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I.
He’s used to it in part. The curling around things. Fitting himself into others’ lives and weaving himself between their interests. He is decorative in nature, reliable in theory, suffocating in practice. Kuroo worries, sometimes, that he’s more a boa constrictor than he’s ever been a feline.
II.
He first told Kenma that he loved him when they were twelve and eleven, huddled together in a blanket fort that was destined to collapse by morning.
His mom had slammed the door so loudly that the poster Bokuto got him for his birthday had fallen and the glass of the frame had shattered. He’d climbed out the window ten minutes later, two sets of clothes packed into his backpack and his rock collection swaddled between the sets for safekeeping. His DS was in his left pocket and it swung every time he took a step.
Kenma’s house was two doors down but he kept his window unlocked for nights like these, when Kuroo’s mom and dad fought loud enough to bring about earthquakes and hurricanes, tearing down the walls and stringing up anyone who got in their way. It wasn’t too bad usually. Just when mom was home. She was the one who used the heavens as blankets and raw earth as her bed. She was the one who brought storms home as souvenirs.
When he got to the house he’d knocked three times on the glass, waited for Kenma to push the frame upwards, and then tumbled into the room. Kenma sat back down and Kuroo started assembling the fort around him. This moment was the eye of every storm he’d ever been caught in.
It was something practised. The extra sheets were in the closet in the hall. He took pillows from downstairs, mumbling an embarrassed hello to Kenma’s mom when she spotted him. He got the blankets last so he could take them off of Kenma’s legs and they’d already be warm when he spread them out. Then they’d both wiggle between the layers until their bodies were met from toes to hips to shoulders to hands, and they’d play something they were both good at.
They stayed like that for hours most days, pressed tight as if they could melt into one human being. Breaths synced, pulses steady, postures mirrored. Their blankets weren’t the heavens and their bed wasn’t raw earth, but Kuroo liked that more than the sound of blank silence or fruitful screaming, and he liked it much better when Kenma was beside him to help him breath and beat and be.
When the sun sank beneath the horizon, Kuroo would lean his head against Kenma’s shoulder.
There wasn’t so much stress when they were like this. It was KurooAndKenma against the world, a two headed monster that wanted nothing more than to seek silence and revel in the way its twin lungs inhaled on their own rhythm. There were no fighters trying to slay them, no npc’s asking for attention. Just their own little castle on a hill to keep them warm and safe.
Kuroo snapped his DS shut, sliding forward so he wasn’t leaning onto his elbows anymore. He yawned into the crook of his elbow, cheek squished against his own skin, and let himself watch as Kenma’s lips twitched. He had to be fighting something difficult. It showed in the smallest of ways, like how his eyelashes floated downwards for a quarter of a second before he really blinked, how his lips pulled closer than usual, how when a chunk of dark hair slipped from behind his ear he didn’t move to fix it in the slightest.
He watched Kenma like a lifeline, following a string to a destination, pulled through a labyrinth in the dark.
For Kuroo, he was memorizing something he already knew. They’d been best friends for four years, teammates for two, and Kuroo had watched Kenma the whole time. He didn’t want to lose him was the problem. Things changed so fast and people faster still, but Kuroo didn’t know what he would do if Kenma changed while he wasn’t looking. He didn’t know what to do if one day he turned around and Kenma was looking back at him. He didn’t know what he would do if one day Kenma saw him and left. If he was just a boy surrounded by storms that tore down walls and strung up the people around them and nothing else. Kuroo needed this. He needed Kenma.
“You’re staring.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
Kuroo scrunched his nose in distaste, intent on proving his innocence even when Kenma hadn't looked up to find his eyes. There was a comfortable silence after that, broken only by the soft press of buttons, and Kuroo rolled onto his side, gaze pouring back towards the ceiling of their pillow fort.
The sheet was freckled with love-worn Pac-Man figures. It made him think of days at the arcade when they’d found a quiet spot in the corner where high schoolers sometimes came to be gross and they’d camped there all day, taking turns playing until Kuroo complained that they’d need to eat something soon and Kenma had gone up to the front counter and gotten them one of those Pac-Man plushies from the wall without even having to ask which one Kuroo had wanted.
He missed the summer more than he thought.
“Do you wanna go to the arcade this weekend? We can take my bike, it's not that far.”
Kenma hummed, a sound that was soft in the back of his throat and wholly representative of the way he’d process Kuroo’s question once his brain could switch over from Boss Fight to Best Friend. It only took a few seconds and Kuroo didn’t mind waiting. Kenma looked up at him a half-moment later with an expression that was one of Kuroo’s favorites, the one where he looked like he’d been made up of soft watercolors and his smile was a quiet murmur of peach.
“Sure, sounds fun.”
