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This cannot be happening. Kei absolutely refuses to believe that it is. There has to be some mistake.
“So I was thinking, we could display the stegosaurus skeleton right in the middle of the entire exhibit, in this particular room here, since it is the main centerpiece, right– either that or we could have it put right at the end of the entire series of hallways, as this grand big finale–”
Maybe Kuroo is simply filling in as a substitute until the real, actual exhibition designer Kei’s supposed to work with arrives. This project takes place over the course of six months, after all, it’s a relatively big project, and there’s no way he’s going to be working with Kuroo Tetsurou for half a year.
“Assuming the measurements of all the rooms you gave me are accurate, the size of the rooms seems big enough for either plan – I did notice that some of the specimens you want to display may be a bit of a tight fit unless we arrange it right, so we should talk about that– oh, also, I noticed something interesting about your lighting that we could use to make the exhibit more unique–”
Or maybe Kuroo is just here to play a trick on him. A very elaborate trick, granted, given that he’s been insisting he’s actually the exhibition designer for this, it’s true, I’m not lying, didn’t you read the memo sent to you, but Kuroo Tetsurou doesn’t seem like he’s above carrying out a scheme this elaborate just so he can reveal he’s been fucking around at the end. If this really is the case, oh my god, Tsukishima is going to kill him, he actually will, how dare he do something like this–
“Okay, so it’s decided, we’ll display all the models in various stages of fucking, all of them in different positions – I bet we could position the pterodactyl model to look like it’s screwing the compsognathus from the back somehow, you know, and we can have all the models just fornicating–”
Kei’s head snaps up. “What?” He yelps.
Kuroo raises one eyebrow from where he is sitting across from Tsukishima. There are papers spread out on the length of table between them, all of them filled with diagrams and scribbled notes and pictures of all the different models and fossils carefully marked out and pinned. Kuroo is idly twirling a pen between his fingers. “Took you long enough. Are you finally paying attention? It’s a shame though – you completely missed out my speech where I speculated how a T-rex could ostensibly have sex with a stegosaurus.”
“You– what– I can’t even– How dare you–” Kei splutters. “Who even uses the word fornicating in everyday speech.”
“When they want to grab the attention of the museum curator sitting across them, possibly, because they’re talking about something important that aforementioned curator should probably listen to,” Kuroo says, pointedly.
Kei rolls his eyes derisively, determinedly ignoring the slight pang of guilt he felt after that statement. “I was listening,” he says, defensively. “You mentioned something about wanting to finalise the layout of the exhibit, didn’t you? Fine, we can work on that.”
“Not quite, Tsukki,” Kuroo corrects, and Kei bristles at the nickname, “I did say that, but I also said a bunch of other things, including stuff about the lighting features of the museum, all of which you clearly did not hear because you were too busy zoning out.” Kuroo’s brows furrow. “Though you really should pay attention because what we are going to do with that main stegosaurus display will impact the overall mood of the exhibit and we should decide on that early.”
Kei, meanwhile, is feeling a deep sense of mortification that he has probably only felt a few times in his life. He’s a professional, dammit, so why is this one little thing throwing him so off-centre? He’s had plenty of one-night stands. Granted, this is the first time he has to work with one (he makes it a point to keep his work and personal life separate), and granted, the one-night stand in question is a figure infamous in his circuits, with rumours already linking Kei’s name with his in a way that makes any further association insidious no matter what kind of association it is, and– and–
Actually, when he thinks about it, Kei is completely justified in feeling the way he is right now. Kei’s worked too hard to stay out of the gossip mills of high society to be jeopardised like this. If he’s being honest, having to work with Kuroo Tetsurou at this point right now, when even the barest hints of a nothing (because this is nothing, what the fuck, it’s just a work relationship, and it’s not as if Kei could’ve planned this – he wasn’t exactly asking about career details when the both of them fell into bed together) could and would spark off a whole forest-fire of false rumours, is bringing him a series of headaches and anxieties that he used to believe couldn’t exist simultaneously in one person. There’s a first for everything, it seems.
