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“In my defense, I thought it would go a lot more smoothly.” Kuroo taps his foot on the curb twice, leaning on one hip and surveying the scene before them with a contemplative hum. Sawamura stares at him in disbelief.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” A car blares its horn as it drives passed, a guy in the passenger seat waving happily at them. Sawamura feels suitably mocked, but Kuroo simply waves back.
“What do you want me to say?” Kuroo turns to look at him, blinking curiously. The fox cub bundled in Kuroo’s hoodie and cradled lovingly in his arms blinks curiously at Sawamura too. Sawamura feels his face grow warmer, how unfair for Kuroo to be stood there like some kind of bad boy in a bad manga like it's no big deal.
“I don’t know!” Sawamura huffs, looking off to his left. “You’re just too relaxed about the situation.” He gestures at the mess in front of them with a wave of his arm.
“Huh.” Kuroo follows the motion of Sawamura’s arm before snapping back to focus on his face. A smile creeps up slowly. “Well, better that than we hit this little girl, don’cha think?” He sidles up closer to Sawamura’s side, dipping down to show off the cub more fully as it sniffs curiously in Sawamura’s direction.
“And you think Kenma will agree with you?”
“Are you telling me,” Kuroo narrows his eyes, staring down at Sawamura with heavy suspicion, “you’d rather we had hit her?” He gasps dramatically, reeling away from Sawamura and hunching over the cub protectively. “Monster!”
“Of course not!” Sawamura rolls his eyes, stepping over to pinch the soft skin of Kuroo’s arms. “I just wish this hadn’t happened.”
“An unfortunate casualty. A brave and noble sacrifice some would argue.”
“But is some Kenma?” For the first time since it happened Kuroo looks a little guilty. He sighs deeply, lowering himself down to sit on the curb and looks at the mess consideringly.
“I’ll call him.” He says after a moment, wrapping the cub up tighter and handing it off to Sawamura wordlessly. Sawamura flops down onto the curb in his place, stroking it behind its ears as he watches Kuroo shimmy his phone out of his back pocket. It’s always a treat watching Kuroo shimmy in those jeans.
“Kenma?” There’s a moments pause before Kuroo explodes. “Who said I did anything to your car?” Sawamura snorts at the petulant tone he’s using. Kuroo twists around to glare at him. “You be quiet.” He grumbles, sighing wearily as he listens to whatever Kenma is saying. “Okay, okay,” he mumbles into the receiver. “See you soon.” Sawamura raises an eyebrow at him.
“He’s coming here?” Kuroo nods sheepishly. “How? You didn’t even tell him where we are.” Kuroo’s eyes widen in surprise. He curses under his breath and then taps out a quick message on his phone, pausing to squint at their surroundings for a moment. His tongue always lolls out of the side of his mouth when he’s concentrating; Sawamura finds it endearing. Kuroo makes a satisfied little chirping sound and then looks up, catching Sawamura’s eye and smiling toothily.
“You guys look really cute.” Sawamura frowns. Kuroo takes a photo on his phone, shrieking in delight at it. “This is going to be my new wallpaper!”
“I can’t believe you.” Sawamura can feel his face flushing even deeper despite himself. He can’t believe himself either. A few years ago winding up sat on a curb cradling a fox cub with a borrowed car they’d just shattered the rear window of would have seemed like a nightmare situation. Now it seems like he should have almost expected it. The first half of their day had gone by without a hitch; something like this was bound to happen really.
“Ney, we can keep her right?” Kuroo crouches down in front of Sawamura, peering over and looking at the cub with round eyes. “She obviously wants to be our baby or else she wouldn’t have been lying in the road waiting for us like that!”
“Our baby?” Sawamura squeaks, staring at Kuroo in alarm. They can’t just pick up a wild fox and keep it, he knows that. And yet he can’t bring himself to tell Kuroo no when he looks so happy.
“You don’t think she’s our baby?” Kuroo tips his head on one side; fingers pausing where they’d begun to scratch behind the cub’s other ear. He pouts up at Sawamura. It’s even more disarming because Sawamura knows it’s not a forced one.
“I don’t know.” Sawamura look down at the cub. It is a little cute. “Why are you so sure it’s a girl anyway?”
“When I was checking to see if she was injured I had a little look.” He mumbles, avoiding Sawamura’s gaze.
“You had a look?”
