Archive of Our Own

Koutarou's been a little in love with Kuroo for as long as he can remember. Oh, it's not all that tragic.

●●●

Kuroo isn't afraid of anything. Or, rather, Kuroo isn't afraid of many things. He's beautifully put together, almost like it isn't a natural construction at all. When Koutarou was fourteen and figured out that there's nothing he loves more than being behind a camera and knowing when and how to make someone look their most beautiful, the first subject he'd ever captured was Kuroo. Whatever knowledge Koutarou had in those days of composition and colour, he'd applied that little bit of knowledge to know that Kuroo was never quite from this consciousness. Never quite all there, never quite all here.

Kuroo isn't afraid of many things. He flinches at unexpected loud noises, the ticking of clocks, and slammed doors. It used to be bodily at first, and then he learned to draw it closer and closer to the boundaries of his skin, until it was nothing but a tightening of his eyes. Barely even that, now, but when it happens Koutarou sees a ghost of him lurching forward in permanent stop-motion, holographic like an overlapping roll of film. Like two pictures caught on top of each other. Kuroo doesn't have an armour. He is armour, hard and unyielding and the wind howling around in all that empty space inside.

He isn't afraid of many things. He flinches at unexpected loud noises, the ticking of clocks, and slammed doors. Koutarou flinches harder, actually.

He's eighteen years old when he learns what it means to pack up a dream before he's fully unpacked it.

●●●

See, it’s like— Koutarou has a box. He knows there’s a dream in the box, but he doesn’t exactly know what kind of dream it is. That’s because he’s never opened the box. It’s his to keep; that he knows. He can’t open it— that, too, he knows.

●●●

It's a sunny afternoon, the day they move their things into their apartments. Koutarou's a few blocks away from Kuroo, which is much closer than they used to be when they first met. Koutarou still remembers nagging at his parents to take him to go play with Kuroo when he was ten, eleven, twelve. They always indulged him, exchanged terse greetings with Kuroo's parents the first few times before a new rule was established: Kuroo would come over as often as possible, and Koutarou would not go over at all.

He's a few blocks away from Kuroo, and he's never been more relieved about anything in his life. That they both applied to this place was a coincidence; that they both got in, their intelligence— Kuroo's exams and Koutarou's portfolio and both of them with their different brands of determination to go out there and do something in the world. Koutarou’s never been anyone's, no matter his afflictions; in fact, maybe it would've been easier if he had been someone's, but he's never known how not to be his own person. Loving Kuroo is a pulse of fear, almost, sometimes. He'd never have believed that he could give so much of himself to someone, live so much of their life as his own, before. He doesn't know what before is, though; because there was no before— there's always only been this: Kuroo shading his eyes with a hand, a hand on his waist, trying to figure out how to get a particularly large box up the stairs to his new apartment.

'I'll help with that,' Koutarou says, nodding towards the box. He thinks it has Kuroo's textbooks, but he isn't sure. It doesn't have fragile marked on it.

'I know,' Kuroo replies. 'I'm just wondering if I should've brought it in the first place. It's crockery. How much am I going to cook?'

'Start labelling that shit, Tetsu. What if I'd just hauled it up like that?'

'That's exactly what I'm saying. Smash it for all I care, how much crockery am I going to use?'

'You're not living on instant noodles throughout your university career, hotshot. Let me tell you that real quick.'

'I can eat at the café. They can take it out of my paycheque.'

'You're not eating at that damn café.' Koutarou hates how good that café is, hates that there's a branch on campus. If anything, he'd have thought Kuroo would score free meals from an establishment owned by his own father, but instead he'd come in a week before university, triumphant that he'd managed to get a job there as barista.

'I'm going to make the best coffee the manager's ever had,' Kuroo had said, grinning wide and victorious. 'I’m going to kick ass, and then Dad will make me manager.'

'You're not eating at that damn café,' Koutarou repeats, as he glares down at the box. 'Are you helping me with the fucking box or not?'

It's when Kuroo's happily talking about the kitten Kenma adopted that it happens. He trails off mid-tirade about how small and cute the thing is and how unfairly Kenma's calling it Count Dracula, of all things, and Koutarou looks up from where he's trying to shut the trunk of the car he shouldn't be driving at seventeen. Seven years are more than enough to tune into the silence of a friend, but he's only ever seen this kind of look on Kuroo's face a handful times over those seven years.

