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“Let’s have dinner! Me, you, and Kenma!” Bokuto’s voice came through the phone, far too loud and notably garbled.
“Sorry,” Kuroo said, yawning as he turned the stovetop off, “It’s cleaning day. How about we do Tuesday night instead?”
“It’s nine in the morning?” Bokuto pointed out, “How many chores are you doing that they will take you until after dinner?”
“Cleaning the china we just inherited, the kitchen counters, vacuuming, dusting, and doing the bathrooms,“ Kenma said loudly, holding his plate out for Kuroo to serve him.
“Oh, hey Ken!”
“Morning,” Kenma said, sleep still tinting his voice.
“Wait, how is that possibly going to take you ten hours?” Bokuto asked.
“Cleaning always takes literally forever,” Kuroo said, “This will easily take us the full day and it's long overdue.”
Kuroo filled Kenma’s plate with approximately two bites of egg, multiple breakfast pastries, and a piece of bacon.
“Just multitask and divide and conquer,” Bokuto suggested, “That’s what I always did growing up. You’ll be done in no time. I promise. Plus, like I said. That amount of chores should take you like four hours max.”
“How about we try it and I’ll text when we’re done, but don’t wait up or anything,” Kuroo suggested.
“It’s not gonna happen,” Kenma said quietly as he eyed his eggs with suspicion.
“I have complete and total faith in you,” Bokuto reiterated.
“See you on Tuesday,” Kenma said.
“Tonight,” Bokuto said, sounding less confident by the moment.
“We’ll try for tonight, and I think we can do it, but if we end up taking too long like Kenma thinks we might, then Tuesday it is. We’ll keep in touch,” Kuroo said.
He was always the negotiator between his two favorite (and equally and oppositely stubborn) people.
“Just coming to check in,” Kuroo said, “I think we are killing this. Maybe we will see Bokuto after all.”
Kuroo placed his hands on Kenma’s shoulders, feeling the muscles move as Kenma unearthed one of their wine glasses from the soapy water.
“Mm,” Kenma said, leaning his head back enough for Kuroo to kiss it.
Kuroo pressed his lips to the top of Kenma’s head, and upon deciding that wasn’t enough, wrapped his arms around Kenma’s upper chest.
His desire to mess with Kenma taking over, he moved quickly, scooping the top layer of bubbles from the sink and placing them on Kenma’s head.
“My hair, you asshole!” Kenma squawked.
Kenma used his arms to capture Kuroo’s across his chest and Kuroo could have easily broken out of the restraint to avoid what Kenma was about to do, but he chose not to. He did, however, close his eyes in anticipation. Sure enough, Kenma snapped his head back and up, effectively transferring the swath of bubbles to the lower half of Kuroo’s face.
Kuroo just giggled, flinging the bubbles away from him.
“This is what I get for trying to help you,” Kuroo teased, “I guess I’ll just leave then.”
“You’re going to dry now,” Kenma said in the voice he always used when fake scolding his partner, “Stay over there.”
Kuroo bowed sarcastically and walked over to the cabinet to grab a dry dish towel. He started off drying dishes as instructed, but got quickly bored. The dishes would eventually dry themselves. What was the point of speeding up the process?
Instead of thinking about dishes as instructed, he devised another way to annoy Kenma and started to practice whirling the towel and quietly snapping it like a whip.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kenma asked, spinning around, wine glass in hand.
“Uh, standing here waiting for your slow little self to finish washing that so I can dry it.”
“I’m sure,” Kenma said, suspicion clear in his tone.
Kuroo waited, ready, as the perfect moment came. Kenma was turning on the faucet to rinse the glass, blissfully unaware of Kuroo’s dramatic wind up. With a snap of his wrist, Kuroo whipped the towel hard against Kenma’s butt, laughing like a school child.
Kenma didn’t react, not even to glare at Kuroo.
Kuroo was taken aback, just long enough to be completely unprepared for Kenma’s next move. He calmly grabbed the sink hose and sprayed it at Kuroo, the floor, counters, and cabinets all collateral damage.
Kuroo laughed, deep in his chest. Kenma had won that battle, fair and square.
“Wanna hug, sweets?” Kuroo asked, holding his arms out wide, water dripping to the floor.
He was absolutely soaked, so the last thing he expected was for Kenma to shut the faucet off, wordlessly walk over, and wrap his arms around Kuroo, the side of his face pressed to Kuroo’s soggy chest. It appeared that Kenma was full of surprises that day.
Kuroo took a deep breath, squeezing his arms around Kenma, rocking the two of them back and forth.
Kenma mumbled something against his chest that sounded a lot like an ‘I love you’ but Kuroo wasn’t quite sure.
“Hmm?” Kuroo prompted.
“I said, you’re a slimy, no good, morally reprehensible, generally inept coward with a ridiculous cowlick and a sheer lack of any redeeming qualities.”
“Ah, I love you too,” Kuroo said, looking around at the extreme wetness of the kitchen, “So what now?
“Well, it appears that all of our clothing is wet,” Kenma reasoned, “Perhaps we should remove it.
“After breakfast, you said I was supposed to keep us on track here,” Kuroo pointed out, “And I declare that clothing must remain on at all points if we are to finish in a reasonable amount of time.”
Kenma sighed rather dramatically, the back of his hand on his forehead as well.