“Cool,” Kuroo echoed, and when his smile mirrored Kenma’s he squished his face back into his arms so his relief wouldn’t be so tangible. Sleep was numbing his nerves and sparking a lazy happiness in the pit of his stomach that made him too loose with the way he expressed.
They were always quiet together, learning in tandem like two spectators in the world. He had to be careful around Kenma because of that. If he got too loud or became too much, they might break apart. They might stop moving in tandem, stop waltzing between storms, stop being Player One and Player Two. He wasn’t sure Kenma wouldn’t leave him when he found out who Kuroo really was. So he stayed quiet, and he shut his eyes when the sun tucked herself behind the hills.
Sleep was something Kuroo found quickly when he was with Kenma. He was too comfortable, too dazed by the warmth of laughter, too distracted by safety. He liked being with Kenma. He liked their little castle and their little routine. For this, he would give up his DS, his volleyball, his world.
“Goodnight,” the word came out melted by stars and safety, “I love you, Kenma.”
The stars took him before he could hear a response, washing over his thoughts with a blackness that would fill too soon with rose colored memories of clashing swords and bright colored heroes. His dreams were of friends who fought together and breathed the same air, held the same hearts, felt the same fears. They were of boys who came from stardust and built their homes under a sky that was bluer than the ocean and clearer than glass.
His dreams were of his favorite people in the world, the people they could be when they were together.
III.
He grew accustomed to change.
‘I love you’s became something weightier than they could manage in the light of day, the arcade started charging ten dollars for an hour instead of five, school started a half hour earlier than it had two years before. Kenma was better at video games than he was. Kuroo was taller than most of the boys in his year. Fall came and then winter and spring and summer.
His dad only came home on the weekends now. His mom hadn’t come home since his fourteenth birthday party.
Kenma came to school one day with hair the color of sunlight, and Kuroo had choked on his water for long enough that a third-year had stopped to ask if he was okay. He wasn’t.
The problem hadn’t been the color. He liked the color. It reminded him of honey and roses and the type of happiness that came from lying in the sun when you were cold. The problem was that change was something he couldn’t control, it was something ineffable. A concept that could hold his trust and then escape with it as fast as it had come. Kenma, his constant, was slowly becoming a thought that twisted his stomach and tangled his thoughts, and that was a change more dangerous than the rest.
Kuroo had mourned his loss by refusing to extract his hands from Kenma’s hair for two weeks.
Every break, every practice, every second they spent playing Mario Kart on the bedroom floor. An elbow leaned on Kenma’s shoulder, his fingers looped in the strands as he murmured something vaguely obscene. His hand ruffling over the top of Kenma’s head. A tug of blonde between his fingers, aggravating and affectionate.
It had taken three more months for the roots to grow out enough for Kenma to be annoyed.
Kuroo had gone to the store with him, following behind his friend with a casual silence that usually meant he was documenting which of his worst jokes would elicit the most vivid reaction from the cashier. When they reached the cosmetic aisles, Kuroo stood beside Kenma and watched him pour over the brand names. After a minute of indecision, he realized something was wrong.
“Which did you get last time?”
Kenma gestured towards the bottom shelf with a lethargy. “That one.”
“Did you not like–“ Kuroo tore his gaze away from his study of Kenma’s eyelashes to look at the shelf. Where Kenma had pointed was a gap between the boxes, shadowed by the metal above it. It was sold out. Oh. “We can go somewhere else? There’s a Seiyu by Yaku’s dad’s apartment.”
Kenma squinted. “No, it’s fine. I’ll just get this one.”
“You sure?”
Kenma nodded, picking up a box and turning to leave.
It’s only four hours later, camped in the pale white upstairs bathroom of the Kozume’s that Kuroo realizes what a horrible decision this had all been.
The room reeks of bleach, stinging within their lungs with a fury that threatens to overtake any attempt at willpower. Kuroo squints through the inconsistency of the fumes, his eyes tearing up for a moment before he wrenches the window open. A thin strip of grime lifts from the sill and falls down into the shower. Fresh air seeps into the room. Kenma lets out a sigh.
“Was it this bad before?” Kuroo asks, stepping out of the bathtub. Kenma’s hair is wrapped in a thin sheet of plastic, shining in the bright lights, and when he looks at Kuroo, the faint idea of an egg floods his thoughts. Kuroo hides his laugh with a cough that sounds more like he’s choking.
“No, but it seems like it’s working faster this time, so.” His eyes are back in the mirror, watching the roots of his hair in half-hearted curiosity. It is lightening faster. Kenma’s hair is already a rusty sort of brown and they have fifteen minutes left till he washes. It looks nice. It looks different. Kuroo keeps catching himself stare as Kenma changes like the seasons in front of his eyes.
