Work Text:
ardently
ar•dent•ly
…an adverb that describes doing something with intense, passionate, or deeply felt emotion and enthusiasm
Kozume Kenma is seventeen and made of bone and quiet heartbeat when he is asked, “Do you like anything, Kenma?”
Kenma’s eyes slide over to meet Kuroo Tetsurou’s.
Kuroo is leaning up against a tree in his backyard, long legs sprawled out in the grass, all gilded and impossible and the low burn of teenage beatific. He is on the cusp of adulthood, his shoulders broad as they have always been, his knees pale. Kenma is on his stomach next to him, absentmindedly twining blades of grass between his fingers. Consider that the earth is vibrantly alive under them. Consider that Kenma does not understand this.
“What does that mean?” Kenma questions.
Kuroo hums. He considers every word he says; always careful, always measured.
“I mean,” Kuroo says. “I want to know if you actually like anything.”
“That’s a stupid question,” Kenma replies. “You’ve known me for ten years. Of course I like stuff.”
Kenma sort of wants to say that everything he likes seems to have direct correlation with the proximity of Kuroo’s hands, but he doesn’t. He just snaps a string of grass in half and plucks out a new one.
The sun beams down on Kenma’s back, warming him. It is mid-March and cloudless in Tokyo, everything coming to life under the beckoning breath of spring. Breeze ruffles over them, fluttering Kenma’s hair into his eyes. Kuroo stares down at him, his face open and unfettered. Kenma wonders what he’s looking for, really, by asking that question.
“Okay,” Kuroo says. “We’ll play like this, then. Do you like volleyball?”
Kenma considers it.
He remembers the first time his hands fit around a set properly. The memory is followed very closely by the look in Kuroo’s eyes when he slammed it down onto the other side of the court. He remembers his lungs rattling around in his chest, exhausted in the heat of June on a run with the team, sweat on his brow. The memory is followed very closely by the retreating vision of Kuroo’s silhouette, waving him forward. He remembers watching a scoreboard click from twenty-four to twenty-five, signaling his first win of his high school career. The memory is followed very closely by Kuroo’s smile, beaming and real and brighter than anything, taking up the whole gymnasium.
“I don’t know,” Kenma replies. “Kinda.”
Kuroo chuckles, right in the center of his chest.
“I don’t think it’s an unreasonable question, when you give me answers like that.” Kuroo reaches out and picks his own strand of grass. “It’s easy. Do you enjoy playing?”
Kenma shrugs as best he can from his position.
“It’s fine,” he says. “We have a strong team, and I’m good at what I do.”
“You don’t like it or dislike it,” Kuroo supplies, guessing. “You like what comes with it more than the sport itself. The team, the outcome.”
“Yeah,” Kenma agrees. “I like winning.”
“Well,” Kuroo laughs. “We agree there, at least.”
Kenma eyes him. Kuroo is a genuine guy, full of good intentions and warm charm, and he often has layers to everything he says. Kenma doesn’t have many friends, and nobody else in his life holds a candle to how well Kuroo knows him. Kuroo knows what he likes, and what he doesn’t like; Kuroo doesn’t have to ask. There’s something more underneath it.
“Are you asking if I’m going to quit after you graduate?” Kenma asks.
Birds chirp somewhere above them, cheery and ringing. Kuroo’s face doesn’t change, but the light behind his eyes shifts and deepens. Kenma looks away from his gaze. It is always hard to hold.
“Nothing ever gets past you, does it, Kozume?”
Kenma’s name in Kuroo’s mouth is a melody on the wind.
“No,” Kenma says to the ground. “Not with you.”
That chuckle again.
“Sure,” Kuroo replies. “I guess that’s what I’m getting at.”
Kenma watches his own hands smooth through the green of the earth. They are pale, small, mostly unblemished. He has a scar on his left pointer finger from where he cut himself once in his first year slicing green onions in Kuroo’s kitchen. He remembers Kuroo’s hands covering his own, tugging him to the bathroom for a bandaid, tongue clicking and smile concerned.