“Mhm. Little boy foxes have this sheath thingy and little girl foxes don’t. Here,” he rolls the cub into his arms, unwrapping it from his hoodie. Sawamura’s a little surprised how obediently it rolls over onto its back and stares up at Kuroo. Kuroo strokes it gently, cooing soft little noises at the top of its head as he strokes down its belly. Sawamura supposes he might also be obedient under such tender treatment. “It’s kind of difficult to see since she’s still a kitten and all, but under her fur she has mammae. Do you see?” Sawamura hunches himself forwards and stares down at the space between Kuroo’s thumb and forefinger.
“What am I supposed to be seeing?” Kuroo chuckles warmly and knocks his head into Sawamura’s.
“Her girly parts.” Sawamura looks up at Kuroo’s face. “If she were a boy you’d definitely know.”
“Sometimes I forget you’re such a nerd.” Kuroo feigns a gasp, holding a hand over his heart and blinking rapidly.
“I always knew you were only with me for my good looks. But to have it confirmed the day we get our first daughter. Honestly Daichi, way to break a boy’s heart.” He flutters his eyelashes, peering down at the cub. “Don’t worry princess, papa will look after you even when his looks have left him and daddy’s run away with a pretty boy half his age.” He sniffs dramatically. “We’ll always have each other.” Sawamura reaches up and tugs on Kuroo’s ear sharply.
“Idiot.” He brings his other hand up to cup Kuroo’s jaw, leaning over the space inbetween them to kiss Kuroo's pout right off his face. “No one is prettier than you.”
“Daichi!” Kuroo squeaks, blush seeping onto his face. “Anyone could see us!” He nibbles on his lip but makes no move to pull away.
“What so I’m not allowed to kiss my boyfriend the day we get our first daughter?” He raises an eyebrow, smirking at Kuroo as his eyes widen.
“We can keep her? You mean it?” Sawamura is pretty sure they’re not allowed to have pets in their apartment block. Is even surer that technically foxes aren’t meant to be kept as house pets. They’ll have to take it to a vet for a check-up which will be expensive. Then there’s the food and bedding and not much of that matters in the face of Kuroo’s blushing, hopeful face. He nods once, rolling his eyes when Kuroo cheers happily into the air. He lunges at Sawamura, slotting himself in between his legs and peppers his face with tiny kisses, halting only when the cub starts to squirm in his arms, letting out the tiniest bark Sawamura’s ever heard.
“Good girl,” Sawamura pets her on the top of the head, smile growing when a little tongue pokes out to lap at his fingers, “you tell the mean Kitty Cat to stop attacking me.” She purrs appreciatively, closing her eyes and nuzzling into Sawamura’s touch.
“I think she was just jealous.” Kuroo points out, resting his head on Sawamura’s shoulder to stare down at her with a soft smile playing across his face. "She wanted to be the center of attention."
“You guys know you’re in public right?” Kuroo and Sawamura’s heads jerk up in unison. Kuroo doesn’t remove himself from between Sawamura’s legs though, smiling sheepishly up at Kenma.
“We’re fathers!” He announces proudly, carefully lifting up the cub to show Kenma. “You’ll be godfather, right?” Kenma narrows his eyes, stepping closer with trepidation.
“Oh.” His eyes grow soft and he brings out a hand to stroke along the cub’s ears. “Yes. I’ll be a good godfather.” Behind him Ennoshita and Yamamoto are surveying the mess.
“Only you guys could fail this hard at buying a bookshelf.” Yamamoto laughs, boots crunching as he steps over the glass. Sawamura would point out how he can name at least half a dozen people, Yamamoto included, who have definitely messed up worse than this in the past but as he’s come to their rescue he decides not to.
“What happened exactly?” Ennoshita tips his head back to ask, though Sawamura doesn’t miss the amusement flashing in his eyes either.
“We got to the house fine and picked up the bookshelf fine.” Kuroo’s obviously still proud of this part of the story. He had found the bookshelf listing on eBay and convinced Sawamura they could drive over to pick it up. Sawamura had assumed they’d get lost or the old man they were buying it from would turn out to be a lizard person looking to use them as his next skin vessel or maybe the bookshelf would actually turn out to be a miniature one for a doll’s house. Instead they’d found the house easily and had a pleasant cup of tea with Mr. Makino as he explained he was moving to the countryside to be with a woman he met online so had to sell the things he couldn’t take with him; he’d ended up gifting them nearly half of his books too. They’d even managed to position the bookshelf perfectly in the car, leaning diagonally over the passenger seat in order to keep the boot closed – Sawamura had to sit behind Kuroo and hold the bookshelf in place.
