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“Traitor,” Tetsurou hisses. “I can’t believe you would do this to me. How could you? I gave you my kidney.”
Kenma stops mid-eye roll to scoff. “You have not given me a kidney.”
“I would have! If you needed a kidney, I’d get you a kidney. Maybe mine, maybe someone else’s, but you’d have one so how do you justify this… this… treachery?!”
“You have an odd definition of treason.” Kenma keeps right on packing up the gargantuan, cardboard box neatly labeled ‘linens’ with things that are decidedly not. There are some video games in there, a couple of magazines stacked against the side, his entire collection of socks strewn around the perimeter, and right in the middle, cushioned by two Nekoma Volleyball Club t-shirts, a figurine of a dragon the approximate size and weight of a bowling ball. Tetsurou has one, too, but his is a reasonable size and has a chipped wing from the last time Yaku tried to steal it.
“You are stealing my adorable, obnoxiously tall rage-monster friend from Miyagi. How is that not treason?”
“I’m not stealing him and besides, he’s my friend, too,” Kenma says.
Much to the bane of Tetsurou’s existence. Leave two anti-social, too smart for their own good, snarky brats together for one semester while Tetsurou adjusts to college life, and they go and form an unbreakable bond spanning training camps, practice matches, and Spring Nationals. Simmer for another year and a half and here they are.
How fun, now all three of them are friends. It only makes Tetsurou want to scream a little bit, all the time.
“You’ve ruined everything.”
Kenma gently places a pillow inside the box, then tops it off with three chargers and a ziplock bag full of half-empty shampoo bottles. “None of this would be a problem if one of you would man up and admit you have feelings.”
“You take that back. I don’t have feelings.” Tetsurou grabs the bag of shampoo and shakes it at Kenma in two jerky bursts before Kenma yanks it away. “I am heartless!”
“You have so many feelings I can’t believe you don’t choke on them.”
Tetsurou gives his best glower and dutifully holds the flaps of the box together. Kenma tapes it up, grabs a marker, crosses out ‘linens’ and writes ‘stuff’ on the side and top. How specific.
“Either way, it doesn’t change anything,” Kenma says. “You don’t have to like it. You just have to help me move. It’s your obligation as my best friend. Since you’re good at it—you know, the packing and physical labor aspect—I won’t replace you until after I’m settled in. I’ll even let you come to the housewarming party to shoot your shot with—what did you call him? The adorable rage-monster from Miyagi?”
“You missed obnoxious,” Tetsurou says, but it doesn’t help his case any.
The housewarming party, as Kenma put it, is a joke.
Kenma and Tsukishima’s apartment is three bedrooms—one converted for Kenma to use as an office—a living room and an actual, proper kitchen with a stove and everything. It compensates for the luxury with its location: perched on top of a twenty-four-hour laundromat squashed between two hotels. An incessant rumbling seeps up from the floorboards. All day, every day, it smells a little like fabric softener. Kuroo doesn’t think it’s that bad. Kenma doesn’t care much either. For some insane reason, Tsukishima kind of likes it.
The party consists of the new renters; Yaku because Yaku has his driver’s license; Kai because Yaku didn’t want to actually carry anything helping Kenma move; and Kuroo. Everyone’s sitting around the newly furnished living room, drinking soda and picking favorites out of the trail-mix, and doing their level best to make sure to interrupt Tetsurou and Tsukishima’s conversation at every opportunity. Tetsurou feels a bit like he’s on display at the zoo, spectators gathered at a respectable distance and watching with obvious rapture from the other side of the coffee table as he converses with the object of his affections on a second-hand, floral-print sofa.
“This is a gathering at best,” Kuroo says, reclined with his half-full glass cradled to his chest and sarcastic gaze tilted up at the ceiling. The plastic, bendy straw serving as pipeline to his drink pulls at the corner of his mouth.
To the right, Tsukishima sits a little sideways with one leg pulled up on the cushions and the other foot resting on the floor. He’s been more relaxed since moving in with Kenma. Like nearly everything about this arrangement, Tetsurou is both pleased with and despises it on a fundamental level he is not emotionally equipped to poke at.
“You’re the one who played it up as some huge party,” Tsukishima says.
“That’s what it was advertised to me as. This is false advertising, how dare you.”
Tsukishima snorts back a laugh.
