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The phone was ringing.
Kenma's eyes darted up from his cup of instant ramen, silently observing the lit-up screen. He didn't recognize the number and he studied it for a long minute, wondering who could be calling him.
Someone from work, maybe? He'd called out sick from the game design studio he worked for after suffering an endless series of migraines. After all, he wasn’t much use to them if he couldn’t stand looking at a screen for too long. But maybe something urgent came up. He hoped not.
Perhaps it was something less dire, like a friend with a new number, calling to cheerfully announce the news. That seemed like the sort of thing Shouyou would do, and he was the first name that popped into Kenma’s head when he considered friends.
His mouth twisted as he acknowledged the lie, but the first name that popped into his head was one that hadn't passed his lips in years. There was no point mentioning it. Similarly, Kenma acknowledged the pang that echoed through him as he forced that thought into his mind; it was familiar, and the familiarity dulled the ache.
It was probably nothing. A wrong number, most likely. Something like that. He hesitated regardless, hands hovering in place.
The phone gave another ring before Kenma tapped the conversation into existence, setting his ramen cup aside. "Kozume speaking," he answered, staring at the sequence of numbers neatly printed on the screen.
There was a pause and Kenma could have sworn he heard a nervous intake of breath; his eyes narrowed, examining the phone suspiciously.
"Hey, Kenma," said a voice so familiar that it was impossible to forget, something Kenma knew for a fact because he'd tried to forget it, but he still heard it murmuring as a common thread in his memories, as a repeated figment of fitful dreams, as a throbbing, constant wound at the back of his mind. He couldn't speak, and after a long moment, a more frantic plea blared through the speaker: "Don't hang up!"
"I'm not hanging up," Kenma replied, fingers clenching on the table, because in all honesty he had briefly considered hanging up.
He heard Kuroo sigh over the line. "Sorry," he muttered as Kenma struggled to understand how, all this time later, Kuroo could still read him so easily, even when he wasn't in the same room. Or the same city, or prefecture, or time zone, or country, or continent. "I just wanted to be sure. You're not busy, right? Am I bugging you?"
"No," Kenma answered.
"Okay. Like, I'm serious, I don't want to bother you, but I wanted to..." He trailed off and Kenma felt both of them filling in blanks. "...talk," Kuroo finished weakly, and Kenma heard him tsking at himself, the sound directed away from his speaker but distinguishable nonetheless.
"Who gave you my phone number?" Kenma asked.
"Hinata Shouyou." Of course. "He thinks we should talk too."
"What does he know?" Kenma retorted, words too fast and too harsh as prickling heat seared up his neck.
But Kuroo laughed through a scoff in that way he had, the way Kenma remembered. "Yeah, fair enough, it's not much. But I think he's right." There was an odd shortness in his breath, one Kenma couldn't quite explain. "Listen--"
Kenma interrupted, "Doesn't it cost a lot of money to call from America? You didn't have to, it seems a little excessive." He tapped his fingers on the table, equally determined both to make this conversation stop and to drown in the cadences of Kuroo's voice forever.
There was another scoff. "Don't be so concerned about things like that. What else was I supposed to do? I suck at writing emails and I don't think you read them anyway. Figured just rambling would be better. I'd figure it out along the way, y'know? Less pressure," Kuroo explained. "It does cost a lot to call, or it would, if I were still in the States. But I'm not, so no worries. My bank account is safe."
"You...what?" Kenma asked slowly, feeling as though his brain was underwater. Not...?
"I'm back home," Kuroo informed him, and suddenly Kenma felt weightless, like he could drift up into the stratosphere, and his brow kept furrowing as he struggled to keep up.
"Oh. You are?" he started, words unsure and colliding together on his tongue. "You're back in Tokyo? When?"
"Got in this morning. Home sweet home, all busy and bustling as usual. Kinda felt like I'd never left New York but it's more familiar now. Cozier. Like I actually belong here."
Kenma stopped tapping his fingers and instead began twisting them around each other, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "I didn't know you were visiting Tokyo. You should have said something."
"Not visiting," Kuroo corrected, and the weightless feeling was back; Kenma was almost dizzy from it now.
"You're...?"
"I'm back for good. Got transferred. One of my newspaper's sister companies had an opening and I got it. You're speaking to the new best sports journalist in Japan," Kuroo said proudly.
"You're not going back to New York?" Kenma asked in a voice that came out much smaller and sadder than he intended.
"Nope. Maybe sightseeing sometime, but I'm back home for the long haul now."
"Where in Tokyo is your--?"
This time Kuroo interrupted. "Sorry. Meant to correct you. Not Tokyo, Sendai. My mom's gonna kick my ass for calling her from the train instead of visiting, but I figured I better settle in for suburban life. Might be a little bit of culture shock, I've been living in big fuckin' cities for way too long."
Instead of feeling weightless, this time Kenma was fairly certain he'd been hit with a massive electrical shock out of nowhere and couldn't move at all. "You're in Sendai? In Miyagi?"
"Yup. Same as you. Funny, huh? I should have figured you'd move out to the sticks, you always liked the quiet..." He listened to Kuroo heave an enormous, exhausted sigh. "Jesus, your driveway's long, why the hell did you buy this place?"
"I like being far back from the road," Kenma started defensively, but the cogwheels in his mind were spinning fast.
"Yeah, no kidding."
"Hold on, what about my driveway?" Kenma questioned in a rush, seizing the phone and taking long strides over to a window that faced front, ramen forsaken.
