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“Okay, let’s go through this again. Don’t go too slow, because the faster you go the easier it is to make a clean jump. I’ll be standing…here,” Bokuto crouches down to sit on his haunches, sidewalk chalk in hand, and he draws a single line in pink across the asphalt. Kuroo nods thoughtfully before politely raising his hand.
“Question.”
Bokuto inclines his head. “Ask away, my good sir.”
“So are you gonna take a running start or what? Might help with the take-off.”
“Dude, have you seen my calf muscles? My gastrocnemius is insane. No need for a running start.”
“Noted.”
They’re interrupted by the sound of a very pointed clearing throat, and the two of them look up to find Akaashi standing in front of the gate, dark eyes glaring holes into their heads. “What,” he deadpans, hands on his hips, giving them the dirtiest look they’ve seen him give anyone in a long time, “do you two think you’re doing?”
“Making history,” Kuroo answers simply.
“Becoming legends,” Bokuto adds.
“Answer me or neither of you are getting dinner tonight.”
“Well, I’m glad you asked, Akaashi! See, Kuroo is gonna drive at me in his car, starting from over there,” Bokuto points to the end of the block, where a similar pink line is faintly visible, “and I will expertly jump at exactly the right moment so the car’ll pass below me—ah! I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry, it’s totally safe, I saw someone do it on YouTube—“
Akaashi looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm. “You’re going to kill yourself.”
“It’s fiiiiine, Akaashi. Me and Kuroo have been practicing tuck n’ rolls all day, and nothing bad happened! Well, Kuroo hit his head a little bit at one point, but that’s what the helmets are for!” He points at each their heads in turn, Kuroo’s helmet a glimmering cherry red and Bokuto’s a shiny gold, chunks of their hair sticking out of the holes in the shell. Kuroo gives Akaashi a double thumbs-up.
Akaashi shakes his head, eyes closed as if in prayer. “I just.” He holds up his hands in a defeated gesture, slowly backing away as he does. “I can’t deal with this. I can’t watch. Go and kill yourself, I don’t care, just don’t do it in front of the house. Bloodstains on the concrete will make it harder to sell later on.”
Kuroo frowns, seeing the logic in this, and then looks at Bokuto. “Wanna try it down by the river where all the factories are?”
“Ooooh, yeah, yeah! That’ll give us a better backdrop for the camera! Like, it’ll be all edgy, and stuff.” He gestures towards his camcorder set up across the street, tripod angled towards the chalk line. “For documentation purposes, you see.”
Akaashi doesn’t reply. His nostrils flare for a moment, and without another word he turns around and goes back inside. He slams the door behind him, and the window panes shake.
“Geez, who pissed in his breakfast this morning,” Bokuto grumbles, somewhat ruffled.
Kuroo clasps his shoulder. “Never mind him,” he says, “We’ll show all the nay-sayers how wrong they are!”
“Yeah!" Bokuto crows, perking up instantly. "We’ll show them!”
And that's how twenty minutes later finds Bokuto staring out at the river. The water is dark, a slowly-moving current topped with a rainbow layer of oil; the nearby bridge has piles of suspicious black garbage bags underneath, and the far shore is lined with billowing smokestacks. It’s perfect. Bokuto makes the last adjustment to make the camera as focused as possible, and he takes a deep, readying breath. The air smells like burning plastic and river sludge, but it all just serves to get his blood pumping even further. After a moment of sucking on his index finger, of raising it in the air and cocking his head to the side—he detects a northwest wind. Excellent. Having checked everything off on his to-do list, he waves his arm over his head. “Rev the engine!” he hollers.
Kuroo’s Volkswagen, idling about thirty or so yards away, gives him an answering vroom, and the next moment Kuroo’s messy head sticks out the window. “The engine is revved! Are you fucking ready?!”
Bokuto jumps up and down in preparation, making sure his muscles are warmed up and raring to go. “I’m fuckin’ ready!”