From fall to winter to spring to summer.
“Wanna teach me how to do the flurry attack thing?” Kuroo pushes past Kenma, bare shoulders meeting for a fleeting moment of raw electrocution, and Kuroo reaches up to pull his sleeves back down from where they’d been scrunched towards his neck.
Kenma follows behind him, unflinching. “It was in the beginning tutorial, Kuro.”
“Yeah, but no one learns anything from tutorials. You just see that Y means attack and B means sprint and then you button smash through everything else.” He knows Kenma’s face is warped by disgust at this comment. That was the intended effect. “And now you get to show me how to do the special stuff. It’s a win win.”
“I don’t see the second win in this situation.”
“The second win is you beating Thunderblight for me.”
Seventeen minutes later Kenma pushes the switch back into Kuroo’s hands to wash his hair out, and Kuroo spends another eight minutes throwing bombs into the mouth of a molduga, half bored and half missing the way Kenma had sat leaned against him for long enough that he’d become accustomed to the warmth.
When the bathroom door opens, there's a faint drizzle of steam in the air and the thick smell of soap. Kuroo finds Kenma’s eyes, watches as a drop of water makes the slow slide from a high point of Kenma’s cheekbone, down the side of his face, and onto his neck before it disappears into the fabric of his hoodie. Kenma’s hair is brighter than last time, pulsing with light, a diadem of slick gold running down to frame his face in warmth. He looks like something holy. An angel possessing a body. A heartbreak waiting to happen.
Kuroo realizes in this moment that he wants to kiss his best friend more than he’s ever wanted anything in the world.
Kuroo realizes in this moment that he’s been doomed from the start.
Kuroo realizes in this moment that he’s been staring like a deer in headlights.
“It looks nice! You look nice. It’s lighter,” he supplies, knowing Kenma would have noticed the way his words stutter in their rhythm. “It didn’t all fall out and leave you bald. Thank god for that.”
“Shut up.”
Kuroo grins. Kenma comes over and tucks his wet hair into the side of Kuroo’s neck, and his objections are weaker than they should be, his voice a little more broken than what should be allowed.
The change had been too gradual. It had been too slow, turning over in his veins like flower petals floating to the ground, and Kuroo wonders when he’d started watching Kenma as more than just a survival instinct and instead as a thought that twisted his stomach and tangled his thoughts. When had his adoration blossomed into a longing? It was overwhelming now that he had named it, pouring over every part of him with a guilt or a want or a regret.
The possessing angel next to him says, “Link is dying.”
Kuroo thinks he is too. “Fuck.”
IV.
Kuroo is made up of arms and legs and cat bitten tongues. He’s tentative in what he takes, starving when he takes it. His eyes are thieves even when his hands aren’t, stealing memories of his favorite parts and weaving his thoughts into a gallery of stolen art.
His favorite pieces are as follows:
Kenma’s smile hidden behind a curtain of blond. The surety of his fingers when they press down on a touch-soft keyboard. His eyes, wide and wild and golden. The curve of his ankle, the arch of his hip, the twist of his laugh in the air. The shape of a scowl. His arms reaching towards the sky, fierce and unrelenting. Shoulders curved into a lilting ‘C’. The way his words look as he speaks for Kuroo and only for him. The way his teeth glint in shallow light when he’s fed up with the night's shortcomings. His anger, his indifference, his care. The way he looks at Kuroo between a sea of faces, sharply present, sharply bright, sharp and sure of them even when Kuroo is not.
When it comes to Kenma, there is nothing he couldn’t love.
In his head it's some type of worship. Some devotion of grandeur. It’s clutching at a wish and loving the thought of it enough to make a museum of things you would never forget. He’ll take the collection to his grave and bury it as the last thing on his tongue, a show of simplistic sacrifice. He’ll choke on all the love as it comes rushing out of him, begging to split his lips as he swallows and swallows and swallows. Kuroo is sick. He is full. He blinks and the world is made of Kenma with all his bleeding memories and burning moments. Kuroo breathes and all he can feel is what it was like to be beside him. When Kenma stops at his side, the hunger hollows him out again and he remembers what it’s like to be made of arms and legs and cat bitten tongues.
V.
“Do you want to say that again?”
Kuroo smiles and the expression is like a crack in the earth, like the moment before Hades rescued Persephone, like the pounding of black hooves over dirt. For a moment he’s wicked. For a moment he’s cruel.
The boys across from them stand in ragged silence, their laughter long past their lips and lost in the presence of this threat. Kuroo stands in front of Kenma like a grotesque white knight, the fingers of his right hand painted in some first year’s blood as the boy holds his nose. There’s nothing but the sound of passing cars and the wet breathing of hurt.