"It's long?" Kuroo answered innocently.
"How do you know that?"
"Because I'm walking up it, of course."
Kenma spotted him in the same second he said it, a familiar figure weighed down by a carry-on, phone pressed to his ear and free hand in one pocket, and the shock that lit up every nerve in Kenma's body was in some no-man's-land between terror and joy.
"Why are you--"
Kuroo spoke over him in that same frantic voice that he'd used to ask Kenma not to hang up. "I'm sorry, I know it's really sudden and probably counts as trespassing or something, but...but I had to do it, alright, you didn't leave me with many options. Every time I came home you had an excuse not to see me and I couldn't take it anymore. Just...I'm sorry. I know this must freak you out." Kenma said nothing, merely watched as Kuroo got closer to the front door, all the details suddenly becoming visible: the odd flips of his hair, the tightness in his shoulders, the pattern on his bag, and finally he vanished under the front awning. "You gonna let me in?" he asked quietly as Kenma heard a knock both at the door and echoing in his ear through the phone.
He considered, but his feet moved of their own accord before he could come to a decision and he opened the door with the phone clenched tight in his hand. Kenma blinked, stared, took in everything, even the smallest aspects. Kuroo looked older, but surely Kenma did too, yet his hair was the usual wreck of bedhead as it'd been since Kenma met him, his eyes were still gleaming, and as he looked back at Kenma, the smile on his face was the same soft one that Kenma could remember loving too much. "Hi," Kuroo said, shoving his phone in his pocket and fussing with his bag strap, looking nervous, almost as if they were strangers meeting for the first time.
In a way, it felt like they were. In a way, it felt like they weren't.
The phone slid from Kenma's grasp as he gaped and Kuroo reached out and caught it before it could smash on the front stoop. "Sorry," Kenma mumbled as he took the phone back, following suit and putting it in a pocket of his sweater before stepping aside to let Kuroo in the front room.
"No need to break your phone to keep me from calling, I'm already here," Kuroo said smoothly; it would have been a joke if they were younger, but Kenma heard something bitter and melancholy lurking between Kuroo's words and it clawed at his heart.
"I was surprised, that's all," Kenma answered, his voice barely rising.
Kuroo acted as if he hadn't heard, preoccupied examining the house. The impressed whistle he let out seemed to denote approval. "Damn. You did pretty good for yourself, huh?" he asked. Kenma was inexplicably distressed seeing him with his bag still on his shoulder, as if he could walk out the door at any second.
"I guess," Kenma said, forcing every syllable out with enormous effort. He knew Kuroo could tell from the way he went quiet, ambling around the room like he was in a museum filled with beautiful things he couldn't touch. He was giving Kenma a chance to collect himself, some time to take it all in. But Kenma wasn't sure if he ever could collect himself, and suddenly realized how much he despised this weight, how being with Kuroo was difficult now when it used to be one of the few things Kenma could rely on and trust absolutely.
He started picking apart Kuroo's earlier apology, about how he'd shown up at Kenma's doorstep almost out of desperation, and he was burning inside because he knew it was true. And worse, he knew it was petty, childish, downright stupid.
He hadn't taken it well when Kuroo went away. And he knew it had nothing to do with him personally - or maybe it did - and he knew he couldn't have expected Kuroo to build his life around a childhood friend who had grown too attached, too used to him hanging around - except he had, and it stung when proven false - and he knew he'd given Kuroo the cold shoulder for nothing for much too long - but of course he'd done it for something, just something he couldn't say.
It had been much too easy to believe that Kuroo was leaving him behind specifically, much too easy to resent him for it, much too easy to ignore him instead of trying to repair what had become broken between them.
The minutes stretched on and finally Kuroo sighed. "Been a while, huh?" he asked, hands shoved in his pockets; Kenma saw his fingers twisting behind the fabric. "If I squinted, I'd almost mistake you for a real adult. Perfectly self-sufficient and all."
"You look the same," Kenma replied.
Kuroo grinned. "The years can't dull my natural charm," he teased. His voice was lilting and he seemed so at ease, as he always had been; Kenma used to envy him for it, the way he slipped into any environment and suddenly it was like he'd always belonged there. But Kenma could tell he was calculating and re-calculating, straining to keep the conversation normal.
He could feel the odd gaps between them too, Kenma realized with a jolt. Talking together wasn't easy for Kuroo, either, and he'd never known Kuroo to be out of his element in talking to anyone. Much less to him.
Kenma tried to shrug it off. "It can't have been that long," he lied through his teeth.
"Yeah, it can," Kuroo argued. "I was still in school last time I saw you. New Year's, remember?"
Kenma did. He remembered the end of an old year long past, the firecrackers, the white noise, the words that had left his mouth. And, more importantly, the words that hadn’t. Kenma remembered New Year’s.
Parties had never been Kenma's forte and New Year's parties were no exception, considering they were a mess of excitement, alcohol, and glitter-coated party hats. Much too loud and much too long; even after midnight they kept dragging on, practically endless. And he always ended up with glitter under his fingernails somehow.
Fortunately, he was adept at hiding at parties of all kinds, especially when they were at Kuroo's house, which he knew as well as his own.
He glanced up from the progress bar on the save slot in his game, nudging Kuroo with his elbow. "You can go downstairs if you want. It's almost midnight."
