Work Text:
When Tetsurou was six years old— and, if possible, even cuter than this— a boy called Oda or something had pulled on Kenma’s hair. Kenma, who, at the tender age of five, had already developed a concerning ability to hold back tears, had proceeded instead to pick up the nearest rock at the playground and hurl it in Oda-or-something’s direction with a calm precision that suggested that he had been an assassin in a previous life.
What Tetsurou had mostly retained of this playtime interaction can be summarised in three memories: the first, of Oda dodging the rock by the skin of his teeth and vowing in that very moment to serve Kenma all his life henceforth like a turncoat from Game of Thrones. The second, of their kindergarten teacher saying now, now, that was just because Oda-kun likes Kozume-kun, sometimes boys will act out like that, isn’t that so, Oda-kun?
The third is of Tetsurou’s father, narrowing his eyes and gravely shaking his head when Tetsurou enthusiastically relayed this new anthropological discovery to him over dinner.
No, Tetsu, his father had said in his serious voice. Your teacher is wrong. Oda shouldn’t have bothered Kenma. You should be nice to the people you like.
Unfortunately, while Tetsurou did thoroughly internalise the concept of being nice to the people he liked, his father had refrained from commenting on what to do if said people had no objections to the whole hair-pulling thing. Metaphorically speaking, of course; since at the age of six Tetsurou had had yet another decade and a half to go before hair-pulling came full circle back to the literal. But metaphorically speaking, Tetsurou’s all-knowing and kind father had not touched upon the idea that hair-pulling might not actually be bothersome for some.
Had Tetsurou possessed the foresight and vocabulary at the time, he would’ve asked his father. What if hair-pulling is someone’s love language, he would’ve asked, but as it was, he knew neither what a love language was, nor that sixteen years later, he would be in love with Tsukishima Kei.
✤
‘Oh my God,’ Tsukishima hisses. ‘That’s so fucking rude. Put that back.’
Tetsurou has two skills that he has honed to besotted perfection when it comes to Tsukishima. The first is getting under his skin, which is the first thing Tetsurou ever did to him by virtue of spilling a limited-edition strawberry frappuccino down his shirt in the café next to campus, and hence comes as easy as breathing. The second is ignoring him, which is just another way of getting under his skin, but requires more effort from Tetsurou’s part. Because Tsukishima is as impossible to ignore as the urge to skip an 8 AM molecular genetics lecture, a u up? text from Oikawa Tooru, or that magic lychee cocktail Shimizu makes that tastes so deceptively sweet that you’ve had three glasses and are on the floor before you know it. On Tetsurou’s scale of irresistibility, Tsukishima definitely falls on the magic lychee cocktail rung.
Still, he’s worth every bit of the restraint it takes Tetsurou to ignore him, so Tetsurou ignores him, and continues twisting the lid off the container in his hands. It’s stupidly tiny and Tetsurou’s spent enough time with Alisa to know that in the world of cosmetics, price is inversely proportional to size, and so it is with extra glee that he grabs Akaashi’s expensive jade roller and dips it into Akaashi’s equally expensive— that smells like rose— cream. Its gleam in the light of Akaashi’s expensive little vanity lamp is frankly kind of disgusting, but he’ll take what he can get, which is Tsukishima’s drunk, horrified gasp as he rolls the cream onto his cheekbone.
‘You,’ he says in a stage whisper, ‘are so fucking disrespectful. You—‘
‘Do you hear that?’ Tetsurou interrupts, bored with the jade roller now and reaching for what looks like a box of jelly lip masks. He makes sure to do it quietly, so that Tsukishima can heed his instructions.
‘Hear what,’ Tsukishima says testily, but it falls flat, because just then, the gorgeous heavy silence of a winter night spent in a cozy, heated bedroom— is interrupted by a sound that would be suspicious without context, and is unmistakable with.
And while Tetsurou is more than happy to accept all the blame for about ninety percent of the predicaments Tsukishima ends up in— even though for the most part Tsukishima prefers cursing every generation of his own ancestors for copulating and eventually leading to his birth and hence his predicament of the day— this one has nothing to do with Tetsurou’s sixtieth deliberately misguided attempt at wooing him, and everything to do with Tsukishima’s own roommate. One could blame it on the inebriating nature of alcohol or the inebriating nature of the activities Akaashi and Bokuto are currently conducting next door, but whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t Tetsurou who chose the wrong bedroom to crash into, leaving Tsukishima no option but to take Akaashi’s. No, that was all Akaashi, and—
Tetsurou grins slow, pleased, and mean as another sound that is also all Akaashi fills the air again, this time accompanied by percussion.
