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When Sawamura found out that Kuroo had accepted a spot on the university volleyball team playing alongside Sendai native Oikawa Tooru, Sawamura’s first reaction was to burst into shocked laughter on their LINE video call. Then he blanched, recovered, and said in a suspiciously neutral tone, “He’s alright,” which turned out to be somehow both an understatement and also a bold-faced lie.
WORDS have MEANINGS, Kuroo messaged Sawamura under his covers at orientation training camp, thumbs tapping at his phone furiously.
It was light’s out in the first years’ shared accommodation at their inaugural training camp, the first grueling night of many grueling nights, the humid Tokyo air lightly perfumed with sweat and laundry detergent from home and mosquito repellent. Their futon mats were shingled together so close that they might as well have slept right on top of each other (were they getting hazed? This must be hazing, right?). He had to be sneaky about texting, lest he get an earful from some of the crabbier ones about sabotaging their sleep to get a better chance on making the starting lineup, which would be announced at the end of the week.
As if Kuroo had to resort to subterfuge for a shot at the roster. Some of his fellow first years had sieves for hands.
Sawamura replied, What in the world are you talking about?
OIKAWA TOORU, was all Kuroo could bring himself to say.
That must’ve gotten his point across, because Sawamura merely sent back a sticker of LINE’s cartoon rabbit mascot Cony laughing hysterically, like Sawamura himself was reaching through space and time to make fun of his despair. Sawamura was very clearly still riding the high of the power trip Karasuno had gotten after defeating Nekoma at Nationals, which was so deeply cutting that Kuroo could not find it in himself to elaborate any further than that.
He supposed he didn’t need to. Sawamura understood better than anyone.
Kuroo had heard of Oikawa before that, of course. Unlike Kenma, who only paid attention to one half of Karasuno’s freak twins and had an aversion to object permanence when it came to any other volleyball player, Kuroo liked to keep his thumb on the pulse. He had read Oikawa’s little high school interviews in Volleyball Monthly, seen that sickly sweet smile, the kind that would’ve belonged perfectly on an idol’s face at a meet-and-greet if it weren’t for the fact that those smiles held no joy in his eyes, only fire.
He already knew what kind of person Oikawa was without even reading his inane interview answers or looking at his fanservicing winks and grins. Guarded would be a kind way to put it. Kuroo preferred fake.
*
Earlier that morning, when all the first years were corralled into a circle like they were cattle for slaughter and forced to introduce themselves to the rest of the team, Oikawa had smiled at him when he said he graduated from Nekoma. It was that same idol magazine smile that made Kuroo itch, the kind of smile that felt like sunlight glinting off the ocean that camouflaged a hungry shark out for blood.
“Ah, you guys lost to Karasuno, didn’t you?” Oikawa goaded.
“At least we’ve gone to Nationals,” Kuroo said, taking the bait before he could stop himself.
He didn’t know why Oikawa looked so smug when they both earned themselves a lap around the athletic complex as punishment for disrupting orientation—a team record for quickest fight broken out between first years, if the amused look on the assistant coach’s face was anything to go off of.
“That was a bit mean, Kuroo-chan,” Oikawa called out to him just before overtaking him on the track, voice breezy, feet light and buoyant, like nothing stuck to him. His nonchalance made Kuroo grit his teeth. “I only wanted to see if you were interested in forming a support group for victims of Karasuno. Are you always this heartless to canvassers? Do you always rub their insecurities in their faces?”
Kuroo let him run in front of him the rest of the way.
If Kuroo was going to be nice about it, Sawamura technically wasn’t lying when he said Oikawa was alright, although Sawamura cleverly did not specify in what way.
Oikawa was better than alright. It became painfully apparent from the very first icebreaking passing drill that Oikawa was set to become their coaches’ new favorite. All those horror stories about his awful jump serve from Sugawara were true—although, to be fair, Karasuno’s defense was famously absent, and old man Nekomata had drilled into their heads for the past three years that no serve couldn’t be dug. His setting was precise, though not as laser-accurate as that other Karasuno freak twin, and he had an uncanny ability to know exactly what a spiker needed after just a few plays.
“Talented people are unbearable,” Kuroo muttered testily to Konoha while they were divvied up by year in lines to spike.
“What? Oh. Him?” said Konoha, glancing at Oikawa, who had set a lazily arcing four to Yamagata, a sieve-handed first year whom Kuroo hadn’t met before in the high school circuits. The parabola of the ball was breathtaking. A beautiful height. It was annoying, really. “Hadn’t heard of him. Besides, you haven’t been stuck on a team with Bokuto for three years. Training camps don’t count.”
“Kuroo-chan, you’re up next,” Oikawa interjected sweetly before Kuroo could point out that he was friends with Bokuto and quite liked his single-minded, bullheaded enthusiasm.
“Look at you. Making friends already,” Konoha called after him, that facetious asshole.
As Kuroo jogged up to the attack line, Oikawa was ready for him and tossed another four, just as beautiful as the last one. Ah, it was a good jump. The lofted height of his body slicing up through the air and the reassuring weight of the ball against the palm of hand reset the anxiety in his head. For only a split second, he flew. Nothing else mattered. It was as if he had left his consciousness and was seeing himself spike the ball resolutely into the other side of the court, scoring a perfect line shot that fell just within bounds.
When he landed, Kuroo chanced a look at Oikawa. He regretted it instantly, though, when he saw Oikawa’s tilted chin, his calculating stare, as if Kuroo weren’t a player, but a pawn.
“Your true contact point is actually higher than that,” said Oikawa, face neutral, almost cold.
“Nice kill,” said Konoha when Kuroo circled back to the end of the line.
“I think I’m going to transfer to Bokuto’s uni,” Kuroo said.