"Nah," Kuroo answered, and Kenma shrugged, attention recaptured by the screen. He could feel every movement Kuroo made, even the vibrations of him speaking, from how they were curled up on his bed, illuminated only by the faint light of the lamps glowing through the crack of the door. "Shit's boring, it's all my parents' friends from work. I had to bust out every trick in the book to convince them to let you here, even."
"Because your parents figured you'd hide out with me the whole time," Kenma said, feeling both his own smile and the rhythms of Kuroo's answering laughter through his skin as he spoke, all of it familiar and soft and comfortable.
"Exactly," Kuroo confirmed. Kenma could have sworn he moved closer and his heartbeat quickened, racing even as he stayed completely still.
A warm sort of quiet enfolded them again, as it tended to do. The buzz of chatter downstairs turned into white noise combined with sounds from the TV and music, and the whole thing was rendered almost pleasant, background music that was easy to tune out. Not like Kenma needed something to fill the silence; the quiet he and Kuroo shared never felt heavy or awkward, like the silences that fell between Kenma and other people at times. And, often, Kuroo would fill it himself with convoluted stories, only-slightly-funny jokes, and running commentaries of observations. Kenma didn't always respond, but he did appreciate the interruptions, the levity Kuroo carried with him everywhere he went.
But when Kuroo spoke this time, his voice was eerily quiet. "Hey, Kenma?" he started.
Kenma blinked and let his screen go dark. "I'm listening," he said, not moving. Something was wrong. He knew already from the sudden lurch in his gut, from how he wasn't sure he'd heard that tone of voice out of Kuroo's mouth before.
"You didn't have to shut your game off," Kuroo protested, shifting as he sat up; Kenma moved with him, staying attached for as long as possible before pulling back to peer at Kuroo through the shadows, his furrowed brow discernible even with his bangs in the way.
Kenma gnawed at his lip. "It has to be important," he said finally, resisting the urge to say it had to be bad, if Kuroo was talking like that.
"How do you mean?" Kuroo asked, head off-kilter.
Kenma shrugged and stared at the bedspread. "Usually you just talk," he explained in a mumble. "This time you got my attention on purpose. You wanted to make sure I heard whatever you were going to say, so it has to be important."
"It's scary how you do that," Kuroo complained with a huff.
"You're easy to read," Kenma said - because Kuroo was, for him, at least. After spending so much time in his company, it was impossible not to read him as easily as words on a page.
"Rude. I'm an enigma and you know it," Kuroo argued, in a fruitless attempt to lighten the mood again. Kenma could hear the strain in his voice, even though it was so slight.
The lurching in Kenma's stomach kept repeating until it became incessant. He was avoiding the subject. He was trying to make jokes that weren’t landing. None of this was a good sign. "What is it?" he asked.
Kuroo stared at his crossed legs for a minute, picking at a loose thread on his pillowcase. "I'm going to California soon," he said, quietly, without any preamble or elaboration. Just a statement of fact, plain as day.
White noise was consuming Kenma's brain. He shook his head. "You just came back from California," he corrected, as if Kuroo could have mixed up the flow of time somehow. He'd spent his previous semester abroad, studying English and journalism in tandem. They'd stayed in touch, of course, side-stepping time zones through email chains, but it hadn't been the same. While Kenma would never say so, deep down he was so glad his best friend was back home where he belonged that he'd barely let Kuroo leave his sight ever since he'd returned.
Kuroo nodded; he tugged the thread free and started twisting it on his finger, still staring down. "I'm going back," he said. "The university I was studying at, they want me to do my senior year there."
"The whole year?" Kenma asked. His voice echoed strangled and small in his ears.
Kuroo nodded again and he still wouldn't look up. "Yeah. So I'd graduate next winter, which is weird, but they're willing to work with me. Remember the professor I told you about, the Japanese guy? Well, y'know, he kinda took me under his wing. Says my English is great and I'd be in good shape if I graduated from there. Future-wise, I mean. So he helped me arrange it." The laugh he let out sounded stunned. "My folks think it's a great opportunity."
"It is," Kenma said automatically.
"It's far," Kuroo replied.
Kenma didn't need the reminder. "What do you mean, future-wise?"
"My professor thinks I could make a living in the States," Kuroo answered, and Kenma's blood ran cold. "Like, after I graduate. But I dunno. It seems kinda rough, going to live where I barely know anybody for so long."
"You liked California, right?" Kenma asked needlessly; the long strings of attached pictures from sun-streaked beaches that clung to Kuroo's emails had proved as much.
"I mean...yeah, but...a year's longer than a semester. It's not the same. Guess I'm nervous about it," Kuroo admitted with a sheepish, small laugh.
"You could always come back after you graduate," Kenma said; he saw Kuroo start to move and took his turn to stare away. His face was burning and he was suddenly grateful for the dark of the room. "Knowing English would look good on your résumé here."
"You think I should do it?" Kuroo asked, voice even quieter now.
Kenma glared at the floorboards. "What does it matter what I think? Do what you want. It's not my life," he said, using every ounce of self-control he had to keep his voice steady.
He heard Kuroo scoff. "You're my best friend. I want your opinion."
Something inside him was howling sounds that weren't words and Kenma struggled to discern the chaos. His opinion was immediate. His opinion was that Kuroo belonged here in Tokyo, always a train ride or a phone call away. His opinion was that Californian colleges were evil shadows sinking claws into his best friend and dragging him across the ocean, never to be seen again. His opinion, his horrible, shameful opinion, was that Kuroo's future was not waiting for him in some foreign country. His future ought to be this room, these moments, the unspoken intimacy they had created within each other through years of shared space.
