Archive of Our Own ^beta

Waking up is a process.

First Kenma becomes aware that he’s awake. The amount of sunlight and noise from the street inform him of the approximate time of morning. Then his old-fashioned alarm clock clicks, the little spring releasing in preparation for the ringer to go. That’s Kenma’s cue to move. He rolls to his side and plants his hand onto the alarm clock to silence it before the vile sound can ruin his day even before it’s begun.

It was not as much a gift from Kuroo as it had been a concession to their mismatched routines when Kuroo had started high school. It had remained despite Kenma already having followed Kuroo to Nekoma High; Kuroo is no longer in charge of Kenma’s executive functioning in the mornings—the clock is.

Mornings are unkind. Kenma sits and blinks for several minutes, until his eyelids don’t stick together so badly anymore. His legs feel like jelly when he manages to stand up. He takes his phone off the charger and brings it into the bathroom with himself, sending Kuroo a sticker on Line to let him know Kenma is awake. He stalls on the toilet until Kuroo’s replying sticker chimes in. It says you can do it.

Afterwards, Kenma brushes his teeth, yawning non-stop, and washes the night’s sleep from his eyes. Another few minutes of blinking take place when he returns to his room, staring at the tempting valleys and peaks of his sheets, standing on legs that make him sway. He isn’t much of a morning person, or really much of a person at all before noon. And it’s not that he doesn’t try. He doesn’t try very hard or all the time, but he does try. He’s just not meant to wake up early.

His school uniform and books are already packed, leftover from the previous night and Kuroo’s influence. The tracksuit is easy to pull on even with lacking hand-eye coordination—he does it with his eyes closed. The socks take a while. He can’t find his balance to put one on, and if he sits down, he won’t get up. It takes an extra five minutes out of his breakfast time. Which is all the time he has for breakfast.

After collecting his backpack and PSP and phone, Kenma stands with his forehead pressed against the back of his door and counts to ten. To twenty. To thir- The numbers blur.

“Who invented morning practice?” he mumbles, clutching his phone in his hand. “Why am I doing this?”

He bends his unwilling knees and slides the door open, then shuffles downstairs. He has two mouthfuls of rice and a sip of miso soup, washed down with barley tea under his mother’s watchful eye. She puts a banana in his pocket and a pork sausage in his hand, then walks him to the genkan.

“I’m going,” Kenma says automatically.

“Have a good day,” she replies. It’s routine.

Kenma closes his eyes against the brightness and coolness of the morning when he opens the door. He feels his hair lift and flutter around his face in the breeze that smells a little like the river. The water level is high, and much vegetation by the riverbank has been submerged only two streets away, but the water hasn’t come over the flood walls. He takes a right at the end of the path, squinting at the street beneath his feet until he comes to the red flower pot.

He doesn’t have to turn to look. The sound of a door opening is followed by the satisfied greeting of a morning-fowl. A rooster of extraordinary proportions. “Kenma!”

Kuroo is a long, red blur in Kenma’s vision. Focusing his eyes is too much work, so he just closes them and bites into his sausage. It’s salty and juicy, even though it’s not hot anymore. Kuroo’s big hand lands on top of his head, thumb digging into the soft spot at the back of his skull and pulling his neck straight. Kenma feels like a limp jacket hanging from a hook, but at least he doesn’t do anything embarrassing like moan out loud.

“I put an extra egg in your lunch,” Kuroo says. “And I’m going to watch you eat it.”

“Creepy.”

“What do you mean? I’m watching you eat right now,” Kuroo says in delight. Kenma doesn’t have to open his eyes to see the crooked grin. It’s painted in excruciating detail on his brain. “Oh. Hello.”

Kuroo’s hand leaves Kenma’s neck and lets him slouch again. Kenma risks opening one eye and finds Kuroo crouching by him, hand outstretched towards the neighbourhood cat. A slinky old tomcat, with hopeful eyes on Kenma’s breakfast sausage. The cat pushes his cheek familiarly against Kuroo’s fingers, but bypasses him to come wind around Kenma’s ankle with enough force to disrupt the sock he’s pulled over the hem of his track pants.

Kenma squats next to Kuroo and bites off a piece of his sausage to offer to the little god of their street in exchange for good luck. Kuroo bows his head and claps his hands twice, then nudges Kenma with his elbow.

“Today’s going to be a good day, Kenma. I feel it,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Kenma feeds the cat another piece, then pets him. “Thank you,” he tells the cat, then finishes his sausage and gets up to follow Kuroo down the street.

“Eat your banana!” Kuroo calls out over his shoulder, pointing his finger at Kenma. “I saw it in your pocket. You’re going to need it. Leg day, Kenma!”

The second process of the day is getting to school. Kenma eats most of his banana, giving the rest to Kuroo, while they walk along the riverbank, where the water is higher than usual. The new school year—Kenma’s second of high school—is only a few weeks old, and captainhood suits Kuroo. Kenma feels at peace going to volleyball practice. Kenma tells himself he feels at peace. He hides his yawns in the collar of his zipped-up jacket and wipes the banana remains on his pants, then takes out his PSP, plodding along Kuroo’s seven-league stride.

The air is cool, but not crisp. It has the feeling and smell of aquarium water, except at the train stop where the breeze generated by the trains whisks it away.

“Bamboo rice and skipjack tuna,” Kuroo explains as the station platform fills and empties around them into the constant trains. “Braised burdock root, egg, and spring cabbage. Apple slices for your sweet tooth.”

“You’re the only high schooler who makes his own braised burdock root,” Kenma says. He doesn’t know when Kuroo has the time. There’s morning practice, school, evening practice, and then often Kuroo comes and does his homework at Kenma’s house. And he still insists on making them both lunch, even though Kenma could just buy something at school to eat.

“Am I, though?” Kuroo says, grinning so his slightly crooked canine tooth peeks out from between his lips. The passing train makes his coxcomb hair flutter over his eye. Kenma puts his eyes dutifully back on his game.

“You are.”

“Am not.”

Kenma doesn’t look up at him. He doesn’t. He can feel the expectation radiating from Kuroo like a cloud of too much body spray. He grits his teeth and grabs the PSP harder, but the words still slip out of the corner of his mouth, quiet and traitorous.

“...Are too.”

Kuroo straightens with a whoosh of self-satisfied air, having leaned down to hear him. Kenma closes his eyes and holds his breath and wishes he could go back to bed.

It’s a process.

When their train comes, there are no seats left, so Kenma wedges himself between one of the poles and the wall to keep his balance so he can have both his hands for the game. Kuroo sighs and hangs onto the handhold above. When there’s somewhere to sit, he likes to nap through the train section of the morning, while Kenma is kept awake by the anxiety of having so many people around him. Summer is the worst because then everything feels sticky. Spring is still tolerable.

Kenma tucks his nose into the standing collar of his jacket and grinds low level dungeons mindlessly. There are spots during the train journey where the sun skips across the roofs and streets, still quite low in the horizon, and hits the PSP in a way that makes seeing the screen impossible. He can’t close his eyes because Kuroo’s are already closed.

The Jiji charm dangling from Kuroo’s bag has two yellow plastic gems for eyes, and they pick up the sunlight, pinging little yellow spots around as the charm twirls on its short length of chain. The station announcement with its musical notes blurs in Kenma’s ears, coming from a distance he can’t fathom, like the other end of a swimming pool. Despite the press of people, it’s so quiet Kenma can hear his own breath and the jingle of Kuroo’s cat charm-and Kuroo humming the Final Fantasy win theme very quietly.

In one blink, the light disappears, and Kuroo opens his eyes, lips curling just a little when he catches Kenma looking. Kenma drops his gaze back to his game, suffering the consequences of having been had by Kuroo.

They get off at the next stop. The river of people carries them along like paper lanterns, and Kuroo’s hand holds onto the back of Kenma’s jacket, but lets go when the press of people abates. The process of putting one foot in front of the other towards Nekoma High is automatic. Kenma has already walked this road for a year, so he doesn’t have to look up from Persona 3 Portable.

There’s a small crack in the corner of the screen, and Kenma’s eyes keep tracking to it. It’s his third replay of Persona 3. It’s his third PSP. Next, he’ll get the new PS Vita. Maybe he’ll get it in time for the summer training camp, with some new games. Kenma imagines a glowing row of golden rings as he shambles after Kuroo. Kuroo is hitting all the mobs and spilling his rings. Noob.

“Gotta go fast,” Kenma tells the long back in front of him, stalling in the resume menu of his game.

“I’m not Sonic,” Kuroo replies, throwing it over his shoulder easily. “Don’t let the hair fool you.”

“You’d be Shadow,” Kenma says.

“Oh, cool.” Kuroo dips to the side. “Are you Tails then?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“Am n-” Kenma pulls his lips together and wrinkles his nose, glaring up at Kuroo. He can only see Kuroo’s gloating nostrils from his inferior height.

“Yes?” Kuroo drawls. “You are. Cute and fluffy like Tails.”

“He’s not even cute,” Kenma mutters, ducking his head. “And I’m not fluffy.”

“Kenmaaa,” Kuroo says happily. He tousles Kenma’s hair lightly just as they come to the gates of the school, where Kenma stops to stow his PSP away to hide his spike of anxiety. It’s been months since the previous third years left, right after the Interhigh, but they’d been relentless to him.

But they aren’t even at the school anymore. Kenma clutches the straps of his backpack and moves on past Kuroo at the gates, heading towards the clubroom. The group of red tracksuits is bright like a puddle of blood against the grey walls, and Inuoka waves from the gaggle when he spots Kenma and Kuroo coming.

“Kuroo-san!” Tora yells, making Kenma want to withdraw into his jacket like a turtle.

“Hold onto your horses, Yamamoto,” Kuroo says, pulling out his keys. “Good morning, everybody.”

They’ve all turned to look at Kuroo. Tora, Inuoka, Kai, Yaku, Teshiro. If Kuroo Tetsurou is in the party, gain Rapport.

“There seems to be a problem,” Kai says, stepping aside. A notice has been posted onto the door of their clubroom, and Kuroo frowns, leaning close to study the words.

“Water damage?” he says. He unlocks the door anyway, and they all try to look in at the same time. Even Kenma is curious. It had rained on Sunday, the one day of the week they didn’t have practice of any kind.

The smell from inside the room is brackish, like standing water. The tatami mats are soaked, as are some of the posters on the wall below the window. Kuroo turns to look at everybody, narrowing his eyes like the ambush predator he is. Kenma has seen him make the same face at grilled mackerel just before snatching it up.

“All right,” Kuroo says, hands on his hips. “Who left the window open?”

“What do you mean?” Yaku squares up. “You have the keys, so you locked up.”

“The door was closed, I only locked it,” Kuroo says, then grimaces, recognising that he still ultimately has the responsibility. He should’ve checked the room.

Kenma says nothing, watching as annoyance and irritation and insecurity flit by Kuroo’s mouth, drawing its corners every which way. Captaining doesn’t look fun to Kenma, but it suits someone with such wide shoulders and long arms. Kuroo can keep a lot of balls in the air, both figuratively and literally. What’s left on his face after a moment is just determination, a sharp tooth.

