Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Conventional wisdom №1: Haiba Lev is bad news. If he texts you, something is going to happen.

Conventional wisdom №2: if he wants something from you, you'd better run.

The thing is that Kenma is bad at running. Always comes last and out of breath as if he were a tubercular patient in his last stages.

“kenma, do u still have ur camera and ur video stabilizer?”

Heaven knows he should have broken them.

“what do u want”

“remember we started a crew? our cameraman got a new full-time job and we have a recording tomorrow. can u film this?”

“no”

It’s not that Kenma is disagreeable or mean-spirited. It’s just that with Lev everything... takes too long. And requires too much effort. Like climbing a mountain with a stone tied to one’s leg under the scorching sun. And the crew must be alike. But being at home — stretching in his comfy gaming chair, sipping a soda and putting his feet up on the table, just like now, is much better. This is what Kenma can do and likes to do. A lot.

“please-please-please”

“no”

“r u busy?”

“yeah”

It is wrong to lie. But, as is known, everyone has their own good, and, Your Honor, today Kenma's is such: for the right cause, to lie is all right.

“are u busy all day???? we could start later, any time u say!”

Kozume throws back his head and stares at the ceiling in desperation, as if some unknown higher powers could broadcast their answers there. Haiba really knows how to get under someone’s skin. If Kenma told he could do it only at 6 a.m. on the summit of Mount Haku, Lev and his crew would probably think there’s nothing wrong with it and would be locked and loaded at the crack of dawn. Obsessed.

“What do I say to get rid of you?” Kenma laments.

“kenma pleeeease”

“we’ll pay”

Oh, Lev, such a sweet summer child. Didn’t they teach you that’s this is how you start a conversation? Kozume, who was seconds away from falling asleep because of the boring conversation they were having, feels as though he had got an intravenous injection of caffeine and taurine.

“fine. text the address”

Energy drinks and games can’t buy themselves, he still has to pay the rent, and there have been few commissions this month.

“THANKS”

So, there he is — 02:33 a.m., next day, Shibuya, standing at the famous crossing teeming with pedestrians. What was that about Mount Haku at 6 a.m.? Now it seems like the greatest and the brightest of the ideas: a snowy 33 kilometers’ path doesn’t sound like a torture anymore. Anything, as long as it's not a stream of people, which, like a whip current — looks harmless at first sight, but then you get caught in it, and it drags you, and swimming parallel to the shore is no use, because there is no shore.

The traffic light turns red, and then there’s a loud:

“Kenma!”

He turns his head to the right and sees four guys and Lev, who is waving his hand at him. Kenma approaches them just to join someone (because standing alone as a restless and drifting orphan in this crowd is unbearable) and the first thing he mentally notes is that even with a huge Qfront building behind them, all the five are tall. Fucking idols. Well, all but for Lev, though he is the tallest. But Kenma would rather call him “lanky” — tall, but in an ungraceful manner. Kenma looks at the Statbucks sign and his only dream is to finish as early as possible and get himself some coffee.

“Oh, our new cameraman?” a guy with a satisfied smirk and weird hair singsongs.

“Just this once. 10.000 yen.”

“Don’t worry, if we like it, we’ll give you an extra half on top.”

Now we’re talking. At least they are not that dumb to think that Kenma is going to work for the idea driven by sheer enthusiasm.

“This is Kenma, we met at the university,” Haiba introduces.

“So, you’re groupmates then?”

“No, Kenma dropped out.”

The rest introduce themselves and their names blend into the slurred “bokutokurooakaashioikawa” and Kenma gives them a hostile look, soothing himself: there’s no need to remember their names — he won’t need them after.

“Maybe we should try with that jump after all?”

“Bokuto, if you drop me again, you’ll be the one to push my wheelchair.”

“What? When has it ever happened?”

“The day before yesterday!”

“Oh, shut up.”

Hearing the word “again” Kenma stiffens. It’s not that he had something planned for the evening, but if he did, he could easily forget about it: it seems that there are a lot of takes waiting for them.

Evening. Great. That could work.

“If you just fiddle around till the evening, the sun will set and the light will change. Going to look weird after editing, if we need one.”

The crew members exchange glances and nod to each other in agreement. Poor fallen victims to his masterful manipulation. But Kenma notices that one of them looks grateful, and the one who promised him an extra half on top (Kenma’s already all in), has something resembling acknowledgement and hidden excitement in his gaze. As if he hadn’t expected something smart from their new cameraman.

“So, the jump?”

“Geez, all right,” he gives up, “But if we can’t clear it the first time, we won’t try again.”

“Okey-dokey!”

“Oikawa, you ready?”

“Always ready,” says a guy with an artificially-pretty face and gives them an OK sign.

“Did you memorize the camerawork?” one of the guys turns to Kenma.

He wants to snap with something like “And did you memorize the choreo?” considering their spontaneous decision with the jump, but he holds back. They haven’t paid him yet.

Except he realizes he must have been wrong with his prejudices when the dance begins with the said jump — the black-haired guy places his hands on the shoulders of two others standing to his right and left, jumps onto their folded palms, and they push him back. That is the moment Kozume realizes: 5000 yen on top shouldn’t be enough. He did watch the dance practice at home, they explained what they expected it to look like. But he failed to consider the following:

1) That they will add the jump at the very las moment which wasn’t in the original practice;

2) That those “self-made idols”, as Kenma calls them in his thoughts, will be that good;

3) That so many years of sedentary lifestyle will make themselves known so soon.

Or maybe it’s not that he is so phlegmatic and weak, but it’s they who are too fast? Kenma had expected a high-school amateur act. Clumsy, angular guys resembling high schoolers, despite being in their twenties, who had been watching idols too much and decided, for reasons unknown and obscure, that they could do the same. He had expected outfits put together from whatever they managed to find among their clothes that only vaguely resembled the gorgeous looks from the actual music videos — just so long as there was some resemblance.

Instead, they have the matching black suits, impeccable formation, frightening synchronization, and sharp and precise movements — almost automatic. And they are all in perfect shape. Well, maybe if Kenma were dancing like a madman at the crossing in the heart of Tokyo, he'd look like that, too. Passers-by start paying attention to them, some even begin to take pictures.

It takes Kenma's breath away. Okay, they're certainly not boring. He's only wonderin: why is Lev with them?

“I'm sorry, I messed up!” he says, as if to prove Kozume's thoughts, tripping over his own foot.

Everyone stops, realizing that they will have to start all over again beginning with the chorus.

“We'll cut it out,” one of them says reassuringly, glancing at Kenma as if waiting for him to confirm. He's the one who has to cut it after all.

Kozume just barely nods at... What was his name? Started with “K”... Ko... Ku... Kuroo? Anyway, never mind, it's “the guy with the weird hair.”

Oh, wait, there are two of them.

Well, from now until the end of the day, his name will be “Weird Hair Guy #1”. Sorry, “Weird Hair Guy #2”, but at least you can see something, because the long bangs aren't falling down over your eyes.

They rewind the song, and the dance resumes.

And Kenma has to admit, he doesn't give a fuck whether this guy can see anything or not, but the way he runs his fingers through his bangs is sexy. Kenma's distracted by the contrast of his slightly tanned fingers and his black hair, by the way they separate it into strands, by the way his honey-brown eyes peer into the camera — wait, no — at Kenma. His gaze is languid and relaxed, as if it costs him nothing to jump, land evenly and throw his hands up in an alternating motion.

Kenma is a shitty cameraman. Fire him, strip him of his extra half, kick him out in disgrace. If the footage were posted, only one person would "like" this, and it would be him. Because the guy had already moved to the left and there was another guy in the center, also dark-haired but with normal hair, who we should be filming now.

He needs to be blacklisted as a cameraman. But that's for later, now he has to get out of these deep waters. He lowers the camera and pauses the recording.

“You were out of sync there.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“Where Lev was.”

Your Honor, I solemnly swear this for the right cause again.

Everyone sighs wearily, but understandingly, and even Lev, who has just been impertinently slandered, doesn't try to prove otherwise: so it’s not unusual, which means Kozume didn't miscalculate.

“Then we start again.”

They go on, and more and more onlookers gather around them. And either Kuroo really is too often in the center of their formation, or Kenma is too hung up, but it's getting harder and harder to take his eyes off of him each time. “Usually a friendship is formed between a new member of the working group and the first person who makes him feel welcome,” Is that what they say? That guy — Kuroo — was indeed the first person to talk to him. And the fact that Kenma only remembered his name contributes a nice touch to the growing fucked-up-ness of the situation.

“This is not a fancam,” he reminds himself and gets distracted by Lev in the center. He even involuntarily has to admit that he's not that bad either.

“What's the song?” some girl in the crowd, standing somewhere behind Kenma, asks.

“No idea,” the other girl replies.

The song, which he had almost memorized while watching the camerawork tutorial, was too loud and energetic to Kozume's liking: if it were playing somewhere in a club, he would be pushed till bruised ribs by the dancing crowd. Sharply, jerkily, aggressively — that's how the members move, and he gets tired just from the sight of it all, though he is just standing with the camera, occasionally taking two steps back, one to the right, a little forward, and again and again. He looks like some clumsy virgin schoolboy waltzing, while the guys in front of him look like professional dancers. Kenma couldn't do the same. Well, he doesn't want to in the slightest.

“Their synchronization is crazy,” someone says in amazement.

And it really is, and their synchronization is most noticeable when they all move their feet together or jump, and it sounds as if it were one person. If Kenma were to estimate their movements and synchronization with Tensor flow, the score would probably be about 80%. 

Weird Hair Guy #2 (by the way, a few silvery strands of hair now are sticking out) suddenly stops.

“Wait, what's next?”

“Goddamn it, Bokuto.”

“I was too focused on the “clock” and forgot what's next,” Bokuto says, referring to the moment when they all lined up and, with their arms each at a different angle, bent them to the sound of the clock ticking in song.

Kenma's even sorry they ruined that take, because it looked impressive.

“We go in different directions, and then I'm the center, Bokuto-san.”

“Ahhhh... Oh! Now I remember! Thanks, Akaashi!”

They start over again because they want it all in one take, and Kozume, usually indifferent to other people's problems, even feels a little sorry for Kuroo, who has to do that crazy jump at the beginning for the third time.

The crowd once again livens up when that-Akaashi-guy sits on the ground and reaches out with his thin, graceful left arm toward Kuroo, supported by the others, arches his back with his arm outstretched in the same way.

Bokuto, thankfully, doesn't mess up after the “clock”, and the formation changes, with about 20 seconds left in the song. Kozume hears a high-pitched girl's voice:

“Oikawa-san!”

Oikawa is the center now, and the others around him lunge, leaning on one arm and instantly jumping back up. And they do it so briskly and easily, while Kenma's legs are trembling from his crouching position.

If someone trips, stumbles, or forgets something, Kozume will personally break their knee with a stabilizer. And something tells him that his favourite “Your Honor, this is also for the right cause” is not going to work. Almost 3 pounds of aluminum alloy, for the record. The song stops, and the crowd applauds after that loud guy with the weird haircut 2 encourages it (Kenma forgets his name again).

“Hell yeah!” they exclaim almost in unison.

While the others drink water and wipe sweat from their foreheads, Kuroo comes up and holds out his hand to take the camera. Kenma hands it over and waits for the verdict. He knows he's good at it, and he's not usually greedy for praise or validation, but he could really use 5.000 yen on top of it. The crew gather around Kuroo and clamor over each other to get a peek at the screen.

“Wow, that's really cool,” one of them finally says.

“Yeah!”

“Where'd you learn to do that?”

“I was in a video club in high school,” Kozume mutters.

That's not very much of a lie, Your Honor. Kenma had been there for three full days. And they don't need to know that he once wanted to be a YouTuber, but changed his mind because he hates publicity.

“Honestly, it's cooler than how Hanamaki did it.”

They give him the camera back and he, throwing a “Well, then, I'm off” at them, starts packing his things. While the others are discussing something, Lev approaches him, and Kenma already knows what he's about to ask.

“Kenma, are you sure you don't want to film more of our covers?”

He even gets bored with that triviality of his.

“Yes.”

The truth is, he's just elementary tired. And however good they are, it's easier for him to slouch over his keyboard and dry his eyes with another commission: to create a couple of algorithms or some websites.

“Okay,” Haiba accepts the fate, “Then I'll send you the password to our channel. Can you upload it tomorrow?”

“I'll try to.”

So, Kenma leaves, expecting to spend the evening in editing, overdubbing and mixing the sound and dragging curves. And if it turns out Lev has fucked up too many times, the team can forget about the one-take, and Kenma will have to cut it up with what he's got. Should he ask for, like, 20.000 yen?

What Kozume doesn't expect on a quiet, stifling July evening is a suspicious message from an unknown number:

“hi kitty”

A kitty, huh. Even if Kenma is a kitty, then the one that's going to tear the wallpaper, turn over the litter box and then scratch one's face.

He ignores the message, but a few minutes later another one comes in. And it makes Kozume take his mind off the editing.

“it's Kuroo”

And he has to respond, because it's probably about the video. If he says now that they want a different preset or, God forbid, an extra shot, Kenma will have to bring his promise to break someone's knee with a stabilizer to life.

“what is it?”

“why don't you want to film us?”

Kenma rolls his eyes and lets out a disgruntled groan. Why is the whole crew a bunch of annoying jerks? Was it intentional, or did it just happen by accident?

“i'm tired”

“oh, that's okay, you'll get used to it”

“??????? i don't want to get used to it, leave me alone”

“but we're good, aren't we?”

“so what? u think it's a lot of fun standing with a camera and following u around?”

“you're too mean for your age”

“i know”

“and yet?”

“no”

And then he gets a text saying someone's transferred 25.000 yen to his account.

“it's for 2 shoots. i hope you feel like you owe us”

“what if i just don't show up?”

“then we'll upload a scandalous reveal and tell people you robbed us”

Kenma wonders whether they need him that much or if Kuroo is just savoring his own wickedness.

“where did you go?”

“AHAHAHAHAHA you believed that, didn't you?”

“i'm kidding”

“or not”

“just come, we are shooting in a week. i'll text you the address and time later”

Now there's a chat with Kuroo, just above the chat with Lev. The latter is thick as a plank, and the first one is just a bitch. Kenma looks at the screen with the video editing program open and the video loaded, which he paused just at the moment where Kuroo is the center. And he stares at the screen, looking for confirmation, waiting for the artificial intelligence to read his mind and present him with the result:

Data processing complete, Kuroo Tetsurou is 100% mean and nothing more.

Ok                                     Close

Kozume takes a sip of his energy drink and goes back to editing. There are 20 more seconds of the actual dance to edit, and he also need to add a sort of final credits to the end. He was asked to put the Instagrams of the crew members there, and when “@tetsurOUHHHH” catches his eye, he tells himself: we're not watching this. And it's completely out of question.

And then he decides he doesn't give a damn about it because, after all, who is he to hold himself back?

When Kenma looks through Kuroo's account, he has to admit that the guy is good at picking matching photos. And then, when he takes a closer look, Kenma has the feeling of having lost something. Because last May Kuroo posted a picture with a console in his hands, and it's Kenma's favorite game. a black-and-white photo in the mirror with a cigarette dates back to September 29. On October 16, Kenma's birthday, he posted a selfie with a cat — disgustingly cute (not selfie, the cat), and it looks exactly like the one that used to come to his house for food when Kenma was a kid. And the feeling is... strange. Kozume feels a hint of melancholy, and the feeling is building up into a faint pain in his chest. As if in past life, they were best friends playing console games far into the night together, smoking their first cigarettes behind the school, picking up a stray kitten, staying out late and missing the last bus and eventually walking home across the whole town. Maybe even looked at each other in the mirror while Kuroo bleached Kenma's hair, which he insisted on at 1 a.m. after a nervous breakdown. But, apparently, for some eternal sins, were reborn, never reaching the nirvana, and never found each other in this life. Somewhere at the end, in a photo from 3 years ago, is Kuroo with a volleyball. Kenma involuntarily chuckles: he was on the team in middle school too, but he didn't even sign up in high school: he just got bored.

When Kozume closes the app, he sobers up. This is what happens when you drink too much energy drinks. And when you edit until 4 in the morning. And especially when you reply to Haiba Lev’s message and agree to film 5 surprisingly good dancers.

Conventional wisdom №1: Haiba Lev is bad news.

And all of this — is a very bad sign.

Chapter Text

“Y'ALL KILLED THIS FR”

“03:14… Akaashi…😳😳😳”

“You guys never disappoint when covering any dance”

Could they give at least a little credit to the cameraman? Hello, he was the one to have filmed this whole thing. The name’s Kozume Kenma, and but for him you wouldn’t have seen it at all. Ungrateful brats.

“Oikawa is literally an idol”

“can we talk about oikawa??????”

“Oikawa Tooru call me I’m free Friday night”

“Yeah, tell us more,” Kenma thinks, closing the tab, turning off his laptop and slamming the laptop lid. No, not “us”. Tell Oikawa, he could be into it.

Kenma, however, is no better. Because in two weeks he ends up developing a certain obsession. He opens Instagram, goes to his recent searches and taps that very “@tetsurOUHHHH” with unwanted automatism.

Kuroo seems to be unaware that he shouldn't to flaunt his entire life on the Internet. He's literally an open book welcoming anyone to read it, and people like Kuroo become very easy targets for people like Kenma. One might effortlessly stalk and kidnap him. Kozume has already set up a detective bureau in his head with only one employee — himself — and there's already a pretty decent binder on Kuroo Tetsurou with the ominous title “Personal File No. ...”

1. Weird Hair Guy #2 seems to be his best friend. Kenma’s not surprised.
2. Kuroo has a part-time job at a car service. Kenma’s a tad bit surprised.
3. Kuroo has played all his favourite games. Kenma’s pleasantly surprised.
4. They’ve been into cover dance for 3 years.
5. It’s a she-cat Kuroo has.