“Yes,” Ennoshita agrees, “we can see you managed to pick up the bookshelf.” He gestures to where it now half-hangs out of the very broken rear window of Kenma’s car.
“There was a baby fox in the middle of the road,” explains Sawamura ignoring Kuroo’s indignant squawk over not referring to the cub as a baby girl, “we didn’t notice it until we were nearly on top of it.”
“She’s very small.” Agrees Kenma, still petting the cub in Kuroo’s arms timidly.
“There wasn’t time to swerve! Lest we risk squishing her!” Kuroo stares at Ennoshita and Yamamoto as if daring them to tell him he made the wrong decision. “I had to put my foot down on the breaks! It was the only way to save her life.”
“The momentum of the stop shot the bookshelf through the back window like you wouldn’t believe.” Sawamura had been a little shocked how quickly it slid through his fingers, watching as it flew through the back window and sent shards of glass flying into the road behind them in seconds. He did try to hold on – has the splinters to prove it – but there wasn’t much he could do.
“Oh.” Ennoshita looks at the glass on the floor and then back up at Sawamura. “So none of the tyres are burst or anything?”
“No.”
“You didn’t run out of petrol or break down?”
“No.”
“And neither of you or the puppy are injured?”
“Well she might be injured, but not from our car.” Sawamura's worried she’s hurt and that’s why she’s made no move to try and run away, and was lying in the middle of the road in the first place. Either that or she’s really hungry; she looks too small to be without a mother feeding her.
“It’s really not as bad as we thought.” Ennoshita admits, sounding almost impressed. “You could have just driven home yourselves.”
“Kenma didn’t give me a chance to explain,” Kuroo points out, “he just said he could tell by the tone of my voice something bad had happened and was on his way.”
“I wasn’t wrong,” Kenma adds, looking sharply up at Kuroo, “the rear window of my car is scattered across the road.”
“But now you’re a godfather!” Kuroo smiles. “So it’s worth it, right?”
“You’re paying to get the window fixed.” Kenma doesn’t sound upset by this turn of events at all. “And she’s riding with me on the way home." Yamamoto looks up from where he’s been kicking the pieces of glass into a pile.
“You’re actually going to keep it?”
“Obviously! She chose us! We can’t just leave her here!”
“And it is a little known fact that fox cubs do lie down in roads just waiting for homosexual couples to drive along and adopt them.” Ennoshita nods; Sawamura can’t tell if he’s teasing Yamamoto or teasing them.
“Oh really?” Yamamoto smirks wickedly. “Well how about me and you take a ride babe, see if we drive by anything foxy?” He waggles his eyebrows.
“I can get a lift home in my own car.” Kenma supplies, somehow having managed to wriggle the cub into his own arms. “If you guys want to do perverted things.” Yamamoto beams happily.
“No thank you,” Ennoshita snorts, “I don’t trust these two to get them home in one piece.” Yamamoto droops a little so Ennoshita rolls his eyes adding, “maybe later.” Sawamura wanders over to where the bookshelf is still hanging half-out and nods his head at Kuroo to come and give him a hand. Together they lift it up and slide it back into place. It plops just as easily as it did the first time. Kuroo claps his hands together.
“There. Good as new!” He snorts at the four incredulous looks around him. “Did you guys happen to bring a broom?”
“We bought spare tyres and a first aid kit.” Ennoshita admits shrugging at Sawamura’s narrowed eyes. “We didn’t know what to expect when all Kenma knew was that something bad had happened.”
“We shouldn’t really leave all this glass here.” Sawamura wades through the odd book that flew out after the bookshelf to see if any of them have hard backs they can use to scrape them up with.
“Oh!” Yamamoto perks up suddenly, “I have my shovel!” He leaps over to where he’s parked his pick-up truck behind Kenma’s car, leaning over into the back and rummaging around. “I always have it back here just in case.”
“Naturally,” Ennoshita smiles fondly, “I mean who doesn’t keep their shovel on them at all times?” Yamamoto cries out triumphantly, springing back over to them shovel in hand.
“Okay, where am I putting all this?” He gestures at the broken glass.
“Oh in Daichi’s jumper!” Kuroo answers much too quickly. “He’ll take it off and you can pile it in. I’d let you use mine but the baby is using it to nap in.”
“We mustn’t wake her,” Kenma whispers, looking at Sawamura with wide eyes, “she’s had a traumatic day.” Sawamura sighs in defeat, shrugging out of his jumper. As he bends down to lay it on a glass-free patch of road Kuroo lets out a giddy wolf-whistle.