‘That,’ he answers Tsukishima, who’s blushing so hard Tetsurou can see it in the mirror. ‘That squeaking. That’s your bed. In your bedroom. Respect is reciprocal and you haven’t been offered any. Now come here and help me open this nail paint.’
‘I am not going to come help you open the nail paint.’ Tsukishima gets up off the bed and paces, or tries to; he and Akaashi might be spoilt little princes paying for an entire apartment with their respective hot fathers’ money, but Tokyo is still Tokyo, and the price for filling up your bedroom with useless crap like vanities, wardrobes, and real beds is space. So Tsukishima takes one step forward, hits the wall between Akaashi’s bedroom and his own, and turns back around only to hit the foot of the bed. ‘Put it away and go home.’
‘I told you like thrice that I can’t. We promised Yakkun we wouldn’t wake him up again.’
‘That is not even remotely my problem. Go sleep in the kitchen.’
‘I’m not going to sleep in the kitchen. I was promised a bed and in a bed I will sleep.’
‘No you won’t,’ Tsukishima returns. ‘Because I’ll be sleeping here, and— wait, what bed were you counting on sleeping in if they’d gone into the right bedroom?’
Now, Tsukishima’s a smart guy. Tetsurou loves that about him, along with fifty-seven other things which include but are not limited to: his hair that is so silky that Tetsurou has to tug it every time he rounds the corner of their habitual table at the library in search of a new book; the fact that his pet peeve is people who sneeze loudly, which of course prompts Tetsurou to make his own sneezes as noise-complaint worthy as possible; the way his long coats fit him and make him look like an angel even though he’s a pissy twenty-year-old. Those are all great, but Tetsurou’s favourite thing about Tsukishima is definitely that little brain of his, which is so sharp that not even alcohol can dull it for too long.
It follows, then, that only four seconds are required for understanding to dawn on Tsukishima, and for the nearest object— a throw pillow, because Akaashi can afford those— to be launched at Tetsurou with no regard for the array of cosmetics behind him. Tetsurou catches it more out of instinct than anything else, lowers it to grin happily at Tsukishima’s face, which has turned a shade of red that only shrimp should be able to see.
‘What?’ Tetsurou says. ‘You’re telling me you would’ve said no? Let dear old Kuroo-san sleep out in the cold? It’s minus two degrees, Tsukki—’
‘Fuck off,’ Tsukishima splutters. ‘You’re sleeping on the floor.’
✤
Needless to say, Tetsurou does not sleep on the floor. Once he’s done painting the nails on his left hand an incredibly obnoxious mirror-like silver, he gets bored of the whole shebang and yawns loudly, stretches catlike and exaggerated, then looks over to the bed. Akaashi’s tall but not as tall as either of them, and it follows that his bed, while somewhere between a single and a double, is in no way accommodating of two gentlemen measuring over a hundred-and-ninety centimetres each.
And yet— Tsukishima is curled up on the left side of it, phone plugged into the nightstand outlet, scrolling through his phone without his glasses on. He seems much calmer now that Akaashi and Bokuto seem to have ceased their yoga-adjacent activities in favour of sleep, so Tetsurou tries his chance. There is, after all, a very conspicuous empty space on the right side of the bed— however small— and Tsukishima’s back is to it. Two years of friendship with him have taught Tetsurou the magnitude of that sacrifice, and he’s not one to let things go to waste.
So he slips out of his hoodie and straightens his T-shirt, then hesitates.
‘Can I take my jeans off? I’m wearing boxers, promise.’
Tsukishima snorts, doesn’t look up from his phone. ‘I love that you have to clarify. Do what you want. No socks though, I’ll kill you.’
Tetsurou blinks at him, the little blue square of his phone screen lighting up his face, his bored but bright eyes. Then he bends down and solemnly starts to roll his socks off.