But be that as it may, Kei is nothing if not professional. He’s a professional, dammit, he’s going to face up to this situation with poise and confidence, he’ll work with Kuroo Tetsurou for these next six months and be fine with it, it’s all good, he’s all good–
“You’re not paying attention again,” Kuroo says, dryly.
Kei, having been so caught up in his own thoughts of being a professional that he’s all but forgotten where he is, is subsequently so caught off-guard by Kuroo’s interjection that he commits the not-so-professional act of slamming his hands down on the table out of shock. The resounding bang jolts both him and Kuroo out of their chairs, with the other man blinking wide eyes down at where Kei’s hands are splayed out over papers on light-coloured wood. Instantly, the shame and mortification are back, multiplied by two-fold, and Kei does the only thing he can think of in that moment: he leaves.
“Christ– sorry, I– excuse me, I’ll be heading to the washroom for a moment.” Kei pushes his chair back, and doesn’t meet Kuroo Tetsurou’s concerned eyes.
Kei turns around, and all but flees the small meeting room he and Kuroo had been alone in just moments before.
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Bokuto’s been howling for a good two minutes now. Kei does not appreciate any part of it.
In some of the greater moments of clarity in his life, Kei often asks himself whatever possessed him to make, and subsequently keep, friends with someone by the likes of Bokuto Koutarou. He is, as Kei has established before, a heathen with no regards to privacy and no sense of delicacy, exemplified in the way he chooses to barge into Kei’s house at all hours of the day whenever he feels like it (the fact that Kei chose to give him a spare key means nothing – he only did it so that Bokuto would stop picking the damn lock to get in, he’s had enough of neighbours worriedly stopping him in the hallways asking him about the strange man they saw in their apartment complex), and all he usually does in Kei’s house is clear out his pantry and use up his electricity. Granted, occasionally Bokuto has given excellent advice and support as a friend, in that peculiar straightforward way of his that allows him to look right into the heart of the matter, but as far as Kei is concerned the cons, more often than not, outweigh the pros.
Like right now. It has been a Day and a Half following the disastrous incident that had been Kuroo Tetsurou Showing Up At Kei’s Workplace’s Front Door Like His Personal Manifestation Of Hell, and with Kei’s nerves having yet to settle, when Bokuto had showed up in his front door yet again Kei had wasted no time before he had been off in a rant, talking about his disaster of a situation in a rare display of emotion and distress in hopes that this could become one of the times in which Bokuto would decide to grace him with some of his advice – advice that Kei would grudgingly, if pressed and under the influence of many glasses of alcohol, admit to be very good at times. But if there’s one thing Kei should have known, is that Bokuto Koutarou never works in the way that Kei hopes he would. The universe, in general, never seems to work the way Kei hopes it would, actually, so Kei doesn’t know why he still so often holds out hope otherwise. Anyway, the situation is that now, instead of Bokuto dispensing the advice that Kei so ardently hoped for, Bokuto is currently laughing his whole ass off at Kei’s entire situation, instead.
“You just left?” He’s wheezing now, wiping away actual tears from the corner of his eye, and Kei is so unimpressed. “Going to the bathroom my dick, there’s no way he doesn’t know you were just ducking out! What are you, five years old? Is this how you act around all your one-night stands? No fucking wonder you avoid meeting all of them at all times.”
“Thank you, Koutarou, I’m well aware of how disastrous the entire situation was,” Kei snaps. “In fact, I’m quite sure I used the words it was a disaster word for word when first telling this to you.”
Bokuto waves away Kei’s words with a magnanimous hand. “Well, yeah, but you see, when you get frantic you have this incredible ability of over-exaggeration–”
“What the– I do not– name one time–”
“Okay, no, you don't,” Bokuto conceded. “But you do have the tendency to make things seem bigger than they are, which is why I tend to take your declarations with a pinch of pepper until I hear everything.”
“The phrase is a pinch of salt.”
“Pepper’s cooler.”
Kei rolls his eyes.
