Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

(A young man is centered in the middle of the screen. He’s sitting back against a black and red gaming chair, the headrest jutting up above his head. He has on a large, black headset with red speaker cups and a matching microphone that is set in front of his mouth. The young man—in his mid-to-late 20s—has long hair that’s half-pulled back at the nape of his neck. His roots are a dark brown, but the color eases into a white-blond from mid-length to the tips. Some of his hair hangs loosely by his neck. He has sharp, cat-like eyes that seem to glow golden in the dim of his room. His room is dark, but for the glow of the monitor in front of him and a string of lights strung up behind him, just off-camera.

The young man is wearing a clean, somewhat rumpled blood red shirt with a dark suit vest buttoned on top. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. There’s an equally rumpled, expensive-looking dark navy suit jacket slung over one of the chair armrests. He looks a little tired, a little nervous. Mostly, he looks a bit like he hasn’t slept in days and no one’s offered him an energy drink—he doesn’t seem like a coffee kind of guy, definitely an energy drink enthusiast—in hours.

He looks simultaneously like he’s wired and like he wants to lay his head down on his custom-made keyboard with square keys that are lit up in silver and green and go to sleep. Maybe he even considers it. Maybe he would have even done it, but then the chat starts pinging to the side of his streaming channel and he takes a deep, fortifying breath, and suddenly begins speaking.)

Hi. Thanks for joining me for this uh, special—I guess—stream. I know it’s not my usual time and it’s sort of without any notice. I don’t usually do this sort of thing. It’s out of character, I guess.

(He smiles, vaguely.)

Someone told me that, once. About some things being out of character for me, and I guess I took that as a challenge…

(He trails off. He frowns, as though playing back what he’s said and shakes his head.)

Anyway, sorry. I’m a little nervous. And tired. It’s been…a long few days.

(A pause.)

No, that’s an understatement. It’s been a long few months.

(The young man takes a section of his blond hair and twists it around his left forefinger. This seems to be almost unconsciously done.)

A lot of you have been following along. To my normal streams, sure, but also…the other stuff. My digital diary—(A pause.)—journal. God, diary sounds stupid. Although I guess I have been sort of using this platform as a confessional. Which I probably shouldn’t have done and sorry to my PR team about that…

Anyway. A lot of you have been listening to my video blog entries about this whole situation. A lot more of you than I thought. You’ve been my biggest supporters and my biggest critics and I want to thank you. It’s really meant a lot to me—that you were in my corner, giving me advice, supporting me. Even those of you who told me to get a grip, multiple times and—I mean you were right. But I didn’t want to really hear that.

When I started all of this, I wasn’t really thinking.

(He trails off. His gaze softens a little; he looks contemplative.)

Well, I guess I was thinking, but only about one thing. One person. And how much I’ve always been so painfully in love with him.

(He sighs.)

It’s not the easiest thing, being in love. I’ve always known, a bit, because it happened to me when I was so young. After a while, though, it becomes something you just sort of…carry around with you. Sometimes it’s really hard and sometimes it’s okay.

Sometimes, it can feel really good.

(His expression shutters a little. He looks down at his lap.)

But it can also suck a lot. I guess I was in the middle of it really sucking when I started my vlog entries. You could probably tell, right?—(He winces.)—Those first few entries were…well. Pretty embarrassing. But I guess it helped me get through it. It helps that he doesn’t watch videos—says he doesn’t have the time, but it’s actually because his attention span is shit.

(A smile.)

For things that aren’t nerdy anyway.

The point is, I started the whole thing because I was so hurt. Because I couldn’t fucking take it anymore. And looking back, well. It wasn’t the best way to start everything and as far as reasons go, it was honestly stupid of me. Trust me, I’ve gotten yelled at…a lot. And I’ve deserved it.

(He chews on his bottom lip and abruptly lets go of his hair and straightens.)

That’s all to say that…I have something to say to all of you.

Something to confess.

And I hope you can forgive me for it—all of it. Because the thing is, I’ve been lying to all of you.

(The young man exhales shakily. To the side of the screen, the chat starts pinging, a new response every half a second. His fans—well-wishers, supporters—are going crazy. The chat is going crazy.

He ignores it and takes a breath.)

If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll explain.—(A pause.)—Here’s the story of what happened with me and my best friend Kuroo Tetsurou.

