Jun 7, 2017
honestly how dare he
from For All You Young Hockey Players Out There, Pay Attention by thursdaysfallenangel (my favorite destiel fic of all time ever)
im sorry if this is illegible
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Kenya
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Finland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Thailand
seen from Thailand
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from China
seen from United States
honestly how dare he
from For All You Young Hockey Players Out There, Pay Attention by thursdaysfallenangel (my favorite destiel fic of all time ever)
im sorry if this is illegible
Ringleaders - Chapter Four.
Here is the original ask for this prompt. Here is the announcement for this project!
Prologue. Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three.
[A monstrously sized chapter. I’ve little clue where this even went, but neither do they. Recommended listening is Sober, by Lorde. Now edited.]
“This wasn’t in the information packet I got in the mail,” she comments mid-punch. Her fists meet their mark, and her target crumples to the left. She shakes her hand out to ease the tightness in it. “Sorry, I wasn’t-“ she explains to the pained, confused man, “there’s a guy in the back. I’m talking to him.”
Too close to unconsciousness to register her answer and too angry to mouth her off, the man’s face is stuck at the same level of incredulity until the moment he blacks out.
Kuroo, on the other hand, watches this all happen with a wicked grin on his face.
Apparently feeling differently, she gives his shadowed figure behind the alley corner the third sigh of the evening.
“Got something on your mind, lovely?” sneers Kuroo. It’s convincing enough that she convulses and the edges of her mouth curl up in disgust.
“I’ve got a good reason why I’m not walking through the main streets. Please don’t do that here.”
“Oho?” He pushes off his precarious ledge- someone’s abandoned air conditioning unit offering just the right amount of leverage- and lands into view. Her gaze follows him without hesitation, a smooth transition from invisible to the seen, and Kuroo’s the one to feel an involuntary shudder this time. “I wouldn’t think you’d be the type old men whistle at.”
“Really now?”
“C’mon. You dress like the grim reaper.”
Her reluctant grin is contagious, and Kuroo can feel his lips tremble at the effort not to smile along with her.
“Like you’re any better,” she bites.
“Hey, I’m going for the dark and mysterious thing, and it works.”
“And I’m going for the ‘let’s not get caught by more thugs than I already do’ thing. It’s not working as well as I’d like it to with you skulking around.”
Kuroo shrugs. He nudges said thug’s prone head out of the way with the tip of his shoe before reaching down and searching through the pockets. “I’m skulking successfully. Nobody notices me, so whatever attention you attract, it’s all on you.”
She doesn’t rise to his goading, and he chooses to ignore the relentless burn of her stare on his back. It’s calculating in the quietest of ways, and the more his fingers dance past people’s coats and inner pockets, the more he feels like he’s disappointing her somehow. And that thought toughens him.
Any trace of a smile is gone by the time he stands up with a half-empty wallet and a broken cell phone.
He doesn’t meet her eyes, and she doesn’t ask him about his finds.
“Let’s keep moving,” he offers, and he feels rather than sees, her nod.
Kuroo knows that whatever she doesn’t say is right, in the end. After their last encounter, he had given the outlines for the information packet himself- a tiny, dull thing slipped into an encrypted email as an equally encrypted pdf file. Kenma had placed the finishing touches on a tracking cookie stuck onto every possible item before kissing it goodbye.
He remembers her face the afternoon she’d received it. It had been a face he’d pretty much expected: troubled by the security, irritated at the lack of useful information, but yet inexplicably thrilled at the thought of being complicit in something bigger than oneself- something that can change a life in the blink of an eye. It was everything he’d experienced himself when he had first built this whole venture from scratch, and Kuroo had spent the rest of the day feeling torn between smugness and a pervasive sense of possessiveness, that his feelings should be his own, and his alone.
He’d closed himself off from her after that afternoon, offering only polite nods in the hallways and abandoning his usual alley jaunts. After their meetings ended, Oikawa had sent him odd glances mixed in with the occasional knowing ones that had set Kuroo’s teeth on edge. Yet nothing would compare to her expression.
He could look at her right now, if he chooses to. On pale planes, exclusive to unhealthy shut-ins, he’d find the cumulation of all his poor choices and a smattering of her own. She’d agreed easily enough when he’d finally been prompted by Sawamura to give her an introduction or trial run, or anything if he’s to stick to his word, but her ‘yes’ had been lined with weeks of brittle tolerance, and Kuroo had left that encounter feeling as if he had lost to her again.
One behind the other, the odd pair follow the soundless flashing of a small GPS signal, leading them closer towards the open street. He watches as she pauses to take in a deep breath before venturing a first step out into the faux light of a dying city’s indomitable nightlife.
“He’s bar hopping.” She gives her phone a last glance before tucking it into the safety of her back pocket. “We’ll probably be walking this street for a while.”
“That’s fine.”
It’s not all fine. He lets himself close his eyes for a single moment and chases his dissipating peace by its tail, determined to memorize its grooves the best he can.
She watches him with a curious tilt of her head, and Kuroo pulls himself back to Earth with a few blinks before baring himself open with a flash of a smile. “Lead on,” he says.
She does, and they fall into a strange sort of rhythm that only circumstance can offer on its strangest of days. Kuroo stays a step behind her, knowing fully that he’s the reason for her tense shoulders and her twitching fingers against her thigh, but nothing that easy stops him.
At least, that’s what he thinks, until he finds himself stuck in a damn awkward silence. Despite being in an entirely separate set of circumstances, her aversion to polite conversation obviously hasn’t changed, and Kuroo once again is the one who must break the solid ice.
“Got any questions about the file we sent you?” He tries.
Innocuous, but the slope of her back eases and he knows that she’s relaxing at his expense. You talk a lot, don’t you, her movements seem to say.
“There wasn’t a lot in it,” she says, sounding serene, “do you want actual questions, or family friendly ones?”
Kuroo has a laugh sneaked out from under him, and he takes just half a step more so that he can catch the edges of her expressions. She’s smiling, he thinks, and that earns her several points.
“Let’s lube things up before we shove the whole thing in.”
“Alright.” Yeah, she’s definitely smiling. “First things first then. Pictures.”
“No,” Kuroo answers speedily. “That’d be too easy.”
“It’s natural curiosity, you gotta give me that.”
“Sure, sure.” He shrugs. “But you’ve got a good imagination. We aren’t a dating sim, so we don’t provide profiles, sorry.”
“Says the main character?”
They end up sniggering so loudly that several couples- or sex friends, who the fuck knew- give them odd looks and start to shift further away.
“You find me funny,” she beams underneath a hand.
Kuroo catches it, and sobers up quickly.
“Well,” he clears his throat, “I can’t help that I’ve got a sense of humour.”
“Just not around me,” she confirms quietly, and Kuroo looks away. To hell with proving her point.
She turns her head almost fully to watch him squirm, and sighs again. Softer, sadder. She chooses to ask something different this time, something that won’t make him laugh, if that’s what he wants so much.
“Okay then. So is ‘this’,” she gestures between the two of them and then out at the street, “an interview? A real time dig through my dirty laundry?”
“We’ve got limited qualified personnel,” Kuroo says blandly, “so bear with it, if you can.”
Her head falls, watching the uneven stones in front of her feet. A stream of vibrant indigo club lighting pulses across her ear and down her throat. “I’ve got nothing to hide. I promised so.”
“Yeah, we know.” His voice softens, taking on the tone of a doctor offering condolences for personal tragedies. “But dirty laundry sticks, and we can’t be sure of your brother, still.”
“…I understand. So what did you find in the pocket of the guy earlier?”
Kuroo flicks the thin wallet over her head and she snatches it out of the air. It’s a common wallet, brown, boring, and nothing but several credit cards and an identification are tucked between its folds. She tugs it out and turns it over in her hands.
“Are you going to run this through a search?”
“No. This guy’s just a jilted lover. Your brother probably stole his target, or something.”
“How-“
Kuroo pulls out a large assortment of condoms in a plastic bag and a poorly capped bottle of lube from his pocket and places it soundly in her palms. “Same size, different flavours. He’s just looking for a good time, I think.”
“It’s leaking,” she says with horror as the small bottle gives a miserable sounding squelch, “and you had this in your pocket? I’ve got tissues. Do you need a tissue?”
He hates himself a little more for grinning again, but doesn’t comment.
She takes the chance to deposit that find into the next rubbish bin she sees. “My fingers feel nasty.” She sneaks a glance at Kuroo inviting coat, and he quickly takes several steps back when a sly smile creeps over her face.
“Touch me,” he says firmly, keeping both hands out of his pockets at the ready, “and you’re paying for a new coat.”
“Stingy.” But her cheeks are burning trying not to laugh, and Kuroo deflates when she tugs a tissue out from a packet and wipes her fingers.
“Oh, you’ve got the wet wipes.” Kuroo finds himself leaning in. “Disinfecting?”
“Yeah,” she turns the packet over to peer at the small print, “anti-bacterial, disinfecting. These are pretty good, if you’re looking for a brand. I don’t trust Clorox much, they smell too fruity.”
“Really? It makes my kitchen smell pretty nice.”
“Well,” she taps at her chin with the edge of the plastic wrapper, “I suppose it feels better to cook smelling like lemons rather than a hospital.”
“Jeez, what do you use? Rubbing alcohol?”
“A Japanese brand,” she sniffs, and Kuroo thinks that she sounds a little wounded, “I think they’ve got better hygiene than the Americans.”
“And you just dissed a whole country. Nice going,” he snorts.
She turns mid-step to grin at him, and Kuroo almost trips over his feet at the sudden warmth of his cheeks, unbidden. “And what are you going to do, protagonist?” She asks. She’s the brightest thing in the whole damn street when she’s laughing. “Arrest me?”
Kuroo doesn’t trust himself at all to say something he won’t regret, like: But you won’t be smiling like that if I did, would you? Or, kinky. Or even, I might if you dared me again.
He shakes his head.
That’s enough to please her- anything more than his typical silence when he’s faced with something he finds too awkward to answer, and she faces forwards again. This time it’s crimson against her collarbone and all the way up her temples, the glare of shameless brothel lights bathing her as if she were one of theirs.
“Will I get to meet them?” She asks.
“The profiles?” He confirms, a little thrown by the sudden change in topic. “You’ve got to work your way up if you want to have a reason to. You’re still on trial.”
“Parole, more like,” she mutters. “But I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?”
“I’m a special case.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she answers smoothly, “so if it’s as you say, how does it usually go for nobodies like me?”
“You’re not nobody,” Kuroo corrects irritably, “you’re just new.”
She pauses and then shakes her head, looking chastened. “Sorry,” she says, and it’s so quiet that Kuroo has to dip closer just to catch it under her breath. “Bad habit.”
She offers no more, but her obstinate silence doesn’t stop Kuroo from watching her a few moments, searching.
To him, the concept of self-pity feels like an old friend returning home, and finding the locks changed. Kuroo can no longer remember when he’d taken a long enough break from his relentless war to welcome back childhood ghosts.
“We’re just people,” he finds himself reminding her, “and you’ll get to meet them soon enough. That is, if they don’t find you first.”
“All men are not born equal.” She shakes her head. “But I suppose you’re right. I must’ve become someone worth finding because of you.”
“The work of chance,” Kuroo assures, “and I’m not really that awesome, I’ve just got nosy friends. If it were you, you’d do the same.”
She glances at him searchingly, but turns to rove through the pulsing street when she finds nothing.
“I suppose I would. But I don’t have many friends. Not like you do.”
Kuroo blinks several times, before smirking. “It’s hard to if you’re cooped up in your room all the time. I told you at orientation that school isn’t everything, didn’t I? Make some friends, first year, and illegal orgs don’t count.”
She cracks up at that, ineffectively muffling her laughter with her phone in one hand. Its flashing red GPS light hasn’t moved much.
