Work Text:
The cherry blossoms open up for Kenma’s first day of middle school, and Kuroo tells him it’s a good sign. Kenma is dubious.
“They always open this time of year. It’s nothing special,” he says, and his words are too quiet to echo against the concrete floors of the train station, almost drowned out by the background chatter and the sound of him scuffing the toes of his shoes on the ground.
“No way, it rained on my first day and then I was late. This means you have good luck,” Kuroo assures him, leaning over the edge of the platform to peer out onto the tracks. Their train out of Nerima is due any minute and it’s rarely late, but he’s searching for it anyway. Just in case.
He feels Kenma frowning at him and glances back. “You were late because you were petting a stray cat, not because it rained,” he reminds Kuroo sternly. Sometimes it sounds like Kenma is the older one between them because he’s so serious. But Kuroo’s always liked that about him; it’s funny, in a particular Kenma sort of way. “Get back from there, you’ll fall.”
Kuroo rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet in reply, scoffing. “I’m not gonna fall,” he says, confidently swaying perhaps the slightest bit too close to the edge. He’s been taking the train to school for a year now and that makes him the expert, no matter what Kenma thinks.
“Stop it, Kuro.” Nobody else calls him that - it’s just a habit of Kenma’s that stuck - and so it’s odd to hear it said as a reprimand.
The train barrels down the tracks at them and Kuroo takes the moment before it arrives to observe. Kenma means it this time; Kuroo sees his hands clenched into fists at his sides, mouth puckered in a deep frown that suggests he’s about to be sick. He’s worried, but Kuroo knew that already. He steps back from the platform edge, back to where Kenma’s standing, and nudges his shoulder. “This is it,” he says, nodding to the train doors as they slide open.
“I know,” Kenma answers, but his hands don’t unclench, not even when Kuroo tugs him by the wrist and leads him into the train car.
The cherry blossom trees on the horizon whip past them, blurring against the clear blue sky - it’s April and the air is suffused with the feeling of spring. A new beginning for both of them: Kenma starting middle school, Kuroo starting middle school with Kenma, which is a thousand times better than going it alone. No, make that a million. No, even bigger than that, but he can’t find the word for the number. Something with lots of zeroes.
Kenma is still frowning at his shoes so Kuroo chatters at him, trying to draw his attention up again: “Everyone in club’s super excited to meet you and play with you! Especially me. We get to play for real, finally, and the team’s not even that bad, we got through one round at tournament last year and it wasn’t even our fault we lost, and we’ll be even better with you, right?”
Kenma wrinkles his nose. “What did you tell them about me?” he asks suspiciously.
“Just that you’re cool. And really smart,” Kuroo says with a shrug. The train rolls into another station and Kuroo lets the weight of decelerating push through him, leaning heavy on Kenma’s shoulder.
“Quit it,” Kenma says, pushing back, but his expression has become less scrunched up and Kuroo leans on him with more force.
“I can’t help it, it’s the train,” Kuroo claims, feigning innocence, and Kenma snorts, which Kuroo counts as a victory.
“I’m not that good at volleyball,” Kenma reminds him as he raises his gaze, and the crinkle between Kenma’s eyebrows reminds him, I’m serious. I’m not even being modest.
Kuroo juts out his lip in an exaggerated pout at the same moment they get moving again, sunlight flickering past in a rush and catching on the keychains on their backpacks, the silver poles in the traincar, their dark hair, Kuroo’s permanently unruly and Kenma’s pin-straight. “Come on, you promised,” he says. “And you are good. Really. I swear.”
Kenma is quiet but nods - just once, just a tiny acknowledgment. And with that he curls back into himself, hands wrapped around the backpack in his lap. He doesn’t even look out the window, which is a shame, because they’re passing more flowering trees, ones that fly by too fast for Kuroo to name. He’s nervous. Kuroo knows. Not only about volleyball, but about everything: being in a new school, getting stared at by strangers, meeting other kids. Kenma doesn’t like any of that. He said, once, that other kids in their neighborhood are too loud for him to hang out with, and when Kuroo pointed out he himself wasn’t exactly a quiet kid, Kenma said something vague about how Kuroo was different, but didn’t really say how or why. Not that Kuroo needs a reason; he’s fine with Kenma liking him just because.
It takes a minute, but Kuroo figures out how to get through with him. “Hey,” he starts, tapping one finger on Kenma’s knee to get his attention. “Think about it like…like a game. You love games.”
Kenma looks dubious again, but at least he’s looking up. “School is more serious than that, Kuro,” he says, but something’s caught his attention, Kuroo can see it flickering in his eyes.
So he presses on: “Well, games have goals and objectives. Stuff like that, right?” Being friends with Kenma has made him an honorary expert in video games, because Kenma’s always playing through something or other and he always lets Kuroo watch over his shoulder, even though Kuroo offers too much advice considering he’s not a real expert.
“Right,” Kenma answers slowly, like he’s afraid of letting Kuroo get carried away by this, but too intrigued to make him stop.
“And you’re great at games! So if you think about school as a tough level and all the classes as different objectives, you can beat the first day for sure,” Kuroo says, and every word is confidence, certainty; he’s good at that, sounding like he always knows what he’s talking about. Sometimes he even manages to convince himself.
Kenma mulls it over, mouth twisting. “If this was a game, there’d have to be a reward for completing it,” he answers, but the fact that he’s answering in line with Kuroo’s logic is a good sign. “So I have to get something after every class.”
“Nuh-uh, this is just leveling up. You have to beat the whole game and your reward is graduating, once you get strong enough,” Kuroo replies. “And then you unlock the sequel for high school.” Kenma groans, as if being reminded of future years of school puts a massive weight on his shoulders, but the train’s stopping again and the conversation is lost in the bustle of activity, the sound of fabric fluttering as people stand and straighten out their clothes.
The automated voice in the train car announces their stop in stilted syllables and Kuroo pulls Kenma into the throng of people in the station, crowded by other kids with the same destination. Their voices reverberate over and over and over each other, but Kenma’s voice reaches him through it all, because Kuroo’s pretty sure his ears are specially attuned to Kenma’s voice by now: “What’s the final boss?”
Kuroo grins. “The principal. You have to fight him to get your diploma,” he explains easily.
“Sounds like a lot of work. Do I have any support characters?”
“You start with me but you have to earn others on your own. And that’s why you should join club and meet the team! I told you, they’re all really fun,” Kuroo replies. “They’ll like you. Promise.”
“I guess,” Kenma sighs, but his hands aren’t in fists anymore and he signs up for volleyball as he promised, as Kuroo never doubted he would.
Kuroo picks up the habit of carrying a volleyball around with him, the same scuffed-up one that he used to teach Kenma how to play. It gets him in trouble on the train, because he also makes a habit of dropping it as he spins it between his hands, and it always rolls faster than he expects it to and hits some important-looking people in the shins. But he has to get more used to the feel of the ball on his palms, because that’ll help him play better.
He explains this to Kenma, words shouted over his shoulder as he chases the escaped ball again, zigzagging up the aisle with his keychains rattling away on his backpack. Kenma looks like he doesn’t get it, but maybe that’s because Kuroo kept interrupting himself apologizing to strangers.
“How will it help you play better?” Kenma asks; he’s still shy at volleyball practice but Kuroo sees him warming up a little bit at a time. By the time their first tournament rolls around he’ll be friendly enough. Kuroo is sure of it.
Kuroo collapses back down into his seat with a sigh. “If you know how much the ball weighs you know how much power you need and stuff,” he says, tossing the ball up and down over his head, listening to air whipping around it. It’s a softer sound than the train’s hissing. “And once I figure that out, I can figure out the personal time difference attack, too. So I can line up with you better.”
Kenma was waiting for that response; Kuroo can see it in the specific way Kenma squints at him. He’s exasperated as he says, “You said it’d be hard and it’d take a long time to get right. Don’t be impatient.” He shakes his head and returns his attention to his Pokémon game.
“I know what I said, but…” Kuroo groans, shoves his face against the ridges on the ball, as if pressing it against his forehead will help him devise strategies or absorb volleyball knowledge via osmosis or something. “But I want it to work! It’d be so cool if we could get it to work. We pulled it off, like, once last summer. We can do it again.”
The music from the game is blaring loud but Kenma’s fingers are only hovering over the buttons, not touching them, not moving. “My toss isn’t that good yet,” he mumbles. “It’s hard. Making the ball go where I want, I mean.”
“No way! You’re a great setter, you’re smarter than any other setter I’ve ever met. Ever!” Kuroo insists.
“How many setters have you met?”
Kuroo ignores this, because it won’t help prove his point. “If we did it once we can do it again, especially now that we’re even better than last summer.”
“It’s different,” Kenma answers in a lower voice than usual, and he pokes at his screen, reviewing inventory and HP.
“What is?”
“Practicing with you and practicing with the team. You won’t yell at me if I mess up,” Kenma says, and it’s hard to tell what he’s saying when he’s talking both so quietly and so quickly.
Kuroo considers this. “Well, then you have to get super good so nobody will have a reason to yell at you. Easy as that,” he says with a shrug.
“That’s not easy, Kuro.”
“Is so! We just have to practice more than the other guys and learn how to do stuff they can’t do, remember?”
“I remember.”
“Okay, so it’s settled,” Kuroo says self-importantly, because hanging out with Kenma usually means being responsible for making plans. “We’ll practice more once we get home, until we’re perfect, right?” Kenma wrinkles his nose and starts playing his game again, rustling through tall grass. “And I’ll buy you an apple pie from the corner store after.” Kenma’s expression unfurls itself. It’s easy to bribe him: Kenma is never as reluctant as he says he is.
Kenma has a certain patience for Kuroo and his planning, his scheming, his strategizing to get ahead, and it’s because he’s as much of a schemer as Kuroo is. He hasn’t missed the way Kenma’s eyes flash at practices, both informal ones outside their houses and real ones in the school gym, how he tracks the path of the ball and adjusts his hands and fingers in between every toss. He’s already evolving, catching his mistakes and correcting them without a word. Volleyball’s good for him, Kuroo decides, satisfied. Now the trick is making sure he’s good enough to keep up with his brilliant setter.
Kuroo throws the volleyball in the air again; it thuds loud against the roof of the train car and ricochets off his face. Kenma goes and retrieves it this time, to make up for how hard he laughs, and his dark hair swishes back and forth with the motions of the train in a way Kuroo’s never could.
In Kuroo’s third year of middle school, he and Kenma are absolutely forbidden from skipping school to attend Tokyo’s Inter High preliminary matches.
“This is more important,” Kuroo explains as they watch their stop for school passing out the window. “They’ll understand.”
Kenma nods and they return to poring over rosters and notes they’ve compiled, comparing the records of Tokyo’s high school volleyball clubs. They’ll get official tournament programs once they’re at the gym, but even then, their list is more comprehensive. Kuroo did most of the work, but Kenma helped and caught a couple mistakes here and there.
What really matters, though, is the watching, but they can’t do that until they’re at the gym. Kuroo’s heard it’s much grander than the building that hosts the middle school tournaments and he’s already itching to be a year older and playing there, wearing a high school jersey with pride. Nothing really counts until you get to high school, unless you happen to be exceptionally talented. Kuroo knows himself well enough to realize that title doesn’t apply to him, but that’s not what he’s after anyway.
Kenma is focusing on the schools they’ve picked as powerhouses, the ones with old, esteemed reputations and the newer up-and-comers in the prefecture, comparing and contrasting in endless rounds. “Some of these schools are kind of…” Kenma starts, in his someone-around-here-has-to-be-realistic voice. The older he gets, the more he takes it on.
“Hmm?” Kuroo prompts.
“…competitive,” Kenma finishes, taking a long time to pick the adjective he wants. He means both the schools themselves are difficult to get into, and that their volleyball teams don’t have much room to spare.
Kuroo considers this and points to one of the schools on the list, Nekoma. “They’re not that competitive,” he says.
“Don’t be dumb,” Kenma retorts, eyes darting to Nekoma’s lackluster stats for half a second. They’re facing stiff odds this year, as they have been for as long as Kuroo’s been in middle school.
Kuroo laughs as he traces the kanji for the school’s name with one finger. “What do you mean, don’t be dumb? I’m the smartest person you know,” he says, voice lilting.
“I don’t know that many people,” Kenma returns, but it only makes Kuroo laugh more. “No. Kuro, I thought you were taking this seriously.”
In one swift motion, Kuroo pulls their notebook of statistics out from under Kenma’s hands and waves it around in the air, pages fluttering loudly. Someone else in the train car clears their throat as warning and he settles down. “I’m taking this very seriously,” he reminds Kenma in a hushed voice.
“So why are you even thinking about a school like Nekoma? They’re nobody,” Kenma says, and he’s right, and Kuroo’s serious, and these two facts can co-exist.
“Nekoma was good a while ago. They got to Nationals, I remember watching them playing.”
“That was a while ago. They haven’t been good since then. And it’s not like they were a powerhouse before that, either. They’re just not good,” Kenma answers.
Kuroo sits back in his place, tapping the notebook against his chin. “Kenma,” he starts.
“Are you going to ask me some weird hypothetical question to try and prove a point,” Kenma asks, flatly, and it’s not actually a question.
“Kenma,” Kuroo starts again, and Kenma sighs, but is quiet. “Why do we play volleyball at school?”
Kenma stares at Kuroo as if he asked something truly weird. “Because club activities look good on transcripts,” he attempts anyway. “Or. I don’t know. Because we like volleyball. Something like that. You like it, at least.”
“Oh, come on, you like it!”
“You like it more.”