“We can still use the lockers as usual,” Kai says serenely.

“A little water won’t melt us!” Tora bangs a fist against his chest and pushes past everybody to get into the club room, throwing off his shoes at the genkan, and then making a face when his socked feet come into contact with the damp tatami. Inuoka snickers.

They file in, Yaku punching Kuroo in the side. Kenma stalls at the genkan and stays there until Kuroo extends his hand towards him and waits for Kenma to relinquish his backpack.

“Cat’s tongue, cat’s feet,” Kuroo mutters knowingly.

“What’s that?” Tora calls out, pulling himself out of his shirt. “Cat’s got your tongue, Kenma?”

Kenma sighs and slips back outside. He’s not good with hot food or getting his socks wet. He picks on his fingers idly while waiting, creating a painful hangnail, with the chatter from inside keeping him company. Shibayama dashes past him, greeting him with a quick and brightly polite Kenma-san! before going in. The voices are raised again in explanation, Tora’s the loudest, followed by Kuroo’s Shut it, Yamamoto!

Classes start at 8:30am. They’ll all rush to change with five minutes left before the start of class, and Kenma will suffer from the itchiness of a sweaty scalp. Weight training wipes him out almost as badly as running. His arms will shake. His legs will tremble. The thought of it annoys him, and he can almost feel the ghostly touch of sweat between his shoulderblades.

“Stop making that face,” Kuroo says, his palm pressing between Kenma’s shoulderblades, forcing him to take a step forwards. “Let’s jog to the gym,” he says in his captain voice as the rest file out. He hands Kenma his indoor shoes.

“Where’s Lev? Is he late?” Yaku says loudly. Despite his volume, his voice doesn’t ricochet around the mostly empty school grounds the same way Tora’s does. A few other sports clubs also have morning practice on Mondays.

Behind them, Inuoka and Teshiro struggle with the support crate of towels and water bottles. With them lacking a manager—to Tora’s great, continued anguish—it’s usually the first years dealing with those duties. Kenma remembers the damp and disgusting towels flung his way by the upperclassmen, followed by the empty water bottles. Once, one of the empty bottles had hit him on the temple. It hadn’t hurt, but it had hurt.

Their footsteps rattle on the gravel and then thump smoothly across the paved walkway as they trot after Kuroo like ducklings. Kenma totters along stiffly and unwillingly as they jog around the grounds to warm up. By the second round, Lev and Fukunaga join them, and Kenma hears them talking—well, Lev talking—as they pass him to catch up to the main group.

“I don’t get it,” Lev is saying. “Why’s the team banner say ‘Connect’? What does it mean? Connect to what?”

“Wi-fi,” Fukunaga replies.

“That makes so much sense!” Lev exclaims. “Kenma-san!”

Kenma doesn’t want to be that upperclassman, but Lev is that underclassman. Kenma tucks his chin into his collar and stares ahead, moving his legs mechanically. He has to concentrate or he’ll lose the rhythm of which arm or leg he’s supposed to swing. How to breathe—in through the nose, out through the mouth. It’s not a process as much as it forces Kenma to process his physical existence in a way that’s not exactly agreeable. There are times when he likes to exist, but during running isn’t it. His hands stay cold despite the exercise, and the hangnail he’d created throbs just on the verge of his consciousness. It’s going to bother him while setting, and then Kuroo’s going to bother him about it.

Kenma thinks ruefully of the banana. He can still taste it, cloying and acid at the back of his tongue. When he finishes his run after everybody else, he takes his time to change into indoor shoes.

“Stretching!” Kuroo says, and they all fall in line. Midway through, Coach Naoi comes in.

“No after-school practice,” he says simply, and Kuroo looks unhappy. Sometimes Kenma cheats by appropriating Kuroo’s emotional expression as his own, out of simple expediency—he doesn’t have the energy to keep coming up with his own—but these are the kind of changes he takes well. He can go straight home and get into some serious osu!.

“Can we practise on our own?” Tora asks.

“Just take the extra rest,” Naoi replies. “You’ll be busy all through Golden Week. Do today what you were saving for then.”

“All Golden Week?” Kuroo asks, glancing around the attentive gazes of his team. “What are we doing?”

“Coach Nekomata will give you the details tomorrow, but I can say it’s practice matches with teams you haven’t faced before. You’ll need permission from your parents to travel.”

“Where are we going?” Lev asks excitedly.

“Miyagi,” Naoi says, shaking his head a little. “But keep your expectations in line, Haiba-kun. You’re a bit too green yet.”

“But I’m going to be the ace!” Lev declares, causing Tora to bump into him.

“In your dreams, Musashi!” Tora challenges. “Only after you beat me and these guns!” He tears off his jacket and displays his biceps. Inuoka even cheers, and surprisingly, Kuroo doesn’t put his foot down immediately. He’s glancing at Kenma instead, with a face that says he knows something.

“Kuro,” Kenma says, gesturing for him to come.

“Okay, everybody,” Kuroo says. “If you’re done- Yamamoto! If you’re done, go and start with the weights. First years, calf raises. Second years, squats. Third years, lunges. Let’s go!” He claps his hands together loudly. “What is it?” He lowers his voice when speaking to Kenma.

Kenma sticks the red and raw hangnail into view, and Kuroo sighs.

“Kyanma,” he says. “You’re killing me. We’ll be right there!” He takes Kenma’s hand and pulls him over to the towels and water bottles. “What is this?” he says.

“An excuse,” Kenma says, meeting Kuroo’s sharp eyes. Curiosity is a pleasant little thing. “You know something.”

“I know many things,” Kuroo says, still holding onto Kenma’s fingers. He drops them to pick up a water bottle, shoving it at Kenma instead. “Miyagi,” he mutters. “You don’t remember?”

Kenma shrugs, getting ready for a lore dump.

“Karasuno. Battle of the Garbage Dump.” Kuroo’s eyes search his face, looking for recognition. “No?” Kuroo makes a show of fussing over Kenma’s finger with their small first aid kit. It doesn’t require the attention, but it’s providing them a small moment to talk and an equally small moment for Kenma to put off weight training. Kuroo looks thoughtful instead of vapidly smug like usual.

“I think it’s the destined rival Coach Nekomata talks about sometimes,” Kuroo explains. “They’re up in Miyagi. Why else would we be going there?” A grin gathers the corner of his mouth up his cheek like a thread being pulled. “Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“No,” Kenma mumbles around the mouth of the water bottle, a little resentful for being pulled into this. Having a rival sounds exhausting. And a destined rival? Kenma is ready for a nap. Kuroo’s eyes glitter like the ones of his Jiji-charm.

“Today’s going to be a good day, Kenma,” Kuroo repeats, wrapping Kenma’s finger with a thin, water-resistant plaster. “Moisturise your hands sometime soon, okay? Your fingertips look like they might split.”

“They won’t.”

“They might.”

“But they won’t.”

The third-year setter before Kenma hadn’t been as much of an asshole as the other third years—he’d been condescending instead. He’d condescended to tell Kenma how he should care for his hands for optimal setting. Kenma had been so uncomfortable he’d forgot everything that had been said to him. Kuroo rubs his hands, pressing into the palm and gently stretching his fingers as if they’re going to do spiking practice. Kenma doesn’t know how to feel about their apparently upcoming trip to the north, so he takes in Kuroo’s excitement.

“I’m good now,” he says, picking on the plaster as soon as Kuroo lets his hand go.

“Hey, since we don’t have practice, let’s go to the arcade after school,” Kuroo says. His face splits into a carved-pumpkin grin. “Don’t make that face. Think about it.”

Kenma doesn’t need to think about it. He wants to play osu!. At home, where it’s quiet and calm. He drags himself up off the bench and follows Kuroo to the weights, shuffling over to the squat racks where Tora is already shirtless and yelling and Fukunaga’s face is pinched in a way that says he’s enjoying a private joke.

Kenma slots himself in after Tora to do his due diligence, although with a vastly smaller amount of weight. The metal bar across his shoulders smells sharp and feels tacky against his palms.

“Go, Kenma!” Tora coaches. “Just ten more!”

“Shut up,” Kenma grunts, more wheeze than voice.

And so, under the oppressive support, Kenma toils. Running at least has scenery; weight training only has misery. Literal grinding for better stats. It’s so much more rewarding in games. The numbers are visible. The rewards are tangible. The only reward for Kenma’s hard work in real life is more work. No, thank you.

“Kenma! Proper form!” Kuroo calls from where he’s lunging. “Lev! Keep your hands-”

Just as Kenma dips into the deepest part of the squat, the waterfalling rattle and bang of metal-on-metal startles him, but the very human shriek of pain is what stands him still, burning under the bar. His breath is pushed out in a short gasp, then blanketed by the thunder of running.

“Teshiro!”

The quiet first-year setter is on his knees, one hand curled around the other. Lev stands by, eyes and mouth equally wide, holding one 10kg weight, while the other is on the floor next to Teshiro. Instead of struggling up, Kenma lands on his ass and rolls the bar off his shoulders. Being on the floor, he can see Teshiro between the forest of legs, holding up his hand towards Coach Naoi.

“Infirmary, now,” Naoi says, helping the first year up. “Come on, Teshiro-kun, I’ll take you. Kuroo-kun, take care of the rest.”

“Yes, sir,” Kuroo says, but with a wrought edge to his voice. Their silence follows Naoi and Teshiro out of the gym and then becomes the fizz of a burning fuse. Kuroo digs his knuckles into his hips, turning to look at everybody from under his jagged fringe. “What the hell happened?”

The fuse keeps getting shorter, and nobody says anything for a long, dreadful moment.

“It- it slipped,” Shibayama says and starts when everybody’s attention whips towards him. He balks, face white. “The weight slipped off the rack, and he tried to catch it. I think.”

“That idiot!” Tora explodes. “Why would he- It’s ten kilos!”

“Yes, thank you,” Kuroo says, holding out his hand. He exchanges looks with Yaku and Kai, then rubs his face. “Put the weight down, Lev. Carefully.”

The way Lev moves is very strange. Inuoka rushes to help him. Kenma hasn’t moved from his spot on the floor, knees tucked up and hands hidden between them and his body. His hands are sweaty—like they get after holding a controller for hours.

“Sorry,” Lev says finally, weakly. Kenma is used to Kuroo’s longness, but Lev is skinnier and even taller, only he tends to hunch over, hiding his height. He’s even more hunched over now, looking nauseated.

“Not your fault,” Kuroo says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Take a break. Drink some water.” He guides Lev towards their break station, sitting with him like he’d sat with Kenma. Yaku whirls around and stomps after them, making Lev’s shoulders snap up. Kai smiles at the rest of them.

“Let’s keep going, okay?” he says, urging the remaining five of them to disperse while he reracks the weights left behind. Tora helps Kenma put the bar back.

“Did you finish your reps?” he asks, a little subdued. Showing that he cares. “I can spot.”

Kenma just shakes his head, drained by the events and the exercise both. He catches Kuroo’s eye while Yaku either berates or comforts Lev—it’s hard to tell from their expressions. He nods at Kuroo to release him from whatever tether there is that pulls him to find Kenma when something happens and gets under the bar again to start over with his set of squats.

