okok so the oc from ringleaders. could you give us physical descriptions? i've been dying to know since the birth of christ
and i think i love you a little for saying it like that LOL made my evening
so here’s a little disclaimer before the cut to say that: when i write ringleaders, i write it with the explicit purpose of keeping the oc ambiguous and without description because i want it to be easier for readers to put themselves in her place without having to circumvent all the physical bits. however if you’re the kind of person (in this case you are) who likes to actually have a character to follow, then you’re in luck, ‘cus im gonna do that after the cut.
don’t click if you don’t want your immersive reading to be interrupted!
Grey eyes. That’s the only detail that I’ve included in the story for now (that matters, at least.) They are an incredibly stormy grey, with occasional flecks of silver underneath fluorescent lighting, and sometimes violet underneath natural light.
It’s less of an attempt to make her seem cool and important, and more of how I actually love the different shades of grey, no pun intended, that can change and dip into different emotions at any given notice. It makes it intense, and that’s what I want her to be.
Black hair. Detail number two that doesn’t really give to characterization. It’s long and past her shoulders, and it’s snipped into a straight line at the ends. It always looks permanently moisturized for some reason, and it’s never really disheveled. No bangs, just shorter locks that frame her face.
She’s also someone who’s very pale. (I’m not being supremacist, I swear.) She’s mostly sitting indoors most of the day, poring over her books for her thesis, and then wandering out at night when there isn’t any sun. She really doesn’t get enough vitamin D, and sometimes her joints hurt.
She looks asian, in my mind, probably because haikyuu is japanese…
She’s short. Slim, thanks to not much food and constant exercise. You can’t fight well when you’re fat, that’s just a fact of physics. She’s around 155cm, I’d say, which, when you’re put next to a lot of volleyball player height people, makes you look deficient.
She doesn’t like being short, but she doesn’t like wearing heels more. They hurt, and she can’t really move well in them.
Muscular enough that it makes her look not-dainty, and in her opinion, she thinks she looks bad in tight tops because her muscles show when she flexes.
Her… feet are tiny. I don’t know why this popped out in my mind, but dang, they small. Her hands are smaller than average too, but they’re pretty roughed up from years of lifting things and scrapping around with people. Unfeminine hands, and if she had a choice, she’d choose to always wear gloves. Too bad she can’t use her touchscreen then.
Her eyes are sharp at the ends. She doesn’t have large eyes, none of that doe-looking business, but it makes her look accidentally scrutinizing all the time to people who don’t know her well.
She wears glasses when she’s not fighting.
Lips are very frequently chapped, but they’re actually quite plump. Her lips are the only thing on her face (in her opinion) that look actually attractive. If she could take selfies that had nothing but her lips, she would.
Always leaves her chapstick at home, so she’s always chewing or licking her lips.
She does have a slightly resting bitch face, but rather than really mean, it’s more very serious, and people sometimes ask if she’s alright.
When she smiles, it doesn’t light up her face or anything, but it’s usually a slow curl, a small fluttering motion and her eyes crease up just a tiny bit. Not much else on her face moves, and her smiles seem really serene because of her poor facial muscles.
She likes wearing black. It keeps her unnoticeable, and also slim. It’s also easy to pair with things, and if she needs to change quickly into something more action suited, she can always just switch pants and take off a jacket or something.
Usually tight black clothes underneath, like underarmour or something.
Bad with the cold. Wears a lot of long jackets. Likes scarves.
Oddly enough, she also has a few statement pieces that she rarely wears. Like, really stylish mustard yellow something, and she’ll never have the occasion, but she’ll look at it once in a while on its hanger.
Hello everyone! I've recently seen a couple posts mentioning the Ringmaster breed, and thought I'd shed some light on the subject.
Ringmasters are a type of entertainer all their own, but are often mistook for an 'alpha clown' or some other such title. However, they're closer to Mimes than Clowns even with their brightly colored clothes, and it's evident by their elegant yet practiced movements, particularly in the arms. The best way to tell if you have a Ringmaster or simply a very professional clown is to introduce them into a group of clowns- their natural instinct to lead a show will kick in and in mere hours the whole host will be performing in perfect sync to what the Ringmaster commands, using a complex series of motions and sounds.
Ringmasters are more common among large herds of clowns, and are usually found in the wild Domestic Ringmasters, while uncommon, aren't dangerous and are sometimes bred to keep large facilities for rescue of other clowns in check; while they're able to command most clowns and perform perfectly, they are also very compassionate and hate seeing a hurt performer, and will often seek out the sad or injured to care for them. As such, they're seen as a good candidate for guarding small children. A close friend of mine had a Ringmaster for most of his life, as he had eight siblings and his parents were more than happy to let them all be entertained and protected by him.
That being said, owning a Ringmaster is a challenge. They'll often grow attached to the clowns present; note, I say clowns, as they have a heavy preference for them over mimes, pierrot, and harlequins. Ringmasters are very protective of 'their' group, and can even turn aggressive when challenge or when they see a challenge. It's for this reason that I would discourage you from getting a Ringmaster to watch your children, as they may eventually see you as invading their home, which is wherever your children are; you are challenging their right to care for your little ones!
Older Ringmasters are favored heavily among families, given that with age comes a much more relaxed air; their movements become more subtle, and they're far less likely to see adults as threats or challengers, though they always favor children. Young Ringmasters are best for caring for a large group of rowdy clowns, as they're very athletic and can leap about to keep everyone in check.
I will update this post as I found out more on Ringmasters! Additionally, I'll be making a post on Ringleaders soon- while almost identical, Ringmasters and Ringleaders have quirks all their own. Stay tuned!
[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.
for the unfortunate souls who have read chapter four when i posted it a few days ago, i’m sorry for the absolute shit quality. i re-read it and found it horrendous, so i’ve gone and fixed quite a few sentences. it should read easier now. without your eyes bleeding.