“Don’t look at me like that Dai, you knew I had ulterior motives.”
“I don’t know if his jumper will be big enough,” Ennoshita hums, watching Yamamoto scrape up piles of glass and shovel them on Sawamura’s jumper thoughtfully, “you might need to take yours off too Tora.” Yamamoto’s face burns bright red.
“Ohoho? So he can give it but he can’t take it?” Kuroo trills, enjoying himself more than he should be, all things considered.
“Trust me,” Ennoshita smirks wickedly, “he can definitely take it.” Kuroo howls so loudly Kenma smacks him on the shoulder, afraid that he’s going to wake up the cub. Yamamoto coughs, staring at Ennoshita’s face for a moment. The corner of his mouth tips up in a shy smile and in the next moment his jumper is next to Sawamura’s on the floor collecting glass.
“Today has been a good day.” Kuroo marvels, waggling his eyebrows at Yamamoto’s broad shoulders.
“I can’t believe you,” Sawamura gasps, mocking Kuroo’s tone from earlier, “ogling other men the day we get our first daughter! Way to break a boy’s heart.” He clutches a fist over his heart dramatically.
“Don’t worry,” Kuroo walks over to flop himself over Sawamura’s back, “I’ll always ogle you the most!” No one moves to help Yamamoto, all content to watch him clear the road. He straightens up after a few minutes, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Hey,” he smiles dopily at Kuroo, “what are you guys going to call the kid anyways?”
“Nina.” Kenma replies sweetly, rocking the sleeping cub a little in his arms.
“Nina? Where’d you get Nina from?” Kuroo quirks an eyebrow but doesn’t seem entirely opposed to the idea.
“Shouyou’s got me watching this anime; there’s a girl dog called Nina.”
“What anime?” The name Nina seems painfully familiar to Sawamura but he can’t put his finger on why.
“Fullmetal Alchemist.”
“No!” Yamamoto cries out distressed. Ennoshita looks at him in alarm. “Nina’s a little girl who gets fused with her dog and dies!” He wails, leaning onto his shovel heavily and shuddering.
“Kenma you’re no longer allowed to suggest names.” Kuroo states simply, though Sawamura gets the feeling he’s only not collapsed on the floor himself because he still feels bad about breaking Kenma’s window.
“If you’re naming her after anime characters you should go with a cat anyway.” Ennoshita suggests, rubbing soothing circles on Yamamoto’s back. “What’s that cat girl in the show you watch?”
“Neferpitou,” Yamamoto mumbles, “but they shouldn’t name her that either. She’s evil.”
“In what way is a fox closer to a cat than a dog?” Sawamura furrows his eyebrows. “The babies are called puppies!”
“Uhm, no.” Kuroo scoffs, digging a finger into Sawamura’s side. “They’re kittens.”
“Puppies!”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure the guy who doesn’t know how to check a fox’s gender knows everything else about them. Seems likely.” Sawamura blows a raspberry into Kuroo’s smug face.
“Neferpitou is nice,” hums Kenma, “you could call her Pitou for short.”
“If Kenma likes it you know it’s bad.” Yamamoto looks up from his shovel, bottom lip still quivering.
“We’ll think of a name later.” Sawamura decides, knowing if they have to bounce around names between the five of them they’ll never agree on anything. “For now I think we should drive her to the vet and make sure she’s okay.” He’s more worried now that she’s essentially passed out.
“We’ll take her to the vet,” Kenma nods serenely, “you take my car to get fixed.”
“Ah! Yes! Good teamwork.” Kuroo detaches himself from Sawamura, stepping over to Kenma and ruffling his hair. “Want me to give you my card?”
“Won’t you need that for my window?”
“Oh… want me to give you Sawamura’s card?” Kuroo blows a kiss at Sawamura lovingly.
“Yes, that would be good.” Kenma nods happily. Sawamura fishes his wallet out of his pocket and throws it at the two of them before joining Yamamoto in folding their jumpers into neat parcels of glass. They drop them into the back of the pick-up truck along with Yamamoto’s shovel and turn around to find Ennoshita and Kenma already strapped in the front.
“Make sure you keep us updated on our baby.” Kuroo nods, fluffing up Kenma’s hair one last time before running back to Kenma’s car. “C’mon Daichi, the quicker we get this window fixed, the quicker we get our baby back!” Sawamura rolls his eyes, shouting out a thank you to Ennoshita and Yamamoto for their help and slides into the backseat. He wraps his entire body across the bookshelf, even though there’s hardly a point now that it’s already smashed the window.
