Work Text:
The shop is dead during peak hours, the heater is on the fritz, the fluorescents keep flickering, and Tsukishima is more or less useless. It’s been the unluckiest month of Kuroo’s life to date. He is convinced Tadashi has used some kind of black magic to draw all his customers into Wags and Whiskers, totally ignoring all the cool album posters and neon signs in Offbeat’s front window. Kuroo has even put stuff on sale. Good stuff. But the thing about sales is that they only work when people actually buy things.
Running a business is tricky.
“Are you sure?” Kuroo asks, leaning onto the counter. “You really haven’t seen anything?”
“No, Kuroo.”
“Any weird, bundled herbs? Any tiny little dolls that look like me?”
“A weirdly huge collection of needles? A ouija board? A vial of pig’s blood? A book of spells?” Bokuto fires off, his voice ricocheting around the empty shop.
Tsukishima closes his magazine.
“No,” he drones, “I can’t say I’ve seen a vial of pig’s blood at our apartment.”
“Well, keep an eye out.”
“I will not.”
They all glance up when the lights flicker, a mechanical buzz vibrating above bright white ceiling tiles. Kuroo groans and Bokuto gives his back a consoling slap with his giant, cricket bat hands. Tsukishima opens his magazine again.
Bokuto hangs around until his break ends, telling Tsukishima to keep an eye out for pens and pencils at his place that look like magic wands, and when he goes, the door’s bell chimes and echoes through the sad little flickering shop. Kuroo eyes the obnoxious sale sign that covers the entire lefthand side of the front window.
He taps at the glass fish bowl in his office. He knows he’s not supposed to, okay, and Tadashi would absolutely scold him for it. Akaashi would absolutely snub him, which is somehow worse, because Akaashi’s cold shoulders are equal to Antarctica or maybe some subzero constellation in the Boomerang Nebula, which is definitely a real thing because he overheard Tsukishima telling some poor customer about it last week who was just trying to buy a Jefferson Starship album. Tadashi has rubbed off on him. It may not be a good thing.
Kuroo watches his fish flutter around its bowl.
“We’re almost out of purple rocks,” he tells it.
The betta fish flutters some more. The lights flicker again and Kuroo sighs, leaning back in his creaky chair.
* * * * *
“Okay, go.”
“The heater is busted,” says Tsukishima.
“The flickery lights,” adds Tadashi.
The two of them shuffle around the music shop’s front counter, its wooden top cold to touch. The icy metal buttons on the register aren’t any better. Kuroo stands behind the counter, manager-like, a clipboard in his hand. He clicks his pen and poises it over the paper.
“You have a whole clipboard for this?” asks Tadashi, tapping the metal clip with his finger. “Kuroo, there really aren’t that many problems. Just the heater thing. Get it so people won’t be able to see their breath in here anymore. Oh, and the haunted lights. Definitely those.”
“I think they’re kind of cool,” says Tsukishima.
“Well, they’re not,” Kuroo replies, but scribbles in cool? next to that item on the list anyway. “Also, there’s this weird clicking noise. Like a click-click-clack thing. Tsukishima doesn’t hear it, or so he claims, but it’s driving me nuts. I mean, how is my fish supposed to sleep with all that going on?”
“Please don’t tell me you’re fixing that just for the fish.”
“I mean, I’m not. It’s just an added bonus.”
“I wish Akaashi were here. He’d know what to do,” Bokuto insists. He shoves his hands further into his mittens.
“He’s not dead,” says Tadashi. “He’s working.”
“Thirty feet away,” adds Tsukishima.
“That’s thirty feet too far.”
“You’re thirty feet too far,” Bokuto counters.
“What does that even mean?”
Click. Click-clack.
Kuroo shushes them. He grabs Bokuto and Tadashi’s wrists, his pen clattering onto his clipboard.
“You heard that, right?”
“Heard what?”
Click-clack.
“That,” he insists.
“I definitely heard that,” Tadashi promises, up on his tiptoes to peer over Kuroo’s shoulder.
“Wait,” says Tsukishima. “Is that what you’re talking about? That sound?”
“Yeah, what’d you think?”
“It’s a guy going through CDs. A customer.”
Kuroo gawks. “Are you—are you serious?” he asks, and then balks harder because the clicking was there when he and Bokuto tried to sing the Canadian anthem with their mouths closed, it was there that time he openly sobbed while watching Titanic on the world’s tiniest television in his office, and it was definitely there when he called his sister about that weird rash he found and told her, in full detail, of how it looks just like this rash he had in high school when he kept forgetting to wash his jersey.
Not cool.
“Well,” he manages, willing the red out of his face because Kuroo doesn’t get embarrassed, he just doesn’t, no matter how bad his flush tries to ruin his shameless reputation. “Did you at least ask him if he needs help?”
Tsukishima blinks. “No.”
“Why do I keep you here again?”
“‘Cause he’s nice to look at,” Tadashi lilts.
Kuroo grins wickedly because his flush zings across the counter and into Tsukishima’s face instead. Kuroo ducks out and away from them, intent on tracking down the clicking. He ignores it when the lights flicker and follows the noise to one of the very back rows of the shop, past all the speakers and sound equipment, to the row right by his office. Of course.
Kuroo has the worst luck.
He tries to remember just how detailed he’d been with his sister but forgets when he sees the clutter that litters the carpet from one side of the aisle to the other: CDs stacked two feet high, colorful plastic covers shiny under the shop’s fluorescents. The sheer quantity of them is staggering, no matter how separate their piles may be. The adjacent shelf is empty. Kuroo hasn’t seen it that bare since before the very first time he stocked it, case after case after case, lifting them out of cardboard boxes with both hands.
“Whoa,” he utters.
The clicking stops. The guy stills, a handful of discs halfway to their pile. He peers up at Kuroo.
“I’m going to put them back,” he says.
He stares at Kuroo steadily, warily like he thinks he might pounce. Another moment and he decides that Kuroo’s harmless, his sharp gold stare darting away. He places the album he holds on its foot-tall stack. Clack.
“Do you need help?”
“No. Thanks.” Click-clack.
“Really?” asks Kuroo, stepping closer to the chaos. “Because it kind of looks like you do.”