His stomach squirmed as he watched his fingers twisting on his sweater. Truth be told, he had never thought of his own future as separate from Kuroo's. It was supposed to be theirs together, like so many other things had been - school, volleyball, hazy summer afternoons, gray winters spent under the quilt in Kenma's room, everything, everything Kenma knew had Kuroo attached somehow.
But he had no claim to all of that forever, no words to say so, no idea how to express it without sounding unutterably selfish. Instead he spoke the words he knew to say: "It's a good opportunity." Because it was. "You'd like it. I know you would." Because he would. "You should do it." Because he should.
Please don't leave me, some part of him localized to his thrumming heart wailed, but he bit his tongue.
Kuroo had never really been his to lose in the first place.
Their eyes met again and Kuroo looked curious, contemplative, somehow younger. Uncertainty didn't suit him, Kenma decided, missing Kuroo's easy confidence. He shouldn't be giving Kenma that look. He ought to be grinning wide and bragging about all he'd do and see in California, anticipating a perfect year abroad, planning out every day to the minute, not staring at Kenma through the darkness looking lost and small. "Yeah? You think?" he asked.
Kenma nodded vigorously, letting the knotted-up tension out through his forced enthusiasm. "It'll be great for you," he heard himself say.
He had no right to take Kuroo's future from him. In fact, it was his responsibility, as a good and selfless friend, to ensure Kuroo went through with it. Kenma wouldn't make him throw it all away just to save himself from loneliness, just for more days to miss more chances to say something he should have said years ago.
Kuroo pressed his lips together. "You sound like my parents," he said, and it sounded like a joke and an accusation simultaneously. "Doing the semester kinda felt like a vacation. A year's more serious."
"A year's only two semesters, Kuro," Kenma pointed out, and Kuroo rolled his eyes; Kenma could tell only by the way the scant light flickered on his face.
"Yeah, yeah, easy for you say. You're not the one doing it," he retorted.
"Do you want to or not?" Kenma asked, biting back his impatience; how many times was Kuroo going to make him say it? "That's all that matters."
Kuroo ran a hand through his hair and Kenma watched the strands catch the slivers of lamplight. "Yeah," he admitted, quiet again. "Yeah, I do. I'd be stupid not to, y'know?"
"So do it." The words passed Kenma's lips as if a stranger said them and he was shattering inside, his mind already weeks ahead of tonight, to when Kuroo would be gone, when his room would be dark like this permanently, when he wouldn't amble into Kenma's house like he lived there because he'd be living thousands of miles away instead.
Kuroo nodded. "I have to tell my professor this week. Figured I'd get advice first," he said, and when their eyes met Kuroo offered up a familiar smile. "And we both know you've always been the brains of this operation." Kenma rolled his eyes at that and somehow Kuroo could tell in the dark. "What? It's true."
"You're not stupid."
"I'm not as smart as you," Kuroo answered.
It took enormous effort for Kenma to stay quiet, to stop himself from saying yes, it was true, Kuroo couldn't be as smart as him because he couldn't tell Kenma was lying, that he didn't want Kuroo to go, that he couldn't stand the mere thought, that all along he'd been trying to tell him--
There was a clamor downstairs and Kuroo glanced at his alarm clock. "Check it out. Almost midnight," he said, and stood up, pulling Kenma with him by the wrist. "C'mon, let's go talk to other human beings. My parents will weep with joy." But Kenma stopped dead in front of him, hearing the crowd below counting down the last minute of the old year. "What's up?" Kuroo asked, squinting at him in the half-light. Kenma didn't answer, instead tentatively let his hands rest on Kuroo's chest, palms pressed flat so he could feel Kuroo's heartbeat and his breath and the shudder that ran through him at the touch. "What?" Kuroo asked again, not moving an inch.
Kenma could see the bow of his shoulders, how he was stooping to get closer to Kenma's eye level, and the gap between them was so small, but it had always been small, it was supposed to be small, and it felt like second nature for him to stretch up on his toes and hover there, listening to the countdown drag by to its last few seconds until he started to lean in.
Maybe it was cowardice that sent him off the mark, maybe just a poor trajectory, maybe both. Kenma could barely feel the end of Kuroo's mouth under his lips, the wayward kiss ending up on his cheek as the partygoers downstairs cheered and a cork popped. Outside the window, someone was setting off firecrackers and the sudden bursts of light silhouetted their connected shadows, unrecognizable except for the spikes of Kuroo's hair.
As the noise dulled, Kenma fell back on his heels, hands slipping into his pockets. Kuroo was staring at him, looking befuddled, and the static in Kenma's head was deafening now, drowning out all other thought.
He cleared his throat. "For good luck," he offered lamely, shrugging as if most people attempted to have New Year's kisses with their best friends and this was no big deal. "You'll need it this year."
Kuroo nodded, mute for a moment longer. "Yeah. I might," he answered, and his mouth twisted in at the ends in an unpleasant, unfamiliar way. "Hey, Kenma..." he started, but Kenma stepped back.
"I should go home," he said.
"No, wait a minute--"
"Night, Kuro. Happy New Year," Kenma interrupted as pushed the bedroom door open, blinded by the lights in the hall, deafened by chatter and laughter as he shoved his way out of the house. He didn't hear Kuroo following him, didn't hear him call out again, and he didn't know if he was glad for the absence or if it added to the hurt bubbling up thick in his throat.