Kuroo brought Kenma into volleyball. Kenma is good at it, he knows. He enjoys the thrill of picking apart an opponent and finding a way through. He enjoys the low hum of industrial AC in a room full of teammates. He enjoys the way Kuroo’s face will go all strong and proud on the court. He can’t picture the sport without his best friend slotted inside of it, anchoring everything to the ground.
“I’m not going to quit,” Kenma says at length. “I think that would be kind of lame.”
“Will you have any fun though?” Kuroo’s voice has gone all contemplative and low. The words Without me echo between them, unsaid. “I don’t want you to keep doing it because you feel obligated if you’re going to be miserable.”
Kenma rolls his eyes.
“Maybe not everything is about you, Kuro.”
Kuroo sighs forlornly.
“And what a sad reality that is, don’t you think?”
Kenma rips up a fistful of grass and tosses it at Kuroo. Kuroo laughs, freer this time, uglier.
“I’m going to finish the season because I said I would,” Kenma tells him. “It’s that simple.”
“Alright,” Kuroo acquiesces. “I’m sorry for doubting you. It won’t happen again.”
Kenma laces his fingers together and lays his cheek down on them, face tipped towards Kuroo. He feels a bead of sweat work its way down his back. From this angle, Kuroo staring down, he looks sort of untouchable. Saitama sunset, fingers coated in dust from a konbini bag of chips, a monolith of cypress and wood stain. Only a year older, but brimming with a confidence that Kenma has never been able to get his own hands around.
Kuroo tips his head to the side, his stare settling in Kenma’s. A soft smile plays around the corners of his mouth.
“Do you like being here?” Kuroo asks quietly. “With me?”
And Kenma thinks it should all go unspoken. Kenma thinks that Kuroo knows him; what he likes and dislikes. Kuroo knows the answer, but he asks the question anyway. There’s something beneath it, something deeper, something that Kenma is too afraid to reach for. He’s brushed hands with it once or twice. He does that same thing now; he lets his fingertips skim the surface of something grand and untranslatable and holds Kuroo’s golden gaze.
“Yeah,” Kenma replies. “I do.”
Kenma’s parents look at his report card, riddled with A-pluses and glowing compliments from his teachers, and they say, “Alright, well, good, this is what we wanted.” And they’re not happy. Kenma is seven and his parents are not proud, merely tolerant, and there is a difference that reads like the gap between desert and oasis. Kenma nods, he goes upstairs, he goes to sleep, and he doesn’t know any better, really, he doesn’t know that it should be different. Kenma is seven and there is a clattering heart in his chest and a slow-moving spirit behind his claw-ribs and his parents are not proud of him because there is nothing to be proud of. He learns this in increments for the rest of his life. Small doses of a molasses-moving poison.
He’s sure there’s something sad and tragic buried in the marrow of that, but he can’t be bothered to look for it.
Kenma is nine and blinded by childhood when Kuroo wraps long fingers around his wrist and tugs him along the sidewalk outside their houses.
It is a cloudy day, the sky heavy with the promise of rain, and Kuroo moved into this neighborhood a year ago. It’s the sort of day that you never say out loud; you recall it in flashes in three years when you’re bent over your sink and scrubbing your hands raw and dry with dish soap. The clouds, purple and blue, bruising in the atmosphere. Kuroo’s fingers on Kenma’s wrist, bone clacking against bone. The golden daze of childhood. The air, like something you’re remembering as you live it, sticky and hot. Kuroo’s smile.
In the year they’ve spent stumbling into friendship—Kenma’s apathetic blink, Kuroo’s stubborn reappearances—Kuroo does not touch Kenma. Kenma’s natural state does not invite physical touch, so he does not blame Kuroo for the lack of trying; furthermore, he is grateful for it. Kenma keeps his life confined to the one-hundred-and-sixty-nine centimeters of his height and the width of his shoulders and that is that. He has no need for more hands; he has two of his own already.
But nine years old is a fever dream, and Kuroo curls his long fingers around Kenma’s wrist, and Kenma does not pull away.