When Tetsurou peeks over out of the corner of his eyes, Tsukishima’s leaning to the side, one cheek smooshed to the couch’s back. Relaxed Tsukishima living in Tokyo is distressingly cute.
“Don’t even have booze, what is this?” Tetsurou could probably complain about this not-a-party for a good six days if he tried. So many grievances float around from the weak drinks to all this spare company to Kenma, shooting evil, knowing looks from across the room and making lewd gestures when Tsukishima isn’t looking.
“Please, explain who in their right mind would serve any of you lunatics alcohol.”
“No, what you should please do is stop flirting,” Yaku says from the floor across the coffee table. He smacks Kai in the arm with a wild gesture then waves at Tetsurou as if this explains everything.
“Dick,” Kuroo mutters. “Why did we invite you?”
“You didn’t invite anyone,” Tsukishima says.
Yaku sneers. “Because none of you could drive the moving van.”
“Driving is overrated,” Tetsurou says. He could have gotten his license, too, he just had better things to do.
Tsukishima knocks his foot into Tetsurou’s leg. “You’re only saying that because you failed your road-test three times.”
“You said you overslept.” Yaku howls.
“Oh, please. At least I tried.” Tetsurou slices a glare out of the corner of his eye and knocks Tsukishima back with his knee.
Tsukishima rolls his eyes and adjusts his posture so he’s angled more toward Tetsurou. Their thighs brush. “Who needs a license in Tokyo?”
“That’s fair. Since we have Yaku to help everyone move.”
Yaku growls from deep in his chest. “Why? What have I done to deserve having to watch this? It’s not even good.”
“Calm down,” Kai says. “We’re all suffering here.”
Tetsurou inhales his tragically virgin cola.
Now, it’s not unusual for Tsukishima to be the only other sane person in a room, but in this case, Tetsurou wishes he had options. Alas, he does not, so Tetsurou looks to Tsukishima for some measure of commiseration only to find Tsukishima looking right back with the most infuriatingly unreadable face Tetsurou has ever seen on him.
“Ignore them,” Tetsurou says. “They’re insane. Dropped on their heads as babies. When I flirt with you, you will be thrilled and aware.”
Tsukishima laughs hard enough to bruise Tetsurou’s ego.
Tetsurou is willing to admit he’s playing the whole thing up for kicks most of the time. It’s good for Tsukishima and Kenma to get along and be friends; Tetsurou just didn’t think it would happen until later. Next year, maybe, when Tsukishima and Kenma are settled in and independent and Tetsurou has stopped denying all his messy feelings long enough to make sense of them. He didn’t expect to become part of some bizarre tricycle-shaped friendship where the three of them are always hanging out together.
Every one of Tetsurou’s grand plans have fizzled out and died, all because Kenma deigned to make a friend for the third time in around five years.
Logically, Tetsurou understands this is a positive development. Emotionally, he is a complete and total wreck and he wasn’t planning on having to address why for at least another year.
It takes a while to acclimate to college; that was the case for Tetsurou, anyway. Focusing on much else for the first year was nearly impossible—evidence: Kenma and Tsukishima somehow becoming all buddy-buddy while his attention was elsewhere. Tetsurou figured he’d offer Tsukishima the same courtesy, and then in their respective fourth and second years, he’d start poking at the thing they do where they sort of bitch, sort of fight, sort of flirt with a bit more deliberation.
None of that matters at 11:45, the night midterms end.
The bar is packed full of students. No self-respecting member of society would be caught dead in a place like this even if it weren’t an unofficial campus holiday. As it is, the college vibe is cranked up as high as it goes. Yaku terrorized his way into getting a table, they’ve made sure to put Kai in charge of getting the drinks to maintain a friendly relationship with the wait staff, and Tetsurou is suffering the consequences of all these well-thought, rational decisions by being a stupendous level of out-of-his-mind-drunk. Sarukui from Fukurodani and—more recently—Tetsurou’s Chemistry class is to the right, still struggling to decide if coming out with them was the best or worst idea he’s ever had.
Both elbows planted on the table, face hovering straw-length above his glass for easy access, Tetsurou wallows in those left behind. Tsukishima didn’t want to go out and Kenma hedged so hard, Tetsurou almost went to the hardware store to buy garden shears to hack him out of the maze of nonsense he excused himself with. So it’s just the four of them and Tetsurou is trapped in this spiral thinking about Tsukishima. And the way his lips look when he smiles. And the way his hands felt when he laughed and shoved Tetsurou back a step a couple of hours ago when Tetsurou tried to convince him to come out for drinks.