✤
Trying to fall asleep with someone is like getting the world’s sloppiest handjob. You’re barely getting there and then someone shifts, and it’s gone again. At least, this is how Tetsurou usually feels, on a usual night when he’s usually in his usual bed with one of his usual bed partners, all of whom are incessant shifters to accompany his own incessant shifting. And it’s a whole ritual, all right, of huffing and poking ribs and squawking as ice-cold toes touch warm shins, and getting Kenma’s long fried hair out of his nose whenever they crash together, and it’s annoying as all hell but— as Tetsurou is currently realising— it is part of the process of going to bed.
No, Tetsurou realises, as he bites the inside of his cheek and tries not to bore holes into Tsukishima’s sleeping profile— which he can barely see anything of in the faint blue light of an extension strip next to the bed— it might even be vital to the process of going to bed. Because it’s been fifteen minutes with Tsukishima on his back and Tetsurou on his side, and neither of them has shifted a centimetre, and Tetsurou thinks he might go crazy if he doesn’t get to roll onto his other side soon, but he might go crazier if Tsukishima doesn’t give some kind of sign to indicate he’s alive. Like breathing, for instance, because Tetsurou hasn’t seen the fuzzy thick fabric of his unfairly cute sweater rise even once.
‘Hey,’ Tetsurou whispers. ‘Are you alive?’
Even from this close— close enough to smell the unseasonal fruitiness of his cologne— he can’t tell if Tsukishima’s eyes are open, and is left to complete silence for a beat, until the reply comes.
‘Unfortunately,’ Tsukishima says. ‘What do you want? Why aren’t you asleep yet?’
‘Why aren’t you asleep yet?’
‘See, if I was a single-celled organism like you, I’d have less thoughts and sleep more. As it is, I have troubles and responsibilities that you can scarcely imagine, and they keep me up at night.’
Tetsurou is scandalously in love with him. It gets worse by the day. ‘You’re such a snarky little boy when you get drunk. Your insults lose all sophistication. It makes me feel tingly.’
‘I am begging you to shut your mouth,’ Tsukishima sighs. ‘Now, do you need me to put on whale sounds so that you can skip off into dreamland, or are you going to be a big boy and count sheep in your head?’
Tetsurou’s phone lights up with a notification; in its grey glow he catches the last of a satisfied little smile on Tsukishima’s lips. It’s barely there but Tetsurou can tell when Tsukishima’s so much as smiling over the phone, so this is jackpot as far as he’s concerned, especially when so much of tonight was spent in different corners of the same party.
The thing about being in love with someone who’s too stubborn to admit they’re in love with you too is that their denial becomes the most endearing thing about them. Not in the Oda-or-something hair-pulling insistent way, but in the metaphorical hair-pulling as a love language way, which admittedly takes a lot of social awareness, a good sense of boundaries, and more patience than Tetsurou would think himself to have for other things.
What he means to say is, a lesser man would have been heartbroken at the way Tsukishima ditched him tonight to go discuss the failed potential of Tenet with Ennoshita by the window the moment they stepped into the party, but Tetsurou was delighted. It’s only been a month since Tsukishima realised he’s in love with Tetsurou, after all, and he’s still navigating it with a combination of pride and fear that suggests that he thinks it’s one-sided. Which, Tetsurou is going to give him nonstop hell for that once they’re together, but that’ll be later, whenever later is.
For now, he’ll happily deal with all of Tsukishima’s antics, letting the memory of the first red leaves of autumn a month ago warm him in the meantime, when Tsukishima had received the worst oracle of his life, one that said this guy is it, by the way. They’d met up for lunch and Tetsurou wanted to get a happy meal because he absolutely needed the new Doraemon toys, and he’d scored two of them and cheered so loud it made a girl from the table over look at him. Maybe that was what got it started, but he still doesn’t know what the final blow was. Only that one second he was making bamboo-copter Doraemon battle hot-air-balloon Doraemon with sound effects, and the next, when he looked up, Tsukishima was staring at him, phone lowered mid-text, with a look on his face like he’d just been informed Tetsurou was a flat-earther.
Tetsurou knew immediately. Love and a cough, and all that.
‘No,’ he replies to Tsukishima’s barely-there smile. ‘No whale sounds required.’