There is no more to this memory, really. There is just the symmetry of Kuroo’s jaw as he turns and pulls Kenma along. There is just the drag of Kenma’s feet, scraping gently against the sidewalk, as he accustoms himself to the feeling of skin-to-skin. There is just the way that Kuroo is ten years old and already living his life as if he has never doubted anything.
Kuroo’s fingers are warm. His grip is sure.
Consider that Kenma should wrench his arm away and turn tail and hide. Consider that he does not want to. Consider that a few minutes later, rain begins to splatter their heads, and instead of turning to head home, Kuroo begins running. Consider that Kenma runs after him.
Kenma is six and he learns that life is about winning or losing. He plays video games because they have set parameters and calculatable outcomes and he understands the actions he has to perform in order to complete an objective. Kenma plays volleyball because he can sharpen his skills to succeed, and also because Kuroo told him to. Kenma does not weigh his life in terms of desire or happiness, but in the unarguable terms of win or lose.
Kenma is thirteen and breathless in the snow when Kuroo says, “You’re not as good at snowball fights as you are volleyball, Kenma.”
Kenma glares at him.
“There’s no strategy,” he snaps. “It’s just swinging your arm and praying.”
Kuroo laughs, loud and unapologetic.
“You could aim, Ken,” he chuckles. “Maybe you’d have some luck.”
Kenma shakes his head and lets himself tumble down into the snow. Water immediately soaks his pants, but he tries not to pay it any mind as he sits with his gloved hands in his lap. Snowflakes flutter down gently, adorning Kuroo’s hair and lashes and shoulders. Kuroo is fourteen, the time of year where they are only one number apart, and his face is rosy and pink with cold. He follows Kenma to the ground, their shoes knocking together as Kuroo settles himself next to Kenma.
“This is nice,” Kuroo says. He is good at genuinity. “Thanks for letting me drag you outside.”
It should be notable that Kenma hates being tired and Kenma hates leaving bed. He has faced both of these loathings for Kuroo today, and it could mean everything, or it could mean nothing at all.
“I have free will, you know,” Kenma tells Kuroo. “It’s not really dragging me if I agree to it.”
Kuroo waves a hand.
“It feels like I drag you everywhere,” he says.
There’s something underneath that. Something that means more than what he says.
Kenma shrugs under the puff of his huge olive green coat. Kuroo’s coat, actually, forced upon him the moment that Kenma could even formulate the thought, I’ll go without a coat. Kuroo has this small grin playing around his mouth, gentler than usual. His brows are a little bit pulled together.
“You don’t,” Kenma says. He is not as good at genuinity. He tries anyway. “If I didn’t want to be somewhere, I wouldn’t be.”
Kuroo’s grin breaks into dawn, shining and broad.
“We’ll be best friends forever, Kenma.” Kuroo falls onto his back into the snow, the thump of his body muffled by powder. Kenma stays sitting up so that he can watch Kuroo better. “It’s that easy. Please don’t argue with me.”
Kenma should feel stifled by the declaration. He should be gasping for breath under the diligent weight of Kuroo’s affections. He should be hiding and scared under the blistering heat of Kuroo’s unspoken love, but he isn’t. They don’t say that word—they don’t say love. The ground is frozen underneath all the snow; it likely won’t thaw until March. Kenma doesn’t mind that. He likes winter. He’s beginning to like the way that Kuroo sprawls out over the white blanket of snow, golden as if he should be burning straight through it.
“I wasn’t going to argue,” Kenma says. “You got defensive before I could say anything.”
“Force of habit. You love to argue with me.”
“No, I don’t.”
Kuroo’s silence says, Point made.
Kenma huffs. He tips his face up to the drift of falling snowflakes and lets them prick his face with little pinpoints of cold. Kuroo holds the whole image at the bottom, his strong hands anchoring Kenma’s bones into his body.
“Hey, Kuro,” Kenma begins. “Do you want to go play games?”
Kuroo sits up. His eyes, when they land on Kenma, widen as if he has just realized something wonderful. His gaze is too hard to hold. Kenma tries anyway.