The guy looks like he’s been here for years, maybe centuries, rooted to Offbeat’s gray carpet and sorting CDs from two, three, four decades ago. His fingertips slide over the plastic on the next case he sorts, squeaking slightly. He situates his scarf tighter around his neck.
“I’m okay,” he says.
Kuroo blinks down at the top of his head.
“Well,” he replies, turning on his heel. “If you’re sure, then.”
* * * * *
“Blue? Blue?”
“I told you, it’s all we have!”
“Whose choice was this? Whose?” Kuroo scoffs, jostling the awful blue bundle in his hand.
“If it makes you feel any better, we don’t have yellow in stock, either.”
His bad luck strikes again. This time, it hits hard. The fake blue rocks knock against each other in their netting when Kuroo drops them on the counter. He glares hatefully at them. He keeps glaring as Tadashi scans them and sorts his money into the register, the machine beeping and popping. It mocks him.
“He’s gonna be so pissed,” he reports.
Tadashi hands him the blue rocks. “Who?”
“My fish, Tadashi. He knows only a world of purple. None of this blue nonsense.”
“Kuroo, their memories last, like, four seconds. He won’t even know.”
“Three seconds,” corrects Akaashi, propping the broom up against the counter.
“See?” Tadashi reassures him. “Three seconds. Even better.”
Kuroo groans. He needs a lucky rabbit’s foot. Or a four-leaf clover—way less cruel. Even the lights in his shop protest the fake blue rocks as he pours them in, flickering ominously overhead. Kuroo apologizes to his fish but makes sure to let him know that change is an integral part of life and he must get used to it, just like Kuroo has. He swishes his tail in reply. Kuroo interprets it as the fish equivalent of a middle finger.
All this before he realizes his office door is open, and then he hears the clicking.
The guy has moved on to the second half of the aisle he occupied yesterday. Whatever he’s up to, at least he’s making progress. He clicks and clacks and Kuroo stands over him until he decides he must look pretty menacing, his hair giving him at least another half-foot of height, and he kneels down instead. Dark hair curtaining his face, the guy doesn’t notice him.
He jumps out of his skin when Kuroo asks, “Need any help today?”
He squints at him like maybe he wants to leave the store entirely, or at least stick the sharpest corner of the case he holds into Kuroo’s eye. Or maybe Kuroo shouldn’t be spooking the only reoccurring customer he’s had in two weeks. Whichever.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” the guy mumbles.
“Oh,” says Kuroo. “Good.”
“Can you hand me that?”
Kuroo slides the record by his knee across the floor between the same neat stacks as last time, the plastic wrapper crinkling a bit on the carpet.
“Your taste?” he wonders.
The guy takes the Hootie & The Blowfish record with gentle hands. It makes Kuroo feel sleepy somehow, serene, watching short, pale fingers press to shiny plastic. He watches the same fingers as they curl his curtain of hair behind his ear. Kuroo does a double-take at the cutest button nose he’s ever seen—even cuter than the little pink noses of the fresh batch of kittens next door, and certainly the rabbits. They’ve got nothing on this guy.
“Not exactly,” he answers, and the record clicks atop the others.
“Oh man, then you’re missing out. They have this one song, you know, I forget the name, but the guy recorded it upside down.” Kuroo pushes a couple more CDs his way when the guy glances at them. “Like, physically. He sang it while hanging upside down.”
He looks up at Kuroo for a moment. “Neat.”
“I thought so.”
Click-clack.
The shop’s bell chimes and Kuroo stands up again. The new instrument stands won’t stock themselves, though it would be pretty cool if they did. He reminds himself to mention that to Bokuto. Maybe they can come up with some rough sketches—Transformer instrument stands. It could be revolutionary, and it could be totally dangerous and world-ending, but it’s a risk Kuroo is willing to take. The semi-circle of CD stacks shines lamely under the shop lights. From the middle of the chaos, the guy peeks up at him.
“If you need anything,” Kuroo tells him, “I’m Kuroo.”
“Kenma,” he mutters in return, eyes downcast. He tucks his hair behind his ear again. “Thanks.”
The bell’s shop rings again and Kuroo hears the chatter of customers. Two groups, maybe three, all buzzing with excitement and testing the strings of the acoustic guitars set up by the front window, the way Tsukishima hates. Maybe the obnoxious sale sign is working after all.
* * * * *
Only the front and back lights of Wags and Whiskers are on as Kuroo and Bokuto sit on the freshly mopped tile floor. A kitten wobbles around inside the oblong rhombus of their legs, a little unsteady on its feet, its fluffed tail looped into a curlicue.
“What on earth’s he doing?” Bokuto asks.
“How am I supposed to know?”
“I’m just happy he didn’t come in here and start doing that. You know, taking the animals out of their cages, stacking them on top of one another, putting them back. Oh my god, Kuroo, can you imagine?”
Kuroo barks a laugh. The kitten blinks up at him, affronted.
“How do you stack animals?” he wonders.
“You don’t—that’s the thing.”
“Jesus.”
Bokuto runs one finger down the kitten’s back and scratches its butt, making its little tail lose its loop.
“If that kid wants a real challenge, send him over here.”
“No way. Get your own stacker.”
The wall of aquaria glow blue at Bokuto’s back, charming and familiar. No flickers; just calm, steady blue. Wags and Whiskers is his home away from home, but of course, Offbeat is his true home away from home—his baby—which makes the pet shop his home away from his home away from home. But it’s home nonetheless. Not even the hefty smell of kibble gets to him anymore.
“There’s just something about him, you know?”
“Who, the stacking guy?”
Kuroo chews at the inside of his cheek and nods. Up front, Tadashi closes out the register. It beeps and ker-chunks. Bokuto scoops the kitten up when it tries to climb out of their makeshift leg-fence.
“It’s fucking hot in here,” Kuroo complains, shrugging out of his jacket.
“You only think that ‘cause Offbeat’s in the negatives.”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Probably.” He balls up his jacket on the floor and the kitten wanders over, trotting merrily, happy to be out of Bokuto’s clutches. “The repair guy keeps pushing the date back. First it was Monday, then yesterday, and now next week. Next week. If this goes on, it’s gonna be colder in there than it is outside.”
“Put fake snow on the ground or something. People will think it’s on purpose.”