Earlier, at the party, in the middle of his vociferous campaign to ignore the hell out of Tetsurou in favour of talking to pretty much anyone on two legs with a functional knowledge of Christopher Nolan’s œuvre, Tsukishima had given himself away for just a few seconds. Tetsurou was dancing in the middle of the room, showing off the latest nightmare choreography that teenagers on TikTok had come up with, and mid-move he’d caught Tsukishima’s eye. Tsukishima’d abandoned his discussion to stare at Tetsurou with that same flat-earther look on his face again, but softer. It had made Tetsurou think, if only for a few minutes, that maybe tonight would be it. Maybe Tsukishima would let Tetsurou sleep in his bed— though Tetsurou’d already prepared himself for a sleeping bag on the floor— maybe they’d talk.
Well, Tetsurou is in a bed with him, and there’s no more noise, only sound— Tsukishima’s steady breathing in the dark, and Tetsurou’s own, a sigh caught in his throat.
‘Turn away,’ Tsukishima says. ‘I can feel your gaze even with my eyes closed, it’s creepy.’
‘Rude!’ Tetsurou rolls over onto his back and swallows a shiver at the way it makes their shoulders press together. Redirects his creepy gaze to the ceiling. ‘What if you were the sheep I was counting? One Tsukki, two Tsukki’s, three—’
‘One of me is enough, don’t you think?’
‘True,’ he concedes after a second of serious consideration. ‘Though if there were two of you I’d get to see you duel for the alpha spot, which would not only be extremely entertaining, but also disturbingly hot. Maybe the other you wears contacts.’
‘Mortifying as your fantasies are, I’m curious now.’ Tsukishima turns onto his side; Tetsurou cackles, then stops because he can feel each of Tsukishima’s exhales on the side of his neck now. ‘Who wins?’
‘Contacts guy, of course.’
‘By virtue of wearing contacts?’
‘Nah, by virtue of being a figment of my imagination and hence possessing infinite power.’
‘So it’s actually a duel between me and you then.’ Tsukishima clears his throat in that pointed way of his that always precedes a dressing-down of epic proportions. ‘It’s awfully bold of you to think, first of all, that glasses Tsukishima and contacts Tsukishima wouldn’t team up to beat you up. Surely you can imagine me with enough accuracy to account for the fact that no version of me would be able to stand you? Second of all, in what would essentially be a strategic virtual-reality duel, do you really think—’
‘I’d watch it if I were you,’ Tetsurou sings. ‘Don’t forget what happened the last time we were at Kenma’s with the console. I handed your ass to you so hard you were crying. I concede, Kuroo-san—’
‘I was not crying,’ Tsukishima says incredulously, but doesn’t deny the rest. ‘A VR battle is not the same as Mario Kart. Besides, you haven’t answered my first question.’
‘Well.’ Tetsurou decides that if he’s supposed to be killed by Tsukishima’s wrath either way, he’d rather take the real guy, Coke-bottle glasses and all. So he turns over onto his side, and holds still as Tsukishima processes how close their faces are and shifts back, before speaking again. ‘As long as we’re on the topic of mortifying fantasies. I would absolutely not mind if two of you beat the shit out of me. You know, like when you’re a kid at a playground and someone pulls someone else’s pigtails. It’s a sign of love, right?’
At love, Tsukishima freezes just like Tetsurou intended him to. He braces himself for anything from go the fuck to sleep to get out of the apartment to there’s been a misunderstanding, I am in a longterm stable relationship with the guy who cuts my hair and I don’t know how you missed it. He doesn’t brace himself for an impulse kiss or declaration of amour, because while those are things Tetsurou would absolutely love contacts-Tsukishima to do, they’re unfortunately greyed-out options with the real thing, who’ll probably need at least five more business days after this bed-sharing incident to organise his notes, conference-call Yamaguchi and Yachi, and then finally slink over to Tetsurou’s apartment to exchange hearts and spit.
So he braces himself for something offended and offensive, and prepares his best shit-eating grin even though Tsukishima won’t be able to see it. He thinks it’s a smiling-over-the-phone thing too. Tsukishima can absolutely tell when Tetsurou’s pleased with himself.
And he probably senses it right now too, because instead of anything even remotely civil— if sarcastic— he opts to reach out, curl a fist in Tetsurou’s hair, and yank harshly.