“For science!” Kuroo yells, slamming on the gas.
Bokuto tenses his legs. “For science!”
“Well, it looks like for the worst of it, you got off with only a few cracked ribs and a fractured fibula in your right leg. I’d say that you are a very lucky man, Bokuto-san.” The doctor glances over from where she’s gesturing at the x-rays, leveling the both of them with a pitying sort of look that seems to be directly challenging their higher brain function.
“Wow, that’s all, huh?” Bokuto scratches at his head, wincing as he shifts his torso and tweaks his injured ribs. “Sure feels like everything’s broken…”
“That would be the bruising, and it should be healed within a few weeks. With the proper care, that is.”
“A few weeks?” Bokuto groans, picturing the thought of being all achy for that long.
The doctor ignores him, scribbling something down on a clipboard that she carries with her to the door. “We’re going to keep you here a few days for monitoring, and to make sure that you’re not concussed. But it looks like for the most part your head was protected.”
“Told you the helmets were a good idea,” Bokuto stage-whispers. Kuroo shushes him.
“For now, just make sure you get a lot of rest and try not to move too much. I’ll send in a nurse in a little while to start you on some painkillers.”
Kuroo nods. “Thank you, doctor. I’ll make sure he behaves.”
They both get another wary look, and then they’re left alone, the door drifting shut with a soft click. Kuroo groans, propping his elbows on the edge of Bokuto’s hospital bed, putting his head in his hands. “I can’t believe I almost killed you.”
Bokuto pats his back. “Nah bro, it was a team effort. I can’t believe we almost killed me.”
“Akaashi is going to wring my neck.”
“I’ll protect you! As soon as I can walk on my own again, ya know. So…a few months? Can you avoid Akaashi for that long?”
“Considering we live in the same house, no.”
“Godspeed, my friend.”
Kuroo sighs and Bokuto laughs, leaning back into his pillows. “Hey man, can you pass me my phone? With the dumb IV I got these little t-rex arms.”
Kuroo does, and Bokuto struggles to position the phone in front of him in a way that doesn’t twist his ribs or yank on the tubes in his arm. He jerks his chin in Kuroo’s direction, beckoning him closer. “Bro, c’mere, take a SnapChat with me! Hospital selfie!”
“You seriously want our friends to kill me, don’t you.” But he leans over into the frame, hiding his remorse for a brief moment with a pained smirk, and Bokuto flashes a peace sign with over-exaggerated duck lips. The shutter noise goes off, and Kuroo retreats back to his bedside chair.
Bokuto critically evaluates their photo. “Nah—the only one you really gotta worry about is Akaashi, and he never checks the Snaps I send him. Hey, what should I caption this?”
“How about ‘at least I didn’t die’?”
Bokuto laughs again at that, dropping his phone into his lap and smothering his face in his hands. “Oh my god, I can’t believe how lame I am,” he moans, muffled through his fingers.
“Yeah, you are pretty lame.” Kuroo stands, reaching for Bokuto’s complimentary hospital food, and he opens the lone carton of milk. He offers it out, but Bokuto doesn’t take it. Kuroo frowns and sets it back on the table.
“I just…I just really thought I could do it, you know?”
Kuroo senses that this conversation is quickly veering away from light-hearted bemoaning to Self-Deprecation City, and he tries to tread lightly. “It’s not that bad. I mean, it's mostly my fault, anyways. I was driving too slow. Plus, I’m pretty sure that guy in the video had, like, cables or some shit.”
“Still. Everyone’s going to think I’m an idiot.”
“Hey, we both fucked up, dude. No shame in making a mistake every now and then.”
Bokuto’s still shaking his head, inconsolable. “The doc said that I could have punctured a lung. And that it was a miracle none of my organs got squished.” He drags his hands down his face, staring up at Kuroo, his eyes gleaming with vulnerability. “I can’t believe I almost put you through something like that.”