Kuroo blinks. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“It’s definitely not the worst idea I’ve ever had,” Bokuto agrees.
Kuroo could get a Christmas tree, too. He could set it up in the front of the shop and put fake presents around its trunk, all bows and ribbons and boxes like a kitschy mall Santa setup. He could order an inflatable reindeer online and put it behind the counter for added whimsy. He could serve cocoa samples. He could get Tsukishima to wear a Santa hat and charge people to take pictures with him. He wonders how long it would be until Tadashi zoomed over from next door to sit on his lap and ask for presents.
“I wish it was Christmas already,” he voices wistfully.
“You really ran with my fake snow idea, huh?”
“Yeah. Too far.”
“Don’t worry, Kuroo,” Bokuto insists, reaching forward and patting Kuroo’s ankle because it’s all he can reach. “The heater will get fixed. Your questionable rash will go away—”
“I told you not to talk about that.”
“—and the lights will get fixed, too, and then everything will be back to normal. I’d try to find you a four-leaf clover like you wanted, but I’m pretty sure they’re all dead by now.”
Kuroo sighs a watery, woe-is-me sigh that dawdles way longer than it has any right to.
“I really hope so.”
Between them, the kitten yawns. Vinyl shifts noisily as it curls up into a tiny fluff ball on Kuroo’s abandoned jacket and promptly falls asleep.
* * * * *
“Are you—are you organizing?”
Kenma hums without looking up, staring between the CDs in his hands. He wears mittens today. The shop has officially moved from jacket-cold to mitten-cold. Kuroo subsides his guilt and shuffles closer on his knees to peer at the CDs Kenma has yet to get to, all piled up at his side.
“You know,” he starts, “I usually pay people to do this stuff.”
Kenma glances at him, waiting for more. His eyes are sharp but instead of dangerous, they’re more interrogative; shovels rather than knives. He digs without even trying. Kuroo stares back until he’s all mud and loose soil.
“I just like to,” Kenma tells him with a shrug.
“Yeah, okay, but it just feels weird. Like I should make you the non-employee of the month.”
He watches Kuroo for a moment, a sudden reluctance hugging his body closer to the carpet.
“I can go,” he offers.
“No way,” Kuroo insists way too quickly. “I just can’t promise you a plaque on the front wall, that’s all.”
Click. “I can live with that.”
Kuroo grins. He nudges an askew CD back into place on the top of its mini-tower.
“When I first came in,” Kenma mentions, “I thought this was a game shop.”
“We could play tic tac toe,” offers Kuroo. He nearly tips over when Kenma’s lips quirk up in a tiny, unexpected smile. He coughs to fill the moment and says, “It used to be. A video game shop, I mean, before this place moved in here.”
Kenma hums. “I remember.”
“You do?” Kuroo asks, pulling his legs out from under him to sit cross-legged.
“Yeah.” Click-clack. “I walked by it on my way to school.”
“The owner was a dick. I remember that,” he recalls, and Kenma nods vehemently. “What, you met him?”
“A couple times. Until I wasn’t allowed in there anymore.”
“What?” Kuroo implores, leaning forward. “He kicked you out?”
“I guess.”
“Why? What’d you do?”
This aisle has less inventory than the last Kenma had raided, so the stacks are a little less impressive but grand all the same, neat and tidy in his signature semi-circle. Kenma takes up the final CD at his side and, with a hefty clack, places on the tallest heap. He leans back to admire his work.
“This,” he answers.
He grins again as Kuroo coughs a laugh that’s way too sharp in Kenma’s soft, easy atmosphere.
* * * * *
The first time Kuroo sees Kenma not on the floor in a heap of albums is when he’s on the bench across from the strip mall, the one Tadashi likes so much, toying with some kind of handheld console. Kuroo’s too far away to see. But he does see Kenma’s jacket—the kind with fur all around the hood—and it hides so much of his face that he has to turn his entire body to the side to see when Kuroo calls out his name. Kenma waves back, short and sweet.
He’s taking a break between aisles, he tells Kuroo. He is nearly to the front of the store after weeks of sorting, going quicker now that he’s found a groove, clicking and clacking to high heavens. Kuroo has no idea what he’ll do once all the CDs are in perfect alphabetical order.
It shouldn’t be cute. Really, it shouldn’t.
But it’s strange, and Kuroo likes strange, and he doesn’t even have to work to surround himself with it. These things just sort of happen: kidnapped kittens, wayward lizards, handsome fish guys-turned-pet-shop-employees, ficus tree dates he never got the details of, crop top parties, and bags of confetti and plastic kazoos still stashed in his stock room from last summer. On top of this, customers are flowing into the shop regularly now, almost like how it is in the summer, and more customers means more disarray. More posters jammed behind shelves, more tears in sheet music books, more weird smudges on the bathroom mirror, and most importantly, more CDs left anywhere convenient. So maybe Kenma will stick around, after all.
“Better eat it before it gets cold.”
“I can’t eat all this in four seconds.”
“Shut up. Eat your pizza.”
The pizza box and its contents are by far the warmest things in the shop. Tsukishima sighs and takes a slice. Kuroo glances out the window. Outside, Kenma sneezes into the crook of his elbow.
“I’m freezing. I don’t get paid enough for this.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” Kuroo insists. “The repair guy said he’ll be here on Friday.”
“Sure,” Tsukishima says coolly.
“Besides, you’re paid too much as it is.”
Tsukishima fakes disdain. He can say all he wants about his job but the truth is he loves it, Kuroo knows it because Tadashi told him, and Tadashi wouldn’t lie to him, and similarly, Tsukishima would sooner work at Offbeat for free than lie to Tadashi.
“He’s on Yamaguchi’s bench,” Tsukishima mentions, following Kuroo’s glance. He peels a piece of pepperoni off his slice and nudges it away.
“I don’t see his name on it.”
“I’m sure he’s carved it in there somewhere.”
“Yeah,” snickers Kuroo, “probably. You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen him not on his knees.”
Tsukishima aborts the bite of pizza he goes for and frowns. “I’m trying to eat.”
Now Kuroo’s face is officially the warmest thing in the shop. Kuroo: one, pizza: zero.
“Not like that, oh my god, have some tact,” he rambles.