The mood is flat, like the top of old soda. No fizz at all. Coach Naoi comes back without Teshiro and finds a grim team doing final stretches.

“He’s fine,” Naoi says. “Won’t play for a while, but nothing permanent.”

Kenma lies on the floor, suddenly boneless. Around him, conversations spring up like weeds from the sidewalk, and the team gathers around their coach in relief. Afterwards, Kuroo comes to collect Kenma, pulling him up by the front of his shirt.

“Looks like you’re our only setter for now,” Kuroo says as he makes sure they leave the gym in order—no open windows—before locking the door. “No pressure.” His tooth glints invitingly in Kenma’s periphery.

“I don’t feel pressured, just tired,” Kenma says, looking down at his shoes as they walk towards the damp club room.

“That’s my Kenma-kun,” Kuroo says easily. “Coach told me to get Teshiro’s stuff from the club room and bring it to the infirmary. Come with me.”

Kuroo stalls at the door of the club room, hand on the handle, while Kenma decides to agree with him. “Okay,” he says. The first years have been with them only a few weeks, still new and unknown and uncomfortable, but Kuroo’s ready to pull them in with both paws and a wide mouth, just because they play volleyball.

Kuroo tips him a grin and enters the fray of the clubroom to fetch their bags while Kenma waits outside, pulling at the useless plaster on his finger. He’s probably going to be late for his first class if he goes with Kuroo. The noise of the team suffuses into warm familiarity in his ears, like the hiss of his noise-cancelling headphones. He slouches against the wall. Farther away, the sounds of the general student population arriving takes up the rest of the soundscape.

The team rushes out of the room in twos and threes, heading towards their classes in various stages of pulling on ties and buttoning up their shirts. Kenma slips into the mostly vacated space, where Kuroo and Kai are inspecting the soggy tatami, ties hanging loose from their necks. Kenma changes in the genkan, not wanting to step foot into the wet area. Wet socks inside shoes makes him want to lie down and not get up. The itchy, slightly sweaty dampness at the back of his neck under his hair he’s just learned to live with.

The first bell rings before Kuroo comes out. Kai powerwalks past Kenma, and Kuroo is the last one out of the club room. Just as he’s about to lock the door, he swings it open again.

“Kenma, can you check if anything’s out of place?” Kuroo’s face is a jumbled mixture of worry and self-admonishment. Kuroo’s good day already has its black spots, and Kenma doesn’t like that, so he peers into the club room, tracking his eyes across the familiar jumble and tumble of equipment, now placed on the higher shelves off the floor.

The old fan that Kai had brought is set out, but not plugged in. The water-spoiled posters and notes on the wall have been taken down, and the window is closed. It reeks of freshly removed indoor shoes and old kneepads and the damp exhale of moisture in the tatami mats.

“It’s fine,” Kenma says, withdrawing. At his nod, Kuroo closes and locks the door, then pauses, glancing between the key and the door as if wanting to re-open and re-check. “Kuro.” Kenma closes his hand over Kuroo’s fingers, forcing him to make a fist over the keys. “Teshiro.”

Kuroo jerks his head up and smiles a little bit too sharply. “You’ll be late for class.”

Kenma shrugs and shoulders his backpack. “You too.” He withstands Kuroo bumping into his side, then follows him across the yard and into the school building proper where the hallways are almost empty, their indoor shoes shuffling across the floor because neither has put them on properly, heels gapping away from their feet.

Outside the infirmary, Kuroo rubs at the back of his head, making his hair stick out even more awkwardly. “Hold this,” he shoves his blazer across Kenma’s arm and wiggles the knot of his tie up properly, smoothing down his sweater vest. He spreads his arms and looks at Kenma with an unspoken question. Kenma gives him a nod after a quick survey of his appearance.

Kenma isn’t sure when Kuroo changed. Or when he changed clothes. He isn’t even sure which one of them has changed, or if neither, or both. Given the nature of life, it’s probably both. Kuroo had burst out of the shell of his childhood in full stride, pointed grin, shaggy hair and all. Kenma doesn’t know if Kuroo likes form-fitting clothes or if he still hasn’t realised how tall and muscled he is and buys clothes one size too small.

Kenma had always thought Longcat and Tacgnol were them. Different, but the same. With Kuroo as the upright original, the longest of cats, and Kenma his shadow. Not because Kuroo is better, but because Kenma prefers it that way.

He sidles in after Kuroo, pulling out his phone to keep his fingers and eyes occupied while he listens in, first to Kuroo explaining to the nurse, and then greeting Teshiro who’s seated in one of the beds, hand wrapped and iced. He sits up straight when he sees Kuroo.

“Brought you your stuff, kid,” Kuroo says. “Sorry it took a while. I should’ve just ended practice.”

“No. No, it’s all right, Kuroo-san,” Teshiro says. “Not on my account.” He spies Kenma standing half behind the privacy curtain and nods solemnly, but doesn’t address him. Kenma likes that in a person, especially somebody he’s going to have to closely work with. “I’m sorry I can’t come to Miyagi with the team.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kuroo says easily, hands on his hips. “You just make sure your hand heals, so you can come back and help us get into Nationals later.”

“Is Haiba-kun okay?” Teshiro asks. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“Yeah, he’s good,” Kuroo sighs. He rubs at his own hair again. “Listen, kid, we need to get to class. You take it easy.”

“Can I still come to practice tomorrow?” Teshiro asks. “Just to watch.”

Kuroo gives his head another rub. “Sure thing, but Coach has the last word, okay?”

“Thank you, Kuroo-san. Kozume-san.”

On their way to class, Kuroo stops at a vending machine and gets them both a bottle of cold barley tea. Kenma’s in no hurry. He idles on his phone in the shadow of the vending machine, chewing on the mouth of his bottle while scrolling on 2chan. After a while he looks up at Kuroo, who’s staring off into the middle distance.

“How many times have you ever skipped class?” he murmurs. Kuroo may have the face of a bousouzoku gang leader and the length of Bayonetta, but he also has the grades and attendance record of a nerd. The only reason he doesn’t attend cram school is because the day only has 24 hours and even Kuroo can’t stretch that long.

“Like three times?” Kuroo says, coming back from the distance. Kenma keeps his eyes on his phone although he can see Kuroo moving in his periphery. Sometimes Kenma gets tired looking up at him. Kuroo slouches, sliding down until he’s almost level with Kenma. “Nice kid.”

The press of Kuroo’s shoulder to his own makes Kenma’s thumb pause on the screen of his phone. He lowers the mouth of the bottle from his lips and glances at Kuroo’s papercut-sharp profile. Kuroo is asking without asking. Asking even though they rarely disagree on people—it’s just that Kuroo’s observations are used to provoke and Kenma’s to avoid. Same, but different.

“He’ll be fine,” Kenma says.

Kuroo looks at him down the length of his lashes and nose. His crooked canine peeks out from between his lips as soon as they stretch into a smile. “You’ll teach him everything you know?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Kuroo slides down farther until he’s sitting on the linoleum of the ground floor corridor. His unworn jacket is a blue flag on top of his bag against the off-white wall. Kenma rubs his fingers together where the plaster is, feeling its unfamiliar rubbery-waterproof texture where there should be none.

“He could be good enough to be a starter next year,” Kenma says, looking down at the top of Kuroo’s head only to catch Kuroo glancing up at him plaintively.

“You’ll be a third year,” Kuroo says. Volleyball is Kuroo’s competition, not Kenma’s. Kenma doesn’t care about staying on the court the longest, but for Kuroo he does a lot of things he doesn’t care about.

“I can still strategise when I’m not playing,” Kenma says. “Even better because I won’t have to be sweaty and tired.”

“They depend on you,” Kuroo says, palming his own cheek to continue looking up. “The whole team. Can’t do it without a brain.”

They depend on Kenma because Kuroo had made it so, but they all wanted to be on the team because of Kuroo. Kenma crouches next to him, watching Kuroo watch him. When they’re shoulder to shoulder, Kuroo tilts his head to rest against Kenma’s, and Kenma is wedged in the corner between the similarly sturdy structures of the vending machine and Kuroo’s body. Something like that is the safest place: between a machine and Kuroo.

“You smell,” Kenma says.

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

Kuroo laughs a little. “Are you sniffing me?”

Kenma turns his face away from Kuroo’s hair and finishes his barley tea. “Am not.”

“Are too,” Kuroo trills happily, trying to shove his head under Kenma’s nose again, but he quiets down so quickly that Kenma can practically feel the uncertainty bubbling to the surface, popping into faint sourness. “They’re all nice kids.”

“Except Lev.”

“You don’t even know him,” Kuroo says in a low voice from somewhere around Kenma’s jawline. Kuroo is a comfortable level of stimulation. Relaxing. He does smell, but only of himself.

“And I don’t want to.” Kenma takes aim and makes an awkward pass of his empty bottle into the recyclables bin.

“Oho,” Kuroo says. “Nice serve.”

Kenma brings up 2chan on his phone again, holding his phone between both hands to be able to simultaneously rub the plaster on his finger while he scrolls. When he gets bored, he switches to Bubble Shooter, letting Kuroo de-stress on him until it’s time for their next class.

“Can I have my lunch?” Kenma asks when Kuroo drops him off in front of class 2-3.

“Come get it from me at lunchtime, I want to see you eat it,” Kuroo says, shouldering his sports bag.

“I think I’d rather starve,” Kenma mutters, turning away.

“Fine, I’ll come to you!” Kuroo tells him, his height serving to give his grin and wave the space they don’t deserve as they separate in the second-year corridor. Kenma tucks his chin to his chest in resigned disgust and makes his way to his seat without making eye contact with anybody in his class.

Kenma’s seat is towards the back of the classroom, but it’s not the last row and neither is it the window row or the corridor row—it just hangs in the middle, undecided about life like Kenma himself. He doesn’t have any current goals that range past raising his ELO in competitive StarCraft 2 or buying a PS Vita. Getting to Nationals is Kuroo’s goal. Being a good captain, and a good volleyball player, and a good upperclassman are all Kuroo’s goals. Getting into a good university is Kuroo’s goal. Kenma just wants to lie in bed until noon and then play games until 3am. Maybe with Kuroo around.

Kenma can’t use his phone during classes, so the pages of his notebook are filled with wreaths of simple drawings, a shiritori game with himself while mathematics and Japanese literature pass by him like waves over a rock. The best way to defeat somebody is to turn them against themselves. Kenma has a lot of practice with that because his mind always works against him. Everything’s just a distraction to keep him from unravelling himself.

When he grows tired, he rests his forehead on his desk, ignoring the greasy spot he leaves behind, feeling like a screensaver and waiting for the logo to hit the corner. Classes are rarely enough stimulation to keep his interest, and the only reason he’s passing anything is because of Kuroo. They don’t do homework together every night, but often enough.

Thoughts of Kuroo mix with the discomfort of existing in a space with others, making Kenma restless. His classmates are a constant babble of minor sensory information, like sitting under a shower spray that has just enough pressure to be uncomfortable but not painful. There’s shifting and creaking and coughing and murmuring and scratching of pens on paper. There’s the scent of bodies, laundry detergent, of whiteboard markers and hair products. Nekoma High has relaxed rules about hair, but not about piercings or make-up.

