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“I’m home, Kenma!"
Kenma doesn't look up from the stack of books in front of him, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, and it gives Kuroo a chance to observe without being noticed, a rare opportunity. He lets his eyes rake over the other male, noticing the way his shirt hung off his shoulders, the way the hem easily covers his knees, and it clicks.
Kenma’s wearing Kuroo’s shirt.
“Kenma, you do realize that’s mine, right?”
The blonde finally looks up, impatiently shoving his glasses back onto his face, sending Kuroo a blank look of derision. “Of course it’s yours,” he mutters, uncapping a highlighter and turning back to his book. “I’m doing laundry, and I like the way your clothes smell.”
Kuroo blinks, grin sliding it’s way onto his face as he stalks over, shifting aside a stack of papers to drape himself across his roommate’s lap. “We have the same laundry soap.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“It isn’t? I couldn’t tell. You’re getting too blunt in your old age. It’s Hinata’s Kageyama, isn’t it? That’s where you’re learning it from.” Kuroo gasps in mock-horror, grin widening.
“Shouyo’s Kageyama has nothing to do with it,” Kenma tells him, frowning down at the boy across his lap. “You’re ruining my papers. Aren’t you the one that told me I should stop playing so many games and focus on school work?”
“Only when it’s convenient for me, or you’re failing.” Kuroo pauses for a minute, letting Kenma scratch out a quote onto his paper. “Does this mean that I can wear your clothes now?”
“You’ll stretch them.”
“And then they’ll be more baggy for you.”
“…Fine."
He sees her from across the bar.
Tsukishima had left long ago, muttering pointedly about his boyfriend staying up, but Kuroo himself stayed, sipping on something that tasted better the more of it he drank.
The thing is, he doesn't know what caught his attention in the first place. Maybe it's her hair, dark roots showing against golden blonde, or the way she watches the bar, like a predator waiting for something interesting to come along. At any rate, Kuroo doesn't remember the conscious decision to get up and talk to her. It's probably something to do with the alcohol.
She laughs at all his stupid jokes, eyes slightly wide in a way that he takes to mean she's interested. He thinks he might have made a stupid comment about them, but at this point he doesn't even remember if he even told her his name.
All he knows is that when she smiles, sharp and unkind, and mutters something about her place, he follows.
Kuroo stumbles in at three, a time even later than usual, and it’s no surprise that Kenma’s sitting on their couch, fingers carefully mashing buttons on some handheld device. He’s wearing his glasses, the new red frames that Kuroo picked out, and the scene makes Kuroo’s stomach twist and knot.
He’s so fucked up.
“You’re back late.”
“Something came up,” Kuroo responds, and his voice is too fast, words slurring together in a jumble, and Kenma hits the pause button to roll his eyes. Kuroo never realized it before, but there’s something about lying. The way it makes his throat close up, makes him feel like his tongue is covered in ash and dust.
“Alright.”
That’s the thing that bothers Kuroo the most, as he stands stock-still in their entry that’s decorated with knick-knacks. Sometimes, he’s not sure if Kenma feels the way Kuroo does. He’s not sure if Kenma feels a flutter in his stomach, a quick flood of pure love the way Kuroo does whenever he sets eyes on the smaller man.
Though, sometimes, he remembers that he doesn’t have to be so unsure.
Kenma gave up a much better life to follow Kuroo, letting Kuroo lead him along and trusting in his decisions. Kuroo knows that he received acceptance letters to much more prestigious universities, acceptance letters that he didn’t look twice at. He knows that Kenma picked up the one for Kuroo’s college, stuck it above his bed, and began packing the same day.
He kind of feels like gagging.
Kenma sits up after a minute, stretching and shooting Kuroo a look. “Are you coming to bed or not?”
“Yeah,” Kuroo mumbles, following the shorter man to their room. “I am.” He still remembers the taste of her lipstick on his mouth, and the way she laughed at his idiotic jokes, and it feels wrong to allow Kenma to shove him onto their bed, curling up by his side seconds later.
Kenma trusts him too much, and Kuroo doesn’t deserve it.
“—I can’t believe you.”
“Kenma—“ Kuroo reaches for the shorter man, fingers closing on empty air.
