Chapter Text
‘All I'm saying is that you are going to be in a different place, and I know what you are like, before you know it you will be living in a pit of your own filth. And you are way too impulsive, what if you buy a house in Australia and never come home?’
Kuroo’s mother’s arguments had become so eloquent and over embellished after the weeks of this rant, but despite the fact that they were already on the cruise ship, and that he was getting off in Australia and not coming back, she had refused to give up hope that he would come home with them, or at the very least, she was permitted to visit for an extended stay.
Truth be told he was actually pretty happy to be getting out from under her thumb, even if he did feel anxious that he wasn’t prepared for the added pressure of cooking and cleaning for himself. But he was 24, and if he didn’t do it now, he was nervous that it would never happen.
The job offer had been a godsend. Working for a university full time, especially in the sports department, he mentally fist pumped again. He was lucky that Australia was so passionate about sports. Plus, in Japan, they didn’t play much beach volleyball unless it was for fun. But Australia had competitions all year round. He was hoping he could get away with joining a club, especially since he was only an assistant. Focussing on all the sports science stuff all the time was draining, especially since most of the people who did sports science at uni usually liked to play a bit.
‘It would be so awful if you found someone and got married over there! Imagine if i didn’t get to meet her, or if she was terrible to you! I would never get to see my grandkids!’
‘Mum, you know I’m gay. Even if i did meet someone, there wouldn’t be any grandkids,’ Kuroo rolled his eyes and pushed his hat down over his face.
‘Sorry love. I know,’ she sat back and sniffled a bit. ‘But you could adopt, and that would be exactly the same! Imagine if I never got to see them!’
Here came the waterworks, cue Kuroo’s need for a … well for anything else.
‘I’m going to jump in the pool for a bit,’ he dumped his hat and t-shirt on the sunbed he had vacated before striding away.
Behind him, he heard his father chuckle a bit. As he walked away he wondered if he heard him say ‘leave the poor boy alone.’
The water was lovely and cool and as well as taking the heat off his skin it eased his frayed nerves. A couple of minutes lazing in the shade, and he needed to swim a few laps, around the swarms of kids with their newly made friends, or couples groping each other and making out. He rolled his eyes, but mostly he was just jealous, because he could only afford this cruise because of the generosity of his parents, plus he was stuck here with them nagging in his ear for the next two weeks.
Jumping out of the water, he wondered if there was anything he could do to get his parents off his back. Well, his mum, his dad had been pretty supportive of the whole thing. Maybe he just wanted him out of the house. Not banging in through the hallway at five am because he had got caught up playing games with Kenma and forgot to go to the toilet earlier. Or sneaking in after breakfast because his night out ended with a bang.
He could prank them, but clearly it would be something he had to get a couple of people in on. I mean, it was a small cruise, but still, there was like two hundred people on board. And it would have to be something that wouldn’t have a lot of clean up, because obviously, he might get kicked off the boat. And he really had to make it last til he got to Australia.
The poolside bar welcomed him and he ordered a gin and tonic with lemon, not lime, and crunched on a piece of ice as he sized up the other people on the boat. Not surprisingly, there weren’t that many people his age on the boat, since not many people his age could really afford a three-week cruise from japan to the Philippines then Australia and back.
‘Three rum and cokes please.’
Kuroo hadn’t seen the man with the velvety voice get to the bar, and when he turned back to the bar, he was shocked he hadn’t noticed the guy before. Well, it was actually a group of guys, three actually, had he just thought ‘actually’ to himself twice in a row? The one who, Kuroo assumed, had ordered had soft looking curly silver hair, eyes like honey and an easy smile, the man standing next to him was quite tall with a short ponytail, his fringe hanging loose around his face, and a goatee, he looked a bit soft natured. The third guy was a bit more beefy, his back muscles were nicely defined and his hair was short and looked like it would ruffle under the fingers nicely, also had a really nice ass.
Kuroo sucked up the last mouthful of his G&T through the straw, slurping loudly, before slamming the glass down on the table, and signaling to the other waiter.
‘A Cosmopolitan please, but could you make it a double and put it in a highball glass? The cocktail glasses are too easy to spill from.’
Kuroo hoped he had given off a charming air a sly grin flashing over his face, but the bartender cocked an eyebrow and swung the Cointreau and cranberry juice up onto the bar.
The three guys had now all received their drinks and were facing back toward the pool. Kuroo tried to not think too hard about whether they had noticed him or not, but he continued to admire the guy with the nice ass, as subtly as he could. His red board shorts clung in all the right places, and he carried himself with ease, was unbelievably sexy.