Oh, Kozume Kenma’s aimed at the “Employee of the Month”, that’s for sure.

He also thinks he's way better than all these careless Internet users, who have no idea where and how quickly everything they publish goes. Until he gets that one message again, but this time it's in his direct messages:

“look who we've got here”

“hi kitty”

Sorry, conspiracy geniuses, Kozume Kenma fucked up. He never opened Kuroo's stories so his account wouldn't show up among those who watch them. But he realizes he's an idiot when a story from Kuroo's highlights says “2 hours ago”.

Yeah, he checks his highlights remarkably regularly.

“oh, what's your favourite energy drink?”

He also realizes that he's no better than Tetsurou, because apparently he figured out that this is Kenma's account. And even though he only has two posts: one with the energy drink, which is what Kuroo is asking about, and one in the mirror with his phone hiding his face, it appears that his hair and oversized grey hoodie are hard to confuse with anything else.

“any,” he replies to the message.

“and mine is mango”

Well, good for you, Kenma thinks.

“you're coming the day after tomorrow, aren't you?”

“do i have a choice?”

“probably not. if you don't come, i'll send lev to come get you”

“ew”

“don’t”

Lev has no idea that he now owes Kenma for life. Even if they pay him ten times as much, that won't cover the emotional distress caused by that saccharine "kitty" in Kuroo's messages to Kozume.

Conventional wisdom number one: If Haiba Lev text you... Who the hell cares anymore? What difference does it make? Haiba Lev is not even texting anymore, but the fucked-up-ness of the situation is only gaining momentum — it's spinning, like in a centrifuge.

***

“Oh, Kenma?”

He quietly walks into the studio, gets his camera out of the bag and starts attaching it to the stabilizer, muttering a barely audible:

“Hi.”

“You said no!” Lev cries out.

Kuroo, stretching his arms in front of the mirror, grins slyly, and Kenma feels a sense of regret for having agreed warming up.

“Why do you agree when someone else asks but ignore me? I'm your friend!”

“You're not a manipulator, at least.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

There's just no explaining to Lev that everything is his fault.

“Let's just get started.”

Some time later, Kenma can already say that he knows some things about the crew members. Weird Hair Guy #2 is very, even overwhelmingly energetic. He's always late to warm ups, and his name is Bokuto. Akaashi is the most flexible of all of them, and the only one who can tell Bokuto off for being late (“Bokuto-san, we don't have all day at the studio”). Oikawa is the prettiest, so “He should be the center more often”. Yes, it's a direct quote. Lev is... just being Lev.

And there’s something different about Kuroo today. In a way that makes Kenma uneasy.

He expected to see Tetsurou doing push-ups, may be, then wiping sweat off his forehead with his T-shirt (beware, it would ride up a couple of inches, stay alert). Or stretched out on the floor next to Akaashi in a full split, fabric traitorously tight around his calves, thighs and ass. Kuroo was a whole other person last time: flushed and passionate, giving his all.

Instead, in front of him is a guy who probably resembles Kenma himself on any given day: a blank stare, red sore eyes and lethargic movements. Are there actually five of them on the team? Do they have another version of Kuroo Tetsurou, the more buoyant one? Or was he just imagining it last time? Just a minor mental lapse — no more. That's what happens when you don't get enough sleep.

Maybe it was Lev, you know. His clumsiness is so enormously overwhelming, that it's even contagious.

“Out of sync,” Kenma informs them as they clap their hands in the chorus and then crouch down.

Everyone stares at Lev, and Kozume might even burst out laughing, but he nods his head in the direction of Kuroo, who already says:

“That was me, sorry.”

Tetsurou yawns and reaches for the energy drink on the floor.

“Kuroo, who's keeping you awake at night?” Oikawa asks, and the guys give out an excited “Ohhhhh”.

Oh, here it comes. Can Kenma guess it word to word? His bet is, “Remember that girl who commented our video? Such a cutie. So we met, and...”

“I was busy with my molecular modeling homework.”

“And?”

“I did less than half of it and fell asleep at my laptop.”

The crew burst out laughing.

“I'm really sorry, but we have to finish somehow.”

“Yeah-yeah, just give me a sec.”

And he does pull himself together: his gaze is still not nearly as bright and piercing as it was last time, but at least he doesn't mess up anymore.

When they finish, Akaashi and Lion finish the water, Kuroo tries to recover his breath, lying flat on the floor, and Bokuto and Oikawa reach for their cigarettes and head for the exit.

“Bokuto-san,” comes a menacing voice.

“Just one, Akaashi!”

Keiji looks at him sullenly, and then just turns away, as if saying “do whatever you want.” And Kotaro takes this opportunity to escape, rushing out after Oikawa.

It reminds Kenma of Kuroo’s post with a cigarette. He expects Tetsurou to go after them, but he doesn’t seem to pay attention at all. Can it be that he gave up smoking? Who knows, maybe if they were anything more than strangers owing their encounter to one particular lanky jerk, Kenma would surely grumble like Akaashi every time Kuroo reached for a cigarette.

In the meantime, he just puts the camera in his bag. And he's even a little insulted by the complete disinterest towards him. “Congrats, you have been clickbaited,” is ringing in his head. Looks like there'll be no more "hi kitty"-s and "you're coming the day after tomorrow, aren't you?"

Kenma looks at Kuroo, who's about to fall asleep right on the floor. "How can they possibly like it?" he thinks, implying the last couple of hours of trying to make another video which would las for a few minutes top.

Bokuto and Oikawa return, and Tooru sits next to Kuroo, hovering over him as if here were a corpse being identified.

“Kuroo, you with us today?” Lev asks.

Whatever this is, Kenma can’t help wondering where they get the energy from.

“Nah, I'll pass,” he sighs, exhausted.

“Come on, it’s the second time you've ditched us.”

“I still have 400 structures to build in Maestro.”

Bokuto frowns his eyebrows in confusion.

“It's a program,” Kuroo explains, finally getting up from the floor.

“What's it written in?” Kenma suddenly interjects.

Everyone looks at him.

“Meaning...?”

“Programming language.”

“How would I know?”

Kenma fishes his phone out of his pocket.

“If it's Python, I can help you.”

“Oh, it better be Python,” Bokuto singsongs and nudges Kuroo in the ribs as if they're hatching a plot of epic proportions. Tetsurou just waves him off.

“So?”

He suddenly looks a lot more interested. All right, all right. Molecular modeling is obviously more interesting than Kozume Kenma. The only interesting thing about him is that he can shoot and edit a video for you and your team and then rewrite a program for you. 

“Yeah, Python.”

“Can you help me then?” he gives Kenma an alluring smile.

“Fine.”

And when Kuroo, having changed, walks out of the studio to meet Kenma, who is waiting for him outside, he asks quite a reasonable question:

“Why so generous all of a sudden?” Tetsurou leans in slightly to look into his eyes.

Kenma wishes his hair weren’t in a bun right now: he used to hide behind the long strands when he was feeling uncomfortable with something.

“Took us too many takes today because of you.”

“Fair enough.”

They walk into the coffee shop, where they smell fresh pastries, and Tetsurou sits at a table by the window, pulling out his laptop. 

“So, what is it that you need to do?”

“I have a combination. Two radicals, 20 variants of each. And I need to build 400 structures.”

Kenma squints, purses his lips and taps his fingers on the table, trying to figure out what he could possibly do. And the next second he's typing something, and Kuroo chuckles, surprised. Kenma wishes he could say “watch and learn,” but it’s not the screen Tetsurou’s looking right now, but Kenma, and... So be it.

“What is it that you're doing?”

“I'm rewriting the program through the string function, and hopefully it'll be building the structures automatically.”

Kuroo gives a small whistle.

“Is there anything you can't do?” he asks.

“Dance,” Kenma replies right away.

“We could teach y-...”

“Don't. I get tired just looking at you.”

As he inserts command, Kuroo leans back in his chair and falls silent. But not for long.

“Where did you learn that?”

“I've been into programming since I was a kid.”

“What else don't I know about you?”

“You know just as much as you need to know.”

Kuroo hums meaningfully, and then there's a notification sound coming from his phone.

“Oh, it's about the costumes. They'll be ready in a week.”

“You have like... a tailor or something?” Kenma can’t help his curiosity.

“Yep.”

“How can you afford that?”

“We chip in. Bokuto works at the gym. Akaashi works at the coffee shop. And I work at the car service.”

“Is there anything you can't do?”

“What do you want me to know how to do? I can learn.”

“To shut up,” Kenma says not even taking his eyes off the screen.

“There's only one way to shut me up.”

Huh. Kenma’s not falling for that childish trick.

“One? You're not very imaginative.”

“Oh,” he chuckles. “What matters is that you are.”

And apparently Kuroo really doesn't have the “shut up” option, because after a few minutes of silence, broken only by the clatter of the keyboard, he says:

“Shall I get you some coffee? You're hungry?”

“Not really,” Kozume answers nonchalantly.

“Not really?”

“I don't know, I'm a reluctant eater.”

“I noticed. Shall I get you something to eat?”

“I'm not hungry,” he insists.

“That's not what I asked.”

“Fine,” he gives up, getting the message that no matter what he says, Kuroo's going to have it his own way. It's easier to give up at this point.

Kuroo rises up, but doesn't go for some reason yet. Kenma looks up at him.

“What is it?” he asks, when he catches the guy’s studying gaze.

“Trying to figure out what you'd like.”

Yeah, right, go for it, guess my favourite coffee and give me another confirmation that our paths parted during the reincarnation.

That's the code Kenma couldn't rewrite even if he tried to.

“What happened to the good old asking?”

“That's boring.”

“Well, good luck with that,” at this, Kuroo heads off to the counter to make an order.

Kozume resumes working on the program, and the code is almost ready, but there's suddenly a “Your battery is running low (20%)” on the screen.

“Give me the charger,” he says to Tetsurou as the latter returns with two cups of coffee.

“I don't have one.”

“Why the fuck?”

“Sorry, I didn't think our cameraman, who literally needs to be coaxed into doing anything, would be such a sweetheart as to offer his help himself,” Kuroo scoffs.

What a mean bitch he is.

“Can you finish it yourself?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Well, if you had watched carefully, maybe you'd understand something.”

“The code wasn't the most interesting sight.”

“I'm ignoring it,” Kenma thinks.

Kozume stares at the screen and contemplates what else he could do before the battery dies.

“Let's go to my place,” Kuroo suggests.

“What?”

“We'll charge it at home and finish it.”

“I'm not going.”

“Come on. I've got a cat. You can play with her.”

Kenma almost blurts out “I know,” but holds back just in time. Kuroo is quite aware that Kozume has seen his posts, but he can do without the fact that Kenma remembers each and every single one.

On the way to Kuroo's place, they drink coffee and argue about whether it counts that Tetsurou guessed it was an Americano but didn't guess whether Kenma likes his coffee sweet or just black. Kenma says it doesn't, but who cares what he says — his real feelings sometimes don't coincide with his words.

As they walk into the room, something clings to Kenma's leg. And that something is a cat.

“Take her off.”

Kuroo does so and takes her in his arm.

“This is Akari*.”

“Really?” Kenma gives him the are-you-kidding-me look.

“Why?” he looks offended for two.

“She's literally black.”

“She's the light of my life.”

Gross. It better not be what comes next after “kitty”.

Kuroo guides him to his room, passes him the charger and disappears in the kitchen while Kenma goes through the code to see where he was. It's his first time here, but he catches himself thinking that he knows some of the interior elements thanks to Kuroo's Instagram: the mirror from the cigarette photo; the indoor tree (how come the cat hasn't destroyed it yet?); a couple of childhood photos on the shelf; and a volleyball on the floor.

Kuroo returns with a bag of chips and sits down next to Kozume.

“Do you want me to make you some ramen?”

“Nah.”

“Well, suit yourself,” he gives up. “How's the program coming along?”

“A little more time.”

Hearing this, Tetsurou stretches and yawns again.

“Get some sleep already,” Kenma wants to say.

“Don't know about you, but I'm going to eat. I still want to play volleyball today.”

“Your ball's a bit flat,” Kozume says without a second thought.

And, oh, Kuroo quickly loses his interest in food. Because:

“Can you tell by eye?”

You shouldn't have said it, Kenma. You shouldn't have.

“Um, yeah...”

“You play volleyball?”

God knows you shouldn't have.

“A bit... When I was at school.”

“Will you play with me?”

That’s quick.

“I have editing to do today.”

“Not today then!”

Kenma turns in his direction and, shit — He. Shouldn't. Have. — sees Kuroo, who is glowing with excitement and seems ready for the volleyball championship right now.

“How the fuck do I say no to you?”

“Fine,” he sighs.

“I would never guess you played volleyball when you were at school.”

Kenma would never guess so either if he looked at himself now. Not that he looked athletic back then, but his muscles got smaller and weaker, and his posture leaves much to be desired.

“Ever thought about starting again?” Tetsurou just wouldn't drop the topic, would he.

“No, thanks. I'm good with filming and editing.”

“I'll hold you to that. By the way, how did you like the choreography today?”

“It's good. Your fans are gonna love it.”

“What fans?”

Like you don't know.

“The ones who leave you thousands of comments.”

“Oh, so you've read through the comment section?”

“Not a word about the cameraman's work. I'm insulted.”

“Isn't it enough for you that we praise you?”

Kenma is about to say something sarcastic, but Kuroo gets up and takes the plate to the kitchen and, from the sounds of it, answers some phone call.

The structures not yet finished, Kenma spins in the chair and notices the cat. Must have slipped into the room when Kuroo walked out.

“Well come here then,” Kenma says in a quiet voice and takes her in his arms.

The cat — black and graceful — studies him and sniffs as Kozume brings her closer to his nose. He even wonders if it would be a problem if Kuroo's cat didn't like him.

“I take it that you're friends now,” comes a voice from the doorstep.

“She snagged my hoodie,” Kenma complains, pointing at the thread, to which Kuroo bursts out laughing.

“Оh.”

Kozume turns his head to the screen, which displays the long-awaited “completed” — 400 fucking structures.

“Well, my job here is done,” he gets up and leaves the room.

He's putting on his sneakers when he sees Kuroo leaning against the doorjamb with his back.

“The volleyball thing... still on?”

Huh. Where's your ass confidence now?

“So many requests,” Kenma mutters, tying the shoelaces.

“And what do you want in return?”

Ah, here it is.

Panic, system failure, Error 404, an error has occurred while communicating with the server, error 406, error “Kuroo Tetsurou”, “Kozume Kenma” does not respond. Check for solution? Fuck, yes, because where the hell did he get this flirting from?

“From you? Nothing. Bye.”

And he walks away.

Error “Kozume Kenma”: satisfactory response timeout. He really doesn't need anything in return, because spending time with Kuroo was surprisingly easy. If Kenma were cheesier, he would say it was “enough”. It's as if they had done it hundreds and thousands of times before — goddamn their past life in Kenma's head.

When he gets home and, completely exhausted, finally collapses on the bed and unlocks his phone, Kozume notices several new YouTube notifications.

“i'm going to need some dry panties, mine are-“

“DID YOU SEE KUROO RUNNING HIS FINGERS THROUGH HIS BANGS??????”

We fucking did, and there's more, you freaks.

“02:19, lev is so cute when he stumbles 😭”

For fuck's sake.

But one of the comments gets his attention:

“can we talk about our cameraman Kozume Kenma who did a great amazing outstanding wonderful job filming us??? please give him lots of love 🥰🥰🥰”

He taps the blue "View 12 replies".

“do you know how fine kozume kenma is?”

“kozume kenma is so fine!”

And he doesn't like this unwanted attention.

But it's nice to know that Kuroo remembered.

Chapter Text

Kuroo Tetsurou likes many things. He likes cats going to the beach in the summer. Likes mango flavoured energy drinks and black colour. Likes chemistry and showing saying the full name of DHA. Likes smoking mild cigarettes, but only when Bokuto insists because Kuroo went through blood sweat and tears giving up smoking a year ago. He likes to dance in the heart of Tokyo and count how many people are watching and making video of them. Likes to play video games, or play volleyball occasionally.

There are few things Kuroo does not like. And it’s his job at the car service.

When it's scorching heat outside, and it's July, and you've got a car with piston rings to replace. It's high time he became a public transport activist.

“Kuroo, what the hell are you doing there?”

Tetsurou is a kind man. But while his job is just a thing he doesn't like, he can safely say that he hates his boss.

“That's kid stuff, for Christ's sake,” and it's a mystery whether he wants Kuroo to hear it or not.

“Then go and do the fucking thing yourself,” Tetsurou mutters.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Come on, he tells himself, just a little bit more. And then there are two more cars he has no idea what to do with. Kuroo would quit this miserable, thankless job, but then he'd have no money for the studio and costumes. And for advertising. And their new cameraman. And Kuroo is choked with the thought.

It hits him when he thinks of the latter.

Yeah, Kuroo's a doomed man without their cameraman-editor-programmer-ex-volleyball-player who is so charming in his cheeky honesty. Or just without Kozume Kenma. It's kind of embarrassing that Tetsurou didn't have high hopes about the guy who was introduced to him as “Well, I think Lev found some guy, he's kind of coming, I guess”. Too many “I guess”, “some guy” and “kind of”. They had a dozen clumsy, cack-handed boys holding a camera for the first time before they found Hanamaki. And he was good, to his credit.

But God bless his new full-time job at a restaurant.

Because otherwise Kenma wouldn't be there with them now.

And God bless Haiba Lev twice for somehow dragging Kenma to them that first time.

The key problem is the ninth word in the previous sentence: dragging. They need to literally drag Kenma every time. And even Tetsurou was running out of ideas on how to lure him out. Sure, Kenma was honoured with the pet name “kitty”, but he certainly didn't look like the type of cat to buy into catnip. 

Telling Bokuto about it, as it turned out, was even worse of an idea than trying to deal with it himself.

One: he does not know what to “shut up” is.