“Shut up,” Kenma spits. He’s never been this angry, never in his life, and especially never at Kuroo. He runs his fingers through his hair, pushing his bangs out of his eyes, before he throws his cell phone at their couch, disgusted. “Just be quiet, Kuroo, we’re done.”
“Done,” Kuroo echoes, eyebrows pinching together. “Done? Kenma, just listen, she was a mistake—“
Kenma doesn't stick around to hear the rest, the door slamming shut after him, and Kuroo buries his face in his hands because he’s never fucked up this bad in all the years he’s known Kenma.
He gives Kenma ten minutes of a head start, only ten, then scoops up the discarded cell phone from the couch, sliding it into his pocket as he locks the door behind himself.
He knows where Kenma goes when he’s upset, and it’s easy to trace his footsteps through the snow, following him to the cafe just a few blocks up the street.
It’s only when he gets closer that he hears the screaming.
The source is easy to spot, a young woman with brown hair who stands on the street corner with her hands pressed against her mouth, eyes wide. Kuroo watches her for a second before he notices the car, front bumper painted with red and crushed against a light pole.
The woman screams again, and Kuroo finally notices the pool of red seeping from underneath the car, and the fingers that lay limp against the ice that’s started to freeze on the sidewalk.
Time slows to a crawl as Kuroo walks up, mind numb and hands shoved into his pockets, curling tightly around Kenma’s phone. He stares down at the body below him, complete with a head of blonde hair that gives way to black roots, and he bends down to gently take Kenma’s hand. It’s silent now. He distantly wonders if someone told the women to be quiet.
There’s more yelling as patrons spill out of the cafe, men forming a circle around the scene, and all Kuroo can think is that Kenma’s fingers shouldn’t be this cold. He looks up then, at the people with their faces pressed against the windows of the cafe, and the crowd around him stares back, one woman speaking quickly into a cell phone while a man pulls the driver out of the car.
It’s a blur as the ambulance arrives, EMTs pulling Kenma out from under the car, and Kuroo stares silently at the bloody mess of his best friend, fingers curled into a fist. The screaming starts up again.
“—Gone, died on impact—“
“Wheels hit the ice—“
“He was just crossing the street, came out of nowhere—“
The conversations stutter and stop, the entire scene falling silent, and it’s only then that Kuroo realizes that the screaming he's been hearing is coming from himself.
Kuroo stares upwards at the ceiling, slowly sinking his teeth into his lower lip as he listens to the whispers.
“Why hasn’t he killed himself yet?” Tsukishima asks, and he doesn’t do it to be an asshole, Kuroo knows. He’s curious. Kuroo snorts from the couch, and looks at the pile of dirty dishes on the table, the same ones that haven’t moved in a week.
“Shut up,” Bokuto hisses, pots clanging loudly from the kitchen. Kuroo shuts his eyes as Daichi peers out from the kitchen. There’s silence for a long minute, then a sigh as Bokuto speaks. “What’s left for him to kill? He died that fucking day. He died with Kenma.”
“We’re not talking about this with him passed out in the damn living room,” Daichi grinds out, and there’s a slam of cabinets as the group descends into silence.
Kuroo feels a wash of anger, then pain, and then nothing at all as his fingers close around a bottle of whiskey hidden underneath the couch.
There’s a soft beep in the darkness, and Kuroo freezes, eyes opening wide while his fingers scrabble for the TV remote, pressing the mute button. The apartment is too dark, too quiet, light dying behind the curtains, and he doesn’t remember falling asleep. He doesn’t remember what day it is.
Kuroo jumps as the beep sounds again, and he’s up in a second, warily moving towards the phone plugged in on the kitchen counter. He sucks in a breath when he sees the screen of Kenma’s phone light up.
It vibrates again, beeping a final time, and Kuroo stares at the words ‘Anniversary’ displayed in bold letters across the display. There’s a picture of cats set as the lock screen.
Trembling fingers hit the lock button before shoving the phone against the tile backsplash, and Kuroo’s back hits the wall with a heavy thump.
He doesn’t enter the kitchen again for an hour, fingers spasming against the neck of a bottle of gin, and it’s dark outside before Kuroo lets the bottle roll off the couch and hit the carpet, empty.