He turned away to grab his drink off the bartender and hand over his room key to add it to the tab, and when he looked back, the silver haired one had come over to him.
‘Hey, we were just about to play a game, any chance you’d like to join us? It would make an even two on two.’
‘Yeah, sure, mind if I finish my drink first, though?’
‘Of course, come and meet my friends,’ he led Kuroo the two steps to the other guys at the bar, who were watching the exchange with at least some level of interest.
‘I’m Sugawara Koushi, this is Azumane Asahi,’ long haired guy waved and smiled. ‘And the guy you’ve been staring at for the last five minutes, is Sawamura Daichi.’ nice ass beefcake punched Sugawara in the arm before offering a handshake to Kuroo.
‘Nice to meet you guys, I’m Kuroo Tetsurou,’ he smiled at them and then wiggled his eyebrows. ‘Sorry for staring, I just couldn’t help but imagine my head between your thighs.’ then he laughed. ‘You are just perfect piggy backing size for me.’ just easin’ the tension…
Sugawara laughed too, Sawamura tried to act cool and take a sip from his drink but snorted and started coughing.
‘So what brings three young men like you guys onto a cruise like this?’ Kuroo said, trying to hide his blush by sucking up as much of his drink through the straw as possible.
‘Sadly my fiance has left the scene, so we are taking the honeymoon early to celebrate finishing Uni.’
‘Hm a threesome, and straight on the rebound, kinky Sugawara-san,’ Kuroo wiggled his eyebrows again.
This time the other two laughed and Sugawara was left sputtering over how clearly it was a mistake and it wouldn’t happen again and he was sorry to the other two.
Sawamura turned to Kuroo, his straight white teeth flashing, ‘He forgot to organise separate rooms for us, and in the end we could only get one extra room, so Asahi and I are taking turns sleeping on the couch in the honeymoon suite.’
Kuroo grinned and nodded along. ‘Rookie error, Sugawara-san.’
‘Please, you can just call me Suga. What about you Mr. Comedian? What brings you onto this boat?’
‘I’m actually a lot more lame than you guys and I’m on holiday with my parents before I move to Australia for a year for work.’
‘Ooh,’ a collective wince went around for Kuroo’s predicament.
‘Now, that is a fucked up threesome.’
This time Kuroo spat his drink all over himself. He could not believe his ears, had that seriously just come out of the mouth of Azumane-san?
Suga-san and Sawamura both let out huge booms of laughter, and kuroo pretended with all his might that Sawamura’s laughter didn’t make his stomach turn.
‘Wow, it’s always the quiet ones you want to be careful of,’ Kuroo managed to get out around his own laughter. ‘Thankfully I didn’t forget to book my own room though!’
That earned him a playful punch in the shoulder from Suga-san.
The rest of their drinks went down easily and without much further choking. The next thing kuroo knew was that they were standing around a beach volleyball court and picking teams.
Suga-san and Sawamura-san ended up playing paper-scissors-rock to decide who got to pick their team mate. Suga-san won and decided he would take Azumane-san on his team, Sawamura-san clapped Kuroo on the shoulder and grinned at him.
‘I’m a wing spiker, but I’m also a decent anchor, so we should be right, even if you’ve never played before.’
‘I couldn’t have asked for a better teammate, I'm actually a middle blocker, but i'm also a spiker too, looks like we are a good all-rounder team,’ Kuroo grinned back.
On the other side of the net, Azumane-san had a serious look on his face as he pulled his hair back into a tighter bun, and Suga-san kicked down into the sand an unsettling smile on his face.
Thankfully for the first part of the game, Kuroo was in front of Sawamura. He wasn’t sure if he could keep composed if he saw that ass perfectly flexed in front of him. At least later he could blame his blush on exertion and his drool on sweat or something.
The game was actually good, from the looks of things, these guys had played together for quite a while, and even Sawamura was able to prevent a few points, just because he knew how they would play. He even griped at Kuroo a couple of times, saying ‘keep up,’ or ‘maybe you aren’t holding your liquor, old man.’
Kuroo refused to give up though, and before long they had pulled ahead and were winning their third straight set. Maybe he wanted to impress these guys, but mostly he thought he just wanted to impress Sawamura-san, who was breathing heavily now and had drops of sweat rolling down his face and chest. Kuroo tried not to feel flustered by how sexy the guy was. At least Azumane-san’s spikes kept him pretty busy, and it wasn’t hard to hide his blush with the energy he was giving to win this.