Kuroo holds up a hand. “Not the point. Stop distracting me. No, if we just liked volleyball we could play by ourselves. But playing on a team at school means we want to play for real, right?”
“Right,” Kenma answers, after a beat.
The notebook is returned to Kenma’s lap so Kuroo can again start tapping at Nekoma’s stats. “So I want to play for real. That’s why Nekoma. Maybe. I’m still thinking about it, and we have to see them play first, so--”
“You just want to go there to make sure you play? But you’ll just lose all the time. You can’t make them good by yourself,” Kenma questions, and he still looks befuddled.
“Of course not. It’s not just about me, or about playing…” Kuroo answers, and then pauses. “Listen, Nekoma’s got nothing except the fact that they were good years ago, and since then they’ve fallen into total disgrace. But that’s also their greatest strength. They have nothing but that dream of being good again and - most important - a burning need to prove themselves. And I can help them do that. It’s only a matter of getting the right people working together.”
“Why, do you have a burning need to prove yourself?” Kenma asks, and he meant it as a joke, but Kuroo only shrugs.
“I guess I do,” he says. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Kenma’s expression changes by degrees, shifting out of pure incredulity to something more serious. But when he speaks, his tone hasn’t changed much. “You and your scheming,” Kenma mutters, shaking his head. “It’s not like you couldn’t test into some of these other places. Aren’t you top of your class?”
“Well,” Kuroo goes on, dodging Kenma’s point, “if they’re not good now, we’ll just have our work cut out for us. Nothing wrong with a challenge, right?”
“We?” Kenma repeats.
“You and me. We’ll go together,” Kuroo replies, voice still easy, as if he’s talking about concrete facts. “If anyone can bring them back to glory, we can.”
He’s never once considered not going to high school with Kenma - or, no, he’s considered it, but only as a worst-case scenario. Even if he was yearning to fly the colors of a powerhouse school, he’d hesitate, unless he knew Kenma was following behind him.
Nekoma’s a good fit for Kuroo: it’s a tricky puzzle to undo, a wealth of potential that he can help polish. It’s a school no one will look twice at, and Kuroo’s always liked surprising opponents. This is a place he can throw his energy into, a team he can actually make a difference on. And it’s easy to get into, for him and Kenma both.
For the first time, Kuroo wonders if Kenma accounted for him too.
Kenma sighs, but Kuroo catches the smallest grin for a fleeting second. “Someday I’m gonna stop going along with all your weird plans,” he warns, untruthfully.
“But not today?” Kuroo grins.
“I guess it makes sense to keep going to the same school. If I don’t take the train with you, I’ll have no one to sleep on in the morning,” Kenma says.
“Maybe you should get more sleep,” Kuroo says, only half-joking, because he knows for a fact Kenma doesn’t get enough sleep. He gets an eyeroll in response to that one.
Their shoulders press together as they keep reviewing the standings and the train speeds along, weaving them into the heart of the city. The sunlight filtering through the windows comes in more infrequent bursts, eclipsed by looming skyscrapers and office buildings. Kuroo lifts his eyes, minds the list of stops ahead of them. Kenma forgets to pay attention to things like that, which leaves Kuroo as the navigator. When he looks through the window, he sees split seconds: a meeting in progress in a conference room, an elevator beginning to ascend, a desk and an empty office chair, flashes of multicolored curtains drawn tight or flung wide open or framing the rooms within too perfectly to be accidental.
“Did you mean it, about going to Nekoma?” Kenma asks later, beginning to nod off on Kuroo’s shoulder. The first round of prelims are over now and the sun is gone beyond the horizon, leaving only streaks of orange where it used to be, swallowed by dusk. Nekoma lost in short order, as expected, falling to Nohebi in two sets. Fukurodani’s already favored to snag a representative slot and, after today, it’s easy to see why. They took both their games today in two quick sets each.
Kuroo watched close and saw what Nekoma was trying to do. Overall they seemed to have a fairly simple strategy, focusing on steady defense instead of attention-grabbing offense. They didn’t have aces to shove into the spotlight like the powerhouses did, but they’d be tricky to play against if they pulled it off. A powerhouse ace was just another spiker if he couldn’t get past solid receives, after all. The problem, of course, was that they couldn’t pull it off, but it was a good idea. A good foundation, a good place to start, a good way to grow. It was the sort of thing Kuroo would do if he were in charge.
“Are you coming with me?” he asks instead of answering. It sounds like teasing. It’s not. It makes a difference.
“Sure,” Kenma tells him, and Kuroo lets his shoulder sag under Kenma’s weight, feeling him settle closer.
“Then yes, I meant it. How about it? You okay going there?”
Kenma’s quiet, weighing the question. “There are worse places to go,” he concedes, which is as close to excitement as he’ll get for now. But it’s enough.
He’s after that flash in Kenma’s eyes, that spark of interest that betrays when he’s happy and trying not to show it. Kuroo remembers Kenma as a stranger too easily, as the quiet, small neighbor kid who never left his room. Kuroo spotted him peeking out behind the upstairs curtains sometimes, always vanishing the second he was noticed. The unofficial ghost story of their street, only spoken of in murmurs. He remembers how sad Kenma seemed then, how silent. Now he knows that Kenma simply doesn’t telegraph anything so easily, that he’s not sad, really, only quiet. But still, something in him always yearns to pull out smiles, sparks, something, just as proof.
The train rattles under their toes that don’t quite touch the floor - they haven’t hit growth spurts yet, something Kuroo despairs over every time they hit the volleyball court - and Kuroo leans his head on Kenma’s, appreciating this moment of peace, because once they get home they’re undoubtedly in trouble.
Kuroo’s last middle school match is a crushing defeat in a round too early to count as a respectable finish, but he doesn’t show his disappointment. Instead, he eyes what will soon be his new train stop on the map of Tokyo, traces the bright winding lines stitching the city together. He thinks out loud about Nekoma, what the school will be like, what the team will be like, how he’ll like it. To himself, determinedly not out loud, he wonders how much he’ll miss Kenma now that they’ll only go back and forth to school together. He thought they’d only have the mornings, but Kenma promised to wait in the afternoon too, to linger at their middle school stop until Kuroo arrived there for his transfer. He said it’d give him more time to avoid his homework, but Kuroo knows that’s not the only reason, and he’s grateful that Kenma can see through him.
“They have ties with their school uniforms. Cool ones,” he narrates to Kenma, who’s sitting and tapping away at one of his handhelds. “And then the volleyball uniforms? So cool.”
“The red’s a little flashy,” Kenma muses without looking up.
“No way!” Kenma taps to pause his game very deliberately and glances up to deliver a silent response that speaks volumes. Kuroo twists his lips to one side, tilts his head, considers. “Alright, well, maybe, but there’s nothing wrong with being a little flashy,” he amends easily. Kuroo’s new train stop is farther past his current one on a different line, closer to the humming heart of the city where the near-suburbia of Nerima fades out entirely. He’ll have to transfer at the old stop and journey on alone.
Kuroo’s excited for starting at Nekoma, sure, but he already wants the first year to be over. He reassures himself with a reminder: the last two years will be better. Things will only get better from here.
The windows on the train doors reflect him in a wobbly sort of way, like he’s caught squarely between existing and not. He tries to flatten his hair but his efforts make things worse. Actually, he’s not even sure which part to try and fix, considering it’s all a mess. He’s accepted it. Mostly. The train whips past advertisements, fences, empty tracks, other trains, and Kuroo stands superimposed over the world beyond the glass with his middle school uniform buttoned up to the chin. His mother says he’s starting to get more angles in his face, looking older, like the proper high schooler he’s about to be.
He doesn’t think too much about change. He lets it happen without seeking it out.
Lost in his thoughts and his reflection, he doesn’t notice the train taking a turn and stumbles forward, hitting his face on the door. Over his head the paper advertisements flutter.
“Sit down,” Kenma calls, and he doesn’t have to add, “before you hurt yourself worse, you idiot,” because his tone says it for him.
“So mean, Kenma,” he answers, but he takes his place at Kenma’s side again and nods to the console in his hands. “What’s this one?”
“It’s Pokémon. How do you not recognize Pokémon by now?”
“This is a different one,” Kuroo insists.
“They’re all pretty much the same,” Kenma insists back.
“Are not. They’re all in different places.”
“Are too. You don’t know anything. They’re all still Pokémon.”
“Are not.”
“Are too.”
The train halts at the station and the robotic voice announces its name. Commuters filter in and out, caught in the last rays of daylight. The empty seat on Kuroo’s other side is filled and he shifts closer to Kenma to make room.
“…not.”
“Are too.” Someone across the aisle shushes them and Kuroo laughs and Kenma elbows him. Kuroo lets him get the last word.
On Kuroo’s first day of high school, Kenma nods to the cherry blossoms. “It’s good luck,” he says, with the smallest of smiles. Kuroo grins wide back and quits fussing with his tie. It took several tries to get the knot right and it still doesn’t look even, but for a moment, he doesn’t think about it.
It’s strange to see the pair of them reflected in the windows as their train rolls in today. They used to have the same uniforms, but now they strike a contrast: Kenma in his same old gakuran, Kuroo in the new dress shirt, the red tie, the sweater vest, the blazer. Kuroo’s gotten a bit taller, not enough to be satisfied, but enough to begin opening a gap between them. Already he’s caught himself stooping his shoulders to get back on Kenma’s eye level, or as close to it as he can manage without being noticed.
He straightens up and they step into the train car.
Kenma’s diligently gaming as per usual, face bent over the screen to avoid the early morning glare. Kuroo watches the shapes and colors changing without taking in any details. He pulls at his tie again and coughs when it catches too fast and chokes him. There are cherry blossom petals stuck to the outside windows; it rained last night and the glass is still wet. Kuroo knows it rained because he kept waking up in the night and every time he blinked into the darkness he could hear rain pattering on the roof, the window, the sills, and the puddles dried up by morning but he knows what he heard.
“Everything okay?” Kenma asks, and Kuroo nods before he realizes Kenma isn’t looking up and can’t see.
“Yeah,” he answers, clearing his throat again, one finger digging into his collar to try and prise it open.
“You have nothing to be nervous about,” Kenma says. On his screen he kills a monster and a victorious little trill pipes out of the console.
“I’m not nervous,” Kuroo says, but he huffs as he says it and it undermines the intended effect.
Kenma looks up now and his expression is an odd blend. One part exasperation, another part worry, still another genuine empathy. If anyone understands first day nerves, it’s Kenma, and Kuroo feels soothed when Kenma nudges him with his elbow. “You are so,” he says.
“Am not,” Kuroo attempts, puffing his bangs out of his face.
“Are.”
“Not.”
But the tension is broken now. Kuroo laughs, leans his head back against the wall of the train car, lets the vibrations absorb his worry.
They get off at their usual stop and Kenma bids him goodbye, assures him they’ll see each other later, and informs him that he’ll expect a full report about Nekoma this afternoon. He doesn’t realize it - or, scratch that, he probably does - but giving Kuroo something to work towards is the best thing he could do at the moment. So as Kuroo waits on the platform for the new train and Kenma disappears into the familiar middle school crowd, he’s not thinking about his nerves, but compiling observations to retell later. He has a purpose now, one outside feeling awkward and out of place.
The second train he takes has cherry blossom petals stuck to the outside too, but as the sun rises higher and the rain evaporates they fall off, lost to the wind.
His new train stop is sleeker and much busier, and Kuroo doesn’t push his way through the crowd with anything close to confidence. It’s alive with people, practically has its own heartbeat from all the energy it takes on, yet it feels so empty. He’s never realized how much he hates being alone until this second.
He keeps turning his head to check that Kenma’s following behind him out of habit, forgetting he’s not there.
In the afternoon, Kuroo delivers his report on Nekoma.
“…there’s only three first-years, and that’s counting me, they’re lucky I decided to come because only having two would basically be a total failure and you can’t get better with only two people…one of them’s a wing spiker, Kai, and he doesn’t talk much but he’s cool, but the other one…” Kuroo interrupts his lecture to groan for dramatic effect; a story’s as only good as you tell it, after all, and he wants to tell this one well. “…the other one’s that libero from our last tournament, remember the team that totally beat us and had that really great libero?”
“A little,” Kenma says with a shrug. “It was over pretty fast, I can’t remember much.”
Kuroo bristles at the memory; the old sting of defeat has been irritated by meeting Yaku Morisuke again at the Nekoma gym. “You remember. He basically got every receive no matter how fast we hit it or where it went. Total speed demon. Probably because he’s short, it helps him go faster or something, less wind resistance. I guess. I don’t know.”
“Liberos are usually short, Kuro.”
“Yeah, whatever!”
“You’re not that tall either, Kuro.”
“And you’re shorter than me so you can’t talk,” Kuroo asserts, lip jutting out into a pout before he can catch himself. “Anyway…it’s a really small team, the captain says he wants to try integrating all of us newbies into practice matches and stuff just to see how good we are.”
Kenma raises his eyebrows. “They’re gonna get you on the court that soon? Really?” he asks.
“Well, not in anything official,” Kuroo says, waving a hand as if dismissing the concept. In his head, he says, Not yet, but just you wait.
Quiet lulls between them; the train sighs pulling into the station. “Anything else?” Kenma prompts, and Kuroo yearns for this day a year in the future, when Kenma will be beside him at Nekoma and Kuroo won’t have to recreate it for him. But he doesn’t say that out loud either.
Kuroo considers, tugs his tie looser, watches the cityscape flying past the window, counts the colors of dusk as the sky darkens. They’re almost to Nerima now. The city’s yielding to the suburbs piece by piece: the buildings lose their height, the flowering trees begin to interrupt the horizon, and the train empties out a bit more with each stop, as though it were exhaling.