The TV’s blaring now, some commercial about kitchen supplies, and it leaves a void when Kuroo smashes the power button before stumbling back into the kitchen. The counter swims in his eyes and he just manages to grab Kenma’s phone, pulling it from it’s charger with a sharp yank, before he ends up sprawled out on the floor.
The phone demands a password when he swipes the screen, and he types in Kenma’s birthday first, then his own, then their anniversary, fingers tightening around the phone as each is rejected. He tries Kenma’s mother’s birthday, then his father’s, then the day he started college, and by that point he’s crying.
The screen is blurry when it finally lets him try again, and Kuroo doesn’t know if it’s from his tears or from the alcohol. He throws the phone against the wall when it doesn’t accept the release date of Kenma’s all-time favorite game, and his shoulders rack with sobs that he hasn’t allowed himself to release.
The world is spinning when he crawls towards the phone again, and his hands shake so hard that he nearly drops it again as he enters zero one zero five. Their long-gone high school jersey numbers.
He does drop the phone when it unlocks with a chirp, and stares at his own face grinning back from the background, eyes half-closed while his white teeth gleam in the sun.
Kuroo stares at his own picture for so long that the screen dims, then locks, and he types in the code again. His thumb brushes an icon, and he jumps as Kenma’s pictures open, organized neatly into labeled albums.
He taps on his own name, and stares as thousands of pictures of himself fill the screen. There’s pictures of him alone, him with Bokuto and Daichi and Tsukishima and his high school team, as well as his college one. There’s even a row of pictures of him and Kenma, who looks severely uncomfortable while Kuroo grins at the camera, chin hooked on his best friend’s shoulder.
Kuroo taps on one of these, one where Kenma is staring at the camera with an exasperated expression while Kuroo presses his face into his neck, and Kuroo chokes on a wheeze, pressing the home button. He breathes then, in and out, fingers tightening around the phone’s casing, and then he presses on the icon for notes.
There’s a lot of these too, dating back years and years, and Kuroo’s never fully appreciated how Kenma never deleted anything until now.
There’s a dozen notes with half-written love confessions, and dozens of notes that range from the release dates of games to small facts on Kuroo himself, what he eats, what movies he likes, what his favorite color is.
Kuroo scrolls to the most recent ones, and wipes a tear away impatiently when it falls on the screen, before clicking the home button and going to the calendar.
There’s tons of reminders, from movies that he wanted to see to their anniversary to exam dates, all color-coded and listed in order of importance. Kuroo smiles faintly as he sees the cat icon by anything relating to him, and finally his eyes start to dry.
Kuroo spends hours there, sitting in the darkness of his kitchen, light only provided by the phone in his palms, and when the clock strikes twelve, Kuroo sobs like he’s lost Kenma all over again as the notification for their anniversary disappears.
“Bro, how long has it been since you’ve left your damn house? Call me, Brokuroo.”
“Kuroo, you need to call me back. You know my number. It's Daichi, in case you've forgotten while you've been a hermit.”
“What the hell are you doing, you idiot? Pathetic. Come on, call one of us back.” There’s a rustling sound, and Tsukishima’s voice dips into something that Kuroo could consider a waver. “Please.”
Kuroo hits delete on each message, and doesn’t bother listening to the rest of them, watching as the number drops from thirty to zero.
There’s an ache in his heart as he registers that none of the names were Kenma’s, and it grows when he remembers why.
He’s standing in line at the deli down the street in a rare moment of courage to brave the outside world when he sees her again.
She’s beautiful, so beautiful and Kuroo’s amazed he didn’t realize it the night of the party, but then again that was probably the haze of smoke and alcohol. She’s got golden hair that gleams when the sunlight hits it just the right way, and she's pulled it up in a way that shows off the heart shape of her face.
Even through the windows of the deli, Kuroo can see her eyes. Their golden, unnatural color, the way she narrows them like a cat, and it hits him all at once why exactly he had kissed her first at that party, vodka spinning like a hurricane in his mind.
He retches and runs for the bathroom, shoving open the door and barging into an empty stall. Kuroo fists his hands into his ratty t-shirt as he gags, eyes closing as tears slide down his face to drip onto his sweatpants, darkening the fabric as they hit.
The girl’s gone when he comes out and Kuroo leaves without buying anything, heading straight for his apartment, to the comfort of darkness and alcohol and the never-ending presence of Kenma.