‘Ow, Tsukki, what the fuck!’
Tsukishima’s not even looking at him. Still on his back, voice loaded with smugness now, he replies, ‘Didn’t you just say something about pulling pigtails?’
‘I said pull, not wax,’ Tetsurou splutters, rolling over and facing the vanity. ‘Oh my God, you’re so mean. I’m going to bed. Good fucking night.’
✤
It lasts four minutes. Tetsurou knows because that’s about the length of the ducklings compilation he just finished watching on mute, and Youtube is just about to load up the next video— more ducklings!— when Tsukishima huffs. Tetsurou feels it against the nape of his neck; oh. He’s close.
‘How can you be this dense?’ Tsukishima asks, then.
Tetsurou slowly puts his phone away, but refuses to roll back. ‘What now?’
‘You literally said— you know what, forget it. You’re on your own.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ And frankly, he really isn’t in the mood, not because he’s actually mad at Tsukishima— that’ll be the day— but because the ducklings had started lulling him to sleep, and every witty comeback henceforth will knock off two health points. ‘Am I supposed to apologise because you ripped my hair clean off my scalp?’
‘You said,’ Tsukishima retorts through audibly gritted teeth, ‘No, you won’t make me say it. Goodnight.’
It takes four more minutes, which is the length of the second duckling compilation, though their lulling capacities are nullified by the fact that Tetsurou is now sulking. To be precise, Tetsurou sulks for three minutes out of the four, and at the onset of the fourth one, realises exactly how fucking dense he is, and only waits until the end of the video out of a sense of civic duty to the ducklings.
The moment the last of them waddles offscreen, Tetsurou all but flings his phone away, so quick is he to turn around. He ends up accidentally kicking Tsukishima in the shins— Tsukishima curses— and throwing a hand over his ribs— Tsukishima curses violently— before he settles down as best he can when his heart is going at roughly three hundred kilometres per hour.
‘Wait,’ he says breathlessly. ‘Wait, you’re shitting me. That was your confession? Your stupid, mediocre confession? Pulling my fucking hair at three in the morning in Akaashi Keiji’s bed?’
He wishes a lamp was on, because he can feel Tsukishima’s furious blush radiating off his cheeks, rendering them far more impossible to resist kissing than a measly lychee cocktail. Tetsurou would abstain from lychee cocktails forever to touch Tsukishima once, in fact, and—
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ Tsukishima asks. He’s trying to sound defensive but all he sounds is petulant, and it is so much fun to be in love with him that Tetsurou could do this forever and never get bored. ‘It was a perfectly acceptable response to your juvenile provocation—’
‘It wasn’t,’ Tetsurou cuts in. ‘It wasn’t perfect. That’s the thing. And you like everything to be perfect! That’s why you don’t like me!’
‘What?‘ Tsukishima finally rolls over, and now their ankles are brushing, and his feet are freezing. ‘What the fuck did I literally just say? And— what?’
‘No, no.’ He’s excited now. This is the best night of the year. Possibly his life. ‘I know that. I know of your undying passion for me—’— Tsukishima makes some kind of wild little sound— ‘—I just said you don’t like me. I mean, you like things to be proper and respectable and perfect, and have you met me?’
‘Kuroo, what the fuck,’ Tsukishima says flatly. ‘Listen, I literally think you’re the most annoying human being on the face of this earth, but even I know you’re a fucking sunshine mojito.’
‘A sunshine mojito isn’t perfection.’
‘It isn’t,’ he says. ‘But a sunshine mojito helps when you realise the rest of the world isn’t perfect either.’
That shuts Tetsurou up for a minute, but only a minute. See, the thing about being in love with Tsukishima Kei is that he’s had an excuse for the past while to observe him even more than usual, and a discerning observer wouldn’t take long to realise that beneath his thorny glory lies an almost matter-of-fact, clinical ability to appreciate others. It may only make it out once in a blue moon, but it’s there, all right. And so he has the luxury of not spending too long on the shock of Tsukishima calling him a sunshine mojito, all in favour of preparing his umpteenth shit-eating grin of the night, the best for last.
‘Aww, Tsukki,’ he drawls. ‘You know, I think you might just like me after all. I might even go as far as to say—’
‘Do not.’