He follows Kuroo's gaze to the building across the road from them, and to the car parked near the doorway of that building. A girl and a boy, who must be their age, with the girl on the trunk of their car and the boy pulling her cheek. They're laughing, talking about something Koutarou doesn't give a shit about, because he's trying to figure out what's so unusual.

Then the boy leans forwards and knocks their foreheads together, and Koutarou thinks Kuroo must have tensed at that. He wants to be petulant, wants to turn to Kuroo and say so what, don't we do that too, but the stinging realisation that it's not the same comes at the same time as another realisation that he's far too disinclined to swallow right now. He's always known; he doesn't need an explicit reminder, and yet. And yet.

Koutarou isn't afraid of anything. He wants but refuses to flinch at the things that scare Kuroo, on principle. Apart from those, he might be afraid of one or two things. He turns his face to look one of them in the eye, and he wishes he hadn't.

It isn't about the amount of longing visible on Kuroo's face, it's not that at all— it's rather the effort he's making not to let it show through, and the slowly crushing realisation of how much Koutarou can see it anyway— amplified even if he can't catch half of it. It isn't about the amount of longing on Kuroo's face, it's about how they both think it shouldn't be there, for entirely different reasons.

Koutarou catches Kuroo's wrist, and that he meant to do. Kuroo turns around, and that he meant to happen. What he didn't quite intend was to lean forward as far as he did, lay his cards out quite like that.

He stops himself midway, before he can actually pull Kuroo in and kiss him. He stops because it won’t be like this, if it ever happens.

He leaves himself open, because he's afraid of one or two things, but Kuroo's not one of them. His strength, yes. His thoughts, yes. But his heart, no. Not the sum of it all.

Kuroo looks right back at him, lips parted, eyes surprised. He doesn't move. And Koutarou, for having mustered all that courage without realising it, feels it drain out from his fingertips.

'The crockery,' he says, and Kuroo looks down at their hands, then at the box, then nods. He looks tired.

It's near the end of March, the sun beating down on them, and Koutarou wonders what he ever meant for it to mean. What he ever meant for any of it to mean. Because all that happened is that Kuroo now looks tired, and Koutarou feels angry, and neither of those are new things at all.

●●●

Kuroo was taught, growing up, that being loved would never quite be achievable for him. Koutarou doesn’t know if he wants to make a list of people proving that wrong, or if he wants to prove it wrong all by himself.

●●●

Kuroo isn’t fond of looking himself in the eye in mirrors, but he can transform a place just by being in it. Koutarou doesn't think he could handle meeting another person like this, who knows where to stand in a room so that his voice echoes through all the walls when he sings. Kuroo's had an angel's voice for as long as Koutarou's known him, and there's nothing he loves more than using it. When he sings, when he plays that well-worn guitar of his, he leaves this consciousness while strengthening it for everyone else. Koutarou sees it in his eyes; he knows Kuroo's not here, because he looks happy.

It makes Koutarou want to cry, or vomit, or both.

The café where he shouldn't be working is already much more cheerful than it must've been because he works there now. Koutarou knows this even though he's never visited it before. He knows it because that's just what Kuroo does— he walks into a room and he looks around at the curtains, and he cocks his head at an angle and thinks of what could be done. And then he does it.

He does it for every house but his own.

There's a boy who's been coming around to the café every other day, around the same time that Kuroo's shift ends, late at night. Koutarou catches his name the first time when he says it to Kuroo. Oikawa, with the long brown hair and big brown eyes and a ready smile. He orders a coffee that he could easily make at home, a double espresso, and then takes his time drinking it as if everyone knows why he's really here.

A couple of weeks into their first semester, Koutarou finally blinks himself into social reality and waves to him. Oikawa gravitates towards him immediately, bringing his ridiculous little coffee over and complaining nineteen to the dozen about some professor of his who gave him a hard time that morning.

'And you?' he says, raising his eyebrows. 'What do you study, Bokuto?'

'Photography,' Koutarou answers, looks at the barely-noticeable shake of Oikawa's fingers as he stirs his little spoon to cool the coffee down.

'And him?' Oikawa nods towards the kitchen. 'The songbird?'