The words wither in his throat, pouring over his tongue like barbs, pulling through his teeth like wretched things, “guess not. Fuck off.”
When he turns away, it’s as if he’s casting off some sort of abomination. There is violence in the act. He regards them with a disgusting hatred, with a power that shadows over their existence and always will.
And then the hatred seems to fade into amusement, the expression softens to pity, and he is once again Kuroo. He throws an arm over Kenma’s shoulders like it’s second nature, pulling his friend towards his chest and keeping him there. The act holds as much adoration as it does arrogance.
“Come on, let’s go home.”
The anger is burning still. It’s hot under his skin, hot enough that he knows Kenma can feel it too, searing lines onto the back of his neck, but neither of them pull away from each other as Kuroo guides them towards the car. He’s good enough at hiding it, but not good enough to hide it from Kenma.
Kuroo extracts himself from his friend a moment sooner than he usually would have. The air is dizzying.
Violence hides beneath his fingertips and behind his eyes as they climb into their seats, and when he forces the key into the ignition with a little more force than is entirely necessary, Kenma looks at him. It’s both disgusted and accusatory.
“It didn’t matter.” He says it very matter-of-factly, and for a moment Kuroo feels hysterical.
Kuroo tries at a smile, wrenches a hand through the tangles of his hair, refuses to look back at Kenma. “I know.”
The look deepens into something worse than a frown, something that plays a balancing act between exasperation and delirium, and when he speaks his voice mirrors the expression, “what they said doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”
“I know. Yeah. I don’t care either.” His voice is flat, a trick he’d learned from too many years of talking circles around people he needed to believe him.
“You’re just white knuckling the steering wheel for fun then.” Kenma is not one of those people.
Kuroo meets his gaze, a defeated smile taunting his features and blurring the jagged edges of his fury. A moment passes. He sighs. Kuroo can switch between disguises as easily as he likes, but that doesn’t mean Kenma has to believe them. They’re sparkling glamors between them and the world, but KenmaAndKuroo share hearts and lungs and veins. You can’t trick your own cells into believing you’re someone else.
“They were being assholes. It was annoying. They can’t just say that type of shit to you, Kenma, they’re basically asking to get decked.”
They’re both looking away now, the van’s engine purring beneath their hands.
Kenma glances out the left window, fast, before peering at Kuroo through a sheet of blond. He’s tired of the situation, Kuroo can tell.
“But you didn’t need to do that. That wasn’t even a fair fight,” he says after a second too long. His voice is almost as flat as Kuroo’s had been moments before, each word frayed with distaste. He’s arguing a point Kuroo doesn’t understand.
“They deserved it.”
“They were being assholes, and then you decided to be one too.” It’s not an insult. It’s a fact. It’s that Kuroo had made a show of his anger, that Kuroo had pulled Kenma into his performance like he was an accessory to be shown off. It’s that their words mean as little to Kenma as Kuroo’s rescue had.
Kuroo frowns. “Fuck. You’re right.”
The blood has dried enough to be sticky across his skin. When he goes to fumble through his hair for the second time in five minutes, it catches. His frown deepens.
“I’m sorry,” Kuroo continues. He wanted them to shut up. He wanted them to remember that they’d done something wrong. He’d wanted them to see Kenma and think of him, think of the feeling of pain as they’d laughed over something crude. He’d been wrong. “Can I make it up to you with pie?”
Kenma’s eyelashes are shining in the setting sun. His face is awash in reds and yellows, beaten into reluctant agreement by the concept of sweets, and Kuroo feels bad. He doesn’t need to choose Kenma’s fights. He doesn’t need to feel for the both of them. Sometimes Kuroo argues for the wrong parts of them, for the parts he feels like need protecting, and sometimes he just fights for himself.
Kenma nods in the light.
Kuroo shifts the car into drive.
VI.
He’s not insecure. He knows Kenma like a third limb, knows there’s nothing that could amputate him from Kuroo’s life in a million years. Not the sharpest knife, the deepest cut, the strongest pull. But Kuroo worries, sometimes, that it’s not an amputation he has to worry about. He’s not always the best friend. He’s gentle with Kenma, cares about him a little too much even when he knows he shouldn’t. He’s stubborn too, stretches his friend a little further than he knows he should. And sometimes Kuroo worries that he’s just something Kenma has, not something Kenma wants. You can grow accustomed to the leash around your neck always being there.
He doesn’t know how to make sure he matters. He doesn’t know how to let go either.
Sometimes when he holds Kenma’s wrist it’s a plea. Begging him to stay when he’s not threatening to leave. Sometimes when he pulls at Kenma’s hair it's a promise. He won’t leave either. Sometimes when he presses their bodies together, tucking them into the spaces no one else can fit, it's a thank you he can’t say any other way.