In their apartment, Kenma still lives. His jackets are hung by the door, his phone stays plugged into the counter, his hair dye bottles line the shelf in the shower. There are days when Kuroo yanks Kenma’s shirts over his pillow, or wears his jackets, or orders Kenma’s favorite take out, and each time he hates himself just a little more.
When Kuroo opens his eyes, Kenma’s there.
There’s sun, shining through the window, and Kenma’s sitting beside him, fingers tapping away on his phone. There’s comfortable silence and Kuroo smiles before shifting in the bed, just a little.
“You’re awake late, Kuro.” Kenma doesn’t even look up, brows slowly drawing together as he stares at his screen, and Kuroo closes his eyes again.
“You know I hate waking up. It’s the worst part of the day.”
Kenma hums absentmindedly in response, continuing to tap on his phone while Kuroo opens an eye to watch him. Kenma’s lips twitch slightly when Kuroo tries to kiss his fingers, pecking them before they move, and Kuroo laughs when he finally locks the device out of exasperation. “Kuro, stop.”
“Make me,” Kuroo responds, eyebrows wiggling obscenely. Kenma sighs, breath dusting over Kuroo’s face, and Kuroo laughs before pulling him close for a kiss.
Kenma’s breathing hard by the time they pull apart and Kuroo prides himself on that fact, fingers creeping slowly up Kenma’s sides to rest gently on his hips, rubbing the bone that protrudes slightly. “You’re beautiful.”
There’s a rolling of eyes before Kenma leans back against the pillows, eyes slipping shut while Kuroo presses kisses to his neck, trying to ignore the feeling of something not being quite right. He pushes the feeling away, tangling his fingers with Kenma’s, even as he starts to realize that something’s wrong.
Suddenly the scene doesn’t seem so nice.
The sun’s gone, along with the warmth, and Kuroo shivers as he sits up. Kenma doesn’t look at him, fiddling with his fingernails as Kuroo peers out the window at the stormy clouds that seem to have appeared out of nowhere.
“Kenma?”
“Yes, Kuro?”
“This isn’t real.” Kuroo doesn’t know how he knows, but he does, and his stomach sinks to his feet. “This is a dream.”
Kenma shrugs, avoiding his eyes, and sinks lower under the covers. “Maybe.”
“It is.” Kuroo feels like throwing up now, tightening his grip on Kenma’s fingers, except it’s not him. It never was. “Fuck, this is a dream.”
Fingers brush over his eyelids, gently closing them, and Kenma’s voice whispers into his ear. “It’s time to wake up, Kuro.”
Kuroo comes into the waking world like a hurricane, tears already on his cheeks. It’s sunny, light peeking through the blinds, and the only thing that’s wrong is that Kenma’s still dead, and Kuroo is still very much alive.
“Kuroo, I haven’t heard from you in a few days, bro. Are you ok? Text me. Or call me! Whichever! You know I’m a night owl!”
“It’s Daichi, Kuroo. I’m meeting up with some of my old high school team, do you want to come? Just let me know. Call me.”
“It’s been a week, you damn cat. You’ve got to stop with this juvenile shtick of sending our calls to voicemail. It’s pathetic and annoying. Call me, you full-blown idiot.”
When he opens his fridge, all that’s in there is a jar of month-old peanut butter, and something that might have been cauliflower at one point, Kuroo isn’t sure.
The shelves swim before his eyes, and the cauliflower merges with the peanut butter, and it takes five minutes of deep breathing before he can straighten out the spinning world.
It’s a year since Kenma died, and the thought makes Kuroo suck back the last of the vodka in his bottle.
Five minutes of stumbling through his apartment reveals that there’s nothing left to drink, or eat, and Kuroo grumbles as he shoves his feet into his boots, swearing and hissing under his breath as he yanks the laces tight.
It’s cold, when Kuroo steps out his apartment. It’s cold, and wet, snow falling heavily, and Kuroo curses as he slips, grabbing onto the handrail and hissing when the chill bites through his gloves. It’s almost as cold as the day Kenma left. It's almost as cold as Kuroo's heart.
His phone rings in his pocket and he lets go of the rail, reaching for it as he takes another step.
There’s a brief moment, right when his foot hits the ice, where Kuroo has time to gasp, arms pinwheeling as he falls down the good twenty or so steps. His head bounces once, twice, three times before he stops in a crumpled heap at the bottom, blood splattering the stairs and pooling underneath him.