'Management.' Koutarou wonders how outlandish it is to others, Kuroo's singing habit. He knows Kenma thinks nothing of it, knows precisely what Kuroo's parents think of it, knows objectively that it hardly lines up with the way Kuroo's learned to be silent in almost every other regard. The songbird. He's always wondered if it was rebellion, in a way, but he doesn't give it too much thought because he is still afraid of one or two things.

'Childhood friends?'

Koutarou looks up, and Oikawa's grinning, and he smiles back, nods.

●●●

Kuroo turns eighteen nearly two months after Koutarou, and they go out and get drunker than they should. That isn't anything new either, but this time Kuroo has a car, even if it’s untouched in the parking lot. He doesn't spare it much thought, because the car is sleek, and shiny, and white, still right where it was when Kuroo drove it in at noon. And he's drunk off his ass, past the point of delusion and right back into lucidity.

'That's a wicked fucking car,' Sawamura says. 'You're going to have to keep it clean, though.'

There's nothing but sincerity in his voice, even though they all know that no one else has gotten a car at eighteen. He's a classmate from Kuroo's management faculty, a friendship that Kuroo announced with more surprise than anything else, and genuine, heart-wrenching surprise at that. There's a guy in my management class, he's cool. He borrowed my charger. He's cool.

The car is sleek, and shiny, and white. It isn't the fanciest car in the city, maybe not even on the campus. It's a convertible, just the perfect size and build to pass a message. They've always been good at doing that.

'Are you kidding?' Kuroo grins. 'I'm getting it redone to red the moment I save up.'

Koutarou's chest seizes up for a second.

And him? The songbird?

'Kuroo,' Kenma says, and they all snap to attention. It's an adorable hierarchy, actually; listen to the tiniest kid because he's the only one who isn't drunk. 'You're not getting it redone.'

It isn't an order; it's an assumption, almost. Koutarou and Kenma have both imagined the outcome of getting the damn thing redone, but Kenma's the only one who doesn't give a fuck, who'll say it out loud. Koutarou's almost bracing himself for it.

No one's drunk enough to say angry, or livid, or red. Not after Koutarou and Kenma have both seen those little notes in the margins of Kuroo's notebooks. No one is going to yell at me, no one is going to yell at me, read one too many times, makes him want to yell— and that’s another thing he’s afraid of.

Kuroo grins at Kenma, nothing but armour and wind. 'Oh, I'm getting it redone.'

●●●

Later, they drag each other back upstairs to Kuroo's apartment. Koutarou knows there's a holy mess there, needs to help Kuroo put at least some of it away before they dispose of the drinks in more appropriate ways. It's going on three in the morning, and it's fucking cold even though he's lost estimate of how much alcohol he has in his stomach, cold enough that he keeps crouching next to the radiator, too impatient to wait for it to kick in fully.

Soon enough, they're sprawled on opposite ends of the couch, each with a bottle in his hand, Koutarou leaning his head on the armrest and staring at Kuroo, Kuroo staring at the opposite wall, a strangely content look on his face.

Koutarou knows it's not contentment. He doesn't think Kuroo knows what that is, because it's something that comes somewhere near happiness. Kuroo doesn't know contentment; Kuroo knows compromise. No, this is Kuroo gently falling back into himself, winding down from the day, coming back into whatever reality he's made for himself in the dark of the night.

Koutarou poses his bottle on the floor and sits up a little, watches carefully.

'That was good,' Kuroo says softly, one arm across his stomach, the other raised, bottle near his lips like he's forgotten what he raised it for. 'That was a good evening.'

'It was,' Koutarou says. Hope is in his throat like a prayer to anyone who'll listen, so desperate. So fucking desperate. 'Yeah.'

'I'm just amazed—' —it's breaking, it's breaking '— I didn't think so many people would be willing to be in my presence for that long.'

It breaks. Not loudly, not soundlessly either. The hope breaks like a voice would break.

'Please stop,' he says. His voice breaks. 'Please.'

Kuroo's eyes tighten, and Koutarou's breath catches, his fear only not outdoing Kuroo’s out of shame. He recoils, exhales, tries again. 'Fuck, Tetsu. I wish you'd let someone show you—'

'Would you do it?'