“The problem,” Tetsurou mumbles around his straw, “is that he is cute. He shouldn’t be. He’s stupid tall and turned into a fucking Dorito so how in the hell is he so cute?”
‘Cute? Dorito?’ Yaku mouths, a perplexed frown twisting his mouth nearly upside-down.
“And he’s funny. And he thinks I’m funny. And he likes trashing Bokuto in practice no matter how indifferent he pretends to be.” Tetsurou could, easily, do this all night.
“I don’t know who you’re even talking about, anymore,” says Kai.
“His guy. You know, the blond one who lives with Kenma,” Sarukui says. “Well, apparently not his guy, but I don’t think I believe him. Seems like one of those ‘supposed to be a secret’ things only Kuroo’s ass at keeping secrets. I guess I can kind of see it, though. The cute thing, not the rest of that nonsense.”
Tetsurou is utterly positive there’s a lot of this he’s ass at, but he can’t figure out what any of it is. “Hah. Ass.”
“Kuroo, buddy, you want some water?” Kai laughs. “Let’s get you some water before we go. I’ll drop you off at your guy’s place. Let him deal with you.”
“My guy,” Kuroo says. It comes out wispy and floaty, clouds cradling his head and massaging knots out of his neck.
“Dear lord, water’s not enough, give this fool some coffee,” Yaku says.
Kuroo dutifully downs the water Kai hands over and rattles off Kenma’s address when he asks where they should drop him off. This is part of the best friends deal, the stupid drunk nonsense. If Kenma didn’t want to put up with it, he should have picked a different college. And that’s the long and short of it, from leaving the bar and dropping off Sarukui at his dorm, to the moment Tetsurou realizes he’s staring at the brassy gleam of the 783 screwed to the wall next to Kenma’s—and Tsukishima’s—door.
“I think I didn’t think this through before,” Tetsurou says.
Kai cackles.
Yaku knocks on the door. “I can’t wait to see who answers. It’s like Russian Roulette for besotted morons. Best friend? Or the Dorito?”
“Assholes.”
“Sure,” Yaku says. He knocks again.
The door opens. Tsukishima, hair stuck up in every direction takes one look at the group of them and swears a cavalcade that impresses even Tetsurou. For extra fun, Tsukishima is shirtless. Tetsurou is sure he should be ashamed for how hard he is starting. So he stares harder.
Seize the day. The Romans were onto something.
“Good luck!” Yaku shouts. He and Kai leave Tetsurou propped against the door jamb, helpless and wasted.
Tetsurou needs different friends. Not better ones, necessarily, just ones who weren’t involved in this unfolding tragedy.
"You take this back!” Tsukishima shouts down the hall. “Kenma’s not even here why do I have to deal with this?”
Tetsurou’s I need this information for future verbal sparring with my best friend in the whole wide world alarm bells engage. “Kenma’s out? Where is he? Who’s he with? Did he take a bag or just not come home?”
“You sound like a child with a mouthful of Cheerios,” Tsukishima says. He grabs Tetsurou by the arm and drags him into the apartment before practically flinging him onto the couch. “Stay there.”
After a few moments full of stuffy quiet, more cottony than vacuumed, Tsukishima returns with a bottle of water and two Tylenol trapped in his fist.
“Drink this. Take these”—Tetsurou obliges—“Lie down and go to sleep.”
Tsukishima shuffles off again and comes back with a pillow. He considers Tetsurou for a heavy moment before dropping it on the couch. It is just gut-wrenchingly romantic that Tsukishima didn’t pelt him in the face with it. The notion screeches, overtaking even the frantic desire to murder Kai and Yaku. Hackles at attention, arms crossed over his naked chest, bulging—oh and that is just obscene—arms, Tsukishima is a furious mother hen caring for a drunken toddler and who knows if it is hilarious or touching but Tetsurou wants it to be a little bit of both.
“Lay down,” Tsukishima snaps again when Tetsurou makes no move to do so on his own. He reaches over and leans on Tetsurou’s shoulder until he collapses under the weight, couch cushions swallowing him up.
“Laying down is boring.”
“Then go to sleep.”
Even more boring.
