Work Text:
It’s a brisk Thursday morning in February when the bell over the salon’s door chimes and Tetsurou, kneeling on the storeroom floor, up to his elbows in newly-arrived boxes of supplies, hears a voice that pours down his spine like gently melted chocolate. “Hi,” the heavenly voice says, low and rich and a little sheepish. “Uh, I’m here for a haircut?”
Tetsurou doesn’t realize he’s frozen, head turned to listen, until a thrown comb smacks into his shoulder. “Don’t you dare,” Kenma says from across the tiny room, scowling the scowl of someone who knows he’s about to be left to sort through innumerable bottles of hair dye on his own. “Kuro, if you fuck off right now, I swear to god -”
“We have a customer, Kenma,” Tetsurou says, trying to look innocent of all ulterior motive as he gets to his feet and edges towards the door. In the face of that scowl, it doesn’t quite work. “What, do you want to let him walk right back out?”
“Get Akaashi to do it!”
“ - our stylist will be with you in just a moment,” Bokuto is saying faintly outside. “Our prices? Yes, they start from -”
“Listen, Akaashi’s great, you know I love him, but he still isn’t as confident as he needs to be, you know? It’d be better if I -”
“I’m going to kill you. I’m going to stab you in your sleep in the middle of the night and watch the life drain from your eyes -”
“That is unnecessarily violent, and as your boss I disapprove. Like, a lot,” Tetsurou says, ducking out of the storeroom with increasingly dire threats muttered at his back, along with a couple of bitter insults about his (admittedly, rather high) susceptibility to any man with a deep voice and an attractive smile.
The customer talking to Bokuto has both, along with warm, dark eyes behind oversized glasses. He’s a university student, Tetsurou decides, rapidly cataloguing the hoodie, the well-worn jeans, the hint of dark circles under his eyes. Probably in his early twenties, like Tetsurou, with a short, trim figure that says he’s on some kind of sports team.
He’s cute.
Okay, keep it together, Tetsurou thinks as he walks to the reception desk. Ignore how Bokuto is grinning at you. You’re fine. It’s all fine.
“Oh, here he is!” Bokuto says, all innocent enthusiasm. “Sawamura-san, this is Kuroo Tetsurou, the head stylist.”
“Welcome, Sawamura-san,” Tetsurou says with a slight bow, expression automatically settling into the easygoing smile he uses for new clients. “What can we do for you today?”
“Daichi is fine,” the customer says, smiling and bowing in return. “I’ll be in your care. I just need a simple haircut, nothing too fancy.”
Figures, given that he walked in on a Thursday morning without an appointment. “Sure, no problem. Right this way.”
Bokuto gives him two thumbs up behind Daichi’s back, grinning even wider. Tetsurou glares at him, then leads Daichi to one of the empty chairs, giving himself a cursory glance in the mirror in the process. Crisp black shirt tucked into black slacks, hair looking good, the silver ring in his left ear gleaming attractively - excellent. If he plays this right, he’ll know whether Daichi might be interested long before he walks out of the salon.
“So,” he says, smiling at Daichi in the mirror. “What kind of haircut would you like?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Daichi replies, sheepish once more. “I don’t usually get anything more than a trim, but my friends keep telling me I look like an old man so I wanted something new? Not too fancy, just . . .”
“Modern and stylish,” Tetsurou says knowingly, running light fingertips through Daichi’s hair before rolling a strand between thumb and forefinger. His hair is thick and quite adorably rumpled, if a bit too dry. He doesn’t need any kind of haircut to look better, in Tetsurou’s opinion, but Tetsurou definitely isn’t complaining about having him here. “We can do that, Daichi-san. Here, have a look at this.”
He gives Daichi the reference book they keep on hand and lets him browse for a minute or two before suggesting that he lets Tetsurou trim the top and crop the sides and back, tapering down in length as he goes. “It’ll look natural and suited for nearly every occasion,” he explains, indicating the model on the page. “Depending on how you style it, you could look ready for a formal presentation or ready to go to the club.”
