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“So,” starts Kenma flatly. He is determined to not- show too much emotion. Because if he pouts, much less frowns, then Kuroo will lose it, and then the team will lose it, and he’ll have to go through another group hug, which he really just can't do again. His hair is mussed enough.
And, privately, he admits that he'd rather have a moment alone with Kuroo out here in the grass, next to bright plum blossoms staining the air with the smell of spring. Just a single memory, calm and warm and real, where Kuroo and he can be sincere and adult about graduation before their last afternoon at school together ended.
“So,” he says again, and then turns, and tries his hardest to not let his teeth click with how fast he closes his jaw.
“What are you doing?” comes strangled out of his mouth.
“What does is look like?”
Kuroo is fumbling with his uniform. His hair has been styled slightly neater so that his parents could take photos for the family. He’s staring uncomfortably deeply into Kenma’s eye. His face is a bit pink.
“No!” Kenma says, voice high and through clenched teeth as Kuroo offers it to him. “Put- put that away! Put that away!”
“Kenma,” says Kuroo, lowly. “I want you to have it. You don't have to accept my feelings, but… I'd rather you have it, anyways.”
“You're giving me your second button.”
“Yes.”
“But you know what that means.”
Kuroo frowns. “Do you really think so little of me?”
Kenma doesn't respond, instead feeling a warmth crawl up his neck. “Aghshh,” he lets out, weakly. “Hafgh.”
“This is the first time I've seen you so worked up a while.”
“I'm not worked up. You're worked up.”
Kuroo smiles, and his eyes crinkle. Kenma hates him.
“So…” Kuroo says, raising his eyebrows. “Can you please take it?”
Kenma picks the button from his palm. It's thin and smooth. His fingers feel weird from where they brushed Kuroo’s hand. Tingly.
“Is this really- not a joke?” he treads.
“I really wouldn't joke about being in love with you.”
Kenma feels like he should fall to his knees right there. Love. Love. This was like a scene from a VN, the weird BL ones where commitment was promised far too easily and everything was followed by passionate lovemaking.
“You’re thinking something weird,” says Kuroo, frowning.
“You said love.”
“We’re best friends. I love you either way.”
“Huh?”
Kuroo shifts on his feet, looks around. Kenma forgot that other people weren’t that far off- the main graduation stage was just some hundred feet away. He could even see Lev holding desperately onto Yaku, either hugging or a last-ditch effort on Lev’s part to forcibly prevent Yaku’s departure. Nekoma would be looking for them soon.
“I mean that I love you as my best friend. I'll probably always love you that way. And I like you a lot romantically, and I think I love you that way too. But even if I don't, I still love you like my best friend. So I love you either way.”
Kuroo ends this by looking up at him, somehow, even though he’s miles taller, but the sight makes Kenma’s heart speed up. It's so out of the blue and tender that Kenma could curl up and scream into his knees. It wasn't really fair. He wasn't good with words. Kuroo knew that.
“Not that you have to respond now,” Kuroo adds, “but also it would be nice if you could tell me how you feel back.”
He can't just say it, the way Kuroo could say it, he can't just-
“I love you too,” he says, furiously not making eye contact. “For the same reason. Or in the same way. Whatever.”
“You're too sweet.”
“I hate you.”
“I'm wounded.”
He covers his face with his hand, embarrassed and excited, the feelings churning in his stomach. This was happening.
And then Kuroo would leave in a week or two. The thought struck him with a startling vigor for a thought that he had been rolling in his head for the last year. But now it began a rotten feeling at the pit of his stomach, a feeling that he knew he could not let fester lest it ruined things before they began.
“Come over.”
Kuroo’s eyes widen. His face, which had just been starting to lose its flush, becomes rosy again. “Oh.”
“Sorry,” Kenma says, a bit breathless. “Was that too fast? I don't mean anything by it. I just.”
“Not too fast,” Kuroo gets out at last. “I mean, I've been to your house a thousand times already. I practically grew up there. Not too fast at all. Pretty much the opposite of that.”
“You're doing it again.”
“Sorry.” Kuroo smiles again, unsure, and the Kenma realizes he’s holding onto the button so hard that it almost hurts, where it’s lodged into the second knuckle of his ring and middle finger. The place where the button should be on Kuroo’s uniform is bold as day empty, frayed threads and all.
“Everyone will know,” says Kenma quietly. “When they see you. It’s obvious.”
“They’ll be wondering who I've been wooing with my superior romancing skills.”
“They'll be wondering why you're trying to use juvenile cliches to romance anyone.”