“But the couch is lonely and we never get any time together. You realize that? Everything’s a triangle now and it sucks.”
“I don’t even know where to begin with this,” Tsukishima sighs.
Tetsurou struggles his way upright, gets a hold of Tsukishima’s arm, and yanks. Tsukishima folds into a seat on the couch with a huff.
“I just want some quality time with my adorable rage-monster friend from Miyagi,” Tetsurou says and wow, he’s careening straight from loose tongue to danger, danger, abort, go sleep in Kenma’s bed immediately. “And obnoxious. Damnit, everyone keeps forgetting obnoxious.”
“We will spend more time together,” Tsukishima says. “But not at three in the morning. I don’t care if you want to be wasted for it.”
“The problem with that,” Tetsurou says, “is you’re too cute to be wasted around.”
“I’m sorry?” Tsukishima says like he’s not sure if he should be but he figures it’s the easiest way to get out of the conversation.
“Like you being sorry helps any,” Tetsurou grumbles. He plants his face straight into the pillow Tsukishima gave him, laying on the other side of the couch, across Tsukishima’s flannel-swathed legs, and oh, oh what a mistake. Tsukishima is warm against Tetsurou’s chest and the pillow smells like him. Sandalwood. Spicy cinnamon and Snuggle-fresh and blond and Doritos and— “You are just too fucking cute. I can’t stand it.”
“Go to sleep, Kuroo.” Tsukishima’s laughing. It’s quiet, under his breath and meant to disperse unnoticed, but Tetsurou feels it quaking over his skin and gliding through his hair.
The next morning, Kenma stares at Tetsurou over his cereal and says, “I didn’t know we could have him delivered.”
Tsukishima answers, “Me either. I tried to give him back but no dice,” and sets another pair of glorious Tylenol next to Tetsurou’s equally glorious glass of water.
Tetsurou needs three showers. Possibly a handful of headache medicine; these measly two pills won’t cut it. A lobotomy, if any of what is careening around in a foggy haze tinted with an aura of stupid things you did last night is true to reality. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if he really was ranting about Doritos. If he actually sprawled out over Tsukishima’s lap while doing so, Tetsurou is going to take one of those showers with the toaster oven.
“I think I would have just left him out in the hallway,” Kenma says.
This friendship is the worst thing Tetsurou has ever had to endure in his life. Tetsurou throws back the pills and drinks the entire glass of water. Now he feels like a dry sponge that’s drowning. Fantastic. “You both suck. Do you know that?”
“Because we’re cute?” Tsukishima asks.
Tetsurou bangs his head on the table. It’s not like his headache is going to get any worse.
“And… I’m a Dorito? What does that even mean?”
Kenma chokes on his cereal. “Nothing,” he gasps. “Doesn’t mean anything. Kuro just likes chips.”
Maybe Tetsurou will just go to Russia with Yaku next spring.
Tetsurou might be battling some insecurities. He’s willing to admit it in the sanctity of his own thoughts. Having his best friend and plain, old, boring I sort of wish we weren’t just friends-friend having their own thing strung between them is messing with his head. It’s so bizarre seeing Tsukishima and Kenma get along with anyone, that they’re getting along with each other is insane.
How does that even go? Do they sit on the couch in total silence, Tsukishima watching a documentary or reading periodicals and Kenma playing video games? Whenever Tetsurou’s over, that’s basically what happens. It’s always up to him to keep any conversation going and even then, it’s no easier with two of them than it is with one.
Those quiet sort of silences are alright with two people. It’s intimate, in a way. With three it’s just creepy.
“Stop daydreaming.” Kenma reaches across the table and flicks Tetsurou right in the forehead. He goes back to typing on his laptop. “You know, this wouldn’t be half as much of an issue if you’d ask him out.”
How absurd. Tetsurou scribbles a few more doodles in his notebook. “I can’t just ask him out, what are you crazy? I have a plan to follow!”
“Well then start following it.”
“It’s not the time.” Tetsurou doesn’t know how to explain it. His agenda in no way involved Kenma living directly in the middle of his field of play and it’s screwing everything up. A pudgy bird with boxy glasses and angry blond hair glares from the margins of Tetsurou’s notebook. This, too, should not be nearly as cute as it is.
“Kuro. Please. Explain it in normal-talk, I can’t keep translating in my head. What the hell is going on with you?”