They are not Persephone and Hades. They never have been. There are no chains he could bear to wrap around Kenma, no pomegranate seeds he would feed him. They are Eurydice and Orpheus, and Kuroo knows the day will come when he turns around. Kenma will be there, eyes cast towards the sky as Kuroo falls into the murky nostalgia of oblivion. And they will be two one-headed monsters, half crawling apart with wounds that others will try and heal.
Until then, he’s someone to walk with. Ahead or behind or beside.
VII.
He slides behind Kenma on the couch, bracketing his legs beside his friend’s and pressing into his back so he can lean his elbows over Kenma’s shoulders. When he’s arranged them into one being instead of two, Kuroo’s hands find solace in Kenma’s hair. His fingers slide through light to dark, touching whispers of suggestion to lean back further into Kuroo’s grasp.
He’s being a menace and he knows it. Kenma confirms the fact.
“Stop it.”
Kuroo laughs then, loud and overtly annoying to anyone on the receiving end of Kenma’s mic, but he extracts his spiderweb fingers and pulls away until he’s just a solid surface behind Kenma, a wall he can lean against if he needs one. They sit in silence for a moment, just a two headed monster named KurooAndKenma. Breathing synced, heartbeats slow, skin warm with comfort. Kenma leans back. Kuroo exhales and the sound is something soft between them.
The screen washes with black, overlaid with a sharp red “Game Over” that sways over the darkness as if the letters are underwater. Kuroo snorts.
“Alright, loser, I’m going to work. See you later. There’s pizza or something in the fridge. If you don’t eat it, I’ll cry. So,” he stops with a look of extreme uninvolvement. The situation is out of his hands. He’s already pulled away to stand up and slink away.
Within the time it takes for Kuroo to cross the room, Kenma hums out a type of acknowledgement, his voice faraway as he agrees, “sure. See you later.” His screen is loading back to his previous save, and a set of avatars dance across the two-toned screen. For a moment they’re the only thing moving. There is no breathing, no hearts beating, no shared living for the statues they’ve become.
Kenma’s eyes are peeling him open, stealing his thoughts and asking him a question he can’t seem to answer in words. His hands are warm. His fingers itch. Kuroo knows that this is a lotus, this is a siren’s song, this is an addiction that abstinence won’t break. Somewhere he caught a strain of loose-tongued luck, and the infection has given him a best friend who sits in front of him and watches him with a gaze like a power tool. He’s waiting for the day that Kenma will find that inside these walls of marble there's nothing but dust and cracked stone. You can’t carve him into David. Kuroo can’t be what Kenma’s eyes ask him to be.
He carves his mouth into a one sided smile. “Link is freezing to death.”
“Shit.” The eyes are gone. Kuroo leaves a moment later, and when his hands shake he blames it on the cold.
VIII.
The bed is new. It’s new and big, or at least big compared to what he had before, and somehow that makes it supremely uncomfortable.
He doesn’t like open spaces, he doesn’t like being alone, he doesn’t like having this giant expanse of sheets that seem to leech all the heat from his body and remind him that he can’t sleep even with three blankets and a circle of pillows crowning his head. His skin is crawling with enough discomfort to make goosebumps freckle the flesh of his arms.
This isn’t home. Home is a twin sized bed pressed flush against his wall where he can curl into himself and be safe with enough walls put up to keep even his thoughts out. Home is where Kuroo can sit down and fall asleep as if the act itself is systematic.
Even here, with his sight frayed by exhaustion, he can’t seem to stop thinking for long enough to close his eyes.
Kuroo lurches up with a sort of hesitance, half brave and half nauseous before the preliminary emotion twists into the secondary one and then he’s really lurching up and out of bed. The feeling catches him off guard, dragging him by the neck until he clutches the doorknob and sucks in a breath. Some unknown despair presses hard against the back of his throat, coaxing his brain into the thought of retching. He swallows it down with a painful difficulty.
The kitchen light is off when he enters, but Kenma is still in the living room so he’s not entirely blind. Blue light dances on the walls of their apartment like a lit candle when he reaches the sink. For a moment it seems like he’s underwater, floating through sleep and waking, his footfalls heavy when they should be silent. Light from the refrigerator floods the room and the illusion vanishes.
He’s not alone. Kuroo should know that.
He’s not alone when he lifts a glass to his lips in the dark, looking for reassurance. He’s not alone when he stumbles to the kitchen at midnight, searching for something he won’t find. He’s not alone in a continent of gray sheets and cold thoughts, not when Kenma is only a wall away.