“Yeah,” Kuroo answers. “Of course, Kenma.”
Kenma is twenty-five and engulfed in a feeling when he steps out into the dry heat of Rio de Janeiro with Kuroo.
Rio is framed by mountains and covered in palm trees. Kenma is older now; on a good day, he would almost consider himself worldly. He has traveled to Europe, to America, to most of the prefectures in Japan. Bouncing Ball LLC is thriving and flourishing into the mammoth mouth that is the gaming industry, and Kenma does not allow himself to be swallowed. He grows his life into something worth waking up to—energy drinks that he keeps in the fridge, blazers that Kuroo bought him when he got his corner office—, and yet stepping out of a car into Rio de Janeiro for the first time is the most dizzying thing he has seen in years.
He thinks that it probably has something to do with the man standing at his side.
“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,” Kuroo says, spreading his hands to mimic the distant shape of Christ the Redeemer. “Nothing beside remains.”
Kenma’s nose wrinkles.
“What are you talking about?”
Kuroo drops his hands as their chauffeured car zips away into traffic. He shoots Kenma a meaningful look.
“It’s poetry, Kenma,” Kuroo tells him beseechingly. “Didn’t you take a literature class in college? Was it not a gen ed?”
“I thought it was a Bible quote.”
“Why would I be quoting the Bible?”
Kenma looks at Kuroo like he’s stupid and points to the statue.
“Because that’s literally Jesus?”
“The question was less about situational context and more for you to consider who the hell you’re talking to.” A smile begins to curve Kuroo’s mouth. Kenma wants to press all ten fingers to it. “It’s Percy Shelley. Ozymandias.”
Kenma shakes his head.
“Gesundhuit.” He jerks his chin forward, where a wooden path extends between two high-rise condominiums and leads to the beach. “Do you want to go look at the water or something?”
Kuroo is twenty-seven and too impeachable to be true. He has grown into himself with an aching, slow burn. Kenma’s ribs are saccharine and heavy with the weight of him. Kuroo stands in sunny Rio in slacks and a blazer that cuts him stark black and white against the sky, with smile lines and crows feet, and it makes Kenma’s head hurt to look at.
Kuroo looks down at himself, and then back up at Kenma.
“Eh,” he says after a beat. “Why the hell not?”
They walk the rickety wooden boardwalk to the beach. Kenma told Kuroo two months ago that Hinata would be in Brazil this time of year, and Kuroo did not miss a beat when he replied, I know, Ken. Would you like to fly there with me? Kuroo is twenty-seven and he holds the reins of control with loose, lazy hands.
At the end of the wooden steps, Kuroo shucks off his shiny black loafers and socks. Kenma mirrors him. They step onto the sand, burning hot on the soft soles of Kenma’s feet. Shoes dangling from their fingers, they step carefully in time—always in time—closer to the ocean. People mill about, shirtless and sweating and granulated, throwing footballs and running into the sea spray. The two of them are decidedly out-of-place. Kenma finds, maybe for the first time in his life, that he does not care.
They pause a few feet away from the lapping of the waves. Kuroo draws in a deep breath, his eyes sliding closed.
“You always told me you never cared for leaving Tokyo,” Kuroo says mildly, eyes still closed. “Funny the things you’ll do for Hinata Shoyo.”
“I’m sponsoring him,” Kenma answers. “I have to watch him play.”
“I know.” Kuroo’s eyes reopen, gluing themselves to the blue horizon line. “I’m just saying, Kenma. It’s funny.”
“I’m not laughing.”
Kuroo snorts.
“You never are.”
Kenma is sponsoring Shoyo, sure, but it’s not quite the right answer. Kenma is twenty-five and trying to discern how much longer Kuroo will be patient with him. Kenma is digging his toes into Brazilian sand and trying to figure out how much longer he can do this.
