Work Text:
Kenma frowned. The last thing he wanted to do on a rare free day was sweat in the sun, but Kuroo had insisted that this beach trip was “important team building, Kenma, don’t you want to max out your bonds? Or, uh, wait, social links!”
Kenma was not so easily manipulatable as to be convinced by any random video game terms. Unfortunately, he was very susceptible to a certain overgrown black cat’s sparkling eyes and pleading pout, so here he was. At the beach. Sweaty. And cursing his weak teenager brain.
At least Taketora had had the good idea to bring along a sizeable beach umbrella, which Kenma had immediately claimed for himself. He now sat in its shade, sunglasses on, presumably playing his portable console while the rest of the team expended unnecessary energy running after each other in the sand and even bumping a volleyball around. They’d had practice yesterday and would have it again tomorrow; wasn’t that quite enough?
The worst part of all this wasn’t the sweat, though, nor the sand, nor even Lev’s incredibly loud screeching as he antagonized Yaku. No, the worst part was Kuroo’s shirt and the way it currently laid on the towel next to Kenma, very much not on its owner’s body. Kenma couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from said body, which seemed to genuinely sparkle in the sun. His dark sunglasses hid the true object of his gaze, but the repeated game over tune from his console was starting to drive him insane.
He turned the console off and shoved it into his bag with a huff. Maybe he could take a nap, or go get a snack at the nearby convenience store. When he looked up, though, he jolted as he found Fukunaga had silently settled next to him, making that unreadable cat-that-got-the-cream face at him. Honestly, it made no sense that Kenma was the one with a reputation for being cat-like when Fukunaga existed.
“You seem to be… out of focus, Kenma,” Fukunaga said, miming taking a photo as he did.
Kenma raised an eyebrow at him.
Fukunaga shrugged and turned a hand palm up to Kenma, revealing a selection of small seashells. He laid them down on the edge of Kenma’s towel. “For you to sell by the seashore.”
Sometimes, Kenma thought that Fukunaga was not, in fact, a Japanese teenager, but rather an alien species’ experimental attempt at creating human life. He picked at the seashells idly, slipping one with a rather pretty blue iridescence into the pocket of his swimming trunks.
As weird as he could be, the nice thing about Fukunaga was that he never seemed to expect conversation; like a cat, he was happy to simply co-exist, which Kenma appreciated. Especially in contrast to Taketora, who probably lost HP every minute he wasn’t actively yelling.
They sat in silence under the umbrella for a few minutes, during which Kenma’s eyes yet again strayed to where the third years were now trying to turn Kai into a sand mermaid. They’d barely managed to cover half his legs when Shibayama dropped by to ask Fukunaga to join an impromptu game of tag.
As Fukunaga stood up, he turned back towards Kenma. “To love is to suffer. Surfer boy.”
Kenma stared, wide eyed. Fukunaga’s cryptic wording didn’t do much to hide his underlying meaning. Was he being that obvious? He flopped backwards onto his beach towel and threw an arm over his face. He really needed to get this situation under control. At least Fukunaga probably wouldn’t tell anyone… hopefully.
It wasn’t as though Kenma never saw Kuroo topless. Hell, he’d seen more even, between shower rooms and public baths. And it wasn’t as though he didn’t know why he kept looking. Kenma wasn’t quite sure when his feelings had slipped past the line of friendship, but he wasn’t fool enough to deny it. Kuroo always looked at him like he was a cute baby animal, always took care of him, always prioritized him. Who could have resisted falling for him in Kenma’s place? He’d only become conscious of it somewhat recently, though.
Somewhere between middle school and high school, Kuroo had grown from above average to outright tall, bulked out, and transformed from “lanky kid with weird hair” to “athletic, attractive guy (with interesting hair)” in the eyes of their classmates. One afternoon during his first year, as he’d headed over to Kuroo’s shoe locker to walk home together, he’d come upon a scene that shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did.