“Hey, hey, hey, none of that now! All that matters is that you’re still kickin’—well, mostly, once you get your cast off. I don’t want you worrying about me, at all. Seriously.”
Bokuto nods, still not looking convinced, and he glances down at his lap, where his fingers are tangling together anxiously. “Did it at least look cool?” he mumbles, and—and his bottom lip is trembling now, and Kuroo can’t handle that, he just can’t, he’s a sympathetic crier and seeing someone so normally exuberant as Bokuto looking like a kicked puppy on the sidewalk of life is getting to him.
“Bo,” Kuroo whispers, his voice cracking, “you always look cool. It doesn’t matter if you’re spiking a hard-ass toss or rolling over the hood of a car going twenty-five miles an hour, you always look cool.”
“Don’t make this gay, you cornball.” Bokuto smiles wetly, sounding a little more like his usual self, and Kuroo smiles back, leaning over the bed to brush strands of Bokuto’s limp hair away from his eyes.
“Well too bad, because imma ‘bout to make this super fucking gay.”
“How could this conversation possibly get any more homosexual.”
“Like this.”
And Kuroo leans down and kisses him, cupping a hand under his jaw, being gentle and mindful of the bruising. Bokuto laughs right into his mouth, smiling into the kiss as he grips onto Kuroo’s collar and pulls him in, arms winding around his neck and teeth nipping at his bottom lip.
“Ow, ow, I thought you stopped biting people in the first grade,” Kuroo grumbles, his lips smarting, and Bokuto laughs again.
“I refuse to conform! Down with the system! Stick it to the man!”
“Well stick it to the man a little less forcefully, you almost broke the skin—”
“Oh, boo hoo. Like you have any room to talk, sharky.”
But he’s softer this time, a gentle scrape of his teeth, and Kuroo sighs blissfully. It’s when Bokuto shifts and pulls, like it’s trying to get Kuroo to lie down on top of him, that Kuroo has to call a time out and give them both a few minutes to cool off before the nurse captures them in a compromising position.
Bokuto pouts sullenly, the apples of his cheeks flushed pink. “The second it doesn’t hurt like a bitch to move, your ass is mine,” he warns.
Kuroo grins. “And my ass will be right here when that day comes. But for now, just eat your damn Jell-O.”
Hours later it's ten o'clock at night and the both of them are watching a shitty made-for-TV movie—they’ve muted the volume and are instead filling in the actor’s lip movements with their own variation of the script. After the last nurse had left, Kuroo had snuck onto the narrow hospital bed to snuggle up besides Bokuto, arm behind his back and pulling him close into his side.
“Oh, but you’ve killed Raphael! He was the best laser-hair removal specialist in the metro area—who will burn off my bellybutton fuzz now?” Bokuto warbles in a high voice, the woman on-screen sobbing and pointing an accusing finger at the man across from her.
The man implores her, taking her quaking hands in his, and Kuroo narrates: “I’m sorry, my darling. But Raphael, like, tried to fuck my dog. He got what he deserved.”
Bokuto cracks up, tipping his head back onto Kuroo’s shoulder and letting loose a series of ugly snorts. “Dude, you fucking suck at this. He tried to fuck my dog? That shit’s messed up. Let’s try to keep it PG.” As he speaks he turns his head to nuzzle his nose into the side of Kuroo's neck, his breath hot against the skin.
Kuroo presses a quick kiss onto Bokuto’s forehead. “Sorry man, but seriously—” he gestures at the TV, “he looks like he’d be into that kinda stuff, doesn’t he? I think it’s his mustache.”
“It is a pretty shitty mustache,” Bokuto allows.
“Right?”
Bokuto smiles sleepily, the painkillers working their magic, and he sags bodily into Kuroo’s side. “Hey, babe?”
Kuroo reaches for his hand—the only not tied up with the IV, and he holds it in his own. “Hmm?”