Kenma is halfway through the process of falling asleep when the bell rings for lunch. In order to avoid Kuroo calling him out of the classroom, he stuffs his phone and his PSP in the pockets of his blazer and slinks into the corridor, but that’s where his proactivity ends.

The cloth around the lunchbox that Kuroo thrusts in his hands is bright yellow, patterned with green limes. The box is heavy, and it makes Kenma’s stomach similarly heavy.

“Let’s eat outside,” Kuroo says, stretching himself even longer. “I need the air.”

They end up on the steps of the volleyball gym after propping open the door to the clubroom to allow it to air out further with the help of the fan. Yaku and Tora come to sit with them too, which frees Kenma from the burden of interaction. Instead, he leans against Kuroo’s back and unwraps his lunch.

“Kuro.”

“-so then I told Daishou that the 90s called and want their hairstyle back, and he spiked the ball at my face-”

“I was literally there,” Yaku keeps repeating over Kuroo’s story, told between bites of rice and descriptive, impolite pointing of chopsticks.

The lunch in Kenma’s box has a face. A cat face made with black sesame seeds on the bamboo rice. Among the elements Kuroo had told him about also lives a lone sausage octopus, a single piece of tempura chicken, and a clump of shiitake. Next to the apple slices is a tiny taiyaki, one which Kenma recognises will have an apple filling. It’s a riot of things compared to Kuroo’s own, much simpler lunch.

“Kuro. Why are you giving me your leftovers?” Kenma says, staring at the smattering of unconnected tidbits in his lunchbox. Tora leans over curiously, cheeks full with his yakisoba bread, which almost sprays out as he laughs, then coughs, covering his mouth to swallow.

“What do you mean?” Kuroo turns to survey the situation. “It’s just one of everything. Doesn’t mean it’s the last one of everything.”

“Then what is this?” Yaku says, also leaning in, agreeing with Tora’s braying laughter.

“I’m feeding him things he likes!” Kuroo says, now slightly defensive in the way only Yaku can make him. “Shut up, Yamamoto!”

Tora’s laugh is cut immediately, but only because he’s trying to hold it in, turning red and bug-eyed in the process. Kenma hadn’t meant to make it such a big deal, but with Tora and Yaku there, that had maybe been inevitable. Upon looking back down at his cat-faced and entirely too big lunch, Kenma can see Kuroo’s logic. There’s one of everything so Kenma can have one of everything without getting too full. Well, hypothetically. Kuroo’s share of the same basic lunch is much bigger, and he has an extra egg as well. Protein and carbohydrates for after weight training.

“Oh. Okay,” Kenma says. “Thank you for the food.” He places his palms together, catching Kuroo’s victorious fang from the corner of his eye. Tora’s laughter subsides, and Kuroo turns back to Yaku, leaving Kenma to eat in peace, sheltered by his wide back.

“Anyway, so then Daishou called me a cock, and I told him he’s a snake-” Kuroo keeps going.

“Clever,” Yaku says dryly. “Also I was right there. You ugly-screamed at him that he’s just a tail with a face.”

Tora falls over onto the step, laughing again. Kenma remembers the match. It’d been Kuroo’s first year of high school, so only the current third years had witnessed it. Kenma had heard of it afterwards, when Kuroo had admitted his devastation over losing to Nohebi, but also his guilt that he’d misspoken about snakes. They’re not just tails with faces, he’d said sadly.

It’s new, the food, like this. Before, when Kuroo has made Kenma lunch, it hasn’t been like this. Always simple, but filling and tasty, and then Kuroo transferring bits and pieces from his own lunch onto Kenma’s throughout. Kenma feels stupid. It’s been a process he hasn’t realised at all, and this is the end result. Being successfully fed. Being conditioned to eat one of everything. He’s been had. Again.

“I can’t believe you’ve done this.”

“What’s that?” Kuroo flicks a look over his shoulder, sharp of tooth and eye and hair. Kenma shoves the empty lunchbox at him, and Kuroo takes it, grin growing bigger. It’s really a smile, but the crookedness fools most people. Tora looks impressed.

“You ate all of that?” he says. “Oh man, I was hoping I’d get leftovers.”

“Way too early for that, Yamamoto,” Kuroo says, packing away both the boxes. “About a thousand years too early.”

Kenma splays his hand on the concrete step to push himself up out of Kuroo’s lee, the pitted surface digging into the high points of his palm and fingers, catching against the peeling plaster on his finger. “I’m going back to class,” he says, feeling turbulent. April isn’t the kindest month, and the wind whisks his hair up and into his face when he stands up.

“See you, Kuroo-san. Yaku-san,” Tora says, jumping up after Kenma. “I thought for sure you wouldn’t be able to eat all that.”

Kenma rakes his hair down and around his eye to be able to glance back at Kuroo and Yaku still on the step, Yaku making a smug face at Kuroo’s annoyed one. Kenma grimaces too.

“Knew it,” Tora says. “You forced yourself to eat it.” He cuffs Kenma on the back of his shoulder, making him miss his next step and stumble a few feet. “Way to go, Kenma!”

The length of the yard stretches almost double as Kenma drags himself through the post-cherry blossom season wasteland of paved paths and greenery with Tora hanging from his elbow. Kenma doesn’t have his track pants to shove his hands into and the pockets of his uniform pants are all wrong, so he only holds his hands vaguely aloft and uncomfortable. He doesn’t feel triumphant about eating. What he did doesn’t take any of Tora’s mystic guts, just spite at being wrangled into a thing.

“I wanted to play osu!,” he mutters in Tora’s direction.

“Is that one of the games where you woo the girls and they get naked?”

“Woo?” Kenma repeats tiredly. “You mean dating games? No. It’s a rhythm game.”

“What’s that?” Tora says, miming drums. “Like Guitar Hero?”

“Kind of,” Kenma agrees. It’s the same general idea, anyway, hitting prompts in time with music. Explaining is an effort he’s not ready to give on the topic.

“I bet I’d crush at it,” Tora says, then jostles Kenma again. “Let’s take the first years to karaoke since we don’t have practice!”

“No,” Kenma says, walking past the door of Tora’s classroom without stopping.

“Why not? It’ll be great! Kenma!”

Kenma doesn’t turn to look as he slinks into his own class to spend the afternoon falling asleep from understimulation and from eating too much. He has no intention of going to karaoke unless Kuroo literally carries him. There’s even precedent. Tora had been there, so he may have taken Kenma’s negative as a challenge instead of an actual answer.

Kenma keeps his head down for the rest of the day, only slightly regretting eating the whole lunch Kuroo had prepared. He wraps his arms around his stomach, running out of the classroom when it gurgles loudly, digesting, and spends some time in the school bathroom, just sitting on the toilet with his phone, hating the idea that others would hear the sounds of his body being a body. Working as intended, but still embarrassing.

When the last bell rings and he’s done with his classroom duties of wiping the whiteboard and collecting the trash while others stay to sweep, he heads out, meeting Kuroo at the shoe cubbies. Kuroo is surrounded by most of the volleyball team, even Teshiro with his bandaged hand. Tora is playing an air guitar, using his bag as a stand-in for the instrument, and Kai beams benevolently.

Kenma joins them, staying at the edge of the enthusiasm.

“Kenma!” Kuroo says almost immediately. “Karaoke!”

Almost as one, the team turns to look at Kenma, who tucks his chin to his chest, hiding behind his hair. The noise and jostle is already wearing him down.

“Isn’t Kai-san the vice captain?” Lev says like a guileless length of rope. “Why are we asking Kozume-san?”

“Kenma,” Kenma mutters.

“This isn’t a club activity, Haiba-kun,” Kai says. “So we ask everybody.”

Kuroo is looking at Kenma across the group that comprises all the friends Kenma has, expectant. A rumbling irritation builds up in his belly for being put in this position. “I can’t go,” he mutters, then stomps through the team, brushing his elbow into Kuroo. “You said arcade,” he hisses, ignoring the fact that he knows Kuroo would love to go do karaoke with the whole team.

“I did, didn’t I?” Kuroo lifts his long arms and shoulders in an easy shrug at the team. “I’m sorry, I promised Kenma,” he says, but doesn’t sound sorry at all, and Kenma’s shoulders tense up by his ears with realisation. He’s been had by Kuroo again. Going home is way better than arcade, but arcade is better than karaoke, so Kuroo has steered him in the direction he’d wanted with the threat of karaoke. Kenma wouldn’t put it past him to have put the idea of karaoke into Tora’s head in the first place.

Kenma drags his feet across the school grounds until he’s outside the gates, where he draws out his PSP and lingers in the shade of the gate, chewing on his disappointment. The day has dispelled any lingering clouds and notched up the temperature to where the polyester of Kenma’s sweater vest under his blazer is becoming itchy and uncomfortable. He leans against the wall and uses it to scratch around his shoulderblades until he recognises Kuroo’s long shadow coming out of the gate, blazer carelessly hanging from his fingers across his shoulder. His fang is sweetly revealed from between his lips when he finds Kenma waiting.

“Sorry to keep you,” he says, and they fall into step, heading towards the train station.

“If you wanted to go with them, you should’ve gone with them,” Kenma mutters down at the screen of his PSP, staying a step behind Kuroo.

“Are you using me for shade?” Kuroo asks instead.

“I thought you were clever,” Kenma says viciously. It only makes Kuroo huff softly and stay just that distance ahead that leaves Kenma in the perfect spot of shade just at his elbow, taking the sunglare off the cracked screen under his fingertips.

The familiar patterns of Persona 3 take Kenma’s mind off Kuroo’s machinations and his role as the victim of them and smooth out the jagged compression articles of his mood by the time they’re at the train station. He lets Kuroo swipe his Pasmo card in the reader so he doesn’t have to bother. Kuroo slips the card back into Kenma’s backpack with a pat on his elbow to guide him to the right side of the platform into the murmur of the wind.

With barely a blink between moments, Kenma finds himself sitting in the train, wedged between the arm of the seat and Kuroo’s knee. The seating runs along the side of the train car, and Kuroo has bent one leg under himself, caging Kenma securely, and rests his elbow on the back of the seat, looking out the window. Whatever renderings Kenma’s brain is capable of, they still fall short of the real thing right next to him.

Kuroo’s fringe casts one of his eyes into shadow and leaves the other to pale under the sun. His face is still, un-grinning, just a slight pull to his pointed brows and eyes—but whether it’s from thought or against the sun, Kenma can’t make out. It’s the kind of stillness that only happens in moving vehicles.

Kenma likes trains. Not to the point of wanting to travel in them for long distances or taking pictures of them or caring what model he’s riding in, but for this. For the moment when he can’t do anything except be moved by an external force. Being one of those bob-by things on fishing nets. A volleyball that’s being volleyed across the net, just floating.

And sometimes like this, Kuroo looks like a different person with the same face. Like somebody Kenma doesn’t even know, and a sweep of uncertainty overtakes him, making him want to push Kuroo’s hair back and look in his eyes and ask him questions only he would know the answers to.