It’s funny how Kuroo’s starting to recognize the commuters on his trains, the people who share his schedule who he knows without knowing. He wonders if he’d recognize them on the streets of Tokyo or if the train is too much a part of how he knows them to see them without it. He wonders if the people on the train hear his and Kenma’s conversations or if his words pass through their minds as ambient noise. He wonders how many of his words Kenma has catalogued. It’s definitely at least most of them. Kenma catalogues everything, after all.
“We’re gonna get to Nationals,” Kuroo says out loud over the rumbling of the train, loud enough for everyone to hear, and he grins wide at Kenma. “Maybe not this year. But we will.”
Kenma’s lips twist but he’s not doubtful. “Sure, Kuro,” he answers, and it echoes like a promise.
Facts about Nekoma are parsed out daily, but carefully. As with most things, Kuroo has a plan and each piece of information is a calculated step. “They have white jerseys, too,” Kuroo remarks one morning.
“That sounds as flashy as the red,” Kenma answers, simply to tease him about it, as if Nekoma won’t soon be Kenma’s school too. Kuroo isn’t couting the days until next April, not precisely, but it feels like he is.
“This really old guy used to coach, back when Nekoma went to Nationals,” Kuroo says on another day when the threat of rain hovers over the city. “They had a super serious rivalry with a team in Miyagi. They did training camps together.”
“What team in Miyagi?” Kenma asks, because he knows Kuroo wants him to ask. It’s an unspoken arrangement; Kuroo doesn’t mind Kenma’s quiet, but Kenma makes up for it anyway by giving Kuroo questions to answer. It’s both an excuse to talk and permission to: I don’t mind. I’m listening. I care. Really, I do.
But Kuroo can only shrug to that. “Dunno. Senpai wouldn’t say.” He adopts an exaggerated tone and goes on, “It’s in the past now, why bother asking?” His voice becomes his own again when he complains, “Seriously. He who ignores history is doomed to repeat it, right?”
“And those who live in the past never move forward. What’s your point?” Kenma replies sagely, and Kuroo laughs at how serious he sounds.
“Who said that one?”
“No one. Just me.”
On a different afternoon Kuroo names everyone on the team, their years, and their positions. It took some time to memorize, despite the team being small, because Kuroo had to be sure. As of right now, Nekoma has two setters, a second-year and a third-year. “They’re okay,” Kuroo decides with the slightest shrug.
He feels Kenma squinting at him before he sees it, but pretends he doesn’t. “What are you saying?” Kenma asks him, and his phone screen goes dark so he can cross his arms instead.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” Kuroo says airily, waving a hand, but can’t bite back the grin playing at the corners of his lips and he slides his eyes over to meet Kenma’s. “Why, what are you hearing?” The lilt in his voice gives him away too easily.
Kenma scoffs and shakes his head. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, and his arms stay crossed so Kuroo can see his fingers twisting against his sleeves.
“No idea what you’re talking about.” Kuroo feigns innocence because he wants to hear Kenma say it, wants to make him say it, because maybe if he says it he’ll believe it.
His faking is rewarded with an acidic glare but Kuroo doesn’t break. Kenma rolls his eyes and looks away first. “They’re not gonna make me a regular in my first year,” Kenma says dismissively.
“I’m not saying that!” Kuroo replies; it’s a half-truth, but it’s not the main point, so he’s willing to concede. “No, look, no one said anything about your first year, but your second year…” Kenma groans and pulls out his phone again, resumes tapping at whatever game he’s bent on beating this week. “Oh, come on. You can’t play volleyball without a setter, and if you’re the only one who joins up next year--”
“There’s no guarantee of that,” Kenma interrupts, poking his screen so hard it looks like he’s trying to break the glass with his bare hands. “Next year a ton of setters could go to Nekoma. What’s your point?”
“My point is that you’re good and there’s room for you,” Kuroo answers firmly, fighting his exasperation to keep his voice even. He nudges Kenma’s shoulder with his own and Kenma doesn’t push back. His gaze is cast to the opposite end of the train car, as though he’s counting the afternoon shadows or the silent passengers or the trees they pass as Nerima slides closer out the window. “I’d be honored to have you as our setter, and so would everyone else.”
“You’re biased,” Kenma answers shortly, and from his tone Kuroo knows it’s meant to be a grave insult.
“I know you’re good,” Kuroo returns instead of trying to deny it. Maybe he’s a little biased, but it’s not like he’s lying. Kenma can be good and Kuroo can be biased simultaneously. He’s sure of it. “They’ll know it too once they meet you.”
Kenma doesn’t answer him and Kuroo decides not to push it, even though he’s right.
The next day Kuroo talks about how he’s befriended Kai and, reluctantly, Yaku: “I mean, he’s good, so it’s good for the team. I can be diplomatic for the sake of the team,” he says self-importantly, and Kenma raises an eyebrow. Kuroo wonders if Kenma’s been psychic all this time or if it’s been so long that he can’t tell Kenma a lie anymore.
The run-up to Inter High keeps Kuroo at school late and he tells Kenma to go home without him; the image of Kenma lingering in an empty train station after sunset makes guilt kick at him, no matter how much Kenma insists it’s no trouble. The train is different when he’s alone. It’s not a venue for his storytelling anymore, because those words belong to the daylight, to the morning and the afternoon, to Kenma always sitting beside him. In the night, the train windows transform into dark mirrors. Every time he tries to look out at the city, he can only see himself and he fidgets with his fingers to avoid the eyes of his reflection, who looms at him in the glass and looks like somebody else, someone he’s never seen before in his life.
On a different day months later, when the lingering feeling of defeat gives way to hope for Spring High, Kenma meets him at the train after his first summer training camp and rides back to Nerima with him. Kuroo fills the air with stories. “We ended up with an okay record, we lost a lot but not, y’know, too much, and I got to play a bunch and pulled off some magnificent blocks…”
“Magnificent, huh?” Kenma repeats. He’s only teasing so Kuroo puffs up with pride.
“Absolutely magnificent,” he asserts, beaming. “Oh! I met this wing spiker from Fukurodani and he’s pretty cool, his name’s Bokuto and he has this ridiculous cross spike, it almost took my arms off! I heard the coaches saying he’s gonna be one of the top aces someday and we did a lot of extra practice, because blocking a good spiker makes you a better blocker and trying to spike past an amazing blocker--”
“Like you, of course,” Kenma interrupts.
“Yeah, you get it. Exactly like me,” Kuroo says, and he can tell Kenma’s proud, and he doesn’t know why he aches to know that. “Like I was saying, it was great, and I’m gonna shut all the spikers out at Spring High this year. Definitely.” He knows without having to ask that Kenma will skip school to see Nekoma play again this year, and on another day, he realizes it’s not the night that transforms the train from light to shadow, it’s being alone, but he keeps that revelation to himself.
There are facts he excludes, of course. They aren’t lies, Kuroo assures himself, only because lies by omission aren’t the same as lies without qualifiers. He doesn’t mention how he sprained his finger on a failed block in a practice match or how that particular failure got him benched for the practice match after, a lingering reminder of how he hadn’t been good enough. He doesn’t mention the specific silence of a locker room after a loss. He doesn’t mention when he grows taller because it’s no longer enough to be satisfied and Kenma was right, playing for Nekoma means learning the ins and outs of defeat over and over and over but Kuroo never stops yearning for victories and it pours salt onto the sting. He doesn’t mention that he became friends with Kai and Yaku so quickly because they’re the only ones who will stay late to practice when even the third-years vanish, because the three of them are building a foundation by themselves.
And he doesn’t mention that nobody he meets and befriends is a friend like Kenma, because it’s self-explanatory yet unspeakable at the same time.
He tells Kenma more and more frequently to go home after school in abbreviated texts, and usually Kenma listens to him. Sometimes, though, he waits anyway and Kuroo lets Kenma guide him into the train car by the hand, and he leans far over to bury his head on Kenma’s shoulder and sigh all his breath out. Kenma talks then, divulges his own facts: “Sensei gave that girl who always throws the paper airplanes detention today. For two weeks. I think the school called her mom too.” “One of the kids on the team called me senpai at practice and it was weird.” “Every time I lose this boss fight I have to watch the cutscene again and the terrible dialogue is haunting me.” “You need to get more sleep, Kuro, you look like a vampire.”
Kuroo laughs to show he hears, spends his last dregs of energy on the sound, and he knows Kenma sees the obvious clues like the bags under Kuroo’s eyes and the tape binding his fingers as well as the invisible ones, the dead-weight exhaustion sunk into Kuroo’s bones and the bruised confidence. Sometimes they catch the train so late they’re the only ones in the car but they still only take up two seats, pressed close together as though it were crowded.
It’s always on the worst days that Kenma waits for him and Kuroo analyzes the texts he sends, searching for patterns, indications, clues, specific misspellings or emojis or anything, and finds none. Kenma simply has a way of knowing.
I know your secret. You’re psychic, admit it, he texts Kenma without context, smiling at the screen.
I have no idea what you’re talking about, Kenma answers a minute later, and Kuroo hears every word in his voice.
Kenma’s there at Spring High to watch Nekoma win one game and lose the next and he lets Kuroo take the only empty seat on the train on the way back home. “You were good,” Kenma tells him, talking above him, voice disembodied; Kuroo keeps on staring at the ground, the laces on his shoes, the way Kenma’s feet change position to match the train and keep his balance.
“You don’t have to try and make me feel better. It won’t work,” Kuroo mumbles back, rolling his shoulders and imagining the letters on the back of his jacket shifting with him.
“You were good,” Kenma repeats, more forcefully. “I’m not trying to make you feel better. I’m just telling you.”
“Liar,” Kuroo answers, but the word rolls off his tongue through a smile.
April arrives the same way it does every year, heralded by cherry blossoms reaching toward the sky and shedding petals onto the earth. Kuroo and Kenma wear matching school uniforms again, or they would be if Kenma was wearing his blazer like he’s supposed to.
“It’s too hot,” he explains with a shrug.
“Uh-huh. And what’s your excuse for your tie?” Kuroo asks, raising an eyebrow. “It’s lopsided.”
Kenma scoffs. “It took you months to learn how to tie yours. Leave me alone,” he grumbles, and then drops his phone into his pocket to wrestle with the tie instead.
“Let me,” Kuroo says, and Kenma frowns for a minute but surrenders, letting his hands fall slack at his sides.
Kuroo soon discovers knot-tying is a different experience when working from the front. “Did you just tie your fingers?” Kenma asks. His tone is somewhere between amusement and exasperation and Kuroo frowns at the uncooperative twists of the fabric.
“No! Shut up, I’ve got this,” Kuroo insists, and when he’s done the knot is still lopsided, just in the other direction. Kenma sighs and the rush of air flutters through Kuroo’s hair.
“Ties are useless,” he decides as the train roars over the tracks.
“You’ll learn,” Kuroo assures him, and they step through the doors together.
Kenma’s nerves aren’t telegraphed as plainly as they were in middle school, but Kuroo can still recognize the expression of them: hands curled at his sides and shoved into his pockets when he notices Kuroo noticing, eyes shifting but mostly staying rooted to his shoes, colder silences. Kuroo talks him through it. “Kai and Yaku are excited to meet you,” he says, and wonders if Kenma remembers a similar exchange from years ago.
There’s a pause and their eyes meet; Kuroo sees him weighing his options, considering what to say. “What did you tell them about me?” he asks. He remembers.
“That you’re cool and very smart,” Kuroo answers, perfectly according to script, and then deviates. “But there’s something I didn’t tell them. A surprise.”
He sees Kenma thinking and knows he’s figured it out when he squints. “No way. I don’t believe it,” Kenma says. “There’s no way you held off telling them--”
“That I’ve perfected the personal time difference attack thanks to my brilliant setter?” Kuroo interrupts, grinning. He can finally say it with total confidence, that they’ve figured it out enough to use it for real, or at least in practice matches, and Kuroo burns to try. “Yes, I’ve managed to keep it to myself. It was a struggle, but it’ll be worth it to see the looks on their faces.”
“Show-off,” Kenma informs him, and Kuroo feigns offense.
“Who, me? Never!”
As far as Kuroo knows, Kenma is the only first-year setter. He remembers what Kenma said about how he couldn’t be a regular in his first year and can’t shake the feeling he was right. But it wouldn’t hurt to try anyway, to dazzle the team from the get-go. First impressions are everything, after all.
Kenma deserves his turn in the limelight, even if he doesn’t want the attention. He’s earned it, and Kuroo’s more than willing to lead the way.
He looks out the window and imagines the two of them at Inter High, tricking opponents with their wits and wearing jerseys so flashy and bright the crowds can’t bear to tear their eyes away. Kuroo imagines them shining for a moment, and then another train passes on the opposite track and the window warps, reflects them in darkness, and there’s no color to be found.
It’s an ordinary thing, something that’s happened to his reflection a thousand times before, but it still strikes Kuroo as a bad omen and he looks away.
On the way home Kenma occupies himself with a game and Kuroo taps his feet in erratic rhythms on the floor of the train car, waiting for an opening. Someone across the aisle from him coughs but he doesn’t stop.
A funeral dirge pipes through Kenma’s speakers and he huffs. “What?” he asks Kuroo without looking at him.
“What?” Kuroo echoes, but his feet fall still.
Kenma shrugs. “Whatever it is. Say it already, I can feel you staring at me and it’s distracting,” he grumbles. His fingers reboot the game as he talks and he tsks when it loads in. “I’m so far back now…”
“What’d you think?” Kuroo asks over him. “About the team, I mean.”
