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Chapter Text

“I hear his mom, like, beat the shit out of him when he was little.”

Kuroo pauses in tying his shoes and instantly regrets doing so, because by the time he thinks to start retying them, his hands shake too badly to do much at all.

He recognizes that voice. More than that, he knows it quite well, is rather intimately acquainted with it, considering how many days a week he has to hear it chewing him out on his blocks. And, sure, he knows those damned third years like to mess with him during practice just to show the rest of the team their superiority over next year’s probable captain, but talking about his personal business behind his back is a new low.

As much as he wants to leap off the bottom step of the 3^rd Gym and saunter up beside them at their spot at the end of the outside walkway, cheekily questioning what they were gossiping about, he can already feel his throat growing dry. When that very thing his senpai now laugh about happened, he clammed up completely, taking weeks before he could talk to his adoptive father, months before he could speak to the new neighborhood friend he made, and nearly two years before he could so much as whisper to any of his teachers or classmates.

Even now as a second year in high school, if something overwhelms him or horribly upsets him, or, in this particular situation, fills his mouth with the bitter taste of shame and betrayal, he’ll slip back into forced silence.

So, when his seniors, the people he’s supposed to look up to, to see as role models, murmur about his past, he can only sit quietly and listen.

“It doesn’t surprise me, really,” says a second voice, one that had only snickered until now. “Could you imagine having to deal with that mouth all day, every day?”

“It’d be hell,” the first voice, their fucking captain, confirms. “I want to punch him a little myself, most days.”

“Maybe we should see if we could get away with it. He needs his teeth kicked in from time to time.”

Kuroo’s pulse hammers through his head as he presses the heels of his hands against his closed eyes. He can’t do this, he can’t freak out, not here and certainly not with these assholes near him. They won’t be the ones to push him over the edge, not after two days of a fantastic camp, not after he’d just gotten done with a solid individual practice alongside Bokuto and that new Fukurodani setter, Akaashi. He’s had a great time so far, really enjoying getting to share in Kenma’s first high school camp and getting to hang out with Bokuto, and he won’t let his senpais ruin this for him.

His body, though, has different plans. No matter how many times he tells himself that he’s not back in that place, that he’s not in danger anymore, that these boys won’t dare mess with him and even if they do he can handle them, his throat feels like it’s closing up and his shoulders begin to tremble. He knows he won’t get hurt this time, knows he won’t have to cower against his attackers like he did back then, and still that small, wild part of his brain that hasn’t yet learned how to relax begs him to run.

Before he can do anything at all, a pair of shadows fall over him, and he looks up with a jolt. He hadn’t even heard his senpais walking his way, but now they loom over him, glaring down with unreadable expressions on their faces.

“Evening, Kuroo,” the captain says, tilting his head to one side, trying valiantly to hide a smirk. “Didn’t realize you were here. So, um, how was individual practice?”

He can’t answer. His tongue has clamped to the roof of his mouth, his lips have sewn themselves together. The captain’s words are mere whispers in the background of Kuroo’s mind, which focuses most of its efforts on watching his senpais’ movement, keeping a close eye on how they raise their arms and how much distance remains between them and him.

The world fades to light and shadow, muffled speech and one-sided conversations, and the captain keeps making sudden gestures above Kuroo’s head. He doesn’t even have time to recoil, time to flinch away; he can only tense and throw his own arms over his face and wait for them to strike.

But then they’re gone. He returns to the present in stages, first aware of the fact that he’s sixteen and not six, then of the humid night that surrounds him, then of a person sitting to his left.

“It’s alright, Kuroo-san,” the person says when he cries out and jumps away from them. “I won’t hurt you.”

In that moment, something changes. His mind still turns circles around itself, screams without a voice and trembles without a body, but deep in some small corner of it, in that part that usually keeps him on edge, he senses calm. It is not his own kind of calm, not a return to his usual playful, relaxed self. It is empty, somehow, not so much a feeling of tranquility as a lack of chaos, and a lack of everything else as well.

He knows as soon as he feels this strange emotion that he is not alone in his own mind.

“Did you just—?” he begins, turning to the boy at his side.

Akaashi stares at him, eyes wide and face half drenched in shadow. “What just happened?” he asks. “What was that?”

The rest of his nerves begin to melt away, and he lets out a shaky laugh. “However you did that, keep doing it.”

“Does it make you feel better?”

“It does.”

So, Akaashi’s mind continues to blend into his, filling up his consciousness like a drop of paint in a bucket of water. Kuroo focuses hard on it, feeling how that peacefulness remains even with the setter confused about this new skill he’s just discovered. While he carries on, Kuroo decides to explain what made this whole thing possible, because it gives him something to think about beside the way his heart still pounds in his chest.

