Chapter Text
Keep in mind the last time
but don't ignore the first
Raise your eyes
just go again
There will be a next time
---
The first time Tetsurou ever got a crush, he was six years old and his mom had introduced him a little girl who was the daughter of an associate at his mother's work. She had short brown hair that curled at the end, and eyes the color of deep silver satin. She introduced herself as Kaede and gave a tiny bow of her head. Tetsurou bent so low to the ground his hair nearly touched it; she had laughed and called him cute, and that was it. He was smitten.
Kaede liked jump rope and got chalk all over her hands when they drew on the street outside together. Her favorite color was green and she said that Tetsurou's smile reminded her of the chesire cat- Tetsurou wasn't familiar with the tale, so they stayed up late into the night while she read Alice in Wonderland to him, until Kaede's mom came to yell at them to get to sleep.
Kaede was Tetsurou's first at many things. First and foremost, she was his first friend; she was the first person to take his pudgy hand in hers and hold it so tightly he thought his fingers might break. She was the first one to press rosy lips onto his own bitten, chapped ones, a kiss that was dry and soft and fleeting and perfect. As perfect as a kiss could be for a six year old.
The day that Tetsurou kissed Kaede under the tree in his backyard was the day that her father went to jail for arson, a story that he never heard and wouldn't have understood until he was older. All he knew was that it was the first time that he saw Kaede, who was stronger than the limbs of his old oak tree and braver than Tetsurou could ever hope to be, cry. It was the first time, and the last.
Kaede moved away in the following week. He never heard from her again.
---
Tetsurou's parents held hands a lot. They were a young couple, who got married directly out of high school and never quite stepped out of their honeymoon stage. Tetsurou was often enamored by the way his parents would lace fingers when they saw on the couch together, or press kisses to eachother's cheeks at random intervals during the day. It reminded him of the place where Kaede had left a wet, sloppy smooch right on the corner of his mouth. The skin still burned where she'd kissed when he imagined hard enough.
He wanted to hold hands with someone, too. Someone who was important to him like his mom was to his dad. He lay in bed some nights and thought about Kaede and wondered why he didn't miss her as much as he thought that he should.
Tetsurou decided he would find another hand to hold.
--
A boisterous and energetic child, Tetsurou had no problem with charming adults. They flocked to him and commented on how smart he was, how impressive his big vocabulary sounded, and my, what a handsome boy he would grow up to be. He preened under the positive attention, though his mother reminded him it was best to remain humble whenever he let it go to his head.
Other children were a different matter entirely. Tetsurou had friends... some friends. Acquaintances, he came to know them as. He liked the sound of the word but he didn't know if he was too keen on the concept. Why couldn't he get friends who showed up to his house to play and laughed with him like all the other children seemed to have? He tried hard to be someone's favorite, but no one ever seemed to want him as their first pick.
His mother assured him that he was her favorite, and while it didn't completely put his troubles to rest, it did assuage some of his wounded feelings.
And then came Kenma Kozume, a petite boy with long black hair and eyes like the ones on the stray tabby that came out to brush against the back of his legs sometimes when he walked into town. Tetsurou had mistaken him for a girl, at first- he thought that Kenma was exceptionally pretty and had the immediate desire to hold hands with him. This desire, to his surprise and confusion, didn't fade once he'd found out Kenma's gender.
Kenma was quiet and made Tetsurou work to get him to open up, but he found that it was well worth it in the end. His new friend was smart, though unlike Tetsurou, he was quiet about it. The air around him was unassuming and nothing about him really stuck out. He didn't like to play outside much, and he always kept his eyes down when he talked- but he listened to everything that Tetsurou had to say and made comments that would often take him by surprise.
Kenma wasn't just smart. He was so smart, and he was so good at playing game boy. Tetsurou could sit and watch him for hours, quietly hanging onto his shoulder and applauding him when he bested a particularly hard level. Although Kenma often told him to not be so loud, it was a nuisance, there was a tone in his voice that let Tetsurou know that he didn't mean it.
Tetsurou desperately wanted to hold hands with Kenma Kozume, but for the time being, he kept quiet about it.
--
The first time Tetsurou lost Kenma was also the first time that they held hands.
It was a rainy day in the middle of April, the kind where the rain isn't heavy enough to a palpable presence, but one would surely have damp clothing if they stayed out in it for too long. The earth smelled like damp grass and moss and dirt, like earth, and Tetsurou inhaled deeply at every change that he got. The rainy seasons were the best, though Kenma would disagree with him. His friend was the type to stop at every uprooted worm that lay wriggling on the pavement and gently scoop it up into his hands, depositing it back onto the earth. It brought a smile to Tetsurou's face every time he thought about it.