The thing about being best friends with someone for twenty years is that you start to tune them out and that’s okay. Or, okay, a more accurate way of putting it would be you learn when to listen to them and when they are complaining for the sake of complaining. Kenma’s gotten good at that sort of thing. It’s sort of a hazard of having been best friends with Kuroo Tetsurou for well over half his life. In a stunning act of character development—or role reversal, maybe—that neither of them could have foreseen when Kuroo was the shy and awkward eight year old who moved in next door to the Kozume house with his father, grandparents, and older sister, Kuroo had shed his shy and awkward social behavior sometime around the summer he had shot up six inches in the span of three months. He’d started his first year of high school just a few months before and suddenly he was tall, chatty, and charming? It was as though he’d somehow forgotten that not six months before, he would still fumble over his words half the time and Kenma would have to come rescue him from dire social straits.

Anyway, that’s not the point.

The point is that Kuroo hit his social stride sometime between fourteen and fifteen and Kenma’s been listening to him ramble on about nearly anything—and possibly everything—ever since. It’s been—God—nearly thirteen years since and Kuroo hasn’t stopped. Kenma, who can only process so much information at any given time, has had to develop defense mechanisms of his own. Ergo, knowing when Kuroo needs his active attention and when he’s just whining because he never gets to whine anywhere else or to anyone else in his life—(other than his older sister, but, well, Ayu-san has put Kuroo on a fifteen minute time limit per day and anyway she’s usually in between Japan and France most times for her work)—and he knows that Kenma will put up with it.

(Kenma wouldn’t put up with it from anyone else, but he supposes Kuroo is grandfathered in. Also the…other thing.)

“—and he just sent me a picture of his dick! I didn’t ask for it, he just sent it to me.”

Kenma is in the middle of playing an action-adventure game that he’s already run through one time before, but hasn’t picked up in a few months. He likes to go straight through and beat games initially and then circle back to play through them at a slower pace, collecting all of the items and completing the side quests he had missed his first time through.

The game doesn’t require his full attention and mostly he’s dicking around a village, trying to collect hidden resources that will help him later on, but he’s still been at half-capacity with Kuroo. That is to say, he’s been half-listening to Kuroo whine about his tragic love life for the better part of an hour.

To his credit, Kuroo is usually fine with grunts and murmurs and the occasional half-hearted question from Kenma. If he really wants Kenma’s full, undivided attention, he will make himself clear. Today, he’s just content to whine into the abyss, which Kenma knows because he’s being annoying and not needy. With Kuroo, there is a very marked and specific difference.

He’d barged into Kenma’s house after work (well, let himself in—he has a set of spare keys), changed into a pair of old Nekoma sweatpants he leaves at Kenma’s, and ditched his button-up work shirt for a suspiciously thin t-shirt that he’d gotten for free at some point from a JVA event. Kenma—anticipating Kuroo’s presence because Kuroo barges into his house after work more days a week than he doesn’t—had already ordered udon and chicken katsu from their favorite restaurant and had it waiting in the microwave to keep warm. He’d finished streaming for the evening and already changed by the time Kuroo reemerged, so they ate through the noodles and the chicken on his nice, fancy couch while Kuroo rambled about his day and Kenma updated him on the latest lowkey gossip from the Bouncing Ball office.

Now, an hour and change later, Kuroo’s spread himself out over Kenma’s nice, expensive couch, half of his body dangling off the side and his feet pressed against Kenma’s thighs because he’s unbelievably long, like a stretchy, elastic…noodle.

“And that’s what it’s like at least a quarter of the time. Maybe a third. And like—don’t get me wrong. I like a good dick! No one would ever say that Kuroo Tetsurou doesn’t like a good dick.”

Kenma frowns and tries to convince a local townsperson to give him an elixir that will grant him extra HP. The townsperson is kind of an asshole and rejects Kenma. Rude.

“Why would anyone be talking about Kuroo Tetsurou’s preference for or against dick?”

Kuroo raises his head a little (it had been hanging dramatically off the edge of the armrest) and blinks at Kenma.

“I don’t know. It sounds like the kind of thing someone might say.”

“Like who?”

Kuroo hums.

“Hmm. Sawamura?”

“You think Daichi is going around talking about your dick?”

“Not my dick, Kenma. Whether I like dick.”

Kenma sighs.

“Are you still not over your—” What was the word? “Fixation with him?”

