’d wanted.

“Maybe.” Bokuto chuckles, finishes his drink, and then sets his own glass on the floor of the room, the ceiling of the home beneath them, right next to an ashtray where they both jostle imperceptibly with the bass still floating up to them. “Maybe it’s kind of uncool, actually.”

Kuroo grins, searching for the center axis of the conversation which seems tilted wildly off-kilter. “You doing something uncool? Doesn’t seem likely, dude.”

Bokuto’s gaze, still focused on Kuroo which is honestly kind of rare and extremely heady for a guy whose attention constantly seems pulled in a hundred directions at once, changes a little, gets warmer or heavier or something else he doesn’t know exactly how to parse. “It’s pretty likely,” he says. Their knees are touching, chairs so close together. Kuroo hadn’t noticed, personal space not something either of them kept too carefully between them. Normal. Right.

Kuroo does drain his glass then, does set it on the floor next to him, leans forward to rest his elbows on the tops of his thighs because suddenly that feels like the right thing to do. “No way, dude,” he argues with an amount of sincerity that tells him he probably shouldn’t go downstairs for a refill if he wants the conversation to stay coherent, “you’re the coolest.”

Bokuto laughs at that, warm and loud in the enclosed space. “Nah, that’s definitely you.” He shifts then, like Kuroo had moved too near him although his body hadn’t actually moved away at all. “You’re actually, like, too cool.”

“No way, dude, tha—”

“I think that’s why I didn’t really mind. That you saw it.” His gaze is like a physical weight on Kuroo, keeping him in place, half-frozen and all of a sudden completely unsure of where this conversation is going. “Maybe I… kind of liked it.”

Kuroo’s mind feels like a CRT television switched off, even the static dissipating in favor of winking out to black. He might stare at Bokuto with his mouth hanging open for thirty seconds or thirty minutes, and Bokuto eventually turns a little pink but he keeps looking back at Kuroo, like he’s willing him to snap out of it and respond. “What?” is what he comes up with eventually, which isn’t entirely satisfactory but it’s all he can manage.

“Is that weird?” Bokuto laughs again, rubbing a hand anxiously over his thigh. Kuroo follows the movement, follows the way his hand presses the fabric of his pants against the solidity underneath and forces him to reckon, yet again, with just how much Bokuto’s legs are. Looking back it’s probably lucky he wore those ridiculous knee pads in high school, or Kuroo’s current and very specific sexuality crisis might have come significantly earlier and heaven only knows how that might have gone. “You’re kind of a catch, dude. If someone had to see my dick you’re probably the best option.”

That brings Kuroo slightly more into reality, and he looks back up to Bokuto’s face. “What do you mean ‘someone’?” he asks, and the flush across Bokuto’s cheekbones deepens just a little, spreads lightly down his neck where Kuroo wants to follow it with his fingers, with his mouth, Christ. “Weren’t you sending it to somebody else?”

“Ugh.” Bokuto buries a hand in his hair, leans forward to mirror Kuroo’s posture otherwise. It brings their faces a little closer together than Kuroo might have chosen otherwise considering the situation, but… normal. It’s normal. It’s not weird that he can feel Bokuto’s next words on his face, laced with what smells like rum and maybe a hastily-discarded piece of gum. “This is kind of embarrassing.”

“More embarrassing than me looking at a dick pic you weren’t even trying to send me?”

“I mean, yeah.” Bokuto sighs. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t actually trying to send it to anyone. Like, I just thought my dick looked good, took a picture, went about my day and then attached the wrong thing and sent it to you before I could take it back.”

Kuroo sits with this in silence, eyes bouncing between Bokuto’s with how close they are, hard to focus in the swirl of alcohol and the music still pounding up into the room, muted but forceful. “So,” he says, finally, rolling the dice in a way he hopes would make Shirofuku, Suzumeda, and Mika proud and send a chill down Kenma’s spine wherever he’s at, “you weren’t sending that to anyone. Like, you weren’t trying to sext anybody else. You didn’t… have someone else to send it to.”