“You haven’t been transported to a different universe,” Kuroo says lightly, his eyes tracking from the distance back to Kenma. The sun flits between the spaces of his shaggy hair and short, dark lashes. The dip above his upper lip is in shadow. Kenma releases his breath.

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

“Were too,” Kuroo says with the calm self-assurance of somebody who knows the truth.

Kenma looks down at his PSP, but doesn’t unpause his game. Kuroo isn’t strictly wrong. Kenma hates isekai stories. The sheer anxiety of being thrown into a new world or universe without knowing how anything works. He’s barely got this one figured out. It had happened to Kuroo. It had as-good-as-happened to Kuroo when his parents had got divorced and he’d moved to Tokyo with his father.

The train car is not empty, but it’s not full either. Kuroo tilts his head closer and jams his knee tighter into Kenma’s hip. He stretches his arm along the back of the seat to rest behind Kenma’s head so that he can hook his thumb into the collar of Kenma’s blazer, enough for Kenma to feel it, like a grounding wire.

“Kenma.”

Kenma turns his face away before Kuroo can bump their foreheads together. He knows he’s making a face, can feel the pinched wrinkle on top of his nose and the tension in his lower jaw from gritting his teeth. He tucks his chin against his chest and lets his hair bracket his vision until it narrows down to his PSP. The console comes out of standby, and the screen turns back on, displaying the pause menu. He continues his game with Kuroo’s thumb just touching the hair on the back of his neck, and Kuroo turning to look back out the window as the train weaves deeper into the heart of the late-afternoon city.

The many Shinjuku arcades glitter even during daytime. Kenma drags his feet on the smooth asphalt, unconcerned and unmotivated by the twinkling invitations to step into the loud spaces.

“Where to?” Kuroo asks him anyway.

“You pick,” Kenma says and gets a grin in response, with Kuroo gently nudging him through an automatic door that greets them in a sweet and polite robo-girl voice. The entrance is lined with UFO catchers and money exchange machines.

Kenma likes UFO catcher games. They require patience and hand-eye-coordination, both of which he’s good at. Doing the same thing until success. Or until Kuroo gets impatient and demands to have a try. He isn’t bad at them either. Their many musics intermingle into a cacophony as Kenma peers into the rainbow-lit machines to see what they have for prizes. Many of the see-through plastic window panes are smudged with hand and nose prints against the lights.

But Kuroo pulls him deeper into the kaleidoscope. “Not yet! We need to move first.”

“You mean you,” Kenma mutters, his sleeve in Kuroo’s grasp.

“And you,” Kuroo says with infuriating self-assurance. With a sweep of his free arm, Kuroo introduces Kenma to the bank of DDR machines. “It’s not dancing, it’s a game.”

“How dare you,” Kenma says.

Kuroo holds his hand to his chest as though he’s about to exclaim what a kind and thoughtful person he is, but instead he just keeps grinning, the happiness in his eyes glittering with all the lights of the machines around them, making them gold and pink and blue and gold again.

“You said it, not me,” he says, forcing Kenma to re-live the moment when he’d actually uttered those words some years ago, after winning a sweaty dance battle against a gangly late-middle school Kuroo. “Which means it doesn’t count.”

Kenma mulls over his youthful indiscretions while trying to glare off Kuroo’s sweet, victorious grin. “Fine. I’ll see how you smile after I trash you at this again.”

If possible, Kuroo’s grin gets even more crooked. “You’re on, apple pie.”

“You’ll be buying me some,” Kenma says, letting his backpack slide off and tugging his arms into the sleeves of his blazer to remove it. Kenma doesn’t lose at games. He’s vastly better with controllers or the keyboard and mouse, but he has the benefit of shorter limbs and trajectories for DDR—Kuroo may have the longer stride, but Kenma has the more precise one.

“Oh, yeah?” Kuroo is goading him, but Kenma lets him. Kenma always lets him. He even keeps eye-contact while shaking off his blazer, its sleeves inside out.

“Yeah,” Kenma grunts, getting onto the arrow pad. Kuroo steps up next to him, loosening his tie and flashing his crooked fang in Kenma’s direction.

“Okay, Kenken,” Kuroo says, feeding money into the machine, with the lights of the arcade tangling up in his hair.

“Bring it, Longcat,” Kenma mutters, grabbing the bar behind the dance pad as Kuroo scrolls through the selection of songs and levels.

“I’d forgot about that,” Kuroo laughs. “Longcat,” he marvels, stretching up to his full cloudscraper height. “Ready?”

Ready? repeats the monitor, and Kenma nods, stomping on the forward button to confirm. When the music starts and the arrows begin to scroll up, his fingers twitch against the bar he’s holding for balance, looking for the familiar composition of the PS controller, before the input reaches his feet instead, starting to move. His field of vision is just the right size to see his side of the monitor and nothing else. It’s fine if Kuroo wants to compete on his turf. Even if it’s a dance game, it’s still a game. Even Kuroo had said that. It’s not dancing.

The machine rattles under the speed and weight of their movements. Kuroo’s flailing elbow almost nails Kenma in the head. Kenma adjusts, eyes glued to the screen, his brain transforming the visual signals to directional ones in his legs. He isn’t perfect—he isn’t even good—but he’s better than Kuroo. The first song ends in Kenma’s win by almost a thousand points. He holds out his hand without thinking until the sting of Kuroo slapping it with his own makes it through his curtain of concentration.

“Good one, Kenma,” Kuroo says, hardly even out of breath, but still grinning with even more colour and sound. He rolls up his sleeves before selecting the next stage. And the next. And the next. Until Kenma’s knees are shaking and his breath travels in damp puffs hard enough to make his hair billow and stick to his forehead.

“Co-op?” Kuroo offers, his hair a little flatter with sweat. He doesn’t pant like Kenma, but he’s breathing harder too, shoulders heaving and chest expanding. His left collarbone peeks from the gap of his unbuttoned top button and loose tie above the cut of the sweater vest.

“Okay,” Kenma says to the gleaming collarbone, washed in the lights of the arcade. Kuroo holds out his hand, palm up, and Kenma smacks it tiredly. The stage Kuroo chooses is slower, and the prompts travel from side to side, giving each of them fewer steps per minute. A cooldown from the earlier exercise. They do two in a row.

“I needed that,” Kuroo says when it’s over, the machine displaying their joint score with a fanfare.

“Are you going to make me stretch now?” Kenma steps off the pad, heel slipping on the edge. His grasp on the support bar is the only thing that keeps him from falling onto his ass. Kuroo’s hand is there a second later, supporting Kenma’s elbow.

“Do you think I should?” Kuroo asks. His mouth is amused, but his eyes chew Kenma up from top to bottom to make sure he’s unhurt. The machines next to theirs are empty now, but there are more people in the arcade in general, which means the ambient noise level is also higher. Kenma hadn’t noticed it while concentrating.

“I don’t want to,” Kenma says, avoiding the rest of Kuroo’s long, pointed gaze and touch by crouching to collect his belongings into a pile on the floor. A hair tie with two sparkling cherries dangles into his field of view from above.

“Your neck’s sweaty,” Kuroo says. “Use this.”

Kenma stops himself from immediately sweeping up his hair off his neck and revealing that Kuroo is right. “Where’d you get that?”

“Mika-chan.” Kuroo snatches the hair tie back up, but presses it around Kenma’s wrist when Kenma gets up. “UFO catcher time.”

“H-home time,” Kenma argues, limbs discombobulated by too many simultaneous actions: trying take off Daishou’s girlfriend’s hair tie, trying to follow Kuroo, trying to shoulder his backpack, trying to convince Kuroo that there’s no further need for recreation for the rest of the month. Why does Kuroo have Daishou’s girlfriend’s hair tie? Why does Kenma have it now?

He shuffles after Kuroo, his arms full, dodging other arcade patrons and noise. Kuroo acts as a breakwater, but only for himself when he’s too far ahead as if afraid to look back. Kenma catches up to him haunting the bright cubes of UFO catcher claw games and their cheap prizes. There’s a group of middle schoolers around the next one over, their faces almost pressed into the already smudged plastic, yelling encouragement to the one operating the claw.

“I don’t want this,” Kenma mutters, trying to shove the hair tie at Kuroo, who barely budges from his spot in front of the claw machine controls. Kenma lets the hair tie drop on the floor.

“These are keychains,” Kuroo says brilliantly, as if Kenma has no eyes. “I’m going to get you one.” He starts counting out his money, talking at the same time. “I saw Mika-chan last week by chance. We had tea and complained about Daishou.”

“Kuro,” Kenma says, uncomfortable, trying to take as little space as possible as people pass by. Kuroo draws him under his arm.

“I’ll get you that one.” He points into the sea of pastel, plastic eggs. It’s as if he’s trying to point out a constellation in the light pollution of Tokyo, and Kenma has no idea which one Kuroo means.

“I can get my own keychain,” Kenma says. Kuroo palms the back of his sweaty neck briefly, pushing aside his hair. It doesn’t cool Kenma down in the slightest—quite the opposite.

“With that finger?” Kuroo huffs. “Besides, I want to get you one.” Kuroo turns to give Kenma a glimpse of his fang, while picking up the hair tie off the floor and putting it back in his pocket. “I’ll just give this back to Mika-chan in front of Daishou some day. Make him sweat.”

Kenma rubs his fingers together, picking at the plaster again. One hangnail—one treated hangnail wouldn’t stop him from playing a claw game. “You have a terrible personality.”

Kuroo’s grin just grows, curving up his cheek as he feeds coins into the machine, then fiddles with the controls, unperturbed by the middle schoolers cheering at the next claw game over. Kenma sinks against the machine next to him, digging out his phone, uncomfortably damp in his school uniform. He flicks through the screens of his phone, back and forth, a restless habit for when his focus is drained but he needs to calm down. The discordant environment and the lights glancing off his phone make it difficult.

“Five tries,” Kuroo says. The egg slips from the claw. “Ah. Four tries.”

It helps when there’s a deadline, a clear objective, a countdown. Kenma can handle Kuroo’s four- three tries at getting the right pastel egg from the ball pit even though he’s tired and over-encumbered. As long as he keeps his head down and his back against something sturdy to prop himself up.

Kuroo grunts and groans while he grapples with the controls, making a variety of sounds not known to nature until they leave his clenched mouth. Even the middle schoolers at the next machine look interested, and Kenma wants to crawl under the air hockey table.

“Oh. O-ho!” Kuroo crows then, making the whole machine shake with his enthusiastic joystick control. “Kenma! You’re not even looking!”

Kenma, if possible, averts his eyes even more, turning three-fourths of the way away from facing Kuroo and looking only at his phone. The claw machine shakes and clatters and soon Kuroo holds out his hand in Kenma’s vision, cradling a pastel blue egg. Kenma shies away like their home street cat when he doesn’t want to be petted, but Kuroo commandeers one of Kenma’s hands off his phone and pulls him towards the exit. Kuroo’s hand is damp and hot.

It’s easiest to look at people when they’re not looking back. Eye-contact is a burden on society, but watching Kuroo when he’s looking away makes Kenma tick like a clock. Steady and wound up.

