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There are forty minutes until their show, and now that everyone has finished their stint in Yaku’s Makeup Chair they are all currently milling about in the green room. Yaku is packing up the sprawl on the dressing table, capping a dark creamy smudge pot that shines like oil slick and tossing pressed pans of blackened green and bruised plum into a bag with deep reds, moody yellows, anything else he could tell his sister to get her hands on from work, the more outlandish the better. He doesn’t particularly care if they knock together and get all over each other—nobody would be able to tell on-stage anyways, and from up close Yaku could declare it deliberate genius. A Basquiat-esque aesthetic choice.
He pauses when he picks up one of the many black pencils skittered over the counter, the tip smashed and melted from when he’d taken a lighter to it so he could run it along Kenma’s lashline and rub it in with the barest touch of his pinky. He glances at himself in the mirror and and leans in to add a little more of it under the lower rim of his own eyes where his work with an eggplant powder has softened the black kohl.
Yaku jumps when the door slams open somewhere to his left, and he nearly pokes his fucking eye out. The other members of their group—Tora, who is nursing a beer and drumming on his lap at a table in the corner, Kenma, sitting on the couch with his legs tucked underneath him and headphones secured over his ears, and Lev, who seems to have cornered an unwitting stage assistant into a conversation he looks to be more enthused by than the other, by the way she feigns polite interest—all look over to the intrusion. The looks on their faces give off the impression that they’re supremely less impressed by the sudden reappearance of Kuroo than the man himself is. Kenma’s expression is flat, unsurprised, Lev looks to be a bit bewildered but also intensely curious, and Tora looks to be about two minutes from busting a seam laughing his ass off.
Yaku, in contrast, isn’t sure what to think. His brain is having a hard time keeping up with much of anything as it struggles to process the figure in front of him.
He kind of wishes he did poke his eye out. Because being blind would be better than this.
Illegally long legs plastered into leather pants that already shimmer in the light of the dressing room, and will probably be the only point of focus on stage. A tank top, tight and black and riding up the slim curve of a waist every time its owner so much as moves a shoulder. The only thing more distracting than those things at the moment is how exceptionally pleased Kuroo looks with himself, golden eyes glimmering sharp and bright beneath layers of oxblood powder packed around them.
He looks good, knows it too, and Yaku’s immediate reaction is to want to throttle him for it. For all of this—this... thing that’s been growing inside his body without his permission for the past six months since he answered the ad seeking a guitarist plastered to a lamppost outside his usual laundromat.
Then, to revoke his membership in this band and drive to the nearest convenience store for cigarettes and beer. Only the essentials to deal with a situation of this magnitude.
“How long did it take you to get into those?” Tora asks, trying his damndest to stifle an outright laugh.
Kenma looks like he’s doing about the same, with the way his lips press together as he picks at a thread on his oversized jacket.
“You look like you broke a sweat,” he supplies, his voice soft but delivery devastating in its nonchalance as he pointedly attempts to curl back into himself so he can resume his pre-performance nap.
Kuroo’s eyes narrow at them, and he puffs out a breath to set a stray lock of wild hair back into place without using his hands to fuss with it. “Fuck you both,” he declares flippantly, and Yaku feels the seconds slow down to a crawl that is thick and syrupy like treacle on his skin as he watches Kuroo turn towards him in the vanity mirror.
“Yakkun,” he calls, striding up to him with a languid cant to his exposed hips. While the nickname sounds silken and self-satisfied to Yaku’s ears at first, it quickly enters his brain, actually registers, and wraps around his windpipe. The sound turns from something innocuous into the hiss of a boa constrictor that holds his general life and well-being tangled in the dangerous coils of its body. The first coherent thought his mind—the traitorous bastard between his ears—comes up with is where the hell Kuroo is possibly hiding his underwear in those. “What do you think?”
What does he think indeed. The way Kuroo’s lips curl around his name and the question almost make Yaku believe that his is the only opinion the younger man cares about.
Oh, for the love of fuck.
Yaku takes another minute to shove everything on the vanity back into the bag so it’s ready to take home as soon as they're done, and then another one after that to fish a beat-up carton of cigarettes and matchbook out of his own slashed pair of pants. He perches one between his lips and lights it as he leans back against the lip of the now-clean counter. Taking a drag feels like lighting a candle in a chapel because it’s really his last hope against his heart thudding so hard in his chest that it snaps some ribs, and he lets the breath out as he looks up at Kuroo.