A girl with long brown hair in a bouncy ponytail had been standing by Kuroo’s locker, handing him a pink envelope as she looked away shyly. There was a bright red flush high on Kuroo’s cheeks, and his eyes were wide. As Kenma watched, unseen, he’d taken the letter and stuttered out his thanks. His voice had cracked in the middle, and normally Kenma would have immediately filed it away to make fun of later, but his mind had been filled with something akin to the sound of a full cupboard of plates suddenly hitting the floor and shattering.
Kenma hadn’t instantly understood. The girl had ran off a moment later, and Kenma had walked home with Kuroo as usual, his brain racing as his fingers tapped away on his console. It had taken another two days of feeling like he’d eaten something that had gone bad before he’d sat with his parents while they watched a romance drama on TV, and suddenly made the connection. He wasn’t scared of Kuroo getting distracted by a girlfriend; Kuroo wouldn’t be himself if he let anything get in the way of his passion for either volleyball or school. And he definitely wasn’t jealous of Kuroo—a random classmate noticing him and, worse, expecting him to respond to their feelings, sounded like an absolute nightmare. No, what he was scared of was Kuroo getting closer to someone other than him. Kuroo walking someone else home, Kuroo falling asleep on someone else’s shoulder. Kuroo holding someone else’s hand, and kissing them, and someday marrying them and fondly remembering Kenma as “that guy I always hung out with as a kid, the scrawny one, you know?”
And even that wouldn’t have been so terrible, but it wasn’t just that Kenma was scared of being left behind. It was that Kenma wanted to be the person holding Kuroo’s hand, kissing him, and someday marrying him. Which was perhaps putting the horse before the cart, but Kenma had always excelled at planning ahead.
He’d moped about it for a few days, sure that Kuroo must have accepted the girl’s confession; after all, she fit his preferences, with her long hair and soft voice, and even though Kenma wasn’t particularly interested in girls he could tell she was as attractive as Kuroo himself was. They would look good together, he kept telling himself. It wasn’t as though he had any delusions of being the kind of person Kuroo was into; he’d heard him describing pretty girls when Yaku or Taketora brought the subject up, and Kenma was not a pretty girl by any definition of the term. When he saw the pink envelope on Kuroo’s desk a week later, he hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to ask if Kuroo was going to be busy after school from now on.
“Huh?” Kuroo had asked, looking completely lost.
Kenma had lifted the letter. “You didn’t accept?”
Kuroo had looked a little awkward, maybe pained even. “Ah, no. We have exams coming up, and then next year I’m gonna be a third year, and I won’t have a free minute outside of volleyball. It wouldn’t be fair,” he’d said. Was he sad that he couldn’t accept? Kenma almost felt guilty, but couldn’t deny how happy this made him. That meant he was safe from having to see Kuroo with someone at least until he graduated, then.
“What about you, Kenma?” Kuroo had asked.
“Ew,” Kenma had replied, and it had almost seemed as though Kuroo was relieved by his answer—though it was most likely because it meant he’d have no competition when trying to drag Kenma into extra practice.
Kenma thought he had done a fairly good job of hiding it since then; he and Kuroo were nearly always glued to each other’s side anyway, and he wasn’t some simpering fan, doodling “Kuroo Kenma” in his notebook margins. He groaned, muffled by his arm, before trying to shake himself out of it. It was just Fukunaga, who was always more perceptive than he seemed. No way Taketora or Yaku had the emotional capacity to figure it out. Kai… well, Kai wasn’t quite so oblivious, but he’d never tell even if he did figure anything out. Kai was a good guy like that.
Ugh, this was too much thinking. Kenma rolled onto his side, curled up into a ball, and decided to take a nap.
He woke up some time later to small, icy droplets of water falling onto his legs. When he blinked his eyes open, he found Kuroo standing over him, hair matted down by seawater. How was even that a good look on him? He squinted his eyes angrily at Kuroo, but it only made him laugh.
“Kenma, come on, we’re having a chicken fight! I need you to be my fighter!”
“A chicken fight?”
“Yeah, you know, you sit on my shoulders, knock everyone into the water?”