“Put your blazer on,” Kuroo says on the street where lights and lanterns have begun to shine with the sun gone behind the buildings. “You’ll get cold.” While Kuroo gets the plastic egg open, Kenma pulls his blazer back on, pushing indiscriminately through the sleeves he’d turned inside out before. One of them bunches up and sticks and Kenma flails his arm until he gets the knot out.

Sometimes, when Kenma looks up from his screens, Kuroo’s there, cheek pillowed on his hand, just looking. Sometimes he’s smiling. Sometimes the ever-sharpening edges of his face are soft. Kenma ticks like an over-excited metronome when that happens. New sweat breaks across his skin when he gets his blazer on and Kuroo is there again, looking straight at him, eyes alight and holding out a small plastic keychain.

“It’s... an egg?” Kenma mutters, avoiding Kuroo’s eyes out of habit. The yolk has a worn-out face, and it lies on the egg white as though defeated. The plastic egg insides that came from a plastic egg leave Kenma nonplussed.

“It’s Gudetama!” Kuroo says. “It looks just like you.”

“I think you’re projecting.”

Kuroo snorts with laughter. “You mean I’m hungry?” He takes the shiny plastic egg back and bends it curiously between his fingers, then attaches it onto his own bag below the Jiji charm eyes because he knows Kenma has no intention of taking it.

“Aren’t you?” Kenma says, grasping the straps of his backpack and turning to go down the narrow street.

“I feel like soba,” Kuroo says, proving Kenma right. “Hot or cold? I’ll buy. I know you’re saving up for a PS Vita.”

“Why do you keep doing that?” Kenma mutters, instantly defeated. The street is crowded, and the store windows blink with lights and advertisements. There’s a crepe shop at the corner, its wall displaying the whole variety of crepes and waffles they sell in plastic perfection. Kenma almost stops to look for an apple pie filling, but it’s better to keep up with Kuroo’s whitewater wake where there are people.

“Doing what?” Kuroo’s sleeves are bunched up to his elbows as if he doesn’t get cold after sweating.

“Anticipating me,” Kenma says at the ground.

“Do I do that?” Kuroo drags Kenma away from the flow of people in the middle of the pathway. They go past the FamilyMart and duck into the high-ceilinged, air-conditioned luxury of an indoor shopping street. Or, in their case, a shortcut.

Kenma doesn’t think Kuroo’s that dense or self-unaware that he doesn’t know what he’s doing to and with Kenma, so he doesn’t bother with a reply. It’ll just be a pointless affirmative, wasting air and energy. Kenma thinks this while paused in front of a gaming store, ignoring the music and the automated greetings and the salespeople offering packets of tissues from the doorways of their respective little stores. He watches the Journey trailer on the display screen of the store.

“Journey was good,” Kuroo says after Kenma shifts, breaking the moment. “So good.”

“I wanted to play it with you,” Kenma says, turning away from the garish window, purple and green aftershocks of the lights still dancing in his eyes as he looks up at Kuroo, meeting his eyes, not his nostrils.

“I was there the whole time,” Kuroo says. They move away from the window and through the indoor mall, looking for somewhere to eat.

“I wanted you to be in the game,” Kenma says. There’s a difference. Kuroo had sat next to him, elbow to his elbow, the whole playthrough, sniffling at the end, but he hadn’t been with the avatar of Kenma inside the game, running and flying across the sands.

“I’ll play some Wii Sports with you,” Kuroo says. He doesn’t own a single gaming console, and his laptop isn’t powerful enough to run much more than browser games, but he had been excited for Wii Sports. Tennis elbow isn’t on Kenma’s list of acceptable gaming-related injuries, but he still feels a pang of sympathy for his near-abandoned Wii, shoved under his bed because he rarely uses it. But honestly it’s Nintendo’s own fault for concentrating so much on local co-op. Some people don’t have friends.

Kuroo now, walking beside Kenma, has his hands in the pockets of his trousers and his blazer folded over the messenger bag he wears for school. “You pick the game. I’ll play anything,” he says when they step out of the mall corridor and onto the street where low-slung power cables checker the still-light sky into palatable pieces. 

“Badly,” Kenma mutters, and Kuroo bumps into him gently.

“I have other skills,” Kuroo says. “Don’t I?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because you watch me enough to know.”

While true, Kenma resents the fact being exposed in words. His nose wrinkles of its own accord. “Do not.”

“Oho. Do too,” Kuroo says victoriously and guides Kenma under the fabric dividers over the restaurant door and into the dingy little space, which is filled with humid, dashi broth-tinged air, like stepping into a noodle bowl. 

The heat curls up under Kenma’s hair and shirt like an unwanted guest, making him feel the weight of his polyester sweater vest and the time spent stomping the DDR machine. Even Kuroo’s hair wilts at the ends, and his face fills with an expectant blush. Kenma also resents that a blush on Kuroo makes him look energised and bright-eyed instead of a disgruntled tomato like Kenma. Or a tired egg. The Gudetama keychain gleams with soft plastic smoothness, hanging from Kuroo’s bag, offering Kenma a glimpse of his future.

“Do not,” Kenma says under his breath as they stuff themselves into the tiny booth, glaring at Kuroo from the window of his hair. Kuroo’s knees bang against his under the table, and Kuroo’s elbow almost takes down the soy sauce station as he tries to fit into a space meant for people much shorter. “I’m not even hungry.”

“Kenma, my tired little egg,” Kuroo says. “Soba is good for you. It contains essential amino acids and antioxidants, you know. It’s the buckwheat.”

Kenma’s heard this before. Kuroo is probably going to live to be a thousand years old with his interest in nutrition. Kenma is going to die of spite at 45. “Really,” he says flatly, sinking into his seat with his head bowed over the PSP.

“Histidine,” Kuroo starts, and Kenma only sighs, letting Kuroo go off. “Isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine.”

Kenma nods along to the familiar cadence of Kuroo’s voice, letting it and the weight of the PSP between his hands calm him down. The clank and hiss of the kitchen and the calls of welcome! become background. Kuroo taps his finger against the tablecloth, which is patterned with pictures of cute noodle bowls and fishcakes, then waves at the waiter to place their order.

Kenma has his game muted. His senses are overlaid by the pop music on the radio on the restaurant’s counter, the voices of the patrons and the cooks, and the sudden smell of scallions and curry sauce as the waiter brings the people in the next booth their food. The old wood-panelling, yellowed tablecloth, and warmth colour the moment golden. Kenma sneaks a peek up at Kuroo, who is leaning his face on his palm and has his eyes closed. His lashes create little curved shadows on the tops of his cheeks, and the squish of his palm against his face deforms his sharp edges just the tiniest bit.

Kenma moves his legs incrementally forwards until he catches Kuroo’s ankle between his own, making Kuroo look up. His lip curls the smallest amount, and he reaches across the table to touch his finger along the ridges of Kenma’s knuckles, wrapped around the PSP. But his eyebrows are tilted up in the middle, and Kenma focuses on that.

“Kuro. You look-”

“Handsome and kind?”

“You’re deflecting because you’re insecure,” Kenma says relentlessly. Kuroo’s fingertips sneak just inside the cap of Kenma’s blazer sleeve, tracing the seam of Kenma’s wrist, slow and warm against his pulse. The pause menu graphics loop on the screen under Kenma’s nose, and he runs his thumbs over the buttons on either side of it. “Is it about volleyball?” he asks.

“You’ll understand a year from now,” Kuroo says with a ghost of his usual grin.

“Suffer, then,” Kenma mutters, hunching over his game again, pulling his shoulders in, but leaving his toes hooked around Kuroo’s ankle and Kuroo’s fingers in his sleeve.

“I’m just feeling nostalgic about my youth,” Kuroo murmurs, literally forcing Kenma to give him a disbelieving glare.

“Because you’re turning 40 this year instead of 18?” Kenma shakes Kuroo’s fingers out of his sleeve just in time to make room for their food. One of the soba portions is topped with tofu and the other with mushrooms; both bear steam veils that pour upwards between Kenma and Kuroo’s faces, blurring the already-worn edges of the restaurant.

“I have a lot of feelings,” Kuroo says, cracking apart a pair of chopsticks and pushing them towards Kenma.

“Too many.” Kenma saves his game and shuts off the PSP, waiting for Kuroo to place his hands together and copying his pose. “Thanks for the food,” they mutter in tandem.

“Don’t say it,” Kenma says when Kuroo opens his mouth and stabs the chopsticks into the kitsune soba. When Kuroo has feelings overflow, Kenma is also often forced into feeling some type of way because of his cursed human empathy, but he’s not about to do it in public. Their legs scuffle under the table, Kuroo’s knee banging on the underside of it and making their dishes rattle. Kenma eats all the nameko mushrooms off the soba in retaliation. Not because he particularly likes them, but because Kuroo does, and Kenma is that petty.

Kuroo polishes off most of the soba after Kenma gives up on his spite-eating, and when he’s done, he stacks the bowls and gets up to swing his bag onto his shoulder. His back is to the rest of the restaurant, so he doesn’t see the man at the table next to theirs get red-faced and leap up from his chair just as the waiter arrives with an order of hot soba and rice. The noodles and the boiling hot broth splash onto Kuroo’s back. A line of soup splashes across their table, and a droplet of it even reaches Kenma’s cheek.

The man piles another outburst on top of the previous, his face reaching critical purple mass as he screams at Kuroo and the server both. Kenma digs his fingers into his thighs and stares at the back of Kuroo’s neck, dotted with furikake and turning an angry red. The boiling hot noodle broth. It must have spilled all down his back. Burning.

“Kuro.” Kenma’s knees almost buckle as he stands up. The server is bowing. The man is screaming. Kenma’s ears roar with discomfort. Kuroo’s hands are in fists at his sides, stuck in place. “Kuro!” Kenma grabs his wrist and wrenches Kuroo around, but aims his scowl if not his eyes at the server. “Where is the restroom?” He doesn’t raise his voice, and he doesn’t try to de-escalate the situation. That’s not his problem.

He drags Kuroo in the direction where the server had glanced and shoves him into the tiny restroom. “Take off your shirt,” he says, already pulling Kuroo’s bag from him.

“I’m okay,” Kuroo says, but tugs his soggy sweater vest over his head anyway, followed by the tie and then unbuttoning the shirt underneath. The space is barely enough for them to be standing side by side, so Kenma climbs on top of the toilet seat, hands already filled with wet tissues, which he presses into Kuroo’s bright red neck and back as soon as it’s undressed. Kuroo hisses long between his teeth, especially as Kenma mops up the furikake from the back of his neck.

Kenma vibrates with unfortunate energy while Kuroo rinses his sweater vest in the sink. With the height of the toilet seat added to his, Kenma can’t catch Kuroo’s eyes in the mirror, so he just stares at the back of Kuroo’s bright red neck, patting the wet paper down to where the worst red tarnish is.

“Maybe we’ll get free food,” Kuroo says, facing down.

“You already paid,” Kenma mutters. Kuroo squeezes the sweater vest as dry as he can, then wads it up with the shirt.