“Responsible ‘till the end,” she grins, “you’re better a guide than I’d ever be. God help me if I end up with your job in two years.”
“And what would you say, hm? Toss an anthology at their heads and tell them to use it if they ever need a paperweight?”
“I’d advise them against making friends,” she says dryly, “because social interaction is a heavy burden.”
“Oh,” Kuroo says in a voice that increases the chances of him getting punched in the face exponentially, “so cool.”
“We are what we are, Kuroo Tetsurou.” She flicks her heel at him, which he dodges lazily. “And not all of us can be anarchist edgelords.”
“At least I’m king.” He grins.
“What irony.”
Kuroo doesn’t disagree with that. They both walk on, each with their own wry smiles at the misguided corners of the world. “Any more questions?” He adds. “No pictures, and no addresses, but you can ask. We’re not particularly cloak and dagger in person.”
“Only in emails, then.”
“Only in emails,” he agrees, “and other traceable forms of documentation.”
“Well,” she taps at her chin with a blunt nail, “who’s your favourite?”
“I hate them all.”
“Alright, alright, so no personal questions either. But I’ll figure you out sooner or later, just so you know.”
He daresay she might very well end up doing so, but his lips remain sealed, and he only blinks once, very slowly, when she narrows her eyes at him. She does a little twirl on the spot and gazes up high, racking her brains for another question.
“If you let me join, properly,” she asks slowly, “who would I be under?”
Quickly, Kuroo tries to remember what exactly had been in her information doc. Probably not more than what the average middling recruit would get, thanks to Tsukishima’s meticulous standards, and he isn’t too keen on getting himself chewed out for spilling.
“They told you about the divisions, right?”
“Yup, the training system, options for lodging, operational divisions and the general hierarchy of recruits,” she says. “Training for newbies, lodging for strays, and units under one coordinator for various purposes such as recon, fights, and general troublemaking.” She counts them off one by one on her fingers. “I hope I’m troublemaking.”
“You’re enough trouble as it is.” Kuroo shakes his head. “But didn’t they give you their names?”
“You mean the codenames? Yeah, it had them,” she shrugs, “but I’ve forgotten. Must’ve not been very creative ones.”
Which does not surprise him in the least. Their steps have slowed to a therapeutic stroll, and something in the way she swirls her head to and fro in a dance alongside the neon lights that tells him that not only is she the first to ever have forgotten, she’ll also be the last.
The smile comes to him, and he doesn’t fight it. “I’m flattered you even remembered my name,” he says.
“And I was worried when you remembered mine,” she replies, but there’s a soft peach resting underneath her eyes, and no matter how closely Kuroo peers, he can’t figure out if it’s her skin or the night lights. “But I guess it turned out okay in the end.”
He has to clear his throat when the first sound he tries to make sounds like he’s being split in half.
“Well.” He launches into explanation. “There’s Raven and Dragon, which, if you’d bothered to pay attention, are in charge of the training and lodging, and the ops, respectively. Then there’s, uh… Otter, in charge of IT. We got to him if we need hacking, or if, you know, we need help turning it on and off again. There’s also Dog and Owl, they’re all ‘sneaky sneak’ and also the reason why we haven’t been all arrested yet. Eagle’s the guy you don’t want to piss off- he does all the heavy duty stuff, keeping the bad guys at bay and all that. And last but not least, there’s Tiger. A man who is almost the exact opposite of a tiger, he’s an organizational freak who keeps us oiled and running. And there you have it.”
“Animals.” She watches blankly as the ground moves underneath her feet. “Original. At least that explains why I don’t remember any of them.”
Kuroo rolls his eyes and plucks the phone out of her hands. She makes a sharp ‘hey!’, but he ignores it. “Dude, we’re a bunch of grown men. We’re not going to get more creative than ‘what’s your favourite animal’. Did you expect us to pick our drag names or something?” He clicks his tongue scathingly at the thought. “‘Hi, I’m your leader, but you can call me Karen.’”
She’s laughing. Definitely laughing. Kuroo wants to sew her mouth shut.
“It’s better than your favourite colours,” she offers. It’s an olive branch that’s almost half dead, but he takes the damn thing and doesn’t retort. God help them if they named themselves into the fucking gay power rangers, with all seven colours of the damn pride flag.
“To answer your question,” he says, firmly, “I’d put you with Dragon. It’d be a waste of time training you when you already know what you’re doing.”
She leans backwards slightly, a surprised look on her face. “I thought you said I’d fight better with fewer wasted movements?”
“Yeah, you would,” replies Kuroo, “but that’d be actual combat training, and it’s three hundred quid for private sessions.”
“Really?”
“No. But you get the gist.”
She hums, low and drawn out as she contemplates the information. Her fingers tap rhythmically against her thigh. “I guess with you around, I’m getting freebies from the master.”
That makes him snort, and he waves his hand across his face. “I’m far from being the master. I’m… in the middle, if you have to make a list.”
Her eyebrows rise, and continue to rise, until Kuroo begins to wonder if they’ll ever come back down.
“If you’re the middle, then-“ she stops, stuck on the reality of the statement, “wow, then I’m pretty shit.”
He peers at her out from the corner of his eyes, and sighs. She catches her phone just in time when he tosses it at the back of her head.
“You really need to get rid of that bad habit of yours,” says Kuroo, “but you’re above average. You realize that you’re comparing yourself to people who fight for a living, right?”
“Oh, I see,” she exhales, “so some of your members fight for a living.”
Kuroo’s expression sours.
“Well, that teaches me not to make you feel better next time.”
It isn’t all true. Kuroo’s bad mood is mostly voluntary, and from the way she’s staring at him, he warrants that she’s aware of that too. That he’s not the type of person who would let anything slip between his cracks. He has no cracks. Only blocks upon blocks of barricades.
That’s why when she reaches out with two frail looking fingers, he doesn’t pull away. He watches as she pinches his sleeve between her thumb and her index finger, and tugs ever so slightly. They resume their walk, with him beside her, and she lets go when he feels closer again.
“I’m not going to say anything to anyone,” she says.
He knows. That’s why he did it.
“I wasn’t going to do anything with you, you know.” He watches for her reaction, but there isn’t one. He doesn’t want to think about how she’d expected him not to in the first place- that she’d bared herself for him, for a losing bet. “It was Owl who convinced me, in the end.”
A lime green caresses her waist and dances up against her temples, disappearing behind them along with the crowded Subway.
She turns her head, and he’s privy to a quiet smile. It’s the first time he’s seen her seem so gentle.
“Then please tell them ‘thank you’ for me.”
Kuroo thinks of Akaashi’s impassive face and his all-knowing eyes.
“He’d say that there’s no need to thank him,” says Kuroo, “but I’ll let him know.”
She bows her head in gratitude. When she raises it again into the light where Kuroo can catch her expressions once again, there’s a mischievousness in it that unsettles him.
“It sounds like there are quite a few members nicer than you, aren’t there?” She wonders.
“Is that a question, or a statement?” Kuroo scowls. She chuckles at his almost constant moodiness, and reaches out to give him a conciliatory tug on the sleeve. When he lets his scowl relax on his face, he takes note of her small slump of relief.
“Neither,” she says softly, “and just for the record, I think you’re nice. Even if you forget that you are sometimes.”
Kuroo yanks his jacket out of her reach, and she doesn’t move to touch it again.
They pass several stores in this fashion. He counts: two brothels, three and a half bars, half off on Wednesday nights, one club, two vomiting passers-by, and four couples having sex against a wall. When he reaches out to tap her on the shoulder, he’s startled when she’s startled, and he expends a burst of willpower simply not to snatch his hand back like an injury.
Kuroo gestures at the tightly gripped phone in her hand. “Where’s your brother now?”
Frowning at the instrument, she pushes at the touchscreen until it’s large enough for her to read the words under poor fluorescent lighting. “Room 5. That’s a club two blocks away.”
“Must’ve finished pre-gaming in bars then. It’s what now, two?”
“Two thirty,” she corrects, “and I know what you’re thinking. My brother’s a hedonist.”
“A hedonist at risk of serious liver failure,” adds Kuroo wryly, “but I guess it’s not my problem.”
She sighs heavily, slumping forwards when it all leaves her in one breath. “It wouldn’t be mine either if I knew what else to do.”
He eyes the blinking dot, now firmly located in a club and unlikely to leave anytime soon, and pulls her to one side. “And your parents?”
“Dead.” When Kuroo only presses his lips together, offering no condolences, she grins. “They were drug dealers; can you believe the irony?”
“Irony’s sick in the head,” says Kuroo. He towers over her frame, and staring at the crown of her head down to the shadow of her nose, he dares, just this once, to rest his hand on it in comfort. He doesn’t lift it, and she remains still. “For what it’s worth, I think you turned out pretty okay for such a shit start.”
“I bet you say that to all the strays,” she laughs. Kuroo’s hand-rest sinks underneath him, and he glances down to see her rest her weight against the grimy wall. “But still, thanks.” She smiles, just enough for him to catch.
When you’re in a street as busy as this one, as late as this one, pockets of air begin to pop up for tireless people to swim up for an easy breath. Kuroo, along with her stoicism, carves a little corner of solitude for themselves in the midst of Dante’s second circle of hell, and he lets the white noise over them awash.
Kuroo flexes his fingers, tightening then stretching out experimentally against the black spilling down her neck, and lets the hubbub linger a little longer while it can. His eyes wander through the streams of people- some old, some young, some in love and some high beyond belief- but, his citizens. A mess of bodies and lost minds wandering into the waiting arms of an expensive woman, crushing their torsos against each other in a beat that drowns out their lives and swallowing liquor with a fervor that doesn’t allow them the time to taste it.
This is no place to think, not against these brick walls that haven’t been scrubbed in years, stinking of piss and possible dysentery, but it’s amongst the many that the one is invisible. Kuroo really rarely comes here, finding it hard to function drunk and hard to fight in plain sight, but the images flit through his mind all the same. Through her eyes, this must be closer than home.
He hopes- just a small hope- that her shithead of a brother doesn’t make this back-end orgy the last place she ever sees him.
Neither of them keep track of time for as long as the red dot stays where it is. Yet inevitably, a pair of naked women come crashing down on them in a tangle of limbs, a high-pitched screech and a drunken giggle that gurgles with a toilet flush.
She must’ve caught the alarm on his face because she pulls him out of the way with a sharp tug on his wrist, and begins to smother her laughter.
“First time seeing naked lesbians?” She teases.
“No.” God, his eyes are closed and he can still see their bare asses. “First time mid-orgasm next to street signage? Yeah.”
She laughs even harder, patting him solidly on the shoulder. “You’re in luck. If they were gay, you might end up getting a facial.”
Kuroo shoots her a filthy glare that she accepts with grace.
“Fuck off. I’m not letting a stranger’s whiskey dick near my face without ripping the miserable meat tube off.”
A wicked sheen sharpens her grin. “Oh? Only a stranger’s?”
But Kuroo Tetsurou is too great a man to be moved by such feeble mockery. “All interested friends get a pass, but only tested applicants need apply.” He taps the tip her nose. “Safe sex, boys and girls, safe sex.”
She considers this. “I do admit that out on the streets isn’t very safe. I’d suggest a pretty popular love hotel three blocks down left. They hand out complimentary condoms if you book the suites.”
“The fuck are you? The local tour guide?”
“Oh, Kuroo. Knowledge is power.”
“Fucking- yeah, and alcohol is relief. I need a drink if I want to forget that image within the next decade or so.” He cracks an eye open to peer at her GPS. “If your brother isn’t moving anytime soon, you need to take us to a bar.”
“Okay.” She shrugs. “What are your preferences? Strippers? No strippers? Hot bartender?”