Bokuto looks up at him, frowning slightly. “Am I still hot even though I got this thing up my nose?”
“You look even hotter than usual. Ten out of ten, would bang.”
“Jesus, keep it in your pants,” Bokuto laughs. Kuroo grins, reaching for the remote on the side table, and he flicks off the TV. The room plunges into darkness, the only illumination the wavering silver glow from the moon shining through the open curtains. Bokuto’s drowsy golden eyes seem to reflect the meager light, and he whines, his voice breathy with the call of sleep. “Aw, now we’ll never know how Justine reacts to finding out her laser-hair removal specialist is into bestiality!”
Kuroo leans over and drops the remote back onto to the side table, reaching down to pull up the flimsy hospital blanket. He tucks it under Bokuto’s chin, smoothing it over his broad chest. “You need to go to sleep. The nurse is gonna come by in a few hours to make sure you haven’t died in the middle of the night, and I don’t want you be a sleep-deprived psycho. You’re gonna be hopped up on drugs enough as it is.”
Bokuto moans, his thick eyelashes fluttering. “But I don’t wanna.”
“If you go to sleep now I’ll sneak you in a McFlurry for breakfast. One with M&Ms.”
“Oh, you’re evolving. Playin’ me like damn fiddle.” He sighs, breath smelling of lime Jell-O. He pauses to think it over for a moment, the silence stretched out. Kuroo begins to think he's fallen asleep mid-thought, but then he eventually murmurs, “Fine. But you’ll stay, right? Here, with me?” He’s gone very quiet, the silence and dimness of the room magnifying his exhaustion, and Kuroo leans over to peck him once on the lips.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Bokuto smiles blearily, his eyes already closed. “Love you, Tetsu,” he mumbles, and the last syllable barely leaves his lips before he begins snoring, loud and right in Kuroo's ear. Kuroo laughs to himself quietly, settling down and making himself comfortable. He doesn’t let go of Bokuto’s hand.
“Love you too, Kou.”
One Month Later
There’s at least twenty-five people crammed into the living room, all of them carrying with them an air of confusion, and all of them vaguely wondering why the room smells like someone left a bologna sandwich in the sun all day.
“What are we doing here, again?” Yaku grumbles, hissing as an overly exuberant Lev elbows him in the back of the head.
Kenma shrugs, not looking up from his phone. “I don’t know.”
“You live here.”
“Mmm.”
Yaku sighs.
Even though none of them actually knows what’s going on, a rock-paper-scissors tournament is held soon after to see which six people get to cram onto the loveseat together—the losers are perched anywhere there’s space; on the arm rests of the couch, the one beat-up armchair—Konoha manages to unearth several sitting pillows from a storage closet. But the majority end up sitting on the floor, some looking less pleased about this than others.
Bokuto and Kuroo stand before the group, in front of the large flat-screen TV, looking somber and professional. They’re both dressed nicely, pressed shirts and slacks, Bokuto with a pair of crutches propped under each armpit. His cast is neon green and coated with Sharpie doodles and cat stickers.
Kuroo claps his hands together several times to get everyone’s attention. “Welcome, welcome, friends. Thank you for coming tonight. First of all, I’d like to apologize for the smell. Someone, and I’m not gonna name names, but someone thought it wouldn’t be big deal to drop their food behind the couch and then not pick it up for five days.” Here Kuroo glares at Bokuto, who looks down at the ground in shame. “And second, I hope you’re all ready for a cinematic masterpiece.”
Iwaizumi, a tournament winner of one of the highly-coveted couch spots, shoves Oikawa off of his lap. He lands on the floor in front of the loveseat with a pained oof, and Iwaizumi ignores his ensuing whine. “You never actually told us what we’re watching,” he points out.
“Yeah! Is it a movie?” Hinata asks excitedly, shoving a handful of popcorn into his mouth. Kageyama, sitting beside him, snarls something that sounds like “obviously, dumbass,” under his breath.