Two: he' way too simple.

Only when Kuroo leaves work does he get a chance to check Bokuto's reply to his morning message, which says he wants to remind Kozume that he agreed to play volleyball with him, but Kuroo is scared to.

Bokuto's answer, however, is irrefragable.

“just ask him”

To him, Kenma is like a tamagotchi. And to Kuroo, he's a code with a thousand strings, which one scours until there are burst blood vessels in the eyes, just to see that it's a comma that's missing.

“told you, i'm scared”

“y? i'm sure he's into u”

“well i wouldn’t be so sure”

“what happened to the flirt i knew? may he rip...”

“i told you not to call me that”

“i have a feeling he doesn't think i’m serious about him”

“you know, never mind”

He's texting on the go, glancing up every couple of minutes at the crossings. You know, whatever, let him get hit by a car. Maybe he won't have to drag Kenma to his funeral.

“let's play volleyball today”

“U WANTED TO ASK KENMA”

“I DON'T KNOW HOW”

“JUST ASK!!!!!!!!!!!”

“you're not helping”

“u'll thank me later”

Tetsurou stops by a coffee shop, thinking whether or not to go in. He could use some Dutch courage, but they have a rehearsal today.

Coffee can't replace alcohol, but it's better than nothing.

He even takes an Americano with one spoonful of sugar. He tastes it and fights the urge to spit it out — it's disgusting. But he drinks it. Maybe this way he'll pick up the Kozume-Kenma-radio-station and everything will work itself out, because, as it turns out, that is his favorite coffee.

“hi”

His Americano hints to him not to use “kitty” this time.

“remember you promised me to play volleyball?”

“are you in for a play today?”

Twenty minutes of nervously checking the phone passes, and Kuroo is drinking his second coffee. And the second coffee tells him that today he'll have to use the Schrödinger method: “At every instant there is a non-zero probability of the lion ending up in the cage. Sit and wait.”

Kuroo sits. Kuroo waits.

He's late for practice.

Very late for practice.

“Kuroo, if you picked up Bokuto-san's habit of being late, you are hanged, drawn and quartered,” Akaashi threatens when Kuroo finally shows up at the studio.

“Sorry, work.”

“We already did the warm-up.”

“I warmed up on my way to you.”

Tetsurou drops his bag, takes his phone out of his pocket and checks it one last time before joining the others.

Looks like he'll have to wait some more. 

“Kenma you coming?”

“kitty”

His heart is racing as he types. What a high school romance, for God's sake.

“i'll be sad if you don't come.”

“Kuroo!” Oikawa calls out.

“i'm already sad”

“Coming!”

"we'll be in the studio for another three hours, just in case"

Actually, it's “we” for three hours. In Kuroo's case it all four.

Five, six, seven, eight, and then the same part all over again. Five, six, seven, eight — changing the formation. Out of sync. One more time. Five, six, seven, eight, day after day. Five — work tomorrow. Six — picking up costumes the day after tomorrow. Seven — four classes he can’t skip two days after tomorrow. Eight — practising his own new choreo.

Maybe there's still room for “nine — volleyball with Kenma” tonight?

Practice ends, and everyone is about to leave, except for Tetsurou.

“Kuroo, did you book the studio for an hour longer again?” Lev asks.

“Yeah. I want to practise something.”

“Hey, take it easy. Don't overdo it, man,” Oikawa says.

Kuroo just brushes him off.

“Oikawa's right. Do you ever get a day off?”

“Once a month,” he says half-jokingly.

There's nothing wrong with that for him. He likes too many things, and otherwise there's no way he'll be able to indulge in all of them.

“From now on, I'm the one booking the studio,” Keiji concludes.

“Hey!”

“Akaashi, I'm hungry!” Bokuto shouts, showing up in the doorway.

“Coming, Bokuto-san.”

Everyone leaves, and Kuroo looks toward his phone.

And his goddamn heart is racing again. He likes too many things, but he would rearrange his schedule with a light heart or invent the 25th hour to make time for a certain someone.

But he still stares at those few messages, and feels as if they stare back at him.

"i'll be sad if you don't come"

"i'm already sad"

"we'll be in the studio for another three hours, just in case"

It's like they're saying, “What do you want from us? We're off the hook. We're delivered. Any claims about us not being read should be addressed to Kozuma Kenma.”

Kuroo wishes he read them at least.

Tetsurou allows himself to have a break. He rewatches the choreography he is about to learn. He can't, however, shake off the compulsive urge to check the notification panel, but he knows for sure: dancing will distract him. Anyway, he'll get to see Kenma when they shoot again.

Kuroo’s balancing himself on his left hand, trying to switch it to the right hand while swinging his leg, and then stand up. But he keeps either falling, or landing wrong.

“Fuck.”

He's all sweaty, but he keeps going: he runs his fingers through his bangs, which immediately go back in place, wipes the sweat off with his T-shirt, and starts all over again, humming the tune to himself.

He needs that choreography. He also needs someone to film this, actually. But that's for later.

Or now?

There's someone behind the glass door. The cameraman-editor-programmer-ex-volleyball-player, the guy with a charming messy bun, or just Kozume Kenma.

“Didn't expect to see you here.”

“I was asleep.”

Kuroo chuckles. He was about to lose it over... Kenma being asleep. Tetsurou will definitely claim compensation.

“I'll close the studio and then we can go to my place to get the ball,” he says.

“Okay.”

“By the way, I was wondering...”

And Kuroo is... embarrassed? Wow, new character abilities: unlocked. He has to admit: it's a rare, embarrassing sight — standing with his lips pressed and his hand on his waist, the other one scratching the back of his head or going through his bangs.

“You want me to shoot this?”

“If you don't mind. I'll pay.”

At this rate, Kuroo will end up as a threadbare beggar. Because if he has to pay Kenma for any time spent together, he'll have to work full-time at the car service instead of part-time, take the night shift at the coffee shop, making a triple espresso for some crazy night-bird, and master web-design, miss deadlines and get used to “I have the layout, but it's only in my head” from the clients.

“We'll see.”

Wait. If you want something from Kozume Kenma, wait. But the truth is, Kuroo's body doesn't wait and actively produces phenylethylamine, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.

They walk to Kuroo's house in silence. Come on, make small talk. Earth to Kuroo Tetsurou, do you copy?

But it's deadly silence — and no signal. Should he start writing a script before they hang out...?

“What did you do today?”

And that's the best you can do? This isn't even high school romance anymore, it's the most saccharine rosy pinkish shoujo: it's a pity sakura petals and glitter are missing.

The protagonist is, of course, an awkward idiot.

“Nothing.”

“It can't be.”

At least not in Kuroo's universe.

“It can.”

“Well, I fixed three cars today, went to a coffee shop, a couple other places and we had practice. By the way, your americano sucks.”

“Cool. I had a nap today.”

It makes him laugh again — this blunt honesty of his and how unintentionally funny he is — but this thought is the second most important after “Kenma was sleeping all day, but he came out to play volleyball with me.”

The “sit and wait” method seems to be working at the end of the day.

“Have you eaten today?” but no response. “Kenma,” he tries to sound menacing. “Take it,” and hands him a chocolate bar, which he had thoughtfully put in his backpack in the morning.

Must be his sixth sense, that's for sure. He'll have to drink Americano with one single spoonful of sugar (one spoonful is an insult — the coffee is neither sweet nor bitter!) more often, because it definitely can pick up the Kozume-Kenma-radio-station.

“Stop with that feeding already.”

“But I want to.”

He also wants to hug him, tight, until he squeaks and his bones crunch. He would most likely either break Kenma, or Kenma would break his arm.

When they reach the house, Kuroo tells him, referring to the chocolate bar:

“When I get back, it better be gone.”

On the other hand, can really he blame Kenma for preferring his hobbies to eating? As if Tetsurou hadn't done the same today. The only difference between them is that his hobbies are more active.

When Kuroo returns, he sees something that warms his heart. He feels like a cat being scratched behind the ear while the sun warms his belly. Because Kenma, sitting right on the playground, finishes the damn chocolate bar. And his fingers and lips are covered in melted chocolate. It feels as if Tetsurou can even feel how sweet they are. Sweeter than the artificial, sickeningly sweet shoujous taken together. This is the real romance. Kenma finishing his chocolate bar.

“Come on, get up. What position?” Kuroo asks as they start.

It’s quiet, and the only sound that can be heard is their hands touching the ball and the shuffling of their feet.

“Setter,” Kenma replies.

“And why did you quit?”

“Our team sucked. I gave them some decent strategies, and they weren't good enough to execute them.”

They just throw the ball to each other as a warm-up, and Tetsurou can tell: there is absolutely no effort in the way Kozume throws it, but there's accuracy, as if the trajectory is calculated by a computer program. Kenma is a kind of a program himself, and Kuroo hasn't yet learned to read such literary works. 

“Didn't you have a team at the university?”

“I did.”

“And why didn't you join?”

Oh, here comes the effort in his throw. Apparently, Kenma's annoyance functions as fuel.

“Do I look like someone who could play volleyball right now?” he asks in a skeptical tone.

“You look like someone who could if he wanted to.”

This is the part where Kenma asks, “Is that a compliment?” and Kuroo answers, “Yes, it is.” But it seems the imaginary draft of the script can be mentally scrunched and tossed into a metal trash can just to be burned later. Because Kenma just gives him an incredulous look and squints. And Kuroo wishes his cheeks were a shade pinker not from running after the ball, but from his words.

Or is it better to stick to the “sit and wait” method?

“Toss to me,” he sees that incredulous look again. “I was a middle blocker.”

Volleyball when it's two of them is hardly a volleyball. So Kuroo is painting a watercolor picture in his head of how he'll ask Bokuto and Akaashi to play with them. Kenma would grumble a little at first, but under the pressure of Tetsurou's undeniable and irresistible charm, would give up. He'd cringe every time somebody called it a double date, grumble some more when they finished because he'd be all sweaty and “actually I think I pulled my leg”. But he'd secretly enjoy it, just as he's begun to enjoy filming, because there is no other explanation for how engaged he looks with the camera now. And for how he reads the comment section and gets upset when people don't praise the cameraman.

“And now?” Kozume asks, tossing the ball over the net.

“What now?”

“What position?”

“I didn't join the team.”

Kenma nods, apparently realizing that Kuroo's now preoccupied with other things, including dancing.

“By the way, why did you drop out?”

“After my professor told us to analyze a transnational corporation in Uruguay using Porter's Diamond Model, I realized that economics is not my thing.”

“Oh, I thought it was because of Lev.”

And — Kuroo can't even believe he's hearing this at first — Kenma lets out a chuckle, and Tetsurou manages to catch his lips parting in a smile before the guy covers them with his hand.

And they say life is not made up of pleasures alone. It very well might.

“And we had a professor — he was 90 or something — who went out during the exam and left for his summer house.”

And Kenma doesn't even notice he's smiling. Doesn't cover his lips. He is so adorable, goddamn it.

“And what did you do?”

“They just gave us grades based on our current academic performance.”

Kuroo imagines that it might be fun to be groupmates with Kenma. Tetsurou would send a meme saying “I request the pleasure of your company at ditching today's classes, no refusal accepted” in the evening and that would be their reason to skip the first class. They'd fail and exam and would have to retake it. They'd drink beer in the toilet just because they could and then go to their lecture as if nothing had happened. Maybe they'd join the volleyball team after all, so that they could tell tearful stories to their examiners about how they defended the honor and pride of the university at competitions. And the examiners would take pity on them. And then, elated by their success and a sense of permissiveness and carelessness, they would leave the town for the whole vacation.

It's a nice scenario. Kuroo likes that it settles in his head and has no intention to leave.

When the ball ends up somewhere far into the bushes, Kenma, who looks like a heavy cloud in his black hoodie, wearily trails after it the way clouds swim: lazily and slowly.

“You know, you don't have to do this. Playing with me, I mean,” Kuroo says as Kozume returns and looks like he's just run a marathon.

“I just want to sleep.”

“I know a place...”

“I'm ignoring it.”

Ignore it. For now. Let's see how long you last. Kuroo, as it turns out, is very patient.

They're about to continue, but Tetsurou's phone making several notification sounds, and he pulls it out to read them.

“Just a sec.”

And he doesn't expect the instant biting words that come next:

“So what is it? An annoying ex?”

“What if it is?”

And in one billionth of a second Kuroo will realize how he totally fucked up.

“Which one?”

Congratulations, now you're on the honor roll of “that one flirt who hit on me just for the sake of hitting on me and I don't know how to shake him off, so I'm just going to act all aloof and polite with him.” Here's your clown nose and a certificate of merit in a gilded frame.

“I don't actually have as many as you might have thought,” he replies with the faintest hint of sadness in his voice.

He should've bet on Bokuto's “i'm sure he's into u”. Would have got himself a couple hundred yen to buy a fucking can of fucking americanos with one fucking spoonful of sugar. Cause life is not made up of pleasures alone indeed. Sayings never lie.

“Okay,” Kuroo hears from Kenma, who throws the ball back at him.

Which part of it is “okay”? Nothing's “okay” now. It just fucking slipped out. He was in the mood to make a joke, and he did so. They say in every joke there's a grain of truth, don't they? Not every, for fuck's sake. That's just the way Tetsurou is when he talks: flirtatious, relaxed. It helped him a lot in his life, but, mark his words, it's going to be the end of him, too. And he'll only have his cat.

Well, it's not the first time, nor will it be the last. But what a shame.

Wait a minute. The cat.

Kuroo looks at his watch.

“I have to feed Akari. I'm gonna go. Thank you for playing with me,” and after these words Kenma hands him the ball.

“Kuro.”

Maybe Tetsurou has gone deaf with all that music at full volume during practice. Because he can't hear the last “o” in his name.

“Huh?” he turns around.

“Show me your choreo.”

“Why?” Kuroo asks in bewilderment.

Kenma folds his arms across his chest and exhales heavily.

“I need to know if it sucks or not.”

And Kuroo stares, trying to comprehend what's going on. His brain seems to be building 400 structures manually right now.

“I can't show you everything here,” he says, glancing over the asphalt playground.

“Then don't show me everything.”

So he does. He doesn't even bother to turn on the music. And Tetsurou feels damn sorry that he can't dance give it everything he's got right now — after being on his feet the whole day, after work and practice, after volleyball, because of the tension in his body, because of the asphalt playground. But it’s Kenma asking, he'll do it barefoot on the glass.

“Okay, I'll do it,” Kozume concludes. “When do you need it?”

“I don't know yet, I still have to talk to my backup dancers. Maybe in two weeks.”

“With your backup dancers?” Kenma specifies, clearly not expecting this.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, deal. I'm off,” and he walks... runs away even, as if he's afraid that Kuroo will ask questions.

And Kuroo does have them.

“Bye.”

Tetsurou comes home and, throwing the ball on the floor exhaustedly, goes straight to the kitchen to feed his cat. She's patient too, so she doesn't even claw his leg as she does with strangers or when she's particularly pissed. Kuroo puts food in her bowl first, then he heats something up for himself, and when he finally sits down, he takes his phone and sees:

“send me the original video so that i know the camerawork”

Kenma probably hasn't made it to the bus stop yet. He texted him right on the go. And he's charming in that, too.

“so????” Kuroo asks impatiently after sending him the link.

“ok”

“thanks kitty”

“stop calling me that”

“no❤️”

He's absolutely not planning to stop calling him that. Kenma will get used to it. The “sit and wait” method has never failed Kuroo yet.

Chapter Text

And Kenma is getting used to it. To the fact that Kuroo responds more actively at night. With Kenma's sleeping schedule this is not a problem at all. He is getting used to the fact that when Kuroo is bored and his messages are left on read for a long time, he starts to like and dislike those two photos Kozume has on his account, so that there are 50 notifications displayed when Kenma's back online. To the videos with Kuroo's cat in his direct messages. And to meaningless arguments:

“being a setter is boring”

“sure, when ur a shitty setter”

Meaningless because, obviously, a setter is the best position.

“I'd be a great setter”

“in ur wildest dreams”

“just the facts, kitty”

Yeah, he's getting used to the “kitty” too.

But he's not yet used to the irresistible urge to watch all the videos on the team's channel.

And Kuroo's pace.

“Come on, come on! Morning exercise,” Kuroo declares, pushing Kenma in the back.

“This is the last time I agree to shoot something this early.”

“I promise, it's the last time.”

But he has no intention of slowing down.

“Kenma, you're an ex-volleyball player!”

This is not really a valid argument now — after all these years of sitting in a game chair looking like a liquid substance.

“Remind me: why am I doing this?”

Kuroo hums.

“You tell me.”

No, one's not supposed to say that out loud. This nonsense has no right to be put into words. They should invent a new logographic writing system for this nonsense, and then let linguists figure it out for centuries.

“By the way, we'll reach 100,000 subscribers soon. I want to take the team out to celebrate at the bar. You coming with us?”

“I don't really like crowded places,” Kenma mumbles.

“I noticed. Still?”

“We'll see.”

“No ‘we'll see’, I'll be expecting you. It's not every day that you reach that many subscribers in 3 years.”

“Is it that important to you?”

“I almost got into choreography college, but my dad talked me out of it. He said it wasn't promising. So yep, it's important.”

Kuroo-san, you obviously haven't seen your son dance. If dancing isn't promising, Tetsurou will redefine the notion of it, and when he becomes a professional, everyone will drop out of the most prestigious universities and forget about studying microbiology, cosmic radiation and economic trends.

“But I like chemistry. So you're looking at a future pharmacist.”

“Synthesize something that makes me wide awake at 8 in the morning.”

“It's called ‘coffee’ or ‘energy drink’,” Kuroo laughs.

Kenma yawns in response and then says:

“It's no good.”

“Come on, 8 in the morning isn't that early.”

Should he know that for Kenma it's time to go to bed rather than wake up? Maybe, but he was too out of breath to tell him that.