“I get it, dude, I’m lonely,” Bokuto laughs. He’s looking at Kuroo’s mouth, Kuroo’s almost sure of it. He’s dropped his hand from his hair to his own shoulder, pulling a firm line along the muscles in his forearm.

“But,” Kuroo continues, “you think I’m a catch.”

Silence, or the closest thing to it in a noisy house, follows this for a moment. Kuroo watches Bokuto do the math in his head, the math Kuroo’s been forced to do over the last few weeks, the last few hours, and he’s known Bokuto a long time so he sees clearly when he comes to a conclusion. Seeing his expression shift sends a hook tugging behind Kuroo’s navel, insistent, clear, and he wonders why the hell he’s been torturing himself over something that could be so simple. “I mean,” Bokuto says, gaze molten in the light of the moon, “I did send you a dick pic.”

Kuroo laughs at that, quiet, more a huff of air than anything. He sees it stir the fine hair falling by his ears. “You did.” He leans forward, just a little more. “Would it be weird if I told you I liked it?” Bokuto shakes his head. “I liked it.”

“I have more where that came from.” Kuroo smirks at him; this feels good, right, their normal bantering with a different tang. Maybe they can have normal and more. “Would it be weird if I told you I wanted to kiss you right now?”

Kuroo pretends to consider it, cocking his head, putting a finger to his chin. “Hmm. Hard to imagine that happening.”

“Kuroo Tetsurou,” Bokuto says, and his voice is serious enough to knock the wind out of Kuroo’s lungs, “I want to kiss you. Right now.” Bokuto reaches out then, that hand on his shoulder warm from the body heat under his shirt when it cups Kuroo’s jaw, fingers spread over his cheek and down to his neck, and Kuroo inhales, all bravado gone like it’s been wrung from him. “Is that okay?”

“Mm,” Kuroo manages, which might be the beginning of mmhmm or might just be the only strangled sound he can make, but either way Bokuto reads him right, the way he always does, and closes the minute distance between them.

Bokuto’s lips are warm, and soft, and Akaashi and Shirofuku must have finally succeeded in their joint quest to get him to use lip balm regularly because they’re mostly smooth against Kuroo’s, where, holy shit, Bokuto is kissing him. It’s not an especially mind-blowing kiss, technically speaking; neither of them really move, just the pressure of one mouth on another, only a moment before Bokuto is pulling back again to look Kuroo in the eyes, but Kuroo’s brain is lagging on a whole new level, forcing his eyes to open again, blinking slow as a cat.

“Uh,” Kuroo says, stupidly, bringing a hand to his lips like he could physically hold the feeling of Bokuto there. A ridiculous thought, but still the feeling of sparks transfers to his fingers where they brush against his skin.

“I, uh,” Bokuto is stammering a little, watching Kuroo all over, hand still on his face. Kuroo’s pinky brushes the meat of his palm, below his thumb. “I can do better than that. Like, if you wanted to maybe—”

“Bo.” Suddenly realizing he’s created an obstacle, Kuroo reaches out with the hand on his own mouth, seizing a fistful of Bokuto’s shirt, feeling him warm and strong underneath. “Bo, kiss me again.”

“I can?” Bokuto asks, and Kuroo’s nodding, leaning in again, head tilted to slot more thoroughly to the memory of Bokuto’s lips. This time instinct takes over for Kuroo’s higher brain function, letting him tip his jaw tighter against Bokuto’s hand, move his mouth with Bokuto’s in a smooth and satisfying rhythm, prod his tongue to Bokuto’s lower lip to a gasped-open mouth. Kuroo takes a turn first, licking over Bokuto’s tongue where it lays heavy behind his bottom teeth, flicking his soft palate, then back to let Bokuto take a turn.

He sucks Bokuto’s tongue into his mouth when he moves it, gets a moan in return that drives a spike of arousal right to the root of him, and then there’s a loud noise right below their feet, sending them springing apart and panting.

“Did fucking Terushima leave the roof locked again?”

Someone’s voice sounds very close to them, probably right below the floor beneath them, and the rattling attempt to open the hatch sounds again. Kuroo looks at Bokuto, who’s already looking at him with a grin breaking across his face that looks like the sun, and Kuroo can’t help but mirror it.