He was annoyed. He was embarrassed. Fuck, why did he even glance that way? What did he want, Oikawa’s approval? It was different, Kuroo tried to tell himself, when Kenma was cold to him like that. Kenma was only ever objective, wasn’t shy about the hard truths, but he cared about him. Kenma had been his setter for the last six years. Playing without him felt like missing a limb.
Oikawa was good but he wasn’t perfect. The four he tossed to Konoha right after his toss to Kuroo was too low, his sing-song apology echoing on the court. But the next one was perfect, and so was the one after that, and one after that one too—and so was the joyful, breathless smile on Oikawa’s face as he tossed ball after ball, perfect or otherwise, to the rest of the hitters. Facing the sky, hands reaching upward, the magnetic lines of his outstretched arms, he looked like he couldn’t imagine belonging anywhere else but on the court.
When Kuroo’s turn to hit came back up again, he found himself jumping higher, just to prove something, anything. But he didn’t know what he wanted to prove—or to whom.
The second his hand slammed down the ball at the top of the parabola, he knew that Oikawa was right. He had never spiked like that before in his life. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to sulk or laugh, a bittersweet rush rising up his throat. In the corner of his eye, he saw the assistant coach scribble something down on a notepad and stick it in a manila folder—his high school stats? His progress at training camp? Their tiff earlier that morning, their chemistry just now?
It didn’t matter. All Kuroo could see was the brilliant gleam in Oikawa’s eyes and, most surprising of all, a genuine smile. It was small and soft, a tender, beautiful thing, unfurling like a new leaf in the springtime. It made Kuroo itch in a different way than Oikawa’s picture-perfect but loveless smile in Volleyball Monthly did.
*
After Kuroo lost brutally in rock-paper-scissors for the showers, he returned to the first years’ room only to find that Oikawa had laid out his futon next to his.
Oikawa had cinched the second round of rock-paper-scissors, that asshole, and seemed to have passed out as soon as he was finished with his shower. He was curled up, facing away, laying on his side with the covers pulled so high up that it hid all but his wavy brown hair, still damp, and the top-half of the bridge of his nose. They had only been acquainted for a day—a very long, very exhausting day—but it was strange to see Oikawa’s hair soft and unstyled. He looked younger, sweeter when he wasn’t all done-up like he was in his long repertoire of magazine interviews.
Kuroo pulled his own covers over his head to hide his phone. He texted Sawamura: WORDS have MEANINGS. Sawamura laughed at him: the Cony sticker. Did Sawamura think it was cute of him to use LINE mascot stickers? A learned behavior from a girlfriend, perhaps?
After a moment of stewing in his annoyance and relishing in a few pleasantly achy stretches, Kuroo decided that he wasn’t actually still mad at Karasuno’s victory over Nekoma at Nationals last season and added, What’s his damage?
Sawamura didn’t respond right away. Kuroo thought he’d fallen asleep until a reply rolled in: I think it’s because Ushiwaka broke his spirit in middle school.
So now he’s breaking MY spirit?, Kuroo complained. For revenge? Do I look like Ushiwaka?
You’re both equally ugly LOL, Sawamura said, which was so outrageously rude that Kuroo scoffed powerfully before he remembered where he was and froze. If Yamagata had the nerve to tell him to accuse him of sabotage, Kuroo was going to lose it. Even Karasuno’s shorty was a better blocker than Yamagata.
His phone buzzed again. Sawamura had double texted. I guess you and Oikawa don’t get along because it’s like looking into a mirror. Must be hard…
Kuroo hated him.
He gingerly poked his head out of his covers, flooding the room with the blue light from his phone. Someone across from him—maybe Souma? Kuwabara?—snored softly. Yamagata was sprawled out on his back and dead to the world. Thank god. The room was quiet, punctuated by the soft sounds of breathing and the rhythmic lull of the crickets outside.
Then Oikawa shifted next to him. He took his time, slowly flipping over onto his other side so that he faced Kuroo, reaching out of his blanket cocoon to tuck his covers under his chin. It made Kuroo think of flipping a crêpe, folding a paper crane. He mumbled something Kuroo couldn’t make out. The light from Kuroo’s phone screen illuminated Oikawa’s eyelashes and the shadows that they cast, curved over his cheek, his surprisingly delicate nose.
Oikawa mumbled something again. “Who?” Kuroo thought he said. It broke him free from his trance, and he turned off his phone.
“Sorry,” Kuroo whispered and immediately felt silly for it.
“S’kay, Iwa,” Oikawa murmured.
The room was well-insulated, warm from the humidity and the proximity of all their bodies, even though all of the windows were open. Someone had even left a fan blowing softly in the corner, its electric whirr white noise into the night.
But for some reason, Kuroo felt like he did when Kenma once pushed him into the pool in their neighborhood recreation center one summer. Kuroo couldn’t even remember when it had happened or what he had done to deserve Kenma’s ire—only that, one second he was standing on solid, dry land, and the next, his feet fell from under him, eyes snapping shut, lungs heaving, his chest plunging into the cold, cold water.
*
Kuroo was never going to underestimate the determination and detective prowess of fangirls ever again. By the fourth day of training camp, it had somehow spread to the general public that there was a very pretty first year on the university’s men’s volleyball team. Soon, the oppressive veil of testosterone was broken up every once in a while by a peppering of cute girls hoping to get a good look at Oikawa, who unfairly still looked like a pop idol even after almost a full week of sweat and jammed fingers and flying fall drills.
Oikawa had noticed the girls first, sensing them like a shark smelling blood in the water. He was an entirely different person in front of them, waving and laughing saccharinely at them like Prince Charming, if Prince Charming was an eighteen-year-old from Sendai with a horrible personality, as if he didn’t stay practicing deep into the dark every night, eyes cold, hands bruised. Kuroo couldn’t stand it, Oikawa’s smiling and preening and peacocking. There was nothing behind them, no intention at all.