Saying absolutely nothing, Kuroo stares at her for as long as it takes for his disbelief to fade, and for her to stop being a piece of shit. She cracks a smile before beckoning him to follow with a hand, which he does.
They arrive past two small corners, and when she pushes the door open for him, whatever apprehension he had that had accumulated this evening, vanishes.
It’s a subtle dip in the middle of a busy street, tucked away into one of those pockets of quiet, and several well-dressed patrons float in and out with both weight and lightness of a tipsy weekday night. A haven of gold light seeping through the cracks of the door and its hinges, Kuroo watches with baited breath as it spills over into the dark greys, sickly limes and glaring rose splattered across the floor in rays.
He takes two steps inside, and she slips in behind him, closing the door carefully with several fingers. The bartender gives her a smart wave and a secret smile, and Kuroo’s about to spin around and ask if she comes here often, until something even louder catches his attention.
“Kuroo!”
He could recognize that voice anywhere. No one else has such a resounding shout that clogs your ears for days. “I thought that you were a bourbon-at-home kinda dude! Nice seeing you here, man!”
Aware that he now sounds like a closet alcoholic to his companion, he ignores the speculative gaze of the sage looking bartender and slides into the seat next to Nishinoya.
She hovers uncertainly at the other end of the bar, and shuffles forwards only when Kuroo beckons her into the seat on the other side of him.
“You look… really different tonight, Noya-san.” Kuroo observes, inspecting the unnaturally slick looking slacks and dress shirt. “Your hair’s down too.”
Nishinoya grins hugely, and props a thumbs-up. “Thought I’d try to fit in tonight, with stuff going on and all. I ‘aint gonna be a good supervisor if I were slumming it out in the clubs.”
“Now that I can imagine you doing,” grins Kuroo. “I’m here on business too. Not to get drunk.”
“You did say you wanted a drink,” she points out from two seats away. The two men swivel around as if only remembering that she’s there with them, and she meets their gazes shyly. “Trivia.”
In that moment, something in Nishinoya’s mind clicks, and he brightens visibly when the correct thought comes to him. He nods confidently and sticks out a hand in greeting.
“You must be the Missus that Kuroo’s monitoring!” Nishinoya declares. “Nice to meet ‘cha, I’m Nishinoya Yuu, but you can call me Noya like everyone else does.”
“It’s nice to meet you too, Noya.” She shakes his hand, and he leans back, satisfied. “I hope I’m not disturbing anything.”
“Not at all,” he reassures her, picking up his glass and giving it a cheeky wave in the air, “I’m just here killing time. Until the two of you showed up, I was bored out of my mind.”
Kuroo sighs, and gives Nishinoya a light slap on the back. “That’s called slacking off, my working-class employee. What are you here for anyway?”
Nishinoya pauses for an imperceptible moment, his sharp eyes snapping over to her curious expression, but when Kuroo shows no other reaction except for leaning back on his two hands, he shrugs. “Rookie ops night. First recon mission for their trial period. Just my luck that it’s this street too- I can’t be bothered to follow them around past all the sin outside.”
Kuroo laughs at the description, letting the low chuckles tumble out of him in somersaults. “How many?”
“Just five, tonight. They’re younger, so I’m splitting them up before they get themselves shit-faced by accident. The same rules as grade school field-trips, y’know?” Nishinoya leans closer, over Kuroo, and snaps a finger-gun at her. “I heard that you were the one Kuroo bumped into when you were looking for this group of kids! Man, Daichi had a field day when he saw you.”
“Daichi?”
This time, Nishinoya does look over at Kuroo properly, waiting for either a red or green light. Kuroo keeps his lips pressed shut for an agonizing while, his brows scrunched up as if in great pain. He gives Nishinoya a weary nod.
“Alright,” Nishinoya says slowly, gathering his wits about him next to a touchy Kuroo, “Daichi’s the dude who drove the van.”
She fixes Kuroo with a pensive stare, and slowly shakes her head. The disappointment in the creases of her face are tangible, but her voice betrays none of it, only an iron patience. “I see. You don’t have to tell me more than that, if it’s for the better. I’ve had my chance to ask my questions tonight.”
“You sure about that?” Nishinoya asks, “it’s rare that you get this guy’s permission for anything.”
She smiles. “I’m sure.”
And Nishinoya laughs. Several patrons jump at the robust sound, but the bartender only smiles out the corner of his vision. Noya turns to face her properly, intrigue dancing through his fingers and he taps them restlessly against the counter. “’Aight then. You like whiskey?”
“Better than vodka,” she answers, surprised by the sudden change in topic.
Both men nod vigorously.
“Vodka’s swill,” Kuroo mutters, “but I’m not saying that any louder in case I get dragged out and beaten.”
Nishinoya pulls out another thumbs-up, looking proud to be sitting next to two soul-friends. “Two Rusty Nails here, Chikara!” The bartender bobs his head wordlessly and begins to work with a sparkle in his eye. Nishinoya winks at her. “You’ve earned yourself a good drink, Missus.”
Kuroo groans when he sees the tell-tale twitch of her lips about to start giggling. “Motherfu- Noya-san, please. Stop calling her that.”
Nishinoya looks even happier when he’s told expressly not to be. “Hang around each other long enough, and you’ll be the mob boss’ wife sooner or later. You heard it from me first, okay?”
“We’re not a mob, moron.”
“Right.” He nods firmly. As she watches, she’s beginning to learn that something dangerous is about to happen whenever Nishinoya smiles in that exacerbated, excited way. “We’re cooler than a mob.”
“Amen to that.” Both Kuroo and Nishinoya chuckle in their private joke. “But don’t let Ush- uh, that guy, hear you say that.”
“He’s a good man,” Nishinoya insists, “if he were to beat us for each time we talked shit about him, our bodies would be unidentifiable in a harbor by now.”
Kuroo smiles, and if anyone asked him if it was fondness in his voice, he’d cut out their liver. “Yeah. He’s a good man.”
“You two sound like you’re in love.” The two men jolt out of their thoughts at the sound of the laughter in her comment, and the tinkle of ice against their drinks. “I’ll leave if I’m interrupting,” she offers.
“It’s too late for that,” Nishinoya grins, “and since you’re not asking for more info, we’ve to give you something else to stew in when you get home, right?”
Kuroo sits back with his drink and watches as she searches Nishinoya’s unwavering grin for lies, only to find none. Still, he considers, there’s truth in Noya’s words. Nothing cataclysmic has tied itself to her yet this evening, and she had done everything that he’d asked. Including the bar, including the drink, and had pulled herself out of a reluctantly given opportunity for the details that she’d craved for ardently in their convoluted exchanges. It’d be poor manners, and he can hear Akaashi’s exasperated voice telling him so in his head.
He waits until she’s taking her first sip, and jerks his thumb in Nishinoya’s direction. “He’s Dragon,” he says, “and Sawamura- the van-driving Daichi- is Raven. We’ll be figuring out what we can do with your skill set in our next meeting.”
She almost chokes her mouthful. “Dragon…” Her eyes widen. “Ah, the Ops! The one you said you’d put me with.”
“Yup,” Dragon brightens, “you’ll get to work with me, lucky duck.”
Kuroo’s relieved when she relaxes at the announcement, and falls into a quiet that isn’t unfriendly, only contemplative.
Nishinoya watches her with his blinding enthusiasm masking his scrutiny. Wasting not a second, calculations flit through his mental data as he prods here and presses there until she’s a file in his compartments, exactly where it needs to be. When he slides it into place, the smooth ‘click’ of a puzzle piece against another, Yuu reappears in the forefront.
“I’ll start to keep tabs on you too, since we’re officially putting you somewhere,” Nishinoya adds. He takes a long drink of whatever’s swirling around in his questionable glass, peering at her over the rim.
She only smiles faintly and nods, a warm crinkle at the corners of her eyes. Kuroo watches the nonverbal spar with a nice cool beverage in hand as a table-side refreshment until someone yields.
She’s the one who blinks first, and seems to pull into herself and out of whoever she had summoned for the occasion.
He watches as she downs the rest of her glass in one go and wipes her mouth with a thumb.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” she tells Kuroo. “I think it’s about time my brother started back on the move.”
She shifts past the chairs and through the trickle of customers as if she were only a figment of their imagination, and exchanges a wave farewell with the bartender before the door falls shut behind her. Kuroo has to remind himself that he’s the stranger here, and not her.
He eyes Nishinoya’s questionable expression, and asks, “I thought you were already keeping tabs on her, since… since last week?”
Nishinoya shrugs. “You’re our leader. We keep tabs on everyone you come in contact with.”
“You-“ Kuroo breaks into a disbelieving chuckle once his mind catches up with the rest of him. “Man, I can never get used to how you operate.”
Nishinoya smirks and raises his glass in a mock salute. “That’s just ‘cus we’re friends. Normal people don’t imagine their friends toying with their other friends.”
“Do you think she’ll notice? That you’re waiting for a change in behavior?”
“’Waiting’ seems a pretty harsh word. More like, preparing? Just in case. We’re not hoping she fails.”
Kuroo flips through his collection of her quiet smiles, disappointed silences and patient looks. “She seems like the real thing,” he says afterwards, “either that, or I should really suggest a change of occupation. I’ve never seem someone play a saint so well as she.”
“Saint?” Nishinoya sounds amused. “Nobody’s a saint. But I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I’m doing here, my man? It’s the first test run for the rookie ops, so you’re our recon target tonight.”
Kuroo is ashamed of even feeling surprised.
“Just-“ He stops, and sighs. Leaving his drink unfinished, he slides off his stool and points a finger at Nishinoya’s anticipating look. “Whatever you find, if you leak even a bit of that shit to Oikawa, I’m going to roast you in your sleep.”
“But I don’t sleep?” Nishinoya laughs when Kuroo takes a menacing step forward. “Okay, okay. No leaks, just for private perusal, yeah?”
Kuroo rolls his eyes, but huffs out a chuckle all the same. “See you tomorrow night, Noya-san.”
Said man beams and bounces as he waves goodbye. “Laters!”
Kuroo leaves the bar feeling infinitely more watched than before. Instinct takes over, his feet guiding him to the safest spot and he forgets entirely the reason he’s left the bar at all until he feels a polite tap on his shoulder. He has to arch closer than he’d expected in the dimness of the alley, but she’s undoubtedly there beside him. It’s simply too dark for him to catch the wry smile.
“Good chat?”
“As good as it’ll ever get with someone like him.” Kuroo breathes in raggedly. “Sometimes, I wonder what kinda guy he’d be if he wasn’t born here. In this shithole.”
He doesn’t resist when she takes him by the wrist and leads him back onto their original route.
“I think he’d still be your friend,” she says after a while, “there’re some things in a person that fucked up can’t change.”
He looks down at her. “You think so?”
“Mhm.”
Some florescent blue bursts along her profile, mingling with the greasy streetlight pale across her right. Colours makes its way across her skin in a road trip by night, and Kuroo follows the map down her neck and shoulders to her grip above his wrist, in a starving angel livid.
He lets her hold it until she lets go.
“I just realized,” she starts, “you never told me your animal name.”
Kuroo watches the blue break into orange.
“I’m Cat,” he answers simply.
When the pale lime of a flashing banner falls across the bridge of her nose, and an alien pink draping itself in linen onto the cut of her jaw, Kuroo feels as if he can, if he wished to, reach out with a finger and draw out the lines of her newfound edges carved against the back of her bones. She’s luminescent, marble ridges, indisputable and in a different life. A better life.
Perhaps there’s something poetic in him after all.
Perhaps all this is, is poetry.
this just in: pismaco has no idea what hockey sweaters look like
school doodles for my fav fic of all time: For All You Young Hockey Players Out There, Pay Attention by thursdaysfallenangel
sam in this fic is the BEST and i only want happiness for my favorite little SJW (sam JUSTICE winchester lol)
ive actually drawn a lot more for this fic but this is just what i drew recently
id expect more in the future if i were you ;)
gotta break in the new sketchbook
anyone else a fan of It's Always the End of the World Somewhere by scaramouche?? cuz i sure am
Ringleaders - Chapter Three.