“How are we going to beat this dragon if we have to also do laundry? I can’t possibly go on in these clothes,” Kenma asked, not moving the hand.
“I’ll run a load,” Kuroo said, “And because we need to actually work separately to prevent this from happening again, I hereby ban you from entering the laundry room once you dump your wet clothes in the washer.”
There was another reason for banning Kenma from doing the laundry, one besides the strategic separation of the two, but he didn’t want to encourage Kenma’s mischief by saying it out loud.
“Yes, sir,” Kenma said, saluting with the dramatic hand and awkwardly pulling up his wet shirt with the other.
Kuroo unplugged the vacuum to move to the next room, but was distracted by the sound of quick feet heading up the stairs to the second floor.
“Hey Ken? Aren’t you supposed to be cleaning the bathrooms?”
He waited for another second for a response, but while listening for Kenma’s voice, he noticed the dryer had stopped whirring.
Kuroo figured he’d let Kenma have a few moments to do whatever he was up to- probably getting some time in on his most recent Zelda save- while he folded the laundry and changed the load. It would be a nice short break for Kenma and perfect timing. Kuroo was beginning to get a bit cold and putting on his freshly cleaned, warm hoodie sounded unbelievably comfortable.
When he finally finished taking the clothes from the dryer and tossing them into the basket to fold, he was confused that his sweatshirt was nowhere to be found.
He frowned, as he changed the load and looked through the piles, but he still couldn’t find his sweatshirt. He would have sworn he had placed it in the previous load.
He sighed, turning on the washer and dryer once more. Maybe he was confused and just thought he grabbed it. It wouldn’t be quite as cozy and warm but he could just grab a hoodie from upstairs once he was done folding.
He got through exactly four items of clothing before realizing where his sweatshirt had gone. No wonder why he’d heard Kenma uncharacteristically running up the stairs. He was fleeing the scene of the crime!
Kuroo didn’t bother to continue folding the laundry nor did he take the unfolded clothing with him as he ran up the stairs. He had more important things on his mind: bringing the thief to justice.
He knew stomping up the stairs would alert Kenma to the fact he was onto him, but he had the tactical advantage regardless. One of them was really agile with incredibly long legs and the other was probably hiding under three blankets. Kuroo could easily get to and through the door before Kenma could get up and close it.
Sure enough, by the time he crossed the threshold, Kenma was just reaching the door. To Kuroo’s surprise, not only was Kenma wearing his freshly cleaned sweatshirt, he was also wearing a pair of shorts that Kuroo hadn’t even noticed he was missing.
“Come here you scoundrel,” Kuroo huffed, running Kenma backwards into the wall.
“You’ll never take me alive,” Kenma said, a glint in his eye as he tried to duck around Kuroo.
“Oh, please,” Kuroo said.
They both knew it was an empty declaration. It was less than a minute before Kuroo was able to manhandle Kenma enough to throw him onto the bed.
“You have thirty seconds to return my clean laundry.”
Kuroo didn’t even particularly care if Kenma wore his clothes. Really, he found it adorable, but he obviously couldn’t admit that to Kenma.
“Make me.”
The two words were enough to spring Kuroo into action. He practically pounced on Kenma, scooching him backwards on the bed before sitting on his shins gently enough to not hurt him but heavily enough to hold him down.
“With pleasure, my dear.”
He snuck his fingers under Kenma’s- his own- sweatshirt and started tickling him. Kenma’s light laughter quickly turned into hysterical giggling as he tried to push Kuroo’s hands away. He didn’t succeed, of course. Kuroo was rather talented at pulling Kenma’s clothing off, but it was made even easier in that the clothing Kenma was wearing happened to be multiple sizes too large for him.
“No, damn you!” Kenma shouted, flapping his arms rather erratically.
It wasn’t long before Kuroo was able to use all of that movement as leverage to yank the sweater off and toss it to the side.
“Sweater’s mine,” Kuroo said, glancing down at Kenma’s bare chest, “And so is that.”
Pinning Kenma’s wrists to the bed next to his ears, Kuroo started placing playful kisses down Kenma’s belly and sides, the parts of him that were the most ticklish.
He glanced up, seeing Kenma’s lips pressed into a hard line and he knew he was about to win. If Kenma was already forcing a neutral face, he was seconds from cracking.
Kuroo decided to end it right then and there.
He licked the spot right above Kenma’s belly button and blew raspberries against his skin. He smiled as Kenma burst into laughter, no longer able to hold it back.
He freed Kenma’s wrists, only to wind his hands in his hair as he kissed against Kenma’s giggling mouth. The kiss was rather awkward and generally unsuccessful as they were both mostly giggling, but that made it worth more than any kiss of passion.
“Kuro.”
The word was whispered softly, love and amusement tinging it, the same as the gentle pokes against his shoulder.
Kuroo opened his eyes, disoriented as he adjusted to the dark room. He didn’t remember trying to nap, so waking up threw him off. He yawned as he sat up, stretching, until it finally occurred to him that the reason it was dark wasn’t just because the lights were off. It was late, like really late.
He laughed, deep down in his belly and dug his phone out from a fold in the comforter.
It was almost midnight and they had yet to finish cleaning. Just to underscore the point, they had four missed calls from Bokuto.
“Well, there’s always Tuesday.”