He'd had one last chance and he'd let it go like all the others, made a fool of himself by wearing his heart on his sleeve for once, and it was only the first few minutes of the new year but he already felt so tired.
He remembered the days after that as a series of blurs. Kenma's mother told him over breakfast on New Year's Day that Kuroo was going to his school in California soon, saying he drove his parents mad delaying his response to the eleventh hour. He'd be gone by the middle of January. The exact date passed through Kenma's head like he hadn't heard it, or rather, because he didn't want to.
He planned on feigning sick the day Kuroo was supposed to leave, but found he didn't have to fake it; he was wracked with twisting pain from the second he opened his eyes, and, curled up in bed, he heard Kuroo and his family in the living room with Kenma's parents, talking like nothing was wrong, like the world wasn't ending.
And he heard the stairs creaking through his bedroom door, heard familiar footfalls making their way over the carpet, heard Kuroo's voice murmuring his name as he walked in. Kenma stayed still, cocooned in blankets, stomach churning because Kuroo didn't ever announce himself when he walked into the room, didn't usually seek out acknowledgment because he knew Kenma was listening, except now, the one time Kuroo was asking, Kenma was refusing him.
The mattress shifted by mere degrees when Kuroo sat on the edge of his bed, carefully, like he was visiting a sick stranger in a hospital room, and Kenma's instinct was to turn over but he held steady, barely moving to breathe.
"Kenma?" Kuroo asked again, another unusual thing; Kuroo had tugged him out of bed for school or volleyball practice or any number of things Kenma tried to sleep through too many times to count. It was so abnormal it felt surreal, but that didn't surprise him as much as it should have. This was the first time they’d seen each other since New Year’s, and Kenma felt as if he'd already lost Kuroo to the ocean waves. He stayed immobile and Kuroo seemed to buy into the charade as easily as Kenma's mother had. The silence was throttling him, thick and impenetrable. "I'll be in touch. Promise," he tacked on after a long minute, and Kenma had a funny feeling Kuroo didn't really buy the charade after all. Instead he'd chosen to play along, to give Kenma a chance to admit he was faking. But he didn't take it.
He felt Kuroo run fingers through his hair gently, carefully, as if soothing him to sleep, and he had to use every ounce of self-control he had to resist reaching out and grabbing Kuroo's hand, rolling over and begging him to change his mind, to tear up his plane ticket and forget California, to stay here where he belonged. But all he could picture in his head was Kuroo agreeing, nodding and smiling soft and curling up beside him so Kenma could feel his heartbeat again, throwing away everything because Kenma had asked him to, and he wanted that so badly, too badly, and he didn't know how he could ever live with it.
No matter how much he wanted to delude himself into believing otherwise, they couldn't exist in this room forever. He couldn't build a world in his best friend when Kuroo belonged somewhere else, somewhere grander, somewhere that wasn't confined to four walls and bedspreads and humming with white noise. It was for the best. It was for Kuroo. It was better than anything Kenma could offer him. He just had to believe that.
So he closed his eyes and felt the weight on the edge of his bed lift and disappear.
As the sun set he heard car doors slamming on the street below, heard Kuroo's voice distantly, like in a dream, as he heaved suitcases into the trunk, heard the car engine rattling as it went down the block until it faded, and then he was suffocating wrapped up in the sheets and the quilt on his bed, still unable to move except to shudder through his sobs.
The world had blurred by even faster after that. Kenma had his own schoolwork to do, internships to apply for and job interviews afterward, and Kuroo finished school in California but didn't come back, instead started working in one of those coastal cities with names that weren't in English or Japanese so Kenma could never remember them. He sent emails Kenma didn't answer, with more and more time between every subsequent message. And holidays came, and friends started getting married, and Kenma knew Kuroo had gone between the United States and Japan time and time again but he couldn't bear it, and worse, he didn't know what he'd say. Instead he'd avoided his own best friend and it was awful, he knew, and then he couldn't stand to see Kuroo because Kuroo deserved better than an awful, cloying best friend, and everything had spiraled far out of his control. And a few years past, Kenma heard through the grapevine that Kuroo had moved to New York, even further away, and it filled him with such a mess of anger and grief and regret, so why bother trying at that point?
And now Kuroo was standing in his living room, watching him closely. After all this time, he was back, and Kenma was still so used to his presence that seeing him here felt normal, even though Kuroo had never stepped foot in this house before today.
"I guess it has been awhile," Kenma conceded, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt as he spoke. It was starting to hit him slowly, the fact that Kuroo was home again after living abroad so long. Why had he backtracked like this? Guilt was creeping at the edges of his mind, unrecognizable until it was holding him in a vice grip. "You didn't...have to come back," he mumbled, staring at the carpet. "I'm fine. Really."
He glanced up to see Kuroo giving him the oddest look. "How heartwarming," he deadpanned, brow furrowed, and usually a tone like that would denote playful sarcasm, especially directed at Kenma, but this time it burned.
"I mean..." Kenma's mouth twisted as he struggled to figure out what, exactly, he meant. "I thought you liked it there. In America. You should have stayed there. Isn't that what you wanted?" He came back for you, he threw it all away for you, because you couldn't let go, because you clung, because you wanted him to, his mind taunted in quick, harsh whispers.
"Home's home," Kuroo said with a shrug, dismissing the idea outright. "Never meant to stay so long anyway."
"No," Kenma insisted, more forcefully this time, hands balling into fists. "You wanted to go. You didn't have to come back just because..."