“I’ve never been to a club, so I’ll take your word for it,” Daichi laughs, handing the book back. “That sounds good, Kuroo-san. I’m all yours.”
Tetsurou will, later, cite the laugh and the I’m all yours as the beginning of the assault on his focus. No one could blame him, he later tells an amused Bokuto and an unimpressed Kenma, for his mind wandering a little. They hadn’t seen the dimple winking in Daichi’s left cheek. They hadn’t seen the way he settled his hands neatly in his lap, fingers curled around the hems of his sleeves. They hadn’t seen the vulnerability of the naked nape of his neck when he bent his head forward, obedient to the gentle pressure of Tetsurou’s hand, or the startling length of his eyelashes when he took his glasses off. It had been inevitable, really, that Tetsurou would make the very minor, extremely tiny little mistake that he did.
“Shit,” he mutters under his breath, switching off the clippers as he stares down at the back of Daichi’s head.
Daichi’s reflected eyes flick up to meet his, questioning. “Something wrong?”
“Uh.” Yes, I accidentally gave you a bit of a fade and cropped your hair shorter than I should have and now you look a thousand times hotter than you did before. “Yeah, I’m - I apologize, Daichi-san, I’ve ended up cutting it shorter than you asked for.”
Daichi makes a considering noise, putting his glasses back on before turning his head to examine his hair from the left, then the right. “I’m so sorry,” Tetsurou says again, now a little nervous that he hates it and doesn’t know how to say so. “We’ll give you a discount, of course, and -”
“You don’t have to do that. Actually -” Daichi grins, sudden and pleased. “I think it looks pretty great. Modern and stylish, like you said.”
Tetsurou narrowly avoids sighing out loud with relief. “Well, I’m glad you like it. Let me just finish up, then!”
Ten minutes later, Tetsurou and Daichi stand with arms crossed and gazes locked across the counter.
“Forty,” Tetsurou says.
“Ten,” Daichi counters.
“Look, it was hardly professional of me to -”
“But it turned out great, I really like it, so -”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I shouldn’t have -”
“How about twenty?” Bokuto interjects, nudging Tetsurou admonishingly when he opens his mouth to protest. “And we’ll throw in a bottle of conditioner, too.”
Daichi squints at the conditioner’s label for a moment before nodding. “Fine,” he says, taking out his wallet. “Twenty percent is all right.”
“And you gotta come back every month, okay?” Tetsurou says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the counter. The smile he gives Daichi is the crooked little smile that never fails to charm, the one reserved for his favourite customers. “To let me take care of your cool new style, make sure it doesn't grow out too much.”
“If you’re going to fight to give me a discount every time,” Daichi laughs, “then yeah, I will. Maybe the next mistake you make will turn out even better, hm?”
“Come back and we’ll see,” Tetsurou grins, and keeps his eyes on Daichi as he pays, gets his change, and disappears down the street with a polite wave.
“I’m surprised you didn’t actually wink at him,” Bokuto says drily, nudging Tetsurou out of the way so he can put the money away.
“Like you did with Akaashi yesterday?” Tetsurou snorts, going faintly pink despite himself, and leaves Bokuto spluttering as he goes back to the storeroom to check if Kenma still needs help.
A week later, and he’s still not sure if the flirting was too much or too little. Daichi hadn’t seemed to mind, but he hadn’t really reciprocated either, so does that mean it’d just gone over his head? Like he thought Tetsurou offered forty percent discounts to all his customers out of the goodness of his heart? Now that he thinks about it, Tetsurou had been so occupied by his mistake that Daichi had, in fact, walked out the door without Tetsurou knowing if he was, firstly, interested in men and, secondly, interested in Tetsurou.
Dammit. So much for the charm of the crooked smile.