“Did you coat your legs in baby powder?” he dredges up from some deep, blessed part of him that is still clinging to some shreds of coherency. Frankly, he is astonished at how normal he sounds. “If you didn’t, you’re a dumbass and you’re not allowed to complain about the chafe in your asscrack starting tomorrow morning. Also, I’m not gonna help you get out of those after the show.”
The gobsmacked slack of Kuroo’s jaw is priceless, and allows Yaku a brief moment of breathing room to collect himself again. This momentary ceasefire is redoubled when the dam on Tora’s amusement finally crumbles, and he cackles hysterically in the background like a rabid hyena. Kenma lifts his head up a little to glare at him from the other side of the couch. The stage assistant Lev had been talking at finally grabs at the momentary distraction to excuse herself from the frankly ridiculous gaggle of people that is their band.
“You’re just jealous,” their frontman huffs back at Yaku, and apparently he must feel exceptionally bold or exceptionally stupid, because he plucks the smaller’s cigarette from between his practice-callused hands and brings it up to his own lips. “Because I look way cooler than you.”
He jabs the toe of his well-worn combat boots into the side of Kuroo’s knee, and watches him buckle and grab for the back of the vanity chair between them to keep from completely falling over. Things slowly start coming back into focus, his head clearing a little in response to the ridiculous expression Kuroo is making—teeth grit to avoid losing control of the cigarette or swallowing it, eyes round and surprised at the sudden attack. Arms flailing out to his sides like useless wings to keep himself from falling flat on his ass.
“Oh yeah?” Yaku throws back, feeling just a little more confident as the a crack appears and he can see through it to petulant idiot Kuroo really is under all the make-up, hair gel, and roguish sex appeal entirely fabricated for the stage. “How about you try sitting down in that chair right now?”
There’s a beat where they just look at each other. Yaku breaks away first, if only to light another cigarette, and Kuroo scowls as he lets out a drag of his own. Yaku’s cigarette, actually, his brain reminds him, and Yaku decides not to pick at that thread for his own benefit. Apparently Kuroo decides not to rise to the challenge, because in the next moment he shoves himself off from the edge of the counter and over to the mini-fridge tucked by couch to grab a beer, and Yaku’s brain slowly switches back on thought by thought.
Kuroo doesn’t sit down for the next thirty minutes before they’re called to perform.
— — —
Though it’s now two and a half hours after they walked out on stage, it feels like nothing at all. Time has a habit of passing Yaku by when they’re playing for real—songs that take months to create evaporate into the air in seconds once he’s under hot lights and suffused in the roar of crowds, the thundering of Tora’s kit, the reliable purr of Kenma’s bass line, Lev’s synth that turns into whatever they need in that moment.
And of course, Kuroo’s voice.
The voice that is so much more than a voice, the way it spills from painted lips like a spell and holds an entire audience totally captive but wanting to be there. It wraps around the frontman’s body, transforms him into someone entirely new that is—Yaku is incredibly loathe to admit—hopelessly captivating. There’s a charisma to him that is entirely unmatched.
Where he’s heard Kenma say that sometimes playing their set under such bright lights exhausts him like a day in the sun; Yaku thinks that perhaps Kuroo is in a category all his own, thriving under the spotlight and the sweat on his skin literally sparkling as he reflects the intensity he absorbs from all of them on stage back out into the crowd. He plays the frontman of a post-punk band exceptionally well, dark and moody when he needs to be, but underneath it Yaku can see just how exhilarated he actually is to be there, from the slightest bounce in the toe of his shoe as he crosses the stage to the slight tremor in his wrist as he clutches the microphone and growls into it.
But now, with the last patrons gone, the stage cleared off and all equipment loaded back into the van, their band is crammed into a couple booths with their close friends and venue staff nursing beers and half-melted mixed drinks. Despite the calmness, there is the buoyant, electric feeling of a show well-played buzzing in the air, because Yaku still feels the phantom vibrations of his guitar in his hands as he reaches for his double jack and coke; and he recognizes the same giddiness in the laughs and roars from his mates that are a little too loud, little too high. He’s crammed between Kenma and Lev, who sits on the outside with a Shirley Temple in front of him as he animatedly relays a story about him and his sister to Saeko on the other side of the table. When things start to feel like a little too much he takes advantage of a momentary lull in his chatter to kick at the tall boy’s ankle with the toe of his boot.