Bokuto leans forward to take another scoop out of the bowl of cornflakes he has in front of him, chewing noisily and leaving Kei hanging for a good twenty seconds. He’s eating cereal out of a fucking mixing bowl. Kei can’t even remember where he’d last put that shit, yet somehow Bokuto’s managed to dig it out to consume half of a week’s worth of breakfast food in one afternoon. “So, what happened next?” Bokuto asks around a mouthful of half-chewed cereal. Kei grimaces in disgust and leans away from where he is seated opposite from Bokuto at the dining table.
“Nothing happened. I came back, we discussed the brief outlines of how the exhibit is supposed to look like and the theme, and then we set a date next week to meet again to look over some specific details and flesh out our ideas.”
“And you didn’t run away like a pansy little brat again?” Bokuto checks.
Kei scowls. “I was perfectly professional, thank you very much.”
If Kei had been unable to look Kuroo in the eye and had nearly banged his knee against the bottom of the table whilst handing a pencil to Kuroo (they had brushed fingers), well, that’s Kei’s business and no one else’s.
Bokuto laughs, like he can see right through Kei’s bullshit and isn’t buying a second of it. “Sure, if you say so.” Bokuto shovels in another spoonful of cereal before his face scrunches up in thought. “Wait, so what’s the problem right now? Is it that you’re feeling awkward about the whole working-with-someone-you-had-drunken-sex-with thing? Because I can’t help you with that buddy, you’ll just have to get over it.”
“It’s not just that I slept with him!” Kei snaps. “It’s that I don’t want anybody else to know that I slept with him.”
And isn’t that the crux of the issue – no matter how much Kei tries to tell himself things are fine, the rumours he knows are swirling around him and Kuroo Tetsurou leave him feeling anxious and incapable of acting normally. Kei can’t help feeling scrutinised, interpreted by invisible eyes who watch every move he makes, can’t help feeling that everything he does is going to end up being discussed and talked about behind his back where he would have no way to ever know or control other people’s perceptions or opinions on him or his damn personal life. There’s this rumour that Kuroo Tetsurou has a gigantic crush on you. The gossip mill can be vicious, untrue, unkind – Kei has known this ever since he was young, known that what could make or break someone’s status in high society is not the truth of a rumour, but its pervasiveness, and Kei has never wanted to be a part of that. There has been nothing he has found so far in life that would ever be worth being a part of that.
Bokuto groans. “God, you’re overthinking again. Why do you care so much what other people think? Look, this Kuroo guy is someone you slept with, and now is someone you have to work with. That’s literally all there is to it. You don’t have to give a shit about anything else.”
Kei glares at Bokuto. “It’s not that simple.” Kei both envies and hates Bokuto’s naivety, in equal measures.
Bokuto rolls his eyes, waving his spoon around. “Sure it is! In the first place, how on earth will people know anything about you and Kuroo working together? There’s nobody you know who works where you work.”
Kei pauses as he considers that possibility. Bokuto’s right, actually – a huge reason why Kei had chosen to work at where he did in the first place had been because nobody from his personal life works there. It’s his own personal sanctuary. And as long as Kuroo isn’t the type of person who blabs about everything he does to everybody, in theory nothing should come out, because Kei sure as hell isn’t going to volunteer the information to people, even if they asked. Actually, as far as Kei knows, Kuroo should be estranged from the people Kei (against his will) puts up with, so there’s no way he would be able to talk about this to other people, would he? Hell, nobody in his circle had even fucking known that Kuroo was an exhibition designer; they had all thought he had been up in Las Vegas moseying it up as a gambler or some shit.
It’s at times like this that Kei remembers why he keeps Bokuto around. The overgrown man-child could be useful, at times.
Bokuto, who had been watching Kei’s face in silence for the past two minutes, bar his obnoxious cereal chewing, now triumphantly crows and shoves another mouthful of cornflakes into his mouth. “Hah! Told you. You so owe me one for this.”