Tetsurou spies a thin strand of actual frustration. He takes a moment to consider the matter and try to pull all the tangled up things he’s feeling into something coherent instead of spewing indignation and hoping it goes away sooner rather than later.
He taps his pen on the table twice then wags it disapprovingly. “You reinforced the friend-zone.”
“What?” Kenma scoffs. “That’s the stupidest—”
“No, seriously, you did. Now we’re all friends, it’s twice as hard to break out. Anything I do not only risks my friendship with him, it can also affect my friendship with you, and your friendship with him.” Kenma and Tsukishima do not make connections easily. Tetsurou is violently opposed to threatening the ones they’ve managed to develop, especially since they went and somehow did it without him at all.
“That only makes sense if it’s just you driving me insane, but no, this shit is blasting in stereo twenty-four-seven and Kuro? Kuro I am going to kill you if you don’t pull it together,” Kenma says. “One of the two of you has to listen to me. Stop feeling sorry for yourselves, convinced there’s some grand universal scheme keeping you apart. You are what’s keeping you apart. Just go for it. Everyone knows you two are crazy about each other. Stop being a baby and go suck on his tongue.”
“How romantic.”
“The subtleties of romance are clearly lost on you. I think you need a direct approach. Otherwise, you’ll dance around each other forever and Kuro, I mean this with all the love and affection I am capable of: I am tired of this.”
“It’s not the time,” Tetsurou tries again. He needs to make sense of his feelings and solidify his plans. Tsukishima deserves a grand gesture, not some pedantic confession drawled over cup noodles.
“Even Yaku is rooting for you. Out loud. How much more of a reality check do you need?”
Oh, and there’s the slap-in-the-face wake-up call Kenma’s been firing all day. “Really?!”
“Finally!” Kenma says.
The thing about confessing an over-saturated, over-thought, over-worked bundle of over-indulgent feelings to someone who is—generally—every bit as emotionally cagey as Tetsurou is that neither of them are willing to take the leap and be blunt about it without some sort of indication it’s welcome.
Despite all his whining and complaining about his Kenma-reinforced friend-zone, Tetsurou does genuinely value the friendship he’s developed with Tsukishima. There wasn’t much to it until recently, when Tsukishima came down to Tokyo for college, just a stringy something that cropped up now and then. Tetsurou sent him cute pictures of geckos sometimes. Tsukishima sent him hideous ones of fish. Sometimes Tsukishima would ask for volleyball advice and sometimes the grapevine would rattle with an accomplishment and Tetsurou would send a congratulations.
Their friendship is still delicate but it’s developing—and it’s nothing like the relationship Tetsurou has with Kenma. Tetsurou and Kenma’s friendship is solid. They’re brothers, they’re always going to be in each other’s lives, there’s no nuke big enough to cause damage.
Tsukishima, on the other hand, could maybe survive a cherry bomb. So, Tetsurou has to be careful with this vexing thing where his secret, hidden in the back of the closet, ten-point-agenda for slowly wooing Tsukishima throughout the whole of his college experience has crashed into a Kenma-shaped mountain and exploded.
In the end, Tetsurou decides to lean on what they have in common. Tetsurou would prefer a blunt and direct approach, no nuance, no room for misinterpretation, so that is what he will use. Tetsurou’s first worry would be ‘what if whatever I say ruins everything,’ so Tetsurou will lay it out so there’s nothing at stake on Tsukishima’s end.
Tetsurou can do this.
He’s spent four days practicing on Yaku.
Yaku is, consequently, finally in possession of Tetsurou’s coveted dragon figurine but that’s fine, it’s worth it. Tetsurou will steal it back when his packing skills are called on again for Yaku’s move to Russia
Tetsurou and Tsukishima sit on the couch. They’re angled toward each other and Tetsurou is both relieved and devastated to not be fall into your oh-so-appealing lap-drunk this time. Tsukishima stares expectantly into Tetsurou’s eyes. A sharp, ear-piercing, krrrrch shakes the walls from Kenma putting together an out-of-the-box modular bookcase with a power drill and screws instead of using the provided nails. Like the laundromat rumbling underfoot isn’t enough.
“Oh my god, Kenma, get out!” Tetsurou screeches.
Kenma appears around the corner looking harried. “I live here, asshole.”
“I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” Tetsurou says. “I actually mean it, too, at least halfway. I only want half of your friendship!”