Tetsurou worries over this for two whole weeks before reluctantly concluding that Daichi was just a really nice customer, and that he shouldn’t seriously expect him to return. So when Daichi does come back almost exactly a month later and asks for Tetsurou by name, he’s surprised, elated, and very pleased to find that thinking about Daichi about fifty times daily has let him accurately remember the exact shade of Daichi’s lovely brown eyes.
“You came back just in time!” he says, settling Daichi into a chair and giving his shoulders a quick squeeze. “It’s grown out quite a bit. Would you just like a haircut this time? Or -”
Holy fuck his shoulders are so warm and solid underneath Tetsurou’s palms, and that dimple is absolutely torturing Tetsurou with how goddamn kissable it looks, and Tetsurou really, really cannot bear to let him go within a mere half an hour.
“ - or, actually, we’ve got a promotion going on! You can get a whole treatment - oil massage, shampoo, and conditioner - for just five hundred yen extra.”
At that, Kenma looks over from where he’s manning the counter and gives Tetsurou a narrow-eyed look that says Really?
Tetsurou ignores him.
“Really? That sounds kind of relaxing, actually.”
“It’s the perfect start to your weekend,” Tetsurou says, with a bright, commercial-worthy smirk, and Daichi snorts with quiet laughter and says, “Sure, okay then.”
So Tetsurou rolls his chair over to the hair wash station, chatting easily as he gets the oil warmed up, and Daichi turns out to have a delightfully dry sense of humour and an even more delightful chuckle when he’s amused, deep and quiet in his throat. It’s a slow evening, thankfully, so Tetsurou can stand behind the chair after he’s wrapped Daichi’s hair in a hot towel, pretending to wash his hands or rearrange the bottles on the counter nearby, and talk to Daichi at length without worrying about other customers waiting for him.
“Do you want me to leave you alone for a bit?” he asks some ten minutes later, suddenly realizing with a twinge of guilty embarrassment that Daichi might just want to be left in peace and quiet. “Some customers don’t like it, I know, so if you want to relax on your own, just tell me to shut up and I’ll -”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Daichi says, gratifyingly quickly. A drop of sweat slips from the edge of the towel, slides down his temple; his eyes are wide and earnest. “But you don’t have to feel obliged to keep talking to me, Kuroo-san, I’m fine with quiet if it would be easier for you to work.”
“Not at all,” Tetsurou says, unable to help smiling. “I have a tendency to run my mouth, so if you’re fine with it -”
“I am, really. You were saying about Tanaka-san?”
“Right, yeah - so he got marched in here by his sister and his boyfriend, and they sat him down and told me to buzz off every last centimetre of his hair, which was terribly bleached, and he sat there looking at me like ‘Please don’t do it!’” Tetsurou gently tugs the towel off, wiping the little bead of sweat away before guiding Daichi’s head under the tap. “But he was no competition for his sister - her eyes said ‘Do it right now or die in agony’ - and his boyfriend was this pint-sized kid who was somehow holding Ryuu down despite having arms like twigs - is the water too cold? Is that better? Great - so I figured I’d better listen . . .”
Daichi laughs in all the right places, and he tells Tetsurou a story about a school friend who spent so long deciding what colour streaks to get to make him look ‘wild’ that his hair had grown halfway down his back by the time he eventually gave up. Tetsurou laughs too, then asks about Daichi’s hometown, his current friends, his classes at university, and scrubs gently through Daichi’s hair with fragrant, lathered hands as he listens. Daichi is curious about Tetsurou’s career, in turn, so Tetsurou gives him the brief version - his mother always trusting him to cut her hair when he was young, getting in trouble in school for experimenting with his own hair, working part-time for six years to save up for his own salon.
“Took a while,” he says, rinsing out the last of the shampoo and getting started with the conditioner, “but we finally made it. We’re doing pretty well, too, business in the last couple of months has been -”
He cuts himself off, realizing that Daichi hasn’t said anything for a while, and looks at Daichi’s face - which is slack-jawed, entirely relaxed, his eyes peacefully closed.