“I was going to do laundry anyway,” Kuroo says, this time turning his head enough to let Kenma see his tilted fang and small grin. “Maybe we’ll get a free carrier bag for these.”

Kenma sniffs and peels away the sodden paper, feeling cramped inside his own head for all the frustration that’s built up. “It’s not fine,” he mutters, standing watch over Kuroo as he digs out his gym t-shirt and Nekoma track jacket and slings them across his splotchy shoulders, almost a matching colour to the jacket. Kenma crouches on the toilet lid and buries his face in his knees, folding his arms over his head, the space inside his head becoming even smaller.

“I smell like seaweed,” Kuroo says, ruffling the hair on the back of Kenma’s head. “Smell me.”

“No.” Kenma swipes at Kuroo’s hand, trying to drive it away.

“Come on.” Kuroo sniffs, probably at himself. “Take a whiff of this.” Kuroo wraps his arm around Kenma’s head, swaddling him in the smell of the noodle broth and—even more so—the scent of Kuroo and faint echo of laundry detergent.

“Stop it,” Kenma grumbles. “Kuro.”

“What? No. Seriously.” Kuroo rubs his armpit across Kenma’s head.

Instead of pushing Kuroo off, Kenma turtles, pulling himself into a tighter ball. Even though he hadn’t been the cause of the scene outside, he’d been a part of it. The thought of people waiting to look at him when they come out of the toilet makes his skin cold. They’ll see Kenma. They’ll perceive him. Even worse, they might remember him afterwards. Tell their families and friends.

“I live here now.” Kenma resigns to his fate. Kuroo stops trying to rouse him with the power of odour and crouches down instead, knees wide apart to accommodate for the toilet as he leans on the door.

“How do you want to deal with the sleeping arrangements?” Kuroo asks, placing a hand around Kenma’s ankle, bared between the top of his sock and the hem of his trousers. “Sleep in shifts? I figured we’d have to live in a 1LDK when we moved out together, but this is a little smaller than that. But, I mean, at least food’s close.”

“Kuro.”

“Getting any of your consoles in here is going to suck. Is there even an outlet to plug them in?”

“You’re embarrassing.”

“You’re the one who wants to live with me in a restaurant toilet.”

Kenma pulls his head up to glare at Kuroo, grinding his teeth. Kuroo has his cheek resting on his knuckles and his elbow braced on his knee, looking up at Kenma. His eyes are half-lidded like a restful cat’s. Kuroo isn’t smiling, but he might as well be grinning from ear to ear. His amusement curls around him like a long, black tail—like his hand around Kenma’s ankle.

“Let me out,” Kenma says. There’s little space to make an exit without Kuroo’s cooperation.

“Already?” Kuroo’s fang comes out as his lips stretch and split in the expected grin. He stands up and dusts the knees of his trousers. Opening the restroom door floods the small space with new food smell and a further humid heat that sticks to Kenma’s cheeks as he steps off the toilet with shaky legs and follows Kuroo out into the seating area. Kenma doesn’t look up, but he sees the feet of the server come their way. Bows and apologies commence, and Kenma leaves Kuroo to deal with that while he slinks outside.

The air is cool and a little crisp, like a firm apple, but instead of a sweet or tart taste, Kenma’s mouth is sour. He takes out his PSP, and the light of its screen is surprisingly bright, which lets him realise the evening has begun to darken in earnest. He idles in the inventory menu, standing just behind the restaurant’s little standing advertisement, in a space between it and the wall and a potted plant where nobody will approach him, in the shadow away from the row of red plastic lanterns hung above the entrance.

Kuroo finds him there  as soon as he comes out, hefting two plastic bags in victory. The lanterns turn his eyes red. “Free apology food and a bag for my wet clothes,” he says. Kenma doesn’t remember having a  conversation about them living together at all, but there’s no point in bringing it up now, so he attaches himself to the familiar sight of Kuroo’s red jacket as they wind their way through the lit alleyways to the metro station.

The lighting goes from dim yellow lanterns against darkening blue to cool neons of pink and purple and then to the impersonal white of the metro station. The air is cool there too, but dull and tasteless as it comes through the massive AC turbines in the ceiling. The recycled air dries both Kenma’s eyes and his throat, but he’s good at keeping his head down. And while Kuroo probably knows Kenma’s struggling, he won’t bring it up in public, just stands near Kenma like a firewall, a head above everybody else.

Kenma doesn’t think he breathes once until they exit the metro journey at the other end, walking along the quieter streets of the Nerima ward’s Shakujii river park where the lighting comes from sparse streetlamps. Even the PSP is dark. There are clouds now, blocking the sky. It smells like rain and river water.

“Are those fireflies?” Kuroo says, but of course they aren’t. It’s too early. Kenma still looks towards the water, breathing in the cool air. With breath comes words.

“No,” he says. “Are we going to move in together?”

“Yeah. Aren’t we?”

“Are we?”

They side-eye each other for the length of a half a dozen steps or so, shrouded in the shadow and chill between two lamps. When they reach the edge of the next lit area, Kuroo’s fringe leaves one of his eyes in dramatic shade and elongates his nose.

“...Aren’t we?” he says with the slightest delay borne of uncertainty, belying his harshly defined appearance.

Even though the harshness is created by outside forces and not by himself. Kenma wants to say a lot of things. “Is that what you want?” he only says.

“Yeah.” Kuroo picks up his pace, and Kenma shuffles along, grasping at the straps of his backpack a little bit too hard. “Yeah, it’s what I want,” Kuroo says more forcefully. “I want to live with you. As soon as possible.” Kuroo’s attempt at running a hand through his hair is aborted because of both of his hands being occupied with bags, so he just waves them awkwardly. If it’s going to rain, who’s going to hold the umbrella? Kenma’s arms will tire holding it up high enough to cover Kuroo. Not that he won’t try for him.

“But,” Kenma says. “Why?”

Kuroo’s hasty stride slows down, and he looks at Kenma. “Don’t you want to live with me?”

Kenma considers the wind that smells like spring and waterborne plants. He considers their oddly-shaped friendship, the clock that ticks in his chest only for Kuroo. “I’ve never thought about it,” he admits, facing down at his feet. “I’ve never thought about moving anywhere.”

“Never?” Kuroo says, and Kenma shrugs.

Kenma has never moved. He’s lived in the same house on the same street all his short years—now half of them with Kuroo right next door. “Are you going to move out next year?” he asks, struck by this new idea of not living next door to Kuroo. By the realisation that Kuroo has some sense of the shape of his future, unlike Kenma.

“It’ll be cheaper to stay,” Kuroo says by way of answer, untroubled by the concept of commuting. He lays another strangely uncertain look at Kenma’s feet like a cat leaving a half-alive mouse at the door. Kenma isn’t sure he wants that look to be elaborated upon in public. He shrinks back and ducks his head again.

“I really need a bath,” Kuroo says, giving them both an out, then jostles Kenma’s shoulder. “Look! A tanuki!”

It’s not yet entirely dark, but Kenma has no idea how Kuroo has spotted anything in the murky green twilight of the riverside park where the clouds press down on them. He sees nothing but swaying plants, and then the handles of the plastic bags as Kuroo shoves them at him in his quest to get his phone.

“Bokuto doesn’t think they’re real!” Kuroo hisses, attempting to frame the animal in the viewfinder of his phone and leaving Kenma to deal with the weird, desperate aching and tingling in his hands and feet over their discussion.

“That’s a cat,” he mutters.

“Tanuki are real!” Kuroo dives into the shrubs, phone outstretched.

“Yeah, but that one’s just a cat,” Kenma says to the empty riverside walk as Kuroo disappears on his chase. After a moment, a grey cat with a short tail dashes across the road a few metres in front of Kenma. He doesn’t wait for Kuroo to come back, but keeps going, dragging Kuroo’s bags, somewhat mindful of the one containing food.

This is the edge of the map. In a game it would mean either an invisible wall or a warning to turn back. In real life there are no such precautions to keep people inside the playable area. Kenma slouches to a new stop, staring at the ground just in front of his feet. He doesn’t feel the need to push his limits or leave his comfort zone or whatever—that’s for people who want to wear clothes with toggles and straps and go rock climbing.

Change isn’t as easy as games, as Kenma is bitterly aware. He starts when Kuroo surfaces from the shrubs nonchalantly and joins him on the footpath.

“It was a cat,” Kuroo says, unembarrassed. When he steps over the edge, so does Kenma.

“Why don’t you get Akaashi to tell him tanuki are real?”

“Because Akaashi thinks I’m a pain in the ass,” Kuroo says, showing an alarming amount of self-awareness. “And it’s way less funny that way.”

“Are you bullying Bokuto?”

“Kenma!” Kuroo gasps, betrayed. Kenma doesn’t fall for his theatrics. 

“You owe me apple pie,” he says.

“Yeah, I know,” Kuroo replies, nudging into his side with all the exaggerated emotion gone.

“Frozen taiyaki doesn’t count.”

“I will get you actual apple pie,” Kuroo promises.

There is a shrine on the corner of their home street, currently occupied by a frog. Around it are various pots and planters of flowers, and then a fence. The street is only wide enough for one car to pass at a time. The frog says kero, and the little cat god of their street says kekek, whiskers stiff like bristles, staring at the frog from the top of the fence. When they pass by, the cat reaches down with a paw and attempts to swipe at Kuroo’s eye. Kuroo claps his hands twice and bows.

“Thank you for the blessing,” he says, then peels away from Kenma, circling the red flower pot. “Take a bath!” he says. “I’ll be over in a few.”

“It’s too early for a bath,” Kenma murmurs in defeat, giving the unaffected cat an accusing glare. There have been few blessings in Kuroo’s day, and Kenma is ready to blame the cat for it. “I hope it rains,” he whispers. “So you’ll get wet.” He only pets the cat once, then snatches his hand back and exerts the last of his energy to limp home, falling over the edge of the genkan and laying on the floor until his father passes by in the hallway.

“Welcome home,” he says.

“I’m home,” Kenma replies, face smushed against the floorboards. “Kuro is coming.”

“Don’t let him do your homework for you,” his father says and disappears into his study. “Dinner’s on the table.”

Kenma drags himself upstairs, not giving into his exhausted desire to walk up the stairs on all fours, which is what he did as a child. He leaves the bath to fill up while he takes off his distress-sticky school uniform and shoves it all in the washing machine. It is early for a bath, but he wouldn’t be able to concentrate the least bit on his homework with an itchy scalp and the stale dampness living underarm.

Bathing is a process that is best started from the top. Kenma’s had the same routine for years. It’s boring, but thorough. Sometimes there are extra steps, like peeling off a plaster that wasn’t needed in the first place. The squidgy, rubbery thing with its waterproofing clings to him stubbornly as he tries to find a raised edge with carefully blunted nails. Like trying to find the edge of the transparent tape. Going round and round, while the shower hisses and the bath fills.

If Kenma is ever going to live with anybody else than his parents, it would be Kuroo. Like some type of family. Like some type of relationship. The thought loops in Kenma’s brain like his fingertip around the smooth plaster until he finds enough of an opening to peel it off. But the thought never really finishes.