"Because...?" Kuroo prompted, hands shoved more deeply into his pockets now.
Kenma didn't continue the thought. "You don't have to take care of me," he said, words tumbling out in a rush, and he saw Kuroo's eyebrows shoot up in surprise before furrowing again into a deep confusion. "You did for a long time, when we were kids, and you didn't have to do it then either but you did, I don't know why, you just did it. But you don't have to anymore. You're not stuck with me. You didn't have to come back."
"I wanted to come back," Kuroo said, taking a step closer.
"Why?" Kenma demanded to know, feeling his shoulders shaking.
Kuroo's own shoulders sagged and he let out a scoff, this one too harsh to be a laugh. "Hmm, I don't know," he started, his tone biting as he started crossing the room leisurely, and Kenma fought the urge to back away and hide. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe I missed you?" Kenma's heart was throbbing and it hurt and he stared away. "That, maybe, seeing my best friend again meant something to me? Would you just...just look at me, Kenma." Kenma did; Kuroo was only a step from him now, his expression twisted in a way Kenma had never seen, and he stared in disbelief.
He realized that his earlier assessment that Kuroo looked the same as he always had was wrong; there was a weariness in his eyes that was utterly foreign.
He couldn't hold Kuroo's gaze for long and he heard an impatient sigh when his eyes dropped to the carpet again. "You really hate me that much, huh?" Kuroo asked, voice heavy and rough and so unlike his own, and Kenma's head snapped up again, intending to dispute it, but he couldn't find the words fast enough. "I should've known you didn't want to see me. You made it pretty plain."
"I..."
"I've been back home. You know I have," Kuroo interrupted. "And I know you avoided me every time I've been back."
"No--"
"Yes you have."
Kenma's mouth kept stuttering over syllables. "It's...it's complicated, I don't--"
"It's not complicated--"
"You don't understand," Kenma shot back, hearing his own voice get loud and harsh too, realizing he'd never really argued with Kuroo, not even once. They didn’t talk to each other like this. Never.
"Clearly I don't!" Kuroo burst out, gesticulating wildly, and Kenma saw his hands were shaking. "No, alright, I don't understand why my best friend quit talking to me and stopped wanting to see me and suddenly hated me--"
"It was easier," Kenma said, because it was, easier to stay away, easier to evade, easier to pretend he hadn't spent long afternoons on satellite views of New York boulevards and California beaches trying to imagine Kuroo there, trying to understand Kuroo belonged to the ocean waves and neon city lights now, not to him.
"Easier?!" Kuroo shouted. "For you, maybe, but you're not listening. I missed you, okay? Every day I missed you and I didn't know what to do, all these years it's been like this and nothing about it was easy!" He took heaving breaths as they stared at each other, the few steps between them a gaping chasm of carpet that neither could cross, and Kuroo's face quickly crumpled from fury to misery. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm sorry for...for yelling. I'm just..." He sighed. "Would you tell me why you hate me already? Let me have some fucking closure. For old times' sake."
That word leapt out at him again, "hate," and it didn't compute. "I don't hate you," he said, words sure again, because if nothing else he was sure of this. "How could you even say that?" I loved you, Kenma thought miserably, and then amended, I still love you. He hadn't let himself acknowledge that for the longest time.
"Because you haven't talked to me since I moved to the States?" Kuroo answered, sounding stunned. "I mean, come on."
"I told you. It was easier," Kenma said, the explanation coming out like a plea. "You...you had the whole world in front of you. Your whole future. I didn't want to..." His mouth twisted and his fists were clenched so tight they were trembling, because while he'd dwelled on this countless times, the words had never actually left his mouth. "...hold you back. That's what I meant. You didn't have to come back. You weren't supposed to. You should be where you want to be, doing what you want to do, not worrying about me."
In his head, Kenma repeated the justifications he’d used years ago: that Kuroo deserved more, that there was something better out there for him than the walls and the quilt and the warm silence and background white noise and that kiss and him, there had to be something better out there for Kuroo than just him and his clinging hands and his aching and his misaimed, unspoken love.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Kuroo demanded to know, looking equal parts indignant and horrified, as if Kenma had said something truly abhorrent, and it jolted Kenma from his contemplations. "Hold me back? From what?"
"From...you wanted to live abroad. If I told you I wanted you to stay I would have been holding you back," Kenma argued, narrowing his eyes. This was an obvious progression; why couldn't Kuroo understand it?
"You didn't want me to go?" Kuroo asked, voice hushed, and Kenma's stomach flipped as he realized what he'd said.
"Of course not," he retorted, words fast and low but distinguishable, because there was no point denying it now. "I wanted you to stay with me but it was selfish, I didn't have any right to--"
"You what?"
Kenma huffed. "I know. I know. I already said it was selfish, but you asked," he muttered. "It was a good opportunity. You were smart to take it."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Kuroo asked, starting to pace across the room and running a hand through his hair. That was an old habit, one that Kenma remembered seeing a thousand times: before their first volleyball game together at Nekoma, when they called Kuroo’s name at his graduation ceremony, silhouetted against the sunrise when they walked to school. "I mean, I asked you what you thought for a reason, it mattered to me what you thought about it. On New Year's. Do you remember?"
Painfully well. "Yes," Kenma answered.
"It was never the plan to stay so fuckin' long, you know," Kuroo informed him. "Like, my life's dream wasn't running away to another country for years and years of my life--"
"Running away? From what?" Kenma asked.