“Let me out,” he says, plucking the maraschino cherry from his glass by its stem where it’s resting on top of the ice, “I need the bathroom.”
Lev unfolds himself from the booth, all freakishly long legs and arms, and Yaku feels the phantom pulse of envy as he bites down on the pitted fruit in his mouth and tastes the juice and grenadine spread in a sweet, slow slide over his tongue. As he heads to the back for the bathrooms, he recognizes again how small the whole place feels without anyone inside, bodies pressed against one another in a dizzying mass. Without blinding lights from above, the musical heavens they always strive to reach seem much more beleaguered with dust bunnies and hanging cables than he imagines. But at least they’re much closer.
Two and a half drinks buzz pleasantly in Yaku’s system as he splashes cold water onto his face in the bathroom sink. He runs a damp hand through his hair too, and takes a moment to look at himself in the mirror. There are no real sparks flickering behind his eyes the way it feels like there are, but the deep purple eyeshadow rimming them still sparkles slightly even though it’s been smudged to high hell by sweat and look more like watercolor bruises than intentional cosmetics. Although it still looks good—he’s always pretty impressed by the staying power of the things his sister gives him from work—the post-show routine of slathering his face with cold cream side-by-side with Kenma in the bathroom of their shared apartment is something he already finds himself looking forward to. There’s always something satisfying and near-religious about shedding one’s nighttime musical skin in a shower stall at three in the morning.
He chews a little on the cherry stem in his mouth as he heads back to their tables. When he’s about halfway there and rounding the corner that separates the stage hallways out into the main hall with the bar and stage, he catches the wild, raucous laugh of Bokuto from the table behind the one he was sitting in before. Instead of Kenma, Lev, Saeko, Ryuu, Noya and a handful of others from the stage crew; this one has Kuroo, Bokuto, Daichi, Tora, Ennoshita and Asahi.
He watches as Kuroo turns from where he’s laughing beside Bokuto and cranes his neck a little to peer around Asahi’s tall frame seated across from him on the other outside end of the curved booth. His dark brows knit in confusion for a moment, but he stops when he turns his head the other way and locks eyes with Yaku.
The electric feeling surges back into his palms when Kuroo gives him a smile that simply looks different from the one he was wearing before. “Yakkun,” he calls with a slight bubble in his laugh that probably has a little to do with the four empty drink glasses in front of him. “C’mere.”
Yaku gnashes on the stem between his teeth a little harder, feels the softening give of it under his back molars. But. Not to be outdone, he walks over and cocks his hip a bit impatiently because there’s nowhere to sit. “What?”
Kuroo scoots a little further into the booth, ignoring Bokuto’s squawking over being crushed, and pats the newly-vacated vinyl space beside him that barely looks big enough for two-thirds of his ass.
Apparently Yaku must take too long to decide, because in the next moment Kuroo has hooked a long finger into the belt loop resting in the soft dip of his hip and pulls him down gracelessly beside him. He turns his head and continues talking to Daichi, even as Yaku struggles to right himself in his new position that involves being plastered to Kuroo’s side at every possible point of contact.
Diagonally across the table, Ennoshita takes a long drink from his fifth beer bottle, but even his eyes aren’t glassy enough to disguise the look he gives Yaku, when the rest of them seem to breeze past this… predicament.
Asahi gives him a warm greeting across the table and Yaku returns it with a slightly-tepid enthusiasm that the other frankly doesn’t deserve. But it’s hard to pay attention to literally anything else when Kuroo’s hand still hasn’t left him.
Just when Yaku thinks things couldn’t get any worse, it settles palm-side down at the very top of his thigh. He feels the thud of his heart in his teeth as he scrabbles for something to distract himself from the warmth melting through his jeans into his skin.