“Something like that,” Kuroo replies mysteriously, and Hinata’s eyes go wide.
Bokuto clears his throat. “As you all know, a few weeks ago I was the victim of a tragic accident—”
“Which was entirely your fault,” Akaashi interjects frostily from the kitchen entryway, looking annoyed.
“—and I’m sure you were all worried half to death, but I am obviously on the road of recovery as we speak!” He gestures grandly to his crutches, and his words are met with scattered applause, Hinata’s and Lev’s being the loudest and the rest stemming more from pity than anything. “Now, I read online that the best way to overcome trauma is to talk about it! Face your fears—share it with others! And as luck may have it, we have the whole shebang on camera. May I get a drumroll, please?"
Kuroo obediently begins slapping his hands onto one thigh in semblance of a percussion instrument. It takes a moment for the group to come to terms with what's happening, and then there’s a collective groan.
Yaku hangs his head in despair. “No.”
“Now, prepare yourselves for—”
Iwaizumi curls his lip. “Bokuto, I am not gonna watch you get hit by a car in shitty camcorder resolution. “
Suga and Daichi rise from their seats with a disappointed shake of their heads, and are the first to follow Akaashi out into the kitchen. They are soon after followed by nearly everyone else, giving the hosts looks varying from utter disgust to concern over their mental well-being.
“Guys, guys, wait! It’s art! Kuroo added background music and everything—no, Kenma, not you too! I thought we were friends!”
By the time the room is cleared out, only Lev, Hinata, and Tsukishima (and, by extension, Yamaguchi) remain—the rest had fled into the kitchen and backyard to prey upon the food and beer that were supposed to have been reserved for the after-party. The four of them sit on the floor, sitting criss-cross-applesauce and looking entirely like a group of schoolchildren waiting to have a story read to them. Hinata and Lev look like they're about to explode with excitement, but the others...Bokuto blinks owlishly, his lips spreading in a slow smile. “Wow, Tsukki, I never woulda guessed you’d be down to watch this. Finally realized how cool I am?”
Tsukishima shrugs, leaning back on his hands. “Honestly, I just really want to see you get hit by a car.”
Yamaguchi snickers.
Kuroo grins, reaching over to give a hearty slap to Bokuto’s back. “Well, we can’t disappoint our audience, can we, my darling?”
Bokuto mirrors his devious smile. “Certainly not, my prince! Okay, now, guys— I hope you’re not too squeamish, because I do bleed a little bit at one point— ”
In the end, both Hinata and Lev have thrown up, Tsukishima is laughing so hard he’s reduced to tears, and both Bokuto and Kuroo are banned from ever throwing a party without Akaashi’s written permission ever again.
Epilogue
Bokuto hobbles out of the bathroom, a funny look on his face, and Kuroo glances up from his book. He frowns, pushing his glasses further up his nose. "Bo? Come to bed. You really shouldn't be putting any weight on your leg—"
"Giant balls."
Kuroo raises an eyebrow. "Pardon?"
Bokuto's eyes gleam. "Giant bouncy balls. You know, like the kind old ladies exercise with."
"What about them?"
"What if—okay, now, just hear me out—we both have one, and we just run at each other—"
Kuroo sets his book down on his lap, eyes widening. "One of us would go flying."
Bokuto nods, the look in his eyes manic. "It would be the ultimate test of strength. The champion takes all. And, I mean, we could do it on grass, or sand, to make the landing softer—"
"Or," Kuroo interrupts, "we could do it in a parking lot or something. To up the stakes."
"What about—"
"Helmets."
Bokuto smiles fondly. "I knew I loved you for a reason."
There's a loud knock on the wall from the direction of Akaashi and Kenma's bedroom, and they both freeze.
"If I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing," says a loud voice from the other side, "then I better not be."
Bokuto meekly crawls into bed, Kuroo guiltily putting his book away.
The two of them stay up until the wee hours of the morning quietly mapping out their plan.