"Uh, I don't know, everything? Hey, maybe you don't know what it feels like, but when the person who knows you best gives you the silent treatment for literal years, it kinda sucks," Kuroo said, words still heated and pacing growing faster.
Something was withering inside Kenma's chest. "You...you had other friends here," he attempted. "What did it matter what I--?"
"I have other friends and then I have you, alright?" Kuroo interrupted. "Or had, I guess. Point is, it's not the same and you know it, don't act like you don't know what I mean." Kenma did. "I'm not kidding. In my head, I was coming home after school. Maybe not immediately, I don't know, but New York wasn't on the horizon when I left here. But..." He stopped dead where he stood and sighed; Kenma watched the agitation evaporate from his frame and it was as if he'd shrunk a few inches, shaved off a few years, again looking strangely lost and out of place. "Fine. I guess I know what you mean. It was easier to stay away after awhile," he murmured.
"I don't hate you," Kenma ventured cautiously, interrupting another heavy silence.
Kuroo flashed him a very forced smile at that. "Again, heartwarming," he commented, voice clipped. "You were pissed at me though, weren't you?"
Oh. Kenma scuffed his toes along the floor as he was, again, forcibly reminded of how well Kuroo could read him. "I shouldn't have been. It was petty," he admitted.
"You should have told me," Kuroo said, and Kenma frowned more deeply, because no, he shouldn't have, because then Kuroo would have had even more reasons to stay away. "What? You don't think so?"
"No. I was right not to say anything. It wouldn't have helped," Kenma retorted.
"Listen, I know I used to joke about reading your mind, but I can't actually do that, alright? Hate to shatter the illusion, but I can't know something like that if you don't tell me," Kuroo said tersely. "And even if you think it wouldn't have helped, I can't possibly imagine an alternate universe or whatever where this turned out even worse. So spill. Why were you mad?"
"Because I didn't want you to go," Kenma supplied, because that was the easy answer.
"Why? Can't be because you would have missed me," Kuroo replied, words still quick and harsh and cutting.
Kenma twisted the hem of his sweater but not even that could curb the way his hands were shaking, because this was a more difficult answer, relying entirely on words Kenma had all but banished from his mind. Because I wanted you here. Because I was in love with you and couldn't say it. Because I'm still in love with you and can't say it. Because I wanted a future with you in it. Because... "I tried to tell you," he pointed out desperately, remembering New Year's, midnight, firecrackers, white noise, a closeness that they had never replicated. "Don't you get it?"
Kuroo was studying him now, looking increasingly confused. "Get what?" he asked, but there was a drag in his words, something making them slower, so it sounded less like a question and more like a dawning realization. He was figuring it out and Kenma stared determinedly at the floor. "Kenma, get what?"
The shaking wouldn't stop and Kenma's head snapped up in one abrupt motion, and he couldn't tell what expression he was making, only knowing it had to look tortured. "Kuro," he started sternly, amazed by how steady his voice sounded. "I kissed you. What do you think that meant?"
But he was distracted by watching the myriad of expressions that crossed Kuroo's face at the pronouncement, flying from wide-eyed surprise to critical, almost suspicious glaring, mouth twisting closed after falling open in shock. "You...no, shut up. On New Year's? You kissed my cheek, that's not--" Kuroo started.
"Yes, on New Year's. At midnight," Kenma pointed out, crossing his arms. "Everyone knows what that means."
"You said it was for good luck!" Kuroo reminded him, clearly agitated.
Kenma squinted. "And you believed that?" he asked.
"Okay, not really, but it was more believable in the moment than...than...what was that supposed to be, a confession?" Kuroo demanded to know, and Kenma's shoulders stiffened. Yes. Yes, of course it was. A last resort of a confession, a desperate, unplanned one, but even so. Kuroo seemed to understand, because when he spoke again, his voice was no longer incredulous, instead sounding hushed: "Was it?"
From the way he said it, it was obvious he knew the answer, and Kenma felt his fingernails digging into his skin through his sweater sleeves as his whole body seemed to clench. Every cliché about confessions was wrong, he decided viciously; he didn't feel better for saying it, it hadn't lifted any weight from his shoulders, it was just some stupid thing he shouldn't have given voice to.
So wrapped up in his own thoughts, Kenma didn't even hear Kuroo's footsteps creaking nearer except in the back of his mind, as a memory of the same sound crossing his bedroom floor so many years ago.
Kuroo's fingers were tracing the side of his face now, carefully, tilting his gaze away from the floorboards and brushing past locks of bleached hair, and Kenma had never seen this expression from him before but decided he liked it, because it was soft and calm and seeing it felt like being younger and whole again, like how he'd felt before Kuroo had become a distant specter instead of Kenma's constant tag-along shadow. But he'd barely processed that, hadn't even started to wonder what, exactly, was happening here, before Kuroo ducked his head and pressed a kiss to Kenma's mouth.
The feeling that shocked through Kenma's skin was the same as listening to Kuroo's heart beating when they were alone, but even moreso, and he yearned to get lost in it until he forgot that haunting emptiness, that familiar ache.
There was nothing aggressive about the kiss, despite it being unannounced and almost invasive by Kenma's usual standards for interaction with people; it was unmistakable yet still cautious, and it made Kenma understand how Kuroo could have been confused on New Year's. It should have been like this at midnight. He would have gotten it then.