“What? Kuro. I’m not getting in the water.”
“Why not? It’s not even that cold!”
“... Did you forget that I don’t know how to swim?”
For some reason, Kuroo seemed completely surprised by this information. Which made no sense. When had he ever seen Kenma swimming? Kenma didn’t need to know how, he was perfectly comfortable remaining on land for the rest of his foreseeable existence. Considering the conversation finished, Kenma closed his eyes to go back to his nap, but felt a looming presence over him as water started dripping right onto his face. He opened his eyes, ready to snap at Kuroo, but before he could even say anything, Kuroo was dragging him up by the shoulders.
“Kenma-kun! How did I not know this? It’s dangerous, you need to learn! What if you fall in someday?”
Kenma tried to make himself heavy, like a cat that didn’t want to be picked up, but Kuroo had a lot of experience with this particular tactic and easily hefted him up. “Come on, come on! I’ll teach you!” To Yaku, he shouted, “You guys go ahead without me!”
“Why,” Kenma moaned as he was pulled towards the water, but he could hear the resignation in his own voice. He had absolutely no interest in swimming, or getting in the water at all, but when Kuroo got an idea into his head like this, it was impossible to escape it. Sure, he might manage to get him to lay off for today, but next weekend he’d be showing up with the schedule for their local pool, or sneakily convincing his parents to sign him up for classes at their next dinner together. Better to get it over with now.
The water was as disgustingly cold as he’d expected it to be. Why did people go swimming for fun when they could stay home, on their couch, in their air conditioned homes? This wasn’t news to Kenma, but there was something wrong with the vast majority of people’s priorities.
They splashed into the surf, then into calmer water past the small breaking waves. The water reached up to around Kenma’s stomach when Kuroo stopped. Kenma rubbed his arms, trying to stop shivering.
“Ok, here should be good, what do you think?”
Kenma stared blankly at Kuroo. He knew better than to expect any engagement on his end.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he laughed. “I promise I won’t let anyone else bother you the whole rest of the day if you make a real effort to learn, how’s that?”
Kenma gave the lightest shrug of his shoulders, but the fact that he remained there was proof enough that he’d accepted, and Kuroo knew it, judging by his satisfied smile. Kenma awaited instructions while he began calculating the minimum amount of time he needed to put up with this before Kuroo would be satisfied.
“Hmm, you know, now that I think about it,” Kuroo said, bringing his fist up to his mouth, “I’m not actually sure how to teach someone to swim.”
Well, this was a promising start. Kenma made a vague movement in the direction of the beach, but Kuroo grabbed his shoulders.
“Wait, no! I have an idea. Ok, first…can you put your head underwater?”
Kenma looked at him with all the disdain he could muster, before putting his head under the water, blowing air from his nose to keep water from going up it. He may not have known how to swim, but he had taken baths before. When he popped back up, shaking his now dripping hair out of his face, Kuroo looked sheepish.
“Well, uh, good job with step one!”
Saying so, he moved his hands and reached for Kenma’s face. Kenma drew back sharply. Was he going to shove him under to test him?
“Hey, hey, just going to put your hair up,” he said, and Kenma noticed the hair tie he must have pulled from his wrist. He reached forward again, fingers carefully slipping around Kenma’s jaw and behind his ears, gathering his hair at the nape of his neck to tie it. Kenma desperately hoped that the cool water was enough to tamper the blush he could feel rising to his cheeks.
Luckily, Kuroo didn’t seem to notice anything. Kenma tried to banish the feeling of Kuroo’s fingers, tried not to imagine that instead of tying his hair he’d continued leaning in, pressing their—
“Ok, what about floating on your back? Can you do that?”
“Never tried.”
“You want to lie down on the surface of the water,” Kuroo said, demonstrating it. His hair floated out in a halo around his head like some strange sea urchin hat. “The human body is less dense than water, so if you lie horizontally, you’ll float. But you gotta make sure you’re using your core to stay really flat.” He popped back up and waved towards Kenma. “Now you try it!”