‘—as to say that you might even want to kiss me. Really bad. Like, really really bad. I’d even let you yank on my hair like an undomesticated animal again.’
‘This is the worst night of my life.’
This is the best night of Tetsurou’s life. ‘Admit it. You want to—’
‘You know what?’ Oh, no, that’s a voice Tetsurou’s never heard before. ‘Actually, yeah, I do.’
Now that makes sense. It’s a voice Tetsurou’s never heard before because he’s never known a Tsukishima who’s inclined to kiss anybody, let alone him, but before he can verbalise this observation his mouth is busy containing what some would call a screech. Because suddenly Tsukishima is above him on all fours, and he can’t see anything but can feel the air around him change to accommodate their two sleep-warm forms as Tsukishima lowers himself.
And then Tetsurou’s mouth is too occupied to contain any sounds, so it’s good that Tsukishima swallows most of them.
Tetsurou almost laments that they never got to reach the unresolved-sexual-tension phase of this whole thing, because he would’ve appreciated a few more weeks of trying to imagine how Tsukishima’s lips would be before discovering just how incredibly soft they are. So soft Tetsurou can barely feel them at first, they have so much give under his own; only when he gets his teeth around the lower one and bites down gently— Tsukishima gasps— can he actualise that they’re kissing. They are, in fact, making out, skipping all chastity in favour of the heavy touch that alcohol causes, though Tsukishima’s cool hand up his shirt doesn’t stop him from pulling away for one last shot.
‘I didn’t say I like you back, though,’ he says, one finger hooking into Tsukishima’s belt loop. ‘This is awfully presumptuous.’
Tsukishima pulls back and sits up, straddles Tetsurou’s hips, leaning back against the triangle of his bent legs.
‘You said you wanted two of me to beat you up,’ he replies simply. Which, fair, and true. ‘So shut up and let me kiss you unless you want me to make good on that.’
‘Try me,’ Tetsurou says.
He gets his wish. Thirty seconds pass which are filled with what he can only call sexual tension of the highest caliber. The air has never been this charged before, not even that time they were playing truth or dare and Iwaizumi accepted to do a strip-tease and they all realised, four years into undergrad, that he knew how to dance. No, these thirty seconds trump an entire degree’s worth of parties and makeouts and spin-the-bottles, because Tetsurou knows exactly what Tsukishima is going to do, and that is half the battle won. Because he doesn’t know who’d win between contacts-Tsukishima and glasses-Tsukishima, so good would he be at predicting them both. As good as Tsukishima is at predicting himself.
So Tetsurou braces himself for the bruising kiss he’s about to receive— a retaliating bite, maybe— and consequently does not brace himself for Tsukishima reaching down to yank at his hair again.
Tetsurou yelps so loud that Tsukishima’s answering, crowing laugh is subdued under it, and then under the clattering sound of Akaashi’s stupid pretentious steel water bottle, knocked off the nightstand by Tetsurou’s flailing arm. The struggle that ensues is unsightly, made stupider by the fact that they can’t see each other— Tetsurou wrestles Tsukishima onto the bed growling about payback— Tsukishima levels a decidedly unsportsmanlike kick to the inside of his thigh— the bottle rolls towards the vanity—
‘Will you two shut the fuck up,’ Bokuto calls from the other room.
They both freeze, Tsukishima’s hands around Tetsurou’s wrists, and turn slowly to stare at the wall opposite the bed, through which the admonishment came. In synchronisation, fifteen seconds later, they turn back to look at each other. Just then Tetsurou’s phone lights up with another notification, and he gets to see the way Tsukishima’s long light hair is splayed on the dark pillow, the quirk to his lips. A sparkle in his eyes that has nothing to do with alcohol and maybe nothing to do with kissing Tetsurou, even, and everything to do with the sweet spirit of revenge.
And Tetsurou doesn’t know about VR battles with imaginary twins, but he does know that he and Tsukishima don’t make a half-bad team themselves, especially not when they have a common target. It’s one of the things he loves best about Tsukishima, after all. His soft smile. His sharp smarts. His sneaky, sarcastic streak.
‘Shall we?’ Tetsurou asks solemnly, and Tsukishima’s already clearing his throat, preparing to vocalise.
‘Do your worst,’ he says, and Tetsurou pounces.