He had a fan club in high school!!!, Karasuno’s shorty had texted him excitedly. Hinata had extorted Kuroo’s number from pushover Kenma after he had heard the news about them being teammates and was all too willing to partake in gossip.
A fan club???
They chanted OOOOOLÉ whenever he went up to serve!!! He’s so cool!!!
What the hell, said Kuroo. Is he Spanish?
Is Hanger a Spanish last name? Hinata asked.
?????????, replied Kuroo.
The fact that the girls instinctively understood that Oikawa was the pretty first year was only one of Kuroo’s grievances. It was also annoying and very disheartening that none of them had eyes for anyone else—and Kuroo wasn’t even ugly, unlike Kimura, another first year middle blocker. Even Kenma, who had never willingly perceived another person in his life, had once admitted that he could recognize that Kuroo was good with the girls, even though he did not understand or care why.
“Girls love me,” Kuroo said to Konoha over lunch.
Konoha snorted.
Lunch break was always held outside—not because the weather was particularly good, but because none of them could stand to be locked up inside the court for any longer than they had to, state-of-the-art facilities be damned. It was stifling in there, but it wasn’t much better outside: sultry, sweltering, the sun perched high in the sky, not a cloud in sight. If Kuroo were in a better mood, he would’ve appreciated how saturated the sky was, a dazzling ultramarine.
The other first years were slumped under a shady tree in a pile after they wolfed down their meals. Kuroo was going to do something drastic if he was stuck with Yamagata for even a second longer than he had to be, so he was forced under the sun. Konoha took pity on him, perhaps out of a misplaced sense of loyalty after so many practice matches in high school. Oikawa usually ate with Nagihara, their talented fourth-year starting setter, but today he had hung back to clump up with Kuroo and lanced at his stew like a kingfisher.
“Seriously, they do,” Kuroo continued. “They flock to me like I’m birdseed and they’re—well, birds.”
“That is literally something only people who are not good with girls would say,” said Konoha. He waved to the clandestine girls lingering at the edge of the athletic complex field, too shy to approach the throng of tall, very sweaty men to get to their idol. “What’s your secret, Oikawa?”
At that, Oikawa stilled. Then he picked at his stew some more. Then, in a sonorous tenor, he said, “I simply can’t help that I was born full of charms.”
Kuroo snorted. “Name one charm you have.”
“Rude! Name one charm I don’t have!”
Konoha wisely chose this moment to slither away to the rest of the first years under the tree, leaving Kuroo without shade. He didn’t know what was brighter: the sun, or Oikawa’s huge brown eyes.
“You spend forever on your hair,” Kuroo listed off. “You’re a horribly picky eater. I think you might snore—not sure about that one yet. Your smile.”
Oikawa recoiled in shock. “How dare you. My smile has been described as, and I quote verbatim, ‘vibrant and effervescent,’ by Volleyball Monthly.” He side-stepped over the other accusations. “Like a nice champagne! I’m willing to bet big money no one’s ever said that about your smile.”
Kuroo was not known to be a stickler for the rules, but for some reason this ground his gears. “Underaged drinking, I see.”
“What, you’ve never had a beer before?”
“Not even a sip. I respect the law,” Kuroo lied through his teeth. He, Kai, and Yaku had frequently taken advantage of his older sister’s laissez-faire approach to partying. “Do the ladies know about all the illegal things you do?”
He laughed. “I didn’t take you to be a stick in the mud, Kuroo-chan, but it was in Paris, so it was legal.”
“Paris?” Kuroo raised an eyebrow. “You got whisked away to Paris?”
“I got whisked away to Paris,” Oikawa repeated. Then he added, petulantly, “By my sister.”
“Ah, there it is, the truth—your sister. No wonder. You’re beautiful,” Kuroo said cruelly, unable to stop himself, “but you can’t keep anyone around, can you? Not with that two-faced personality of yours. You pretend to be so carefree, but that’s not you at all, is it? Would it kill you to be real for once?”
It was at that moment that Kuroo realized how deathly quiet the athletic field had become as the rest of the first years witnessed their argument. He didn’t know why he said all of those bitter, hard things, nor why he couldn’t stop his cutting onslaught, only that every word felt like a dagger cleaving through his mouth.
It was just the truth, he tried to tell himself. It would’ve come out sooner or later, kindly or callously. But that didn’t make him feel better. The vitriol in his heart crept all the way up his throat, suffocating him. He then realized that it wasn’t vitriol at all, but jealousy.
Oikawa dropped his gaze and silently returned to fishing around his stew for a moment. Then, he said cavalierly, with bravado, with that insouciant façade Kuroo hated, “Well. Isn’t someone cranky today?”
Slowly and proudly, as to not appear like a wounded animal, Oikawa unfolded himself off of the field and walked back to the gymnasium, linking a familiar arm through Nagihara’s. Kuroo couldn’t decide if it was better or worse that he didn’t cry.
Later in the evening when they played in rotating practice matches in different permutations of bodies, they found their way back to each other. Oikawa’s tosses to him never faltered, as if nothing had ever happened. Kuroo flew, but there was a weight in his heart. The coaches wrote down their notes in their notepads. He wondered what they were saying about them, if their plays together were fooling anyone.
If I said something really mean to you right before a game would you keep tossing to me, Kuroo texted Kenma while under the covers. He had finally won the right for the first shower after almost an entire week, but the stuffy, humid air under his blanket felt like it was undoing all the soap—a pyrrhic victory. Oikawa wasn’t back yet, and for the first time, Kuroo was glad that he stayed at individual practice too late to be healthy.
No, came Kenma’s immediate reply.
I think I might have fucked up, Kuroo wrote after a moment.
Then say sorry, said Kenma.
He fell asleep after that, but it was the kind of sleep that didn’t come kindly, in starts and stops, waving and waning.