Everything’s so cold, wind biting at his body, but there’s a warmth spreading around his head, just like when Kenma would pet his hair while they laid in bed at night, and the last thought Kuroo has is that he misses Kenma so very much.
Kuroo is sixteen years old and playing a practice match when the first years walk through the door. He doesn’t even look at them, focused on the feel of the ball against his palm when he blocks it, and the slap of Kai’s hand against his shoulder while his side celebrates their victory.
“Oi! One of you first years, throw it back!”
Kuroo looks at the group then, eyes raking over the first years with boredom. They don’t look special, or even the least bit determined, and Kuroo has no need for team mates that won’t fight tooth and nail to stay on the court.
He dismisses them without a second thought.
The group twitters before a small body pushes from the back, scooping up the volleyball and tossing it in the air, hitting it solidly over the net.
Kuroo’s eyebrows raise at that, and he grins his sharpest grin as he calls to the newbie. “Hey! What’s your name?"
“Kozume Kenma,” comes the reply, and Kuroo almost misses his words, lost as they are to the roaring in his veins as he stares back into narrowed, golden eyes. Kozume looks uncomfortable, and Kuroo understands why when he feels wetness on his cheeks.
He doesn’t know why he’s crying, and he lifts a hand to wipe at his face before staring at the teardrops on his fingers. Kozume still looks awkward, edging to the back of the group, and Kai's looking at Kuroo like he's lost his mind. It’s possible that he has, because of how much joy he has at seeing this kid, this kid he’s never even heard of before.
Kuroo’s never met this Kozume before in his life, he’s positive. Except there’s something about him, something about his face, something about his name that makes Kuroo’s heart ache. He’s not sure what it is.
Kozume’s gone by the time practice ends, the door swinging shut behind him, and Kuroo grabs his bag before following. He doesn’t even bother to change.
Kuroo catches up with him just outside the gates, panting and holding his side like he isn’t a trained athlete. It’s slightly pathetic, but he can’t help the terror digging its claws into his heart. He wonders why, as he watches Kozume’s head lift, why he’s so worried about the other boy running away.
“Kozume!”
“It’s Kenma,” comes the surprisingly steady voice, and Kuroo catalogues the way he avoids eye contact like the plague. “Just call me Kenma.”
“Then just call me Kuroo. Listen, I… Are you headed to the train station?”
Kenma nods slowly, eyebrows raised just a little to hide in his hair, and Kuroo wonders if he has lost it. “I am.”
“I’ll walk you.” It doesn’t take much for Kuroo to fall into the younger boy’s pace, and he doesn’t even mind the silence of the walk, punctuated by the tapping of Kenma’s fingers on his phone screen.
Terror fills Kuroo again as they stand at an intersection he’s spent his life crossing to get to the station from school, and he doesn’t understand the way he grabs onto Kenma’s shoulder, pulling the other back from stepping off the sidewalk.
“Kuroo?”
“I…” Kuroo chokes, words piling up in his throat and he’s not sure where to begin. He stares from the light pole to the cafe across the street. “Have we ever met before? Anywhere? The store?”
“I’m pretty sure I’d remember your hair if we had.”
Kuroo ignores the slight on his hairstyle, rubbing the back of his neck slowly. “It’s just, well, you seem so familiar.”
“I think you’re imaging things,” are the words that Kenma says, but his eyes flash with something that Kuroo can’t place. “...Are we ever going to cross?”
Kuroo’s face is red, he feels it, but Kenma doesn’t mention it. It’s another silent walk to the station, and Kuroo clears his throat again as Kenma walks through the train doors. “You take this train every day?”
“Yes.” Kenma’s doing the thing again, eyebrows raised, and Kuroo feels kind of like dying.
“We should walk together. Home. To the station.”
The doors start to close, but Kenma’s still staring at Kuroo. Like he’s a puzzle piece he can’t find the place for. “As long as you can get through the crosswalk.”
“We’ll just have to cross together then, won’t we?”
The train leaves then, but not before Kuroo catches a glint of teeth as Kenma smiles for the first time.
He stands there, staring at the spot where Kenma used to be, and only then does it occur to him that he just missed his train.