Koutarou stops short, blinks at Kuroo. There are two seconds when Kuroo's still staring ahead, but then he turns, looks right at Koutarou. There really isn't anything in his eyes. He isn't tentative, isn't afraid of the answer. Koutarou knows as much; someone who thinks every question will be met with no isn't afraid of asking questions.

Before he can try, again, to change that misconception, Kuroo's already looking away again. He exhales sharply, the corners of his lips almost curving up, almost as if to say I thought so.

Koutarou sleeps in his own bed that night, after an hour of staring at the ceiling and thinking well, I wish you hadn't fucking thought so.

●●●

Kuroo doesn’t have an armour. Kuroo is armour. His body is strong and his smile is stronger, because he believes what he believes with a carefree conviction, with almost an abandon, as if it’s a relief to think that he can’t be loved.

Koutarou isn’t afraid of anything. He might be afraid of one or two things, like how he almost hates Kuroo’s strengths and logic. Like how he loves Kuroo like the world is too small.

●●●

He wakes up with the dream half out of its box. Not even out of its box, actually; it's still in there. It's always been inside, but he's never really looked at it, just because he knows that it's there. He's never even opened the box. That's the difference, he decides. He doesn't wake up with the dream half out of its box; he wakes up with an open box. It's got some crockery inside. A couple of bracelets, leather and steel.

He's never had a hangover a day of his life and one day the universe is going to get him for that, when it's done getting him for this. The sun's long since set even though it's nowhere close to dinnertime, but the cold does nothing to him as he makes his way across roads and pavements. He holds the takeout bag closer to his chest, regrets not getting something to cover it with. It's going to get cold.

It might get cold anyway, actually. He's only got one other bag with him, and it's an overnight bag.

Kuroo's door is unlocked as always, and so is the door to his bedroom when Koutarou makes his way to it. He's exactly where Koutarou expected to find him, on his back on the bed, only his boxers on and a very humanly miserable look on his face. Koutarou might not get hangovers but Kuroo sure does. It can't be that bad, though; he looks relatively fresh in the light of the lamp; all showered with his hair damp on his pillow, and he actually lazily raises a hand to greet Koutarou when he sees him.

'I brought takeout,' Koutarou says, holding the bag up. Kuroo groans loudly in appreciation.

'I love you,' he says, and Koutarou laughs, shakes his head. He leaves it on Kuroo's desk before advancing towards the bed, nudging Kuroo's ribs with his knee to make him shift. When he sits down, Kuroo rolls onto his side to face him properly, and Koutarou looks down at him in silence for a while.

He looks tired, but not exhausted. The shadows under his eyes are no news, nor is his apocalyptic hair. Koutarou wants to reach out and run his fingers through it, but he's wanted all sorts of ridiculous shit for no reason at all— there's no need to want it when he’s always had it, so he doesn't know why he still wants it. He doesn't want to know why.

'Hi,' Kuroo says.

'I'm going to show you.'

'What?'

'I'm going,' Koutarou says, slowly, deliberately, 'to show you.'

Kuroo doesn't say anything, and Koutarou waits for him to take it in. He can see the comprehension dawning, the change in the lines of his mouth and eyes, and that one shaky breath that gets away from him. Kuroo is beautifully put together; armour put together with the objectivity one can only have if he's without love for it. That one shaky breath makes Koutarou fall harder than a thousand songs would.

He leans down slowly enough for Kuroo to know what's happening, and then he makes it happen.

Koutarou has never kissed a boy before. In their second year in high school, when Kuroo was rejecting advances left and right without registering them, Yukie had laughed Koutarou through a clumsy night in her bedroom when her parents were away. Of course it ended one day, but it wasn't something that neither of them had seen coming, and not something that hurt either of them. After all, Yukie, more than anyone else, had seen Koutarou exist around Kuroo.

Koutarou has never kissed a boy before. Kuroo has never kissed. This he knows. And so he makes sure that he's light, that he's slow. There is a strange feeling that has been working its way up his hands from the moment their lips first touched, a kind of ache starting from the tips of his fingers and twisting slow, slow, slowly around the little hinges where his fingers fold into halves and thirds. He curls and uncurls them to relieve it, and brings his hands up to frame Kuroo's face. His eyes are closed and he hopes with a childish kind of desperation, that Kuroo's are, too.