When the door opened softly, he snapped back to consciousness but kept his eyes closed. He could hear Oikawa’s socks sliding over the floor, the closet door opening and shutting. Pulled together like magnets, Oikawa unrolled his futon next to Kuroo’s, and then their hands were inches away from touching, and his soft breaths lulled Kuroo back to sleep.
*
Kuroo was the last first year to get up—none of the other assholes had thought to wake up him—and was subsequently alone when he saw the announcement for the final lineup. The names of everyone on the starting lineup was printed out on plain computer paper and taped unceremoniously onto the front door of the gymnasium. Scanning the list, he saw that he didn’t make it.
Neither had Oikawa.
That came as a surprise. Kuroo hadn’t expected himself to make it this year—the fourth-year middle blockers were some of the strongest in the nation, and he had three full more years to prove himself. Oikawa, though, was already one of the best but still ran himself ragged every night trying to be better. What an awful feeling, Kuroo thought, to spend so much of your life on something, only to be told that you still weren’t good enough.
The gymnasium was empty except for the coaches lingering on the bleachers, so Kuroo left in search of—anyone at all; someone specific; either one. It didn’t matter, except that it did. When he poked his head into the dining hall, Oikawa wasn’t with the others for breakfast, and Kuroo turned on his heel before he could talk some sense into himself.
What would he even possibly say when he found him? He couldn’t ruminate on it for too long—Oikawa was sitting at the edge of the athletic field under a shady tree, looking up at the endless blue of the sky. His brown hair caught the morning light, a speck in the distance like a sparrow’s wings in flight. He didn’t turn immediately when Kuroo loped up to the tree and sat down next to him, their knees touching. They sat together in a shared bittersweet, dawning silence.
“I’m sorry,” Kuroo finally said.
Oikawa’s eyes traced a cloud. Kuroo wondered what he was seeing, what it was like to be seen by him. “Do you even know what you’re sorry for?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry that I’ve been so jealous of you.”
Oikawa snorted. “Because of the fangirls? I can send them your way if you want. We can share the wealth of getting attention, like big boys.”
“No,” Kuroo said, “it’s not because of the fangirls.” He was suddenly desperate for Oikawa to understand that it wasn’t about the girls at all. Why couldn’t he get the words out? Where was the onslaught from the other day when he needed it? “It’s just,” he tried, “you’re the kind of person who knows what they want, and when you want something, you want it so badly, with all your heart.”
“Knowing what you want,” said Oikawa, not unkindly, “is not the same as getting what you want.” He laughed, but it was a mirthless thing. “You were really mean to me, you know.”
“Okay, that was because of the fangirls,” Kuroo conceded. “And it really was because of your smile. You have a nice one.”
“Yes. Once again, it has been described as, and I quote, ‘vibrant and effervescent,’ but you told me to my face it was shitty. You’re just like Iwa-chan, only more full of yourself.”
Kuroo thought to the night when Oikawa said that name in his sleep. He was too afraid to ask who Iwa-chan was and didn’t know if he could take it, so he ignored it. “No, not that smile. Your real one.”
Oikawa didn’t reply and merely watched the clouds float by past them.
The wind had picked up and pushed one cloud into another so that they touched and integrated into each other, changing shapes as they did. Kuroo and Yaku’s class were forced to learn about the environment in their earth sciences class during their last year of high school, which was how Kuroo knew that all clouds were just tiny little particles of water and dust, that what they looked like depended on relative humidity in the atmosphere, and that was why they were always changing. They were the same, until they were different.
The world spun; the temperatures rose and fell; the sun went up, went down. Kuroo went to practice; they rotated onto the same teams; Oikawa unrolled his futon next to his.
“I don’t really care about them, the girls,” Oikawa said in a rare show of sincerity. “I’m sure they’re nice. But I don’t want really want to get to know them. I don’t want them to get to know me, either. You were really mean to me,” he repeated, lightly, “but I want to make the starting lineup too badly to care.”
“I’m sorry,” Kuroo said again and meant it. Want, he couldn’t help but note the present tense, and not wanted.
“I’m sorry, too,” Oikawa said. He turned to face him, then, and, even though they looked nothing alike, when their eyes met it really was like looking into a mirror, like Sawamura had joked about almost a week ago. Their knees, still touching, knocked into each other, and when Kuroo tilted his head, he saw his reflection in Oikawa’s brilliantly gleaming eyes. Did he really look like that, with that tender look in his eyes? Or did that tenderness emanate from Oikawa?
“What do you want?” asked Oikawa.
Kuroo didn’t know and couldn’t answer. Perhaps he did know, deep down inside, but just couldn’t put it into words.
Instead, he got up from off the ground and dusted off his sweatpants, then offered a hand to Oikawa. “Come on, we’ll be late,” he said. “Unless you want to do another lap of flying falls. Then that would mean that you’re absolutely unhinged, and I can’t associate with you anymore.”
“Not any more unhinged than you. And it’s very rude of you to offer your dirty hand, Kuroo-chan,” he complained, but took it in his own anyway.
Much later, when they were done with practice, Oikawa silently unrolled his futon next to Kuroo’s, and Kuroo silently let him, and they silently turned toward each other, and silently faced each other, and silently looked at each other.
The collar of Oikawa’s sleep shirt was damp. Kuroo wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel it for himself. But he froze himself still in time before he could do anything stupid, like trail a hand down from Oikawa’s collar to his shoulder, or trawl a hand up to tangle in his wet, unruly hair. He wondered what he looked like to clever, perceptive Oikawa—like the canary that the cat had caught?
Oikawa arched an eyebrow and closed his eyes and smiled. His cheek was pressed into his pillow and it gave him a stupid-looking pout. Still, the smile was real. Kuroo didn’t know what that meant, or why, as the nights went on, the other first years started saving the spot next to Kuroo for when Oikawa came back to him.