“Just a little longer, kitty.”

“Get me in a carrier then since it's ‘kitty’.”

“No carrier, but I can carry you in my arms.”

In addition to Kuroo's pace, Kenma is not yet used to him flirting so blatantly.

They reach the studio, where several people, the backup dancers, are standing at the door. Kuroo shakes hands with everyone in turn and says:

“Thank you for doing this.”

“It's nothing, dude.”

And when they come in, he introduces Kenma:

“This is Kenma, our cameraman.”

“Oh, I've seen your latest videos,” someone says. “The camerawork is awesome.”

Kozume only nods in gratitude — this is his best at 8 a.m., and on top of that, in a crowd of strangers. Give him back Lev and the other jerks, he misses them already.

“Kenma, help me get the lighting right!” Kuroo calls.

“I can't make it identical to the original by the way. You need a camera crane for that,” he says as they move the lights.

Kozume is met with a reassuring smile.

“I know you'll do it in the best way possible.”

Kenma is flattered by this blind faith, but his hands are shaking. He's good at a lot of things: programming, editing, retouching, web-design, and he's played so many hours on Steam that it's time he started an eSports team. There's one thing he can't do: socialize. And now when Tetsurou asks him to look at them through the camera, he has to tell the guy on the left to come closer. And the one on the right to turn a little more toward the light.

With a shaky voice, but he manages to do it. And then they start.

“Decided to hide your terrible hairstyle under a cap?” he asks as Kuroo puts it on his head.

“Actually, everyone likes it.”

“Exactly.”

They turn on the music: Tetsurou sits on his knees, throws his head back, and then looks directly at the camera.

Synthesize something that makes me wide awake at 8 in the morning.

Fucking pharmacist. Kenma won't be able to fall asleep at all after these sights: they will haunt him like flashbacks as if he had PTSD.

He looks at Kuroo's perfectly straight arm cutting the air with sharp strokes and thinks: how much strength is there in those arms? Probably enough to strangle him. What abour breaking his neck?

Fetch him a dynamometer, Kenma just needs to know.

His own hands are shaking again, as if Kenma were in a bad trip. There's no strength in them now - he couldn't even hold the dynamometer, let alone squeeze it. Stabilizer, it's all on you now.

“Dear diary, from this day forward I promise to bring a tripod.”

Kenma looks at Kuroo through the camera and realizes: he is the ultimate idiot. His last two brain cells proudly (as if it were something to be proud of) proclaimed that they liked Kuroo Tetsurou.

Why not Akaashi? He, with his flexibility and grace, doesn't even belong on the team. He should be voguing in a see-through black blouse, bending his pale thin hands, twisting his wrists at seemingly impossible angles, bringing them to his face, then falling and doing a split.

Oikawa could also get into vogue — but the one that’s the cover of the magazine. Striking a pose on the white cube, a strong-face, a charming smile, — dynamic, static, perfect in each and every photo, showing off in a snow-white shirt and black pants — nothing superfluous, but Oikawa doesn't need that.

Bokuto is a far from being as graceful as Akaashi and Oikawa are, but with his physique he could easily enter a bodybuilding contest. With him they can do any kind of lift they want. He could place Akaashi and Oikawa on his shoulders and carry them around all day as if it costs him nothing — he wouldn't feel the slightest bit of pain in the morning.

And out of all the beauty (Lev doesn't count), Kenma's twisted mind chose the Weird Hair Guy #1, and Kenma’s all like “yeah, this one.”

Because Kuroo is a mean annoying bitch who had the nerve to text him “Hi, kitty” after their first meeting. Let Akaashi be a hundred times more pliable and do all the possible splits imaginable, Kuroo will invent alternative anatomy and do the same if needed.

Oikawa is cute, pretty even, but Kuroo, to his liking, is more beautiful: Kenma's never been into guys with soft gentle features and always thought his own were too soft, but Tetsuro's — sharp and strong — seemed perfect to him. But if he had to look just like Oikawa, he would find a way to be reborn with a different face. Well, it might be not that bad, though, because Kenma got tired of retouching his light stubble in the preview photos they decided to take last time (God forbid they ever do that again).

Bokuto is buff, and yes, it's sexy, but one: Kuroo is barely any different from him; and two: the possessed jerk would buy up all the protein and take a 24/7 gym membership and look just like Koutarou in a month or so.

Perhaps even better.

Kuroo was wearing a cap, and Kenma was pretty happy with it, but the song hasn't even reached the chorus yet, and he's already thrown it off. And he does it again — runs the strands through his fingers. Kenma doesn't even know what he wants more: to do the same thing — run through his bangs (he wonders if his hair is soft or coarse?) — or to have Kuroo grab a handful of his hair, twist it and pull it (hey, Kozume let his hair grow for a reason).

“How's it going in there?” Kuroo asks.

“All clear.”

“Great.”

And for the next part, he takes off his jacket. Forget the dynamometer, get him a blood pressure monitor — Kenma's blood pressure's probably reading of 180/110 now.

There are 8 people on the backup, and they're all touching Tetsurou, holding his hands while he, bends his leg, feigning a fall. Kenma's watching the other dancers more and thinks: is this the kind of thing you have to do to touch Kuroo? It's not that hard, he could learn it. He'd rather sweat it out, fall into a bridge, do the splits to exhaustion and calluses on his feet, if he can touch Kuroo. You know, a cameraman's not supposed to do that. The cameraman's supposed to be “scene 2, take 15, camera, action, a-a-and... cut.”

And “cut” indeed. Because after a couple of failed takes, they do make it. And for the next part, which seems to be the last one with the backup dancers, Kuroo needs to take off his vest.

At this rate, he'll be fully naked by the end of this. Sorry, Kuroo, but then Kenma'll have to keep this footage. Not a second cut and no color correction.

Tetsurou undoes the top buttons of his shirt and unties his tie. Don't look. Don't look. It's like standing on a cliff or a glass bridge.

Kuroo's hand is in focus, his fingers folded into a “pistol” and... Uh-oh, that gesture's going to haunt Kenma. Like one of the PTSD symptoms, and that's a hard to cure.

Can he just stop moving his hips like that already? Kenma's so tired of that.

And of a 5 hours' filming.

“Is that it?” someone asks, as they finish another take.

Kenma looks through the footage.

“I think so.”

“Oh, that was quick today.”

Quick? Kenma was on the verge of ordering the first tripod he could find on the Internet and paying 3 times more for instant delivery.

“Aren't you leaving?”

“I still have one more part to shoot. But you're free to go, thanks for today, guys.”

“'t's all right,” one of them replies.

“Can't wait to see the full cover!”

As they leave, Tetsurou exhales heavily, and it's not only from exhaustion, but also as if saying “This is only the beginning.”

“Well, that makes just the two of us,” he tries to hide his tiredness and sound playful, but Kenma ignores the ambiguity of the wording and changes the subject.

“Is it a lot there?”

“Yep.”

“Why? The song fragment left is short.”

“Because I screw up a lot.”

“Let's make it quick somehow.”

“Do you hate my company that much?” he whines quizzically.

“I'm tired.”

“Let's rest then,” Kuroo sits down on the floor, leaning his back against the wall and holding out a bottle of soda to Kenma.

He sits down next to the guy. The soda's warm, but it's still better than nothing, so Kozume greedily drinks while Kuroo talks about what angles he'll need next:

“When I'm sitting on the floor, go a little bit to the left. Oh, and also, take the close-up when I jump.”

Kenma listens almost closely, occasionally nodding and humming in affirmation. And almost misses Kuroo's next words:

“Your bun is coming loose.”

Kenma ties it again, but — it's worth admitting his defeat to physical activity — his hands are traitorously shaking, because the fucking stabilizer is heavy and they've been filming for over 5 hours now.

“Let me do it.”

It's official now: physical activities be damned. Damned be Kuroo Tetsurou, who doesn't even need permission — he moves closer and already runs his fingers through Kenma's hair, gently removing the old stretched rubber band. Kenma's once again hit with a non-existent flashback to his childhood: the same night with the nervous breakdown and hair dyeing, but now it's as if he hadn't been there alone, as if Kuroo had already ruffled his hair, dyed it and made a bun. Kozume even allows himself to lean into the touch, because it feels good. He realizes then that Kuroo is doing something wrong altogether. And it seems it's because he volunteered to do it, even though he has no idea what to do.

But Kenma will definitely give him another try.

He feels like a stray mangy cat who has never known affection until now. And he's even happy to be so reckless as to trust someone who's tossed him some food and scratched him behind the ear. He feels like a kitten in a shelter: sitting behind his cage, extending his paw and asking: “Am I good enough for you? Take me home, I'll be good, I promise.”

Although, in Kenma's case, it's more like, “Maybe I'll scratch your arm, knock down your vase, tear up the couch and eat a flower, and be all like don't poke me in the face with a toy mouse, just give me some food and I'll sleep the rest of the day away. But take me anyway.”

Kuroo takes him by the chin and tilts his head, and when Kenma meets his gaze, he realizes one thing: suicide is the solution when Kuroo Tetsurou is looking at you from above, and you have no ways to retreat.

Well, Kenma does have one. Hail Kuroo Tetsurou, who doesn't know how to tie a fucking bun.

“What did you do?” he mutters with feigned indignation, taking the rubber band from his hands.

“I didn't get it,” he waves it off, as if he had had no intention of tying it on the first place.

Kenma bets his life on that.

“Let's go,” he says taking his camera.

Kuroo rises, straightens his clothes and stands in the center. He moves as if he weren't tired at all, touches his neck, moves his hips so sensually again, falls down and almost does a split, lunging forward. And looks at Kenma, who still feels his fingers in his hair.

“Don't look at me, look at the camera.”

“Embarrassed?”

“Idiot, that looks weird.”

“You ruined the take, by the way.”

“It was bad anyway,” Kenma lies. It was perfect.

“That's not true.”

If Kenma weren't so tired, he'd ruin all his takes just to watch it longer.

Kuroo starts again, but as he tries to do that thing with switching it from his left hand to the right while swinging his leg, he falls over.

“You're just doing it to show off, right? It's not in the original video.”

“It is! It's between the part when the backup leave and then return.”

Kenma looks on with feigned incredulity.

“Let me show you.”

Kuroo stands next to him and leans in, poking at the first button he sees and opens the settings.

“Are you a boomer or what,” Kozume grumbles closing the settings and opening the videos he just shot.

Kuroo ignores it.

“It's between this one and... And that one,” he points his finger at one of the videos.

“Okay, get off me, you stink of sweat.”

“I know, I've been dancing.”

And Kenma's definitely in some kind of bad trip. He bets Kuroo rewatches that part of the video later and whine:

“Kenma, I asked for a different angle! And the close-up!”

But Kozume's memory is blurred, and all he can think about is how can a person balance oneself on just one arm? The same one that feels so gentle in his hair, fingers ruffling through the strands so gently and tenderly?

Later, though, Kuroo rewatches the recording and seems satisfies with the result.

“That's it, then.”

“We're leaving?”

“Yeah.”

Kenma can barely stand on his own feet and he doesn't even bother to wipe the lens as he usually does. If he had his way, he'd put his camera under the kitchen table and come up once a month with a ruler to check if the layer of dust has become thicker. But he can't.

He packs fast, but Kuroo lingers. If Kozume hears something like “Oh, I forgot about another part!”, he'll have to make his old promise to break his knees with a stabilizer a reality.

But they just walk out of the studio, and Tetsurou closes the door. He saved Kenma from a criminal record, it seems.

“You coming?” he asks.

“Wait, we forgot something,” Kuroo says, turning the key backwards.

Kenma looks around in confusion: he took his camera, and Kuroo has his bag.

“Doesn't look like it.”

Please, don't say anything about “another part”. He doesn't want to go to jail for intentional infliction of serious bodily injury.

Kuroo opens the door, pushes him into the studio, and Kozume manages to notice: it's really empty. It's just them and the echo of the lock closing again, this time from inside the studio.

“What is it?” he doesn't understand, seeing that Tetsurou doesn't even look around to find the thing he'd forgotten.

Kuroo doesn't respond. He moves closer — if Kenma had an alarm system, it would be beeping by now with a long screech. If he had a rope fence, like an exhibit in a museum, Kuroo Tetsurou would already be dragged out under the arms by two guards for stepping over it. Kenma is barely a work of art, at most — he is an arthouse painting, but still — exhibits should not be touched. But Kuroo's lips touch his, and he kisses Kenma -first softly and hesitantly, then more daringly and insistently, and it's already a bit like vandalism. Kuroo drops the bag to free his hands and cup Kenma's face. He can't have the luxury Tetsurou has: if he drops the camera, they'll probably find someone else. Kenma's a nice guy, but what is he without a camera? And then Kuroo won't be kissing Kenma. That's not a pleasant thought. It's a very painful one.

With his other, free hand, Kenma takes him by the shirt and pulls him closer. He needs to be careful with the camera, he got that. But what about Tetsurou? What does he like? Will soft touch on his neck take his breath away, or will it be Kenma's audacity to bite his bottom lip? He doesn't have time to think and choose, so he does both at the same time, and Kuroo, barely audibly, moans into the kiss. Maybe he likes contrasts?

Kenma will give him such an eclectic mix that he won't know what's what himself anymore.

He doesn't know even now anyway. He doesn't know if it's the shivering from the forthcoming seizure or the fact that Kuroo is running his fingers through his hair again. He doesn't understand if it's his blood pressure again, or if his heart is pounding because Kuroo is sucking on his lower lip and is not about to stop doing it. He doesn't understand if it's a hallucination or if he's hearing his own quiet moans through the kiss. Doesn't understand if it's all the residual stage of schizophrenia or if it's all Kuroo Tetsurou.

“Fuck.”

He barely pulls away — Kenma can still feel the heat of his breath on his lips -- because his phone rings. Kuroo takes it out and exhales nervously.

“I think we should leave,” he begins awkwardly. “Go, I'll be right there,” and he nudges Kozume toward the exit.

He frowns, but doesn't have time to say anything, because Kuroo answers the phone, and the door closes.

While he's gone, Kenma tries to figure out: how much sleep would it take to not have such plausible hallucinations again? From this day on, Kenma's schedule will be perfect: sleep — 11 p.m., wake up — 8 a.m. Nine hours of sound sleep, no more, no less.

“So how will your fans like it that you're gay?” he asks as Tetsurou walks out of the studio.

“It's cool. They all adore you.”

“Because of your stupid comment.”

“Because of my stupid comment.”

To that, Kenma smiles — he can afford to, because Kuroo can't see, walking beside him.

“What are you going to do tonight?”

“I'll start editing. And order pizza.”

“Editing? Tonight?” the guy looks surprised.

“I like to do everything as soon as possible and then rest.”

But Kuroo's question isn't followed by anything else. Hey, wait a minute. Kenma cancels his reply. Video? It can wait, he knows how to work under pressure. Pizza? Fuck it, they'll deliver it even at 3 a.m. All the pizza delivery guys hate him anyway. If he weren't that introverted and cold, he would have already made friends with all of them. But Kozume is picky: he eats fresh pizza only. If he doesn't like the way it looks, he won't touch it. That's why he hates changes in his routine — one pizza place, having it delivered at the same time, only tried and tested ingredients.

But, take notes, you will need:

Kuroo Tetsuro - 1 piece.

...to find yourself saying “screw my schedule” and forget you even had one.

It costs him a giant effort to restrain himself from asking Kuroo, “Why?”

“Don't overdo it,” Tetsurou says.

“You're one to talk.”

“I'm allowed to.”

They stop near the entrance to the subway station.

“I'll go to the university. I still can make it for my last class.”

“If they don't teach you how to synthesize something that makes people wide awake at 8 in the morning and which is not coffee or an energy drink, then it's not worth it.”

Kuroo laughs.

“If I find out, I'll be sure to let you know,” he waves Kenma goodbye.

And hardly had five minutes passed when he sees a:

“text me when you have some free time”

“kitty”

Kuroo probably hasn't even made it to the university yet. He's texting him on the go.

“i thought you'd just found out where i could get triple doses of caffeine”

“for you, I'll ask my professor today. I'll let you know when I find out”

“tell me tomorrow”

“I'll forget it by tomorrow”

“oh, wait”

“ohhhhhhh I get it”

“deal”

And Kenma smiles — he can afford to, because Kuroo can't see. And he makes a mental note to the mental diary:

“Dear diary, from this day forward I promise to get more sleep,” because it's vital that he distinguish between being mentally deranged and Kuroo's very real and very soft lips on his own.

Chapter Text

“Kenma got into a fight with Kuroo.”

“Wait, what?”

Wait, what?

Indeed: you hear that and you don't believe it. Maybe someone just played Chinese whispers? Started a dirty, compromising rumor? Or is this not at all about the Kenma and Kuroo everybody knows? Maybe they finally met in a parallel universe where they're childhood friends and got into a fight in the yard?

No, no and no.

But there surely is another explanation for that. No serious bodily injury. Almost.

“This is the last time I'm doing this crap.”

“It's not you who is doing it, it's the program.”

“One more word, and you rewrite the code yourself.”

Kuroo falls silent in submission — this code is probably even higher in his hierarchy of needs than food. Kenma hears him stretch out on his bed like a cat. He rolls around, rubs against each pillow, chooses the one he likes best and makes himself comfortable.

You know, Kenma didn't want to “cede” the bed to him for a long time.

“Don't sit on it.

“Why not?”

“It's unmade.”

“I'll make it.”

“There are my clothes.”

“I'll put it away.”

And he does make the bed. And he puts the clothes in the wardrobe. Kenma seems to have gained a few points on the “acts of service” section in that “love language” test everybody likes to take.

It was an unfair fight.

So now is Kuroo lying on his bed — because he's earned his right to. Conquered and occupied it. He's propping his chin with his hand and is surely staring: Kenma can feel Tetsurou's gaze on him with every inch of hid body, with every fucking molecule he's made of.