Here is the original ask for this prompt. Here is the announcement for this project!
Prologue. Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Four.
[This is legit like, 5k in one sitting and I thought my brain was steaming out of my ears. ‘Is the lady suspicious, or is Kuroo just dense?’ - coming to you in theaters now.]
It’s a Saturday, but Kuroo finds himself waking up to his six o’clock alarm anyway. It takes him at least four bleary eyed tries to slap the snooze button on his phone, and he groans with excruciating pain that once again, he is required to function for another day. He shifts, his phone clatters onto floor, and he dozes back off to sleep for two minutes, dreaming about throwing himself off a high building.
Breakfast isn’t much better. It’s slow, he pours orange juice into a bowl and his toast into a cup, and the sound of children playing outside sets his teeth on edge. It’s a nice neighbourhood he lives in, but with nice neighbourhoods come families, which means children. He almost runs one over when he starts his car to make his way to his lab back on campus. The look of betrayal from the distraught child glances off him like oil on water and he pushes his foot hard against the gas pedal.
There is one saving grace, however, is that he’s famous at work. ‘Nobody talk to Kuroo Tetsurou before it hits ten’ is an unofficial rule, and Tetsu reigns supreme as the lord of zombies in the bright corridors of exhausted academia. They don’t fear him exactly, because he doesn’t snap or grumble if he’s disturbed from his walking sleep. It’s just universally known that unless you’re really deprived of conversation, you’re not going to be very entertained with a man who can barely form words. It’s even worse if you ask Kuroo to do something for you in a hurry in the mornings. The last time he was sent off on a mission to deliver a package, he got lost for about an hour and a half and was finally found sleeping underneath a bench outside. They took pictures, and he had to see them pasted everywhere for a week, but he was too busy feeling relieved that they didn’t turn him into a meme to mind.
“Morning,” he hears an amused voice call after him, and Kuroo waves his hand tiredly in reply. Or tries to, but his fingers only manage to twitch oddly by his sides and the person chuckles and walks off. Kuroo smiles dumbly, although what for he’s no clue, and unlocks the door to his office.
The chair is simply too far, he decides with one eye cracked open, so he makes do with the wall to his immediate left.
Sleep had eluded him for far longer than usual last night, and he had found himself taking at least five sleeping pills before coming to the realization that if he had any more, he might be put in a permanent coma for at least five days. Not that it’s a terrible idea, but he prefers to actually feel like he’s sleeping, when he’s sleeping. Without any other options, he’d settled for actually counting sheep. They were kind of cute- black, round things that baa-ed happily at him until they started doing little tap dances in his imaginary field, and his mind finally shut itself down a few hours before sunrise.
He sinks down onto the carpeted floor and lets his head fall into his arms. There’s a voice that nags at him that says he’s not supposed to sleep at work, but as his eyelids start to fall, the darkness seems too soothing for him to resist. This time he dreams of little sheep-people, wooly centaurs, maybe, running around in what is now a slightly purple field, making happy giggling noises that sound suspiciously like this morning’s children. A rustling sound suddenly permeates his dream, and he shuffles uncomfortably against the concrete wall. Not too awake, the sheep people incorporate the odd sound into their movements, their thundering hooves suddenly making sounds like paper on carpet. Then, there’s a pause outside, and the sheep people pause too- before he hears a decisive knock on the door that startles him out of his crumpled position. Kuroo topples over sideways with an ‘oof’. He swears he hears a soft sigh on the other side of the door, but forgets it quickly when a pristine envelope stares at him from the floor. He prefers the sheep people, to be honest, but he picks it up anyway and gets to his feet.
It’s a daunting task, but he’s a big boy, and he manages to wobble his way into his expensive leather chair (straight out of his own pocket too, he was sorely disappointed when his petition for upgraded office supplies was soundly rejected) which he collapses into.
Kuroo turns the envelope over several times in his fingers, noting how there’s nothing on it except for an exceptionally penned ‘Kuroo’ on the top right corner and sealed with a traditional lick. He tears it open with a noise of satisfaction when it rips jaggedly under his finger.
It smells like tea leaves when he sniffs the page, and is filled with a handwritten message that looked like it had come straight from ‘Calligraphy for Dummies’. He’s never received anything from anyone who had writing down like an art form before, but when he looks down and finds the signature, he’s surprised by how unsurprised he is. Trust a poetry major to write like the Queen of England.
Kuroo, it begins, and the lack of any formalities gives him a tired chuckle. Here he was, expecting purple prose. I hope it isn’t too odd for you to receive a written letter in this day and age, but I thought perhaps this would be the best way to get your attention. I’m sure you have far too many unopened emails in your inbox for any of them to catch your eye. Kuroo grumbles at that, because she’s right. After the previous evening, I suspect you might not want to meet with me face to face either, so this was my only option. I’m using my best handwriting, even, which I hope you appreciate because my fingers are cramping.
I… can’t presume to understand your position. Admittedly I only know the cursory information available to anyone who asks the right questions, but I have noticed that you are rarely intercepted by people on campus regarding your extra-curricular activities. I took the liberty of guessing that you keep your personal and professional life separate.
I envy your ability to do so.
Kuroo blinks at that. The sentence jumps out at him with sudden honesty, sudden intimacy, and he can see the way it pens darker than all the other sentences so far. She must have hesitated, or perhaps struggled with writing it. The smirk slides off his face, and he sits up straighter in his seat. He doesn’t know what he did to earn her confidence, but his discomfort was no excuse to disregard her sudden seriousness, even if there wasn’t anyone else to see him in his office.
Nevertheless, I must have been an unwelcome surprise last night. I, of course, had my own reasons for being there and will not apologize for them, but I should have given you less grief, possibly. I doubt I’ll remember I even thought this later in the day, so please don’t hold me to that; I have a tendency to be insufferable, quite like yourself. At this, he has to be impressed, because this is the first time he’s been insulted so very articulately, and it makes him squirm a little in his seat. Still, I assume that I am a little wrench thrown into your plans, whatever they may be. I would like to assure you that I have no intentions of breaking the barrier between your two lives- quite the opposite, actually. However, with regards to your ‘organization’, because it has overlapped with my own interests if you recall specific parts of our conversation last night, I will not be able to completely leave this opportunity before me untouched.
I’d like to propose a truce. A trade. An agreement, of sorts, that I hope will be beneficial to us both. I will not jeopardize your position in exchange for some information that I hope will clear up some of my own involvement with my… struggle, with authority. Authorities. We are different, but not enough so, it seems. I hope you will consider this proposal carefully, and as I assume you already know where I hold my office hours, I welcome any questions or enquiries that you may have.
I await your favourable response.
Yours truly.
The letter ends with a very dignified swirl that Kuroo assumes is her signature, and he’s faintly impressed. Either she’s put a lot of thought into crafting an autograph, or she has, most likely, given him her actual signature on paper in an act of good faith. He lets the thick letter paper fall from his hands and the first thing he does is pull up his own email.
The contrast is quite startling, he has to admit. He thought his emails were okay until this morning, but clearly, he writes like a drunk baboon in comparison. Thx, one of his emails end in, and Kuroo cringes so hard that his forehead meets his desk with a thunk. He considers replying in kind, with a damn posh letter, but it only takes one more glance at her cursive script for him to sigh and give up that idea entirely. Perhaps he’ll draw a picture instead.
He imagines a little chibi figure of him with a thumbs up going ‘okay!’, and cackles loudly to himself.
Kuroo catches her after lunch in their commons when he slinks in for his fourth cup of coffee. It’s excellent coffee too- all the grad students had pooled good money together to get one of those high-end coffee machines with George Clooney in their commercials, and ever since then it’s become a local treasure. The line for it isn’t as long as it would be on a weekday, but he spies her sipping on her own mug in contemplative silence, a large book spread out on her lap. He hesitates for a moment, but slips out from his position in the line and makes his way over to her. It’s a big sacrifice, and he hopes she knows that.
“I felt like I was being summoned to court,” he sits himself on the armrest right beside her. She on the other hand, barely shifts, and the only sound he hears is her small breath as he smiles and her hair shimmies forward when her head dips.
He waits patiently for her to close her book- anthology- and she places it on the coffee table in front of her and sweeps her hair to one side to look at him clearly. Kuroo inhales sharply at the very vibrant grey he’s greeted with- almost violet under the right lighting- and he finds that he can’t look away at all.
“Sorry,” she says, her voice soft and careful, “I can’t stop writing like my thesis. I can’t stop dreaming about my thesis.”
“Wow, your major sounds like a riot.”
“Yours sounds equally fascinating,” and he has to grin at that, “’cus then I’d dream about numbers and I might actually just die in my sleep.”
“Feel my pain,” Kuroo laughs, and although she doesn’t laugh with him, he doesn’t miss the way the corners of her eyes crinkle.
He feels thrown off balance by this completely harmless chat. Funny small talk and charming quips were his actual specialty, as is being a piece of shit, and nobody is ever surprised to hear his distinctive laughter echoing through corridors or past stairwells. It all comes out when he knows he’s allowed to, and his mirth dries up sufficiently to make way for solemnity during the nights. He’s never had to pretend to be casual in front of someone who knew his occupation, and what’s even stranger is that this doesn’t feel out of place at all.
She’s smiling right back like she means each word, both now and in her letter, and Kuroo feels like he’s being left out of some grand secret. Like he’s falling into a trap, but when she blinks, her lips twist into an awkward smile that gives away her usual loneliness. He can’t help but feel his gut twisting around his chest. He can’t help but feel like he’s not lying at all, and the very thought unnerves him.
“Your letter,” Kuroo suddenly pitches his voice lower, both in volume and in pitch, and his face darkens. She leans forward in response, and once again her hair falls back across her face to hide her eyes from view. She’s no longer smiling. “I’d like to discuss it more, but not here.”
She doesn’t respond, her tightening fingers the only indication of her understanding, so he continues. “I’m going to be frank with you right now- I don’t like the sound of anything, or you appearing out of nowhere. You’re getting into things too large for you alone, but if you really want to hear what you’re asking for, I’m not going to stop you. That is, until I know exactly everything there is to know about you.”
“You have a hacker,” she responds quickly, “your types usually do. You can type in my name and find out more about me than I can tell you.”
“There are things you don’t know even about yourself.” Kuroo stands up briskly and she glances at him for a split second. His eyes are chilly, brows harsh and unforgiving and he watches with a small ripple of satisfaction when she shivers involuntarily and turns her stare back to her hands. “I’m good at tugging those things out of people. Data can’t tell you if someone’s lying, but I can. I’ll know how serious you are about this ‘trade’ if I see you later. Four pm, at the closed train station on the yellow line heading north. I wouldn’t be late if I were you.”
There’s a muted silence to her movements as she reaches for her book without another word and opens it again. Kuroo frowns at the lack of response, but chooses to turn away to finish filling up his mug like he had intended. The chatter doesn’t stop around him at all, indicating that their conversation had gone completely unnoticed, but the feeling of discomfort doesn’t leave him. Kuroo feels like something had slipped through his fingers and he had no clue what it was.
Setting an alarm for three fifty, he settles back into his office chair and tries to forget about the way her fingers shook against well-worn pages.
Although he had told her not to be late, there’s nothing hurried about the way he walks towards the empty station. Still in his regular college clothes, he looks less like a man on a mission and more like a geocaching young guy, but that doesn’t stop his hands in his pockets and the purposeful crunch of gravel underneath his always metal lined shoes.