Kenma shrugs again. “You were right about it being small,” he starts. Kenma is one of three first-years joining the team and the only setter. Kuroo already sees Nekoma’s future on his friend’s shoulders and he’s ready to help carry the weight, to win practice matches and tournaments and titles together, to put Nekoma’s name and their two names with it back on the map.
“Uh-huh. And?” Kuroo prompts.
On screen Kenma dodges a skeleton in a suit of armor. In real life he purses his lips and keeps his eyes down. “That guy with the mohawk was really loud. And the other first-year was really quiet,” he continues.
“A perfect balance, then,” Kuroo says, nodding. “And?”
The funeral dirge chimes again and Kenma groans under his breath, mashes the buttons to respawn even though doing so won’t make the game start up any faster. “I don’t know. That’s it,” he says. “There’s not much to talk about.”
“Maybe not yet,” Kuroo answers, and Kenma’s right - he usually is - but Kuroo is dreaming of something better, and it makes the ordinary reality more exciting through the allure of imagined potential. He goes quiet and lets Kenma focus on the game, only watching out of the corner of his eye. By the time they pass three more stops Kuroo can hum along to the funeral dirge, and two stops later he starts harmonizing, and a few minutes from Nerima he’s making up lyrics.
“Shut up,” Kenma finally tells him, huffing and sinking back in his seat. He glares when Kuroo laughs. “It’s not funny,” he insists, but it’s futile, and in another minute he’s yanked off his tie and started whacking Kuroo in the face.
“Quit it!” But he’s still cackling so Kenma only hits him more.
“Be quiet already, it’s not even funny,” Kenma repeats. “You sound like a dying hyena, it’s annoying.”
Kuroo’s hands close on the tie and he tugs on it, trying to yank it away, but he only ends up dragging Kenma to him until they’re nose-to-nose and his face takes up Kuroo’s entire field of vision. He lets out a few more breaths of laughter, but after a moment, he forgets what was so funny in the first place.
He wonders, have Kenma’s eyes always been so many shades of gold?
“Kuro.” He blinks, lets go, and Kenma retreats back into his seat. Prickling heat sears its way up the back of Kuroo’s neck and he strains, desperately, to find his bearings again. The train screeches on the track and they stop moving. “Are you--”
Kuroo clears his throat and grabs the console. “Let me,” he says instead of answering the question, and he doesn’t know what the question is but doesn’t want to find out either.
“Let you what, play it? You’re just going to die.” Kenma leans over to watch, tie stuffed into his backpack and out of sight, and Kuroo breathes again. The train resumes moving, slowly at first, like it’s trying to remember how.
“Nah, I got this,” he assures. “Which button’s the sword?”
“You’re gonna die,” Kenma repeats. Kuroo shushes him and trawls the dungeon, throwing up his shield and opening the inventory before he finds the sword. He crosses blades with the skeleton, waits, steps back, and hits the wrong button. “No, it’s the other--”
“I know, I know!” Kuroo insists. “Fuck, which one…”
“Kuro, opening a menu doesn’t pause it, the skeleton’s still coming.”
“What? That’s bullshit!” Kuroo exclaims. His fumbling fingers select a torch in the inventory and the noble knight on screen brandishes it instead of the sword. “I didn’t tell him to do that!”
“Yes, you did, you hit the button and I told you--” Kenma falls silent and Kuroo follows suit; on screen the skeleton touches the torch, bursts into flames, and collapses into dust, howling as he vanishes. Triumphant music kicks in as the knight picks up experience points, still waving the torch around like a moron.
The train rattles and Nerima’s a minute away. Kuroo frowns at the screen and then at Kenma. “How’d that guy make noise? He’s a skeleton. He doesn’t have vocal cords, he can’t make noise,” he asks.
Kenma throws him a withering stare, but it soon breaks in half and he snorts. “Give me that back,” he says, and Kuroo hands it over. “Doesn’t have vocal cords…”
“It’s a legitimate concern!” Kuroo says, and his voice is serious but he grins anyway. “I mean, scientifically speaking…”
“Scientifically speaking, you’re a nerd,” Kenma interrupts dismissively, and Kuroo pushes his shoulder into Kenma’s and draws out another abbreviated burst of laughter.
“That was the most stressful experience of my life, by the way,” Kuroo replies, exhaling loud on purpose. “I mean, I thought I was about to die for real.”
“More stressful than volleyball?” Kenma asks, incredulous. “Definitely not.”
Kuroo shrugs. “Volleyball’s nothing to be afraid of,” he says easily, and he’s memorized the view outside the window, the cherry blossom trees and the signs announcing Nerima and the low buildings right by the station. “Especially not when you have a good team to back you up.” Now that Kenma’s here, Nekoma feels more like his team, more like a place he belongs. He yearns for it, to feel completely at home on the court like he does in these train seats, like he does ambling out of the Nerima station, like he does wherever Kenma’s by his side.
He knows what it looks like when the two of them walk together; they see Kenma as nothing more than an introvert and Kuroo as his only link to everything he otherwise avoids. It’s not like that at all. They’re two twining vines of morning glories that only bloom when they build upon each other. There are other trellises to climb, of course, other places to grow, a whole world to bloom in, but they’ve chosen their connection.
Every day Kuroo loses more memories of days without Kenma beside him. Every day it becomes more abstract, and Kuroo doesn’t miss the clarity. His life makes more sense with Kenma in it.
They stroll out into the April air; it’s still warm even though the sun’s beginning to set. Behind them the train car announces the next stop, the doors click shut, and Kuroo hums along to the music drifting out of Kenma’s game. He likes the way the sound of buttons clicking interrupts the melody. The rush of the train departing overwhelms the sound for only a minute, and then it’s echoing against the walls of the station, against the signs and the clocks and the vending machines and everything else, always rebounding back to them.
“You never thanked me for beating that skeleton,” Kuroo reminds Kenma.
Kenma scoffs and glances up to say, “Thank you, Kuro, for being born so lucky that you accidentally solved the problem.”
“You’re welcome,” Kuroo answers, and Kenma scoffs again as if it was a joke, but it’s not; Kuroo can only hope he was born lucky. The back of his neck goes red and hot again but the sunset dyes the world around them in so many hues of orange and pink that it’s impossible to notice.
He pushes it from his mind, because this isn’t a puzzle he’s ready to try and solve. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
The train doors are closing and Kuroo knows exactly how fast they go, so he knows he’s not going to make it. He runs anyway, even though his legs protest with renewed aching. He shouldn’t be pushing himself like this after a long practice - Inter High is right around the corner and the team’s in overdrive - but he has more important things to worry about than himself right now.
He tries to jam his elbow into the gap between the doors to force them open but he only slams his arm into metal as they snap shut in his face. “Ow! Fuck!” he yells; the woman standing near the door throws him a scandalized look and turns her back. Soon she and the rest of the train vanish, leaving Kuroo rubbing his throbbing elbow on the platform. “Shit,” he mutters, just for the feeling of saying it in between huge gulps of air. Other commuters idling on the platform glance at him sidelong like he’s some bewildering art installation, all decked out in flashy Nekoma red and panting with wild tangles of hair sticking to his sweaty brow.
Kuroo doesn’t pay them any heed. He’s got tunnel vision - all that matters is getting back to Nerima.
He leans back against the wall of the station and glances up. Another train will come soon, but not soon enough. He pulls his phone out of his pocket but knows not to expect any messages. The screen’s blank, displaying nothing but the time, and Kuroo’s eyes go out of focus staring until it goes dark.
He’s alone on the platform today. Kenma vanished before practice officially ended, and it’d been a while since his habit of retreating into himself had included retreating from Kuroo. It’d be an understatement to merely say this is worrisome; it’d hurt if Kuroo didn’t know the reason why.
The third-years at Nekoma see the same fact Kuroo does: that Kenma will be the only setter on the team by Spring High despite only being a first-year. That’s just how things are. It’s a stroke of good fortune for Kenma, nothing he planned, and yet the third-years treat him more like a nuisance than a future leader on the team. Like they resent him, even though they hardly know him. Even though they barely gave him a chance. Kuroo grimaces thinking about it, pretends it doesn’t infuriate him; he can’t force anyone to like Kenma. But they should, but it’s unfair, but there’s nothing to dislike about him, but, but, but…
There’s a rumor going around that the old coach is coming back, the one who brought Nekoma to Nationals in some long-past age, and Kuroo knows that, if this is true, it’ll be a shock of energy, and more importantly, it’ll represent a chance to win again. He knows - only through intuition, but he knows - that it’s a chance the older students burn for, but one they will miss.
It stings, thinking they’re turning their frustrations on Kenma. They don’t care to know it, but they’re taking something precious from him. Kenma doesn’t play volleyball to indulge Kuroo anymore, not like in middle school. It means something more to him now. He might not say it out loud, but it’s true.
That spark that flashes in him when they’re playing, Kuroo hasn’t seen it in weeks. Kenma practically glowed when they showed off the personal time difference attack at practice; he’d been a little overwhelmed by the attention, sure, but pleased by it, too. He wants to belong on the team as much as Kuroo does, and he can help them win, but not if he quits before he gets a chance.
When the train comes Kuroo’s the first one on, and he’s so anxious to move that the train couldn’t go fast enough, it feels like he’s going in reverse instead.
He knows why Kenma left him behind at school - Kuroo tells himself he knows more things now when really he’s only guessing, because most of his guesses are right and it’s simpler to treat them as fact. He even has a good guess where Kenma will be. Kenma’s waiting for a reason to stay, wants to be reassured, needs someone to tell him not to quit. All Kuroo has to do is find the right words.
In the back of his mind a voice asks if maybe this time his intuition is wrong. Maybe Kenma’s just tired of it and wants to quit, knows Kuroo will try and tell him not to, and left school early to escape that annoying inevitability. Maybe Kenma’s not only tired of volleyball, but tired of Kuroo, who always drags him along into it, too.
Kuroo mulls over the words, the doubts, the insecurities, and decides they simply can’t be right, because he doesn’t know how to recover from the alternative.
He listens to the train instead of his thoughts and those words dull from roars to whispers until they evaporate completely. Instead he counts the rhythm playing against the train tracks, tapping his foot along with it. It’s an ordinary melody he’s so used to hearing that he’s almost forgotten how to listen, but now that he’s paying attention, he can follow it.
Kuroo thinks about heartbeats, breathing patterns, all sorts of natural rhythms - Kenma’s the best at picking apart structures like that, honing in on the places they fit together and then rebuilding them, making them work for him. He knows how to read people in classrooms and on the court, how to respond. He knows how to stop for a breath and analyze a toss in a second, how to mind opponents’ strategies and break them apart before the first set ends. Kenma knows the way home to Nerima without seeing, without hearing, only by memorizing the pattern of train stops and starts.
But Kuroo’s not far behind in skill.
He keeps tapping his foot. The wheels of the train click along the tracks over and over, pausing only when they hit each station, but even that has its rhythm: the pause, the almost-silence as the engine brakes and winds down, the scattered echoes of footsteps, the hiss of the doors sliding open, the stilted syllables of the station names being read out by machine, and then back to the start. It’s steady, it’s familiar, it’s safe, and it beats in his brain like a pulse.
He sets words to the rhythm, thinking still of heartbeats, of breathing, of a body and all its parts united by head and heart in harmony.
Kuroo vanishes from the Nerima station as the sun hits the horizon, feet on autopilot to the riverside where he taught Kenma how to play volleyball a lifetime ago and tongue testing out different syllables without stopping.
“They want me to be captain.”
Kuroo says this with practiced nonchalance, as if it didn’t take him all day to work up the nerve to say the words out loud. He can practically see each syllable twisting in the air, slowly filling up the whole train car, even though he said it quietly.
“Hmm,” is all Kenma says without raising his eyes or interrupting his combo; Kuroo only glances at him sidelong, because he’s supposed to be nonchalant about it, but he’s a little wounded by Kenma’s own nonchalance. Just a bit. It’s a big deal and it deserves some more respect, doesn’t it?
“I mean,” Kuroo starts again, scrambling to find his next words, “it’s not like there’s a lot of options now the third-years are gone.” Nekoma lost at Inter High, as usual, and some third-years linger for Spring High, but not theirs. The team will survive without them, but at the moment it feels like they’re lost at sea. “Just me and Kai and Yaku. And Yaku can’t do it ‘cause he’s a libero, and Kai says he thinks it should be me.”
“Uh-huh,” Kenma agrees. Kuroo deflates in earnest and turns; this time Kenma’s eyes follow him, glowing gold between the frame of his black hair. “What?” Kenma asks, and Kuroo sees him register the turn of mood, sees his brow furrow as he tries to parse out the cause. “It’s not like this is a surprise.”
“What do you mean, it’s not a surprise?” Kuroo asks.
“Of course you should be captain. Even if we had a ton of people who could do it, it should still be you.”
It strikes him then that Kenma knew this would happen before it did, before it was even suggested, and he’s not nonchalant, merely more aware. “Oh,” is all Kuroo says.
Kenma starts counting off on his fingers and that prickling heat is creeping up Kuroo’s neck again, but pride glows in between, like flowers blooming through concrete. “You care about the team…everyone respects you and trusts you…you’re reliable on the court and off it…you’re smart and you want to win, and everyone else feels good following you.” He pauses and shrugs. “You’ve been acting like a captain this year already. Keeping the team together and stuff,” he reminds Kuroo, and smiles wryly when he adds, “Making sure you’ll have a setter. That’s important, right?”