“Sure. Whatever.”
“I’m serious.”
“Please. I don’t need to know anything more. I have eyes.”
“What does that mean?” Kuroo asks, popping Tsukishima’s abandoned pepperoni into his mouth. They both glance up momentarily when the lights flicker.
“It means I have to watch him eye-bang you all the time.”
Kuroo chokes on the pepperoni. He coughs and hacks. Kuroo: one, pizza: one.
“What?” he manages, his voice rough like he's chain-smoked for four hours straight. “What are you talking about? Also, I never thought I’d hear you use the phrase eye-bang. Jesus Christ, who are you?”
“Fine—visually fornicate. Whichever.”
“That’s worse. That’s ten times worse.”
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Tsukishima drones.
“I want you to tell me what the hell you’re talking about! You think he likes me?”
Kuroo glances out the window again to find Kenma’s taken his hood off for good and the shy autumn sun has finally broken from its shield of clouds, casting the brown grass around the bench in a pale, fleeting yellow. Tsukishima grabs a napkin and wipes the grease from his hands.
“I’m definitely not talking about this,” he says.
“About what?”
“I’m not gossiping with you about your little crush.”
“Tsukishima, you started it.”
“Now I’m ending it.”
Kuroo squints. “Newsflash, if it weren’t for gossiping about little crushes, you might not have a boyfriend. Do you even know how much Tadashi talked about you last summer? Do you even know? I know his favorite lock of your hair. I shit you not. I could point to it right now, but I won’t give you the satisfaction."
Kuroo plummets to second place because now it’s the heat on Tsukishima’s face that trumps his, that trumps the pizza, and Kuroo can’t help but smirk. Kuroo: two, pizza: one, Tsukishima: zero.
“He really talked about me that much?” Tsukishima mutters, his voice faraway.
Kuroo groans in defeat. The lights flicker again as he closes the lid to the pizza box, now lukewarm, and shoves it to the side. Leave it to Tadashi to draw Tsukishima’s train of thought completely off the rails, even when he’s next door.
* * * * *
“Stop playing it. You can’t play it.”
“Technically I can play it. Just badly.”
Kuroo hits the power button and pushes back from the keyboard. His disjointed key-tapping drowns out Kenma’s clicking, anyway, and that definitely beats the weird hum of the shop’s faulty fluorescents. Maybe he should get a bird. It could be the shop mascot. Kuroo could put it in the corner in a giant cage and give it a quirky name like some kind of tourist attraction. At least its squawking would bury the hum.
But then again—the squawking. Life’s a tradeoff.
Tsukishima pointedly shakes out two aspirin onto his palm and Kuroo finds the clicking.
“Kuroo,” Kenma says when he comes around the corner, and Kuroo doesn’t know how because it’s the first time he’s actually used it, but from Kenma’s mouth, his name sounds like winning lottery numbers. Kuroo practically feels the giant check in his hands. Loitering at the end of the aisle, he almost forgets to reply.
“Hey, it’s warmer in here today, isn’t it?”
Kenma nods. “Did your repairman come?”
The shop has regressed from mitten-cold and jacket-cold overnight. Kenma’s even missing his giant fur hood.
“No, actually,” Kuroo answers merrily. “Just a coincidence.”
“Oh. That's good."
“Yep. Now I’ve just gotta fix the lights. Sorry about that, by the way.”
Kenma looks up. “The lights?”
“Yeah,” Kuroo replies, his head cocked. “You know, the flickering?”
Kenma shakes his head. “I didn’t notice.”
Kuroo blinks. He glances up at the ceiling. Come to think of it, he hasn’t noticed a single flicker all morning. He doesn’t mention it out loud because he will definitely, certainly jinx himself, but maybe his bad luck isn’t so bad anymore. It’s not gone, not by a long shot. Maybe it’s on vacation. He hovers for another minute, sliding CDs across the carpet when Kenma has room at his side. He wishes him good luck with the rest of the aisle because there’s probably some kind of untapped reservoir somewhere with all of Kuroo’s in it—all of Kuroo’s good luck, that is, and if he can’t have it, someone should.
He’s halfway around the endcap when he hears his name again. He steps back.
“Was that you?” Kenma mumbles. “On the piano?”
“Oh, yeah. I know you’re gonna ask, but I don’t do birthday parties.”
He stares at the CD in his hands. “It wasn’t bad.”
“My cashier said his head would explode if he had to hear A School of Killifish one more time.” Kuroo throws a look toward the front of the shop. Kenma’s already staring when he turns back. Kuroo feels a physical ba-bump in his chest. He asks, “Do you play it?”
“I used to.” Clack.
“Cool. I hear it takes impressive fingers.”
Click-clack-clack—the CDs in Kenma’s hands clatter on the carpet.
“Sorry,” he apologizes for no reason, and really, Kuroo would love to feel guilty because it’s the only time he’s seen Kenma not-so-mellow and fumbling, actually fumbling, his hair doing fuck all to hide his cherry blush, two shades deeper than Kuroo’s own—but his heart does that thing again, ba-bump-ing against his ribcage, and he all Kuroo feels is lucky.
“No biggie. Here.”
He kneels and helps re-stack the scattered albums in Kenma’s hands, noticeably smaller than his own, and if his eyes linger on Kuroo’s fingers a little too long as they stack and sort and click and clack, Kuroo doesn’t mention it.
* * * * *
“He’s got these kitty cat eyes,” Kuroo croons, dropping his feet onto his desk.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Think, like, opposite of puppy dog eyes.”
“Shifty?” asks Tadashi. “Hateful?”
“No, no. Just—sharp. But pretty, in this weird, sort of majestic way.”
“Sure, okay.”
Kuroo sighs dreamily. He muses, “I don’t even know his full name.”
“You move slow, huh?”
“You’re one to talk.”
“God, I know.”
“Kozume Kenma,” Tsukishima supplies from the doorway, making the frame itself look like a doorway for hobbits. Plastic clinks as he unclips his name tag.
“Huh?”
“His full name. Kozume Kenma.”
“And how do you know that?”
He slips his name tag into his front pocket. “We went to school together.”
Kuroo balks. He stabs an accusing finger at Tsukishima.