Kenma tried to imitate Kuroo, leaning backward like he was lying back on his bed, but the bottom half of his face unexpectedly went under the surface and he choked on a mouthful of seawater. He coughed and glared at Kuroo. They’d just started and he was already very done with this whole swimming thing.
“No, it’s… you gotta… I got it. I’ll hold you up until you get the right position.”
Giving Kenma no time to protest, Kuroo pressed a hand against his shoulderblades, warm and entirely unfamiliar. Sure, Kuroo frequently fell asleep against his side on the train, or guided him around the street with a hand on this shoulder, but holding each other while half naked was definitely outside the normal bounds of their friendship. Kenma turned wide eyes to him, but Kuroo misunderstood.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be right here. Lean back, and then kick your legs up so I can catch them.”
Kenma stared at him for a moment longer, but it seemed he was completely unaware of how strange this situation was. Or, he realized, perhaps it wasn’t strange at all. Maybe this was just the normal way to learn, and Kenma making a big deal of it would alert Kuroo to his not-normal-at-all feelings. Which was least likely to let his secret out: refuse, or give in?
Kuroo’s hand pressed a bit harder into his back, and Kenma realised he’d been standing there for too long. Trying to get out of it now would just be strange.
“Come on, just lean back.”
Kenma couldn’t deny the sensation of safety that Kuroo’s support gave him. When he was leaning as far back as he could, Kuroo bent down towards him.
“Ok, now the legs. Lift them up as far as you can.”
Kenma kicked up, and Kuroo hooked an arm under his knees. Which left him holding Kenma in bridal position. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it… Kenma looked up to Kuroo, and noticed a slight red flush on his cheeks. Had he gotten sunburned earlier?
“Now straighten yourself out, flat as a board,” Kuroo said, sounding a bit out of breath.
The quicker Kenma got it, the quicker this whole thing could be over. That was all he could focus on at this point. His heart was beating way too fast, and he tried to channel that into tensing his muscles instead of letting his mind run wild. To his surprise, it worked; he actually felt himself floating a bit, rather than resting entirely in Kuroo’s arms. It was so unexpected that he sagged in relief—right back into Kuroo’s waiting hands.
“You almost had it! Try that again.”
Kenma didn’t have to be told twice. He managed to find the right position again. It was actually more comfortable than he would have expected; Kuroo’s hands were only a faint presence now that he was floating on his own, and though the water was still cold, the sun was warming him. He closed his eyes, wondering if he could somehow fall asleep while maintaining the right posture.
“I’m gonna let you go now, ok?” Kuroo asked. “I’ll still be right here to catch you.”
“Mmm,” Kenma replied. This was really not bad at all. Maybe he should thank Kuroo for deciding to teach him to swim.
They stayed like that for another few minutes, Kenma floating, feeling the ebb and flow of the passing waves, and Kuroo watching over him, occasionally exclaiming his excitement at Kenma’s success. Finally, Kenma got tired of holding himself up. He figured this had probably been enough to appease Kuroo’s teaching urges, not to mention he was suddenly feeling pretty hungry.
“Kuro, that’s enough.”
Kuroo pulled away from Kenma without complaint. “That was great progress for just one day! I’m a great teacher,” he said with a smug smile.
Kenma rolled his eyes, then let his legs fall… and found only open water beneath his feet. The seabed was out of reach; they must have floated off into deeper waters. He gave a panicked yelp as his head went under and found his mouth filled with saltwater.
Rationally, he knew that they couldn’t have moved very far; Kuroo had still been standing, and he wasn’t that much taller than Kenma. He could just let himself go down, push off the bottom and catch his breath. Unfortunately, rationality was currently entirely eclipsed by overwhelming terror. He immediately tried to cough the water out of his mouth, but only ended up breathing in more. He flailed blindly around, feeling his fingertips breach the surface of the water, but couldn’t seem to figure out how to move in that direction. He was going to die here, and he hadn’t even finished the latest Dragon Quest game, and his parents would be so disappointed, and—
Strong arms wrapped around his stomach and pulled him above the surface. Kenma drew a desperate breath of air, then coughed, half-gagging as his body got rid of the water he’d inhaled. Still terrified of slipping back under, he reached out blindly for something to hold on to, and the arms pulled him close.