*
On the last day of training camp, Oikawa and Nagihara switched places, and Nagihara set for the second string players (“The benchwarmers,” as Konoha cheerfully liked to refer to themselves, a not inaccurate self-burn). Even with Nagihara’s laser-accurate tosses, Oikawa’s side of the net crushed them, and Oikawa was especially happy to gloat to Kuroo.
“Sakurai-san and Kawaguchi-san are such high-level middle blockers,” he sing-songed to Kuroo. The two of them were unlucky and were picked to pack away the court while the other players were free to move back from the shared accommodation to the dorms. “They’ll definitely go pro after university. I can’t bear the thought of them being gone—not only will there be a hole in our defense, but a hole in my fragile, tender heart.”
“Aren’t you a poet,” said Kuroo, laughing. “You have a heart of stone. What could possibly mend it, other than caulk?”
“A tall, competent middle blocker,” answered Oikawa. He was in the middle of neatly folding the net when he suddenly stopped. “Well, two of them,” he added, an unreadable note in his voice. “Sakurai-san and Kawaguchi-san are both fourth years.”
Kuroo rolled his eyes, then rolled the cart of reserve volleyballs into the corner of the supply closet and parked it. “What am I, chopped liver?”
This was the part where the Oikawa from a week ago would say something mean and inflammatory, like I said a competent middle blocker. Or maybe he would riff off of the liver bit and say something about how not even a dog would care for Kuroo, if Kuroo were chopped liver. Or maybe he would add a stipulation for the kind of middle blocker he wanted—kind, like Sakurai, or handsome, like Kawaguchi. Oikawa had said a lot of irritating things over training camp, but for some reason Kuroo felt like he wouldn’t be able to stomach it if Oikawa confirmed how handsome Kawaguchi was.
But the Oikawa now, the one in the corner of the supply closet within arm’s reach of Kuroo, didn’t say any of that. He smoothed an unsure hand over the creased tape of the folded volleyball net in his lap. Then, he said, “You’re just one middle blocker. We’d need one more.” Quickly, he shoved the net into its storage bin, as if he had said something particularly humiliating, and then added loftily, “Did we beat you so badly that you forgot the rules of volleyball?”
“Yamagata served a ball straight to the back of my head,” Kuroo groused unhappily, mourning his lost brain cells.
He followed Oikawa out of the supply closet and to the first years’ mostly empty room, since they had yet to pack away their things.
For as methodical as Oikawa was on the court, he was slapdash in everyday life, and his oversized duffel bag overflowed with unfolded track pants and rumpled up sweatshirts. Kuroo was used to years of packing for both Kenma and himself—mostly because he always had to forcibly drag Kenma away from his room to wherever they were going—and there was no wasted space in his own bag.
“Are you the kind of twisted freak who folds his socks?” Oikawa asked in disbelief.
“Are you the kind of twisted freak who doesn’t fold his socks?” Kuroo volleyed back.
“Your poor roommate. How could anyone live with you?” Oikawa wondered out loud.
He didn’t know. He and his roommate, Miyazono, had only met once briefly in their dorm room before Kuroo dumped his textbooks on the desk on his side of the room and had to sprint to training camp before he was late. Kuroo couldn’t even remember what his dorm room looked like. He hadn’t even put sheets on the bed.
Oikawa was already barreling his way out of the room while Kuroo stood at the mouth of the door, taking in the empty room one last time, watching the way the dusk flooded the walls. A stray sunbeam ignited Oikawa’s hair molten gold. As if he had eyes on the back of his head, Oikawa turned around and caught Kuroo’s lingering gaze, and he tilted his head.
“What?” asked Oikawa with an uncharacteristic softness.
Strange, how cramped the room felt at the very beginning of the week, when the first years, still strangers to each other, were sleeping on top of one another like fallen leaves in a gutter. Kuroo remembered the night before, the edges of his and Oikawa’s futons overlapping, even though everyone else’s had a foot of space in between. Their fingers were nearly touching, and his lips were so close to Oikawa’s ear that if he had whispered something, anything, only Oikawa would be able to hear him. Kuroo had a bad habit of holding strangers at arm’s length, but he wasn’t a shy person. Why couldn’t he say anything?
“What?” Kuroo whispered back, watching the way the sun curled gently around Oikawa’s ear.
Oikawa snorted. “Are you a parrot?”
“Haven’t heard that one before. Usually people see my hair and call me a rooster.”
“You’re right. It does look like a chicken’s ass,” Oikawa said fondly.
Somehow Kuroo made his way back to his dorm room without falling over from exhaustion, where he was greeted by Miyazono as well as the pile of clothes Kuroo had hastily left behind on his bed, when he had told himself that he would deal with it later. It was now later, and he did not have any more of the mental capacity to deal with it than he did when he first moved in.
Miyazono was as nice as Kuroo remembered, but he didn’t know a single thing about volleyball, so it would have been pointless to explain to him what he did all week or what a middle blocker even was. It was a Friday night and Kuroo was wound tight, but he had decided to decline Miyazono’s invite to the club with some other floormates.
“Next time,” he promised. “I think I’m going to pass out as soon as my head touches my pillow.”
But Kuroo laid wide awake for a long, long time.
I can’t sleep, he texted Kenma, his old faithful.
Try to, said Kenma.
You’re no help, you know that?
No reply.
He couldn’t pinpoint what it was that made him so antsy, itchy—his mattress wasn’t quite right; he ached deep, down into his bones; it was too quiet inside his room, but the walls were thin and he could hear someone playing cheerful J-pop down the hall, and idol music always made him think of Oikawa waving diplomatically to the girls who showed up to their practices, his plastic magazine smile, the one that never reached his eyes—
And then he couldn’t stop thinking about Oikawa’s real smile, small and radiant, fixed on him. He thought about how, in the beginning of the week, Oikawa used to fall asleep facing away from him, and how Kuroo used to want to reach across the threshold and touch his strong shoulder, to gently flip him around so that Oikawa faced him.