Longing grips him. It fills his veins, controls his teeth and tongue and thoughts until he’s somehow standing in front of Kenma in the dark, their bodies outlined in pale blue and flickering like tongues of flame. The air is cold, beating with a sentient heart that Kuroo is sure belongs to him. Kenma frowns at him. Their reactions are both delayed by drowsiness.
“You love me.” It's a statement. An accusation. A plea. Kuroo tries again, his voice pooling in his mouth like he regrets the words before they’ve been spoken, “you love me, right?”
They’re walking through flurry and slush now, the light pounding on their sides with the insistence of a snowstorm. Kenma’s mouth is sealed shut. His eyes are wide and wild and golden, and the sight makes Kuroo feel sick again. It’s something unnatural to them, this apprehension. It’s Kuroo’s fault.
Silence is not supposed to be so loud.
IX.
Morning is stained by regret.
“I think I should find a new place to stay.”
“Kuro.”
“I know what I said last night, and I get it, seriously,” his smile is forgiveness, its understanding, its agony. “I didn’t mean to—“
“Kuro.”
“I know you hate confrontation. I just didn’t want to let it sit.”
“It was 4am and you asked if I loved you.”
“Yeah.”
Kenma looks annoyed. His hair is falling over his eyes, half dark and half light, and Kuroo presses his fingertips into the stone countertop to keep from walking over and fixing it. They are strung on a tightrope made of sunlight, and Kuroo isn’t sure either of them can balance like this much longer. The drop is as wide as the space between them. He won’t make it.
The pause that comes next seems convoluted with thought, and Kenma opens his mouth once as if to speak. He then shuts it. Kuroo knows patience more intimately than he knows himself; he waits. Kenma’s expression sours amidst the tension, then:
“I do.”
Kuroo’s misery breaks for long enough to let out a quiet, “what?”
“I do love you.”
The words are a nail and mallet, a hammer struck down the middle of his chest. The feeling blossoms within him like wildflowers or an invasive species. He thinks that if he opens his mouth all that will come out is vines that drip hope and sprout colorful misery. The words aren’t fair.
When he can bring himself to speak, the sound is defeated. “Not like that, Kenma.”
Kuroo wants to leave. He wants to drag himself from this pool of repetition and never come back. He wants Kenma to see him for the way he isn’t and choose to stay despite that. He wants things that are selfish and things that are just, but instead he stays leaning against the kitchen counter like it will bear the entire weight of eleven years stuck in a macabre maze of mirrors where Kuroo steals bits and pieces of their hearts and stitches them together behind Kenma’s back.
He stays. That’s what they do.
The two headed monster begins to rip at the seams.
“I-- exactly like that.”
They are bleeding all over the floor. Kuroo doesn’t know how they’ll ever clean up a mess this severe.
“Don’t say that to me. That’s not fair to either of us and you know it,” he says, but the anger he wants to well up in place of all this blood is nowhere to be found. There is nothing. Just a building pressure looming around his thoughts and pushing. One body is becoming two, and from the corpse Kuroo feels the snakes circle him, suffocating him with his own heartbeat. Asphyxiation crushes him in the form of ten letters, four words.
Kenma stands up.
The walls are crumbling down around him. Beneath his feet is raw earth, above his eyes are the heavens. A storm is knocking at the door. Blood rushes across linoleum. The monster splits open a little further, and one body is made up of all arms and legs and cat bitten tongues while the other gets the guts, the heart, the brain. The only thing holding them together is a breath and a soft sound.
Kenma looks at him with eyes that see him fully, with a gaze that breaks bones and carves smiles. He is not looking for David, he is looking at Kuroo.
This is the eye of every storm he’s ever been caught in.
“Kuro,” Kenma’s hand finds his, tugging him to turn away from the countertop. He follows the touch like a lifeline. Kenma is good at a lot of things, but Kuroo doesn’t know how he manages to steal every ounce of his attention like this. The act in itself is criminal. A thief pocketing all of his favorite memories and replacing them with the current moment in a wash of pastel watercolors. “Is it okay if I kiss you?”
The question is sturdy. A wall of marble. Its broken glass from their mirror of mazes, a reflection of every time Kuroo has asked him ‘is this okay’ and waited for a nod on the worst days of his life.
He’s not sure if he says yes or mouths it, but the affirmation pools in his mouth like resilient hope.
Kenma moves as if they’re underwater, tucking a strand of blond tipped hair behind his ear with a measured slowness before the same hand finds the front of his t-shirt and drags him down. Kuroo’s hands move on their own accord, his palms pressing flush against Kenma’s jaw. His thumbs tuck themselves over his cheekbones, pulling brushstrokes of adoration so strong he swears he’ll open his eyes and see red where he’s touched. It is nothing like fireworks, nothing like falling into place, nothing like what his thoughts had provided each time Kuroo had conjured up the idea of this in the back of his head and let it simmer.