Although Tetsurou was one year ahead of Kenma, they were lucky enough to be enrolled at the same school once they turned old enough to attend. Tetsurou was nine while Kenma was eight, and while the former was in a stage of long, gangly limbs and a cracking voice, the latter had yet to go through his growth spurt. He was still small, and Tetsurou liked to tease him that he always would be.
The rain hadn't stopped by the time the two of them had gotten out of school, so Tetsurou told Kenma to stick close to his side. Kenma, of course, had forgotten his umbrella, and he reacted to rain much like a cat who was terrified of water. Scrunching his face, bunching up his shoulders and using Tetsurou's body as a shield when the wind shifted.
They shuffled close together, walking awkwardly with the limited space under the thin veil overhead. Tetsurou had promised he would bring Kenma all the way to his house before he went home, though Kenma didn't seem placated by this- the look on his face said that he'd rather Tetsurou just stay with him for as long as possible, but Tetsurou knew better than to push the curfew his mother had set for him when school had began.
Because he was taller, Tetsurou held the umbrella, and Kenma held onto his arm, his eyes pointed towards the ground. Watching to make sure he didn't step on any earth worms or stray toads, Tetsurou thought to himself. Kenma had a habit of not watching where he was walking- either because he was too anxious to look ahead or because he was too enraptured in whatever handheld device he had brought with him that day. The days following the release of the DS was a miserable, lonely two weeks for Tetsurou.
Somewhere between stopping to rescue a long, icky looking worm, and chastising Kenma for his untied shoelaces, the rain began to pick up speed. It grew heavy as the clouds overhead darkened. Kenma moved even closer to Tetsurou, the look on his face reading fear like an open book. Any words of encouragement Tetsurou could give him were drowned out by the clap of thunder in the distance, followed shortly by a stroke of lightening that illuminated the rounded pupils of Kenma's eyes and the gasp on his face. Like a spooked cat, Kenma's grip on him loosened as the boy turned and fled, deaf to Tetsurou's calls after him.
Tetsurou had never run so fast in his entire life. He felt his lunges squeeze in his chest and his breath escape in him in quick, shallow gasps. He lost count of the corners that he turned, lost track of where he was going. All that he knew was that he had to find him- he had to find Kenma. He had to.
And he did. He found him squatted underneath the the awnings of an abandoned shop. He was drawn in onto himself, legs brought up to his chest and his face buried in his knees. There was a quiver shaking his body, rocking his small frame and sinking fear into the very pits of Tetsurou's heart.
“Kenma,” he breathed, softly, not loud enough to be heard through the storm- though Kenma lifted his head anyways, peering at him with wide eyes and lips pulled into a tight, pursed line.
For a moment, Tetsurou just stood and stared at him. It was when another roll of thunder sounded in the sky that he lurched forward, going forward to where Kenma had jumped and curled even more onto himself, shaking as he covered his face.
“Kenma,” Tetsurou breathed, voice caught in his throat. He stooped down besides Kenma and wrapped his arms around him, covering his smaller body, shielding from the storm. They sat there together like that, Tetsurou murmuring ‘It’s okay, I’m here’ while Kenma shook and whimpered in his grip.
“Tetsurou.”
Hearing his name, Tetsurou reached forward, as if on a natural impulsive, and grabbed Kenma’s hand in his own. His palm was cold and clammy, and his fingers gently shook against the back of his hand. He swept the pad of his thumb gently over the knuckles of Kenma’s hand. Kenma gave a small squeeze.
“It’s okay, Kenma. I’m here, I’ll protect you. I promise that I’ll always protect you.”
Kenma gave his hand another squeeze.
Tetsurou presses his lips to Kenma’s temple. It’s chaste, and he feels the tension roll off of the smaller boy’s shoulders. They sit together and wait out the storm, Tetsurou quietly remarking about the earth worms and what they must be doing, about the cats and where they go when it rains, about the frogs and the croaks they hear in the distance.
When it ends, Kenma is smiling. They hold hands and Kuroo takes him home.
---
Kenma Kozume and Tetsurou Kuroo became even more inseparable from that point on. They eat lunch together. They spend more time at each other's houses than their own. Kenma's mother and Kuroo's (he insists on going by that, now- Kenma calls him 'Kuro', as if to spite him) come to be good friends. Sometimes Kuroo's father laments how his mother spends more time to Kenma's mom than she does with him.