Kuroo laughs. “Is the romancing working, at least?”
Kenma doesn't answer this, and chooses to walk off instead towards where his house should be in another ten minutes. Kuroo follows him silently. Kenma doesn't need to look up to know he's wearing a face-splitting grin.
If he's being honest with himself, he knows that the reason he’s so worked up is because he was expecting for it. Or hoping for it. If he had not wanted it to happen, or not cared if it did, he would have taken the button silently, bowed his head at Kuroo and apologized for a lack of reciprocation, and understand that their friendship would go on unaffected.
But in some private corner of his mind he had wanted that Kuroo would say something, toss him a perfunctory sweet phrase to close their high school career together and give Kenma a fleeting, warm feeling. He had never entertained the idea of Kuroo confessing because it was almost too lavish a fantasy; too overwhelming, too outlandish, and yet it was happening now, it had just happened in the school lawn by a tree while Lev and Yaku were wrestling just some hundred paces away.
“I know it’s cheesy,” says Kuroo, hands in his pockets as he looks at the ground passing by. “But I thought you might like something like that. God knows you like those weird romance games.”
“Shut up,” Kenma retorts, mostly because it's true. It was not much, really, a button: a little circle of plastic, a bit of nothing that could be lost easily.
But it was Kuroo’s, which was one thing- and it was a little trinket of affection, which Kenma knew people liked regardless of how ephemeral or unparticular the memento was. Here is a piece of how I love you, it said, and it could’ve been a flower, or a small letter, or a hairpin, or a ring- well, Kenma would’ve died if it were a ring- and it would’ve been cherished the same.
Well, not quite, Kenma thinks, eyeing the spot on Kuroo’s uniform. Because this was also about them going to school together. This is how I loved you through all our time together at school, please remember the things we said, the lunches we had, the notes I passed. It was a little more heady.
They chat mildly about the weather, and Kuroo’s plans to move in a few weeks, Kenma’s final exams, and it feels so mundane that for a brief moment Kenma entertains the thought that it was an elaborate waking dream he devised if not for the button in his hand and the remarkable heat at the back of his neck, either from the sun beating down or embarrassment.
They arrive at Kenma’s before long, his mother reading the paper in the living room, barely looking up when she sees Kuroo trailing in with a muttered “Pardon the intrusion.”
“Tetsu-chan,” she says pleasantly. “Graduation went well?”
“Yes, obasan.”
“Are you staying for dinner?”
“If you'll have me,” he grins.
“Of course.” She looks back at her paper, waves them off. “Go, now, don't let me keep you.”
Kenma walks up the familiar steps to his room, feeling the heavy weight of Kuroo right behind him, and his presence is heavier, now, full of promise and expectation. Kuroo’s breath is right on his already-warm neck.
When they finally get to his room, Kenma turns around to face an awaiting Kuroo, eyebrows raised. The room is quiet except for the tick of a clock, unlit and a bit blue-dark with the shades drawn.
“Not to break the tension,” Kuroo says, looking down at him, “but why are we here?”
Kenma’s knees feel- watery. Kuroo’s face with his straight nose and awful hair is inches from his.
“I wanted to kiss you somewhere that doesn't mean it's over,” Kenma whispers.
Kuroo opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again. “Alright,” he finally settles on, and leans down and presses his lips against Kenma’s, a peck that feels so slightly wet he must have imagined it, that feels exciting and new but familiar, too.
When he pulls back, his eyes nearly bulge out of his head, because in the dimness it looks like Kenma’s undressing himself and maybe that is a bit too fast-
But no. It was Kenma ripping off his second button, and holding it up to him, like a coin or a shell or- well- a ring.
“You keep mine, too.”
“It’s for third years to do,” Kuroo croaks. “For graduation. Purposes.”
“I know. I don't care.” Kenma scowls. “I’m not giving my third year button to anyone. It’s already yours.”
Kuroo stares at him.
“I just mean-” Kenma says, frustrated, “-that it feels like you're giving me yours as a goodbye, but it’s not over. It hasn't even really begun. I'm giving you mine so that it's a promise. To stay together. Whatever way we want to stay together.”
Kuroo, at a loss for words, simply states, “Your mom’s going to have to buy a new uniform.”
“She can sew another button on later. Are you going to take it or not?”
Kuroo plucks it from Kenma’s fingers. “I'll keep it safe forever.”
Kenma turns away, his hair falling over his face. “Gross.”
“You’re gross. Kiss me again.”
Kenma has no objections to this.