Kuroo managed to speak Kenma's mind when he drew back, slow and uncertain. "See, now that...that was a confession kiss," he murmured. Kenma nodded mutely, for once without any sort of comeback aside from letting one of his hands settle over Kuroo's hand cradling his face, winding their fingers together loosely. "I probably..." Kuroo cleared his throat and tried to smile, but it wavered, looking so hesitant and shy. "I should have done that a long time ago."
"Probably," Kenma breathed out, before closing the gap to meet Kuroo's lips again. He supposed it was only fair; he did have a botched confession kiss to still make up for, and one good turn deserved another, didn't it?
Kuroo's bag slid off his shoulder and thudded to the floor as he kissed back, his free hand joining the other on Kenma's face, a light touch but one that made him feel so deeply connected, and it was as if all the distance that had opened between them promptly stopped existing, like it had never been there at all. He reached up, letting his hand wander up to the back of Kuroo's neck, anchoring him close with fingers twining through flyaway locks of dark hair.
When they broke apart again, Kuroo said in a rush, "I think I've been in love with you since I was fifteen years old. Is that sad?"
Kenma shook his head, taking in all the up-close details, all the curves of Kuroo's face and flecks of gold in his brown eyes. "When I think about it now, I don't think there was a time I wasn't in love with you," he answered honestly. Maybe he'd taken a long time to realize it, but the feeling had always been there.
Kuroo laughed and the sound echoed through Kenma's skin at all the points where they were touching. "Way to show me up," he teased, and Kenma rolled his eyes.
"Sorry. I guess I'm better at unrequited pining than you," he answered dryly, and when Kuroo kissed him again he caught a muttered, skeptical response of “Unrequited?” in his mouth. Even when they pulled back they were still so close, and Kenma searched Kuroo's face for a long moment, going cross-eyed from the effort. "So what now?" he asked.
Kuroo shrugged. "Dunno. This is my first time confessing to my best friend. Pardon my inexperience," he replied.
"Don't be an ass," Kenma chided.
"It's my natural state."
"I'm being serious."
"So am I, I don't know what I’m doing," Kuroo insisted. "Kinda playing it by ear right now. I mean, the kissing thing is working out pretty well, I think, we could definitely keep that going."
Kenma shook his head, aware now that the ease had returned and he wasn't scrambling to find the right words to say anymore, and it felt like a part of him that he thought he'd lost was now restored. "We can't just stand here kissing for the rest of the day," he said.
"That sounds like the best possible way to spend the rest of the day," Kuroo replied, fingers idly curling a lock of Kenma's hair. "We do have lost time to make up for, after all. Many missed kisses."
Kenma hummed in agreement, leaning forward to rest his head on Kuroo's chest, feeling his steady in-out breathing through his skin. "I should have kissed you better on New Year's."
"I should have kissed you one of the times I was back home. Any of them. At Bokuto's wedding or something," Kuroo answered.
"I wasn’t there,” Kenma admitted. “I knew you’d be there, so I didn’t go."
"Ah. I should have figured."
"I’m sorry," Kenma murmured into Kuroo’s chest, eyes closed, half-hoping he couldn’t hear it. It wasn’t enough to make up for everything. Not nearly enough.
He heard Kuroo shushing him from overhead. "Hey, hey. Don’t. At least you tried to tell me. I can’t say as much, can I?"
All at once his mind filled with a lifetime of memories of Kuroo, of his terrible jokes, his smile, the way his laughter felt through his skin, his years of constancy; he’d always been as dependable as ocean waves, and even after such a long time away he’d cycled back, just as he always had. No, Kuroo hadn’t written him love letters or tried to kiss him. But he’d shown his love better than Kenma ever had.
Kenma paused and then went on, "I should have kissed you when you were home for Christmas, out in Nerima. My mother always told me when you’d be home. Even after I asked her to stop."
"Kisses under the mistletoe? I would have swooned," Kuroo said, and Kenma could hear the grin in his words.
"Not under the mistletoe. That's tacky, Kuro," Kenma admonished, only a little serious. "I should have surprised you showing up at your parents’ house and walked with you down to the bridge, by the water. Where you showed me how to play volleyball. Do you remember?" The image bloomed in his mind: him and Kuroo in the dark twilight of December, the river near their childhood homes frozen over and silent, frosted grass crunching under their feet, fogged-up breath hovering in the air.
“Of course I remember.”
He knew without having to ask, because their afternoons by the river stood out stark in his memory, and Kuroo had to know them just as well. Kenma kept painting the scene as it stood in his mind: "I should have told you there and kissed you after the streetlights turned on, so I could see how you'd react. You know. It'd be cyclical. That's where we grew up and then we came back. Really sentimental, but specific enough to not be cliché."
Kuroo's arms shifted to wrap around Kenma's waist in the ensuing silence, holding on tight, and he felt Kuroo exhale into his hair. "I would've liked that," he replied, in one of the softest tones Kenma had ever heard from him. His answer was as delicate as that fleeting image, a moment that passed them by without either realizing, and an abrupt wave of melancholy flooded over him.
"I should've done it,” Kenma whispered, regretting the split-seconds gone past and all the words he’d strangled in his throat. They’d wasted so much time; there was a world of memories never made, years of clasped hands and lost kisses and soft silence, and he caught himself aching again, now for something impossible.
Only Kuroo’s voice brought him back.
"We still could. That river's not going to stop flowing anytime soon. Nerima's still there. And you and me...I'm not going anywhere either." His words were so earnest and sure, and Kenma nodded in time to that steady heartbeat, the thrumming rhythm of forever.
They still had time.