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Kei most definitely does not Owe Bokuto One. If anything, Kei is considering locking Bokuto out of his house for a whole solid week, for the dirty injustice he’s done to Kei on this one particular thing. God knows how he’s gonna do it, the man would chew through Kei’s mahogany door to get into Kei’s house if he ever feels determined enough, but Kei himself is feeling vicious enough that he’ll find a way somehow. Maybe he can baby-proof the house. Or get dog-safety locks. That’ll probably work.
It’s been thirty minutes since Kei’s second meeting with Kuroo Tetsurou has started, and Kei has flinched three times in the last twenty. Kei is understandably in a bind. They’ve barely talked through the concept of the exhibit, and have not even remotely begun to touch on the logistical arrangements and technicalities of the project, yet Kei has doubts about whether he can actually last through the next hour and a half of a meeting that seems to have been designed by the universe to torture his soul. This is an important meeting. This exhibit that the both of them are working on, it’s actually something Kei has been looking forward to putting up in the museum for months now, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t do a good job of it. But Kei cannot fathom how he could possibly pull off putting up this exhibit when talking to Kuroo for any longer than thirty seconds makes his skin feel two sizes too small, and a creeping sense of despair and mortification is slowly taking over his countenance the longer their meeting drags on. Kuroo hasn’t said a single word about it, but from the way he is frowning, Kei knows it’s only a matter of time.
With every moment, Kei blames Bokuto.
The thing is, is that whilst Bokuto’s matter-of-fact observations and suggestions about Kei’s currently dilemma are all well and good in theory, it dawns on Kei far too late that Bokuto didn’t actually give Kei any advice on what to do in practice. Practice referring to what the fuck to do and how the fuck to act around a certain Kuroo Tetsurou. If anything, Kei actually curses how Bokuto’s advice lured him into a false sense of security about his predicament, the same false sense of security that had him walking into the meeting with an assumed sense of poise and confidence that rapidly evaporated the moment he had met Kuroo’s eyes and smile and the first thought he had had was, right, fuck, I slept with this guy. Which leads him to this current moment, where every action of Kuroo kind of makes Kei freeze up in his skin for a moment. It’s almost on instinct.
Again, Kei blames Bokuto.
(A small part of Kei’s mind calls him petty, but Kei’s mode of coping has always been to indulge in his flights of fancy, ride out the worst of his emotions, before reining it in to calmly contemplate his next logical step of action. Right now he’s in the indulging part of the process, and so heartily, from the bottom of Kei’s soul, fuck Bokuto.)
Kuroo sighs mightily when Kei flinches for the fourth time, removing his hand from across the table where he had been moving to take a sheet of paper from Kei’s side of the table, and settles back into his seat. “Alright, so clearly nothing’s gonna get done until we get the elephant out of the room, and I have no interest in either beating around the bush nor talking to others about someone’s business, so I’ll ask you directly: is this about the fact that we had sex?”
There is a very frantic sort of amusement to this. Kei can feel it underneath the rapid dissociation he is experiencing from having Kuroo Tetsurou look him in the eye and ask him straight out about the coitus they engaged in many nights ago. But as it stands, Kei is currently experiencing rapid dissociation from having Kuroo Tetsurou look him in the eye and ask him straight out about the coitus they engaged in many nights ago, so Kei is having difficulty actually feeling the amusement right now. He thinks he might actually be ascending. Leaving the plane, as it were. Astral projecting into another dimension, he means to say.
That being said, Kei is not rude enough to leave Kuroo hanging and awkward even as his soul makes its way to another realm. Given that he’s already been rude in about sixteen other different ways, Kei figures that giving Kuroo a timely response is the last he could do. “Somewhat,” he manages to say in reply. Kei even looks Kuroo in the eye while he says it, which he figures has to be a plus. (Alright, so he might be staring intensely at the skin on the bridge of Kuroo’s nose instead of Kuroo’s actual eyes, but it’s not as if Kuroo can tell the difference.)
Kuroo quirks an eyebrow. “Somewhat?”