He scrubs himself, then lifts himself into the hot bath, sinking up to his nose, curled up in the corner of the small tub. When things stay the same, he doesn’t have to think about them. Moving in with Kuroo in the future doesn’t change anything now, so he lets the unfinished thought seep out of his head into the water, starting awake from his daze with a knock on the door.

“Are you still in the bath?” Kuroo asks, and Kenma isn’t surprised that it’s him and not his parents.

Kenma slips his arms up onto the lip of the bath. “Yeah.”

“Then come out already. You’ll overheat.”

“No, I won’t,” Kenma mutters, heaving his water-slippery body over the edge, only shaking slightly. “Because I’m not a child.”

“You will!” Kuroo calls out, and by the time Kenma gets out and dressed, Kuroo is gone and Kenma’s counter-argument is childishly belated.

“I did not overheat,” he says anyway upon entering his room. Kuroo has made himself at home, sitting on the floor by the bed, wearing a comfy set of sweats and having taken out the low folding table and set it with cups of tea and grape jello. Not apple pie, Kenma notes darkly. “Stop patronising me.”

“Then dry your hair,” Kuroo says even though his own hair is flat with recent dampness as well. “Or I will.”

It’s not much of a threat when Kenma folds himself on the floor between Kuroo’s long legs voluntarily, letting Kuroo take the towel around his neck and use it to squeeze the water from his hair that would otherwise be absorbed by the collar of his sweatshirt. Kenma takes the other end of the same towel and reaches up to do the same to Kuroo. The real end of winter is signalled by Kuroo not demanding they use a hairdryer on each other. Kenma hates the noise.

Under the cover of the towel, their foreheads almost touch, and Kenma is the first one to drop his arms, shoulders aching. “Are you done yet?” he sighs.

“Nope. Why? Gotta go fast again, Sanic?” Kuroo says, and Kenma’s face puckers in reaction. He knocks his forehead into Kuroo’s, making him back down.

“Does your back hurt?”

Kuroo pulls the towel off their heads and fluffs Kenma’s hair. “It’s a little sore.”

Kenma fiddles with his hangnail. “Are you going to take it easy tomorrow?”

“It’s not that sore.”

“Let me see.”

“Oho, is Kyanma worried about me?”

“Why are you like this?” Kenma mutters. He employs eye-contact, the most draining of human social gestures that doesn’t require actual physical touch, and stares until Kuroo’s face crumples like a napkin. Kuroo shuffles around and pulls his sweatshirt up over his head, leaving his arms in the sleeves and the bunched-up shirt under his chin while turning to look at Kenma over his shoulder.

“See?” he says. “No problem.”

A dark pink splash falls from the back of Kuroo’s neck to just under his shoulderblades. It stands out because his skin is still winter-pale. In the summer Kuroo tans darkly. Kenma takes out his sports bag from under the bed where it’s been stored with old games and consoles and pats through the pockets until he finds the half-empty, slightly sticky tube of Salonpas gel. He squirts a line of it onto Kuroo’s back and pats it all across the pinkened skin while Kuroo hangs his head forwards, spine curved under Kenma’s hands like a cat receiving pets. Kenma lingers just a little bit, having uncomfortable feelings and ticking in his chest.

“Is this what you wanted to do during Golden Week?” Kenma mutters and helps Kuroo put the sweatshirt back on without scraping off all the gel.

“Hm?” Kuroo turns and picks up the towel to wipe the remnants of the gel off Kenma’s hands.

“Coach said to do today what we wanted to do during Golden Week. Was this it for you? Just... more of the same?” Kenma’s voice becomes a mumble towards the end. He rubs his hands together, trying to dispel the sticky feeling from between his fingers.

“I like more of the same,” Kuroo says. “With you, anyway.”

Kenma sits with his legs akimbo, bending the soles of his feet together and grasping onto his toes as if about to stretch his inner thighs. They haven’t moved closer together or further apart in years. Kenma is pretty sure there’s space either way, but he has little motivation to force a change in any direction. Maybe when they move in together.

“Just more of the same?” he checks. Kuroo looks up from the towel he’d been folding, his cat-eyes peacefully half-lidded. He puts his elbow on top of the bed and leans on it.

“I want to sit on the engawa and eat watermelon,” he says, which is not a real answer. “And then go see the fireworks at the beach.”

“With me?”

“With you.”

“You want to live in a house with an engawa?” Kenma says. He feels bothered. Or something.

Kuroo nuzzles into his own bicep, closing his eyes as if to imagine it. “Yeah. A traditional house. Don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Kenma says, studying Kuroo’s relaxation. “You can eat watermelon anywhere.”

Kuroo opens his lantern eyes and smiles at Kenma. “I guess so.”

“But… with me?” Kenma checks again.

“With you,” Kuroo promises.

Kenma blinks the thought from his head, looking at his homework. “Will you do my homework for me?” he asks.

“I’ll help you do it,” Kuroo says archly, his smile flashing into a grin like a flame. The crooked fang catches onto his lower lip. Kenma stares at it, then turns towards the folding table and reluctantly piles up his notebooks. It’s not that his homework is hard, it’s just boring, and his attention wanders. Homework isn’t immediate enough, and he faceplants on his maths book.

“What about your homework?” Kenma grumbles, not wanting to be the only one suffering.

“Me?” Kuroo picks up one of the cups of clear jello and twists the plastic spoon apart from the top, then presses his hand to his chest, grinning unbearably. “My homework? It’s all done. Because I’m the kind of a person who values learning and-”

Kenma pulls his maths book over his head, which causes Kuroo to splutter in laughter. The aluminium top of the jello cup rasps as Kuroo pulls it open, and Kenma pushes the sides of the book on top of his head together, trying to squish himself between the pages.

“Golden Week is going to be great,” Kuroo says nonchalantly, the plastic spoon clattering against his teeth. “We’ll go against all new teams. We have promising first years-”

“And Lev.”

Kuroo cackles. “And good second years.”

“Best third years,” Kenma mumbles, pushing the book off his head in time to see Kuroo’s expression go practically gooey.

“Kenma,” Kuroo says softly, still grinning, still unbearable, but suffused through and through with affection, like red ink bleeding through paper. They haven’t moved closer, but they will.

Kenma sighs. “A whole week of volleyball.” A whole week away from his gaming gear.

“You’re excited,” Kuroo whispers, reaching to run his fingers through Kenma’s hair.

“Am not.”

“Are too,” Kuroo assures him, stroking his cheek. “You want to play volleyball.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.” Kuroo hums in satisfaction.

“If you’re trying to subliminally affect me, it’s not working,” Kenma says.

“And yet you’re the setter of my volleyball team, our brain, our control tower-”

“This is the worst. You’re the worst.” Kenma sits up, brushing Kuroo’s hand away and taking up his mechanical pencil. “I have homework. Go home. Are you making me lunch tomorrow?”

“Sure am,” Kuroo says easily, collecting himself. He leans his cheek on his palm and watches, making Kenma self-conscious about the numbers he’s scrawling into his notebook which have no relation to the problems in his maths textbook. “Any requests?”

“Make less.” Kenma ducks his head further down, nose almost touching the page.

Kuroo gives him a long, lingering silence until Kenma ticks his face a fraction upwards to see Kuroo giving him a similarly long, lingering look, waiting like the ambush predator he is. Kenma feels it all the way at the bottom of his spine and stomach. Kuroo’s had him again. Tricked with uncharacteristic silence to look and be seen looking.

“No,” Kuroo says happily, then pushes the other grape jello towards Kenma across the folding table. “Eat this.”

Kenma gives up on protesting the size of his free lunch by protesting something else. He touches the condensation-wet jello cup. “No. It’s warm.”

“It’s sweet.” Kuroo gets up and stretches—as if he needs to be any longer. He looks like he wants to say a whole lot of things, all of them plain as day on his face. Instead, he just steps towards the door and says, “Good night, Kenma.”

“Good night, Kuro,” Kenma says slowly, then digs into the warm and goopy jello. It’s still sweet, and the green muscat grapes are tart, and it’s soothing because it’s exactly what he wanted.

Kuroo peeks back into the room, just a tuft of almost-dry hair and a grin. “Do your homework and go to sleep early,” he says. “And brush your teeth.”

Kenma wrinkles his nose and ducks his head over the jello, and Kuroo’s laugh trails down the stairs where he says goodnight to Kenma’s parents before exiting the house. Kenma stills the urge to go wrench his window open because he doesn’t know if he wants to say something else to Kuroo or wave him goodbye. Or maybe just watch him go. When he stops thinking, he can hear the rattling of a sparse rain against his window. He gets up to look, but the street below his window is already empty, only dotted with raindrops.

The same rain creates a faraway backdrop to the game music in his headphones after he’s done with his homework. He uses a pen tablet to play osu! because it’s more precise that way. He sits curled up in his gaming chair and exists only as a reaction for an hour and a half, tapping and sliding and drawing melody. He starts away from the game when his mother appears in his doorway.

“I knocked,” she says when Kenma pulls off his headphones.

“It’s okay,” Kenma says, a little disoriented from being forced back to reality.

“I see more of Tetsurou-kun than you,” she says. “Have you eaten?”

“I ate with Kuro,” Kenma says, twirling the tablet pen in his fingers.

“Homework?” She nods her chin towards the books Kenma had left scattered across the floor and the table.

“Mm.” Kenma nods too.

“And tomorrow?” she asks.

“School. Practice,” Kenma says. “Kuro will make me lunch, so you don’t have to.”

“Bless his tall little heart,” she says fondly. “Taking on extra work like that. Isn’t he the captain now?”

“Yeah,” Kenma mutters, quietly rebelling against the idea that he’s work for Kuroo. “I’m going to live with him.”

His mother blinks at him. “Are you now?”

“In a few years,” Kenma adds for clarity, voice dwindling.

“Isn’t that just more work for him?” she asks. Her smile is small, but amused.

“I can take care of myself,” Kenma mumbles, dropping his gaze. He isn’t embarrassed, not really, but his stomach and cheeks are warm anyway.

“Prove it by hanging your school uniform up to dry properly,” she says. “You’ve left it in the machine. Then go to bed.”

She leaves him to process the fact that he still needs to put his clothes out for easy dressing in the morning. His tracksuit remains balled up in his bag, and his second uniform set is folded in his dresser. He shoulders the disappointment of not getting anywhere near the world record score for the song he’d been practising and puts his computer in sleep mode. He’s stiff from sitting still for so long and tries to pop his spine while trudging into the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth, then fetches the damp uniform and hangs it up to dry in his room.

After wishing his parents goodnight, he sets out his clothes—on a pile on his chair—and crawls into bed with his phone, not bothering to change out of his hoodie and sweatpants even though he knows he’ll get hot and have to do it later. Kuroo has sent him a selfie of kissing the Gudetama keychain on its round butt, and Kenma doesn’t know how he’s supposed to react to that, so he only sends a sticker of a sleeping fish, to which Kuroo replies with a sticker of a cat about to pounce, and Kenma knows from experience it’ll go on forever if he doesn’t stop responding. Kuroo has no self-discipline when it comes to having the last word.

He plays around on his phone for hours, drained but expectant.

Going to sleep is a long process.