“Shh, breathe, I’ve got you. You’re ok, it’s ok, come here…”
The moment Kenma could feel Kuroo’s body, he threw his arms around him, pressing his face into his shoulder. He couldn’t seem to draw a full breath, panting wildly.
“I’m sorry,” Kuroo was saying, one of his arms still tight across Kenma’s back, the other now having moved up and petting his hair. “I’m so sorry, I should have been paying more attention, I didn’t realize.”
Kenma finally managed to catch his breath. Everything felt a bit fuzzy, his head spinning. He was suddenly overcome with a rush of relief and affection. Of course Kuroo, his Kuroo, had saved him. Kuroo would never let him drown. He squeezed even closer, and feeling his nose pushing against Kuroo’s neck, tilted his face to press his lips into the soft, damp skin.
Kuroo’s hand stilled on his head. “Ken…?”
It was like having ice cubes poured down his shirt. Kenma’s mind was suddenly very, very clear. Had he just kissed Kuroo? What had possessed him to do that? Just a little adrenaline and he lost all sense of reason? Maybe he could he convince him he hadn’t actually done that on purpose, that he’d just been shifting around… He tried to push away, but Kuroo didn’t let go, instead pushing forward through the water, back towards shore.
When they were closer, he released Kenma, letting him slip down until he stood on his own two feet.
“I, that, I was just—” Great, good job, super casual.
Kuroo caught his eye, an unreadable expression on his face, then let his hand trail all the way up Kenma’s spine to the nape of his neck, where he tugged the hair tie out of his hair.
“Later,” he said quietly, dropping his hand, then turned to his left where Taketora, Inuoka, Yaku and Lev seemed to be setting up for a race. “Yakkun! Wait for me!”
Kenma stood there for too long, trying to understand what had just happened.
The rest of the afternoon would have been alright, with Kuroo holding up his side of their bargain and keeping the more overeager members of the team from bothering Kenma, but the impending sense of doom somewhat spoiled the taste of his ice cream. “Later,” Kuroo had said, but what did that mean? Was Kuroo going to make him explain his actions? Did he find it gross? Would he believe it if Kenma said it was some misguided, insignificant response to the adrenaline rush of almost drowning? Had Kuroo figured out Kenma’s feelings, and now he was going to tell him to stay away from him? Well, that one was a bit farfetched, but it would make things between them so awkward that Kenma might stay away of his own accord.
The tension only got worse as they packed up and headed back onto the train, and it was almost palpable by the time they’d split off from the others as they’d reached their stop. Kenma resolutely kept his head stuck in his game, but he could feel Kuroo’s gaze on the side of his head like a blazing fire.
Finally they reached their street. Kenma tentatively tried to turn into his own driveway, but Kuroo pressed a hand to his lower back to keep him walking.
“My dad shouldn’t be home till later,” he said, sounding as awkward as Kenma felt. And as much as Kenma wanted to dodge this conversation, he had to admit doing it without either of their parents around was definitely preferable.
When they got inside, Kuroo waved Kenma off towards the bathroom.
“You can have the shower. You know where the towels are, right? I’ll get you some clothes,” he said, and immediately hurried off to his bedroom.
Kenma made his way to the bathroom, thinking so hard he almost walked into the door frame. It wasn’t a worst case scenario; Kuroo wouldn’t have sent him to shower in his own house and offered him his own clothes if he was disgusted by Kenma’s kiss. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t figured out his feelings, and was now preparing himself to let Kenma down gently. Maybe that was a good thing, actually; maybe hearing the explicit rejection would help Kenma accept it and move on. It was fine. Or it would be fine, with time, and that was as good as Kenma could hope for. Knowing he had no chance was so much worse than only presuming as much, but Kenma could handle it.