“Hey!” Kuroo protests. “I don’t have a fixation with him! I have a healthy rivalry! A former captain’s agreement! We’re pals! Buddies, even! Of a nature.”

“I’m sorry, I meant are you both still not over your fixation with each other.”

Kuroo scowls and nudges his toed sock into Kenma’s thigh.

“The point is I’ve seen a dick or two in my day! I’m a collegial guy. I even complimented the guy back.”

Kenma pauses halfway to opening a mystery box. He turns his head toward Kuroo.

“You…complimented the guy?”

Kuroo looks shifty.

“Yes?”

“His dick,” Kenma clarifies. “The unsolicited one. That you were just complaining about for like, ten minutes.”

“It was maybe two!” Kuroo says. He clears his throat. “And yes, I didn’t want him to develop a complex. That sort of thing isn’t very nice for a young, growing man.”

“How old was he.”

Kuroo looks dubious.

“Kuro.”

“Okay, he was in his 30s! I still don’t want to insult a man’s—well, manhood to his face, even if it was sent unprompted and I didn’t really want to see it!”

Kenma rolls his eyes so hard they nearly fall out of his head.

“You’re missing the point!”

Kenma resumes his game play.

“Was there a point?”

“Yes, there always is.”

Kenma doubts that. Sometimes Kuroo just likes to hear himself talk. It’s the curse of being an inveterate extrovert.

“The point, my dear grumpy kitten, is that I’m tired of it. I’m tired of being sent dick pics. And unsolicited nudes. I’m tired of flirting over apps and going on shitty dates. The hook ups aren’t even that good. I don’t even want to be hooking up!”

Kenma takes a deep breath that uses all of the patience that exists within him. Which, to be clear, isn’t much to begin with.

“Then why are you?”

“It seems like the only way to get what I want,” Kuroo says, pouting a little.

“Which is what, Kuroo?”

Kuroo makes a face and then slumps back down over the couch.

“A serious boyfriend. Or girlfriend. I’m not picky. I just want a partner, you know? A real one. I’m twenty-eight years old and I haven’t had a steady relationship in a few years. I don’t want to keep going out on dates and meeting new people and flirting and going home with them and then starting all over again. The last person I saw more than a handful of times ended up ghosting me. I’m tired, Kenma. I’m tired!”

Kenma swallows an extreme amount of bitterness. He hadn’t realized that all of his years of companionship didn’t amount to being Kuroo’s partner. Well, he had. He’s not stupid, he gets it. He knows that what he and Kuroo have is special, just as he also knows that what he and Kuroo have will never be what Kuroo really wants. And that fucking sucks. Because Kenma had realized at age fifteen that Kuroo Tetsurou is the only person he wants to spend his entire life with.

And now it’s twelve years later and what does he have to show for it except evenings that feel as close to dates as they ever will, without ever actually being one?

Kenma ignores the familiar twist in his stomach. His chest aches, but when doesn’t it? It’s a feeling he’s worn like a second skin for over a fucking decade.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You’re lucky,” Kuroo says with a sigh.

Kenma’s about to collect on that elixir when that makes him pause.

“How so?”

“You don’t care at all, do you?” Kuroo says. “Not that you don’t like—care, but you’re not looking for your soulmate. You’re not out there dating, on the off chance that one of the interminable nights of half-assed flirting and small talk will turn into something real. You’re happy being where you are, who you are. I envy that.”

It’s all…well, vaguely patronizing, to be honest. Kenma would be annoyed—would be pissed—if the real reason for his lack of active love life wasn’t laying sprawled on his couch like a slinky.

“I care,” Kenma says. He shrugs and presses buttons on his controller again. “And I date.”

There’s silence long enough for Kenma to finally collect his elixir. With a feeling of deep satisfaction, he sets off from the village, armed and reloaded on HP. It’s only when it’s been quiet for a minute too long that he blinks and turns toward Kuroo.

“What?”

“What do you mean?” Kuroo says. He’s propped himself up by his elbows. He’s staring at Kenma, a little bug-eyed.

“Huh?”

“You…date? Since when? Who are you dating? When are you dating?” Kuroo looks shocked and it’s only a little unflattering. “You’re dating?”

“Yeah,” Kenma says and shrugs again. “Sometimes. I mean I’ve gone out with people over the last few weeks.”

“Weeks?”

“Months,” Kenma addends.