Would it be losing, if Kenma admitted that he is less-so here for Shoyo and more-so here to watch the slow spread of Kuroo’s smile under a Southern hemisphere sun? Would it be losing, if Kenma took a fistful of Kuroo’s shirt collar and dragged him down, down, down, into something that Kenma can finally hold? Would it be losing, if Kenma let himself feel the shape of a word that he has never had any use for?
“We look kind of stupid,” Kenma says, instead of all that.
Kuroo chuckles.
“We can go if you’d like,” he replies. “I know how you feel about people staring.”
Kenma shrugs. The motion draws Kuroo’s golden gaze.
“I don’t mind,” Kenma says. He hopes it is an answer that Kuroo understands. “We can stay a little while longer. I don’t mind.”
Consider that Kuroo is next to him. Consider that Kuroo’s is the only stare that matters.
Kenma is seven and apathy is something steadfast. He is small and particular and acutely aware that he is not fun to be around. He does not want to play, or run outside, or make crafts, or really move much at all. He likes video games. He likes sleeping. Kenma is seven and he speaks softly and he is too smart for anybody else. Other children do not understand him, and he does not try to make it easier. The turning tail and running is a common response to Kenma’s tongue and eyes, and he’s alright with that. Kenma is seven and apathy is what he curls up in at night to sleep.
Kenma is eighteen and the blue-gray of a bruise when he realizes that he is missing a piece of himself.
Kuroo has been gone for three months, and his absence is cardiac. Kenma had thought he’d be perfectly unaffected, but instead the space where Kuroo used to be arrests Kenma’s entire system in a gray grip. The vending machine where they would meet before practice is haunted. The ginkgo trees they would pass under after school are haunted. The hallway going gold with sunlight at two-forty-three when Kuroo used to walk by Kenma’s last class every day is haunted.
You never realize that something is vital until it is ripped out of your torso. The loss is forceful, the exit wound is a jagged mess of tissue and flesh. Consider a body suddenly without its heartbeat. Consider a body suddenly without its hands.
And it’s not like Kuroo fucking died. Really, it’s dramatic. Kuroo is attending university, thinking about a future in sports promoting, consulting Kenma through every step as if Kenma’s input matters at all. Kuroo has promised to be there for every volleyball game, and he hasn’t broken it yet. Kuroo is a phone call away. Kuroo is one word away. Kuroo doesn’t make Kenma tire himself out on the sport that is sprinting after somebody who does not want to stay. Kuroo stays. Kenma wants him to.
Perhaps that’s the worst part. Kenma did not realize until Kuroo was gone how much he liked his best friend’s gravity.
Kenma shuffles his feet away from Nekoma on a cool day in October and pulls out his phone. He calls Kuroo’s number. The sky overheard is blue, the crystal kind that you can just feel magic in. Kenma wonders if Kuroo will want to hear about the new attack he thought of to try and utilize Lev Haiba better. He wonders if Kuroo will approve. He wonders if Kuroo keeps Legend of Zelda in his college dormitory. The phone rings once, twice, and then Kuroo picks up.
“Hey, Ken,” Kuroo greets, his voice washing over Kenma like moonlight, or alcohol fuzz. “I was just thinking about you, you fucking psychic. What’s up?”
And Kenma’s head doesn’t warm to an absurd degree. It doesn’t.
“Hey, Kuro,” Kenma mumbles back, sucking in warm air through his nose. His sneakers thump gently against the concrete sidewalk. He passes a modern looking konbini where they used to pick up umeboshi and electrolytes after practice sometimes, and Kenma thinks that even Kuroo’s voice over the phone is flushing out the ghosts. “Nothing’s up.”
“This is why you’re my favorite conversationalist,” Kuroo drawls, teasing. “So forthcoming and informative.”
“Oh, shut up,” Kenma snaps. “Maybe I just wanted to talk to you. Don’t we do that? Don’t we just talk sometimes?”
It is an accident, how vulnerable that lands. Kenma flinches from the rawness of his own words, startled by the naked transparency of his voice. He blinks at the horizon line hidden between Tokyo’s buildings. He imagines a great red dragon curling between them, breathing fire, smiling at Kenma like the world is ending.