“Someone find that idiot, I’m getting a refill if I have to wait anyway.”

Footsteps stomp away, leaving nothing but the sound of the music still going strong. Bokuto slides his chair back, sheepish but still laughing, and Kuroo lifts the hatch just enough to see that the stairway is clear.

“We can escape,” he says, raising it further, gesturing to Bokuto to go ahead of him.

“Wanna escape for real?” Bokuto asks, and he’s suddenly up in Kuroo’s space again — and it’s normal, normal like Kuroo had wanted but it also sets his nerves alight, makes his lips part. Bokuto grins. “Wow, I really sound like the kind of guy who sends unsolicited dick pics.”

“Lucky for you,” Kuroo mutters, pushing Bokuto toward the stairs a little in the chest, which does not set his mouth watering, “I’m apparently the type that doesn’t mind getting them.”

“Hot and funny,” Bokuto chuckles, and Kuroo’s lucky he can’t see him go what he’s sure is an embarrassing shade of red, “and a good kisser.” At the base of the stairs, Kuroo close behind him and trying to suppress the flush he can still feel beneath his skin, Bokuto turns to face him, takes his wrist against the railing with a practiced ease that puts goosebumps along Kuroo’s arm. “And hopefully wants to go home with me?”

It’s a question, it’s a nice easy out, but Kuroo doesn’t want to take it; he wants to see where this is going to go. Always, from the very first time they’d met, he’s always wanted to go anywhere Bokuto wants to. Easy, normal. He grins. “Only if you don’t want to go home with me,” he replies, and Bokuto lights up. Stupid, Kuroo thinks. Like there’s any chance he’d say no.

“We’ll decide on the way out,” Bokuto agrees, tugging him along, Kuroo stumbling and laughing and happy behind him.

In the hallway right below the stairs to the roof, they run into Harada, who looks bright-eyed and red-cheeked and is in a very close-looking conversation with the girl Kuroo had seen him with in the entryway and a guy who is watching him like he’s a glass of water in a window at the end of the desert. Sugawara, Kuroo thinks again, and Harada catches sight of him and waves.

“You’ll get home okay without me?” Kuroo asks, knows he’s being kind of an asshole but, really, it doesn’t seem like Harada needs his help anyway, and he nods in response, confirming his suspicion. “Good, have fun. Oh!” he adds, suddenly, remembering who is pulling on his wrist with insistency that is completely and utterly charming. He points at Bokuto, who turns at the increased resistance Kuroo’s arm offers and smiles at the group in general, unsure of who to focus on. “This is Bokuto by the way.”

Harada’s face lights up like someone had plugged in his extension cord, enough that the couple (Kuroo may be making a bit of an assumption here, but there are vibes) he’s been talking to look around to catch sight of Bokuto too. “Right, from the phone,” Harada says, and then because no night is perfect, no matter how much Kuroo had kissed Bokuto, no matter how completely one of them is going home with the other one, he continues, “Nice dick.”

Kuroo’s jaw drops, some mix of shock and awe that he can’t identify, but Bokuto just laughs. “Thanks, man, I appreciate it,” he says, and tugs Kuroo’s wrist again. “This guy’s about to see the real thing, so I hope you don’t mind if I cut things short.”

Steam might actually pour from Kuroo’s ears. He’s not one hundred percent sure, but the open-mouthed glee on Harada’s face says more than he needs to know. Even the people with Harada, who have never seen Kuroo or, he assumes, Bokuto before are snickering.

“I don’t mind at all,” Harada says, with demonic intonation and a wink that is not at all subtle. “Have a great night.”

“Let’s go,” Kuroo mutters, right in Bokuto’s ear so he can hear him over the music and his own laughter, “before I change my damn mind.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Bokuto says, right through his teeth wrapped around a grin in Kuroo’s face, pecking his lips before he can say anything about it and, unfortunately, Kuroo thinks a very stupid and very dopey smile spreads across his face before he can stop it. He’s going to lose his reputation, whatever it is.

They go.