Kuroo scrambles up until he’s sitting.

“Months?” Kuroo nearly shouts. “You’ve been dating people for months?”

“You’re being too loud,” Kenma reprimands him, although his house is big and his neighbors certainly can’t hear them.

“Kenma,” Kuroo says. “What the fuck?”

“I knew you were going to be like this,” Kenma says with a frown.

“Like what?”

“Annoying.”

Kuroo leans in closer, making himself tower over Kenma. Kenma hates it when he does this—mostly because it makes his heart beat so fast.

“Can I help you?” he asks Kuroo, deadpan.

“Tell me,” Kuroo says. “Tell me everything.”

Kenma rolls his eyes and shoves at Kuroo’s chest.

“Relax,” he says. “They haven’t been that good. They’ve sucked. That’s why I brought it up. Don’t act like you’re the only person in the world who’s been on shitty dates. I’ve been on them, Bokuto’s been on them, Taketora’s been on more than the two of us combined. Even Shouyo’s been on a bunch.”

Kuroo waves his hand vaguely.

“Bokuto’s been on shitty dates because he’s trying to prove something to Akaashi that neither of them need proved, Taketora’s been on shitty dates because his standards are abysmal, and Chibi-chan—” Kuroo blinks thoughtfully. “Well, it’s anyone’s guess when he and Kageyama figure out whatever it is that’s happening there.”

Kuroo doesn’t know the half of it, Kenma thinks. He eyes his phone next to him. The screen lights up with texts from a groupchat that’s labeled only as LHC♡.

“So?”

“So, they’re not you!” Kuroo says. “And before you yell at me, I don’t mean that as a bad thing. I just mean—” He runs his hand through his hair, which had been bad before, but sticks up even more now. “—you’ve never expressed interest in dating before. Not really. So…why now? And why didn’t you tell me?”

Kuroo’s expression verges on uncomfortable, which is why Kenma knows that he’s on the edge of actually feeling hurt. Kuroo is all charm and charisma and loud, teflon-feelings, but in truth, he’s vulnerable and fragile in a way that no one else ever suspects. Also in a way that he would never let anyone else see. That’s Kenma’s treat and Kenma’s alone.

Kenma puts his controller down.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Kuroo frowns. “Then…why did you?”

Kenma closes his eyes briefly. One thing about Kuroo is that he has spent years whittling Kenma down into some measure of emotional honesty. Any time Kenma tries to renege on that, Kuroo calls him out on his bullshit and makes clear that he hates it when Kenma does that—hides and deflects. Kenma, in turn, hates disappointing Kuroo. So usually it’s easier to be honest with him than to lie.

“It’s stupid,” he says.

“Going on dates isn’t stupid,” Kuroo says—insists. “Are you trying to finally settle down? It’s okay if you are! That isn’t stupid, there’s nothing embarrassing about that, Kenm—”

“Can you stop projecting onto me?” Kenma snorts. His mouth twitches up at the corner. Typical, overeager, overcompensating Kuroo. He reaches forward and pats Kuroo’s hair, which he does sometimes because it makes Kuroo smile. It works this time too—Kuroo’s temporarily distracted by Kenma’s hand in his hair.

“Okay,” Kuroo says. “Sorry.”

Kenma shakes his head and withdraws his hand.

“It’s stupid,” he repeats. “We have a big announcement and gala coming up in June.”

“I remember that,” Kuroo says. “For the expansion, right?”

“Yeah,” Kenma says and is briefly distracted from Kuroo by the only thing that could possibly ever distract him from Kuroo—his stupid company. “It’s a…pretty big deal. We’re trying to get more investors for the full development and—it’s a whole thing.”

“Okay.”

“The Board thinks…” Kenma picks at a loose thread on his sweatshirt. “I don’t know, they think we’ll raise more money or something if we show I’m in a relationship with someone. I don’t really get it, but I guess all the investors are all family men or whatever. Anyway, they’re being really annoying about it, so Shouyo’s been setting me up with people. But his taste sucks.”

“Shouyo,” Kuroo says, his eyes bugging out a little. “Hinata Shouyo. Hinata Shouyo has been setting you up with people?”

Kenma snorts. He picks his controller up again.

“Yeah.”

“No wonder you can’t find anyone good!” Kuroo exclaims. “I wouldn’t trust Hinata Shouyo to properly set up a—cake display!”