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
Tsukishima shrugs. Tadashi is beaming now, slapping his hands on his thighs like a little kid.
“Oh my god,” he barks, “does this mean I can ask him about high school Tsukishima?”
“It absolutely does not mean that.”
Tadashi barrels on, “Holy shit, Tsukki. How did you look with braces? Were you doing the monochromatic thing yet? How was your hair cut? Did you wear your uniform correctly or did you leave your collar popped and a couple of buttons unfastened to keep up your suave, nonchalant exterior?” He digs his phone out of his pocket with hilarious effort. “I better start writing these down.”
“Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima groans.
“Hey,” chirps Kuroo. “What about me?”
Fingers tip-tapping away, Tadashi looks up from his phone. “Kuroo,” he says, “it’s simple. Sell him a lizard, bombard him with conversation, embarrass yourself a little bit, maybe a lot bit, actually, go on a greenhouse hunt for a ficus tree, get him to invite you over to see the aforementioned lizard, and make out with him. In that order.”
Kuroo blinks. “That’s insane.”
“Well,” says Tadashi, “it worked for me.”
“I’m still here,” Tsukishima grumbles.
Tadashi springs up and whirls around on his tiptoes, planting one wet, noisy kiss on Tsukishima’s cheek. Tsukishima feigns distaste but his arm curls around Tadashi’s elbow anyway, keeping him close. Kuroo twinges because that’s what he wants; that warm, easy kind of affection, that kind of no-hesitation affection, that slow, poignant affection that lingers and lingers and lingers. Could he ever be that lucky?
* * * * *
The crux of Kuroo’s bad luck comes with the first snowfall of the season, powdery flakes dancing and caking onto the sidewalk outside Offbeat and Wags and Whiskers, utterly unaware of the tragedy within: the little blue body of Kuroo’s betta fish floats at the tiptop of its bowl, dead.
“I don’t believe it.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Bokuto consoles. “He lived a full, happy life. Definitely full. I mean, you had this guy forever.”
“I know, I know. But still.”
“Yeah. I know. Poor guy.”
They both watch as the fish bumps against the edge of the bowl and wades away.
“It was those fucking blue rocks, Bokuto. I know it.” Kuroo glares at the traitorous rocks at the bottom of the fish bowl. They glare back. Kuroo glares harder and insists, “There’s just something special about purple, okay, and now I have proof.”
“Hey,” Bokuto yelps. He claps his hands on Kuroo’s shoulders. “You know what you need?”
“Tadashi’s gonna kill you if you kidnap another kitten.”
“No, not that. You need a proper goodbye!”
“I do?”
“A ceremony, you know, in their honor.”
The unlucky fish bumps the opposite side of the bowl and glides to the middle. Kuroo frowns.
“You want to give my fish a pre-flush funeral?” he wonders.
“Yes,” Bokuto hisses, jabbing his fist into the air, “exactly!”
* * * * *
In a matter of minutes, Bokuto and Akaashi turn Offbeat’s handicap bathroom stall into fish church.
“What are these, Akaashi?” Bokuto asks, pinching delicate clusters of folded toilet paper between his thumb and forefinger.
“Be careful, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi warns. “They’re the flower arrangements.”
“You know, Akaashi, this is a church. If we were fish, we could get married here.”
“Very insightful, Bokuto-san. Now please hand me the tape.”
“You should send them off with a song, Kuroo. Get the keyboard!”
“I wish I could, but Tsukishima broke it,” grumbles Kuroo, glaring at Tsukishima where he stands in the corner of the bathroom, bored.
“I did no such thing, it just won’t turn on."
"Just my luck."
Tsukishima continues, "But I won’t deny that I’m happy I don’t have to hear you pretend to play it anymore.”
Bokuto gapes at him. “You can be happy?”
“Sometimes,” he answers coolly.
“I’ll be damned,” says Kuroo.
“Shut up.”
Kuroo makes Tadashi scoop the wretched rocks from the fish bowl when he comes by to offer his condolences, and he pats Kuroo’s back as they pour the rest of the bowl’s contents into the toilet. His poor fish bobs lifelessly above water. Akaashi leaves when his break is over, but not before he says a few kind words into the toilet.
“Life can be so cruel,” Bokuto begins when it’s his turn, he and Kuroo standing in the stall doorway, heads bowed. “But fish really aren’t supposed to know anything about that. And I’m confident that he didn’t. All he knew were moss balls, gentle water currents, and the sheer excitement that came with bowl cleanings.”
“Those probably could have been more frequent,” Kuroo admits.
“Anyway, all we know is that he lived life to the fullest.”
Thoughtfully, Kuroo nods.
“We will never forget the sparkle of your scales,” Bokuto goes on, “or the graceful flaps of your fins. We, as human people, only hope to replicate such light and grace in our own lives, following in your footsteps. I mean, in your fin-steps. Isn’t that right, Kuroo?”
“Right,” Kuroo agrees.
“So today, we say farewell—”
“Hello?”
Bokuto shuts up as the soft word echoes through the church/bathroom. Kuroo peeks around the stall. Kenma peeks back at him. Only his head pokes into the room, his hand curled warily over the doorknob.
“Can you ring me up?” he asks.
Kuroo whirls around. Bokuto nods, grinning.
He pats his shoulder and insists, “We’ll finish up here.”
He looks all too proud, like he might cut his shifts at Wags and Whiskers and start a pop-up fish funeral business on the side, enlisting Akaashi as his sole—and overqualified—decorator. Kuroo whirls around again. He trails Kenma out of the bathroom, the door falling shut behind them with a thud.
“You’re actually buying something?” Kuroo asks, incredulous.
Kenma’s still looking over his shoulder toward the bathrooms.
“Sorry to pull you away,” he says, “from, um—”
“Fish funeral,” Kuroo tells him, and then figures he should have made something up. Something less odd and embarrassing. Not like he regrets it—Bokuto’s speech really was touching.
“A fish funeral?” Kenma repeats, blinking up at him.
Click—he sets the CD he holds on the counter. His sleeves are too long and they droop over his knuckles, nearly down to the tips of his fingerless gloves—fingerless gloves, and with these and his dark hair that skims his jawbone, he reminds Kuroo of some guy in a band. Maybe the drummer so he wouldn’t be front and center on the stage, because he doesn’t think Kenma likes that, or some guy on a keyboard at the back, far behind where the lights fall. The shop is hardly cool enough to warrant gloves anymore, but Kenma wears them anyway. Kuroo’s stare slides to the CD on the counter.