Kissing Kenma is unwinding the life they had lived together.
Everything that makes them KurooAndKenma comes apart where it’s been welded with star’s promises and freckled sheets , falling down around their feet as Kenma’s fingertips ghost over his skin with the same control that he does everything. Kuroo is desperate for this. It's not just the act, the physicality, it's not that he’s drowning in the feeling of Kenma’s hair, Kenma’s neck, Kenma’s lips over his like a grounding force. It’s the fact that they are finally separate and together. It's them. It’s always been them, and the feeling of them is something that could split apart entire beings and entire worlds and entire lifetimes until the only thing left amidst the rubble is this hidden devotion.
Kenma’s grip on Kuroo’s shirt relaxes. The cue in itself isn’t unusual between them, but the severity of their touch is, so Kuroo’s hands are gone a moment later, his fingertips a whisper on Kenma’s shoulders and shaking with something he knows is still fear. His breath is hot, curving down his throat like the old ghost of laughter. His body is searing with the memory of the tightrope, stomach high and waiting for the coming fall. The space between them is no longer a lethal drop, but a series of centimetres.
“I’m sorry,” Kuroo says.
“Why?” Kenma’s voice is softly scathing.
“I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”
Kenma uses the same hand that’s still knotted into Kuroo’s shirt to push him away, hiding the scrunch of his nose behind a curtain of hair that’s not there to cover him. Kuroo laughs at the familiarity of the action, at the way Kenma glares at him with a fierceness that could parallel the longevity of lightning, with a weight that tames storms and breaks hearts. Kuroo laughs at the way Kenma presses his face into his chest a moment later.
When the laughter has bubbled down into silence and his voice is caught between the confines of happiness and emotional exhaustion, Kuroo says, “I’m kind of stupid.”
Kenma hums into his shirt for a moment, the sound low and flat. “Yeah,” he murmurs, his lips tracing hot breath through to Kuroo’s skin.
They have survived an amputation now. They’ve made it through the sharpest knife, the deepest cut, the strongest pull, and the floor is covered in blood and love, mixing until the color red is one and the same to anyone who can see it. KurooAndKenma stand up, their bodies torn in half so that they are made up of monster organs and monster tongues and monster eyes, and for a moment they are just Kuroo and Kenma. For a moment they are just human.
But the world is cold without a second heart to keep you company, and the terrors that cut them apart are gone. There are no storms. There are no museums. There is no boa constrictor. Kuroo and Kenma heave one sigh from two bodies, and press their wounds back into each other, back into one. A monster reborn to love itself and seek silence and revel in the way its twin lungs inhale on their own rhythm. Beneath its feet, there is a river so red that no one can tell if it's love or blood.
“So, are you staying?” Kenma asks his shirt.
Kuroo remembers the distance that two bodies can be carried, the way his dorm for next year is four hours away by train. There's an ache building in his chest at the thought of breaking this little fire they’ve struck between their hands. He wants to hold this flame for as long as he can.
“Yeah,” he says it without a moment's hesitance, “I’m staying. I would have stayed. It just felt like I was cornering you into something with me being here. I don’t know. Sorry.”
Nekomata rounds the corner at the same time Kuroo rests his chin on Kenma’s head, circling over to push against their legs as the pair fold themselves into each other with all their locks and keys left behind. The cat meows, hungry and uncaring.
“It’s okay,” Kenma is unmoving within his arms. A second later he closes his hands into the fabric of Kuroo’s shirt. His cheeks are warmer than anything in the world, warmer than flame, warmer than the sun. “I’m sorry it took you so long to get here.”
The noise Kuroo makes is strangled. Nekomata bites his calf in annoyance.
“This is an ambush. When did you people plan this?”
They lean dangerously to the left, away from the jaws of their home’s resident four-legged menace until Kuroo’s hip hits the counter and he stumbles. His hands are still barely stable. There is still a fluttering echoing up from his stomach, a feeble feeling like dread, like he’s fallen into this with nothing but arms and legs and stars covering his eyes. The feeling suddenly tells him, in hushed tones, that it is easy to grow accustomed to the leash around your neck always being there.
“Stop thinking stupid thoughts.”
Kuroo blinks. “I’m not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
Nekomata lets out a yowl so tragically loud that the neighbors might as well call Animal Control. Kuroo frowns.
“Did you feed him?” he asks, a moment later.
“Yeah. A few hours ago.” Kenma turns while he says it, ducking down and away from Kuroo so that he can pet the soft grey fur away from the cat's eyes. Nekomata pushes against his hand, purring with a sudden ferocity at the attention he’s been granted.