“A little important,” Kuroo snickers, and his mind replays this situation in reverse, the two of them by the riverside, Kuroo assuring Kenma that the team needed him, that he’d help make them stronger. He recognizes his own words, transformed and reflected back to him, somehow made more beautiful by Kenma’s voice.
Saying “somehow” is misleading; the word makes Kuroo’s stomach twist as it hovers in his mind. Kuroo knows how it happened but doesn’t dare say so out loud.
“Are you nervous?” Kenma asks, and Kuroo gives a start, because, silently, he’s drowning in every glowing shade of gold, he’s lost in every shadow where he can whisper words he won’t say. “About being captain, I mean.”
Kuroo relaxes. “No,” he answers easily, because he’s no longer worried about that.
When they come home from Spring High Kuroo’s jersey bears the number one, underlined for emphasis, stark white against red, and their uniforms seem to catch the sunset through the train windows and absorb it, pushing the world closer into night. The flourescents buzz overhead; one in the far corner flickers whenever the train rattles.
“I told you that guy from Fukurodani was cool,” Kuroo mumbles, fighting off a yawn.
“He only hits crosses, though,” Kenma notes, and he sounds like he’s falling asleep on Kuroo’s shoulder.
Kuroo moves his arm so it rests on Kenma’s back, and Kenma leans further into him without caring to hide his yawn. “Yeah, I told you, he has a really good cross,” he replies.
“That’s not what I said,” Kenma corrects, tilting his head up to meet Kuroo’s eyes, and Kuroo tries hard not to only watch Kenma’s mouth move around the words, and he fails horribly. “I said he only does crosses. He can’t hit straights.”
“No way…I would have noticed that,” Kuroo insists, but he’s mulling it over, recounting all his blocks from that last match, trying to remember where his arms went, where he dived for receives, how spikes got through. “I totally would have noticed that. How did you notice that?”
Kenma shrugs and Kuroo feels the motion of it, every shift of muscle under fabric. “I don’t know. I just noticed. So that’ll make it easier next time. You only have to be ready for crosses when you block,” he says, and he said next time, he’s thinking of next time, he’s reminding Kuroo they won twice and lost once, and lost to a powerhouse, at that. A respectable finish for a team without third-years, who only barely had enough people to play at all. “I mean, it’ll still be hard because he hits strong spikes, but still…”
“What would I do without you?” Kuroo asks through a quiet laugh that almost gets consumed by the sound of the doors opening.
Kenma shrugs again. “You would have figured it out eventually,” he answers, and he’s still talking about volleyball strategies, and Kuroo wasn’t only talking about volleyball strategies, he was talking about everything, but the deeper meaning of his words are lost to the air between them.
Kuroo drifts somewhere between being awake and dreaming, tethered to consciousness because he knows Kenma is sleeping and one of them has to be awake so they can get off the train and it strikes him, then, when he’s too exhausted to avoid it, that he’s been fundamentally wrong about something important.
He thought it’d be a noisy sort of rush, an all-consuming something that would sweep him off his feet. He thought he’d know in a moment when it happened, but it’d been happening, a pattern like so many others: blood cycling in the body, train stops strung in an imperfect but unchanging line, a heart pumping and keeping a mind alive, sunrises and sunsets, days in sequence becoming weeks becoming months becoming years.
Love, Kuroo decides as the train flies along the track and his head settles on Kenma’s and his eyes shut, is a quiet thing that grows, slowly but surely, steadily and without stopping. It’s something blossoming between his ribs right at this second, warmth as yellow-orange-pink as a sunset, rhythm as unfailing as his heart thrumming and as Kenma’s heart too. It’s the way he feels when he gets Kenma to laugh at something that isn’t really funny, it’s the familiar weight of Kenma’s head on his shoulder, it’s the reason he chose to grow alongside Kenma - perhaps he always knew, somehow, intuition guiding him before he could recognize it.
Love, Kuroo decides as he opens his eyes, is something that has him, but that he doesn’t have, and he aches for it, and it ties his tongue in knots, and it eludes him, always one or two or five or ten steps ahead and apart. He can’t hope to outsmart it and knowing that leaves him unanchored, lost, silent.
“Hey,” Kuroo says into the empty air. “Hey, wake up. We’re at Nerima.”
Kenma opens his eyes and lets Kuroo lead him out to the station by the hand, as if they aren’t too old to hold hands without it meaning something. But Kuroo lets himself pretend, just to grasp at the feeling of it for a moment.
“It looks nice,” Kuroo repeats, and his voice sounds a little strangled so he clears his throat and pretends it’s not noticeable. Kenma wrinkles his nose, twists his lips, doesn’t answer. “Really, it does.”
“It still reeks like bleach,” Kenma mutters, idly puffing a lock of hair out of his eyes. He showed up at practice with blond hair that morning. While Kuroo hadn’t known what to expect when he got a text apologizing for lateness and telling him not to wait at the station, he certainly hadn’t been expecting something so…dramatic. For Kozume Kenma standards, this is about as dramatic as it gets, and Kuroo feels like he’s missed a step going down a flight of stairs, but constantly.
“If you were trying to be less noticeable, you did a pretty bad job,” Kuroo tells him lightly, as lightly as he can manage, because he means it; he’s used to the spectrum of gold that overwhelms him every time Kenma meets his eyes, but the blond hair only amplifies the effect. Kuroo’s blinded by sunlight every time he sneaks a glance that lingers too long.
Kenma shrugs it off. “It made sense at the time,” he answers. “And I like it now, I guess.”
“Did Yamamoto really think you were a ghost?”
“I hope not. But he overreacts anyway, so maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t think my hair was long enough to make me look like one, but…”
“I’ll kick his ass for you,” Kuroo says, neutrally enough for it to seem like a joke.
“That’s not very captain-like,” Kenma answers diplomatically, but Kuroo sees the smile creeping up his face.
He sighs and leans back in his seat, stretching his legs out into the empty aisle of the train. “You’re right. I’ll make him do laps instead,” he agrees, and Kenma snorts. Kuroo’s close enough that he can smell the dye too and it muddles his already-muddled thoughts, hovering heavy in his head. “Did it take awhile? Bleaching your hair, I mean.”
“Kind of. It mostly smelled.”
Kuroo drags his fingers along the fringes of Kenma’s hair, only close enough to ghost over his skin, but Kenma’s eyes stay on his game so he must not mind the intrusion. There are spots of black and brown here and there, nothing noticeable, only revealing themselves when moved. “I could help you with the back next time you dye it,” he says, more thinking out loud than speaking and expecting an answer. His mind easily recreates the bathroom at the Kozume house, because he knows the place as well as his own home, and he imagines the room closed off and the air trapped inside stinging his nose with bleach and peroxide. He imagines his fingers in Kenma’s hair, imagines Kenma’s eyes watching him in the mirror, imagines how the blond hair might shine under the fluorescents. He imagines a silence that demands no answer, the sort of thing he’s only been able to find in Kenma’s company; he’s compelled to fill the air around him with words and feels restless in quiet most of the time, but not with Kenma. With Kenma he finds a quiet that soothes.
He imagines Kenma’s eyes watching his reflection in a mirror, imagines that gaze pinning him down, and something about it drags a shudder up his spine.
Night gathers outside and Kuroo catches a glance of the two of them reflected in the dark windows. He sees he’s too close, even if Kenma doesn’t mind it, it’s still too much, and he remembers he’s only imagining. There are cherry blossoms stuck to the glass outside again, but even they fade from substance to shadows and only serve to distort the image.
Kenma speaks as Kuroo starts to pull back. “I don’t know when I’ll dye it next,” he says, and it’s not a deflection, Kuroo assures himself, and all at once worries about what Kenma knows and doesn’t know, if it’s too much or if it will never be enough. “It’s a pain.”
“You’ll just let it grow out? That’s quite a look. You’re such a trendsetter, Kenma,” Kuroo teases.
“Shut up,” Kenma answers, and pushes his shoulder into Kuroo’s arm without missing a single button prompt in his game, even though they speed by so fast Kuroo can barely register what they are. “If I feel like doing it again I’ll tell you.”
The daydream lingers, fueling itself with such tiny shards of hope as this.
They trade the skylines of Tokyo for Miyagi during Golden Week, before their second Inter High together; Kenma barely lifts his eyes on the bullet train - “It’s the country, there’s not much to see,” he explains - but Kuroo watches the world beyond the glass change with intense fascination. He’s never left Tokyo, after all.
“Never?” Kenma repeats when Kuroo says so, and he sounds incredulous, but then he shrugs.
“What?” Kuroo prompts. Behind them the rest of the team is chattering, speculating about the teams they’ll play in Miyagi, especially Karasuno, the infamous former rivals from Nekoma’s championship years. Kai’s mostly content to divulge facts about the trains whenever the conversation lulls, even though he doesn’t get a word in often. But Kuroo and Kenma occupy their own little world, as usual. Kuroo grins as he goes on, “I know I seem impossibly worldly and sophisticated, but alas…”
Kenma rolls his eyes and interrupts, “It makes sense. You belong in Tokyo. You’d probably get too bored if you lived in the country, it’d be slow in comparison.”
“I could keep myself occupied. Such is the benefit of having a busy mind,” Kuroo insists. “What about you, already looking forward to living in a cave in Hokkaido? You’d get bored out here just as easy as me, caves in Hokkaido don’t have electrical outlets.”
“You’re the one who brought up caves, not me,” Kenma reminds him, and then shrugs again. “I don’t know. I don’t dislike Tokyo.” He casts his eyes out the window, finally, at the rolling hills and mountains interrupting the skyline, the birds clustered over the horizon. Kuroo imagines they’re crows, because it feels appropriate, and anyway it’s too far to tell for sure. “Quiet is nice too, though.”
Kuroo gasps dramatically. “I never would have guessed it! You, liking the quiet? Impossible,” he teases.
He sees Kenma is trying hard not to smile; the corner of his lip twitches as he squints, and it’s almost as good as making him laugh, simply watching him fight to not give Kuroo the satisfaction. “I can’t like the quiet that much. I hang out with you, don’t I?” he points out with a click of his tongue.
“I’m an exception,” Kuroo says, in a tone that suggests bragging, but he can’t help it, not when every inch of him screams for it to be true, but even if it was true, he’s still not the right kind of exception, not quite.
“I suppose you are,” Kenma answers, and that smile finally shows for a second. Suddenly he’s ready to take this train, any train, every train, anywhere Kenma wants, to the city or the country or the very edge of the world. He knows, somehow, that Kenma’s right, that leaving the city would be more difficult for Kuroo, but his mind conjures a key to a house hidden in the country, his mind builds the front door and the hallway and puts up the rafters, his mind fast-tracks him to a future that ignores how Kenma’s right and instead presents him with another option.
It’s almost tactile, this invented home with Kenma shaded by trees Kuroo cannot name in a place that isn’t even real, because he’s never left Tokyo so how could he know what the country’s like? It’s not real but it’s right there, just beyond his fingertips.
Kenma huffs at his hands and the console between them and Kuroo registers the words “GAME OVER” spelled out plainly, loudly, in full color on the screen. He leans back in his seat and goes over strategies in his head, easing his mind back to reality with every play in Nekoma’s book. He can’t afford to be sidetracked by daydreams now; he didn’t come to Miyagi to lose.
If Kenma notices anything odd, he doesn’t mention it.
They decide Karasuno’s interesting while playing them, so the conversation about it afterward as they speed back to Tokyo feels almost unnecessary. Kuroo divides his attention between the way the sunset looks in Miyagi and the words Kenma is saying. This time around there’s no background noise; the rest of the team is fast asleep around them.
“Their setter’s not smarter than you, come on,” Kuroo insists for what has to be the five hundredth time.
Kenma goes on as if Kuroo didn’t speak. “Their setter’s really smart but they’re not exactly genius strategists, it’s all offensive power, which wouldn’t be hard, really, just…”
“That quick,” Kuroo supplies with a groan. “Yeah, that’s the thing. Inuoka was getting it, but…”
“They have time to improve it,” Kenma agrees grimly. “The stronger it gets, the stronger they get, the more trouble it is.” He mulls it over but can’t seem to find a solution. “And both of them are first-years. The setter and Shouyou. So they’re only going to get stronger, unless they die or something.”
The first name rings too loud in Kuroo’s head but he says, “They’re not the only ones with impressive first-years.”
“Lev is not impressive,” Kenma answers immediately, tsking.
“Yet,” Kuroo says. “Besides, even with a great quick, Karasuno’s Shrimpy is still, well, shrimpy. He can’t outrun everybody.” He fixes a teasing grin on his face and turns so Kenma can see it; the sunset outside is blazing and Kuroo has the window seat, so Kenma is flung into shades of shadow and the scantest slivers of light that Kuroo doesn’t block out. The dark roots of his hair are growing in and his hands aren’t occupied by anything. Talking about Karasuno and their weird middle blocker does enough to capture his interest. “So you’re on first name basis with him, huh? I thought he was some lost middle school kid asking you for directions when I went and found you. You really have to quit wandering off, you’ll meet weirder people than him if you’re not careful.”
“It said Karasuno on his shirt, Kuro,” Kenma points out, and it’s not unusual for Kenma to notice things Kuroo doesn’t, so why does it make his stomach twist now? “And he outran you, remember, so you can’t be that dismissive…”
Kuroo can’t help but feel like Kenma’s picking a side here, and picking the wrong side at that. But he knows it’s ridiculous to feel that way; it’s only teasing, because that’s normal, that’s what they do, but there’s something like burning nausea itching under his skin, clawing up from his stomach to his throat, and it doesn’t listen to reason. “How am I supposed to block something that goes too fast for me to see?” he shoots back too harshly, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. His fingers twitch and won’t stay still. Worse words hover between his teeth and he can’t banish them, not completely, so he clamps his mouth shut instead.