“Oh my god,” he laughs, “you’re getting it!”
Kenma follows his stare and tries really hard not to smile, Kuroo sees where he bites his lip, but he doesn’t recover quick enough. Kuroo smiles, too. He taps at the plastic—clickclickclick—of the Hootie & The Blowfish album that he and Kenma sorted weeks ago.
“Yeah.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t your taste?”
Kenma shrugs, taking particular interest in the countertop. “I thought I’d try something new.”
“Wow,” Kuroo drawls. “Fancy new gloves, fancy new taste in music, what’s next for fancy new Kenma? Gonna walk in tomorrow with purple hair?”
“I don't think I could pull that off.”
“Sure you could. Everything looks better purple. By the way, I was wrong about that whole upside down thing.” Kuroo taps at the CD on the counter again. “Remember what I told you about them? The whole recording songs upside down situation? Well, it wasn’t them. It’s some other American band.”
“Yeah,” Kenma answers.
He grins again, this time a little smugly, and really, Kuroo could get used to that. He gapes.
“You knew?”
“Well, yeah.”
“And you didn't tell me?”
“You seemed so proud,” Kenma tells him with a shrug. “I didn’t want to bring you down.”
“Oh my god, Kenma.”
A soft, welcome moment sparks between them. Kuroo huffs a laugh. He grabs the scanner from its holder and slides the CD across the counter.
Kenma reaches after it. Kuroo stops short when he rests a steady hand on his arm. The knitted material of his gloves is scratchy but his fingertips are warm, they’re soft, curled around Kuroo’s forearm in a nice, consoling grip. Kuroo blinks at him. Kenma stares somewhere near the register at Kuroo’s side, pink in his cheeks and the tip of his button nose.
“I’m sorry about your fish,” he says.
He pulls his arm back to his side. Instantly, Kuroo misses the weight of his palm. He gulps.
“Oh. Yeah, thanks. He was a good fish.”
Kuroo can’t picture his desk sans fish bowl. Maybe if he blames Tadashi hard enough, he’ll give him even more of a discount than he already does. But really, it’s not his fault. It’s no one’s fault, not even Kuroo’s. It’s his bad luck’s fault. But his bad luck can’t exactly give him a discount.
Kenma fiddles with the too-long sleeve of his jacket.
“You could go next door. If you wanted more, I mean. There’s a pet store, isn’t there?”
“Is there ever,” sighs Kuroo.
“I’ve never been in.”
“Really?”
Kenma shakes his head. “It looks nice.”
There’s a beat, like he waits for something. Kuroo perks up.
“You…wanna go with me? Fish shopping?” The scanner clacks when he drops it back into its holder. “You could see the shop. And I could use a second opinion.”
Kenma shifts his weight to his other foot. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Totally.”
“Alright,” he says.
His eyes are bright and unusually attentive all the sudden, and Kuroo feels warm under their gaze like he’s put on a down coat, ignoring the returning heat of the shop and wondering how long Kenma would have to stare at him before he’d be totally ready for winter. A puffball hat, mittens, wool socks, boots—the works.
* * * * *
Tadashi snickers at something Tsukishima says up at the register, probably something at Kuroo’s expense, but Kuroo pays no mind because the aquaria cast a blue glow over Kenma’s face and it makes him look radioactive as the light pours over his features, peaking shadows over his face. Tsukishima should be next door, anyway. Kuroo is pretty sure the ‘back in five minutes!’ sign has been on Offbeat’s door for about seven minutes. Maybe even ten.
“Look at these, Kuroo.”
Sunburst platys dart around their generous tank. Kenma’s stare darts after them.
“Aren’t they high maintenance?”
He lofts an eyebrow at Kuroo, like how the hell would I know, and Akaashi can’t help because he’s in the back sorting out the ruckus that floats through the shop, carried from the stock room along with Hinata and Kageyama’s insistent chatter. Kuroo does not envy him. He sidesteps to the goldfish tank.
“I was thinking something more like these,” he says.
“Goldfish?”
“Yeah. They’re my favorite.”
Kenma stares into the enormous tank and follows the fish with his eyes again, sharp and golden like a cat’s. Kuroo half-expects him to leap forward and plunge his hand into the tank, swatting at the poor fish as they zip around, all hectic and splashing water all over the tile floor.
Instead, Kenma presses a sole fingertip to the glass.
“They’re good luck,” he murmurs, “aren’t they?”
In that case, Kuroo could use a few dozen.
“They are?” he asks, and Kenma nods.
A trio of goldfish swim to his finger. They swish their tails, hovering in place.
“Something about Buddha and fertility. And harmony.”
“How do you know that?”
Kenma drags his finger down the glass and the fish follow for a moment before they break, zipping away.
“It was the trivia on my bag of grapes yesterday.”
“How fruitful.”
Kenma’s lips quirk into a grin. Kuroo huffs a laugh.
“You can’t laugh at your own joke,” Kenma tells him.
“Can too.”
“Can not.”
“Can too. I’m just grape-ful for the opportunity.”
Kenma laughs then, but it’s more like a snort, and Kuroo isn’t sure if it’s the result of him stifling himself or if he really, actually snorts when he laughs but either way, Kuroo falls a little bit harder. Kenma hides his grin with his hand. Kuroo smiles outright at his reflection in the fish tank, goldfish zipping in and out of their transparent heads.
“They’re lucky, you know,” Kenma insists. He presses his finger to the tank again.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. They don’t have to hear your puns.”
Kuroo balks and Kenma hides his grin again as they stare at each other through the glass and there’s this soda pop feeling in Kuroo’s chest, a sort of fizzy carbonation, urging him onto the balls of his feet.
“Hey, Kenma—”
“What?”
Turning his way, Kuroo stops short. For the first time in a while, the back shelf looks awfully full.
“Holy shit,” he mutters.
Red, yellow, green, pink, stupid fucking blue—and purple.