School is hard for Kenma. Not because he's bad at it academically, but because he has issues with the other children. He has issues being in large spaces with a lot of people. He has issues, says his mother, says his teachers, whispers children who are bigger and can look down upon him. Kuroo calls it anxiety. Kenma doesn't like labels.
They don't hold hands, but that doesn't bother Kuroo like it used to. He still wants to touch Kenma, but in different ways. He likes when the other settles across his legs when he's playing a video game, or brushes against his arm when they walk side by side in the hallways. Kenma wonders through this world like his feet are connected to the ground. Kuroo doesn't mind carrying him. He will carry him to the ends of the earth.
By no means, though, is Kenma Kozume a weak person. His brain works in ways that Kuroo is sure he would never be able to comprehend. Their conversations are surface level, but their connection is skin deep. He thinks that if Kenma were to open the curtains to his thoughts and let Kuroo in, wholly and completely, he would very well be swallowed alive.
Kuroo makes friends, plenty of them. But Kenma is his best friend. Kenma is the only one who matters, in the end.
--
The first time someone asks him out, Kuroo is thirteen years old. It's his first school year without Kenma by his side, and he feels like he has had a layer of skin ripped from his body. He's survived junior high by blocking out the sun when other people try to look directly at him, casting shadows. He's built defenses by the skin of his teeth, because he feels wary of the world, feels different, though he can't figure out why.
He's approached by a girl who must be several years his senior at lunch one day, when he's standing underneath a tree in the court yard and spinning a volleyball between his hands. It's a small comfort, but it helps. A volleyball is a reminder of things that are stable, that are safe. They touch a part of him that feels real, true happiness, in the same way that evening naps in the sun lying next to Kenma do.
It's not a confession like the ones on television. The girl doesn't present him with a letter, printed with frilly cursive and wrapped in a white envelope. She doesn't bow and confess her love for him, nor does she blush and stammer.
She asks him if he knows her name. He doesn't. She introduces herself, though he doesn't remember the name a moment after she's said it.
She asks him if he wants to go out with her, clear and simple. She says that she'll give him time to think about it.
He doesn't need time to think about it. He says no.
Though it is the first time he tells a girl no, it will not be the last.
---
Kenma gets into his Junior High. Kuroo is ecstatic- the first thing he does is try to convince Kenma to join the volleyball team with him. Kenma is adamant in his opposition, at first.
Kuroo thinks he's wearing him down, though.
Kenma bleaches his hair. He wears it down, because he says he likes to be able to cover his face. Kuroo thinks it's adorable- he's like a little dandelion.
Pieces of him might drift away in the wind, if you blow on him too hard.
--
"I'm gay."
It's the first time that Kuroo has heard the word spoken aloud. He knows what it means- he's seen it written, absorbed the way in which it's used like an acronym for 'shitty' or 'lame'. He's read it's synonyms, words that feel like sludge dripping across his eyes when he repeats them in his brain. He knows what it means, even though no one talks about it, because everyone knows.
Kuroo stares at Kenma across the room. The look on Kenma's face is serious. Though his psp is in hand, it's slanted down so the glow of the screen casts light across the blankets of Kenma's bed and the underside of his chin, giving him a weary look. His eyes are hard, and Kuroo can not read them.
He swallows, trying to get rid of the sudden dryness in his throat.
"Oh?"
Kenma looks down, then. A shift in his rigid resolve. He's nervous, though Kuroo doesn't want him to be. He never wants to be the one to inspire anxiety in Kenma.
"I think that I am, at least. I don't like girls. I don't ever want to date one. Girls don't make me feel funny like boys do."
There’s something thick and warm coating the inside of Kuroo’s throat. He feels as if he can’t speak, he can only stare back at Kenma’s unwavering golden gaze. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to think. He’s not sure what’s causing the discomfort in his stomach or the feeling of bugs flitting underneath his skin.
Unconsciously, he scratches at his arm.
“Oh, I didn’t know. That’s cool.”
Kenma blinks at him slowly, asymmetrically, and the silence hangs heavy in the air. Then, as if the spell is broken, he turns his head back down to look at his psp, fingers resuming their endless tapping at the buttons on the side.
“Yeah.”
--
Kuroo is different from the people around him. He is 14 and he can feel an uneasiness in his bones that he doesn’t understand. Like there is some sort of thickness in the air, some kind of heavy weather baring down on his body and he cannot escape it just by effort alone. He is stuck.