The world outside the window is dark and formless now, a swirling mass of shifting shadow.
“What?” Kenma asks.
“Nothing.” It’s too clipped and it acknowledges the question and neither was a good choice. Kuroo winces at his reflection in the window; the mirrored expression only makes it feels like someone’s judging him, and he reads the sour look on his own face as one word that appears as a fork of lightning cracking his brain open, hot and quick and fatal: jealous.
He almost asks the question of himself, why, but he knows why, and knowing makes it worse. He can’t help yearning to be noticed, not when it’s so insatiable, twisting like a knife in his heart.
Kenma’s reflection appears from around his shoulder and he looks concerned. Kuroo forces his face to be neutral and keeps his arms crossed so he doesn’t start digging at his skin, trying to pry out the furious itch haunting him. “I didn’t mean it,” Kenma says, lips drawn tight together around his words. “It’s not a regular quick, it’s harder to block. It’s not your fault or anything. And we won all the games we played, so it’s okay. You don’t have to beat yourself up over it.”
His words dispel the burning long enough for Kuroo to remind himself of facts: he’s overreacting, he’s being immature, he’s glad that Kenma’s made friends both on the team and off it, he can’t react like this over nothing more than heightened interest. The facts don’t feel entirely true, not yet - the frothing rage is so much more immediate, seems so much realer when it’s consuming his brain - but they’re enough to take the edge off. He turns back to Kenma, smiling in a way he hopes seems natural. “I’ll get it next time,” he says. “He won’t get it past me again, mark my words.”
Kenma raises his eyebrows. “Next time?” he asks, but he knows the answer, he just wants to hear it out loud; Kuroo sees it flashing in his eyes, flaring bright.
“When we have our showdown at Nationals,” Kuroo reminds him. The sentence rolls off his tongue perfectly, like he’s meant to say it. “That’s what Coach wants, at least. And it’d definitely be interesting, huh?” Nobody knew that much about Coach Nekomata yet, not in his first semester back, but it’s fact that he wants to see another so-called battle of the trash heap, and it’s a dream of being top-tier at Nationals so Kuroo wants it too.
A spark dances in Kenma’s eyes and Kuroo doesn’t have to force a smile anymore. “Definitely,” he replies, and he’s smiling too, and Kuroo never gets tired of seeing that light, that drive, that determination. For once Kenma’s not trying to hide it.
“And we’ll win, of course,” Kuroo adds loftily.
“Naturally,” Kenma responds, and the sparks start exploding in Kuroo’s chest like static electricity jumping between fingertips.
“I mean, how could we not with such brilliant leadership in place?” Kuroo goes on, and Kenma snorts. “I’m talking about you, not me! The setter’s the real leader on the court, remember?”
Kenma wrinkles his nose. “I never signed up to be a leader.”
“You don’t sign up for anything, Kenma, that’s what I’m here for. To push you to greatness,” Kuroo explains, tsking.
“You’re the captain. You have to be leader. Don’t shove it on me,” Kenma says, and Kuroo leans over to shove all his weight on Kenma’s shoulder, and the conversation dissolves into laughter tinged by indignation. They go quiet when they accidentally wake up Yaku and he threatens them both with imminent death.
It takes hours to get back to Tokyo, hurtling through the dark on the bullet train; Kuroo stays awake picking out scenery, watching Miyagi’s skyline grow jagged as it’s replaced with taller and taller buildings. Kenma’s back to tapping at a console with his head on Kuroo’s shoulder and Kuroo’s neck twinges from staying still for so long, but it’s worth it, because he belongs in his own skin again and the lightning doesn’t crack through his skull anymore, not now, not in the soft quiet.
It’s his third year now, only the beginning of it, but still, he’s too old to get eaten up by envy like this. He thinks about Inter High instead, because that’s a battle he feels surer about winning.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
The sound of pencil hitting notebook over and over doesn’t line up with the train clicking under Kuroo’s feet, but he barely hears it, his mind is full of granite scratches and equations and chemical balances. He’d be annoyed by it if he wasn’t the one doing it. It feels less real when he’s doing it, which is kind of funny, in a way.
“Stop that.”
“Huh?” Kuroo asks without looking up or stopping. In fact, the tapping only grows more frantic, grows into an even more incessant rhythm.
Kenma’s hand clamps down on the pencil and Kuroo’s wrist and Kuroo meets his severe expression. “That,” he says, needlessly.
“Sorry.” Kuroo slumps back, only then noticing the stiffness in his back and wincing. He’s been in college prep classes his entire academic life, sure, but that doesn’t magically make advanced chem classes any easier. “It helps me think.”
“You haven’t written anything for twelve minutes. You were just tapping your pencil.” Kenma holds up his phone and displays the paused stopwatch on the screen. It reads twelve minutes, ten seconds. “I counted.” His eyes fall on Kuroo’s notes with distaste. “That looks awful.”
“It’s not so bad,” Kuroo assures him. The train hits a bump and the paper advertisements shudder, whispering as they move. A few of them advertise open houses at colleges in the city and Kuroo tries not to look at them too long.
“When’s it due?” Kenma asks with a tone that suggests he already knows.
Kuroo pretends to consider. “Well, fortunately, it’s only my first class, so I have until we get to school. It’s plenty of time,” he says. The train halts one stop off from Nekoma and it takes Kuroo a minute to realize it. “Oh. Shit.”
“You’ll be fine,” Kenma says, and doesn’t complain when Kuroo resumes tapping his pencil. Rhythms help him think, he’s learned: he works to wordless music, the train’s usual rattling, the white noise blare of an air conditioner in summer, anything that taps out a beat. Kenma knows. He sends Kuroo the soundtracks of every game he plays, which is a lot. Wind gushes in before the doors close and the paper advertisements rustle again and Kenma catches Kuroo looking at them. “Where do you want to go?”
“To a future where my chemistry homework is done,” Kuroo answers, deliberately and transparently obtuse.
“You know what I mean.”
Kuroo does and he keeps his eyes on his work, but it may as well be in a foreign language. He’s not taking in a single pencil stroke. He shrugs. “Don’t know yet. Somewhere in Tokyo, definitely.” Lots of kids his age yearn to escape to Tokyo and he has no desire to leave the city behind, even though it won’t be a real escape, per se. It’s still too much to walk away from.
Kenma does not ask the worse questions: what does Kuroo plan on studying, what’ll he do with his life, where he’s going from here. They’re the questions everyone demands answers to lately. Even he demands it of himself, to similarly unproductive results. The only thing he knows for sure is he wants to play in Spring High, but that’s not a good answer.
Kenma knows not to ask and Kuroo can’t phrase his gratitude well enough, so he lets it rest. The train approaches their last stop, Kenma tugs on Kuroo’s sleeve to let him know, and Kuroo scribbles down some indecipherable answers that look right if he squints.
It reminds him how he’s good at that, pretending he knows everything.
“Top eight’s not bad,” Kenma says earnestly on their trip back home after Inter High.
He’s right, especially for a prefecture as competitive as Tokyo, but not bad is not enough. “It’s not,” Kuroo echoes with his eyes closed and body pressed back against the wall of the train, pressed back enough for him to imagine splitting the wall with the pressure of it. Defeat is an unwelcome guest in him, one he’s still not accustomed to. There’s training camp ahead, and Spring High after that, more chances to grow, more opportunities to win, but they seem far-flung and abstract right now. The red jersey is sticking to his skin and that underlined number one could be branded onto Kuroo’s chest for how much it burns.
“Hey.” Kuroo opens his eyes and finds Kenma staring him down, eyes flaring in a way Kuroo’s only seen in split seconds before, and he’s burning differently now, burning better and brighter and warmer. He doesn’t speak, merely watches in wonder. “We’ll win at Spring High. We’ll go to Nationals. We will.”
Kenma’s hands are clutching his and Kuroo can feel the calluses on his fingertips. It’s so tactile, so real; the feeling of it breaks through his mental fog, a burst of blinding clarity dyed gold.
He feels himself grinning and the salt-sting fades and the burning becomes a glow.
They take more train rides at sunset and at dusk nowadays, lingering longer at school for practice. Kuroo barely feels his exhaustion at the end of the day because his nerves are live wires and every cell of him sings with anticipation. It only takes another push, he assures himself, a little more dedication. Better connections, stronger blocks, more tenacious receives; steadier heartbeats pumping blood and oxygen, minds flooded with adrenaline and sharp like razors; cleverer plays and tougher resistance.
They can win, they can win, they can win. He repeats this new mantra to himself over and over until it radiates off of him and he barely has to say it. The whole team’s attuned to it, but as usual, Kenma’s the best at reading Kuroo’s mind.
“There’s three representative slots this year,” he tells Kenma cheerfully one morning, after staying up too late verifying the information. “We usually get two, right, but since Tokyo’s hosting Nationals that means we get another. So that’s good.” He grins and continues, “Consider it insurance.”
Kenma nods and the shine of the train fluorescents dance over his face, but Kuroo tries hard not to focus on that. He casts his eyes out the window and counts the neon lights on the skyline because he can’t look at the stars, which always get swallowed up by the burning windows in the distance. As usual, his own face is superimposed over every sharp angle cutting the heavens, and he realizes he’s starting to look older than seventeen.
“Isn’t it more fun having enemies you can’t seem to beat?”
Kuroo says this to Kenma once. It’s one of those rare occasions where Kuroo’s outsmarted a video game boss before Kenma, but that’s not the only reason he says it. He’s trying to help Kenma puzzle out Lev, who’s helpfully tall and absurdly optimistic but otherwise troublesome. He knows making it a challenge, like a real-life boss fight, will let Kenma approach it more easily, like his advice to Kenma in middle school had been. He says it, and it helps, but that doesn’t make it ring any truer in Kuroo’s head.
Kuroo’s tired of losing, but he’s always been able to recover from losing at volleyball, given enough time. He’s not afraid of it; it’ll hurt if they lose at Spring High, probably hurt worse than all the other losses combined, but he’s not afraid to give it his best shot anyway, and that’s what counts. The worst loss comes from not even trying.
Yet he sits on the train in the mornings and afternoons and nights and he minds his distance, even though he and Kenma still sit close together. He’s made an unbreakable habit of slumping his shoulders to get close to Kenma’s eye level and sometimes he stumbles off curbs because he’s not looking where he’s going. His mind works overtime creating imaginary places, crafting sentences he’ll never say, building futures he cannot have, and they haunt him, and he cycles between rejecting them and giving in, and hurricanes of words brew beneath his tongue and sometimes he almost opens his mouth to let them roar, loud enough to be heard over screeching metal when the train brakes too fast.
Sometimes Kenma notices and waits, recognizes the look Kuroo gets when he’s about to say something important and waits, fixes Kuroo with those wide, gold eyes and waits; it’d be so easy to say it because it wouldn’t take a hurricane, only the whisper of a breeze. Kuroo’s been ready to say it for what feels like his whole life. He’s been drawn to Kenma since he was only a shadow in a window watching the street below, since before Kuroo knew he was even real.
It’d be easy to say it, and that’s all that would be easy. Kuroo doesn’t know what would happen next, his intuition is too muddled to guess and he’s cut adrift from knowing, and it makes him bite his tongue hard enough to taste metal.
So he doesn’t try and every time he smiles without showing his teeth, because even opening his mouth a little is risking letting words out, every time he shakes his head and breaks eye contact and pretends it was nothing, it feels like whatever’s been tethering him and Kenma together for all these years is starting to fray and split.
It’s a loss worse than any other when he pushes all those daydreams into the darkness.
How was it, reads the text lighting up Kuroo’s phone screen. Kuroo smiles at the familiarity of Kenma’s straightforward, simple, punctuation-less texts. It’s drizzling outside, leaving tiny pinpricks of raindrops on the windows. Kuroo leans back in his seat as he taps out a reply, body swaying back and forth to match the motions of the train.
Good! Just an ordinary open house, he reports cheerfully, throwing in some cat emojis for good measure. Nothing different from the others, though…
Was there food
Kuroo snorts. Such a one-track mind, Kenma!! And then: They had fruit platters. Standard stuff.
Good enough
Kuroo’s been doing a whole circuit of college open houses in between volleyball practice, making lists of pros and cons and taking notes at overlong presentations. The more concrete college becomes, the less it looms over him like a horrific specter. Nothing is definite, of course, nothing ever is until it’s done, but he at least has the tools to make a plan, and Kuroo always works best within plans. When he was a kid, he and Kenma kept their own volleyball records, marking down statistics and analyzing strategies like commentators on TV. Now he gets to call it studying communications and specializing in sports reporting, which sounds official and serious and reassuring. The real challenge now is outscoring the competition to get into the best schools, but even that doesn’t seem so intimidating now that he can translate the vague idea of the future into step-by-step goals.
And, more importantly, it actually sounds fun. Kuroo can see himself somewhere in five years, ten years, fifteen, twenty; it’s solid ground to stand on and that clears his head.
He listens to the stops being read out over his head, the footsteps passing him by, the soft conversations of the other commuters. There’s a woman whispering about dinner plans into her phone, a little boy explaining the plot of a superhero movie to his father and sister, a pair of tourists murmuring in rapid English and sounding out different Japanese syllables one at a time in between their conversation. He’s a part of the picture, this hanging moment in time isolated from the rest of the world until the doors slide open again.
It’s still drizzling outside, but Kuroo thinks he can see the sun starting to part the clouds.