“You’re worried Kenma’s going to get too attached aren’t you?” Sawamura smirks, leaning through the space in the middle to look at the side of Kuroo’s face.
“I’m more worried he’s going to get official documents with a weird name.” Kuroo’s eyes dart to Sawamura’s for a second. “Especially as I already have one I like.”
“Oh yeah?” Sawamura doesn’t really mind what they call her.
“Mhm.” Kuroo drums his fingers along the steering wheel. “Did you ever watch Naruto as a kid?”
“You want us to name our girl Naruto?” Sawamura knew Kuroo had questionable taste but this is another level. “Kuroo, why do you hate our child?”
“No!” Kuroo swats at him absentmindedly with the back of his left hand. “I don’t want to call her Naruto!”
“Oh. Yeah I used to watch Naruto as a kid.”
“Okay, so what about Kurama?”
“As in the fox?”
“As in the fox.” Kuroo deadpans.
“So you thought of Kurama because the Naruto fox is called Kurama? And it’s just a happy coincidence that it sounds like a cutesy version of Kuroo?”
“Oh, so you noticed too?” Kuroo leans back in his chair to knock his head against Sawamura’s lightly. “It will be like she’s really our baby; the ama part is a little like Sawamura. If your name was Samawura it would be better I agree, but we’ll just have to play with the cards we’ve been dealt.”
“So you’d rather I change my name to Samawura instead of us just tweaking the fox’s name to Kurawa? Rude.” Sawamura pouts; his name isn’t that bad. Kuroo doesn’t respond straight away, breaking the car carefully as they come to a set of traffic lights. He twists to look at Sawamura face on.
“And you’d be happy if we called her Kurawa?” Sawamura doesn’t really understand why such a question is causing the tips of Kuroo’s ears to turn red, but as is often the case he finds Kuroo’s embarrassment contagious. He looks down at the back of the bookshelf, picking at a frayed bit of wood with his thumb nail.
“I guess.”
“People would think we’d merged our names together instead of naming her after the fox you know.”
“I actually think I’d rather that.” Both options are embarrassing, but at least this way they look like love-sick idiots as a pose to just idiots.
“Okay,” Kuroo turns back to the road as the light turns green, “Princess Kurawa then.”
They drop their new bookshelf off at the flat first, dragging it up the three flight of stairs with more success than Sawamura was expecting. Then again maybe today’s share of disaster has already happened. Kuroo looks up a repair shop that’s nearby on his phone but by the time they get there they’re told it’s too late to get it fixed and back on the road now so they can leave the car there with the promise it will be ready for collection tomorrow afternoon.
“We can romantically stroll to the store for some kitty food.” Kuroo suggests, linking his arm around Sawamura’s. “Then romantically stroll home. Kenma says they’re being seen now so if we are quick we’ll still make it back before he’s there.”
“So more of a romantic run then?”
“Anything’s romantic so long as you’re holding hands!” Sawamura isn’t entirely sold on Kuroo’s logic on this point, but they do run holding hands when no one else is in the street; it's a little romantic. And Kuroo does hoist the new cat bed onto his shoulder, insisting that he doesn’t need any help and all Sawamura needs to do is stand there and look pretty, which Sawamura finds a little romantic too.
“All things considered,” Kuroo tells him as they’re flopped on the floor next to the newly set out cat bed watching Kurawa snoring peacefully, “today ran pretty smoothly!” The vet had given her a few shots and a list advising on formula and general care, but had otherwise deemed her perfectly healthy. Kenma did mention that the vet had tried to take the cub off their hands and send it to an animal centre, but apparently Yamamoto saved the day with just a stern look and a crack of his knuckles.
“We smashed a bookshelf through the rear window of Kenma’s car.” Sawamura deadpans.
“Daichi,” Kuroo shifts on the floor so that his head is resting on Sawamura’s chest, “you gotta admit it could have gone a lot worse.”
“I don’t have to admit anything.” He runs his fingers through Kuroo’s hair fondly.
“Daichi,” Kuroo whines, leaning into his touch and wrapping an arm around Sawamura. “I love our family.” He gives him a tight squeeze. Sawamura smiles, listening to Kuroo’s soft purrs and Kurawa’s little snoring sounds. If this is the outcome, Sawamura supposes Kuroo might be right and today could have gone a lot worse. But agreeing with Kuroo would be like accepting that now that they live together nothing in his life will ever be fiasco free again. And he’s not quite ready for that. At least not out loud.