“Oh my god,” he whispers to himself, hands stilling. Daichi fell asleep. He fell asleep. While he was getting his hair washed. Fuck, but he’s the most adorable thing Tetsurou has ever fucking seen.
“Stop staring, creep,” Kenma mutters from somewhere behind him.
“He fell asleep!” Tetsurou whisper-shouts.
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“Look at him! Oh my god, I can’t believe -”
“Kuro, wash his hair and move him before he starts drooling.”
“Right, yeah, okay.” Tetsurou is a professional. He can manage this, he’s had weirder customers before.
None of them were this goddamn cute, but. That’s an issue that he’s going to valiantly ignore.
Daichi doesn’t wake up when he’s left alone for the conditioner to work, or when Tetsurou rinses his hair out, or when Tetsurou raises the back of the chair very, very slowly. He doesn’t even wake up when Tetsurou starts up the hairdryer and blow-dries his hair. Tetsurou wants to kiss his sweet dozing face and put a blanket over him and just watch him nap -
Professional. Right. Not a creep. Not a creep. Fuck.
He doesn’t want to wake Daichi up, so he’s left trying to hold Daichi’s head up with one hand and wield the clippers with the other. The man seems just as unbothered by the buzzing of the clippers as he was by the hairdryer, which is damn near miraculous. How exhausted must Daichi be to have fallen dead asleep like this?
A muffled snort distracts him from trying to balance Daichi’s head so he can trim the hair behind his right ear, and Tetsurou glances up to see Bokuto doubled over in the mirror, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
“If you wake him up,” Tetsurou says, his own mouth twitching despite himself, “I swear to god, Bokuto -”
“He’s fucking asleep,” Bokuto gasps, fighting for breath. “Hey, careful, you’ll nick his ear -”
Daichi’s head wobbles as Tetsurou curses quietly and tries to tip it forward, away from the clippers. Bokuto wheezes like a man dying of asthma and hastily ducks into the storeroom so he can laugh in peace. Tetsurou bites his tongue, pulls himself together, and finishes the haircut which, miraculously, ends up looking even better than the first time. He’s just wondering whether he needs to resort to spraying water in Daichi’s face to wake him up when there’s a soft snort and an incoherent mumble.
“Daichi-san?” Tetsurou prods one solid shoulder with a gentle forefinger. “You’re all done.”
“ ‘M wha’?” Daichi looks up, blinking blearily at the mirror for a second before suddenly looking wide awake. “Shit, did I fall asleep?”
“You did,” Tetsurou replies, now grinning widely. “Gotta say, I’ve never had a customer who slept through a rinse, blow-dry and haircut before.”
Daichi groans, leaning forward to bury bright red cheeks in his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he says, muffled. “I can’t believe I did that, oh god. I’m really, really sorry.”
Tetsurou hums comfortingly, putting the clippers away. “It’s all right. Long week?”
“Yeah, it’s mid-terms week, I haven’t gotten a proper night’s sleep in five days,” Daichi sighs. “I feel awful, I must have made your job much harder.”
“You should be more worried about getting proper rest than me doing my job,” Tetsurou tells him, sounding singularly like his father even to his own ears. “Go straight back home and take a nap, Daichi-san. And come back next month for your trim, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” Daichi smiles, getting to his feet. “I will.”
He actually comes back two weeks later, asking how much highlights would cost. Bokuto gives him the full price before Tetsurou can intervene, quoting a number that makes Daichi wince slightly, but he sits in the chair anyway. When Tetsurou passes behind him on the way to prep for a customer about to arrive, the little smile he gives Tetsurou hits him like a flood of sunlight. Tetsurou promptly takes a right turn and ducks into their break room.
“Akaashi, do me a favour and take Shimizu-san when she comes in,” he says, giving Akaashi his most entreating look. “You’re fine with her, right?”