By the time Kenma had finished showering, he’d almost managed to calm himself down. It was the same as losing a match; first it hurt, but then it got better, and then you shook it off and got on to the next one. He dressed in the clothes Kuroo had dropped off, old sweats that almost fit him and couldn’t have been Kuroo’s size since at most middle school. In the living room, he found Kuroo sitting on the couch, a fighting game booted up on the TV. When Kenma walked in, he looked at Kenma then quickly away, focusing pointedly on the TV.
Kenma felt overwhelmed by the affection that filled him at the sight. He hated to have serious conversations face-to-face; eye contact made him want to dissolve into dust. But of course Kuroo knew that, and had made sure to create a more comfortable environment for Kenma. With the game to focus on, he wouldn’t feel quite so nervous about talking. Yes, Kenma’s love was surely misplaced, but how could he possibly have ever felt differently?
He joined Kuroo on the cough, and they played through a few rounds before Kenma felt Kuroo shifting next to him.
“So, about what happened today,” he started.
Kenma gripped his controller tightly. “Sorry,” he mumbled, unsure what else to say.
“No, don’t apologize. I… I don’t know if it meant anything, if it was just from shock or something else. And you don’t need to tell me! But it made me realize that I need to tell you something.” Kuroo paused. From the corner of his eye, Kenma saw him put his controller down on his lap, before taking a deep breath as though he was about to dive off a cliff. “I like you, Kenma. Nothing between us has to change and we never have to bring it up again, I promise, but I needed you to know. It’s been almost a year and sometimes I thought I was going to explode just trying to hold it in.”
Kenma’s ears were ringing; surely he wasn’t hearing Kuroo properly. Kuroo liked him? Kuroo had liked him for a year? That made absolutely no sense. Kuroo liked pretty girls. And Kenma was not… “I’m not a pretty girl,” he said faintly without really planning to.
“What?”
“You like pretty girls,” Kenma repeated, turning towards Kuroo. “And I’m not a pretty girl.”
“You’re not…what?”
“You’ve talked about your type with the guys before,” Kenma said, still trying to make sense of what was going on. “And your type isn’t me.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I didn’t want to tell the whole club that I was secretly crushing on my best friend, you consider that?” Kuroo asked wryly.
“Oh.” Kenma stared at his own hands, knuckles whitening around the controller he still held. Was this really happening? He felt a faint spark of hope, somewhere deep inside himself, that he couldn’t bring himself to extinguish.
“And, you know, I don’t really care about gender, but you’re definitely pretty.”
No. No, Kenma wasn’t particularly self-deprecating, and he didn’t attach much importance to his appearance, but he wasn’t pretty. He was a nerd with hair that was often greasy, bad dark circles, and what had more than once been called “really creepy” eyes. Kuroo was lying to him. And if Kuroo was lying about his looks, what else was he lying about? Was he trying to tell Kenma what he thought he wanted to hear? Was the entire confession a fabrication?
Kenma dropped the controller and narrowed his eyes at Kuroo, who finally looked away from the tv screen and tilted his head at Kenma.
“That’s not fair, Kuro,” he huffed, angry to realize there were tears in his eyes. “It’s not fair to lie to me. Not about this. You should know better.” He pushed himself up off the couch, ready to just run home before he started crying, but Kuroo reached out to catch his wrist and tugged him back down.
“Kenma, what? I’m not lying to you, I swear.”
“I’m not pretty, Kuro. I don’t know what you’re trying to do here.”
Kuroo looked agitated. “You are, though?”
“I’m not!”
Kuroo threw his hands up, looking sincerely exasperated. “Well, you’re pretty to me, then! And that’s all that matters to me. Why are we arguing about this, Kenma?”
Kenma stared. The way Kuroo had reacted… he seemed sincerely agitated that Kenma didn’t believe him. Was it true, then? Was Kenma Kuroo’s type?
“Really? Since last year?” Kenma said, still unable to really believe it.