His approach is by no means quiet, but she barely responds to his presence before her, favouring her Starbucks cup in her hands instead. It’s four fifteen, the sky barely darkening at all, and she sits as if it’s winter on the aged bench. There’s something wrong about this picture, Kuroo feels, it’s a complete contrast from her carefree behavior the night before and where he had spent an entire day feeling like he was being thrown around like an orca does with its prey, she sits curled into herself, protecting her underbelly from the predator.
It was what he wanted to feel like, and Kuroo’s achieved it. She’s here on his request, and he holds all the cards in his hands now, all except for her promise of silence, and that’s quite a lot of cards to be going on.
Yet when she looks up, straight ahead at the train tracks instead of him, he has to take a seat beside her before his determination fails.
“You’re focused on your leadership role a lot, aren’t you?”
Kuroo is glad that he doesn’t have to be the one to start the conversation yet again. “I never mentioned being a leader.”
“You walk like one. You talk like one. You most probably are one.”
“Excuse me for being obvious,” Kuroo replies, slightly affronted. The small tell-tale breath sounds again, but her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, not like it did earlier that day. He has no clue how he had noticed that, and so has no countermeasures against the light flush that touches his cheeks.
“I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” she murmurs, “and you probably don’t view them as faults.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” Kuroo answers stiffly. “But I think you’ll find a psychoanalysis of me won’t get you closer to what you want.”
“No,” and this time she laughs out loud, “what does is a psychoanalysis of me.”
“Yup.”
“Alright then.” She shifts, and Kuroo finds himself looking into those grey eyes again. “I’ve nothing to hide. Give it your best shot.”
There’s a pause between the two of them, and Kuroo sniggers. “That suspense made me feel like I should pull out my hi-tech scanner. This isn’t Star Trek. Let’s just talk.” She’s the one with the quiet blush now, and Kuroo catches it anyway despite her efforts to hide her embarrassment. “You don’t seem like the type to talk to many people.”
“I don’t get along with many people.”
“Why’s that?” Kuroo finds himself actually curious. He’s been there, that socially awkward stage, and he’s still surrounded by it constantly (making small talk with Ushijima and Kenma feels like dragging an indoor cat out for walk), but there’s no mistaking the iron in her voice. This wasn’t just social awkwardness.
“They piss me off easily. I get pissed off easily.”
“Oho,” he smirks, “so the silent and serene type does have a fuse.”
“Yeah,” she shrugs, “I don’t mind annoying people, I just don’t like stupid people.” Her eyes sharpen in a way that Kuroo hasn’t seen before, not even during those dirty alley fights, and his fingers clench in his pockets. “People who don’t think from other people’s point of view frustrate me, so my ideology clashes with theirs quite often. I don’t have any political or organizational affiliations because of that, if that’s what you were angling for.”
“I can certainly see why you don’t like idiots,” he nods, somewhat empathetically, “you’re not too slow yourself.”
“You’re lucky I have brothers,” she eyes him amusedly, “your insults sting quite a bit.”
“Backhanded compliments, I’d like to think of them as,” Kuroo corrects. “I’m nice to my friends.”
Her eyes soften at that, and she looks away. There’s a taste of wistfulness that tugs at the corners of her lips, and Kuroo feels left out of some obvious secret yet again. “Are your brothers your only regular social contact?”
“Yes, I try to stay away from their friends. I’m not involved with whatever they get up to either, I just follow them on the evenings where they’re headed towards trouble. I don’t know who I end up fighting either, only that they’re after my younger brother in particular. He finds it fun and easy to scam drug dealers, you see, so I have to clean up his mess.”
“So he’s smart, but can’t finish his own battles, huh?”
“Precisely. They’ve nothing to do with why I want to know more. They’re just something I have to live with.”
Kuroo reckons it’s a bit more than that, but he keeps his silence. “Then tell me why you want to know more, and why you aren’t blackmailing me for something bigger.”
“I’m not blackmailing you,” she huffs, and she turns back to him with an exasperated look, “I know that’s what it sounded like in my letter, but how else were you to come to me? I’m going to keep your secret anyway.”
“Why?”
“Can’t you tell?” Her cup gives a low pop when her fingers dig into it mercilessly. “You’re so good at sniffing out lies and asking invasive questions, but you can’t tell what’s in someone’s eyes?”
“I can’t, not anymore,” and the honest admission astonishes him. Kuroo itches to clap a hand over his mouth, but the tension in his body is growing, and he feels like he’s being hung dry in a desert and he’s the only thing left, soaked and miserable underneath his own raincloud. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. “Can’t you tell?” He mocks.
She bites her lip between her teeth so hard that it leaves red marks. However, the sudden anger is draining, and there’s something too alike sorrow in her stare. It confuses him too much for him to feel irritated by it, and Kuroo finds himself at a loss for words.
“I’m always angry,” she finally says, and he feels it like a stab to his gut. “I’m always… searching for something, and I’m tired of not knowing what for. Maybe it’s just my indifference to everything, but the longer I sit still, the more I feel like I’m losing something.”
He knows. He knows so well that it feels like someone’s carving a ditch in his chest, and a memory of his merry band of misfits around a table floats up.
“I’m doing this for me, Kuroo,” she’s sitting completely straight and he doesn’t recognize this person at all. At the same time, he sees her every day, when he looks in the mirror, and when he goes to his headquarters at night. It’s been so long that he’s forgotten the name, forgotten what it looks like when it rises to the surface after it’s been buried into his bones for so long. “I don’t need anything bigger from you, because I don’t need anything. I want to know more because- because-,” he waits and waits for the words to stop choking her voice, “-because I can’t do anything by myself, but you seem like you know what path you’re on. I just want to be on my own path, that’s all. I’m curious about your organization because it’s the only one that the strays stick with, and I wish my brother joined your group instead of fucking around with drugs all the time.”
It’s a mess of statements, one after the other with no transition at all, and she slumps backwards onto the bench and hurls her cup onto the dilapidated train tracks. It skids to a stop, her incorrectly spelled name revealing itself underneath the dimming sunlight.
“Ahh…” she sighs, and he glances at her, “it’s been a while since I’ve felt so much about anything. I’m tired.”
“Yes,” Kuroo finds his tongue again, “I thought I fucked up and met up with the wrong person.”
“I’m normally quite calm, I promise,” she smiles, although it is quite tired, it’s genuine, and he can see the relief in her eyes.
“Your mysterious persona was done pretty well for someone with so much, uh, emotion.”
“It’s not a persona,” she grins, “and I can’t believe you thought I was mysterious.”
“You showed up in the sewage system in the middle of the night and said nothing. Seriously?”
She rises to her feet, still grinning, and he follows. Kuroo realizes that he’s a good head taller than her, and has to take a step away so that he can look down to see her face properly. “I just like being insufferable, like I said. Being annoying is what keeps me sane.”
“I suppose we have something in common,” he admits grudgingly, but he doesn’t feel as disgruntled as he sounds when he sees he relax. He’s said something right, although how that little comment had ended up being positive, he has no clue.
“So we’re good?” She asks.
“We’re good.” Kuroo nods. “There’ll be something sent to you tomorrow, if everything checks out.”
She looks a bit puzzled at that, but the smile doesn’t fade and she shrugs again. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
He nods again and lifts a hand goodbye. She mirrors his action, and he turns away before she does, heading back to his car the way he came.
“That was kind of you.”
Kuroo stops suddenly in the middle of the crowded pavement and someone bumps face first into his back. He waves a hand and apologies sheepishly at the disgruntled businessman who hurries along with a sour look on his face. Akaashi, on the other hand, says nothing and watches as his friend stumbles his way through basic social interaction.
“Were you spying on me again?” Kuroo sighs, and gestures for him to follow. Akaashi pushes himself off the wall with a kick and falls into step beside him. “Coffee?”
“The one two streets down has good seating,” Akaashi points out, and Kuroo hums, changing direction. “And yes, I was spying. It’s my job, Tetsu, the one you gave me.”
“The beast is free! Nobody is safe!” Kuroo cries dramatically with a hand over his heart. Akaashi rolls his eyes.
“Not men who slink off to abandoned train stations to meet up with girls.”
“Well? What’s the verdict?”
“The verdict is: you didn’t ask her very much.” Akaashi doesn’t sound accusing, only objective, and Kuroo feels grateful once again for so much tact built into one man. If it were Oikawa, or Nishinoya, he’d never hear the end of it. Or Tsukishima- it’d probably be inscribed onto his gravestone for all he knew. “You seemed moved. Do you trust her?”
“I think so,” Kuroo replies slowly, “oddly enough, she didn’t lie once.”
“A lot of people don’t lie about what they believe in. You’ve just been in this business too long.”
“I guess you could say so.”
Akaashi sighs again, this time fondly with a tinge of chastisement. Kuroo hangs his head at the sound. He doesn’t quite know what he did in a past life to deserve such a friend, but any time he tries to imagine life without Akaashi he feels a little part of his soul curl up and die.
“You’re really obtuse for an intelligent person; you should take a holiday and see if those brain cells grow back.”
“I don’t get paid for days off unless I’ve a doctor’s note,” Kuroo jokes, but Akaashi’s quiet, and Kuroo knows that his joke falls flat in the face of actual worry. “Maybe, ‘Kaashi,” he amends, “if I have some peace and quiet, maybe.”
“It’ll help,” comes the gentle reply, and Kuroo feels a warm hand brush against his. He takes it, and squeezes. “Maybe you’ll find some things you’ve lost over time.” Akaashi squeezes back. “Maybe you’ll realize why she didn’t seem quite the way you thought when you showed up.”
“You know absolutely everything, don’t you? You should have gone in my place with a mask of my face and would’ve done a better job being me than I did.”
“Obviously. But not everyone is as blind as you are, Tetsu,” and Kuroo laughs openly at that. “How anyone thinks that you’re intimidating is beyond me.”
“Dude, I’m just a cat pretending to know what I’m doing. All I really want in life is to sleep.”
“I see no inaccuracies in that statement.”
Kuroo smiles straight ahead, and something tells him that Akaashi is doing the same. Whatever strain he had been feeling earlier after his impromptu meeting seems to be melting right through his arm and out from the hand that still has Akaashi’s gripped softly in it.
“You missed your date, by the way.” Akaashi, Kuroo’s personal keeper, calendar and mother, adds.
Kuroo closes his eyes and tilts his head up towards the sky like he’s praying. “I know. I just ignored the messages.”
“And the phone calls.”
“And the phone calls,” Kuroo agrees.
“Do you want to be known to women as something other than a dick? Because I’ve got some news for you,” asks Akaashi, and Kuroo grins.
“I don’t care what women think. Do you think I’m a dick?”
“Quite a small one.”
“Ouch,” and Akaashi laughs. They’re almost there, their hands still linked in solidarity and companionship, and they push through the busy crowd with double the shoulders.
“Bokuto’s asked after you too,” Akaashi says, this time a little quieter, afraid to be overheard, “and I know you never avoid his messages.”
“Bokuto, my man! Does he just want to talk? Or has he painted some anti-government propaganda again, because I swear to god I can’t bail him out of trouble every damn time. How does he even manage to get his galleries set up when he’s always running from the police?”
“That’s a lot of frustration,” Akaashi smirks, “and I can answer all those questions for you but I shan’t. Be a decent person and catch up with your friends once in a while, please.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
The barista welcomes them with a bright smile the moment they step in, and Kuroo finds it surprisingly easy to return the greeting with equal vigor. Akaashi was right- the seating is fantastic, and they pick out a small corner next to a window facing a tall skyscraper opposite. He’s tempted to close his eyes and sink into a very deep sleep in his very comfortable armchair.
“No more caffeine for you,” Akaashi gives him a mild stink eye, “but I’ll get you fruit juice.”