Kenma looks at Kuroo in confusion.

“What?”

“He’s all volleyball all the time!” Kuroo says, waving his long arms around. “There’s a volleyball where his brain should be! And what does he know about love!”

Kenma thinks about the groupchat. It keeps flashing, probably because he’d started the conversation an hour ago when Kuroo had first brought up his most recent date. He hasn’t responded in at least twenty minutes though. He keeps his expression blank.

“Well, it was him or Taketora,” Kenma says. He pauses. “Or Akaashi.”

He and Kuroo both look at each other and shudder.

“You could have asked me,” Kuroo says and only pouts a little.

Kenma nearly laughs.

“Sorry,” he says instead. “You just…you’ve just been so busy. I didn’t want to bug you.”

“You can always bug me, Kyanma,” Kuroo says. Suddenly, he slings his arm over Kenma’s shoulder. He leans in close and smacks a kiss onto his temple. He’s so dedicated to being larger than life and annoying (and casually affectionate), that he doesn’t even notice how Kenma freezes under his arms. “Okay, I need to pee. BRB.”

Kenma is able to breathe again the moment Kuroo moves away.

“Don’t say BRB out loud,” he manages to gripe back.

Kuroo does his stupid little hyena cackle and disappears down the hallway to the bathroom.

Kenma exhales like his entire life depends on it. Which—given how much his heart is racing and how tight his stomach feels—it might. He throws his controller on the couch cushion next to him and picks up his phone.

[Shouyo]: HELLO??? ARE YOU DEAD?? is he dead? do we think kenma is dead?

[Tora]: can u die of…………ur best friend staying over at ur place 2 much

[Akaashi]: Why do you type like that? Doesn’t it take more effort to type like that than simply typing the words the way they are written?

[Tora]: no idts

[Miya2]: don’t have this convo again, i can’t see you two have this convo again

[Shouyo]: is no one else concerned!! does anyone have eyes on him? maybe kuroo-san was so ummm sexy, kenma’s heart failed and now he’s dead and kuroo-san is sobbing over his body and we’re here having a convo over tora-kun’s typing when we should be having a convo about how our poor best friend literally died of pining too much!!!

[Akaashi]: …

[Tora]: …

[Miya2]: shou-kun, have you been reading historical romance novels with bokuto again

[Shouyo]: the last one was really good, actually, i learned so much

[Akaashi]: Kenma, please put us out of our misery.

Kenma exhales and types up a quick reply.

[Kenma]: I’m alive

[Shouyo]: kenma!!

[Miya2]: well?

[Tora]: is he staying over? did he like his udon?? did he look extra handsome today???

In retrospect, this is Kenma’s fault. In a moment of weakness, he had texted the group first, letting them know that Kuroo was probably going to come over after work tonight, based solely on the fact that he’s come over after work every single day of this week so far. And every single day, he’s brought food or ordered food and folded his long legs up on Kenma’s couch and sat right next to him—(the couch is very big and there is plenty of space for him to sit not next to Kenma, but he has, to date, seemed unaware of that option or at least uninterested in pursuing it)—his thighs pressed against Kenma’s, leaning into Kenma’s space every time he’s tried to take the controller from him or every time he’s tried to distract Kenma from beating him at whatever game they’re playing together.

It’s nothing new and, in fact, Kuroo coming over and eating and playing video games with Kenma is a longstanding tradition that has spanned well over a decade. Only lately, Kuroo must have changed his shampoo or his conditioner or his cologne or something because every time he leans into Kenma or drapes himself over Kenma or rests his chin on top of Kenma’s head when Kenma is just existing—(he doesn’t know why Kuroo likes to do this, only sometimes Kenma will just be standing there and suddenly Kuroo will be right behind him, his long arms wrapped around Kenma’s middle and his chin resting on top of Kenma’s head)—Kenma’s heart feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest.

So when he got a text from Kuroo that evening that just said Running a little late!, implying that he would be coming over again—for the fourth evening in a row—Kenma had kind of lost it.

He doesn’t like calling on the Lonely Hearts Club because the entire concept of the Lonely Hearts Club is too embarrassing for him to even think about, but he had truly been on the verge. And now…well. He’s facing the consequences of his own actions, he guesses.