It was then Kuroo realized what it was he was actually missing: him, on the verge of sleep, on the verge of falling, and then Oikawa quietly padding up to him, unrolling his futon next to his, and Kuroo quietly falling all the way.
Kuroo reached for his phone on the nightstand and scrolled down to Oikawa’s number. Their message history was blank. He had saved the phone numbers of everyone on the team, even sieve-handed Yamagata, but he never had a reason to text anyone, since they had all been together for the entire week.
Can’t sleep, Kuroo texted Oikawa before he lost the nerve.
The reply was instantaneous. Kuroo-chan you perv are you booty calling me?
Never mind, this was a mistake, he replied, fighting a snort.
Don’t worry, Oikawa said. I’ve never once thought that you were perfect.
What were you doing awake? Kuroo glanced at the time. Three in the morning. Miyazono must have been a god, since he was still out.
I’m not really good at falling asleep, Oikawa replied. It’s the one thing I’m not good at.
The ONE thing…
I know what I typed!!! No need to repeat it to me!!! What are YOU doing up?
Kuroo hesitated before sending, Feels weird to be in a dorm room.
Tough, said Oikawa. Better get used to it. You have four more years of this. Or maybe six if you fail a little bit. Or maybe you could move into an apartment.
With you? You looking for a roommate? I’m in if you’re in, Kuroo replied. Ah, the deliriousness of being awake for too long had finally set in.
I wish you wouldn’t jest like this!!! Your taste in home decor probably sucks!!!
We could go to practice together every single day for the next six years, he goaded, but it quickly no longer felt like goading, and come home together, and cook dinner together, and ask each other about our days, and take turns complaining about our shitty professors, and watch bad movies together, and say goodnight to each other every single night.
Sounds terrible, said Oikawa. Sounds fun.
*
Miyazono finally stumbled back into their room about the same time as when Kuroo’s body was waking him up, which was around noon, according to his phone. No new messages, not even from Kenma, that turncoat. Miyazono had been bullied into taking shots well into the night, threw up, took a cab home, threw up again (Miyazono warned Kuroo not to inspect the bushes outside of their dorm building too closely), forgot where he put his keys, and stayed over at a floormate’s room, where he threw up once more, which he spent all morning cleaning.
“I feel awful!” Miyazono exclaimed but looked quite chipper. Kuroo felt worse than Miyazono, and he was not even the one who died and came back to life from alcohol poisoning. “But at least I got a hot girl’s number. We’re going on a date tonight! Hey, Kuroo-kun, are you seeing anyone?”
Was he seeing anyone? When was the last time Kuroo had even looked at another person, much less liked one?
The fangirls who showed up at practice didn’t count—they were Oikawa’s. It was a bit sad to admit, but the only people he had been spending time with lately were Kenma, who had no choice, and Sawamura, who seemed to only be friends with Kuroo to dunk on him, and Bokuto, who was the only person who truly loved him, and Oikawa, who was frustrating and interesting in equal measure.
Miyazono’s retelling of his wild night reminded Kuroo of the volleyball club’s longstanding tradition of holding a rager on the Saturday after their first training camp that the coaches pretended to know nothing about, which was about the only reason why Kuroo was getting out of bed. It was both a homecoming for the upperclassmen and a hazing ritual for the first years that was, for legal reasons, not actually hazing. Fourth years Nagihara, Araragi, and team captain Furuya were sacrificing their goldmine 3LDK apartment with a balcony to host, cementing their statuses as angels.
Kuroo didn’t know what to do with his time until then. He half-heartedly flipped through his business management textbooks but found that his mind couldn’t latch onto a single word, and he puttered here and there around the dorm before wandering onto campus.
It was a beautiful day: a little humid, but sunny and bright. But for some reason he felt aimless, unmoored, weightless and heavy all at once, like he had spent all day in a pool, and now that it was finally time to go home, he couldn’t remember what it was like to walk on land. He shouldn’t have been tired; he had slept for nine full hours. Still, he wanted to go back to sleep.
Kenma was no help in situations like this. Their time together usually consisted of Kuroo talking at Kenma while Kenma was playing a game and desperately trying to avoid hearing what he had to say by jacking up the TV volume. So Kuroo turned to the one person in his life with any semblance of emotional intelligence.
Hypothetical question, he texted Sawamura. How do you know if too much is actually too little?
Hi, replied Sawamura. I’m doing well, too, thanks for asking.
Never mind. Another hypothetical question: How can you tell if someone likes you?
What the hell, said Sawamura. Are you twelve? Am I your dad? Are you asking me about first love?
OK, another one: How can you tell if YOU like someone?
?? Are you okay? Did you hit your head at training camp??
Oikawa Tooru, was all Kuroo could bring himself to say.
Luckily Kuroo was people-watching while waiting in line for coffee in a bustling café and had something to preoccupy himself with, because Sawamura did not reply for a long, long time.
Sorry, I had a lot to process, Sawamura finally said. Kuroo had already finished his doppio and was on the train back to the dorm. He couldn’t find it in himself to call it home; the dorm didn’t feel like one yet. He’s alright. But don’t marry him. You’ll get sniped by his fangirls. And you’ll probably have to move to Miyagi if you do, and I just don’t think your delicate big city boy constitution could handle that.
*
Surely there was a term for getting crossfaded but for the specific combination of coffee and alcohol. It made Kuroo way too many things at once: floaty; but his heart was pounding too fast; but he was about to fall asleep; but he was about to run a marathon.
The upperclassmen had rounded up all of the first years in a circle as soon as they all showed up, which had felt like the first day of training camp. Furuya gave a toast, and then the first years were all handed three shots of unidentifiable hard liquor, which they took all in succession—optional, of course, since it was, for legal reasons, not actually hazing.