“Can you give us a second?” Tsukishima asks. “I’ll try to unmeltdown him but no promises.”
“I am not having a meltdown. The two of you are the worst.” Tetsurou stares at Kenma until Kenma throws his hands in the air and snatches his wallet and keys off the kitchen counter
“Fine. But I swear to god if you two haven’t sorted your shit out by the time I get back I am going to take matters into my own hands and you think Yaku is cruel? I could eat Yaku for breakfast.”
Kenma is too polite to slam the door behind him when he leaves, but it still carries an absurd amount of outrage in the dramatic click of it closing behind him.
Tsukishima shakes his head and gives Tetsurou a bemused look. “Alright, Kuroo, what’s going on?”
And Tetsurou could keep it to himself. He could continue with this horrendous, jealousy-fueled farce where he assumes he’s been friend-zoned, or he could not. He could call Kenma’s bluff—and probably lose—and he could just up and move across the country, go to another school, pursue another career, forget all about his tall, obnoxious Dorito from Miyagi that he hasn’t stopped thinking about in around a year. And a half. Or two.
Tetsurou could also stop being such a baby.
“I don’t want to share you,” Tetsurou says. “I know that makes me a dick but I don’t care. I want Kenma to be my best friend and I want you to be my adorable rage-monster from Miyagi, and I don’t like that you two have made this ridiculous equilateral triangle of us. This geometry is bullshit.”
“What?”
“You heard me!”
“So—and please tell me if I have this wrong—you are jealous that I’ve become friends with Kenma, because you want to be both of our best friends?”
“No.” Tetsurou scowls.
“Because that’s what it sounds like.”
“I don’t want to be your friend. I mean, I do, but not like Kenma is.”
“Jesus Christ, Kuroo, just spit it out.”
Tsukishima wants to play it like this? Fine. “I like you. A lot. In the want my hands in your pants sort of way.”
“Never mind,” Tsukishima says. “Don’t spit anything out, ever. Please take the time to carefully consider what you want to say.”
“You don’t get to pretend like you didn’t hear it.”
“Can’t you do anything the normal way?” Tsukishima despairs. “You spent how long thinking this about this and still wound up going with ‘I want my hands in your pants?’”
“I do.”
“I know.” Tsukishima tilts his head back and sighs. “I don’t—I mean…”
Tsukishima closes his eyes for a moment and squeezes his fingers into a fist. Frustrated. Bubbling with some unaddressed concern Tetsurou didn’t cover during the whole hands-in-pants debacle.
Tetsurou backtracks. “Not just that, though. I like you in the warm, gooey way. The wanna make you breakfast way. The come home and meet my grandparents, they have so many pictures of me doing stupid shit as a baby, you’ll never run out of blackmail but I like you, so I’m willing to let you have it way.”
“Please stop explaining.” Tsukishima gives Tetsurou no time to comply on his own, just reaches out and yanks him across the mediocre expanse of couch separating them.
Kissing Tsukishima is exactly like Tetsurou fantasized. Hot and grabby. Little firecrackers setting each other off in a chain reaction fizzing clear to his toes. His lips are soft; there’s the cutest noise floating out of his throat and trembling in his fingers clenched around Tetsurou’s shirt. The whole apartment smells like fabric softener and okay, Tetsurou gets the appeal now.
“I hate to tell you this,” Tsukishima says, backing off but not nearly enough to be polite, “but I’m not really sure we’re all that good of friends.”
“I’m heartbroken.”
“Shut up.”
“No, seriously, how am I supposed to cope—”
Tsukishima kisses him again. This time Tetsurou goes after fireworks.
“Traitor,” Kenma hisses. “Low-down, dirty traitor.”
Tetsurou hands over the duct tape and tosses a handful of books into the box before Kenma tapes it closed. Scrawled over the side is the word ‘stuff’, proud and only one year old.
“I’m not even sorry,” Tetsurou says.
A tiny smile plays at Kenma’s lips. “I know. You’ve always been the sort of asshole to enjoy ejecting me from my own apartment just so you can live with your boyfriend.”
“None of this would have happened if you hadn’t tried to steal him from me.” It’s meant in a few different ways. Kenma understands.
“And don’t you forget it,” Kenma says. He rips a long strip of tape over the seam of the box flaps and sets the roll on top.
Tetsurou feels a rush of affection for his oldest friend.
“I won’t.”