“There’s a lot of ways people describe the soulmate bond.” He shivers despite the summer heat, and Akaashi throws his warmup jacket over Kuroo’s shoulders. “Some say it’s like a hallway with a door on either end, some say it’s like two people separated by a thin wall. The point is, though, that the two people in the bond can only control their own mind, their own door or side of the wall, and they have to ask for permission to interact with their soulmate.”

“But just now I went into your mind without issue,” Akaashi says. He draws his knees up and rests his forearms across them.

“Well… when people are vulnerable, the barriers that keep other people out get weaker.”

“Oh.” His arms uncurl and trail down to his shins, where he sinks his fingers deep into the skin. “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay. You didn’t know, it’s not your fault.” He waves his hand around, glad to see at least a little of his normal casual behavior has returned. “In fact, I think I read somewhere that’s how most people find their bond. Both people are in some kind of altered emotional state – surprised, overly excited, sometimes drunk or high – and they just sort of click by accident.”

“You seem to know a lot about this.”

“Well, it’s not my first time having this happen.” If Akaashi is at all impressed by this, he doesn’t show it, but Kuroo flashes him a prideful grin anyways. “This is my third round.”

Akaashi frowns out into the night, eyes tracing something or nothing in the distance. “You don’t have to answer this, but what caused that reaction?”

“Don’t tell me I panicked,” he groans, running a hand through his hair.

“No, you didn’t. You did the opposite, actually.” His gaze grows distant, like he’s trying to remember. “I left the gym when Bokuto-san did but realized we hadn’t talked about who would turn out the light, so I came back to check that someone had turned it off.” He glances at Kuroo, then looks away. “When I rounded the corner, I saw two boys standing in front of the entrance, and you were behind them sitting on the stairs. And you weren’t… you weren’t doing anything. You were staring at nothing.”

“Yeah, that, um, happens sometimes.”

“You don’t have to tell me about it. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“We’re soulmates, Akaashi. This kind of stuff is the basic shit.” He stretches out a little more, long legs creeping onto the covered walkway. “My birthmother was… a monster, honestly. She did some horrible, horrible things to me. Those guys you scared off were talking about her, saying some things that she would say, and I guess it reminded me of being back there. Whenever that happens, I act like I did back then, I just sort of freeze.”

“Because it’s easier to let it happen than to fight back,” Akaashi says, and it’s not a question.

“Something like that, yeah.” Normally he would probe that a little more, but he still feels unsteady and decides to change the subject instead. “So how did you get those guys to go away?”

“I didn’t do anything. I was just walking back, and when I got close to the gym, they walked off.” A grimace plays at the edges of his lips, but never fully forms. “You’ll have to forgive me, because I thought you were fine at first. I went inside to make sure everything got put away and didn’t even notice anything was wrong until I came back out.”

He nudges Akaashi’s arm with his elbow. “But you helped me out when you did notice, and I appreciate that.”

“Isn’t that just basic human decency?”

“Apparently not, in my experience. Most people don’t want to get involved.”

Silence falls over them, and Kuroo passes the time by trying to complete the link between his mind and Akaashi’s. Everyone thinks of the soulmate bond in a different way, but he’s always thought about it like a finicky rusted lock that he alone has the key to. The key will work if he puts it in the right way, if he does the right combination of jangling and twisting the lock, but until he figures out that combination, he has to play with it.

“Stop that,” Akaashi says after a while. “It feels strange.”

“Sorry, just messing around. Do you want me to show you how to block the bond?”

Instead of answering the question, he poses one of his own. “What do we do now? What do we do about this? About… us?”

Kuroo checks his wrist for a watch that doesn’t exist. “Well, right now I say we get to the dining hall before it’s too late to get dinner.” He finishes with the shoe he hadn’t gotten around to tying earlier, then pushes himself off the step. “I heard someone say they’re serving mackerel pike, and I don’t know about you, but I plan to partake in some of it.”

“You like that?” Akaashi asks as he hands Kuroo his gym bag. “Sort of bland, isn’t it?”

“Unbelievable. I thought we were supposed to be perfect halves of the whole. You can’t be my soulmate and not like mackerel.”

They keep up this easy, casual banter as they walk to the dining hall and while they eat their meal. Kuroo talks about whatever topic comes to mind, Akaashi makes quiet quips about Kuroo’s positions on these topics, and both of them quickly and easily forget about anything related to shitty mothers and heartless senpai and old wounds.

Chapter Text

Things move quickly in the months that follow. They figure out that not only is Akaashi Kuroo’s soulmate, but also Bokuto’s and Kenma’s, and after a few weeks they all agree to expand their relationship to accommodate one more person, all of them getting to choose how much or how little they pursue their quad’s new member.

