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Okay, first off, what the fuck? Second, what the fuck?
Kuroo glares at his shoe locker, hoping that the contents of it might combust and then disappear if he scares it into non-being. No such luck, however. Several of his college classmates start pouring into the lobby to the sight of the tallest guy in the room gaping at a pile of brightly colored dildos sitting where his shoes should be.
It takes three tries before he can make himself touch his unwanted guests, and his face burns hot and bright as he tucks them under his arm and dashes for the nearest garbage can with a lid. Stares and titters follow him the entire trip, and his heart pounds long after he narrowly avoids an impromptu round of show and tell to the dean, who would have gotten an eyeful of sex toy if not for his face being buried deep within an issue of Time.
Finally ready to get on with his day, Kuroo returns to his shoe locker. Without the stack of neon invaders in the way, he finally sees the note card propped up in the back of the cubby.
Just playing!
Kuroo snatches the card, crumples it, and stuffs it into his pocket to dispose of later. He doesn’t have time for these infantile games. Every minute that passes is one more that he’ll probably be late for biochem, and it takes every centimeter of his long legs to motor along fast enough to avoid it.
The rest of the day is irritating, to say the least. Gossip travels at warp speed, and the most delicious denigration of the day is definitely his deluge of dildos. He can’t go anywhere on campus without at least one person smirking at him like they know exactly who did it. It takes all the willpower he has to not shake them until a clue falls out.
Even as he lay in bed counting the minutes until he finally drifts off, Kuroo can’t help but scour his brain for what absolute assclown could possibly find this amusing. Despite his previous resolve to throw away the note they had left, he finds himself studying it hoping the almost print-like characters written in a fine point pen will divulge their secret owner.
No one in particular comes to mind, but his thoughts spin once again when he realizes that whoever it is, it’s probably someone who knows exactly how to push his buttons. Bad puns will definitely do that, and the toys sure don’t help.
If that were it, Kuroo might even let it go. But no. Of course it isn’t.
A few days later, after dashing from his bus stop to the building in the pouring rain, he goes to stow his squishy shoes only for his cubby to be once again overrun. This time, it’s several strands of condoms, accompanied by another note card like the last one and definitely in the same handwriting. Always bring a raincoat!
If spending the remainder of the day fending off joking requests for a spare condom is terrible, then the next day is worse with multiple bottles of lube with lurid labels, complete with a CD copy of Bon Jovi’s album Slippery When Wet in lieu of a note.
Stuffing the whole lot into his bag, Kuroo grumbles to himself, “Whoever you are, I hate you so much.”
That sentiment trails him around all day when he finds one of the bottles springing a leak all over his gym clothes. His mood doesn’t improve when he puts the disc into his laptop and realizes he actually likes the music on it even if the lyrics don’t make sense to his limited English vocabulary.
Unable to do anything else other than stew, the next day, Kuroo takes his very first countermeasure against his shitty gifter. In the back of his shoe locker, he leaves a similar note card with a simple ‘dude why?’ scrawled on it. It’s the only way he can think of to get an answer short of camping out and waiting for whoever it is to spring out of the shadows and bestow some new form of embarrassment upon him.
The answer, however, doesn’t come. For two weeks, the note sits at the back of Kuroo’s shoe locker, and the rest of the school has found something else to amuse themselves.
Finally, the silence is broken and a response is rendered. Not what Kuroo expects, but a response nonetheless. A heavily decorated red box sits in lieu of the usual lewd display, and Kuroo’s heart stutters in his chest when he recalls what the date is.
It’s Valentine’s Day.
The box can certainly be categorized as gorgeous. Ribbon trim, black bows shot with silver and gold, surfaced by rich velvet. These are the types of things lovers buy for their significant others. Kuroo certainly isn’t dating someone (how do people even date in college when he can barely find enough time to sleep?), but something stirs in his belly at the thought.
With bated breath, he opens the box; when he sees the contents, that breath is released in a whine bordering on a shriek.
Dicks. Again. The box is full to the brim with little chocolate penises, complete with a terrible little vein creeping up the shaft from perfectly wrinkly little balls. It’s with a certain measure of dread that he cracks one of them open, and sure enough, pearly white crème oozes from the center.
“Oh, come on!” Kuroo slaps the lid back on the box and shoves the whole thing back into his shoe locker. Judging by the number of eyes glued to him, he has a feeling that by the end of the day, everyone on the whole campus will know about Kuroo-kun’s evil gifter.
He jams his feet into his slippers and stalks off toward biochem, which doesn’t start for another twenty minutes but he doesn’t care. Kuroo isn’t surprised that he’s the only one in the lecture hall, with even the professor having yet to arrive.
A few deep breaths calm his rattled nerves, and within minutes, Kuroo can almost call himself relaxed. That relaxation evaporates the moment a very familiar voice murmurs from behind him hot breath dancing along the sensitive nerves in the shell of his ear. “Aren’t you going to answer?”
Kuroo twists around to find his old rival/nemesis/jock itch Daishou Suguru smirking at him, arms crossed while his long fingers drum idly against his skin. “Well damn,” Kuroo grumbles. “Now it makes sense. You’re a complete dick, so of course that’s what you give on Valentine’s Day.”
Daishou fakes a pout that dissolves into a chuckle. “While it’s been stupidly fun screwing with you, I did do it for a reason, you know.” He lists forward, his face a few scant millimeters from Kuroo’s. “Know what that reason is?”
Every fiber of his being is on high alert when Kuroo shakes his head, unable to tear his gaze away from Daishou’s intensely green eyes or even consider forming a coherent sentence. The room feels like it moves a little when Daishou vaults over the row of seats and looms over Kuroo’s shellshocked form.
“I didn’t want your stupid garbage brain to think anything other than what’s actually happening.” Daishou leans down until their lips are almost touching. “I like you. In that way.”
There is little time to react before Daishou snares Kuroo’s mouth for a dizzying kiss. Despite Kuroo’s petulant eleven year old self who remembers the lifelong struggle against his childhood frenemy banging against his skull, the rest of him doesn’t seem to give a damn. His hands move on their own accord to push into Daishou’s soft hair and tug on the strands, eliciting a growl that Kuroo can almost taste.
Neither of them are steady when Daishou finally wrenches away panting, grin intact and undeterred by breathlessness. “So, are you going to answer me, you rude beast?”
“You know you’re a sociopath, right?” Kuroo fights the urge to steal another kiss, instead waiting for Daishou to tell him why all of this had been necessary in the slightest.
Daishou hums. “That isn’t the question. Do you want me to be your sociopath?”
Groaning, Kuroo lolls his head back and shakes his head, not bothering to fight the urge to laugh out loud. “Only if you promise to stop leaving sex toys in my shoe locker.”
Their torsos press together as Daishou climbs onto Kuroo’s lap. “I can’t promise I’ll stop leaving you gifts, but I can definitely start putting them in more discreet places.” His tongue darts out and flicks at Kuroo’s bottom lip. “So what do you say we skip our next classes and go rearrange a cleaning closet?”
No! That’s irresponsible and crude and — “Oh god, yeah.”
Daishou drags Kuroo from the lecture hall, evading the newly arriving instructor by diving behind a statue of some old dusty dead guy whose name escapes him for the moment. All he can think about is the hand threaded with his, familiar in sight but not at all in touch. Daishou’s hand.
The weird part is that he’s pretty sure he likes it.
And as they do exactly what Daishou had suggested and meet each other in a whole new way, Kuroo can’t help but think Daishou is probably not remotely done being a pain in the ass. This time, however, it’s a rocky trail he is looking forward to exploring.