“Is this punishment for not dying in training camp?” croaked Kuroo miserably.
“No one said you had to take it,” Nagihara reminded him sweetly, and then slammed back three shots of his own volition.
University players were of a different make, Kuroo thought. Oikawa was standing across from him in the circle and wrinkled his nose at the burning in his throat. When he caught Kuroo staring, Oikawa lifted an eyebrow.
After the near death experience of ingesting rocket fuel, Kuroo was no longer afraid of anything. He sauntered up to Oikawa, who looked more amused than anything else, and teased, “Does this remind you of you and your sister in Paris?”
“No, it does not. I thought you said you weren’t going to be mean to me anymore,” Oikawa whined.
“I said sorry, but I never said I’d stop being mean to you,” Kuroo said. The alcohol must have plied loose his control over his brain-to-mouth function, because he then added, “Hey, Sawamura just told me that I could never survive in Miyagi, do you agree or disagree?”
Oikawa opened his mouth but was interrupted.
“Hey, Oikawa!” a second year shouted from the kitchen. “Ayumi-chan gave you her number, didn’t she?”
Time stopped making sense after that, and it was like several things happened all at once. Oikawa peeled off into the kitchen and began typing furiously on his phone. Someone started blasting a playlist of what seemed like was just the Oricon weekly top singles chart on the wireless speakers. Yamagata broke the seal and was the first to throw up in the bathroom, which only cemented Kuroo’s contempt for him. Souma was convinced into doing the worm but forgot he was holding a beer and spilled all over Nagihara’s spotless floors. A stray cat that neither Nagihara, Araragi, nor Furuya had ever seen before showed up on the balcony, and a swarm of adult men gathered around the window to coo at it.
And then Kuroo blinked, and it was like the apartment doors flooded open and a bunch of girls showed up.
They were nice and made the apartment smell nicer and everyone on the team behave nicely. All of them were funny and smart and ambitious and studied things like biology and advertising and engineering. It almost made Kuroo wish he could fall in love tonight. A beautiful girl with bright brown eyes complimented Kuroo’s hair, and he had to bite his tongue before he could retort that his hair actually looked like a chicken’s ass.
“Thanks,” he said tightly instead.
She got the hint and left not long after that, which made Konoha send a funny look his way.
“What did you say you were, again?” Konoha teased. “That you were birdseed, and girls were birds?”
Kuroo scowled, too irritated to even bother explaining himself.
When he stumbled into the kitchen for another Sapporo, there Oikawa was in top form, smiling that smile straight out of Volleyball Monthly, which did not improve Kuroo’s mood. Oikawa was perched on the countertop, angling himself under the pendant lights just so, like a professional, so that the best angles of his face were illuminated by the warm beams of light. If Kuroo hadn’t known that Oikawa had declared a major in psychology, he would’ve thought that he was an artist.
It felt fucking awful to hear him charming the girls who flocked around him, his sing-song tone of voice, airy and light and insouciant, like nothing mattered. It felt even worse to see how beautiful he looked.
Too exhausted to make any more niceties, Kuroo walked past the fawning girls without a word and shoved open the refrigerator door for the beer. When he looked up, Oikawa caught his glance, and there was an open, curious look in his eyes. If Kuroo knew what the hell was wrong with him, he would have spat it out already.
But he didn’t. So in place of an explanation, Kuroo saluted Oikawa and said, “I think I’ll take this to go.” Without waiting to hear how Oikawa would respond or with what, Kuroo turned away and slipped out into the night.
*
The air was crisp, but Kuroo’s dorm was only a few blocks away from Nagihara’s apartment, and his long legs allowed him to walk at a breakneck speed. But before he could even cross the building gates, Oikawa was shouting after him as he jogged up to meet him on the footpath.
“Don’t let me keep you,” Kuroo said.
Oikawa shrugged and wordlessly began walking next to him. That was fine, Kuroo decided. Oikawa didn’t have to explain himself to him. They were both tipsy from the shots earlier that night and it made both of their treads swavy-swirly, and every few steps Kuroo’s elbow brushed against Oikawa’s and Oikawa’s shoulders bumped against his. Every touch jolted him awake.
It occurred to Kuroo that he didn’t even know which dorm Oikawa lived in, or if Oikawa knew where Kuroo’s dorm was. But the silence in between them felt too fragile to break, and they continued in the direction Kuroo set off in.
Finally, Oikawa purposely bumped hard into his shoulder and asked, “Why would you move to Miyagi?”
“What?”
“Earlier, when you mentioned Sawamura-kun. Do you have a secret girlfriend there or something?”
He could tell that Oikawa was going for a joke, but it seemed half-hearted at best, so he turned the question back onto him. “Do you have a secret girlfriend? What was her name? Ayumi-chan?” Kuroo asked, and surprised himself with how bitter he sounded. He nodded his head towards Nagihara’s apartment. “Like I said, don’t let me keep you. In case you didn’t know, girls like it when you spend time with them.”
Oikawa stopped in his tracks and looked up at him. “I thought I told you before,” he said, annoyed. “I don’t really want to get to know them, and I don’t really want them to get to know me.”
It was the culmination of a myriad of tiny, little things, Kuroo thought, that made something inside of him burst—the coffee; the alcohol; the lack of sleep; the long, long week. The residual disappointment of not making the starting lineup. Sawamura’s bewildering comment about marriage. The way that the street lamps lit Oikawa’s eyes luminous.
“So is this fun for you?” Kuroo demanded, whipping around to face Oikawa head-on. “Stringing them along like that? Or does it feed into your vanity, knowing that people are clamoring to be with someone who isn't even real?”
Oikawa bristled and frowned.