[Kenma]: I didn’t ask

There’s dots at the bottom of the groupchat, which means that multiple people are vying to send a message, each of which will probably be annoying and pretty embarrassing. He doesn’t like to think about the evening Atsumu decided to grill everyone on their go-to seduction techniques in a misguided attempt to figure out why a group of moderately charismatic, handsome, and fairly successful young men were all so perpetually, well, single.

Before he looks again, he hears Kuroo coming back down the hallway and he hastily turns his phone screen off.

“Look who I found!” Kuroo coos. He has a fat, white ball of fur cradled in his arms. He’s looking down at her like someone would look at a baby and kissing her dumb pink little nose adoringly.

Kenma tries extremely hard not to let it affect him.

Kuroo kisses her nose again and Kenma feels himself die a little inside, as usual.

“I told you not to keep picking her up,” Kenma says. “You’re spoiling her.”

“Nonsense!” Kuroo says. He cradles Kenma’s cat closer, rocking her back and forth like a big lump, which, to be fair, she is. “Maru-chan is so well-disciplined.”

“She screamed at me all night,” Kenma says.

“You probably deserved it,” Kuroo replies.

“I fed her at her dinner time, the way I always do, but her royal highness decided that wasn’t enough and wanted more.”

“Well, did you give her more?”

“Obviously not, Kuro,” Kenma says. Maru-chan tries to lick at Kuroo’s face. “Look at her, she’s so round.”

“She’s perfect!” Kuroo crows and lifts her like he’s that baboon in the Lion King. “My sweet angel. Our little baby girl!”

“Mine,” Kenma says dryly. “She’s my demon cat.”

“She’s our child, Kenma,” Kuroo says, shooting him an ugly look. “She doesn’t come from a broken home. She comes from two very loving parents.” He pauses. “Well, one very loving parent and one gremlin who can’t see how perfect she is.”

Kenma’s mouth twitches.

Kuroo kisses her again and then when Maru-chan starts to express how over she is Kuroo’s over-expressive affection, he lets out a wounded noise and lets her down.

“She loves me more than you, by the way,” Kuroo says as he flings himself onto the couch again.

“Tch.”

Kenma picks his controller back up and Kuroo scrolls through his phone for a little bit in silence. After he gets through a conversation with a forest hunter in the game, Kenma nods at Kuroo.

“You staying the night?”

Kuroo finishes sending whatever email he was working on and stretches while yawning.

“If that’s okay with you.”

Kenma’s treacherous heart rate picks up. He ignores it.

“I don’t care,” he says. “You already have half of your stuff here. You basically live in the guest bedroom.”

“I love how warm your personal invitations are, Kenma,” Kuroo says.

Kenma snorts.

“Personal invitations are for people who don’t basically live in my guest bedroom.”

Kuroo’s mouth twitches at the corner.

“That okay, though?” he says. “I’m not imposing, am I?”

Kenma shakes his head.

“The house is too big for one person and one cat anyway,” he says. Hoping he isn’t giving anything away, he shrugs. “I like it when you stay over.”

“Okay, good,” Kuroo says and smiles that wide, genuine smile that makes Kenma go warm and fuzzy all over.

Maru-chan settles into her favorite spot on the couch, which incidentally happens to be where Kuroo was trying to sit. This makes him shuffle over a little more, until Kenma pulls his legs up under him and tries to resume playing, but has a difficult time concentrating when half of Kuroo’s body is pressed up against him.

“Hey, Kenma,” Kuroo says, after a few moments of comfortable silence.

“What?”

Kuroo dithers. Kenma can tell he’s dithering, because he’s using that voice like he wants to say something, but he leaves enough time between speaking and actually expressing what he wants to say—ergo, dithering. What Kuroo could be dithering about at ten o’clock on a Thursday night when he has to be up for work at six the next morning is beyond Kenma. Still, he knows that sometimes Kuroo needs to be coaxed into speaking.

“Am I going to learn sometime this century or—”

“What? Oh,” Kuroo says. He colors a little, which makes Kenma pause his game. When he turns toward Kuroo, Kuroo straightens. He puffs out a breath and grins one of his annoying grins that Kenma finds annoying because it’s just a front to cover whatever he’s really feeling.

Kenma nudges Kuroo’s thigh with his knee.

“I was thinking about your little…predicament,” Kuroo says.

Kenma raises an eyebrow.

“The Board, the gala, the dating.”

Kenma rolls his eyes.

“Yes, I’m aware,” he says. “Of those things.”