Akaashi lowers his magazine and stares at Tetsurou for a long, unnerving moment. “This is about Daichi-san, isn’t it.”
It’s not a question. Tetsurou swallows an irrational urge to apologize, and Akaashi looks at him for a second more before sighing and waving a hand.
“You’re the best, Akaashi!” Tetsurou says cheerily over his shoulder as he leaves, and he’s just in time to grab Kenma’s tray cart from him as he wheels it out. Kenma lets go, mostly out of surprise, then groans. Tetsurou hasn’t heard him that exasperated since the time he tried to teach Tetsurou to play Valorant.
“You hate colouring, Kuro. How many times have you complained about ‘fiddling around with bits of foil’ and ‘mixing up chemicals that could fry your skin off’?”
“Well, maybe that’s why I need to get a bit more practice in,” Tetsurou retorts. Kenma rolls his eyes and leaves, even his silence somehow judgemental. Tetsurou makes a face at his retreating back before wheeling the cart out to Daichi.
He’s asked for dark brown highlights, so the bleach Tetsurou mixes up thankfully doesn’t have to be too strong, and his focus is only required for the placement of each little strip of foil. It leaves plenty of time to chat with Daichi, and they talk about everything from a particularly annoying professor in one of Daichi’s classes to how Tetsurou had had to return a delivery three times last week because the salon kept getting confused with a tattoo parlour two streets over.
Tetsurou’s never had an appointment go by faster. When Daichi’s hair is washed and dried, nearly an hour later, he’s left with lovely highlights that match his eyes perfectly. Daichi’s dimple flashes in and out of existence as he examines himself in the mirror, looking immensely pleased and very, very cute.
“Look at you!” Tetsurou exclaims. He honestly can’t help himself. This man had come in asking to look stylish, and now he looks like a boyband member, ready to take the whole damn world by storm. “Come on, come over here -”
Daichi follows him to a window, and the highlights gleam bright and burnished in the sunlight. “You look great,” Tetsurou laughs, and the surge of - of endorphins or serotonin or something rushing to his head moves his feet without his permission. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s stepped forward and given Daichi a tight squeeze of a hug.
Daichi is still for a split second before he hugs back, laughing too. “I’m glad you’re so proud of your work, Kuroo-san,” he says, “but I kind of can’t breathe.”
“Shit, sorry -” Tetsurou steps away, cheeks suddenly blazing. He just hugged a customer. He just hugged Daichi. “Just - you wanted to look stylish, right, and you really do! I’m so proud - I mean, not proud, that’s weird, but - you know what I -”
“I get it, yeah,” Daichi says. He’s blushing too, all soft and rosy. It’s a good look on him (like there’s anything that wouldn’t be a good look on him). “Um - thanks, I really - I appreciate it. How much do I owe - ?”
“Right, yeah, Bokuto will ring you up!”
“Great. Thanks, Kuroo-san, I’ll see you.”
Tetsurou returns the smile, watches Daichi go off to pay, then goes to put everything away, trying to pull himself together. This is more than a crush, this is - something else, a precipice he doesn’t want to look at, an undertow he doesn’t know how to fight. Is he really so gone for Daichi that he can’t even act professional? He’s twenty-five, for fuck’s sake, not fifteen!
Get a grip, he tells himself, and resolves to at least say goodbye properly, but when he looks up a minute or two later, Daichi is already gone.
He doesn’t come back, the next month.
It’s fine, Tetsurou tells himself. Maybe something came up, fieldwork for college or a bad cold or exams again. Maybe he’s really stressed and just forgot. It’s fine. He loved his hair, he’ll come back to get it done eventually.