It’s not normal. He can’t find the needle that keeps pricking his skin, no matter how much he searches his body. There are no imperfections to be found. Maybe that is the problem- his outside appearance convinces people of a nature he does not really have. A cunning, mischievous, dark personality that is not his own. People spread rumors, he hears them talk. Mostly good things about him- he’s tall and he’s the best middle blocker on the volleyball team, he’s handsome, he’s going to go far.
These things are not necessarily untrue, but they do not define him. Kuroo likes academics- he doesn’t have the highest grades in his class, but he’s close. He likes classic literature; his favorites are C.S Lewis and Charlotte Brante. He likes watching bad American movies so that he can recite lines to Kenma in broken English. He like’s astrology. His star sign is Scorpio.
These things are immutable facts, they are part of who he is. He doesn’t have to think about them; he knows them to be true. So what, then, is missing? Why does he feel so out of place? Like he’s walking on train tracks, trying to keep his balance on the rails.
Sometimes he catches himself lingering in the locker room after practice and watching the way Tatsui Kido’s eyes light up when he laughs, how he gets little dimples next to his mouth when he smiles. Sometimes he gets caught up in watching the forms of his team as they chase after the ball, the hard red lines on their palms and the sweat that runs on their brow. It makes his palms itch.
It scares him.
---
Kuroo throws himself into the game. His team is not great, but it’s not bad, either. That’s fine; he feels like he can do anything when the ball is in his hands, when he hears the screech of sneaker soles on gym floor, or yells of ‘nice receive!’ that reverberate off the walls. He feels like his blood is running hot underneath his skin, burning as it courses through his veins. He is the vessel, the sport is his blood, he is alive and on fire.
Kuroo drowns himself in volleyball, in his school work. He drowns himself in anything, anything at all, anything that will reach over his head even when he stands on the balls of his feet.
He and Kenma grow distant.
---
“Why are you lying to yourself?”
“I’m not. You’re overthinking things.”
“You are. You do it every day. Maybe you can’t see it, but I can. You’re a coward, Kuro.”
“...”
“You have to come to terms with it some time. You can’t live like this.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“..I know.”
---
It’s a secret.
It’s awkward and badly kept. It’s not easy, nor does it feel completely right. But it tastes of freedom and it burns a feeling of understanding in Kuroo’s chest that he can’t deny any more.
Kenma’s hand is sweaty in his own. He’s nervous- Kuroo is nervous, too. They sneak around like vagrants, ducking under the branches of trees or slipping into empty closets. Sometimes they find themselves on the rooftop and Kuroo tucks a strand of yellow hair behind small ears, though it is immediately swept back into dissaray by the wind.
There isn’t a word for it. They don’t need a name. Kenma doesn’t like labels- Kuroo isn’t ready for one.
Kenma has the pinkest lips that Kuroo has ever seen. He spends hours staring at them, hours twisting strands of Kenma’s hair between his fingers, hours breathing each other in and exhaling out their troubles.
They lay together in a sticky tangle of limbs, grass tickling their backs, breathing heavily from practice not long ago. Kenma points a cloud to him that looks like a Pokemon- Kuroo laughs and calls him his little nerd.
Kenma tastes like apples and cinnamon and Kuroo feels whole, for a little while.
--
Rumors. They circulate and infect the student body like cancer. Hushed words in the classrooms that tear out throats of anyone that they target. A vicious apex predator that stalk the hallways and make even the strongest of heart feel fragile.
The word is that Kozume is a fag. Someone’s seen him holding hands with a guy down at the bus stop. Someone else says he keeps quiet because he’s watching guys in class and thinking about doing things with them. Disgusting things. Unnatural things.
Kozume is a disgusting fag, and Kuroo finds him sitting inside of the gym after hours with bruises running across his wrists and on his arms and Kenma doesn’t look him in the eye.
There’s nothing safe about this. There’s nothing freeing in the truth.
--
“Kenma. Please. Talk to me.”
“Kitten. I’m worried about you. Please, pick up your phone?”
“Kenma, I know that you’re getting these. You never leave your phone somewhere for too long.” “Kenma, please. I miss you.”
“I miss what we had.”
---
They break up.
It’s better this way.
Kuroo graduates. He’s off to High School- Nekoma, in Tokyo. Kenma smiles at him the day that school starts as they stand where the roads part and their paths diverge. He promises Kuroo that he will be alright. That they will be together again in just another year, and everything will be fine.
Kenma squeezes his hand one more time, and then lets go.
--
Kenma Kozume is his first.... well. He doesn't like labels.
Whatever they are, he isn't the last.
They never do hold hands again.