He swerves around Kenma and grabs the little bags off the shelf, handfuls of them, the fake purple rocks clicking and clacking in their netting like they’re happy to see him. Hands full, Kuroo spins around. Quizzically, Kenma stares.
“Purple,” Kuroo reports. “They’ve been out of purple for so long. I’m getting them all.”
“You don’t even have fish yet,” Kenma replies.
“That’s secondary.” Kuroo shuffles around to get a better hold of his six bags—for his zero fish, as Kenma has so kindly pointed out—and Kenma takes one as it slides from his grip to dangle from his pinky. Kuroo watches him tuck his hair behind his ear with his free hand. “Thanks.”
“Why purple?” Kenma wonders.
“I don’t know. It just feels right.”
He nods and studies the bag he’s saved, jostling it lazily in his hand.
“Purple’s my favorite color,” he mentions.
Kuroo knew he liked him.
* * * * *
Akaashi bags up two goldfish and an entire new set up for them by the time the winter sun goes down. They twitch their fins in the plastic bag, all swishy and reflective, bouncing back Offbeat’s fluorescent lights like some kind of fish rave. Their new tank is ten times the size of Kuroo’s old fish bowl and nearly eclipses the table he sets it on in the corner of his office, a table which he dragged from the storage room just for the occasion.
“Are you sure that table is sturdy enough?” asks Kenma.
“It’ll be fine,” Kuroo assures him, a fleeting hand on his shoulder.
“Alright. But just know that I’m not helping you mop up fifteen gallons of fish water if it gives out.”
“I would never ask that of the non-employee of the month.”
When they’re still alive at the five-day mark, Kuroo counts his lucky stars (of which he has few, but they’re scattered, so it takes him a while). He doesn’t get to see his star fish too often, though, because the shop booms. Parents need censored versions of popular CDs. Students need music books. Future rockstars need quality guitar picks. Everyone within a thirty-mile radius apparently needs an electronic drum kit, because Kuroo ran out and now they’re on backorder. It’s been weeks since he could see his breath in the shop and the lights overhead buzz pleasantly, steadily.
He’s almost suspicious.
But there is a tradeoff: the crowd of customers keeps Kenma at bay. But the tradeoff to that tradeoff is that Kenma visits later, when the crowd dies down, and he and Kuroo feed the fish he helped him buy in the back office while Tsukishima takes care of the stragglers before the shop closes.
“They look happy,” Kuroo insists, staring into the tank.
“How can you tell?”
“Look.” He presses a fingertip to the glass, leaving a smudge. “They’re practically glowing.”
“It’s their scales.”
“You couldn’t just let me have that, could you?”
“Nope.”
Kenma is awful at hiding his grins. He looks away, deflects Kuroo’s quick glance. His hair falls around his face and Kuroo wonders if it would feel like silk on the back of his hand if he pushed it back, maybe tucked it behind Kenma’s ear like he's always doing. Kuroo’s heart skids around his ribcage like a jet ski in an oil slick. Kenma pulls his jacket zipper up and down its track. Zzzzt. Zzzzzzzt.
“Why did you let me stay?” he asks the floor.
“What?”
“In the shop.” Zzzzt. “Why did you let me stay and mess up your CDs?”
He actually did quite the opposite of mess them up, but Kuroo doesn’t call him on it. He just rocks back on his heels and stares. Kenma’s stare sticks to the floor but there’s something serious there, sharp and serious and slathered in gold, and a thought bubbles up Kuroo’s throat before he has a chance to think it.
“I thought you were interesting.”
“Interesting,” Kenma repeats. His eyebrows duck in a menacing squint. “Like a social experiment?”
Zzzzt. Kuroo squints too, but it’s with confusion, and an idea needles its way into his head that suggests that maybe people have done that to Kenma before, treated him like a science project, mapping him out and tearing the paper between their hands when the lines started to twist and grapevine.
“No—I thought you were original. And you’ve got this slow-detonating wit, you know, when you joke. There’s this sense of calm about you, too. I don’t know. I just thought you were different, in a neat, leather-jacket-in-July kind of way.”
From their tank, Kuroo’s fish look at him like, that was really a lot, and Kuroo stares back like, shut up, I know.
“I still do,” Kuroo adds, catching up.
Kenma stops pulling his zipper. “Oh.”
He lifts his stare, eyes soft as they rest on Kuroo. Kuroo’s face heats up. It’s contagious; Kenma flushes, too. Kuroo’s office seems suddenly huge, like there’s no good reason for them to be standing so far apart, with all this desk and carpet and fish tank between them. Kuroo looks down. Kenma’s eyes dart up to watch him.
“I’m glad this wasn’t the game store,” he says, “like I thought it was.”
“Yeah.” Kuroo waits a beat. “They would have kicked you out for sure.”
He smiles as Kenma snorts his laugh, like the sneeze of a kitten or something equally, ferociously cute, yet just as fleeting. In the tank in front of them, the last few food flakes from earlier duck under the water’s surface. They sink gracefully to the purple gravel floor.
Tsukishima clears his throat in the doorway.
“Can I go?”
Kenma and Tsukishima share a brief nod of recognition—one degree up, one degree down—and it’s so slight that Kuroo might as well have imagined it. Kuroo glances over at the analog clock on the wall. It’s one of the thick, clunky ones they use in schools that he wanted because it looks oh so studious, if a little outdated. But it’s better than no clock at all, and it’s certainly better than digital. Over his dead body.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll get the drawer later.”
* * * * *
“Have a nice night,” Tsukishima says, his hand propping open the door, letting the cold in.
Kuroo’s keys jingle in his hand. The shop hums in the absence of customers, the only lights still on glowing brightly over the demo instruments across from the register.
“Shut up.”
“I was being genuine.”
“Oh. Right. I knew that.”
He slaps Tsukishima’s shoulder. The door falls shut and Tsukishima slinks in a beeline toward his car where Tadashi leans against the driver’s door, looking all fluffy with his coat and hat and mittens. He and Kuroo beam at each other through the glass and snowfall. Kuroo’s keys jingle again as he locks the door.
He jumps out of his skin when a sharp note chimes through the shop. Ding.
Ding, ding.
Kenma sits at the piano. Kuroo presses his hand over his thumping heart.
“Geez, Kenma. Warn a guy,” he wheezes.