Here, beside him, Kuroo’s voice has changed again. It’s husky and well-used in the way it gets only after a show (and probably other things Yaku refuses to consider in public), but the way his words come fast and lilting betrays the exhilaration still singing in his body, like a live wire that connects all five of them and charges them full of post-performance glee. Kuroo still manages to be the center of attention for entirely different reasons now—with his eyes shining bright and lips pulled wide, he is bright and vivacious and frankly thriving in a way that makes it hard to believe he was born for anything else but what he spends his Friday nights doing.
He is supremely lucky, to be twenty-two and have achieved a dream. But despite the arrogance that fact might breed, Yaku is sure Kuroo is aware and grateful for it, too.
Yaku manages to repress the jump his body wants to do when Kuroo’s hand moves again, off his lap and up to grasp his drink. He pointedly ignores the traitorous part of his brain that instantly misses the contact.
“Seems like Yakkun isn’t paying attention,” Kuroo says a few moments later with a pointedness in his tone. No one else seems to really notice or care, but when Yaku turns to meet his eyes the smug curve to his lips is hidden behind his glass. It broadens a little further like he knew exactly what he was doing.
Bastard.
But two can play at this game, another part of Yaku reminds himself. The part of him that fights for self-preservation every time Kuroo is around, the part of him that’s probably kept him well and good and alive until now throughout all of Kuroo’s attempts to pinch and pull and shove at his buttons.
“It probably wasn’t anything important,” he deflects, masking his hesitation with a little shuffle to fish his cigarettes from his pocket. “Nothing that usually comes out of your mouth at this time of night ever is.”
Kuroo’s eyes narrow at that, and he is poised to respond until Yaku takes the cherry stem out of his mouth and flicks it at Kuroo. It lands on the table in front of him, practically picturesque as it sits innocuously in a bright red knot against the dark lacquered wood.
The other’s expression changes in an instant, and everyone else is also wearing looks of mild surprise or amusement. Yaku perches a cigarette between his lips and watches out of the corner of eye. From here, even in the dim darkness, Yaku swears he sees the tips of the frontman’s ears redden, and his lips part ever so slightly a few times as he probably tries to find a rebuttal.
“Hey,” Bokuto pipes up instead on Kuroo’s other side. “You didn’t cheat when you did that, did you?”
“Of course not,” Yaku replies as his first drag of smoke comes out in a huff, and feels the way Kuroo shifts a little in his seat beside him with the way they’re still pressed against one another.
“In that case,” Bokuto declares in a voice mixed with awe and glee, “Teach me sometime, yeah?”
Yaku laughs and taps the ash from his cigarette in the tray at the middle of the table. “Sure thing.” And then, because he can’t help himself because Bokuto is easy, he adds with no small amount of suggestion, “Do you want me to tell you or show you?”
Kuroo hasn’t said a word as the conversation picks back up around them, and when he glances back over at the man he has finished his drink, which had been a little more than half full a couple of minutes ago.
“Think I’m gonna head up,” he declares, and there’s a slight thickness to his voice that Yaku doesn’t recognize from simply being worn out. “Just got really tired.”
Ennoshita, who looks about a gust of wind from being knocked over onto the table, looks between the two of them seated on the end and mutters something that sounds like “For fuck’s sake” under his breath. Asahi laughs a bit good-naturedly next to him, apparently having been the only other one to notice. Yaku feels his skin prickle under the weight of being a bit more seen than he likes.
He scoots out of the booth quicker than Kuroo and feels the air enter his lungs a little more freely now that he is no longer pressed against another body so tightly. He slides back in alongside Bokuto while Kuroo busies himself with saying his goodnights at the other table, and follows the meandering conversation between the other four at the table with a loose attention. Kuroo comes back around about five minutes later, thanking everyone for staying late with a sincerity that never fails to startle and inexplicably warm Yaku in equal measure when he hears it.
“Bo,” Kuroo hums as he wraps up, and the silver-haired man perks up beside Yaku in response to his name. Kuroo points to the table in front of him, and when Yaku inconspicuously tracks the path of his finger, his eyes catch the cherry stem. “Give that to me.”
Bokuto flicks it across the table with the finesse of a paper football champion, and Kuroo plucks it off the table and tucks it squarely between his two front teeth as he bids everyone a final goodnight and turns to head up to their loft.
Yaku chokes on the last drag of his cigarette, and Ennoshita cackles behind his sixth beer bottle.
Bastard.