The next train home arrives in exactly one minute. Kenma’s standing right underneath the wait time sign, the knot in his tie as sloppy as ever and a console piping music between his palms. He glances up when Kuroo calls and when the train pulls in, the ends of his hair flare up in the rush of air.
“Thanks for waiting,” Kuroo says, a bit breathless from running to catch up. They step into the train car; it’s rush hour and crowded and they push to the other side so Kuroo can lean against the doors and Kenma can loop his arm around one of the poles to keep both hands free.
“It’s fine,” Kenma answers with a shrug, but his eyes flit back and forth between his game and Kuroo’s face. “What kept you?”
Kuroo clears his throat. “Nothing major. Takahashi from class 2 wanted to talk to me, so…” He runs a hand through his hair and only realizes too late it’s one of his more obvious nervous tics, one Kenma will definitely recognize.
Sure enough, he’s ignoring his game and studying Kuroo closely now. “Oh. What did she want?” he asks neutrally, but the tone sounds too practiced.
“Nothing,” Kuroo attempts, because maybe Kenma will just drop it, but he doesn’t even blink. He clears his throat again. “It’s nothing, really.” It doesn’t sound any more convincing the second time around.
“She was asking you out, right?” Kenma asks without it sounding much like a question. He glances back at his screen and his Pokémon and starts poking around in tall grass, leaving Kuroo to ponder his answer.
He’s not used to getting confessions, probably because he usually keeps himself busy and eats lunch with Kenma in out-of-the-way corners of the school. Takahashi’s on the softball team and wears her long hair braided tight down her back, and she seemed nice enough, but her being nice didn’t make answering any easier. It was like Kuroo’s brain just short-circuited and he almost told the truth on impulse, which probably would have been uncomfortable for everyone: Yeah, sorry, I can’t go out with you because I’ve been in love with my best friend my whole life and it’d feel like cheating on him somehow, even though he doesn’t know I’m in love with him because I’m too scared of saying it. Also I don’t think I’m straight anyway. Thanks though!
Maybe it’s selfish to say, but he’s pretty sure the whole process was more awkward for him as the rejecter than for her as the rejectee.
Kuroo shrugs his shoulders and tries to play it off. “So nosy. Yeah, alright, she was. It was a private matter of the heart.” He sounds ridiculous, but he can’t exactly tell Kenma the whole story, and the closer he dances around the truth, the easier it’ll be to let something slip.
“What did you tell her?” Kenma presses on, tapping at his screen as he talks. From upside down, Kuroo watches the screen too, observes Kenma deliberating moves against a wild Pokémon.
“None of your business,” Kuroo answers, because it was hardly his finest moment, word-wise.
The wild Pokémon almost annihilates Kenma in one hit; Kuroo recognizes the words “super-effective” even from upside-down. Kenma tsks at his screen and then asks again, “What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t know you were such a gossip, Kenma,” Kuroo teases. “What, you gonna text the details to the whole team? Don’t embarrass me.”
“I’m curious. Why won’t you tell me?” Kenma asks without looking up, but something in his tone betrays urgency, though Kuroo doesn’t know why. The Pokémon faints and Kenma wavers, trying to decide between continuing the fight or trying to flee.
Kuroo can’t tell him because there’s no real reason for him to have said no, not one he can say out loud. He said no because saying yes would mean giving up, and he ought to, but he can’t make himself do it yet. Out loud, though, he clicks his tongue and says, “Because a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, of course.”
Kenma’s fingers clench on his 3DS and there’s a fierce look in his eyes when he glances up and searches Kuroo’s face, and Kuroo has the sudden sensation of being X-rayed. So this is what other people feel like when Kenma analyzes them, gets a read and makes his lists of pros and cons. After a moment, though, it’s over and Kenma relaxes; Kuroo sees tension leaving his shoulders, only apparent once it’s gone. “Quit teasing,” Kenma mutters, and drops his gaze again.
“Sorry,” Kuroo says, trying to laugh, but it sounds like a cough out loud. He can’t tell what he’s apologizing for specifically, but he’s glad the word leaves his mouth. “I told her I was too busy to date right now and that was that. I know, I know, wildly exciting.”
“Don’t let it go to your head, Kuro. She’s only interested in you ‘cause we’re going to Nationals,” Kenma tsks.
Kuroo makes a face. Winning one of the representative slots at Spring High presents a whole host of new challenges down the road, but he certainly didn’t expect one like this. It’s somehow more intimidating than facing rivals on the court, the idea of having to face future confessions. “You think so?”
“Uh-huh. You’re the captain so you get the admirers. They give you all the credit.”
“I guess we better not lose, or else all my newfound popularity will evaporate,” Kuroo jokes, voice lilting.
“You don’t want to win to get popular,” Kenma replies dismissively. “You want to win just because you do. That’s all.”
They go quiet as the train empties out and the music between Kenma’s hands echoes against his palms and the walls and in the lulls of silence as the station names are announced; they drift through Kuroo’s mind like he knows the melodies already. He thinks of that look in Kenma’s eyes, one he doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.
If Kuroo didn’t know any better, he’d think it was jealousy; it crackled with enough energy for it. He can almost feel the lightning again. But he does know better, so he’s only left with speculations, none of which sound quite right.
Kuroo gets familiar with the night trains.
In his experience, the train transforms depending on the time of day. The mornings are punctuated by yawns and slow blinking, a cold sort of half-asleep state. Everyone’s daydreaming about being back in bed, making lists of things to do in the day ahead, waiting for caffeine to kick in. The minutes are slow and the train seems to roll along at a more leisurely pace until they get closer to Tokyo’s beating heart, where everything comes alive in a swarm of clipped conversations and purposeful steps. The afternoons fading into sunset are warmer, usually, and the colors inside the train car seem more vibrant, casting longer shadows. There’s more and louder talk, varying numbers of people from rush hour to the hour after, a feeling of relief about going home.
Night is the mirrored windows that Kuroo’s stared into for years now, yet it’s still difficult to watch his reflection. He almost expects it to start moving independently, to vanish into a pocket of light from a distant building, to distort into something else. The relief about going home is sharper, more exhaustion than anything. Kuroo still can’t see the stars, not even in Nerima, so he contents himself watching neons and fluorescents flicker far beyond him. The lights in the stations he passes strike him as far away, too, all of them distant stars over his head.
He will never know the people whose houses he passes. He’ll never know the people who take the trains with him, even if he can recognize them sometimes. He only knows the pattern of starts and stops always rolling onward and backward.
One night he goes on past Nerima, all the way to the terminus of the line. The station is similar to Nerima’s - train stations usually look the same, or close enough - but he still feels out of place.
He forgets the name of the station once he’s headed back home and has to find it on a map, and even then it seems unreal. His eyes trace the characters, each and every curve, his mouth sounds out the syllables and joins them into a word, he even reaches to touch the map with his calloused fingertips; even then, it’s still not there in front of him, so what makes it real?
Someone should make a movie about like. A train that goes nowhere. Even if you get off at the stops there’s no exits. Or you’re just stalled in a tunnel forever. It’d be terrifying, he texts Kenma as the train cuts through the dark.
No wonder you go to so many cram schools if this is what you think about all the time, Kenma answers quickly. Kuroo’s honestly impressed by how fast he’s typing. Pitching horror movies isn’t on your entrance exam
Says you!!
If you don’t get into college don’t blame me blame your brain
Kuroo memorizes the name of the terminus to make it stick in his head, to remind him that things he can’t reach out and touch are still real.
Nekoma does not win at Nationals, but the blow doesn’t land as harsh as Kuroo thought it would. Maybe he’s prepared himself too much for it to hurt. Maybe he’s genuinely proud of simply taking the team that far as captain, even if it wasn’t far enough. Or maybe he’s tired of wallowing in self-pity. All seem equally possible, and all could easily be correct.
“I feel like I graduated already,” Kuroo tells Kenma on their first day back at school after the tournament ends. It rained overnight and the humidity is making his hair worse. He taps a puddle on the station floor with the heel of his shoe, observing the ripples it makes.
Kenma shrugs. “You’re almost there. Another few weeks,” he reminds Kuroo, and his gaze is dropped to the ripples Kuroo’s making too. “You’re lucky. I wish I was done with high school.”
“They say college is worse,” Kuroo muses. The train arrives and reflects them in flickers, each window in turn catching them for the smallest split second. It makes Kuroo think of stop-motion, and that makes him think about the oxymoron of the juxtaposition. Stop-motion. Both paused and active at the same time, hovering on an edge of something, about to tumble over. He can relate to the feeling. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels between high school and college right now, peering over the edge for a moment on each revolution.
“Do you think it’ll be worse?” Kenma asks, sounding like he knows the answer.
Kuroo grins. “Nope. I’m ready for it,” he says, and Kenma smiles back.
“I know you are.”
With Nationals over and volleyball done for now and college distinct on his horizon, Kuroo has nothing to distract him from his unsolvable puzzle. Another few weeks, Kenma said; Kuroo sees another long series of opportunities he won’t take. And besides, what kind of a person does that? Wait until the last minute and then run away, no matter what the answer is? It’s not running far, only deeper into the city, but even so. It’s easy to lose somebody in the winding side streets of Tokyo.
When Kenma asks what distracted him, Kuroo insists it’s just a nostalgia trip. “You sound like a grandpa, Kuro.”
“Don’t disrespect your elders like that. Let me have my memories.”
And he does - so many of them, more than he can count, an entire lifetime of memories stamped with Kenma’s presence, both invisible and not. They will have to be enough.
A voice in the back of his mind tells him he needs to stop settling for good enough, because it’s never really good enough. He tries not to listen.
He fidgets with the buttons lining his shirt, feeling the threads pulling loose. His fingers always seem to end up on the second one, but it’s not a proper second button, not really, so there’s no point pulling it off.
It’s the end of March and the train is crowded with families and students clutching diplomas making their way home after graduations across the city. Kuroo and Kenma stand face to face with Kuroo’s back against the door; Kuroo’s parents split off into another train car to try and find a place to sit.
“Come see me in the city,” Kuroo says, tapping his diploma on Kenma’s shoulder. His new campus isn’t far, but far enough to justify living there instead of at home. Kenma nods and Kuroo beams. “I can’t wait to hear all my successor’s stories about the team,” he goes on, voice almost sing-song, and Kenma groans at that.
Kenma answers in a question and his lips are pursed between his words: “Why do they want me to be captain? I’m not you.”
Kuroo pretends to consider. “Well, you’re more talkative than Fukunaga but not as loud as Yamamoto. People love balance,” he explains, and laughs when Kenma elbows him. “Because you’re Nekoma’s brain and heart and people love following their hearts, but they’re always better off following their heads,” he tries, and Kenma digs his elbow between Kuroo’s ribs with more force. “Because they trust you,” he says more seriously, and Kenma goes still, pulls back, starts to listen. “They want their brilliant setter to lead them and they believe in you. Only thing you have to do is live up to their expectations.”
“Only that? What a relief,” Kenma answers dryly. “I was almost worried.”
“You can do it,” Kuroo assures him. “And if you need anything you can call me. I’ll talk you through all the captain stuff, it’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Kenma nods again but his lips are still twisting. “I’ll miss you,” he says, raising his eyes to meet Kuroo’s, and Kuroo feels his heart skipping.
“I’ll miss you too,” he answers immediately, too fast, and tacks on, “But, hey, I’m right here. I’m not going far, it won’t be that different.” Yet he already misses having a companion on the train, on the court, in life through all circumstances, and doesn’t think he’ll ever find someone better than Kenma. It’s not far but it’s definitely not the same. But maybe it’ll be good, to take a step away, to shake himself of puzzle pieces he can’t put into order.
Silence lulls between them, filled by the white noise of strangers’ conversations and train tracks clattering. Kuroo imagines sparks flying off the metal, practically sees them blooming out of the shadows underneath his feet.
They’re between two stops when Kenma steps forward and enfolds Kuroo in a hug, burying his face in Kuroo’s chest, and he must be able to hear how Kuroo’s heart is hammering now. But Kuroo leans into it, rests his chin on Kenma’s head and inhales lingering traces of bleach, clasps his hands around his diploma against the small of Kenma’s back, and they keep their balance together amid the back-and-forth of the train.
He forgets to memorize the moment, but it doesn’t matter, because it hangs in his mind without him even trying to keep it there.
Once Kuroo’s at college, he won’t have to take the train anymore. It’ll be close enough to walk, and he’s grateful for it, because now every train car could be this one and it’s all haunted with ghostly projections of past moments. Maybe every train car they’ve ever been in is the same one and Kuroo just never paid enough attention.
They stay like that for too long, buried in each other in the sea of strangers, and almost miss their stop.
Kuroo doesn’t need to take the train much anymore, but he still likes to.
There are afternoons he picks a line he’s never been on and winds his way through Tokyo on it, walking off at the first stop that seems interesting and exploring where he ends up. It means he gets lost a lot, of course, but once he finds his way again, it means he’s mapped another part of the city. It’s a living thing, Tokyo, he knew it before and he’s sure of it now, and sometimes he’s positive the streets shift around when he’s not looking, like a real-life labyrinth. But he’s part of its veins and he’s not intimidated.
There are nights he takes the last train just for the experience. The late cars are either empty or full of groups of people coming back from clubs, or else solitary workers on night shifts, none of whom pay him any attention. When the cars are empty Kuroo walks up and down the aisles, perfecting his balance.