The skin at the bridge of Kuroo’s nose looks quite smooth, actually. A bit shiny with oil, but it’s not as if Kei is one of those unreasonable people who finds natural body excretions something that is disgusting and to be covered at all costs; though Kei supposes it helps that Kuroo’s skin is a rich golden colour that he could probably stand to look at for a long while. Kei, when he chooses to think about it, when he allows himself to think back to that night so many ages ago, can remember what that same golden skin looked like up close, stretched smooth across sinew underneath his palms when he ran them up and across strong flexing shoulders, could remember the heat of skin against skin and how the air between the two of them was suddenly too much and not enough all at once; could remember the feeling of rough lips skating along his jaw, gentle until it wasn’t, relenting until it wasn’t. Yes, it’s true that Kei’s had a lot of one night stands, but it’s also true to say that Kuroo’s been the most unforgettable, for a number of reasons.
Looking at Kuroo Tetsurou seated opposite of him, Kei is simultaneously reminded of all those reasons.
“Yes, somewhat.”
Because as much as Kei looks across the table and sees Kuroo Tetsurou, Kei looks across the table and also sees Kuroo Tetsurou: the famous lawyer’s infamous son, the Las Vegas casino gambler, the strip club drug dealer turned criminal. Only one of those three things is actually true, but if there’s one thing Kei has ever known, it’s that what makes a rumour is not the truth of it, but its pervasiveness, because initial impressions are hard to shake. Kei looks at Kuroo and sees not just him, but everything society has ever said about him, and Kei hates that he cannot do anything otherwise. Kei hates that he cannot see anything otherwise. It’s exactly what he hates about gossip.
The silence between them stretches for seconds, long and unyielding, with Kei steadfastly avoiding Kuroo’s probing gaze. When Kei can’t stand the silence for any longer, he blurts out, “Have you heard what other people say about you?”
The regret sets immediately; because Kei has to watch as Kuroo blinks, pauses, and sit back as his face straightens.
“So that’s what this is about.” He says, carefully blank-faced. The guilt churns low in Kei’s gut, clumsy like ineptitude. Guilt, because Kei never intended to talk about Kuroo quite like this; guilt, because finally talking about this out in the open with the person in question makes Kei’s heart settle in something like relief.
It all comes out in a rush. “Wait–” Kei begins. “That’s not what I meant–”
“It’s fine,” Kuroo interrupts, and the placating smile he throws Kei’s way makes him feel simultaneously better and worse, all at once. “You don’t have to explain anything. It’s fine. I get it. How about this – we can both pretend that our encounter from two weeks ago didn’t happen. How’s that?”
Out of everything that could happen from this meeting, Kei didn’t think it would be this.
“What?” He manages.
Kuroo tilts his head. “Let’s both agree to forget that we ever had sex that night. We’ll pretend it never happened. The first time we ever met each other was last week, as museum curator–” Kuroo gestures in Kei’s direction, “ –and as exhibition designer. We don’t mention it to each other; and naturally, of course,” and here Kuroo pauses only briefly, “we don’t mention it to anybody else.”
Anybody else who might pass it on to people who might take it the wrong way. Kei hears the words as clearly as if Kuroo had actually said them. People who might take it the wrong way, and associate you with me.
There’s this rumour that Kuroo Tetsurou has a gigantic crush on you.
Kei has never thought that he could intentionally be cruel, and he still believes in that; but right at this moment Kei wonders if intention is any sort of a redeeming feature at all.
“Kuroo–” Kei says.
The sound of a phone ringing shrilly cuts through the suffocating air. Like he had been cut loose from a noose, Kei gasps. Kuroo’s eyes flicker, before he pulls out his phone from his pocket and looks at its screen.
“Sorry, Tsukishima,” Kuroo cuts in smoothly, and the use of his full name cuts into Kei deeper than he ever thought it would, “but I have to take this. Please excuse me for a moment – I’ll be back.”
Kuroo leaves the room, and the irony of the situation leaves Kei in bitter disbelief. In the space of the empty minutes that follow, Kei stares down at his hands in his lap, shadowed by the lip of the table and clenched into fists, and tries not to think about how they looked splayed out over golden-bronze skin.
When Kuroo comes back, they resume the meeting, and it’s as if nothing had ever happened between them at all.
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