“I would have dropped out by now,” Kozume declares, as he continues typing in the commands.

“Chemistry is very interesting actually. Did you know that unbreakable glass was invented by a dude who accidentally dropped a flask of nitrocellulose?”

“Insanely fascinating. I wish we were hacking into the Pentagon instead.”

“We will. One day.”

Kenma turns his head and he is greeted with quite a sight: Kuroo is lying on his back, his head hanging off the edge of the bed, and he is looking around the room with a stupid expression, as if looking for something to interest him. He looks like someone who would hack into the Pentagon just to find out about aliens. And not even his bangs cover half his face. The sight is gross-so sick-making it makes Kenma want to take a picture, post it on their channel with the caption:

“This is what Kuroo Tetsuro looks like when he's not on set. I hope you don't like him.”

And then read the comments that just confirm his point:

“I thought he'd be prettier”

“better with bangs”

“I always said oikawa was prettier oikawa if you're reading this call me I'm free friday night”

“Done,” Kenma says. “Looks like I'll be graduating instead of you.”

“Well, if you insist,” Kuroo sits up, and his bangs fall over his eyes again. “But you won't like it.”

“But at least I know how to make a program build structures quickly. Anyway, how much is a molecular chemistry tutor these days?”

“You’ll run me dry. And I’ll have to become a beggar. You know, the ones that usually bother people at the subway entrance.”

“What a lovely sight it would be,” Kenma closes his eyes dreamily.

Kuroo hits him with a pillow. The one that he's already mentally signed over to himself. And he's reaches for another one. No, that seems more and more like a shelling.

“One more move and you'll spend all night trying to bring back the code.”

But Tetsurou completely unbothered by this. Has the code lost some points in the hierarchy of needs? Kuroo grabs the edge of the chair Kenma is sitting on and pulls it toward himself.

“There are better things to do at night.”

“I'll go along with a pillow fight only.”

“That's a good start,” he murmurs in his ear.

“Shut up,” Kenma fights him off with a pillow.

Kuroo takes him by the wrists — Kenma'd better surrender right away — but he does not for the sake of his own respect. The pillow is taken from him, and Kuroo's hands, gripping his wrists a second ago, are now on his waist. Kuroo picks him up and rolls him onto the bed. And Tetsurou's hands, it turns out, are not only strong, but also very quick and agile, because he wastes no time getting them under Kenma's shirt.

“That tickles.”

“Fine,” Kuroo grins, hovering over Kenma who's trying to dodge.

“Enough, let me go,” he says.

“I saw you save the code, you have no power over me now.”

“When I get up...”

“You won't.”

Kuroo puts his hand on his chest, pressing the guy against the bed and kisses him, stroking his back with the other hand. Kenma responds to the kiss. He certainly hasn't started sleeping for 9 hours, as he promised, but he realizes that there are no such plausible hallucinations: Kuroo's lips are too soft, and the way he's kissing him is too greedy and insistent for an illusion. Or it's just delirium. All-consuming and deadly. When his fucking-quick-and-agile-hands are near his waist and when he feels the very tips of his fingers go under his pants, he arches a little, and there's a crunch. Barely audible. They could ignore it. But Kuroo laughs. Of course he does.

And it's all because of his fucking structures.

“Your back hurts? That means rain.”

Kenma punches him in the shoulder for that.

“You're really are a fucking boomer, aren't you.”

“It's not my back that hurts. I should take you out to play volleyball again.”

And “take you out” sounds almost appropriate. It's like Kenma is on his way to becoming a kitten that gets picked up from a shelter because the owner wants to create an Instagram account, put on a collar with a bell and lead him on a leash.

“Speaking of taking you out. Are we all set for tomorrow?”

Kenma grunts in displeasure.

“All right, I'll see you at seven.”

“I haven't said yes yet.”

“You said yes yesterday.”

“That was yesterday.”

“Seven,” Kuroo insists and his lips touch Kozume's a few more times.

He gives in and only manages to utter a doomed “mm-hmm” in between kisses. All that's missing is a white flag to make things look even more doomed.

After 29 hours, Kenma realizes that next time he has to hold his ground, no matter what it takes.

Or start taking the strongest antipsychotic drugs so he never knows what's real and what's a part of his delirium, followed by visual and auditory hallucinations.

***

“Shall we start with a beer?”

“Yeah, let's do it. Cheese balls?”

“No, don't get those. They're disgusting.”

“I like 'em.”

“You eat them then.”

“And I will.”

“Let's have some more fries.”

“What beer do we want?”

“Kenma, light or dark?”

Kenma doesn't give a fuck. He doesn't give a fuck so much that he can barely get his name out of all this chatter.

“Light.”

“Yeah, then we'll have five light beers and one dark,” Kuroo, who is ordering, sums up. “Then, cheese balls...”

“I'm telling you they're disgusting,” Oikawa interrupts.

“Shut up. Cheese balls and fries.”

The waitress leaves, and Kenma thinks about leaving her a very large tip to make up for all the effort spent on their table.

“So what are we planning to do?” Lev asks as they wait for their order.

“We have to come up with something,” Kuroo squints thoughtfully.

“We could just find a nice spot. On a rooftop when it's sunset, let's say. And then add our message to the audience at the end of it,” Oikawa suggests.

“I want to go on the rooftop!”

And Kenma is absolutely not surprised that it is Bokuto who says this. The thing is Kenma himself doesn't want to go to the rooftop.

“If any of you fall off there, it will all be documented on my camera, and someone's definitely going to jail for a couple of years.”

The crew laugh. Although it's unlikely someone from the crew would fall off. Chances are it would be Kozume himself cause his knees would just buckle from fear.

“Well, it's just a beautiful spot. Oh, thank you,” Kuroo says to the waitress who brought them the drinks.

“Make your own choreography,” Kenma suggests.

“It takes too much time and it's really difficult. We're not that cool yet.”

“Don't ruin Kenma's faith in us!”

Lev puts his hand on his shoulder, and Kenma grimaces.

“Don't touch me.”

“It's written all over your face!” Bokuto says through laughter.

Kozume didn't even know he was that funny until this day. These jerks are definitely not doing him any good. At this rate, he'll end up doing a standup comedy with setups which would go something like, “Has it ever happened to you that...?”

They take a glass each and raise them.

“We'll think of something! Let's have a drink in the meantime. Well, congrats on our 100k subscribers, everyone!” Bokuto cheerfully exclaims, and then everyone clinks their glasses with a resounding “Cheers!”

Kenma notices everyone turning on them. Fuck, what's so surprising about a company celebrating something at a bar? What the fuck have you not seen that's so special here? In his mind, he starts a countdown of how many drinks it's going to take so he doesn't have to think about someone staring at him.

“It has to be something special,” Kuroo says, licking the foam off his upper lip, and it's a sight to behold: even more intoxicating than the alcohol itself. “It's a 100k! It feels we started the crew and celebrated 500 subscribers only two days ago.”

Kenma calls Kuroo a boomer for a good reason as it seems.

“Does Kenma know the story?” Bokuto asks.

“I can tell by his eyes that he doesn't,” Akaashi suggests, and he's not wrong.

The crew chuckle in anticipation of what appears to be one of their favorite stories, even if it's being told for the tenth time. 

“Remember when I said my dad talked me out of going to choreography college?” Kozume nods. “Well, that's what he thought. I told him I was going into pharmacy but also signed up for the exam at that college. It was a two-part exam: traditional dance and any of the modern styles of my own choice. And I rehearsed every day, and then...”

“Fell down the stairs,” Bokuto inserts.

Everyone laughs, as if hearing this story for the first time. Kenma somehow isn't even surprised: only that idiot could have had that happen to him.

“Yes, fell down the stairs. Of course, I couldn't take the exams. And so I got into pharmacy.”

“He was so upset,” Koutarou goes on with his mouth full, “That I promised him that when his bones healed, we'd start a crew. I just said that to make him feel better, but he was really serious about it!”

“At first we recorded a cover together, but realized that there are not many choreos for two and it doesn't look very dynamic.”

“Yeah, and I asked Oikawa if he wanted to join in. I was already working at the gym at the time, and he used to come on Fridays.”

“Then they asked me to join in!” Lev draws the attention to himself and smiles contentedly.

Kenma is surprised at the lack of some sappy story about how he ended up on the crew. “They asked me to join in” is such a prosaic simplicity. Kenma has been theorizing that Lev's actually a criminal mastermind who has blackmail on everyone, just so he doesn't get kicked out. Bokuto could probably be blackmailed with his baby pictures, which no one but him cares about. And Kuroo — with some embarrassing drunk texts.

What can be done if he has the face of a man who would text “lubb.u my sweet kituy” after a couple of extra cocktails?

Kenma hopes never to experience that.

“And the-e-en,” Bokuto continues. “I came across Akaashi's channel. He was doing... What was it you said?”

“Contempo.”

“Yes, this thing. But I texted him anyway and asked if he wanted to join us.”

“You threatened me that if I said no, you'd drink yourself to death and quit the crew yourself.”

“I really liked the way you dance!” he makes excuses.

This really reminds Kenma of something. He even gives Kuroo a reproachful look that says “This is what you make people do,” but Kuroo's not bothered and looks like he finds it very funny. 

“Yeah, it does feel like it was only yesterday,” Oikawa says and takes a sip.

“And now we've hit 100k subscribers,” Haiba picks up.

Everyone is quiet for a moment, as if paying tribute to the past and the nostalgic atmosphere, and Kozume feels excluded. Not that he cares about this sense of belonging, but it's still a little poignant that he wasn't with Tetsurou when so many important things were going on in his life. Could they go to the same school in their next life? Could their parents put them in the same kindergarten? What's the big deal, let them be born in the same maternity hospital on the same day and at the same time, so Kenma doesn't miss a second.

“Speaking of which. I've got news,” Kuroo says.

“Oh! Bring it on.”

Everyone looks at him with interest. And Kenma already smells something wrong. He doesn't like news. To him, no news is good news.

“I applied for an internship at a choreography school in Beijing.”

Three.

“Wait, the one that turned me down last year?” Oikawa asks with undisguised surprise in his voice. “And what did they say?”

“I got accepted.”

“You did?”

“What's the school, anyway?” Lev asks, and Kenma even wants to thank him, because he doesn't have the faintest idea either.

“It's an annual internship and anyone can sign up, it's some sort of global audition. If you get accepted, you first train and then they can take you as a backup dancer for performances or for filming,” Akaashi explains.

“Wow. And when are you leaving, Kuroo?”

“September.”

“For the whole semester?”

“Yeah.”

Two.

And then Oikawa asks a question that makes Kenma's vision blur and glitch, though they've only had three beers each:

“But their selection is really strict. What did you send to them?”

“Well, all the certificates from the competitions and my latest cover.”

One.

And suddenly everything makes sense. All the phone calls and his performance video. The fucking video that Kenma shot. Made a valuable contribution. If he had known, he would have crushed the lens, thrown away the stabilizer and burnt the studio just to avoid doing it. Because Kuroo Tetsurou is standing in front of him now, happily announcing to everyone that he's leaving for China.

He should have suspected it back when Kuroo didn't answer the phone for three hours because he was busy. Should have broken his phone every time he got a call. Or should have broken his knee stabilizer in the end (Kenma decides never to throw it away — the thing has a lot of potential). He should have hack into his mail and send a mail to that school, with such content that Kuroo would be instantly blocked and banned from entering China. Something like:

“I changed my mind, you fucking cunts, I'm cool here, and the Communist Party sucks.”

“When did you do that?” Bokuto asks with glowing eyes full of admiration and a “I want it too” look on his face.

Obviously, while Kenma was busy with his crush on Kuroo. And he wants to spit in his face or throw the beer on him, but he's bigger than that, and Kuroo — now — certainly is not worth Kenma's reputation.

“Wait, what about the university?”

“Your father will kill you if you drop out,” Koutarou says.

“I took a leave of absence. I barely got it signed, but it worked out.”

Kenma has only one question in his head: what the fuck, Kuroo Tetsurou? No, he's happy for him, of course, but... Wait a minute, though. He's not fucking happy. He's not happy at all. Kenma's not the kind of guy who's happy despite things. He hates losing, and he loves getting what he wants.

He doesn't seem to be getting Kuroo, you see.

Kozume tries to catch his gaze to shoot, like an arrow, the mute question that still is like a neon sign in his head: what in the fucking fuck? But Kuroo is too busy with Bokuto, who's hugging and congratulating him, too busy with his beer and thinking of ways to smile even happier to make Kenma feel even more miserable.

“Well, to you!” Bokuto raises his glass, urging everyone to do the same.

After they drink, Kenma is glued to the phone and has no plans to say a word the entire evening. When Lev tries to offer him fries, Kenma tells him to fuck off. When Haiba ignores his demand, Kenma nudges him in the ribs. He bends in half, and Kozume is glad that there's at least some strength left in his muscles. Will it be enough to kick Kuroo Tetsurou's ass? Kenma recalls every time his shirt rode up a couple of inches and how he balanced himself on just one arm. The answer to his question doesn't seem affirmative.

“Kenma, you're cruel...” Lev says, as if this were news to him, but Kozume ignores it.

Maybe everyone exchanges a meaningful glance, maybe they pretend not to notice the strange behavior of the unsociable Kenma-the-cameraman: he doesn't know. He doesn't see. He's much more interested in scrolling through his timelime.

He, to be just, is offended by the total lack of attention to himself just like he was a couple of months ago. What was it about clickbaits?

“And you're leaving for a whole year?” Oikawa asks Kuroo.

Drop the topic already. Yes, he's leaving, yes, for China, yes, for a year. What's so hard to understand? It's crystal clear to Kenma. He knows that in a year his hair will grow some more inches, his posture will be so bad that he will look like an old man, maybe his eyesight will get worse, while Kuroo, the cheeky mean asshole will flourish — he will get even stronger and taller, maybe even do something with his hair.

Kenma feels like a hurt little boy who has been robbed of his lollipop and not allowed to play computer games.

And he didn't manage to save the game and stopped at the most interesting part.

“Yep. Well, almost, about ten months.”

“Anything else for you?” a waitress comes to the table.

“Let's have some cocktails.”

Everyone chooses something from the menu, and when Kuroo, who has finally condescended to Kenma, notices that he is silent, asks:

“Kenma, what's for you?”

“I'll have ten shots.”

“Wow-wow,” the crew drawl as if there'd be a show for them.

No show, off you go, Kozume's just going to get shitfaced. If you want to call it a show so bad, let's say it's a circus performance at most.

“Can you do it in one gulp?” someone says in a teasing manner.

Kenma drinks five in a gulp. He's ready for all ten, but first, he didn't like the banana one, and second, he's stopped by Akaashi, sitting to his left, while the others are taking it on camera to post on Instagram. Kenma makes a mental note to thank Keiji later: he is already nauseous, but he has no plans to stop there. He even steals a few sips of Lev's and Oikawa's cocktails under the pretext of “trying it.” He wants to drink himself into oblivion and liver failure, so he can either die or at least throw up.

But under Akaashi's keen supervision, he sips his sixth, vanilla, shot in tiny sips and nibbles at some snacks.

For a while he zones out and only comes to his senses when he hears:

“Kenma, you all right?” and it comes from Kuroo, who for some reason happens to be on the chair next to him.

Bring Lev back. Kenma's ready to forgive him for everything.

“Where is everyone?”

“Oikawa and Bokuto went to smoke, Akaashi went to check on them, and Lev's making friends with the bartender. He does that every time he's drunk.”

Kenma doesn’t respond and rests his heavy head on his folded hands. Staying calm is his top priority. Making it to the end of the evening without throwing up on the table is his top two priority. It seems easy, but the difficulty goes up when Kuroo's hand touches his shoulder. Kenma shakes it off. He reaches for his seventh shot, but Tetsurou moves it aside.

“I think you've had enough.”

“Sorry, I can't hear shit, the signal from China is crap,” Kozume thinks, but the thought is too hard to reproduce.

“Kenma?”

“I'm going to the bathroom.”

“Staying calm is my top priority,” he thinks as he stands in front of the mirror and turns on the water to wash his face.

The light bulb flickers, and it doesn't help to tune into the mythical “peace of mind” Kenma strives for at all. He feels like any second he could have an epileptic seizure, and then he definitely won't answer for his actions.

Someone knocks on the door, and Kozume hopes it's not Kuroo, who so thoughtfully decided to check on him. If Kuroo comes in here, they'll find him in the morning. And then “got drunk, fell down, hit his head on the tile” will be written on his tombstone. And Kenma will bring weeds to his grave occasionally.

But it just some random dude. Kozume gets back to the table and hears the guys still discussing what they'll end up doing to celebrate 100,000 subscribers on the channel (“who gives a fuck, who gives a fuck, who gives a fuck”), and their final choice is a mash-up. Kenma finishes his four shots and, though grateful to Akaashi for his keen supervision, wishes he could have another drink. But he doesn't have any saying on this.

Kenma gets back to his senses when he hears "it's time to go", and he is the first to leave the bar.

“Kenma, where are you going?” Kuroo's voice comes from behind him.

“I'm going home.”

“Wait, let me call you a cab.”

And Kuroo catches up with him. Fuck, Kenma hopes he breaks his long legs again.

“I'll walk.”

“What do you mean you'll walk? You can barely stand.”

“Fresh air.”

“What's with the fresh air?”

“It's sobering,” he says, speeding up his pace.

Staying calm is his top priority. Not falling on his face on the pavement is his top two priority.

“Okay, I'll walk you home then,” Kuroo keeps up with his pace.

Of course he'd keep up, being about 8 inches taller than he is. Kenma makes a promise to become some high-powered secretary to ban physical exercise on the legislative level. Because he wants to sound menacing, but all he manages to say is nothing but hoarse and pathetic:

“Fuck you.”

It's so pathetic that it makes him look like a joke in his own eyes.

“Are you sad that I'm leaving?”