The salon has other customers, other regulars, who provide it with a steady stream of customers. Business is booming, in fact, and in dealing with finicky mothers who want the perfect style for their daughters before schools reopen for the summer, grandmothers who gossip long enough to double their appointment times, and young tattooed men who come in wanting the brightest blonde highlights they can offer, Tetsurou and the team are kept busy day in and day out. Thoughts of Daichi usually only steal into his mind when he has a moment to catch his breath - during lunch breaks, in the moments right after he wakes, late at night when he’s trying to sleep - but though he’s sure that they don’t affect the quality of his work, Akaashi gives him quietly commiserating looks and Kenma snipes at him less than he usually would and Bokuto comes in one day with his favourite flavour of homemade cupcakes for no particular reason. Tetsurou half wants Daichi to come back just so they’ll stop treating him like his dog died. He isn’t that heartbroken, honestly.
And then Daichi doesn’t show up the next month either. Tetsurou waits the whole day with anticipation that dwindles steadily over the next week as there continues to be no sign of him, and he finally has to accept that he scared Daichi away. Given the way he acted, it makes sense Daichi would go to a different salon. It’s not a complicated hairstyle to maintain, anyone could touch it up for him, and there’s no reason for him to come back if he felt uncomfortable, which he definitely did. Even if he didn’t mind the hug, he probably guessed how Tetsurou felt about him, and not coming anymore is the easiest way to make his disinterest clear. Sure, he was polite and personable with a sexy jawline and soft eyes and an athletic body, all of which happened to make him unfairly, devastatingly attractive, and Tetsurou’s never fallen harder or faster for anyone like this in his life, but . . . he was just another customer, in the end. All Tetsurou can do now is accept the implicit rejection with grace, learn not to make this mistake again, and move on.
It’s not easy, but he tries his best - he pushes Daichi from his mind the second he realizes he’s thinking of him, throws himself harder into his work, reaches for one of Bokuto’s cupcakes whenever he’s feeling down - and it works, more or less. He enters May with a renewed appreciation for his friends and their support, takes on several big appointments for modelling photo shoots and weddings, and is overall doing pretty well - which is, of course, when Sawamura Daichi chooses to walk back into his life.
Tetsurou hears him before he sees him, just like the first time. He thinks he’s imagining the warm voice greeting Bokuto, kicks himself for still being desperate enough to trick himself into believing that Daichi finally came back, leaves the break room to welcome the customer and it’s - it’s really him. He’s wearing a dark red T-shirt that complements his tanned skin and cargo shorts that flatter his legs like they were custom-made, and he lights up when he sees Tetsurou like he’s missed Tetsurou, too.
“Kuroo-san! It’s good to see you, hi!”
“Hi,” Tetsurou says, half in disbelief, his heart rising in his chest faster than a helium balloon. “I thought - how come -”
“I know, I know, I should have come in ages ago.” Daichi rubs the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, you always take such good care of my hair, it’s grown out quite a bit -”
It has, and the messy fringe kissing Daichi’s forehead looks unfairly good.
“ - but I had this huge project deadline, and then a bunch of submissions in a row, and then it was hanami season and we were overwhelmed with orders so I had to work late at my part-time job and I just couldn’t find the time -” Daichi pauses, takes a huge breath. “But I really wanted to come back even though it’s been ages so I took a day off of everything and I’m sorry I vanished but please could you cut my hair like you did the first time!”
Tetsurou might cry. He might actually just start crying. How dare this man take a day off from his work just to get his hair cut by Tetsurou? How dare he look at Tetsurou with those pleading eyes, as if Tetsurou wouldn’t give him free haircuts for the rest of his life if he asked? How dare he leave Tetsurou damn near tongue-tied with happiness?
“Yeah,” he says, swallowing past the lump in his throat to grin so wide that his cheeks hurt. “Yeah, of course I can do that. Come and sit down, Daichi-san.”
Daichi’s shoulders seem to drop with relief, and he returns Tetsurou’s smile with one just as big before going to the chair. Bokuto, catching Tetsurou’s eye as he turns to follow, makes a whole series of indecipherable and excited gestures, and Akaashi gives him a serene smile from where he’s cutting and colouring Hinata-kun’s hair. Tetsurou can’t even react, too busy trying to process the fact that this is really happening.