Kuroo watches them, watches the way Kenma balances on the balls of his feet, watches the way their cat pushes and prods at Kenma’s fingers with his nose. There is still the sharp feeling of pressure against Kuroo’s lips, burning into him and reminding him that this is their apartment, their cat, their life.
Kuroo stills, caught on the way his life has swelled into a burning crescendo of one kiss and an act of simplistic domesticity. It's unrealistic. It’s undeserved. Somewhere along the way, Kuroo had convinced himself that Kenma was something he would always miss. He clears his throat, then:
“Can we do that again?”
Kenma stands up after giving Nekomata one last pat, goes, “sure, and his hands are on Kuroo’s shoulders as he’s leaning up to press their mouths together. Kuroo’s hands catch his waist. It is something practiced, this closeness. It’s something that makes Kuroo feel like his life has been made up of starvation, of savoring bits and pieces of what he’s always had.
When Kenma falls back onto his heels, his eyes carry a soft sort of pleasantry, like the watercolors have finally stolen the brightest part of him and kissed them into a haze. The severity that makes up his features, the sureness, the disinterest, it's split by muted distraction. There is no leash here, no chains, no pomegranate seeds. Kenma’s features slow into something like a smile.
“My stream starts in ten minutes. I have to go,” he says it like they’re not half dressed in the kitchen, as if this is a goodbye at a ball. As if they might never see each other again. “Brush your teeth.”
Kuroo groans. “You wouldn’t even be able to tell if I hadn’t said something!”
“I could tell as soon as you spoke.”
“You literally kissed me. Twice.”
“It was a sacrifice,” Kenma says, nonchalant, before he and the cat disappear into the hallway.
Kuroo is sure the end of the world wasn’t supposed to be this simple. It wasn’t supposed to be the effect of ten letters, four words. An insistence in the kitchen. He is sure the end of the world was supposed to be more than the burning of lips and the drowsiness of morning, more than eyes that are still clouded by sleep and hands still warm from embarrassment.
The world had been a nerve, stretched red and raw, and the end had been a statement made of stitches.
Kuroo turns to pull a mug from the cabinet, and he’s sure in that moment that he and Kenma are breathing in the same tempo, their hearts beating on the same pulse, their minds racing on the same waves.
X.
Kuroo’s lips were pressed against the inside of Kenma’s thigh, his lungs heaving a reprise like a symphony. His smile was sharp against Kenma’s skin, warm against cold. Kenma pushed his head away like he was an overactive dog, fingers threading through his hair and shoving.
“Can you act normal for one second?”
He could remember two birthdays at least where he had blown out his candles and wished to stay with Kenma forever. Apparently wishes have a long processing time.
“No,” Kuroo replies, the word more an exhale than a sound. He rests his cheek against Kenma’s bent knee, eyes shut. His overnight bag is still slung over his shoulders, along with another backpack and a half-rain soaked jacket that’s sticking to his skin with a fervor, but he lays another three kisses on what’s left exposed of Kenma’s knee as if he’s perfectly comfortable.
Kenma frowns down at him after a moment, his expression weakened, and he pulls Kuroo up next to him so they can curl into each other as one body instead of two. His game is forgotten.
It's been three months of separation, three months of missing games and missing voices, three months of busy schedules and falling asleep to the soft sound of breathing across telephone wires. Kuroo had forgotten the way they knew each other better than they knew themselves.
“How did you get the time off? I thought they wouldn’t give you the days,” Kenma says.
“I quit. Just at the store. The lab said I could have the week off so long as I made up the hours during the next few weekends. And I missed you,” Kuroo replies.
Their voices are dripping over the silence, words hushed and kind and mixing into one sound of sleepy happiness.
“That was dumb,” a pause, “I missed you too.”
Kenma’s hands push at the straps crossing Kuroo’s body, unraveling him from his spiderweb, and Kuroo lets him, falling back as Kenma leans into his body.
He undresses him slowly.
Kenma deals with his jacket first, fingers brushing down Kuroo’s stomach as he drags down the zipper, and then he drops the wet clothing on the floor to next pull Kuroo’s shirt up. Each action is precise. Each move is fierce in its subtlety. He makes it seem desperate and planned all at once, like he wants to take care of Kuroo now and forever, and Kuroo is sure he’s somewhere close to the verge of tears when Kenma pulls at him to stand up.
This is a lifeline. This a string in the dark. This is a rescue from the labyrinth.
Each rain soaked article is peeled from his body and left to dry on the hardwood by the time Kenma guides him into their bedroom and lays them down on top of the covers, face to face and met from toes to knees to hips to shoulders. KurooAndKenma heave one sigh from two bodies, and fall asleep as one being with wounds that heal in tandem and hearts that share a blood so red it's become love.