And he's not fucking stupid. They don't let people that stupid enter Tokyo University, Japan's most prestigious one, by the way.

“No, it's okay. Just tell me everything right away next time. Is there anything else you're not telling me? Are you going anywhere else after China?” and after that tirade, there's no air left in his lungs at all.

“I thought you'd be happy for me.”

And Kenma wants to be happy. He wants to share in his success, as do the members of the crew, but he can't. How can you be happy for someone when you're not happy for yourself?

“Fuck. You.”

“Okay, you're right, I guess I shouldn't have said that in front of everyone. I'm sorry.”

“I'm sorry”? And that should be enough for him? Shall he keep those lame words as a rainy-day stash?

That's fucking ridiculous.

“I don't give a fuck whether it's in front of everybody or not,” he pauses, because otherwise he'll get tongue-tied, and that doesn't add to his seriousness. “I give a fuck about why you think I should be happy about it.”

“Let's talk.”

“No.”

He doesn't want to. So the whole walk back to Kenma's place is silent. They walk in step, and it just pisses Kozume off, so he tries to break their rhythm, but each new attempt ends in synchronized steps.

It's only when they're at the door when Kuroo speaks again:

“Kenma, let's talk.”

“We have nothing to talk about.”

They could talk about compensation for moral damage at most. And then Kuroo's free to leave for China.

“Please,” Tetsurou takes his hand and tries to intertwine their fingers.

What is it they say? Best defence is offence? In Kuroo and Kenma's case, it would be funny: it'd be the same thing if a kitten clawed a panther. Sounds like a new meme template.

But Kenma does claw him.

He takes advantage of Kuroo's naivety because he thinks that Kozume would never do such a thing, plus he doesn't have enough strength to do so. Kuroo may be used to dealing with such things, but his cat is smaller in size. And Kenma, when he's drunk, is very aggressive.

“Kenma, let me go!”

But he won't. Kozume has never had a proper fight in his life, so he plays dirty: pulls Kuroo's hair, pinches, steps on his feet — all's fair in love and war, isn't it? — while Tetsurou tries to fight him back. 

He has no doubt that if Kuroo fought him for real, he would have hit the wall by now. Kenma himself knows that he has no strength in his arms, especially after drinking alcohol. But he does want Tetsurou to fight him for real. So that he would have even more reasons to be angry and spit a biting “go fuck yourself” in his face.

He may not have enough strength, but the alcohol certainly adds to his courage: Kenma hits Kuroo in the stomach with his knee and opens the door, rushing into the building.

“Fuck,” Tetsurou bends in half, but manages to run inside right after Kenma.

Even though it hurts, he runs up the stairs faster than Kenma, who used up all his strength back when he was speeding up his step after leaving the bar. But Kenma has a head start.

Staying calm is his top priority. Not falling on his face on the stairs is his top two priority. He trips, but recover from a stumble quickly.

“Kenma, fuck, please.”

It turns out it's hard to run away from Kuroo. Especially up the stairs to the fourth floor. Kenma pulls his keys out beforehand, but when he reaches his door, Kuroo yanks him.

“Fuck off already!” Kenma yells.

There's too much alcohol in his body. There's too much anger. He's brimming with resentment. And it all turns into “too much force” which he uses to push Tetsurou. He knows because...

Oh, fuck.

Kuroo's falling off the stairwell.

Even in Kenma's alcohol-drenched body, something reacts: his heart stops for a second as he thinks “What the fuck have I done?” But Tetsurou grabs on to the railing, saving himself from a fracture — no less. And while he's trying to regain his balance, Kozume makes sure he's okay, rushes into his apartment and slams the door.

“Kenma, open the door!”

And it's like Kuroo doesn't even care that he just almost got thrown down the stairwell. What a freak.

“Kenma!”

Kenma's done for the day. He's had enough booze and running, and Kuroo Tetsurou in particular. The number you have dialed could not be reached, or something like that.

He casually goes to the bathroom and turns on the tap to wash his face and muffle the insistent knocking on the door with the sound of water. After doing so, he ties up his hair and takes out his phone, buzzing in his pocket non-stop, and looks at the messages, barely understanding what is written, because everything is still blurred:

“Kenma”

“let's talk”

“let me in”

“please”

“kitty?”

The last one makes Kenma see red. Staying calm is his priority? Fuck staying calm when he spots that question mark at the end, adding a touch of uncertainty and caution. As if Kuroo hadn't been writing the same thing after their first meeting time after time. Kozume pulls down the shower curtain, throws off the shampoos and gels and kicks the laundry basket.

When he gets to his room, he flips over the chair, tosses a pillow that will remind him of Kuroo for a while, and turns off the vibration on his phone so he doesn't have to hear new notifications.

It's settled. Kuroo Tetsurou must be forgotten by tomorrow morning. Now. Freeze-frame and rewind. He's the Weird Hair Guy #1 again.

Except forgetting Kuroo Tetsurou is like trying to squeeze a five-year plan into four years. Five years in ten hours. Especially when you've been aggressively convincing yourself all along that his lips on yours are very real, and not the effects of sleep deprivation.

“Your Honor, if Kuroo Tetsuro kissed me the other day, can we call it reasonable grounds to subject him to a travel ban? No?”

Kenma isn't much of a plaintiff. Which means he'll have to live with it.

Kozume sets the chair back to where it was and sits down at the computer, planning to play something as violent and absorbing as possible to distract himself when an idea strikes him.

He opens the YouTube tab with the crew's channel and looks at the latest three videos, one of which is the one Kuroo had sent. So how did you, Chinese experts, like it? There are about fifty more videos on the channel, and only three belong to him. Still, Kenma is a second away from deleting all of them. Because it all started with this damn channel.

What stops is that it's a shared effort. no one on the crew had known and honestly that's the only thing that saved them. Haiba Lev is the only one who is in fucking trouble right now. If it wasn't for that message a few months ago, none of this would have happened, and he and Kuroo would still be no one to each other, as they should have been by the divine plan.

That's when Kenma's twisted brain comes up with a much better idea. He opens the “community” tab and starts typing:

Hello everyone, this is Kozume Kenma. You're probably not used to seeing any posts from me, but you know me as a crew cameraman. And today I have maybe unpleasant news for you: as of this day, I am no longer the NEKOMAcrew cameraman.

I was very honored to work with the crew. They are all pros and great dancers.

The reason for this is Kuroo Tetsurou. You know him as the crew leader and the guy with the funny bangs. But you also have the right to know that he is not at all what you imagine him to be. “Problematic” is probably not the word that comes to mind when you hear his name. But that's the side of him that I've had the opportunity to get to know over the past few months, and I'm not going to put up with being treated unfairly. 

I will support the crew and will keep up with their activities, but not those of Kuroo Tetsurou.

Thank you for staying with us.

Kozume Kenma.

If Kuroo loves China so much,

Kenma will build the fucking Great Wall of China between them. 

Chapter Text

Kuroo gives up pretty soon. Too soon.

He texts Kenma five times until Kenma blocks his account.

He calls four times until Kenma blocks him number.

He knocks at the door three times. And three times he turns around and leaves because no one opens.

He uses Bokuto's account to text him two times, but Kenma blocks him too. What did they think would happen?

Once he sends Kenma some money with a message saying "for energy drinks".

Zero. Zero interactions with him in the last two weeks. Kenma is even disappointed: he expected more from him than coming at his door.

Kenma expects Kuroo to leave his thoughts soon. Like a deleted file that can only be brought back by a bunch of expensive programs or an experienced specialist. Because Kuroo will be so forgotten that it will be easier to "download a new file" than to search for the old one.

But in reality, there's none of that. Because no matter how much Kenma bangs his head against the wall (and not always figuratively), the fucking guy never seems to leave his mind. And it all gets out of control. Not that there was any control in the first place. But Kozume realizes that he definitely needs some therapy when he texts his client about the logo design, and instead of "city" reads "kitty" in the client’s messages.

But Kozume realizes that his head seems to be in need of treatment when he texts his client about the logo design, and instead of "city" reads "kitty".

For a second, his twisted mind even considers the idea that Kuroo might have found him on the freelance website where Kenma's resume is posted. Yes. He definitely did. Absolutely his style.

So Kenma fixes his hair before going out, inspects himself closely, puts on recently bought sneakers (not the ones that are dirty and almost falling apart), and repeats like a mantra on the way to the meeting, "Act normal." He even comes up with a little scenario.

1. He sees Kuroo. He shows maximum dissatisfaction and resentment.

2. He stays silent for a long time. Kuroo tries to start a dialogue.

3. Kenma shows pity.

They leave, the curtain falls, and everything is as it was before.

But Kenma is not meant to be a playwright: the script goes into the same trash can that Kuroo Tetsurou and all memories of him were supposed to go to. The client turns out not to be him.

“Hello, Kozume-kun.”

“Hello.”

At the coffee shop, Kenma shows the designs he's made: he's scrolling through images with different fonts, proportions and shades, waiting for the client to choose the one he likes.

“Oh, the third one is good.”

And though the imaginary script has already gone to a trash can, that "oh" makes him flinch. "Flinch" is even too literary. Sophisticated and pompous. Kenma fucking cringes. Because Kuroo was always saying that fucking "oh."

But Kenma should to chase those thoughts away. Sweep them out with a broom. Lime them like a corpse and bury in the ground.

Kenma and his client agree on the third design, the one with the thicker, larger font, and Kozume edits the image right there, experimenting with the positioning and the shading of the lettering.

“Yes, it really is better without a stroke. It turns out that even such details make a big difference. Oh, you got an Americano, Kozume-kun?  I've never understood how people drink it,” and he smiles politely and impersonally, just like the manuals on small talk teach you.

Talking about Americano is already too much. You know who else hasn't missed an opportunity to insert his expert opinion on Kenma's preferences? Kuroo T...

He comes back home irritated. The only good thing is that he won't have to see that client anymore, as he has approved the design and Kenma just has to finish it at home and send it to him.

Basically, everything is as it has been without Kuroo. Everything is back to normal: an Illustrator app, a playlist of video game soundtracks, pizza coming soon, a growing pile of clothes (because no one else puts the clothes away), going to sleep at 4 a.m., or not sleeping at all. But while something has fallen back into place, something, conversely, has gone away. The pillow, which Kenma had to hide so that it wouldn't annoy him. Tetsurou's automatically saved address on the pizzeria's app. Recent Instagram searches with the fateful "@tetsurOUHHHH" at the top of the list.

Just a pillow, but it feels as if the room had been completely rearranged. Just an address, but Kenma's already developed the habit of checking which of the automatically saved forms to click on.

It only takes a few more steps: type in the full account name, go to the profile, unblock Kuroo, check what's new, and block him again.

It's okay, it's okay, he's practicing for China. Because it's not going to get any better. Because the famous "It only gets worse" is true.

The peak of absurdity is that it doesn't get better even when Kenma jerks off to Kuroo. It happened later that night when they were drinking at the bar, went home and ended up fighting. Because a sober Kenma would never do such a thing. But he's drunk as hell.

He's only been this drunk twice in his life: when he entered the university and when he dropped out.

And that means he's really drunk.

It's wrong, it's disgusting and nasty, but Kuroo doesn't shame him at all from the screen — quite to the contrary, it's even as if he's watching with lust. A moan escapes his lips. Kenma buries his nose into the very pillow that even smells like Kuroo now, looks up at the screen, and speeds up. His arm goes numb — he's tired — but Kuroo has strong arms, he wouldn't have a problem with that, would he?

He really thinks it will make him feel better. But when he finishes, it's sticky on his hands and sticky inside — sticky and nasty. He got his pleasure which lasted for about ten minutes, and then came a feeling of even more emptiness. And it's not what he'd expected.

To his own surprise, he woke up that morning without a headache and he wansn't even thirsty. He would probably be the envy of all bar frequenters — such talent going to waste. And Kenma has the nerve to be dissatisfied — he was hoping to earn himself some kind of memory lapse yesterday. But apparently he won't forget Kuroo until he's old or until dementia hits him.

He yawns, blinks, and, turning on his side, picks up the phone from the floor, not doubting for a second what he's about to see.

"Kenma, open the door"

"fuck Kenma, seriously, i'm sorry."

"you can hit me again."

"i'll come by tomorrow?"

"you'll have a hangover and I'll make you the most delicious breakfast and bring it to bed."

"i'm a very good cook, by the way."

"kitty?"

"good night."

Suck it, Kuroo Tetsuro, Kenma doesn't have a hangover. And he doesn't need your breakfast in bed.

He swipes the messages from the notification bar and looks at the alerts for new comments on their channel. And almost every new comment is to Kuroo's new choreography.

"*report* *sexual content"

Kenma wonders: if he hid this video, would Kuroo notice? Of course he fucking would, he's been working on that choreo for two months.

"He's not trying to be the perfection, the perfection is trying to be him."

Can Kozume get at least have a one comment about Kuroo from a hater? Cause Kuroo will be getting too conceited. Something like, "idk, he didn't give his all," or, "do smth with ur hair, fag." But what he sees is:

"step on me."

Are you fucking serious?

Well, you know what?... Okay.

Kenma is in more or less in solidarity with that.

Only then it occurs to his not quite yet sobered-up mind that he doesn't see a single comment about his leaving. Does no one really give a fuck about cameramen? Okay, fuck cameramen, but what about the "cancel culture"? Kenma predicts that Kuroo's career should be dead by now.

He only figures out what's wrong when he sees something huge and suspiciously familiar in search history:

“Heloo evruoe this is Kozme Kenma./Your’e pribably not used to seieng any posts from me, butl/”

How the fuck could one confuse the search bar and the text box?

He decides not to publish it on the channel after all. He attempts to do so several times in two weeks, but stops at the very last moment. He secretly hopes that Akaashi or Oikawa will write to him. Or even Lev. Or, preferably, Kuroo will do so using their accounts. Something simple like:

"Hey, we really, really need you to help us with a video! We know you've been busy lately, but can you make time for us?"

Or much simpler and more straightforward:

"Hi, kitty. The money is for 2 shoots. I hope you feel like you owe us."

And he sure thing will.

The doorbell rings: it's almost 12:00, which means pizza time. Kenma gives the money to the delivery guy, mutters a "thank you" and is about to close the door. Then he hears footsteps — someone running down the stairs from the top floor.

That's it. From this day forward, no-contact delivery only.

Barely the delivery guy steps away from the door, and Kuroo runs in right after, apologizing for hitting him. Kuroo, who fucking watched for the damn delivery guy and "waited" on the fifth floor.

“Get the fuck out of here!” he quickly puts the pizza on the chair and tries to slam the door, but Tetsurou manages to sneak inside and now prevents Kenma from closing the door.

“Kenma, let me in!”

“I said fuck you!”

“No!”

Kozume finally gives up. Even with all the anger still sitting inside him, waiting to be released by pulling the trigger, he doesn't want to repeat the fight in the stairwell. The prospect of two years in prison for intentional infliction of serious bodily injury, which Kuroo is literally asking for, is a lot more real than it sounds.

Also, it's not that he has the strength to hold that door. And besides it's worth admitting — it was clever of Kuroo to do what he did, because he knows what time Kenma orders his pizza.

“That's trespassing,” Kenma says gritting his teeth.

“Let's talk.”

“I don't want to.”

“Please,” Kuroo steps a little closer, but Kozume takes a step back.

It's about time he got an alarm system. In normal world they call it a "restraining order".

What are the chances of pushing him the fuck out of here? Especially without his Dutch courage?

“Kenma.”

“Fine. All right. So what is it you're trying to say?”

“I'm sorry...?” he says hesitantly.

Just as hesitantly as that "kitty...?" message. So hesitant and cautious, as if he were standing on quicksand, ready to swallow him at any moment. He could have already mastered a whole speech in the meantime. In verse and with all the literary tinsel that Kenma doesn't understand, but which he would certainly appreciate.

“Is that all?” he folds his arms across his chest.

“No.”

There is a silence on Kozume's part, urging Kuroo to continue.

“I wanted to say that even if I leave, it doesn't mean that my feelings for you will change. And I hope yours won't either.”

“My what? Feelings?”

That's an interesting compound. Kenma didn't study chemistry so he's not familiar with such things.

“Well, my inner chemist tells me there's something going on between us.”

“You're a shitty chemist then.”

“Hey, I'm actually going to graduate with honors.”

What the fuck is going on between them? Kuroo's "spring fever"? Only his spring is taking too long already.

“I'll be back in ten months. And I'll come for Christmas. It'll snow in Tokyo and we'll go somewhere with you. Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Then we'll stay at home and watch some TV shows.”

Kenma stares murderously, hoping that the image of Kuroo will simply burn out his retinas. Dissolve his eyeballs so that he never sees him again — and his smile, his bangs, his catlike squint. There's a smirk on Tetsurou's face, but it's there just for a split second. "And what the fuck is so funny and hilarious about that?" Kenma wonders. Or does he always have that look on his face? It's like he's looking at a new character that hasn't been unlocked yet.

Name: ???

Age: ???    

Skills: [DATA EXPUNGED]

And it's infuriating. It's infuriating, because it turns out he doesn't know Kuroo at all. There are no past lives, no parallel worlds, where they're best friends since childhood with volleyball and the cat they found, where they can foresee every next move. Where they know every scar, remember every curve of the bodies, where they walk in step on their way to school and breathe in unison as they fall asleep leaning against each other.

All he knows is that Kuroo is a great dancer and a future pharmacist. He's also inappropriately sexy. Sorry. Disgusting.

He also knows what his lips taste like. Oh, that means a lot.

“I know it's not a good time to leave, but...”

Kuroo, who's been standing in the threshold until now, walks to the back of the room and sits down on the bed.

“Don't sit there.”

“Why not?”

“It's my bed.”

“How about I say it's ours?”

And he sprawls out on it to annoy Kenma. He stretches out, deliberately touching his long legs to Kozume's, who is standing next to the bed. Deliberately pulling up his arms and straightening up so that his T-shirt exposes his torso.