Sugawara dropped a dump over the net and even though Sawamura dived for the ball, he missed it. When he stood up again, the sand had stuck to his chest and Kuroo’s mouth went dry. They were even and it was match point, Kuroo had to keep it up. He took Azumane’s serve, passing to Sawamura who set the ball to him, probably set it a bit high actually, but he jumped as hard as he could and smashed it down as hard as he could. Now they just needed one more point.
This time Sawamura served and Suga popped it back over the net easily. Azumane ran forward to defend, but this time Kuroo didn't jump he set the ball to Sawamura who hit it off his hand and onto the hard deck of the boat. The ball then bounced away, dangerously close to going over the handrail. The last point was theirs.
They whooped and high fived, as Suga and Azumane-san came over to their side of the net.
‘Yeah, yeah, good game, as captain of the opposing team I’ll treat you guys to another drink. And maybe a bite to eat. I'm starving!’ Suga clapped them both on the back and started walking away.
‘Daichi, you are covered in sand,’ said Azumane-san.
Kuroo looked and tried not to lose all ability to speak.
‘Ugh, it's just sticking to my hands too,’ Sawamura san said as he tried unsuccessfully to brush it off.
‘Quickest way might be to jump in the pool, man,’ Kuroo offered averting his eyes and trying to hide his face by running a hand through his hair.
‘You are probably right on that one.’ the voice was calm and didn't prepare him for what happened next. Sawamura bowled right into him, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him as fast as he could. Kuroo could see Azumane flailing on the other side of Sawamura, also being pulled along.
‘Oi, oi, oi, what are you doing?’ Kuroo managed to see Sawamura’s face, a cheeky, all teeth grin on his face, running towards Suga, who’s back was turned. He was pretty close by the pool now. Kuroo felt Sawamura’s grip change and watched as he threw Azumane into the pool right before he grabbed Suga by the waist and flung the three of them into the water. Kuroo who hadn’t been able to get his balance whacked his shins against the edge of the pool as he landed in the water face first and by the time he surfaced from the waist deep water, with one leg pulled up to his chest, Sugawara was giving Sawamura an earful.
Azumane-san was the first one who noticed Kuroo holding his leg. ‘Oh, Kuroo-san, are you okay?’ it was a miracle he had seen anything frankly, because his hair was hanging over his face again. He almost could have done a Sadako impression.
‘Nah, nah, i'm all good,’ he let go of his leg, the throbbing eased down to an easily ignorable pulse. ‘Just knocked it on the edge of the pool, I should have remembered to jump!’
‘Oh, look Daichi, you hurt him, maybe you should go over there and kiss it all better.’
Sawamura looked at Suga like he was sporting a seriously bad haircut and he thought it might be better just shaved off. But Suga continued to prod him with an expectant look.
‘Would you like me to give it a kiss?’ Sawamura said, looking to Kuroo with the same cynical look on his face.
‘If you’re offering, it would sure be a shame to let those lips go to waste,’ Kuroo wiggled his eyebrows at the guy.
Behind Sawamura, Suga smirked, and Kuroo wondered if he was really the one to watch of the three. Before he could ponder that too much, Sawamura shook his head minutely and started walking towards him. Kuroo stepped backwards, almost nervous. The edge of the pool was right there.
‘Hop up,’ said Sawamura gesturing to the edge.
Kuroo slid up onto the edge and seated himself, not taking his eyes off of Sawamura’s face. The man looked like he was a storm threatening to break.
‘Leg,’ he said holding out his hand at about the place where Kuroo’s ankle would rest on top of the water.
Kuroo obeyed. Sawamura was sexier like this, and as much as Kuroo had tried to just go with the flow and not be creepy or overly into the guy, this was testing him.
Sawamura took his ankle and smoothed his other hand over Kuroo’s shin, identifying from the egg starting to form, where it hurt. Then he bent over and looking up at Kuroo as he did it, he kissed the spot tenderly.
Kuroo gulped. His lips looked so soft, and he felt like it was a waste, not to be able to kiss them with his own lips. And his eyes, he really did look like a storm, they were dark brown and threatened to send Kuroo off the edge, into a dream about chocolate sundaes and sharing them with those lips.
But within a second it was over. Sawamura smiled at him, patting his leg, ‘all better?’
‘Yep, it's healed up just fine, I don’t even think I’ll get a bruise,’ he raised his hand and pushed his hair out of his face.
Suga and Azumane were standing there watching the exchange, Kuroo couldn’t tell what they were thinking. Sawamura probably could if he was looking. Suga didn't give him the chance though.
‘Great, then let’s go get that drink.’