He spins away immediately when Kuroo blows him a sloppy kiss, but Kuroo catches a glimpse of the small smile anyway. He watches as Akaashi joins the line with his trademark, unimpressed expression, and wonders if he should text several apologies now that he has a moment to spare. Kuroo pulls out his phone wearily and stares at it for a few moments before dropping it onto his slumped chest.
Eh, he had time, and a small nap wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Ringleaders - Chapter Two.
Here is the original ask for this prompt. Here is the announcement for this project!
Prologue. Chapter One. Chapter Three.
He’s been called many things in his short years of life- Kuroo is very tempted to start a list of the aliases and accusations that have been leveled at him for the past few years because they’ve definitely piled up along with an extensive bullet-pointed page of all his issues.
‘Vigilante’ made him laugh, ‘thug’ made him shrug, and ‘troublemaker’ made him grin. Tonight’s one of the thug nights, the streets seem to be teeming more and more with misguided youths and corrupt gangs, clashing in the atmospheric district of the water sewage system.
It’s their regular feeding grounds, but the term ‘turf’ caught on faster than intended. They have several in their keeping, thanks to the meticulous efforts of Kenma’s infallible surveillance, and it’s Kuroo’s job to pick them out by hand, plucking them from a spreadsheet like eggs. The area, and the feed. The water sewage is one of the roughest ones- a humid, harsh contrast between antiseptic and an honest stink of fermenting shit, it functions as a satisfactory lair for kids who can take the most from life- an interesting form of the crème de la crème. They’re found without much difficulty, hovering around in their small boy scout-sized campfire meetings, waiting for unsuspecting prey to come by. It frustrates Kuroo significantly to see such faulty planning, but he’s thankful for at least being better at something than the average population- and well, if they were all his caliber, they wouldn’t need him anymore.
He approaches, lies in wait, and pounces at the opportune moment.
“Kids,” he calls out to them in his usual slick, unassuming voice, and it doesn’t surprise him in the least when at least three of them jump to their feet at the insult, “is this really the place to be on a Wednesday night? What would your mothers say?”
“She doesn’t give a fuck ‘cus she’s six feet under,” one of the shorter ones snap at him, patting his baseball bat against his twitching forearm, “and I don’t think yours will mind after I finish in her.”
“Damn, is that the way to talk to a stranger?”
“Get the fuck off our land if you know what’s good for you,” and Kuroo stays exactly where he is. “The fuck are you anyway?”
He owes Oikawa a hearty thanks for forcing him to put up signs in this shithole too. Kuroo jerks his head over at one of the large vinyl sheets hanging from a railing. It’s smeared with crap, messed over with amateur graffiti, but it’s their ad nonetheless. Kuroo thinks it’s a small mercy that it hasn’t been torn off the banister and used as either a toilet or a sleeping mat yet. Such are the troubles of advertising in waste recycling.
“Are you boys angry about something? Making a point, maybe? Or is just this, y’know,” Kuroo waves a hand at them ambiguously, drawing large flippant circles in the air, “a really exclusive book club meeting? I’ve got suggestions.”
The boy with the baseball bat starts forward with a repulsive scowl on his face, hands gritty from too little washing and Kuroo can catch the dim, maroon patches staining the bat- not a beginner then, but a veteran of sorts. He watches carefully as the boy advances, the way his foot is placed solidly in front of the other at a good spread roughly the width of his shoulders, and he knows that if it comes down to it, it isn’t going to be such an easy fight. Kuroo flips part of his long, black trench coat to one side, and readies his fists for a difficult lesson.
A second boy suddenly steps in and Kuroo recognizes him as one of the kids in the back who’d said not a word the entire time. His eyes are wide, yet narrowed, but his lip is bruised enough to show that he’d recently been beat up, and he hadn’t gone easy with the lip chewing either. The boy with the bat almost swings it right into the kid’s face out of surprise when a small hand suddenly grips his arm and holds him back.
“What- the shit d’you think you’re-“
“I’ve seen you around,” the kid speaks quickly, eyes darting to and from Kuroo’s face, “they talked about you a lot- the old group I was with, but then they got swallowed up and I ‘aint heard from them since.”
Kuroo watches impassively. His organization doesn’t run a boarding school for misunderstood children, gathering letters to their parents to mail off every Sunday night. If teenagers are shit with communication, then they’re shit with communication. He clicks his tongue, and tells him so.
“Just sounds like he’s not that into you, kid.”
The kid bristles, looks like he’s about to spit something, but holds himself back. Good, Kuroo ticks a box in his head, self-control is always a good sign of potential. The kid turns to stare at their banner again, still vaguely legible underneath the layers of grime and filth.
“You’re with them, aren’t you?”
Kuroo nods. “That’s right.”
The eyes turn back on him again, and Kuroo keeps himself still, expecting the examination to come. Almost greedily, the kid swallows up the look of his face, tattooing it into his memory, and then the gaze travels lower, to his clothes, still cleaner than the rest of them combined despite the holes and tears, and finally they rest on the watch he wears. It’s the only thing relatively expensive on him- watches are such a pain to buy duplicates of- and for a second, the kid’s face turns hungry.
“We don’t hand out membership watches, sorry,” Kuroo drawls, his eyes not leaving the teen for a moment, “but you do get a goodie bag. Maybe a few more bonuses if you’re…” he pauses, roving his gaze over their makeshift campfire and sleeping bags, “living here permanently for the foreseeable future.”
“So you bribe your kids, huh?” The baseball bat guy speaks up from his frozen position, eyes blazing as if he’s finally caught something he can sell. “What difference are you from thugs then?”
“Pot, kettle,” Kuroo says, an eyebrow raised, “and you don’t get cash. You get to live somewhere else other than the fucking sewers, and maybe a nice, new, shiny bat for you. I’d say that’s an improvement from the whole lot of nothing you’ve got.” He pauses to let them gaze around morosely at their meagre belongings, torn between pride and disappointment, and soon the gazes drape themselves back over him like a leech to skin. “Look, I’m not going to waste my time here. It stinks, and it’s getting way past my bedtime, so.” This time he’s the one who takes a step forwards, and all the kids take one back. Eyes wide, to his enraptured audience Kuroo Tetsurou cuts an intimidating figure of a savior in this mess of reality. “You can all read. Banner. I’m just here to deliver. If you want something better, if you’re angry at the world like all teens should be, we can show you what it really looks like; lemme warn you, it’s going to be uglier than your little field trip here, so you decide if it’s worth it. You get a trial period of one week, then you make your choice. If you lot want to sleep here for the next six months until some gang picks you up and buys your virgin asses for a few twenties and a line of crack, then go ahead. I’ll pretend I spent my evening at home with some popcorn and lotion. If not,” he leans forward to close the height gap between him and the group of misfits. “If not, then you pack up your shit, and you come with me. Ride’s arriving in ten, so you better hurry the fuck up.”
They fucking scram. Baseball boy is the first one to jump into action, his face as bitter and sour as it had been ten minutes ago, but his feet are scrambling for purchase against the slippery tarp of a makeshift flooring, and the kid that had spoken up first follows in a close second. They don’t have much to begin with, scraps of what they had brought with them from a long abandoned-home; they were the ones that meant it, the ones who weren’t afraid of a little suffering. Kuroo knew better than most that most kids nowadays ran away for the shits and giggles, the romanticism of modern day movies and TV shows making it sound like the Sound of Music in the fields, but it wasn’t. Reality was sewage, dirt, weeks of not showering and a never-ending burn of rage for something inexplicable that kept them alive, kept them burning from the inside. These kids knew what shit was like, and they were exactly the type of people Kuroo needed.
He hadn’t moved from his position at all, spine still ramrod straight and he waits patiently as the kids line up one by one, tossing filled packs into each other’s arms like a well-oiled factory line, and he can’t quite hide his grin.
“Nothing quite like some youthful vigour,” he murmurs under his breath as he counts the total number of heads that are in a somewhat organized bundle in front of him. There’s nothing left behind, only the strips of ripped cloth and the embers of a once searing fire from abandoned wooden planks torn from buildings. There’s no eagerness in anyone’s eyes. Just a grim determination, a threat that if Kuroo didn’t deliver, there’d be hell to pay. It was a good look, and he was more than willing to take that risk.
“Let’s go,” one of the rougher looking kids barks, head twisting around carefully to see if there were any threats nearby. Kuroo wonders if their movement would possibly offend someone. “Where’s your ride?”
“Here in three,” Kuroo grins, and with a slow turn of his heel, he spins around and starts to head back out onto the open street, “let’s not get our panties in a twist, ladies.”
The wave of irritation almost bowls him over from behind, but Kuroo takes no heed, braving the onslaught of muttered profanities and the scuffing of feet in stride. He feels rather like a mother duckling, leading all her shitty litter into the world of scary monsters and nightmares. However, dealing with anyone younger than 20 would be someone else’s job, Kuroo thanks the lord for it every day, because he’s patient, and then there’s saintly. There’s only one person he knows that could be capable of such righteousness in the face of the inscrutable evil of children- and ‘lo and behold! Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.
A great, hulking van not too different from those kept by kidnappers in movies, rolls up with astounding quiet in front of their odd huddle by the pavement. Kuroo’s the closest, so he gets a face full of a grim, fatherly smile that doesn’t quite reach the edges of a weary mouth, but there’s no mistaking the complicated joy in those eyes at the sight of more younglings. The door slams wide open, banging so hard against its hinges that even Kuroo flinches.
“Dude,” Kuroo groans, and Sawamura Daichi pops his head out from the darkness, grinning.
“It’s the highlight of my day,” comes the smooth reply, “don’t spoil it for me.”
“Take them and leave.” Kuroo huffs, and Daichi laughs like Santa Claus, beckoning for the group of budding troublemakers into the creepy endlessness of the black van.
“Right. C’mon, up and in. There’s enough room for everyone, so don’t step on each other like animals. Yes, I know it’s dark, shut up and bear it.”
All in all, Kuroo thinks that for a group of rebellious youths and broken people, it’s not too terrible of a welcoming ceremony. The kids look rather horrified at what looks like Nietzsche’s abyss in the depths of the vehicle from hell, but they file in one after the other, their bags gripped tightly in whitened fists, and all the while Daichi watches them like a hawk, ready to bark at any misdemeanor.
There isn’t, and the van door closes shut with a much softer click and a twinkle of brown eyes. Kuroo’s almost tempted to wave a handkerchief just for theatrics, but he manages to keep his hands in his pockets and part with a solemn looking nod before heading back the way he’d come.
Now for the truly terrible part.
Considering that they have hundreds of people at their disposal, some who’d find this task a reprieve, even, there’s something especially sadistic of Oikawa to make him take down the banners by hand. The catch was that it wasn’t all of them, just the ones that need replacing- the ones with the most actual shit on them and Kuroo won’t feel clean for days after touching them. He supposes that if anyone’s to blame, it’d be himself for putting an actual demon in charge of delegation. Nobody was safe from Oikawa’s displeasure or whims, not even the leader himself.
Pulling on supermarket-bought latex gloves that does absolutely nothing for his peace of mind, Kuroo starts to peel off the parts where shit’s crusted and has stuck the banner to the metal banisters.
Kuroo believes he deserves a break after such a commotion, but coincidence shakes her head.
He meets her again, despite all odds.
She’s in one piece this time, but the grime has rubbed off on her and Kuroo is forcibly reminded of a sewage rat, scrabbling to reach the surface. The place is empty for the two of them; the last of the chatter faded along with the view of Sawamura’s van, and he can hear the echo of his footsteps several seconds prior still ringing against the large metal tins of water waste.
“Hey,” he says.
It comes out louder than he expects, but too fascinated with her response, the feeling barely registers to him. He also deserves the disbelieving look on her- it really was a rather lame greeting.