“I see you're passionate about communism.”

Just a little bit more, and the bed will smell of Kuroo. Just a little more, and he will find his black hair on the sheets like cat owners do. Just a little more, and the pillows will get lumpy from the way he rumples them.

“Then you'll definitely like it in China,” Kozume continues, putting as much causticity and bile into his words as he can.

Instead of answering, Tetsurou looks at him with a stop-it-already look on his face and lifts himself up, but only to wrap his arms around Kenma and pull him down onto the bed.

“Don't pull away,” he says to the kicking Kenma. “I've had enough of it that time.”

“You told me I could hit you again,” he mutters somewhere in Kuroo's collarbones.

“What other kinks do you have?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Okay, if it makes you feel better, you can hit me.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

Kenma punches him in the stomach and feels Kuroo's muscles tense. He holds back a chuckle.

“Does it hurt?”

“So much,” he assures him, and buries his nose in Kenma's hair. “Are you really that upset?” he is smilng, Kenma can tell it by the way he sounds.

What does he want to hear? "Yes, I am?" Is that supposed to be a big ego boost for him? That's why Kozume doesn't reply: he doesn't want Tetsurou to hear it if he already knows the truth.

“You promise you won't get mad anymore?”

“I won't.”

“Will you wait for me?” there's so much tenderness in his gaze that it makes Kenma want to cringe and hide.

“As if I have better things to do here.”

And Kenma breaks eye contact: he can't take another second of it. Kuroo hums and kisses his forehead.

“I missed you.”

“Yeah.”

“Akari missed you too.”

“That's not true.”

“I'm telling you.”

“She's already forgotten who I am.”

He wishes he could forget Kuroo that way.

“She'll have to remember.”

And he'll have to, too. Because "forgetting Kuroo" is a non-existent concept. It is a grammatically correct sentence, but it makes absolutely no sense. "To forget" is a transitive verb, "Kuroo" is a proper noun, a direct object. But what is the meaning behind it? "To forget" is to stop remembering. Kozume only stops remembering what he wanted to stop remembering Tetsurou when he kisses him with the care of their first kiss, gently tucking a strand behind his ear. Once he has convinced himself that this is not a hallucination, it is no longer possible to "stop remembering". Kenma runs his hands over his bangs and brushes them aside because they are in his eyes and it tickles, and Kuroo takes advantage of the fact that he broke the kiss and presses his lips against his neck.

“Is this a goodbye sex?” Kozume asks, as Kuroo's lips barely touch his skin.

“You said you wouldn't get mad anymore.”

“I lied.”

Kuroo laughs as if it were a joke. And yet there's a grain of truth in every joke. Like every "I forgive" has a bit of hidden resentment. Kenma has promised himself not to be mad, but it seems he just can't.

“Call it whatever you want. If you want it at all.”

Yes, he fucking does. And it's all because of his hips, his strong arms, and his cocky smile. So where's your pride now, Kozume Kenma? No idea, but his hands are now under Kuroo's shirt. His legs are intertwined with his. His lips — soft and swollen — are kissing him.

The "Kuroo Tetsurou must be forgotten by tomorrow morning" plan is a shameful failure.

Kenma doesn't really care anymore. Pride, reputation, and all semblances of it leave him for good when the belt buckle tinkles and when, after painfully long minutes of weightless touching or rough groping and biting, they are undressed — the last thing Kuroo does is taking off his T-shirt.

“I'm cold,” Kenma whines, because the air conditioner is on full blast in the July heat.

“What do you need me for?”

Kuroo pulls him even closer, touching his shoulder blades with his hands, and then Kenma realizes how hot his hands are. Or is it just his body that is so cold?

Or is it just him being so cold himself? But that feeling quickly fades when Tetsuro sits on top of him. "Heavy," Kenma thinks. He looks up at Kuroo. Answering himself to his own long-standing question, "How much strength is in those arms? Is it enough to choke him to death? Will it be enough to break his neck?" Yes, enough. Enough to strangle him, break his neck, even break him in half. Kuroo savors every moment, every second, stroking his sides, going down to his hips and kissing his chest chaotically. And Kozume wriggles at his touch because he can't wait anymore: he's waited too long. Maybe since "There are more interesting things to do at night." Or, "Your bun is coming loose." Or maybe since, hand on heart, "There's only one way to shut me up" or "Hi, kitty." Kenma finally forgets about the cold when Kuroo lubes his fingers and begins to stretch him: Kenma breathes heavily, he is sweating and his cheeks are burning.

“Relax.”

“When we switch, then I'll relax.”

“Oh. Well, maybe later,” and he moves his fingers a little faster to the soft moans.

"Later" doesn't sound that good. What's "later" to them now? Is it a week from now, before Kuroo leaves, or a year from now, when he comes back? If he comes back at all. And then they won't have any "later."

They don't have a past with naive teenage crushes, the kind they dedicate songs and sloppy poems with lame rhymes to. There is no "later" — the future with the flavor of the most expensive champagne as they kiss each other at their indecently rich wedding — and Kuroo is in his tailored black suit saying his sappy vows, and Bokuto is a best man, and there's a sugary sweet cream cake.

The thought is bitter. No cream can beat that.

Kuroo definitely knows what he's doing when he flips him on his stomach and slowly enters. Constantly asking: "Are you okay?", "Does it hurt?", "Tell me when you ready, okay?" And Kenma doesn't want to think about it, but he can't, and the question never leaves his head: How many have you fucked before? Can you make a list from best to worst and where would I be on it?

And after a few "come on already" from Kenma and as many "sure?" from Kuroo, they moan in unison — as they would breathe if they fell asleep leaning against each other. Only Tetsurou's voice is deep and bassy, and Kenma's is quiet, on the verge of cries and sobs.

Kuroo takes his wrists, and Kozume wraps his fingers around his, but then realizes it's no use — he still holds him tightly, powerfully, so that his hands go numb and tingle.

He leans toward him, because it is not enough. Because he needs to make up for two weeks of utter loneliness. He asks Kuroo to go faster, and Tetsurou thrusts into him jerkily and roughly, but it's still not fast enough. And he needs it like with booze: until his vision goes black. Kuroo's cock slips out, and Kenma lets out a frustrated half-moan at the sudden (and very unwanted) loss of contact. And Tetsurou doesn't even bother to let it go of his wrists: still holding Kenma firmly, he pishes his cock with one finger and thrusts it in all the way in. Then pulls out again. He does this a few more times — sharply and quickly, realizing finally that Kenma is no softie, because it's clearly not the pain he's screaming from. Kozume likes it, but there's one problem: he's already at his limit, but he can't touch himself.

“Kuro,” he asks.

“Hm?” but Kenma doesn't respond.

Tetsurou, however, seems to understand what this was about - he lets go of his wrists, pulls out, turns Kenma over on his back and then continues, this time wrapping his hand around his cock. Kenma wriggles his toes and trembles. Kuroo lifts his hips and thrusts again, and Kenma moans, and again, and again, hoping that this will make the lump in his throat go away. But this seems to happen only when Kuroo goes too. A month or two later, and Kozume won't remember his name (oh, a guy with weird hair, I've seen that somewhere!) And Kuroo will also forget him: he'll find himself a nice Chinese girl, maybe even with similar hairstyle (all correspondences with the real Kozume Kenma are coincidental). Only he didn't dye her hair at 1 a.m. after a nervous breakdown, an honor that only Kenma was given.

Oh yes. He wasn't. The goddamn past life they never had.

Then no, oh, no, that won't do.

Kenma arches, and Kuroo holds him, covering his neck with wet kisses.

“If you... in China... if you find someone there,” oh God, Kenma, breathe, you're dying, “I'll send you anthrax.”

Tetsurou laughs, but doesn't stop — he's holding Kenma, because the latter seems to really like their position — and for Kozume, it's both the most disgusting and the most beautiful sound on the planet. Disgusting, because 1) there's nothing funny about it; 2) who laughs during sex anyway? But beautiful — in its sincerity, as if Kenma were telling jokes. Maybe he'll finally become a stand-up comedian:

"Have you ever had a crush on Kuroo Tetsuro? No? I have, I'll tell you what it's like."

It'd be very unrelatable, because if you haven't fallen in love with Kuroo Tetsurou, you won't understand. He kisses Kenma softly and languidly, running his tongue agonizingly slowly over his lips. He kisses as if he were sharing his own breath with Kenma. Sharing his smirk, as if he longs to see Kenma do the same.

“What's so funny?” Kozume hisses, but it sounds like a weak whisper — that's the best he can do right now because — shit — Kuroo is also good at sex.

“I'm not laughing, I'm smiling.”

“You think I don't see?”

“See what?”

“It's not a smile, it's a smirk.”

“You're imagining it.”

Kuroo bites into his neck, leaving a few hickeys and Kenma freaks out: like anyone needs him here in fucking Tokyo. As if he's the handsome dancer leaving for a year — so desired by everyone that his partner has to "mark his territory."

“Kenma,” Tetsurou touches his lips to his earlobe, and Kozume gets a shiver: sensitive ears.

“What?”

“I love you.”

After that, Kenma realizes: he needs to decide what to do about it. Now. There are two options:

1. Change the subject by asking to kiss him.
2. Tell the truth.

Neither prospect entices him, but he's got only one try — this isn't a visual novel that you can restart the game and end up with a different character ending.

“Kiss me.”

So Kuroo does: he pushes his tongue into Kenma's mouth and covers his palm on the cock with his. Kenma immediately takes away his hand, because what he feels now is ten times better than what he felt two weeks ago on this same bed and with the video on his phone.

“I love you,” Kuroo repeats, barely breaking the kiss — pulling away a few millimeters so that Kozume could whisper it in sync with him.

But he doesn't.

“I get it,” and then he reaches for his lips again.

No "I love you too" in response. It's just that if Kenma says it, it will be his ultimate loss to Kuroo Tetsurou. And he doesn't like losing.

Kuroo is either fine with that answer, or he's too busy with his orgasm. He cums, breathing heavily, and Kenma runs his left hand over his perfect abs, which he has wanted to touch for so long. He thinks about how pathetic he must look next to him with his messy hair and hollow abdomen.

“Kuro.”

He reaches for his right hand.

“I’m tired.”

“You're adorable,” Tetsurou says, pulling out.

And he eagerly helps him. As he touches the cock's head with his thumb, Kenma throws his head back and moans, realizing how much bigger Kuroo's palm is. How much tighter the grip feels on his cock than his own. And it's either Kuroo's already figured out what Kozume's erogenous zone is, or he's just busy testing his guess, because he keeps moving his hand up and down and whispering something in his ear. Kozume can't even make out what it is, but it's probably some sentimental bullshit. Something like "you're so beautiful right now" or "I love what I'm doing to you." Kenma cums: he would cum even if Kuroo were retelling him his quantum chemistry notes, because his languid whisper is more important than the nonsense he's talking. He's even willing to sacrifice his own lips-"here you go". For another dozen kisses. Tetsurou leaves many short kisses, asking where the napkins are and holding out his hand for them in between.

“The pizza's getting cold,” Kuroo informs.

Who fucking cares about pizza right now?

“Let me come around.”

“Was I that good?”

“You were that bad, and now I'm gonna need rehab.”

Tetsurou hovers over him and smirks:

“If I had been that bad, I wouldn't be sitting here with napkins over you.”

"Touché.

“Do you want me to get you some water?” he asks, putting on a T-shirt and running strands between his fingers.

Unbearable.

Kenma nods in affirmation and reaches for his clothes, because it suddenly gets cold when Kuroo leaves. For fucking water. A boyfriend material, huh? Kenma, absolutely exhausted, is lying on the bed and watches Tetsurou who is full of energy for some reason: he puts a glass of water and two plates, obviously for pizza, on the bedside table, picks up their clothes off the floor and folds them neatly, and then he asks Kozume to get up to straighten the crumpled bed sheets. Kenma only says:

“Fuck it, later.”

“No "fuck it",” and Kuroo easily lifts him up. “Kenma, how much do you weigh?!”

“I don't know...”

“What do you mean you don't know? Do you even eat?”

“Yeah. I ordered pizza.”

“Then we're eating it now,” Kuroo puts the pizza box right on the bed.

“I don't want to.”

“Can't hear you.”

Kenma looks up at him. "Puppy-dog eyes" is obviously not his style, but even a wicked squint seems to do the job.

“Just a little. Please.”

Well, it's some kind of compromise: he agrees to two slices. That's a start. If it weren't for Kuroo, he wouldn't have eaten any: he doesn't need the energy for the night now, he's not going to work on the order tonight anyway.

His plans for tonight include falling asleep to Kuroo's mumbling: first he says something about his course paper and triazoles in an indignant voice ("That's the hardest topic! There's only one website about it, and it's in Spanish! I had to ask Oikawa to help me translate it"), and then about the making another video for the channel in August before he leaves ("You'll help us, right?" — "You know the price"). And Kuroo doesn't need to know about what Kenma almost posted on their channel. As they finish their pizza (well, mostly Kuroo), Kozume asks about that school in China, and he excitedly tells him how hard it is to get there and how he started learning Chinese for it last year.

Kenma is already in his stage of acceptance - he's listening to a muffled voice while Tetsurou hugs him from behind and tells him that the same characters in Chinese and Japanese somehow mean "fried flatbread" in the former and "jealousy" in the latter. Acceptance is acceptance. China is China. Kenma's only half-listening He concentrates on cultivating a sense of happiness for Kuroo. He cultivates it with a permutation of rehearsed smiles and feeds it with fake congratulations. He soaks it in disguise and cans it to get it out any time he needs to act happy.

“Kenma?”

“Hm?”

“I say, do you really hate China that much?” Kuroo leans on his elbow and hovers slightly over Kenma to look into his eyes.

“No,” he answers honestly — he didn't care about China at all before. “Why?”

“Hand me the backpack.”

He passes it over, and Kuroo pulls out an envelope.

“What is it?”

“A tearful letter that you can read when you feel like you miss me,” he says.

“Yeah, sure. Compensation for moral damage would be better.”

Kenma takes the envelope and looks at it through the light.

“It's a little thin for a tearful letter.”

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

Kenma figures it's likely to be something like a picture of them together (the only one they have is a blurry selfie from the day when Kozume lost a bet to Kuroo and Bokuto: he bet that Koutarou wouldn't smoke all day, but he underestimated how cooperative these idiots are for each other and their dirty deeds). In any case, it's something embarrassing, so he puts the envelope on the bedside table.

“Open it.”

“I'm not going to read it now.”

“Open it,” Kuroo repeats.

He won't leave him alone, and Kenma knows that. Kozume — there's nothing he can do about it — opens the envelope. True, there is neither a photo nor a postcard inside. Not even a cash compensation.

It is a ticket to China. Two tickets to China.

And before Kenma can say anything, Kuroo starts:

“I thought you might want to come with me. You got so mad at the bar the other day... And I get what it looked like. Like I hit on you because I had nothing to do, and now I'm going to leave for a year.”

“That's exactly what it looked like,” Kozume bites.

“I know,” he replies, sitting down on the bed so he can stare at the guy point-blank. “I'm not fooling around with you. I'm really not.”

He lowers his gaze and twists the ticket in his hands. Has Kuroo spent his savings? Borrowed from someone? Sold something? Just as Kenma shames himself for not being genuinely happy for him, he shames himself for these thoughts flattering him.

“I called to ask about housing. I'll have scholarship, and it covers the dorm expenses. So they said there won't be a problem with that. We’ll just have to pay extra for your room.”

"August 29th," the ticket reads. A little more than a month. Kenma doesn't say anything. He's staring at the ticket, as if somewhere near the seats, date and time he could find the answer to the question, "Why the fuck?"

“Cancel it.”

Kuroo flinches at the unexpectedly broken silence.

“Why?” he finally asks.

“I'm not going.”

“Why not?”

Kozume pulls the blanket over himself, trying to hide from his gaze. It's still an unequal fight — always has been — and it will only take a couple of "please" to neutralize Kenma. One touch and Kenma will beg for mercy.

“There's nothing for me to do there. I'll only be a distraction. And I don't know Chinese.”

“That's not a problem there.”

“Kuro.”

Tetsuro falls silent. And Kenma realizes: he won't handle another two weeks of the deafening silence between them. Not when Kuroo leaves in five.

“I'm not saying I don't need you. But I can't go with you.”

And this time Kuroo "gives up." With a heavy sigh, but he gives up. Maybe Kenma isn't so bad at warfare after all.

“Then,” Tetsuro says, hovering over him, “you have to promise you won't get mad for sure from now on.”

“I won't.”

He won't — he has no right to now. It feels like signing his own death warrant or a deal with the devil.

“You sure?”

"Dear Devil, Mephistopheles, Satan himself, I will be angry just a little bit, make sure Kuroo Tetsurou doesn't find out about this.

Yours, Kozume Kenma."

“Sure.”

“Then we have the whole August,” Kuroo smiles and pecks him on the lips.

It sounds like a line from a cheap summer romance movie. Kuroo Tetsurou sounds like that a lot. Him whispering "I love you" when they go to bed sounds the same. His pounding heart sounds the same when Kenma snuggles into his chest, falling asleep.

His movie-like "I'll text you when we land" will sound the same.

So will his "See you" on August 29.

Chapter Text

If Kuroo Tetsuro and Kozume Kenma are indeed the protagonists of the cheapest rom-com movie it must have the most clichéd ending. So clichéd, that any spectator could foresee it right in the beginning, sitting in the cinema hall for 10 minutes only to finish popcorn and then, bored, give up and leave, not feeling sorry for the money spent on the ticket.

The ending is as clichéd as a villain getting his redemption. As the protagonist with the wondrous gift of stumbling upon all the necessary ancient artifacts at the most opportune moments, defeating his enemies by the power of friendship and love. As the school's handsome, pompous jock who fell in love with a virgin.