When he finds it in himself to pull back, he sees Kuroo's long lashes trembling over that blueish skin under his eyes that Koutarou wishes he could will away. Kuroo exhales so slowly that it must've hurt, and opens his eyes, looks almost at Koutarou but not quite.

'You don't have to,' he whispers.

‘Tetsurou,’ Koutarou says. ‘Hey. Am I wrong? Is this what you meant yesterday?’

Kuroo takes his lower lip between his teeth, worries it for a moment, then looks at Koutarou and nods. He looks so young that it hurts how young they are.

‘Do you want this? Words, please, Tetsurou.’

This time it takes longer, and the yeah, I do is nearly silence itself, but Koutarou nods.

‘Do you think you might prefer it if it were someone else?’ He makes sure that his voice is even gentler than it was before; if Kuroo wants this but not with him, the takeout must still be warm and he’s brought movies.

But Kuroo shakes his head almost immediately, says ‘You’re the only—’ before curling a hand around Koutarou’s wrist. You’re the only one I trust. Koutarou knows Kuroo like the back of his hand. His chest hurts with it.

‘But you still don’t have to,’ Kuroo says, voice so small. ‘I...you don’t have to, just for me.’

Koutarou doesn't know how to answer that. He doesn't know if he's supposed to respond or if Kuroo is just saying it for it to be in the air when Koutarou shows him. A defensive reminder, a plate on the armour. You don't have to. He doesn't know how to answer it when his heart burns so obviously that only Kuroo can’t see it at this point. I have to. I want to, can't you see?

But if Kuroo could see, they wouldn't be doing this in the first place. So he swallows against whatever hurtful tide is rising in his throat, and smiles down at Kuroo, a half-there thing that he hopes doesn't look the way he feels when making it.

'I know,' he says, and closes his eyes when Kuroo's hands come up to his ribs, moving to his back. He leans down again, kisses him again. Firmer this time, with more purpose, with more direction. This time, Kuroo kisses back, and Koutarou would laugh about him being a natural if that ache hadn't come back, lingering and demanding in the centres of his palms. He ignores it and feels, hungrily, the way Kuroo's lips part under his own, the way he takes his hands away after a moment to rise up on his elbows, the way he clings to Koutarou precariously before Koutarou pulls him up, flush against his shivering chest. It's almost more of an embrace than a kiss. Koutarou doesn't know what else he had expected.

When they break away, he curls a hand into Kuroo's hair, looks him in the eyes, smiles a little at him. Kuroo smiles back, and even though it's timid, it's enough of a daybreak for Koutarou.

'It's just me,' Koutarou whispers, and Kuroo nods immediately. 'I'm going to talk, okay? I promise I won't do a single thing without asking you.' And I promise I will do every single thing you ask of me.

'Where was this spirit when I told you not to get that dye job?' Kuroo's smile is wider now, and Koutarou laughs. 'Okay. All right.'

'All right,' Koutarou repeats, nodding. 'All right. I'm going to put my hands on your waist now.'

'Okay.' He’d almost expected Kuroo to scoff, roll his eyes, say something like Bokuto, please, like they've never been there before. But he doesn't, and all at once the enormity of it all hits Koutarou and he lags for a moment before inhaling himself into action; he leans forward and kisses Kuroo a third time, fits his hands around Kuroo's hipbones, thumbs perfectly above the sharpest points. Kuroo's skin is as familiar as always, just as warm, but the way he responds is such a surreal combination of the ease they've always had between them and this trembling kind of terror, that it goes right to Koutarou's heart.

He talks his way through laying Kuroo back down on the bed, through doing away with the blankets first, then his own jacket, dropping it to the floor before coming back to Kuroo. He asks for and kisses Kuroo's shoulder, the warm stretch of skin of the crook of his neck, the heartrendingly beautiful lines of his collarbones. God, but if he had his camera right now, this would break the lens. If he had his camera right now, he wouldn't be using it. He hardly trusts himself to keep this sight safe, to hold it in his heart as carefully as he knows he'll have to.

That's the thing about these one-time occurrences, he thinks to himself as he fits his lips over the strain in Kuroo's neck when he sighs and bares it: they're one-time occurrences. One snap of the shutter; catch the light, catch the gazelle, catch the beat of Kuroo's heart under his lips. Catch the catch of his breath, catch the catch of it all: this is a one-time occurrence. Catch it and put it away in the box.