He’d been trying so hard to cut Daichi out of his heart that he’d forgotten how much he likes just being around him. How easy it is to tease him, how he smiles at Tetsurou in the mirror, how thick and soft his hair is and how promptly he follows directions when asked to move his head this way or that. Forget about dating, Tetsurou would be more than happy just for Daichi to be a regular customer. Just to be a willing planet captured in his all-encompassing orbit, or. Something like that.
Just to see Daichi, and know that Daichi’s happy to see him, too.
He’s setting down the clippers far too soon, and Daichi thanks him, stands, goes to pay. Bokuto’s taking his break, so Tetsurou rings him up instead.
“Thank you,” Daichi says, taking his change and tucking it into his wallet.
“Of course, Daichi-san. Don’t let two months go by before you come in again, okay?”
“I won’t, I promise,” Daichi laughs. “You’ll see me again soon.”
Tetsurou smiles back. “I look forward to it.”
Daichi holds his gaze, laughter leaving his expression as he seems to hesitate. Tetsurou raises inquiring brows, and Daichi pauses a moment longer before saying, abruptly, “Could I have your number, Kuroo-san?”
Tetsurou blinks. “I . . . don’t do house calls, unfortunately,” he says, nonplussed. “If it’s the salon number you want, you can find us on Google - or I could give you one of our cards, if you’d like - ”
He distinctly hears Kenma mutter Kill me now from the depths of the break room, which, rude, how else was he supposed to respond to that - ?
The tips of Daichi’s ears are bright pink, but his voice is impressively steady. “I, uh, meant your personal number. I thought - I really like talking with you, and I don’t want to just see you once a month, so if you’d like - if you’re okay with it, I wanted to ask if you wanted to get dinner sometime. Or - lunch. Or coffee. Whatever works for you.”
Tetsurou clutches at the counter, suddenly a bit dizzy. “Are you - are you asking me out?”
Daichi’s entire face is pink now, and he’s twisting his hands together nervously. “If you’re open to going on a date with me, then yeah. If you’re not, that’s fine, we can just hang out as friends - or if this whole thing was a bad idea, you can say no, I totally understand if you don’t -”
“Yes,” Tetsurou all but shouts, startling Daichi. “No, yes, my answer’s yes - my number is 96256 -”
“Wait, wait, slow down!” Daichi goes from shock to laughter, fumbling for his phone. “Say it again, slowly.”
Tetsurou says it again, slowly, and Daichi gives him a missed call immediately. “That’s me,” he says, smiling all shy and sweet. “So you have no excuse not to show up.”
“Don’t worry.” Tetsurou leans over the counter, grinning. Oh, what he would give to kiss the tip of Daichi’s cute nose. “I’ll show up, unlike you.”
Daichi’s jaw drops before he grins, eyes sparkling with mirth. “Fine, I deserved that,” he says, and leans in like Tetsurou had - more than Tetsurou had, giving him a light kiss on the cheek.
“I’ll text you,” he says softly, still smiling bright, and he’s out of the door before Tetsurou can process what happened.
“Dude,” Bokuto says from behind him, sounding rather awed.
Tetsurou is still frozen. He feels like he’s got steam coming out of his ears. “You saw that, right?” he says faintly. “I didn’t imagine him kissing me?”
“Nope, I saw that!”
“We all saw that,” Kenma says. “What the fuck.”
“I saw that too!” Hinata chirps from his chair. “Congrats, Kuroo-san, he seems really nice!”
“Thank you,” Tetsurou says, even more faintly, before his knees buckle and he plops to the floor, struggling not to break into a euphoric shout. Through Bokuto laughing, Kenma sighing, and Akaashi’s amused Congratulations, he thinks that he’s never been so grateful to another human being as he is to the person who told Daichi he needed a haircut.