“There you go again, up on your moral high horse,” he said coldly—slowly, so that Kuroo heard every word. “You really think you know me, know what’s real and what’s not. Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe I really am that shallow? Does it even matter?” His eyes hardened into flints. “You know, I thought you were interesting. You came in with such a chip on your shoulder, and you didn’t even realize it. I used to think that I recognized myself in you. Now I know differently. You think you’re so much better than me, than those girls. But you’re no better than any of us. You can’t even admit what you really want.”
With one last disdainful look, Oikawa pressed up on ahead without Kuroo. His words were knife-sharp, aimed to hurt, just like his hellish serve, and their growing distance felt like the vastness in between rival courts in the gymnasium. Even worse, he was right, and Kuroo really didn’t have any ground to stand on.
But it was his turning away that left Kuroo destroyed with longing.
Before Kuroo could think himself out of it, he shot out a hand to grasp Oikawa’s shoulder, whipping him back around. He stepped into Oikawa’s orbit and searched his eyes, and to his relief, they were searching back, raw, both guarded and open, impatient and waiting, all at once.
“Knowing what you want,” Kuroo said, echoing Oikawa from earlier that week, “is not the same as getting what you want.”
Oikawa leaned in even closer, and time stopped, and the world blurred, and the stars blotted out like sidewalk chalk in the rain—and suddenly they were so close that Kuroo couldn’t look away from him, the curve of cold light on his cheek, his moody, full mouth.
“So? What do you want?” Oikawa whispered, a challenge.
Two weeks ago, Kuroo would have been satisfied with just his tosses. Wouldn’t it have been an honor, to have volleyballs set to him by Oikawa Tooru, the darling of Volleyball Monthly with his perfect hair, that glossy editorial smile? But then he had seen Oikawa in real life—at training camp, right then and there; in the light, in motion—and the joy and fire in his eyes, and his breathless laughter on the court, and the quiet still lifes of him in the dark at nighttime, and Kuroo finally, finally understood that he wanted him so badly that the wanting flooded his lungs.
“I want to make you feel something real,” Kuroo said and hoped that Oikawa understood, too, when he tenderly cradled the nape of Oikawa’s neck with both of his hands and pulled him in to meet their lips together.
Oikawa kissed back instantly. Something unfurled inside Kuroo too.
When he moved his lips against Oikawa’s, sun-chapped and dry but so, so good, he took his time, slowly memorizing the shape of his cupid’s bow, the sensitive underside of his bottom lip. One of Oikawa’s strong, steady hands rested on Kuroo’s waist, and as Oikawa opened up the kiss and their tongues gently met, his fingers trailed up and under Kuroo’s shirt, skin against skin, sliding up along the curve of his spine. Kuroo’s own hands fell from their cradle to map down Oikawa’s graceful neck, the slope of his shoulders, his delicate collarbones. He wanted to know all of his geometries.
One last kiss against Oikawa’s lips, and then he pulled away to place another one on the corner of his mouth, and another on the jut of his jawbone, and when his mouth met his throat, Oikawa’s breath skipped a beat, hitching like it did right before he tossed to him on the court, and his fingers found their way into Kuroo’s hair, messing it up even further.
“God,” Oikawa sighed, running his fingers through his hair. Kuroo pressed an open-mouthed kiss on his neck. “Your hair really does look like a chicken’s ass.”
Kuroo huffed a laugh against his neck. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re rude?”
Oikawa gently raked the short little hairs on Kuroo’s nape. “No. You’re the rude one.”
Kuroo rolled his eyes but very kindly let himself be disentangled from Oikawa’s throat for one more kiss before they slowly pulled away from each other. He reached out to tuck Oikawa’s hair behind his ear and Oikawa leaned into his touch, only to tug him back into in an embrace. The cold was beginning to set in, but it sent a private thrill arcing through him to know that Oikawa was flushed for an entirely different reason.
“My roommate isn’t home,” Kuroo said after a moment.
Oikawa slapped his shoulder. “What the hell? Are you propositioning me?”
“I meant that it’s getting really late, so you can sleep over if you want! Besides, you kissed me!”
“You kissed me first!”
“Jury’s still out on that one,” he said, just to be difficult. “Let’s just call it a draw. I’ll walk you home?”
Oikawa slapped his shoulder again with even more force. “First you proposition me, now you’re hitting it and quitting it? Take me to your dorm,” he demanded.
To Kuroo’s great relief, Miyazono had stayed out like he promised. The building was surprisingly quiet for the last Saturday night before the semester started. It was strange, Kuroo thought as the two of them entered the dark, silent dorm. This was technically his home, though it still felt as unfamiliar as it had the first night he had lain awake, desperately sleepless and longing for something he didn’t know how to put into words.
They didn’t even bother turning on the ugly fluorescent overhead lights. Kuroo wordlessly handed Oikawa an old Nekoma sweatshirt and watched as he unbuttoned his shirt with those clever fingers, illuminated by only the moon, and put the hoodie on. The look of Oikawa in his things ignited yet another want. Kuroo wondered how many more wants Oikawa could instill inside him.
When Kuroo lifted his covers and scooted into bed, Oikawa followed after him like a magnet chasing after the poles, tucking his cheek into the hollow junction of where Kuroo’s neck and shoulders met. Kuroo looped an arm around the small of Oikawa’s back, tracing little circles into his skin and delighting in his shivers.
It was like training camp, only it wasn’t like training camp at all. Somewhere on a floor above them, the floor creaked. A room on his floor was playing J-pop, and the notes softly filtered through the hall. Someone laughed.
Kuroo supposed that they would have to talk about this sooner or later. But for now the world kept slowly spinning; the temperatures rose and fell; the sun went up, went down. Kuroo’s hand traced the collar of the faded red sweatshirt Oikawa wore; Oikawa’s lips ghosted over his throat with his soft rhythmic breaths; and Kuroo fell and fell and fell.