Kuroo chuckles. Whiskey burn. Cornflower unfurling. August sunrise.
“Of course we do, pudding head,” Kuroo says. “All the time, if I had it my way.”
Kenma presses the back of his hand to one of his cheeks. He thinks it’s a miracle that it doesn’t come away stained a dark, dark red. If this were a video game, he would have fallen to the ground, struck through the chest with an arrow.
“You’d get bored,” Kenma tells him. “Talking to me all day.”
“No,” Kuroo disagrees immediately. “Kenma, I’ve met plenty of people at university so far, and I keep wishing anybody was half as interesting as you.”
If this were a video game, Kenma would be dead.
As it stands, this is real life, and he still might be dying.
“I wouldn’t get bored,” Kuroo insists, as if the declaration is nothing out of the ordinary. “Tell me about practice. You just got done, yeah? How’s our sweet, bastard Haiba?”
Kuroo Tetsurou is a masterclass in this, Kenma has learned. He is the crowning champion of making love look so easy that Kenma has to turn away. He is a harbinger of simple grace, easy care, thoughtless kindness. He doesn’t have to try. He runs Kenma’s whole world, steady-handed and warm as an open flame, and he makes love look so easy that Kenma has to shield his eyes.
“He’s stupid,” Kenma hears himself say. “I made him do one-hundred receives earlier because he couldn’t nail the quick attack I told him to.”
Kuroo laughs.
“That’s cold, Ken,” he says. “Make it two-hundred and some blocks next time.”
Kenma huffs his own version of a laugh. Kuroo makes a little hum at the sound.
They talk until Kenma gets home, and then Kuroo must read Kenma’s mind, because he asks, “Would you like me to come over and bring some snacks?” and Kenma doesn’t have to say anything more than, “I probably won’t be asleep for a while, anyway,” for Kuroo to understand that he means, Yes, I would like that.
Kenma is fifteen and wading through the sticky heat of Tokyo when Kuroo takes his hand for the first time. It is warm, it is August, and Kuroo came from this, Kuroo was born from the bumblebee buzz and the crackle of fire and the brown-orange ache of fall, and he is beautiful standing in the middle of it all. They get out of practice a little bit early, and Kenma has a new game waiting for him at home that he can’t wait to try, and Kuroo knows this.
Kenma is fifteen. Kuroo is seventeen. Kuroo is the smartest man Kenma has ever met, and Kuroo never makes him feel unwelcome.
“Kenma,” Kuroo says, lazy smile fixed in place, his red jacket fluttering around his broad frame. His voice is so deep. Only a teenager, but commanding attention like some general on a black war-horse. Kenma pictures him gilded in golden armor and white fur and likes the image, weirdly. “You’ve still got some energy left, yeah?”
Kenma mutters, “No.”
Kuroo chuckles like he knows better. He does. He always has.
“I don’t ask you for much,” Kuroo says. “So know that this is for your own good. Come on.”
And then he reaches down and laces his fingers through Kenma’s and takes off.
It is remiss of their entire lives together, if Kenma is honest. Kuroo, carefully plotting every turn, lying patiently in wait for Kenma to be ready to give himself away. Kuroo, his prodding fingers gentle and always correct, telling Kenma he is ready before Kenma even realizes it himself. Kenma, letting Kuroo pull him along. Kenma, letting Kuroo kill him a little bit.
Kenma grips Kuroo’s hand. Tightly. Tightly. He hangs on like Kuroo is trying to get away. He thinks he would die if that happened.
Kenma is nineteen and made of blood-red pulse and sunset when Kuroo asks, “Can I assume you’re done with volleyball now?”
A smile curls around the words.
Kenma is standing in a red graduation gown, a black cap on his head. The sun is setting, because it always is, and a cloud of just-graduated third years mill around him on the green soccer field where they’d held the ceremony. Kuroo stands in front of Kenma in a white button up and nice beige slacks, and he is grinning so wide that Kenma thinks the edges of his mouth should be hurting. He looks down at Kenma as if there is no other view he would prefer. Kenma doesn’t hear anything behind the words, this time. They are just a buoyant, teasing question, a reminder of all the times they’ve been here before. Kenma feels something in his chest constrict.