Kuroo gives him that grin again and then rubs his chin.

“Well, they want you to have a relationship and you don’t want to be in one, right?”

Kenma didn’t say that. But he gets what Kuroo’s saying, so he shrugs.

“Sure.”

“And it doesn’t have to be like…a relationship with a woman, right?”

Kenma hasn’t thought about girls since middle school when Hana-chan from Class 2B came up to him on Valentine’s Day and offered him a little box of chocolates and—not knowing how to reject her—he’d said yes. They’d gone out for all of two weeks before he’d realized that every time she tried to hold his hand, he would shove them into his pockets. He’d finally ended up having to break up with her, which made him throw up in the bathroom from anxiety, and she’d been so hurt she’d never spoken to him again. That had been the first and last time Kozume Kenma had dated a girl.

“No,” Kenma says, snorting. “I don’t think anyone expects that from me.”

“Interesting…” Kuroo says, still rubbing his chin like an asshole. “Very interesting…”

“Kuro, you’re being annoying,” Kenma says. “Just say what you’re going to say. Do you have someone for me to date or what?”

“Yeah!” Kuroo says, brightening. Then he laughs and looks dubious. “Well, sort of.”

“What…does that mean?”

“The Board…they just need to think you’re in a relationship, right?” Kuroo says eagerly.

Kenma gives him a confused look.

“Sure?”

“But that leaves some ambiguity, like…if it’s just the appearance of a relationship, does it need to be the real thing?” Kuroo says. He grins. “Does it need to be a real boyfriend?”

Kenma has no idea what Kuroo is getting at.

“What, like an AI boyfriend? I don’t have the technology for that—”

“No!” Kuroo says. “Not an AI boyfriend. A real one. Well a real, fake one. A real, fake boyfriend.”

Now Kenma is a smart guy. Kuroo is also a smart guy. They are both two very smart individuals. So the fact that Kenma takes almost a full minute to process what Kuroo is saying and the fact that Kuroo stares at him eagerly the entire time and the fact that Kenma doesn’t immediately say Kuro, are you fucking insane?, right off the bat indicates that, well—

Maybe Kozume Kenma and Kuroo Tetsurou….maybe they’re not so smart after all?

Because instead of laughing Kuroo off and rejecting the absolutely absurd proposition he’d just made, Kenma gets flustered.

“You want me to be in a fake relationship?” he asks.

“Yeah!” Kuroo says and his grin widens. “Only, it wouldn’t be any fake relationship.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that it wouldn’t be just any fake boyfriend. It would be a hand-selected one. Someone who knows you better than anyone. Someone you could fake it with without even thinking. The most convincing person you could fake date.”

Kenma’s eyes widen as the realization hits him.

“It would be with me!”

Kuroo gets that look on his face he always gets when he has an idea that not a single person can talk him out of. He’s turned so that he’s fully facing Kenma now, clamping his hands down onto Kenma’s shoulder and leaning into Kenma’s space, nearly vibrating with excitement at his disastrous, stupid, absolutely godawful plan.

“I’ll fake date you, Kenma. I’ll be your fake boyfriend.”

Kenma’s mouth drops open. Behind them, Maru-chan meows loudly.

(Kodzuken sits in his usual gaming chair with his usual black-and-red headset on. His hair is loose today, hanging over his shoulders. He has on a black sweatshirt that has a faded cat wearing a cat hat on it—it’s an old and familiar sweatshirt that all of his fans know was gifted to him by his best friend a handful of Christmases ago.

He has a white cat on his lap that he is absentmindedly—nervously?—petting. His viewers know her well. She’s almost as popular on his streams as Kodzuken himself. The cat is settled on his stomach and letting out content purrs as he takes a deep breath and nods to the camera.)

Hi, everyone. Thanks for…joining me, I guess? This is a little different from what I usually do. This video isn’t going to be a normal stream. I’m not going to be talking about games or about Bouncing Ball or even about volleyball, which I know…sometimes one person asks about.

This video’s less about my gaming and more about…me. Which you know I don’t usually do, but I guess—I don’t know. I’m going a little crazy here. And the person I would normally talk to about the things on my mind, I kind of can’t talk to about it at all. And I have other friends, sure, but they’re all…a bit biased? Really supportive, don’t get me wrong. But most of them have known about me and my best friend for nearly our entire friendship, so I don’t know that they can see things as clearly as people who don’t…know anything about us at all.