When he coaxes the hem of Kuroo's boxers over his thighs and knees and shins and first takes him into his mouth, Kuroo freezes, and so does he. He waits for a handful of seconds that he doesn't count, until Kuroo's hand, wildly shaking, comes to rest in his hair, pushing down so gently that it's almost imaginary. He keeps a hand in Kuroo's other one through it; pull on it if you can't speak; rises again to press a kiss to Kuroo's navel only after a while. He rests his forehead against Kuroo's stomach, catches his breath, closes his eyes.

'Where do you go from here?' Kuroo asks. His voice is a murmur, but his hand is still in Koutarou's.

Koutarou opens his eyes, and looks up at Kuroo, who's actually looking down at him, head raised off the pillow.

'We,' Koutarou says, 'go wherever you want to go.'

At that, surprisingly, Kuroo huffs and grins. Koutarou feels his heart twist for a second as Kuroo lets his head fall back onto the pillow.

'I want to go everywhere,' he says to the ceiling. Then Koutarou laughs, raises himself up and trails a hand up Kuroo's side.

'Then we go everywhere,' he says, and Kuroo closes his eyes. He keeps them closed when Koutarou removes his own clothes, and Koutarou doesn't know what else he had expected.

He talks again, not the least bit shy about using his words, because after all, the confusion he keeps feeling still has the same reason: it's just Kuroo. It's just them. So he talks Kuroo through the first finger, and then the second, and a third when his hips start coming off the bed higher and higher. Kuroo spares him a raised eyebrow and a laugh when he fumbles in his jacket pocket for condoms. He shoots Kuroo a glare but actually feels some of the pain elevate, if only for a moment.

He runs out of words when he sinks into Kuroo, the air knocked from his chest so painstakingly that knocked isn't even correct: he feels the moment drawing the breath out of his lungs, slowly, and sealing them on the way so that there is nothing but a burn in his chest and a horrid fucking ache in his throat that he doesn't know what to do with. He barely chokes out a, 'Can I move now?' and loses even that when Kuroo nods.

He doesn't know what else he had expected. He hadn't even thought fully about how else he would've liked to do this. With candles, or in a bigger room, he doesn't know. He'd never fully unpacked that dream. He's never unpacked that dream, except that he's doing it now.

A part of him can still see the room. The dark sky outside the window, the yellow light from Kuroo's reading lamp, the blanket, the black sheets. The moon, somewhere. Kuroo, in his arms, under him, pressed chest to chest and lips to neck, and this ever-building wall of tears in Koutarou's eyes that he grits his teeth and blinks away again and again and again.

And what can he say, really? What can he ask? Would you stay here like this, if I howled and begged? Would you keep me if I cry? Can I keep the box if I want it hard enough?

The box has always been his to keep, though. There's no need to want it when he's always had it, so he doesn't know why he still wants it. He doesn't know why he has to press his forehead to Kuroo's shoulder and clench his teeth and screw his eyes shut against tears, doesn't know why one broken-off whimper escapes him anyway, when Kuroo inhales sharply and says 'Koutarou—'

The sound of his name in that voice slices through him, and it takes all the bravado he's ever had in life to keep himself together when Kuroo moans softly, raises his hips, comes. Koutarou moves through it, taking in every sound, every pulse of Kuroo's body, the very taste of his skin. His grip on Kuroo is strong and protective in the simplest way he's always known it to be; Kuroo panting against his neck, overwhelmed; his hand stroking through Kuroo's hair, over his cheek. He puts it all away in the box, one by one by one.

It's like that that he comes, with his lips pressed to Kuroo's temple and their bodies aligned together like Koutarou is always going to have this. Kuroo gasps again when Koutarou's hips falter, and Koutarou takes a moment to gather himself before kissing Kuroo's eyebrow, shushing him quietly, quiveringly.

He puts that away too.

He's the one to clean Kuroo up despite all the protests, and the heat is already wearing off when he moves the towel gently over Kuroo's stomach, his ribs. Kuroo is half in a daze, struck silent and beautiful in a way that Koutarou can't even process. He fixes his tired gaze on Koutarou when Koutarou gently slips his boxers back on for him, keeps it on him when he puts on his own. Koutarou doesn't know how to read that gaze, but he has a history with Kuroo and silence, and so he makes a guess.