Her responding nod is slow but contemplative, and Kuroo vaguely realizes that it’s reminiscent of two predators outlining their boundaries before agreeing to mutual existence. Funny, because the way she walks, she’s too comfortable, and if he had to put an animal to it, it would be a garden mouse, unaware of its short life.
Why does he always have to be the one to speak first? “You’re not mute, are you?” Kuroo snorts, but shrugs at the lack of response. She hasn’t even tensed up, and it shoots a spark up his spine, not in a good way. “Better for you that you aren’t. At least someone might hear you if you scream here.”
“Will you?” Her voice is a tumultuous wave in the dead of winter, and it crashes against Kuroo’s solid steel, leaving him winded. He watches with rapt attention as her lips morph to form further words and he realizes that he doesn’t want to hear one more word in that terrible timbre. “Will you do something to make me scream?”
“That’s what she said,” he grins, but it’s weak and her face so unmoving that it cracks at his core- he is laid bare before a sea of words and none of them he can choose. A small smile creeps its way onto her impassive cheeks and it is a decision between beauty and calamity in the first intake of breath.
Kuroo hates himself in that moment for being so fucking melodramatic.
“You picked up a group of kids here earlier, right?” She’s asking him and he feels stupid for feeling as if she lorded something over him, even for a few moments. She couldn’t know anything. He’d barely seen her around.
“That depends on who’s asking,” he answers, a hand sliding back into his pocket.
She shrugs, and it seems oddly casual for someone who looks so stern, who stands so painfully straight. Her figure droops down to something more human as she moves along to the remains of the kid’s miniature bonfire earlier and traces unintelligible patterns with the ashy remains. “I know someone in that rag-tag band.” Her head rises and he’s stuck; she might as well have wrapped him in chains and he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. “I’ve heard of your group.”
Kuroo gives the banner in his hands a little wiggle. Her smile grows.
“Tell me about it, please.”
“We have a website, you know,” he raises an eyebrow. “FAQ page and all.”
She laughs! Kuroo never wants to live through another one of those, and his jaw unclenches like a wounded animal when it stops. “There’s no reception here,” she comments.
“There isn’t,” he agrees.
Another sound agrees too, a violent holler not too far off that fills the air with purpose and even though Kuroo’s not too imaginative of a guy, he can see the police dogs ripping into his flesh right next to the sewage treatment. He shoots her a sharp glance, and although it takes her a few more seconds to realize than he does, her nod is serious and urgent. Although they’re two people with their own purposes, it won’t make the slightest difference to the cops. Handcuffs don’t just phase through your skin because you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.
“There’s no reception,” Kuroo grits through his teeth and moves to weave his way through the maze of shit water. He can hear her footsteps right behind him, and he can’t be fucked to suppress the spike of irritation at that. He can feel the wind against his palm as he reaches behind for her arm and misses. Twice.
“I’m not going to fucking break you,” he snaps, and he reaches for her again. When he finally feels her wrist against his fingers, he pulls, hard, and tugs her beside him; their steps match each other in a twisted pattern. “Run behind people and you’re going to get hit one day.”
“That must come from a lifetime of looking over your shoulder.” She sounds utterly flippant, and he considers tripping her over and leaving.
“Says the one who beats thugs up in alleys in her spare time- seriously, what the fuck’s up with that? I can tell you don’t do it for fun.”
“I’m used to looking after my younger brother, he gets into all sorts of trouble.”
Kuroo notices that although he’s doing perfectly fine vaulting over railings and hurtling down unknown paths like a man on fire, she barely has a hitch to her breath as she speaks too.
“That must be some ‘looking after’,” he says, “from what it looked like, you were more of a guard dog than a sis.”
She shrugs- they’re at full sprint and she’s fucking shrugging- and Kuroo holds back a spiteful ‘are you for real?’ between terse lips. What the hell is she doing, floating? And he’s definitely not looking at her chest to see her rate of breathing. Not at all. “He gets pissed off when I show up around him. So I do what I can.”
“You’re damn insane,” he laughs, remembering how each time he’d come by her, there had never been fewer than three other fully grown men around. “You should just lock your brother up if he can’t keep his big boy pants on.”
“Funny,” she grins, “that’s what I tell him, but it doesn’t seem to sit well.”
He’s seen kids like her little brother all over town, they’re a dime a dozen with a special buy one get one free edition. It’s not really their fault when the whole city’s lost its mind, who were the lost young things supposed to look up to? If anything they’re like rodents, attracted by large, flashing lights and shiny things, and boom, you get several dead kids each night on the streets. Kuroo’s had his fair share of delinquents. Her, however- he turns his head just a fraction to catch her out of the corner of his eye- she’s as freakish as she is a mystery, but it soothes him to find that she’s human enough to stumble over a stray pipe as she runs.
The barking and the shouting seems to be fading with each strain of his muscles, and for once, he’s grateful for the pure amount of crap the city generates that warrants such a forest of pipes and containers. It’s an eyesore that’s out of the way of the main city system, and its isolation helps the smell diffuse into the suffering trees around it. Kuroo taps furiously at his phone, refreshing his message every three seconds until even just a single bar of connection pops up, and by the time it does, they’re at the edge of the system and he throws a hunted look behind him before shoving his phone back into his pocket.
He props himself up with his palms against his knees to grab more than a mouthful of oxygen and she’s pressing a hand firmly against her ribs to make sure they’re still rising at a normal speed.
“Got a ride home?” He asks before he can stop himself, and his face pinches when she glances at him with growing amusement.
“I’ll be alright, thank you,” she grins again, and this time Kuroo catches it in full underneath the caustic orange of lamplight. It’s better on his nerves than her laugh, at least, but it settles something uncomfortable underneath his skin regardless.
He fingers his phone awkwardly in his pants and pulls it out abruptly when he realizes how odd it must look. A blush doesn’t quite make it to his face, but undoubtedly there’s a frustrated pinch to his brows that he hasn’t felt since high school. “You can uh, go back, or whatever. We should be good for now.”
She mimics his usual stance, cool, confident and all to masculine and cocks her head to one side. Kuroo feels like he’s underneath a surgery light, scrutinized and picked apart into organs, all until she smiles. That one’s all her.
“I’ll wait for your ride to show,” she inclines her head towards his phone with odd grace and an even odder twitch to her lips, “it’s dangerous out here alone at night.”
“Right, fuck you.”
She laughs, and Kuroo shivers again. He’s going to hear that in his dreams at night with how rippling and bottomless it sounds, and it doesn’t stop even when Sawamura’s van shows up again and shocks him out of his socks with that infernal slam of the door.
There’s not a word exchanged between the two grown men except for a very blank look, and a very accusing one. Kuroo listens for Sawamura sliding back into the driver’s seat, but hesitates for a second too long before closing the door behind him. It is, however, long enough to catch the last of her words before they both take off in opposite directions.
“I’ll see you at school, Kuroo.”
The ride back to headquarters is silent, and if Sawamura notices the bitter expression on Kuroo’s face, he doesn’t ask. And Kuroo doesn’t offer.
Ringleaders - Chapter One.
Here is the original ask for this prompt. Here is the announcement for this project!
Prologue. Chapter Two.
It feels fucking fantastic. To him, his face is perfectly stoic, perhaps with some degree of manic, but he hears, in the thudding emptiness of his own ears, the echoing sound of exceptionally happy laughter and a part of him knows. He hears this laughter every time, and although his blood sings from the contagious joy that seems to permeate the very air of this back alley behind a line of brothels, the stench of fresh blood mixed with sweat and matting iron shocks him back each time.
It’s his own laughter, Kuroo knows. It barely phases him anymore; the energy to fight and laugh at the same time, and it only gets louder, or the occasional hitch of a breath when his knuckles meet a face, or when his feet cracks against a rib, or when sometimes, if he’s lucky, he takes long enough for there to be a harmony accompanying him. It’s a symphony of punches, pain, shouts, screams and begs for mercy that always drags itself out near the ending, no matter how strong the opponent. His laughter is the main chord that ties it all together, and when the final gasp of air is crushed out of a man’s lungs, the orchestra dies down into agonized chokes, pleading, sobbing, and then silence.
If there was applause, he would bow to his waist. His flowers for the evening is the pristine state of his coat, shorter today, but reckless enough for it to be suede and not the protective edge of leather, and he pulls out a packet of tissues he’s swiped from a lady with a huge ass earlier to wipe his fingers. His knuckleduster he can’t quite wipe, but waiting a bit longer to scrub it clean with disinfectant in the safety of his own home is a small price that he’s more than happy to pay for this evening’s entertainment.
Maybe, in a parallel universe, he’d have been arrested long ago. Labeled a psychopath, or at the very least a sociopath, but he’s not quite. Kuroo is unfortunately sane, and in his humble opinion, he thinks that violence is a far safer addiction than drugs- none of that shaking, sniveling shit that comes with withdrawals. In fact, he’s perfectly fine even without his fix, but being responsible for such a large, illegal organization does take his toll- you can’t have so much without giving something back. Luckily he has friends who understand, friends who send him such assignments in his spare time, and he’s appreciative for Ushijima’s silent offering by being absent tonight. The cleanup’s going to be much harder tonight for the follow-up crew of kids because Kuroo’s not a fighter. He’s nothing like Ushijima, or even Oikawa, who takes out their targets with robotic precision. No. Sometimes he thinks, when he needs to, when there needs to be a message personally sent. Then there are times like these, at two in the morning, when he simply feasts. It’s a horrendous mess, bones and fingers and blood on the graffiti covered brick walls, and Kuroo lets himself feel liberated by his labour of art.
In this world controlled by the minority, oppressed by the rich, threatened by the paranoid, this is the best rebellion there is: brains, entrails, and disfigured policemen, bought out by the corrupt. One day, he knows, one day he’ll bring it to their doorstep. And there will be hell to pay.
It’s been a few minutes, and the high’s starting to wear down enough that the shit-eating grin on his face has faded into a dull hum of contentment, and the tension in his shoulders and his fists begins to unravel itself. Kuroo takes a deep breath of the filth in the air, letting it flow through his lungs, covering his insides with the scent of the bodies he’d desecrated, and starts to make his way back into the street. That is, until he hears some loud grunting that most certainly doesn’t belong to him (too rough, too strained- Kuroo enjoys his fights; he doesn’t suffer through them like this poor soul) and he follows the sound like a hound offered a scent. Wariness controls him now, his mind given back to him from his release, and any curiousity is squashed underneath the iron gates of training.
One step at a time, silent and predatory, he traverses the maze of the homeless and the illegal, until he reaches the commotion only a few streets over. The gay bar district, he notices wryly, the most peaceful area out of this entire shithole that the government had created for ‘sins’, and here was a fight brewing between a group of thugs, and a single woman. Kuroo peers in more closely from his shadowed corner, and notices two prone bodies lying on the floor.
She’s protecting them, he realizes, although what good that’d do he didn’t know. There’s just one person, fighting against four others, and there’d be more unless she took them out within the next few minutes. He rests his chin on his propped-up knee and watches with a morbid fascination belonging to only the truly disenchanted.
He watches each movement- brilliant and wrathful, there’s nothing controlled about her movements, only the reckless fling of each punch, the shattering kick of each leg and he can barely catch her face; her black tufts either stuck to her face from exertion or they’re flipping around in the air with each whirl she makes. Truly, Kuroo feels almost lacking in the hair department, someone could make a video out of it. It’s impossible for him to tear his eyes away- for anyone to tear their eyes away, because there’s fighting, and then there’s struggling. She isn’t being overwhelmed, as a solid backwards punch over her shoulder sends a man bleeding into the wall behind him, making a small dent and even from his distance Kuroo can hear the crunch of something breaking. As someone who does have fun, he can tell that she isn’t having any. This isn’t about living the life, for her, this is about survival, and with each solid heave of her lungs, gasping in what air she can in order to fuel her next brash move, he can tell that she’s fighting to get out. Her motive is to live, is to make it out, and in order for that to happen, she needs to win.