“Yes,” Kenma says, sighing. “Completely. Sorry to let you down.”
Kuroo shakes his head. Hair spills in his eye, and he brushes it away with a hand.
“That’s okay,” Kuroo says. He opens his arms, wide and solid; not expectant, just steady. “I’m proud of you, Ken. You’re gonna make a damn good CEO one day.”
And maybe there’s nothing to be proud of; maybe Kuroo is just saying it to say it. Maybe it’s obligatory, maybe it’s best friend duty, maybe it’s empty kindness. Or maybe this is Kuroo, Kenma’s best friend, and he never says anything he doesn’t mean. Maybe Kenma needs to rethink some things. Maybe, if Kuroo says there’s something to be proud of, then there is.
And what choice does Kenma have? What choice has he ever had?
He falls into Kuroo’s arms. He falls. He falls.
And what is pride, anyway? What is enjoyment? The swell of trumpet-fanfare in your chest, screaming out involuntarily from behind your teeth, leaving hot breath hanging in the air? The clog of something sticky sweet in your arteries, pushing its way to your heart, trying to kill you? Or, what? You think it’s something softer? Something more suited for the human body to hold?
Kenma is fourteen and it’s not always apathy, if you squint. Sometimes Kenma cares about the heavy weight of eyes on his form, cloying and screaming like a pack of wolves. Sometimes Kenma cares about volleyball, all-consuming and vicious as it is. Sometimes Kenma cares about Kuroo Tetsurou, with his sharp teeth and fleshy heart and his calcified amber eyes. Kuroo is this stubborn, ancient thing, as if surely Kenma was right and Kuroo was born from some Autumn a hundred years ago, naked and stretching and lithe to a world that welcomes him with open arms. Kuroo is perpetual sunset. Kuroo pulls Kenma outside. Kuroo pulls Kenma through a daydream.
All the time, Kenma cares about Kuroo Tetsurou. It is not apathy at all, when it comes to him.
Kenma is twenty-seven and learning what it feels like to touch something divine when he kisses Kuroo.
Tokyo is a shimmer around them, an oil-spill of gut deep longing and almost two decades of climbing their way into a life together. They’re standing in Kenma’s penthouse apartment, the city laid out below them. Kuroo cuts a figure in front of the glass windows, his whole outline this wandering expanse of equation and wit and handsome wisdom. The tips of their socked feet brush. The apartment smells like the curry Kuroo just made.
Kuroo asks, softly, “Can I kiss you?”
And Kenma says, “Yes.”
And Kuroo reaches, his hands covering Kenma’s waist, but he pauses before he dips down. His brow crumples a bit, in that way it always does when he’s thinking something very important through.
“Do you want me to?” he asks.
Consider that Kuroo knows the answer. Consider that Kuroo always asks anyway.
“Yes,” Kenma answers quietly. “I want you to.”
Kenma is twenty-seven and his palms burn when he sets them on Kuroo's cheeks and pulls him down. Their lips brush. Kenma nearly faints, and he hardly has a way to describe it. It is the constant ringing of heartbeat in your ears, ever-present, always humming just below the surface. All you must do is press your fingers to your wrist to feel it flutter, tangible and sweet. It is remembrance, or perhaps a lack thereof. What is there to remember if nothing ever leaves? Kenma has never had to reach around in the dark for the whisper of Kuroo’s laugh or the shape of his hands. Kuroo has always kept himself just an arms-length away, proximal and fireheart-steady and kind. Kenma does not have to run after him. Kenma does not have to force himself to stay. Consider the feeling of being alive. Consider the fact that Kenma feels this in direct correlation with Kuroo Tetsurou.
Kuroo kisses him. Kuroo cups his hands around Kenma’s face and kisses him as if they have been doing it their whole lives. Kuroo tastes like coffee. Like sunshine. Like childhood, or forever. He kisses Kenma like they have been here a hundred times before, and maybe, in a way, they have been.