“Mmm.” Kuroo nodded. “You probably don’t remember this, but a girl asked me out last year. I wasn’t sure what to tell her, so I didn’t answer right away, but I thought about it a lot, and I realized that I wanted it all. Holding hands, sharing a cute dessert at a cafe, getting a kiss at the front door at the end of the night, the whole nine yards. Only thing is, I didn’t want it with her. I wanted it with you.”
Kenma blinked at Kuroo, and let himself believe it. He’d really liked him this whole time, for just as long as Kenma had liked him. The usually disavowed romantic inside him whispered something that sounded like “soulmates,” and his lip wobbled. He saw Kuroo begin to panic, but threw himself into Kuroo’s arms before he could misunderstand.
“Me too,” he mumbled into Kuroo’s still salt-sticky hair.
“What?” Kuroo sounded half out of breath. “Kenma, please, I need you to be one hundred percent clear right now or I might just die.”
Kenma pulled away, just enough to catch Kuroo’s eye and tucked his hair behind his ears. “I love you too.” Kuroo choked in surprise, but Kenma was on a roll. “ I realized it at the same time as you, but I should have noticed way earlier. I’ve always found it ridiculous that you can’t pick the best friend as your love interest in RPGs, when it’s clearly the only valid option.”
Kuroo was smiling now, his hands having come up to rest on Kenma’s waist. “Why didn’t you say anything, then? I don’t exactly hide how much I care for you.”
Kenma frowned. There had been the issue of him assuming Kuroo liked girls, but even if he’d thought Kuroo was into boys, he still wouldn’t have said a word, because… “You can’t date the best friend in video games for a reason.”
Kuroo’s smile faded a bit as he looked at Kenma. Kenma felt bad for it, but it was true; they didn’t live in a society where it was particularly easy for men to date men. Kenma wasn’t worried for their safety, and he doubted the team would have anything bad to say if they found out about it, but to blindly confess his love for Kuroo? He never could have. That took the kind of bravery only Kuroo had, between the two of them.
Kuroo’s fingers brushed gently against Kenma’s waist over the sweater he wore, and a soft smile came back on his face. He pulled Kenma into a close hug. Kenma thought he could feel their hearts beating together.
“Well, you can date him in real life, and that’s even better,” Kuroo said, then pressed a kiss into Kenma’s hair.
This would surely not always be easy, but in that moment, Kenma realized he would never let it go. It was real, and it was his, no matter what video games thought proper love interests looked like. There was perhaps just one thing missing, though. He turned his head to the side, aware of a rare grin on his face, and bumped his nose against Kuroo’s. When Kuroo gave him a quizzical look, he felt his smile turn sharp-edged.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” he asked.
“Uh…?”
Knowing Kuroo, he sincerely had no idea what Kenma meant, but Kenma had waited long enough.
“Kuro,” he said, letting his eyes go heavy-lidded and licking his lips pointedly. “Kiss me.”
Kuroo was very obedient.
Some unquantifiable amount of time later, Kuroo drew away from Kenma, to Kenma’s displeasure.
“I wasn’t done,” he grumbled, leaning back in, but Kuroo only laughed and hugged him close again.
“Not that I’m remotely opposed to continuing this, but my dad should be home soon. So unless you want a whole other awkward conversation, we should probably move somewhere a little more private.”
Ah. Ugh, they really would have to tell their parents at some point, huh? Awful. Kenma was definitely not looking forward to that. He had a premonition that they were going to be way too excited about it. For now, though… “Fine,” he said, deciding to push his luck. He shifted so he could wrap his legs around Kuroo’s waist. “Carry me, then.”
Kuroo shook his head at him, but stood from the couch without so much as a wobble, arms crossed underneath Kenma as he lifted him up. “As my darling so desires,” he said teasingly, but Kenma was enjoying himself too much to even protest the ridiculous pet name. Having an athlete boyfriend had its perks, and he was decidedly looking forward to getting used to this sort of treatment.
Kuroo walked them towards the stairs, and Kenma sighed contentedly. He was never going to complain about a filler beach episode ever again. Evidently, they were much more important to overall plot than he’d ever realized.