There’s another crack that comes, and somehow Kuroo is instantly certain it didn’t come from one of her opponents. Dropping down from his strangely elevated position, he wanders into the fight like he’s merely a stray cat passing by, and slams his knuckleduster into the lower curve of a man’s spine. He does his best to keep the satisfied smile at bay; this isn’t the time to be smug. Kuroo Testurou’s senses are wholly back, and once again his actions are measured and calculated, enough for him to slam down one and a half men within a minute. He wonders if she’s noticed him yet, with her raging, wild eyes and uncontrollable gasping, but when all the men fall, she doesn’t move to attack him. A comforting sign, for now.
“You fight like you’ve nothing to lose,” he comments, sliding his bloodied knuckles against the crumpled tissue in his pocket. She still isn’t looking straight at him, but he can feel her gaze regardless underneath the mess of her hair. There’s blood trickling down her neck, dissolved in sweat, and a sudden urge to smudge it away with his fingers surges up in him.
She opens her mouth slightly, and Kuroo thinks he’s going to get a sharp comeback because that wasn’t exactly a very friendly thing to say as an introduction, but she lurches forwards, a great heaving cough shoving itself out of her body and he can smell the fresh blood that splatters onto the shit-stained floor.
He has a tissue to spare. He hands it over with a slow, arching hand, like he’s offering a beast a piece of meat as a peace offering, but she takes it, delicately, and then covers her face with it.
“Ribs, probably, I think you might have broken one.”
She looks at him like he’s both a miracle and the stupidest thing to have ever walked this earth. Kuroo laughs.
“I’m just saying. You’re coughing blood, so I’d get that checked out if I were you. Might puncture something.”
He starts to walk away before she can summon up enough oxygen to say anything. Not a move he’d recommend, anyway, and for a moment he debates on calling an ambulance for her friends, but he sees her steely gaze fixed on him, and he shrugs.
“Good fight anyway, you’d be fine on your own if you controlled your movements a bit more.”
To his surprise, she nods, slow and considering, and for once it brings something other than a sardonic smile onto his face. This one’s genuine, and Kuroo feels like he hasn’t talked like a normal human being a human in far too long.
His genuine smile is appreciated from the way she slumps tiredly against the wall, and he offers a little wave before he walks back out into the flashing lights of purchasable sex. Oddly enough, despite his sore fists, this is one of his better nights yet.
Kuroo is generally as good a sport as any other, but occasionally there are days where they just aren’t his days. These arrive more often after a night of utter abandon, be it violent or sexual- to him, there isn’t much difference. His minds shuts down on him either way, just for a few hours, just as a release from the sheer amount of responsibility he embodies on a regular basis.
In a way, his day job takes even more from him. Let nobody ever say that being a student is easy, let alone a graduate student, and Kuroo is forced to become a walking irony; the antichrist of law and order while donning his reading glasses and slicking his hair back as a successful member of society when the sun shines. It’s been his mistake, to date people in the same program as him. Of course, he can still meet their eyes and smile like he means it whenever they cross paths in the pristine, white halls in the direction of the bathroom, but he can’t always hide the bruises. The purpling underneath his collar, or along his wrist, maybe sometimes his shirt rides up when he leans forward- all those things, he can’t bear to have people who think they know everything about him fixated on those little marks that his conviction leaves him.
How do you explain to a week-old relationship that you can’t tell them what you’re up to, because it’s illegal? Bruises and scars are only sexy when they’re relics, examined in the evening light in bed. Not so much when there are new ones every two nights, and he shows up to his dates with a cut lip and scraped knuckles.
Besides, if he’s learned anything at all, it’s that people like to stick to their so called ‘moral code’ more than to brush aside that murky little curtain called social constructs and risk their necks to see how the other side lives. They always blab, in the end. Their little girlfriends around cups of vanilla frappes, their parents over dinner, their one-night stand that they’re cheating on him with- nothing’s new that he hasn’t weathered. He’d rather keep his position in the university; it pays his bills well enough as the occasional TA, and his professor likes him, which is more than what he can say of his list of romantic encounters. This job is an escape of sorts, but one that has its share of costs as well as benefits. It’s a close tie between having to hide his night job from his day job, and his day job from his night job, and both sketch their grey circles underneath his eyes when they’re over.
That’s why, when he shows up to lead the new student orientation this morning in the empty courtyard, it’s like his multiple worlds he’s balanced like a fruit on his head in front of a hundred throwing knives seems to align, and suddenly that knife point is aiming right at his face. The stars conjunct, so to speak, and everything crashes as all the traffic lights turn green.
“Morning guys,” he’s just a student, he reminds himself, “new year, new faces, new level of suffering, am I right? I’m Kuroo Tetsurou, a third year candidate in particle physics. I’ll be the one to show you around and introduce you to the different profs. If you’d all follow me, I’ll give you a run down of your day while we walk.”
Although these days aren’t any easier than his nights, it’s a godsend that he knows he’s just Tetsu here. He’s allowed to be the nerd with crap hair who likes to chew on the back of his pens and throw rubber apples at his friends for points when he’s bored. He’s 25, not dead, and when he smiles here, he does his best to damn well mean it.
Usually. Today his face is strained, as is his muscles with each step he takes, and not even his new sneakers can ease the tension in his calves. He’s unsure if he’s walking too fast for the first years to really take in the sights, because all he can really feel is the intense stare at the back of his head from the small group. Two more steps, and she’d be right next to him, the girl he’d sacrificed his last tissue for just the night before.
His lips are itching to say something, but they feel sewn shut by the pressure, and she’s not saying anything either, just quietly walking several steps behind him and ignoring the new campus for the view of his back.
“Right, this is the most important room for all of you- the pantry. Well, it’s more like a common room that’s been turned into a pantry because everyone’s too lazy to get up to get their own food next door.” There’s a collective murmur of laughter that brushes through the group and Kuroo grins. “Fridge space is first come first serve for week one, then it sticks. I also highly recommend none of you touch the small one under the sink. The fourth and fifth years won’t be happy if they find some of their emergency booze is gone.”
Another wave of laughter, several knowing nudges, and Kuroo’s relieved that some of them have found fast friends among each other already. It can be a soul-sucking environment, and sometimes only strong bonds forged through the fires of intense suffering can save you from the abyss that is research.
He ignores the small smile that’s growing on her face, he also ignores her gaze that’s almost trying to make eye contact, and clears his throat to continue.
“You’ve all done pretty good as an undergraduate, blah blah blah. You’ve heard it all, you’ve probably said it all during the interviews.” They all grin again, rolling their eyes, and Kuroo’s eyes twinkle. “But here, this is new territory. This is George Eliot’s Wasteland, and there isn’t such thing as people graduating on time.” He can hear the rumble of dissent, the confused looks, and the distrusting ones. “You might make it in two. You might make it in three. Maybe your friends make it in six. Providing you’re not drowning yourself in debt or cooking meth at your desk to pay for your tuition, you go at your own pace. I know what everyone else says, what the world says, but fuck them all. Support each other here. Friendly competition is great, but this isn’t high school, and we don’t tolerate people being excluded because they’re four months late for their meeting with their PI, got it?”
Now there’s silence. He takes it for what it is, better thoughtful silence than someone shouting out in plain disagreement, and Kuroo allows the kind smile to make its way onto his face again.
“This is going to be hell, ladies and gentlemen, with regular trips to the surface. And if there’s one thing about hell that’s different than real life, it’s that everyone’s equal- plus it’s damn fun- so let’s keep it that way.”
He hears a muffled ‘what if I really like research’ from the back, and everyone bursts into laughter. She’s laughing too, he allows himself a quick glance, and a rush of relief courses through him. Maybe today won’t be so terrible, and a guy can hope.
Two and a half hours later with an extremely weary and fidgety group, his job’s done and all’s that left is to release them into the wild and back into their respective departments. He watches them with a strange fondness brewing in his belly, and makes to return to his office, a small, private area that had been gifted to him by his oddly flippant professor instead of having to cram all his things into a small cubicle. A small part of him aches, like a badly infected wound, to turn around and see if he can catch which department she belonged to- or even for a sliver of communication between them, but he doesn’t. His hand turns the door handle and he crumples into his leather chair and drops his head into his hands.
He tries to cut out his pervasive curiousity like a tumour with a butter knife over the course of several days. Kuroo doesn’t mind being the responsible one very much, and although he walks into the sparsely decorated living space of his headquarters for the several evenings to come, he doesn’t let himself feel any disappointment when Oikawa starts his daily reports and hands all the physical operations to Ushijima. The only thing that unnerves him a little is how their best fighter keeps his stare fixed on Kuroo the entire time, a soft sort of understanding in the undercurrents of his sentences and it makes Kuroo feels ashamed of something he hasn’t planned on doing in the first place.
Oikawa, much to his surprise, hasn’t noticed anything at all, and is still flipping through the pages of his reports like his life depends on it, those brown glasses perched on his nose. Kuroo always thought they rather suited him, but he’d been scoffed at more than once whenever he brought it up. He didn’t mind. He knew that Oikawa knew it was true, and it most certainly wasn’t Kuroo’s approval that he was seeking, and the knowledge of that was enough to make him grin madly, which had earned him another scoff.
“Nothing big’s popped up the past week,” he says when everyone turns to him for his contribution, and he looks at Kenma quickly for confirmation before continuing. “If everything on Tsukki’s and Akaashi’s side are calm, then the government shouldn’t be noticing our recruitment efforts just yet.”
“Your banners are pretty big,” Nishinoya pipes up from his sprawl in his usual chair, and Kuroo shares in his grin, “I doubt officials haven’t noticed them.”
“There isn’t much buzz about them yet at the office,” Akaashi assures, “mostly people think that it’s a move of desperation, like we’re running out of members or the like.”
“These guys really like reading between the non-existence lines, don’t they?”
Tsukishima shrugs, “it makes my office job easy, so I’m not complaining.”
“Ahh, what an enthusiastic staff I have,” Kuroo smirks, and everyone just shrugs in unison, which is precisely how their work ethic had developed. Maximum chill, maximum efficiency. Kuroo reckons if they had been some secret police instead of a simple anarchy group, it would only take a few weeks for them to rule the modern world. It would be unlikely for Oikawa to settle for less, besides. “Well, we’ll keep up the good work. Slow and steady, or some bull like that. The only major ops upcoming are Ushijima’s, as usual, and thanks to Kenma’s tip, I’m going to pick up a group of kids on Friday with Sawamura. That’s about it, I think.”
“Right then, meeting adjourned,” Oikawa announces briskly, and everyone hides a small eyeroll and a smile at his undeniable authority over everyone’s schedules. “What?” He prods when he catches Kuroo’s sly grin.
“Nothing,” Kuroo laughs, and dives away after patting him on the shoulder, narrowly avoiding a swipe to the head.
It’s a night for avoiding, when he notices Ushijima start towards him for a small second before letting his arms fall back to his side. Kuroo knows that contemplative look on his face even if there’s radio silence from the man, and the best he can offer is a slow nod. A small exhale and a solid stare returns it, and Kuroo can’t help but feel like he’s holding a man’s trust delicately in his two hands. He’s going to try harder to not let his curiousity get the best of him, he swears, and he’s so busy talking himself into dropping the baggage that he misses Nishinoya’s own look entirely.
It’s a small allowance, he convinces himself, when he comes by her nametag by a door on accident the next day. For someone so violent, he’d never expected that she’d be a comparative poetry candidate, but then he remembers the way she had nodded, and leaned against the wall like it was her very spine. Kuroo pushes his glasses further up his nose and walks away, Ushijima’s nod still hovering in his mind, and his hands still feeling heavy.