As the promise that distance would mean nothing. As friendship that didn't pass the test of two thousand miles.

"sorry, i overslept this morning and didn't have time to call."

And where there's "didn't have time to call," there's "didn't want to disturb you." All that while new wagons of excuses that neither of them would believe cling to each other. The award for "the most convincing" goes to:

"your cat threw up, i'm going to clean it up and take her to the vet"

The extraordinary credibility of it is that it's not an excuse at all.

Kuroo looks at this message and immediately calls Kenma. For the third time that day.

“Kenma! What are you feeding her?”

“What you left.”

“It can't be!”

“It can.”

“Then what happened?”

“How should I know? I'll call you when I get back from the vet.”

“Fine. I'll be waiting.”

Kuroo is too assertive, and Kenma is too much in love to lose to two thousand miles. Somewhere in Kozume's mind there's even a scale for how much. And next to the last marking is the "it doesn't piss me off when he calls several times a day and I even answer."

Kuroo calls in the morning and before going to bed, calls when something that makes him happy happens ("Guess what, I'll be alone in my room!") or when something makes him upset ("It's colder here in the fall than I thought it would be"). And Kenma always takes the time to respond. He listens about every little detail. He designs every detail in his mind, paints every little detail and adds it all to the overall puzzle of Kuroo Tetsurou's life in Beijing.

He doesn't pick up only when he's filming. At first it's just Bokuto, Akaashi, Oikawa and Lev, but then they find another guy for their crew because:

“It's better to have an odd number of people to make up the choreography," Akaashi explains.”

He doesn't like this guy, and it's not just that he never likes anyone at first. He's not a bad dancer, but he's labeled as Kuroo's replacement in one way or another. And Kenma picks on him even more than he pick on Lev (who is finally getting some semblance of peace).

“You're too out of line.”

“Move farther.”

“No, now move closer.”

“Somebody explain to him.”

It's not clear to Kenma yes: is he really plainer and worse than the others, or does it just piss Kenma off when he remembers why he's here.

Because Kuroo — isn't.

"i'm going to see my parents"

"don't forget to show them my pictures and tell them how cool I am"

"in your wildest dreams"

This is the only time Kozume refuses a video call, not because he's busy filming. And he's not going to see his parents, but just in case, he doesn't show up online for the next couple of hours. In fact, he just doesn't want Kuroo to see his red eyes swollen from crying because he's embarrassed. Kenma hasn't cried since his first year of high school, when his computer crashed, taking with it all the levels passed and the programs he'd been working on — he was still learning then.

Some would say that Kenma spends all his time on the Internet anyway. And he would tell them to go fuck themselves, because it wasn't the same fucking thing at all. He didn't sign to a long-distance relationship. 

If Kenma had seen that agreement, he would know that in a long-distance relationship no one folds your clothes or does your laundry for you. In a long-distance relationship, no one brings you food three times a day because you forget to eat yourself. And no, "Don't forget to eat" messages are not the same. Every time he replies:

"okay"

And never eats in the end.

In a long-distance relationship, no one falls asleep right beside you to a movie that he himself suggested you watch. No one is hugging you from behind while you type one message after another cursing your teammates ("They're all fucking idiots") in a chat room. No one fucks you so much that all your muscles ache the next day.

It's pathetic to get attached to someone so quickly. It's so pathetic you don't even want details. A little pat on the shoulder is enough, there's nothing to talk about. Although his mother would say it's all because he's withdrawn and reclusive. And the lecturing voice buzzes in his head like Kenma hasn't heard it a thousand times before. He blames Kuroo Tetsurou.

What's even worse than Kuroo Tetsurou? His friends.

“Come on, show me.”

Kenma waves the new console in front of the camera.

“You like it?” Tetsurou's voice is already distorted by the quality of the connection, and when he moves, Kenma can hear every rustle from the microphone rubbing against his clothes.

Kozume stares at the low-quality picture on the screen. If Kuroo had seemed like a hallucination to him before, he now thinks that some maniacal pervert from China could have easily superimposed a picture of Tetsurou on his face. The future is now — your boyfriend turned out to be nothing more than an image synthesis.

“Considering they broke my old one...”

“This one's better.”

“But I won't let them in ever again,” Kenma complains.

“Why so?” Kuroo chuckles.

“I'll fucking show you,” he moves away from the camera and lifts his laptop, so that Kuroo could assess the full scale of the disaster.

“It's just a bit of a mess,” he says, looking at the crumpled pillows and blankets, the dishes on the table and the floor and the piles of food wrappers.

“You do realize I won't be cleaning this up for a week, right?”

“You have to, Kenma, you have to. Where's Akari?”

Kozume goes to the kitchen and comes back with the cat in his arms.

“Lev stepped on her tail today," he informs him as he scratches her behind the ear.

“Tell him he's dead.”

“That's exactly what I told him.”

Kuroo leans a little closer to the camera. As if that could nullify the distance between them. Tear a hole in the canvas of reality, distort the space-time continuum and suck everything but themselves into the event horizon.

“Glad you had a good time on your birthday.”

In cheap romantic comedies you need to respond: "It's all thanks to you," to such words, but if Kenma says that, he's afraid that even the latest technology won't survive such saccharine bullshit: the pixels would blur, the motherboard would short out, and the matrix would be covered in webs.

“They gave you my present, didn't they?” Kuroo asks, and rests his hand on his chin.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

“But I'm definitely not letting Bokuto in again. Next time, tell him to leave gifts in the mail box. He almost broke the mirror in the hallway. I'll only let Akaashi and Oikawa in if he'll shut up for five minutes. He's been telling us how he was trying to get a number from the new gym instructor for half an hour today,” his angry tirade is interrupted by Kuroo's laugh. “It's not funny at all. I feel like I already know that gym instructor personally. Or rather his muscles, because Oikawa wouldn't...”

“Kenma.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

Again. He always shoots that "I love you" to kill before Kenma knows what's happened.

“I'm sorry I couldn't be with you on that day,” he adds, even "finishes it off". Down to the last bullet.

So there's nothing else he could say rather than:

“I love you too.”

And Kuroo Tetsuro, by the way, likes many other things. He likes cats (especially his one) and going to the beach in summer. He likes mango flavoured energy drinks and black colour. He likes chemistry and showing off by saying the full name of DHA. He likes smoking mild cigarettes, but only when Bokuto insists because Kuroo went through blood sweat and tears giving up smoking a year ago. He likes to dance in the heart of Tokyo and count how many people are watching and making video of them. He likes to play video games when he's tired and gets home at midnight, or to play volleyball occasionally when still feels like after a tough day. He likes singing at the top of his voice even though he's out of tune in the shower while he spreads conditioner on his annoyingly unruly hair - Kuroo doesn't like conditioners: none of them are any goof. He also doesn't like it when his upstairs neighbor, a lanky blond guy in glasses, turns his cold water on full blast, leaving Kuroo almost boiling in hot water for his howls, but that makes him laugh more.

He likes Kozume Kenma and being too confident sometimes.

And these two things can't go well together as it seems. Because what kind of overconfident jerk is he to decide that Kozume Kenma would be willing to go with him to China, which, let's be honest, he doesn't give a fuck about?

For Tetsurou, going to another country was like driving from one end of town to the other — it's a long ride, but with headphones in his ears and some coffee for the road it's nothing to him. He's taken a leave of absence from the university for a year, because — remember yet? — Kuroo likes chemistry and is going to be a pharmacist after all. He's been to every translation bureau and every floor at the embassy to get his documents translated and visa made. He's fixed dozens of cars to save money.

What kind of overconfident jerk is he to decide that Kozume Kenma would want to share his dream with him?

Actually, it's exactly who Kuroo Tetsurou is. A man who gets weirdly high from a busy schedule. Five, six, seven, eight — going to a master class. Five, six, seven, eight — doing stretching exercises. Akaashi always said stretching was important. And no one listened. Five, six, seven, eight — listening to his evening classes in Chinese. Five — performance rehearsal. Six — out of sync. Seven — buying a new notebook for practicing Chinese characters. Eight — going back to the dorm and texting Kenma.

Day after day. All the same.

On his darkest days — the ones when you go to the bar to get drunk with the a stranger and imagine that your card balance is unlimited and your liver is immune to all kinds of alcohol possible — Kuroo is ready to admit that he wants to go home. He wants to listen to his four lectures and go to the lab, to the gym they rent with smeared mirrors and music at full volume, he even wants to open the hood of a car again and stare in confusion at the engine and the wires.

He wants to come in and make sure nothing has changed-as if he had stuffed his whole life into a time capsule and left it in the ground before he left. 

But Kuroo never complains. It's his biggest secret: you only tell that to your one-night stand friends with anything harder than beer. And to questions like "How's it going in China?" from his father (who took the news surprisingly calmly) he always answers:

“Great.”

His father taught him not to complain and not to whine. Kuroo doesn't complain or whine. Except very rarely and only to Bokuto. Sprinkling it all with jokes, a self-irony that gets up to his throat after a five-hour event, just not to let himself drown in this abyss of despair. 

Today, Koutarou texts first.

"hey, ur in the dorm????"

"yeah, why?"

"wanted to talk to you. ur not busy?"

"nah. I'm done for today, and Kenma went to visit his family. said the connection wasn't good there."

"ah yeahhhh, he did."

"you talked to him?"

"yeah"

"he called, we were talking about the video."

"he called?"

"what did you do to him there?"

"nothing!!!!!!!!"

"bro, what's your room number?"

"302С. what do you need it for?"

"nothing. akaashi's into numerology."

"is he? what does my 302C mean?"

"ill ask him later, he's busy now."

"okay"

Akaashi Keiji better not know he's been slandered. And dragged into an evil plot. The greatest conspiracy of Bokuto Koutarou and...

The one who knocks on the door. Kuroo never minds company, but today is an exception. Maybe it's his upstairs neighbor again. Kuroo likes to mock him for nothing: just to get some reaction. Maybe it's the guy from his dance class at the door. He probably lost something again and decided to borrow it from Kuroo. If it's the dorm supervisor, Kuroo's the first candidate for a warning today: he hasn't had the time or energy to clean up in the last few days. If he's lucky, he'll get one warning instead of two, because an ashtray could easily get him kicked out.

He opens the door, accepting his fate. How does it go? "You're never challenged beyond your abilities?" Kuroo is all eager to see what's waiting for him today.

“Nihao.”

Whoever came up with that saying apparently hasn't faced challenges. Not everyday troubles, but the true test of one's strength. Tetsurou freezes in shock. He wasn't ready for this. For...

“Kenma?”

...at the door.

“No.”

But it's not a "no".

“Kenma,” but now he's positive.

“Wow, you recognized me.”

That's it. A hole in reality. Even light cannot escape this gravitational field. Space and time are reversed. Kuroo hugs Kenma. He's either laughing or is about to start sobbing.

“Don't you start crying here,” Kozume mocks him. But he lets go of the suitcase handle and hugs him back. Tetsurou buries his nose into the top of his head and embraces as tight as he can. He waits for the guy to squeak and start muttering. But he's patient.

“Bokuto...?” he doesn't finish the question and gets the:

“Yeah.”

Kenma's hot breath contrasts with his cold nose, which he tries to warm by nuzzling at his collarbones, and Kuroo strokes his hair. Gently, as if to reassure him: no cold can get you now. Not on my watch.

“You couldn't wait six months?” he teases, when he no longer feels the cold on his neck — Kenma's warmed up.

This phrase balances on the verge of a funny quip and "I'm going to get in trouble for this." Only Bokuto knew that Kuroo wouldn't be able to fly to Japan for the winter break as he had promised. And he had been telling Kenma all August about where they would go and what they would do — like a program that could be printed on tour brochures and given to all tourists when they arrived in Tokyo.

When it turned out that even for the vacations they had activities written into their curriculum, Kuroo seriously thought for the first time: fuck it. I'd danced enough already. I'd had enough of performing. I'd had enough of that bullshit strokes and tones.

And Bokuto was talking him out of it:

"bro, u’ll be fine."

"don't freak out

"and don't do anything u'll regret."

"i'll talk to Kenma if u need me to."

He did. And there's Kozume in front of him — not even in front of him, but still in his arms, tickling his chin with the top of his head, and answering:

“Consider me on a business trip.”

“Well, then... come in,” Tetsurou lets him out of his embrace.

“No. Let's go.”

“Where?”

“I said let's go.”

Kuroo takes his jacket. He doesn't quite get what's going on, but he obeys.

“No. Pack your bags like you're not coming back here.”

“Is this a kidnapping?” he's joking, but he's still hoping to find out what's going on. “Do I have a say in this?”

“Not really. Not today.”

Kuroo goes to pack. Whatever it is, he already seems to have been totally dragged into this scheme. Kenma wouldn't have any trouble programming him into total submission today, and then resistance is useless: his every action is already in the code.

On the way somewhere Kuroo tries to find out at least something, but Kozume is particularly uncooperative today. Pulling his only suitcase, which fits his entire life in Beijing, he follows Kenma. Kozume looks at the online maps from time to time. He probably got it all from Koutarou under false pretenses, and now he's looking for a cemetery to bury Kuroo at.  

“Did you know they don't say "nihao" in China? Well, they do, but rarely.”

“Be grateful that I learned at least three hundred characters,” Kozume mutters, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“Why do you need so many?”

He doesn't answer, just exhales a cloud of steam into the frosty December air.

“How's the crew?” Kuroo changes the subject.

Will Kenma tell him anything at all?

“They're fine. Yamamoto is still awful.”

“That's not true, I've seen the latest videos. He's a good dancer.”

Kenma squints, and Kuroo can't hold back a chuckle. Some say Kenma's hard to read, but Tetsurou never gets it: his facial expressions can be used to illustrate a master's analysis of basic emotions.

See Figure 1 ("irritation").

“So what is this place?” Kuroo hopes to get an answer at least now that they have reached the multi-story building.

There's nothing remarkable about it: it's gray, with balconies "sitting" one on top of the other, and outdoor air-conditioning units on almost every one.

“Let's go up and you'll see,” Kenma answers.

They do, but Kuroo sees an ordinary apartment: there are millions more like it in China — studios with little furniture, a television on the wall and a glass door to the balcony, with the endless smog outside.

“We live here now,” Kozume announces to him, sitting down on the couch, flopping even.

“We?”

“Shall I leave?”

“No,” Tetsurou drags his suitcase behind him, inspecting the apartment and instructing himself to get used to it. After all, Kenma sounds very serious. “It's just...”

“I’m not living in a dorm for six months.”

“Six months?”

Kuroo has learned his fucking syllabus by heart — this spreadsheet is in front of his eyes even at night — and he's sure: the vacations don't last six months.

Spit it out, Kozume Kenma, what are you up to? Spit it out under the intense cat-like squint you never could resist.

His wide smile — a smug one that says, "Check out what I've done" — Kuroo takes as confirmation of his craziest guess.

“You didn't...”

“I did.”

He walks over to the couch and hovers over Kenma.

“You didn't,” Tetsurou whispers right into his lips while he is still smiling proudly.

“I did,” Kozume wraps his arms around his face and pulls him closer and kisses him.

Kuroo deepens the kiss, and it pisses him off that he once wasted time hesitating to text Kenma, that he almost gave up the idea of kissing him there in the studio the very first time, that he almost decided to leave Kenma alone when he blocked him everywhere and barricaded himself in his house. Maybe if he hadn't wasted time, the four months' separation wouldn't have felt so painful.

On the other hand, then this kiss wouldn't feel so wanted and essential now, either. His neck would not burn with every touch. His breath would be enough for long tirades about love, rather than trying to survive between kisses. Kenma wouldn't want to hear them anyway, though. He'd say it was cheesy and disgusting (but Kuroo actually put all his heart and soul into it!) But Kenma doesn't mind the long kisses, Kuroo's tongue in his mouth, and bites that both of them are generous with. And they go from greedy tearing kisses to slow ones — Kuroo concentrates on every second of that feeling.

If tomorrow there is an earthquake, the end of the world, or even an artificial intelligence uprising or an alien landing, he will die a happy man, because he had long moments of kissing Kenma before he died.

And they will surely return to that. And now Kuroo lies beside him and cradles him, running his hand down his back.

“Where is Akari?” Tetsurou asks.

“I left her with Akaashi. I hope you don't mind. I wanted to leave her to Bokuto, but...”

“He's allergic," he finishes for Kozume.

“I'm sorry I hadn't asked.”

“It's all right.”

“And... I'm sorry I said no that day. I wasn't... ready. And then I decided to save up to get an apartment. And learn some Chinese. I could work somewhere instead of freelancing if anything.”

Kenma can't see it in the half-light, but there's a "thank you" in Kuroo's gaze right now. If he had done all this, it means that he didn't start thinking about it when he heard from Bokuto that Kuroo wouldn't be able to come for the winter break.

He had been thinking about it from the beginning.

If Kuroo thinks about it for too long, Kozume will tell him he's being a softy again.

“Did you really learn 300 characters?” Tetsurou asks instead.

“Yeah," Kenma says sleepily. “I thought it would be more interesting.”

“I'm sick of it myself.”

“I'm not coming here anymore.”

Kuroo laughs. Kenma's hatred of China can be recycled into electricity and supplied to homes.

“What if it's a vacation?”

“No.”

“For a week.”

“No.”

“For a day.”

Kenma hits him somewhere in the ribs — it hurts and tickles at the same time.

“I got it, I got it.”

It's good that he gets it. Kenma hasn't understood much in the last six months. In fact, he hadn't even come close to understanding how he'd become a cameraman for a coverdance crew and fallen in love with the creep who is now sprawled all over the couch. How Kuroo got him into a long-distance relationship and then, to get out of it, Kenma started to learn Chinese and rented an apartment in Beijing. Kenma let him live with him, and now he allows all the things that used to be proudly displayed on the list tiltled "IMPERMISSIBLE".

Little did Kenma understand.

Only that Kuroo Tetsuro is a very bad sign indeed.