(Kodzuken frowns and stops petting his cat. His fingers curl into her fur and she looks up at him, disgruntled, until he takes a deep breath and starts moving his hand through her fur again.)

This is about him, obviously. My best friend, who I’ve talked about sometimes on my streams, but who you’ve never really met. With good reason. You don’t need to know everyone in my life and I don’t want to do that to him either. Except…

(Kodzuken looks troubled.)

Is this a violation of his privacy? I hope not. I mean…I won’t use his real name. Let’s—I’ll call him T.

(Kodzuken chews on his bottom lip for a moment, as though deciding whether to go through with this. Then his shoulders slump a little and he carries on.)

Anyway, so yes. My best friend, T. The thing is…we’ve been best friends our entire lives. Like almost literally our entire lives. I was seven years old when he moved in next door. He was…so weird at first.

(Kodzuken smiles.)

Socially awkward and shy. At that point, we were nearly the same height. He was maybe a little taller than me, but I think it was mostly his hair. He—god, he’s always had the most ridiculous hair. It’s…really stupid. And really cute.

(He laughs and now his smile seems to glow warmer.)

I didn’t think we’d be friends at first, honestly. At first he wouldn’t say anything to me at all, even when his gr—parents came to visit and we were sitting in my bedroom together. He was really nervous, I think. I’d ask him questions or try to get him to talk to me, but he wouldn’t say a word. He was…so quiet. Kind of funny, considering now he has can’t-shut-up-syndrome.

(Kodzuken’s eyes crinkle at the corners fondly.)

I tried my hardest, but I was seven years old and kind of shy myself. So yeah, I didn’t think we would last. But then…I don’t know. It’s easier when you’re younger, isn’t it? One day he came over and I’d gotten a new Sonic game and he shyly asked me about it and I asked if he wanted to play and—that was it. Video games. And then one day he asked me to play volleyball and—you know, in retrospect, I don’t know why I said yes. I was very much a video games-only kid. But I guess when T got going, he made anything seem exciting. Like anything we did together would be an adventure.

(Kodzuken sighs and his expression softens.)

It’s still like that, I guess. Every single thing we’ve ever done together has been so…fun. I’ve never regretted it, not even once. That’s…sort of the problem. It’s been years of this—T and I being together. We went to almost every school together. We played the same sport together. We would walk to school together in the morning and come home from school together after v—sports practice. We would spend weekends together, sometimes practicing, sometimes playing video games. Sometimes, he would drag me out of the house and into the city to go shopping or to go to a market or to meet up with other people I was too shy to call my friend too.

It didn’t stop. The hardest year of my life was when he left for college and I was still in high school. We made it work because we would still text and video chat and he would come home sometimes, but he was so busy and our schedules were so misaligned and it—sucked. It sucked a lot.

We didn’t end up going to the same college, but I went to one close enough that we could start seeing each other again on the weekends and sometimes after classes. We’d study together at the library or at a cafe or he would come over to my apartment and sleep on the couch when his roommates were being too loud.

That year apart didn’t do anything to make us less…dependent on each other. Do you understand what I’m saying?

(Kodzuken’s cat meows and lifts her face to him. He taps her nose and she licks at his finger.)

I’ve never grown tired of him and I think—I hope—he’s never grown tired of me either. We’ve been in each other’s lives as constants since we were kids and still every day when he barges into my house, it’s the best part of my day. Every time he’s gone or too busy to stop by, I miss him. Every time he calls me in the middle of the day, or drags me out on the weekends, or just shows up to something—a Bouncing Ball event that I know he doesn’t have time for, it’s just—

(Kodzuken lets out a sigh that cuts so deep, it nearly startles his cat off his lap.)

I think I’m being obvious. I probably don’t need to spell it out for you guys. It’s clear as day, isn’t it?

I’m fucking in love with my best friend. And I have been for a very long time.

(Kodzuken suddenly looks exhausted. He looks, well, no—he looks like he’s gearing up to say something that will cost him all of the energy he has left in his small body. And that’s probably fair, because then he looks into the camera and says—)

So it pains me to say that I think I’ve made the stupidest mistake of my entire life. Because a week ago, T asked me if I wanted him to be my fake boyfriend.

(Kodzuken drags his hands over his face and sighs.)

And I’m pretty sure I said yes.