'Hey,' he says. 'Tetsurou. You don't have to be worried about this, too.'

Kuroo only quirks a corner of his mouth, and then he turns on his side and smiles at Koutarou, and Koutarou's known that smile since they were ten. He lies down, too, face to face with the knife-cut that he had when he heard Kuroo gasp Koutarou: the realisation, real and final, that nothing will ever come out of this. Not the things he thought he wanted, not the things he didn't know he wanted, not the short-lived desires that bloomed and withered in just these few hours, between their lips and hands. He feels that cold pain course through him again, and clenches his fist on the sheets.

'You are the only thing,' Kuroo says softly, 'that I don't worry about.'

Kuroo has always been his to keep, though. Even if it’s pulling his breath out of his lungs right now, still, Kuroo has always been his to keep.

Koutarou grins at him through the pain, wide and truthful and trying his best. 'Well, then we have that,' he says.

And that's all we'll ever have.

Kuroo smiles back. 'Yep,' he says. 'We have that.'

●●●

Day heaves and struggles to break. He's in goosebumps, cold without his shirt where the blanket has slipped off his shoulder. The sky outside is lightening, but so weakly that there is hardly any of it visible in the room.

Kuroo looks like an angel. Koutarou can only see the barest, softest lines of him, blue strokes and darkness otherwise. His breathing is calm even though Koutarou knows he never sleeps without fear, and the blanket is still on his shoulders. Koutarou has the most exhausted longing to draw Kuroo into his arms, keep him, keep him. He's done it before, he can do it again; just—

In his head, he’s already reached over and pushed back one of Kuroo’s wayward locks, and in his head, Kuroo isn’t sleeping lightly for once. But that’s for his head, not for the hand that’s risen despite itself, halfway across the space between them.

Then Koutarou is pulling away and sitting up, getting off the bed to put on his shirt. They're in the thick of winter so it must be late for it to already be light outside, but he doesn't care. What he cares about is that Kuroo is sleeping soundly, that the takeout can be microwaved, that the box is back in its corner.

The living room is a little brighter, faint light sneaking in through the glass door to the balcony. On the way to the kitchen, Koutarou pauses to frown and laugh at Kuroo's guitar case, propped up against a wall. They must have forgotten the other night.

It looks strangely small, like it doesn't belong to Kuroo. Like it belongs to a doll.

Childishly, he hugs it to himself for a moment before putting it away where it's supposed to be, and returns to the kitchen. Kuroo still hasn't gotten into the habit of keeping his fridge well-stocked, but at least there's always something to drink. Sure enough, there's an unopened carton of orange juice, perfect breakfast food. Or at least as much as he's going to find for the moment.

The takeout can be microwaved.

Koutarou thinks about it for a second before deciding to see how cold it is outside. He almost regrets it when the first chill hits him, when he opens the balcony door. It's not so bad, though— what is?— so he steps out with the juice, closes the door behind him. It's not a huge balcony; it's not a huge apartment. The world is small, a few sizes too small, Kuroo asleep in a doll's house with his delicate fingers curled into the sheets.

The world is silent. He can't see the sun anywhere even though he knows it's coming up, and from here, the sky looks desolate. This weary kind of blue-grey, like it agrees with him about everything. And he appreciates the gesture; it's easier to be brave and stark and loud against this sky than it would be against cyan. And Koutarou, with his ridiculous fucking love for the world and Kuroo Tetsurou, likes to be brave and stark and loud.

He smirks at no one in particular and twists open the cap of the juice, brings it to his mouth, realises belatedly that he forgot to shake it. He takes a large swig anyway, a gulp that almost hurts his throat.

The world is a few sizes too small, his hands so big and heavy with pain. All at once, the juice that he's still swallowing reminds him of how alive he is. It tastes real and healthy, and he knows he needs it to survive. He survived, after all, and he's going to have to keep doing it, and this carton of juice is a doll's carton of juice but it's opening a hole in his chest.

And the thing is, he thinks as he bends to rest his forehead against the icy-cold rail of the balcony, morning dew wetting his forehead; the thing is that he still gets to keep everything. He still gets to keep it all. He doesn't have to cry like this. He doesn't have to hold onto the carton of juice and hang onto the rail and cry like his box is gone from its corner, because it isn't. He still gets to keep it. He doesn't have to cry like this, heaving up against the blue-grey sky and sobbing like his heart is gone from his chest.