And Kenma kisses him back; eagerly, ardently.
Is this what you wanted? Does this mean losing? Does Kenma handing over his heart to be broken mean that he accepts the bite of loss for the rest of his life?
Kenma is seven years old and a boy is standing in his own driveway, staring at Kenma from one house down. The boy is clearly tall, all gangly limbs and messy bed head, and his eyes give Kenma pause. They have a look in them that Kenma sees in the mirror every day. Kenma feels recognition fire through him, soft sparks of explosion, igniting synapses and nerves until he feels like he’s burning up. He tells himself he doesn’t care. He can’t afford to care.
But the boy is very nice to look at. Kenma stands, his PSP dangling out of one hand, and stares.
The boy cups two hands around his mouth and says, “Hey. I just moved in. My name’s Kuroo.”
Kenma doesn’t reply.
Kuroo cocks his head and continues, “I like your hair. And your PSP. What do you play?” His voice comes out sort of timid. Like he’s nervous.
Kenma raises one hand and waves the boy forward. He doesn’t want to yell; this isn’t worth yelling. He’s just curious, that’s all. Kuroo obliges without question, bounding through the space between them with long legs and settling in front of Kenma. His presence is solid. Assured. Kuroo is eight years old and the warmest thing Kenma has ever felt.
“I’ve probably played anything you can think of,” Kenma says quietly. “I’ve probably beat it, too.”
Kuroo’s eyes light up. Kenma shifts awkwardly in the face of that. He’s never had somebody turn that expression on him before. He’s not sure how to feel about it.
“That’s pretty cool,” Kuroo says. “Do you wanna play together sometime? Maybe you can show me some tricks.”
And losing is far away from Kenma’s mind, because he realizes that, okay, maybe he does want to. He nods. Kuroo smiles. Kenma doesn’t realize it, but he is doomed.
Kenma is twenty-six and he is lost and confused on a warm July night, and he sits down at his window and stares out at a golden sunset and he reconsiders the terms of his existence. He moves some things around; he shifts some definitions. He is finding that it is easy to redefine his life when it is in the name of Kuroo. Everything is easy when it’s about him.
Has he been losing his whole life, then? Has he been losing since he met Kuroo?
Kenma is twenty-seven and Kuroo is pulling away, lips slick with spit and face pink and pretty, and Kuroo is asking him, “Are we finally doing this, Kenma? Is this something you want?”
And Kenma has sat down and picked his way through the battleground that is childhood and expectation and memory and future and pride. And Kenma has realized some things. And Kenma is thinking of Kuroo on a beach, just staring and staring and staring, uncaring of any skyline so long as Kenma was there. And Kenma is thinking about the Kuroo of right now, grown up and carved with laugh lines, his hair better tamed and his eyes deeper than any color or ocean. And Kenma is older now. Kenma has been wrong about a lot of things. And Kenma knows, now, in a way that he never has before, what it means to want something.
And he has decided that to lose or to die would be to let the man in front of him slip away, unblemished by Kenma’s fingers. To let it all tumble to ruin would be to push away a reaching hand and try to live forever with his stomach curling in on itself, empty and acidic. To let the world lead him would be to tell Kuroo, No, my future is not covered in you. To lose or to die would be to lie.
But to win. To let the world fall away. To live.
Kenma holds his hand out. Thoughtlessly, Kuroo takes it. His palm swallows Kenma’s up, firm and undeniable and so, so warm. Kenma stares up into Kuroo’s face and doesn’t have any words. Kuroo asks questions and he knows the answers. Consider the sunlight between them. Consider Kenma’s wanting hands.
He reaches up and pulls Kuroo down into another kiss. It is answer enough.
Kozume Kenma and Kuroo Tetsurou walk through Tokyo’s low hum of fervor and vivacity on the bright morning after the whole world shifted, and Kuroo is holding Kenma’s hand, and Kenma thinks that he likes this. He thinks that he likes this, only this, only him, with vehemence and passion, for forever.