But he doesn’t go back to Nerima. His phone still lights up with Kenma’s usual plainspoken texts on a regular basis - Lev got his leg caught on a volleyball net somehow i quit being captain or We beat karasuno in a practice match today but it took all 3 sets or The cat who lives by the corner store had kittens with five pictures attached - but neither of them visit each other. They discuss it every so often, sincerely but still vaguely; or at least it’s sincere on Kuroo’s end, and it’s so much harder to read Kenma through texts, without context.
It’s easy enough to explain away: Kuroo’s still adjusting, Kenma’s got a lot on his plate as a third-year, there’s always another day, it’s not like Kuroo’s in another prefecture or anything, they’ll figure it out eventually. Somehow the lack of distance makes it all less urgent, and Kuroo wonders, sometimes, as he stares at his reflection, if he didn’t go far enough to be missed.
I’ll miss you, Kenma told him, and Kuroo remembers it, and he feels it aching within him. He doesn’t see Kenma every day anymore, but he hasn’t taken a step back at all.
Kuroo gets a summer job and arranges to stay in his dorm through break and stays lost in Tokyo, embedded within its narrow, twisting streets, the center of a labyrinth no one is trying to map out.
In October he makes a decision.
“Excuse me, pardon me, come on, seriously, could you just--” Kuroo mutters as he shoulders his way through the crowd at the train station. It’s Wednesday, it’s October, it’s the end of the day and he’s not the only person scrambling to squeeze into a train car, he has to fight for his place on the platform. A train peels away and he’s at the wrong angle to see the sign announcing the time until the next one comes. The giant cat plush in his arms doesn’t really help, nor does it endear him to anybody on the platform. Kuroo has the distinct impression everyone around him is throwing him the evil eye simultaneously.
He shifts his arms, stretches his neck, and checks the time again. Class ran late so the sun’s already starting to set, but he’s getting to Nerima tonight even if it kills him. He hopes it won’t kill him. That’d be pretty melodramatic, like something out of one of those tacky, sad dramas Kuroo won’t admit to watching.
The train comes fast and Kuroo shuffles his way on, ignoring how the strap of his bag is digging into his shoulder and how cramped the car is. It’ll thin out as they go out to the suburbs, he remembers.
Kuroo whiles away the time, and ignores the variety of funny looks he’s getting for the cat plush, planning words. It’s not like he hasn’t spoken to Kenma at all, but not in person, and it’s been long enough for Kuroo to feel unsteady approaching it again. Has Kenma changed since March? Have both of them? The stops fly by and nerves start to creep higher and higher up Kuroo’s skin until they’re prickling his neck. It feels familiar, but he doesn’t welcome that feeling back. He’ll welcome the same old skyline, the memorized stations down the line to Nerima, the advertisements overhead, some of which are exactly the same as Kuroo remembers. But not that prickling heat.
If anything, it’s not the same, but worse, and Kuroo almost falls over when the train brakes too sharply, so unsure of where he stands.
Starting with hello wouldn’t hurt, Kuroo reasons, mulling it over with his lip caught between his teeth. Hello and sorry for not visiting, to get it out of the way. And tell Kenma happy birthday, because that’s the real reason he’s going to Nerima anyway, he’s never missed any of Kenma’s birthdays since they’ve known each other and he isn’t going to start now. And give him the cat plush, which Kuroo had spotted in Shibuya on one of his expeditions in the city and found wildly funny at the time, but now he was starting to have doubts. Then what? Would Kenma be happy to see him? Kuroo tried hard not to think about it. Of course Kenma would be happy to see him, they were best friends, a couple months apart wouldn’t change that. But still the question, then what? Would it be easy to fall back in step with each other, to talk, to simply be around each other again? They’d been so good at it for so long, it had to be a natural instinct by now. So then why the nerves? It’s ridiculous. It’s like being nervous about blinking, or breathing, or--
“Kuro?”
Kuroo spins around so fast he clocks his head on one of the train poles. The car rolls on and Kenma is right there, standing in the aisle with one arm looped around a pole and the other at his side, clutching his phone, but his attention is focused squarely on Kuroo. Those gold eyes haven’t changed; if anything, there’s more light in them than ever. Kuroo can’t find any differences at all; the roots of Kenma’s hair have grown in even more so it looks like the black is flooding down over the blond, but even that isn’t much of a change.
“Kenma. Hi,” Kuroo blurts out. The words feel unwieldy on his tongue, simple as they are, and he’s practically counting his breaths and blinks, worried there are too many.
Kenma’s brow furrows and he crosses the aisle slowly, examining Kuroo head to toes. “What are you doing here?” he asks, hands reaching for subsequent train poles, keeping his balance over the tracks. Kuroo glances, briefly, at his reflection across the aisle, sees his face above Kenma’s back, and tries to count how many windows must have caught their images like this.
None of the practiced words make it from his brain to his mouth. “It’s your birthday,” Kuroo says instead.
Kenma squints at him. “I know that.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Kuroo tries again.
Kenma’s eyes drop to the enormous cat in Kuroo’s arms as if he didn’t notice it before and he wrinkles his nose. “What is that?” he asks, and then seems to realize. “Oh. It’s for me, isn’t it?”
The sun is gone and the fluorescents in the train car are flickering over them, casting different shadows. Kuroo clears his throat. “It’s got yellow and black spots, see? It reminded me of you,” he explains, and tries a smile that must look terribly forced and nervous, but what counts is he tried.
Kenma is studying him now and all at once Kuroo’s eaten alive with worry, second thoughts, every misgiving he’s tried to shift aside, but then he recognizes the twitch at the end of Kenma’s mouth. “You came all the way here for that?” Kenma asks, and his voice is still calm and even, as balanced as he is, but only barely.
“Well, I couldn’t mail it, could I?” Kuroo asks in a voice that sounds more like his own, and Kenma laughs, laughs and doesn’t stop laughing, and anxiety curls out of Kuroo’s shoulders as he sinks back against the train door and laughs too, and it’s easier than breathing.
They step off at the Nerima station with Kuroo in the middle of a story, like it’s any other day: “…so by this point his arm’s totally wedged in the vending machine, and I’m like, ‘Bokuto, dude, come on, give it up already,’ but he’s going on about how he already paid for it and the machine won’t give him a refund so he can’t back down and blah blah blah, you know, usual day at the mall, gotta call the mall cops to un-wedge my idiot friend’s enormous bicep from the candy machine…Kenma, I’m not crazy, right? Bokuto’s got abnormally large biceps, it’s a fact. Back me up.”
“A lot of things about Bokuto are abnormal.” But Kenma’s still smiling, or at least he is as far as Kuroo can tell, because now Kenma’s holding the giant stuffed cat and it blocks his face when he shifts his arms.
Kuroo tips his head up to laugh and the sound floats into the air above. “Fair enough,” he says.
“Are you staying overnight?” Kenma asks, eyes flitting up to meet Kuroo’s.
“Maybe.” He twists his lips. “I’m not sure, I didn’t think about it. Is that weird? It just feels like going home.” The first part is honest, the latter not so much. He didn’t think of it, too preoccupied calculating other variables, and now that he’s back at Kenma’s side, he doesn’t want to go. He can predict the glimmer of disappointment Kenma will show him, only for a second, only for the sake of full disclosure. He was right before: of course Kenma’s happy to see him, and now it’ll be even harder to go again.
“You haven’t been back. Is your mom mad?” Kenma asks. “If you show up in the middle of the night she’ll probably make you sleep outside.”
“Can I crash at your place?” Kuroo grins without missing a beat. Kenma elbows him and even the jab feels comfortably familiar.
You haven’t been back. The words collide in Kuroo’s head and the months past feel like years, aching wide open and empty, like the site of a demolished building. He doesn’t know how to apologize. He can’t think of a decent explanation; “I was running away” doesn’t count as decent, though it’s honest.
Kuroo leans back against a wall between the two tracks, glancing down at the patterns of metal trailing off in opposite directions, and Kenma stands in front of him; Kuroo feels himself being watched and pretends not to notice. “How’s school?” Kenma asks. His fingers curl around each other, constantly rearranging themselves against the backdrop of white fur on the cat.
All he can do is shrug. School’s the last thing on his mind right now. “Fine. It’s busy but I’m seeing a lot of the city, so…”
“You’ve lived here your whole life,” Kenma reminds him.
Kuroo waves a hand impatiently. “You know what I mean!”
A train pulls in, one Kuroo could take back to his campus, back into the labyrinth, but he only observes it rushing in and rushing past. It’s still hours til the last train. He’s not worried about making the last train. Kuroo sneaks glances at Kenma, memorizes how he looks at different angles, in different shadows, with that particular tiny smile still on his face.
Finally Kenma sighs. “Okay, I’m going to put this down…” he says, holding up the cat.
“On the floor? Of the train station?” Kuroo gapes, probably more horrified than he should be, but it’s a public place, the floor is probably disgusting.
Kenma ignores him. “…so I can hug you,” he finishes, and rolls his eyes. “Talk about dramatic…”
“Oh. Well, that’s fine,” Kuroo concedes too easily.
It takes that long for Kuroo to realize Kenma’s grown taller; when they lean close together and enfold each other, Kenma’s head rests between the junction of Kuroo’s neck and shoulder, and he doesn’t even have to lean up to do it, and Kuroo doesn’t need to slouch as far as he’s used to. Kenma’s hands lace together over Kuroo’s back and his breath is warm and steady on Kuroo’s skin. It’s hard not to shudder, but Kuroo manages it.
He doesn’t count how many minutes they stay like that. The only indication of time passing at all is the back-and-forth arrivals and departures on the tracks, taking turns appearing on either side of them. Kuroo closes his eyes and hangs on too tight. It’s been so many years and he’s no better at keeping his heart in check; it still hums harmonies in tune with Kenma, still seeks to beat in step with Kenma, still overflows with enough love to drown out the ache.
When he opens his eyes, he recognizes the red hoodie Kenma’s wearing, one that used to be Kuroo’s and Kuroo assumed he lost. He remembers the frayed sleeves, imagines the ends slipping over Kenma’s fingers, wonders why Kenma still has it. It was old even when Kuroo lost track of it.
“You should go back,” Kenma says softly, words ghosting over Kuroo’s skin, and then he pulls back to fix Kuroo with one of his most serious stares. Kuroo catches a hint of disappointment at the corners of his eyes, one that’s quickly snuffed out. “You have class tomorrow.”
He’s right, tomorrow’s Thursday and that’s Kuroo’s earliest day, but Kuroo decides to ignore that. He leans in again and rests his forehead against Kenma’s and it makes his hands shake, being that close. “I could skip,” he says, and he’s lucky he’s talking so quietly, or else his voice would sound hoarse.
Kenma frowns sternly but doesn’t pull back. “Since when do you skip?” he asks. “You’re setting a bad example.”
“There are perfectly good reasons for skipping,” Kuroo insists.
“Such as?” There is nothing in the world besides them, they’re caught so close together than nothing else can encroach, and Kuroo has always found happiness at Kenma’s side, up until this year Kenma was a universal constant, sometimes elusive but always present, and the miles to Tokyo feel like lightyears, endless decades spinning off into space.
“More important things,” Kuroo says, and Kenma is watching him, waiting.
“What?” he asks.
The question is an invitation and that occurs to Kuroo in a sudden flash of clarity, and he feels like he’s years late to answer.
He answers anyway: “This.”
A train arrives on each track simultaneously and they roar past each other, pinning Kuroo and Kenma between stop-motion sheets of metal, and the rush of air makes Kenma’s hair halo around his head, alight in the fluorescents, and he’s waiting, he’s been waiting, Kuroo can see it now in a blur of moments that never made sense, puzzle pieces that didn’t seem to belong together until now.
Kuroo doesn’t have to lean over far to kiss him, so the decision only takes a second.
The trains are loud enough to drown out his doubts and then Kenma’s hands clasp behind his neck and pull him into a deeper kiss, and that rings even louder in Kuroo’s head so he presses closer still and Kenma answers in kind, and this is a thousand kisses they should have had already combined with the thrill of the first.
They pull apart and Kuroo sees himself reflected in Kenma’s eyes in innumerable hues of gold. “Did you practice that line?” Kenma asks him, smiling.
“Only for years. How’d it go?” Kuroo says, breezily enough to sound like a joke, even though there’s no point trying to lie to Kenma.
Kenma rolls his eyes with his arms looped around Kuroo’s shoulders and they sway side by side together as the station falls quiet again. “It was okay,” he replies, and then glances at the empty tracks. “You really should go back to school. Nothing personal, I don’t want you to fail out because of me or anything.” Kuroo answers with another kiss, revels in the fact that he can do it, that there’s an infinite amount of kisses ahead of them. Kenma laughs into his mouth and kisses back. “I’m serious.”
“So am I,” Kuroo says, touching his forehead to Kenma’s again, watches how Kenma’s eyes shut and he breathes out and his whole face seems to relax, sees just how comfortable Kenma looks in his arms. “You could always run away to the city with me instead. Wherever you want to go is fine by me.”
“I have class tomorrow too, genius,” Kenma scoffs. “And practice. I probably get up earlier than you.”
“I guess I have no choice but to stay, then,” Kuroo says, voice lilting.
Kenma raises his eyebrows but Kuroo sees him relenting. “I guess so,” he agrees.
They walk to the exit hand-in-hand, Kenma carrying the giant cat on one arm, Kuroo occasionally leaning over to leave kisses - on Kenma’s knuckles, his cheek, his hair - until Kenma rests his head against Kuroo’s arm. The streetlights have popped on outside and Kuroo knows the way down these streets without thinking. Easier than breathing, than blinking, than laughing, like something he was always meant to do one way or another.
The train back to Tokyo is departing behind them with a clatter that echoes over the low roofs of Nerima, but they don’t look back. They’re already home.