Ding. “Sorry.”
An apology and an invitation, Kenma scoots to the very end of the small bench. Kuroo swallows the lump in his throat. He hears the white noise between the notes Kenma coaxes from the keyboard. The tune is pretty, whatever he’s playing, and it’s just plain gorgeous when Kuroo gets to watch the process; each press of ivory, each swift repositioning of Kenma’s nimble fingers. The bench protests the added weight as he sits.
Kenma taps another note from the piano and, suddenly, Kuroo realizes.
“Wait—it works?!” he squawks.
Kenma cocks his head. “What do you mean?”
“The keyboard! Tsukishima broke it—or didn’t break it, or something—but it stopped working!”
Ding. “Seems fine to me.”
Kuroo gapes and presses a few keys himself like maybe it’s just Kenma’s lucky fingers that are able to pull music from the keyboard, but the notes ring through the shop like they’ve been hanging in the air above them all day long, just waiting for Kenma to give them the go-ahead. Quizzically, Kuroo eyes him.
“What?”
“I think it’s you,” he realizes.
Kenma’s cheeks redden. “What’s me?"
“It’s you. I think you’re good luck!”
“What exactly are you talking about?”
“Listen, listen,” he starts, talking with his hands, “first it was the heater, and then the lights stopped flickering, and now this!” He rapidly taps the highest key on the keyboard. “This! No way these are just coincidences.”
“Kuroo, that note is gonna give me a headache,” Kenma says, but Kuroo swears he sees a grin.
The dull headlight glow slides down the shop wall as Tsukishima's car pulls from its parking spot. Light falls over them. Kenma starts to play again, with one hand for a moment while his other pushes his hair from his face. Shadows sneak over his features—the hollows of his downcast eyes, his temples, his cupid’s bow. One falls below his earlobe. If Kuroo rested his fingers at the peak of it, he bets he could feel Kenma’s pulse; just a soft flutter beneath his skin.
Kenma feels him staring, of course Kenma feels him staring, and he turns to stare back.
“My parents made me take lessons as a kid,” he admits.
“They definitely paid off.”
Kenma shakes his head. He pulls a sorrowful chord from the instrument.
“It was to get me to stop playing video games so much.” He drags his fingers up, up, up the keyboard. His reach presses their shoulders together, and even when Kenma leans back, they stay like that. “But all it did was help my fingers from getting cramped up around my controllers.”
Kuroo breathes a laugh. He laughs again when Kenma grins wickedly at the keys he plays. He’s calm, he’s steady, but Kuroo sees the pink in his cheeks, in the tip of his ear, his dark hair tucked behind it. Kuroo’s heartbeat swats at his eardrums. Kenma turns. He plays blindly and the song is just as pretty, the gold in his eyes flickering like flipped coins. Like lucky coins.
Kuroo presses his hand to Kenma’s cheek. He stops playing.
Kuroo takes in a breath, ducks, and kisses him. Kenma kisses back in an instant, his hand slipping from the keyboard to curl warmly around his wrist and just like that, all of Kuroo’s bad luck goes out the window. The bench beneath them creaks with the sudden movement. Their mouths are tentative, so tentative, but Kenma’s hand grips Kuroo’s thigh, holding onto him. The shop could be loud, could be booming, but Kuroo can’t tell; his heartbeat’s so damn loud he wonders if Kenma hears it, and if he can, if his own amplifies to match it.
Kuroo sweeps his hand up Kenma’s neck. His fingers urge him closer and under his thumb, he feels it—the ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump of Kenma’s pulse. Kenma’s hair skims the back of his hand and Kuroo pushes it back, threads his fingers through silken strands to tuck them behind Kenma’s ear so he can fit his palm to his pale cheek.
“Kuroo,” Kenma breathes into his cheek.
Kuroo stops, waiting. Warmth blossoms in his chest, in his stomach.
One more breath and Kenma tilts his head back into the kiss. Kuroo lets out a breath he forgot he’d held, interlacing his fingers with Kenma’s on his thigh. The touch is warm, like everything else—the sweet press of Kenma’s mouth, the color in their cheeks, the spark in Kuroo’s chest when Kenma shifts closer, soft but insistent. A cluster of muddled chords resounds when Kuroo bangs his elbow on the keyboard by accident. He feels Kenma’s grin, kisses it, breathes a laugh between his lips and carries on.
* * * * *
Click.
“What’d his hair look like? Was it shorter then?”
Clack.
“Kenma, do you remember an earring?”
Click-clack.
“What about the black-and-white aesthetic thing? Was he doing that yet?”
CDs click and clack as Kuroo pulls them from their box. Kenma takes them gingerly, their fingers brushing every time, and sets them on the shelf in front of him. Click-clack. Tadashi bounces on his toes at the register.
“I don’t really remember,” Kenma mumbles.
Tadashi deflates. In an instant, he perks up.
“You know, Tsukki, we could always check your yearbook.”
Tsukishima looks up from a magazine he’s read three dozen times.
“No,” he says.
“Come on. You’ve got to have it somewhere.”
“I don’t. Maybe my mom does.”
“I’ll text her,” Tadashi insists, whipping his phone from his pocket.
Tsukishima groans but leans over to watch him type nonetheless. Kuroo snickers and cuts the tape of a new box with a key before placing it in Kenma’s expectant hands. Bokuto and Akaashi talk in his office, Kuroo hears them from clear across the store, something about goldfish and platys and can they live together and no, Bokuto-san, because they come from very different ecosystems, and yes, you can sleep at my place tonight.
Kenma places more CDs on the shelf. Click-clack. Kuroo follows his sudden stare to between his own feet.
“What?” he asks.
“A five yen coin,” says Kenma.
Kuroo leans down and plucks the coin from the carpet. Even under the shop’s dull fluorescents, it glints.
“Seriously, Kenma,” Kuroo insists, flipping the coin between his fingers, “you’re my good luck charm.”
Kenma curls his hair behind his ear and takes the coin Kuroo holds out to him. He flips it on his palm and Kuroo wonders if Kenma can still feel the warmth of his fingertips on the brass. Kenma steps closer and looks up at him, grinning. His golden eyes shine.
“Better keep me around, then,” he says, and he slips the coin into Kuroo’s front pocket.