He knows he has to stop, he knows he can; just—

Just not today. Tomorrow, maybe.

●●●

The summer after their first year at university ends, Koutarou scores a job at Vertigo, the nightclub closest to campus. He's only been there a handful of times over the year, but he loves the place, can respect how it functions, likes how safe it is. The moment he finds out they're looking for photographers, he shows up with his camera, three memory cards, and a smile so wide they can't say no.

'Okay, but important things first,' Sawamura says. 'Does this mean we get free drinks?'

'I don't know, does Tetsu give you free coffee?' Koutarou shoots back, cheerfully dodging Sawamura's jab to his ribs. 'Hey, I don't fuckin' know, man. Your boyfriend can just smile at the bartender though, I'm pretty sure they'll hand him the Roman empire.'

'Suga isn't my boyfriend,' Sawamura says automatically, a most delicate shade of pink filling his cheeks.

'Sure,' Koutarou says. 'Namedrop me anywhere in that club and I will fucking annihilate your soul. You’re not even supposed to be drinking.'

'Up yours.'

His first shift is a week after their holidays start. He makes sure his work leaves no room for complaint, even though he's not quite sure what complaints there could be about pictures of drunk architecture students. He's only on from happy hour to midnight, which is actually the nicer shift of the two main ones that they usually have. He switches out memory cards and unleashes his lens on his friends after a quick vodka.

There's Sawamura and Sugawara, pretty oblivious to the existence of anyone else around them. Iwaizumi from journalism, a "friend" of Oikawa's, apparently. Azumane from marketing, and his asshole classmate Hanamaki. There's Koutarou's asshole classmates, Konoha and Sarukui, hitting on girls and succeeding flamboyantly.

There's Kuroo, leaning against the bar and watching them all with a smile on his face and a drink in his hand. He loves to dance, just like he loves to sing, and he does it more and more these days. It's still only Koutarou who can coax him out to the floor, but sometimes he dances a number with Sugawara, jokes around and pulls faces with Hanamaki. Sometimes he smiles at strangers with a half sort of interest, and it makes Koutarou's heart hope, loudly, for them.

'Hey,' he hears from next to him, and turns, camera in hand, to look at Oikawa.

'Hey,' he says. 'Let me guess, you want another picture with—'

'What do you study, Bokuto?'

Koutarou raises his eyebrows at Oikawa, who's staring at him as seriously as if he really doesn't know the answer. At that, Koutarou leans back against the wall and strings his camera back around his neck before pointing to it.

'Photography?' he says, asks.

Oikawa nods, still serious. 'I'm doing some guesswork here, but aren't you artsy shitheads taught that everything's beautiful, everything's a subject, blah, blah, blah?'

'We aren't taught that,' Koutarou says without thinking. 'I chose it because I already know that.'

'Right,' Oikawa says. 'That's right.'

There's silence for a while— or, at least, between them: the club is buzzing with post-stress revelry; people yelling at the DJ to put on this song and that one; Sawamura in an argument with Iwaizumi, Azumane trying to placate them in vain. Koutarou lives for the action, lives for all the things he can see the people around him doing. That's why he chose it. The bartender taking a shot for himself while pouring some out for a group of would-be engineers; the bouncer with his stoic face breaking into a smile to greet a regular; Sugawara leaning into Kuroo's space and smiling up at him, hopefully, hopefully asking him for a dance.

Kuroo nods and waves Sugawara off, and Koutarou smiles.

'It's a big fucking world,' Oikawa says. 'You do the math.'

Koutarou doesn't take his eyes off Kuroo, and after a moment, Kuroo senses the gaze and turns to look back. They lock eyes for another moment, and then Kuroo grins, tilts his head in a question.

'It's a big, big world,' Oikawa repeats.

Koutarou grins an answer back at Kuroo, his heart bursting with love, both this old, familiar one, and then an older, more familiar one. He turns to Oikawa and eases it into a smile, because he knows that it's a big, big world, and that he loves everyone in it, and that summer has only just begun, and that the air might grow heavy sometimes but it never runs out of wonder.

‘Yeah,' he says. It's not always tragic.