Bokuto pursues Akaashi the most, likely due to their shared school and Bokuto’s inability to love and adore something to anything less than the fullest extent. Despite his apathetic outlook on the whole situation and his quiet protest to the contrary, Kenma also gets to know Akaashi very well, apparently spending a lot of time texting back and forth with him.

And Kuroo… well, Kuroo tries, he really does. After several practice matches and frequent casual two-on-two games and occasional days out involving all four of them, Kuroo decides he likes Akaashi, that he maybe even loves him. He likes the setter’s dry sense of humor and the way that his deep blue eyes crinkle at the edges on the rare instances that he smiles, likes his long toned legs and the sharp angle of his jaw, likes his eternal patience and his snide remarks and the way that he uses his natural cleverness primarily to cause mischief in any situation that he can get himself into.

But no matter how much he likes Akaashi, a distance remains, because from the moment he learned how to control the connection, Akaashi always keeps his and Kuroo’s soul bond closed. And knowing someone based on their outward expression of themselves, on the way they carry themselves and the things that they say, will never be the same as knowing the emotions that emanate from the deepest depths of their innermost self. The latter is what it means to have a soul bond; this is what Kuroo has with Kenma and Bokuto, and what he tries day after day to create with Akaashi.

So, when he feels Akaashi’s half of the soul bond for only the second time in his entire life, all of his attention turns to it.

The sweet, soundless melody of Akaashi’s mind floats to him all at once, as loud as if someone had turned a radio on right by his head, and he jumps at the suddenness of it. Once he recognizes the source, though, he relaxes, taking in all that his soulmate is feeling. Excitement, relief, exhaustion, apprehension, and the purest type of joy all pass through Kuroo’s head, though none of those emotions belong to him.

They make sense, those emotions. Fukurodani just finished kicking the ever-loving shit out of Nohebi in a quarterfinal game not ten minutes ago, and even though the team outwardly took their win with tremendous grace, it must feel so good to knock Daishou and his snakes down a peg.

Were he any more petty than he already is, Kuroo would soak in all those emotions Akaashi is feeling and pretend, just for a moment, that they belong to him. But he wants the Fukurodani team to experience their victory in full, which some of them wouldn’t be able to do if they could sense a person using their win for his own momentary pleasure.

So instead he sits in the empty, gutted Nekoma locker room, placing things into his sports bag with a speed that seems to indicate he’s never packed anything away in his life and needs to take as much time as possible to learn how to do it.

The locker room door swings open, and he startles and turns towards the person that enters.

“All by yourself?” Akaashi asks, frowning, just his head peeking out from behind the door.

Kuroo doesn’t speak, instead reaching over and lifting his bag off the bench to toss it near one of the lockers.

Akaashi takes a seat right beside him. He smells like soap and whatever detergent he uses to wash his warmups, all traces of his involvement in a previous game hidden neatly away, except for a volleyball that he keeps tucked beneath his right arm. His hand wraps protectively around the ball, fingers spread out across its surface for increased grip, holding the thing like a small child might hold a security blanket.

“You got the game ball,” Kuroo says, giving the best grin he can manage. He forgets for a few seconds that their soul bond is open, just long enough for a sharp stab of jealousy to flicker through before he winces and pushes the feeling down.

“I, um.” Akaashi’s eyes goes wide, and he places the ball between his feet, out of Kuroo’s field of vision. “I didn’t come in here to gloat, I swear. I’m not trying to rub it in your face.”

“It’s okay. You should be able to feel good about your win.” He takes a deep breath and runs hands through his hair, playing with the fringe in front of his eye. “And I know you deserved that game ball, whatever you did to get it.”

He gives the shiest smile Kuroo’s ever seen on him, his cheeks growing faintly pink as he nods at the compliment, words having apparently failed. Kuroo decides right then and there that he is probably in love with Akaashi Keiji.

“Why’d you decide to open our connection?” Kuroo asks, since he’s been thinking about the subject already, and Akaashi can probably sense that.

“I did it by accident, I think. Like last time.” He gives a tense, awkward-looking shrug and glances away. His fingers come up and knit together, ending up practically tied in knots by the time he speaks again. “But I didn’t… want to close it this time. I didn’t mind having it open.” He bites at his lower lip. “Maybe I’m just hysterical from the game or something, but I think I… or, rather, I know that I, um, like you quite a bit.”

Oh, he’s definitely in love with Akaashi Keiji.

“Did you come here to confess to me?” Kuroo wiggles his eyebrows, one side of his mouth coming up in a smirk, and Akaashi blushes deeper and turns away. “If so, then I don’t think you’ll mind if I do this.”

Akaashi kisses like he’s breaking, like he’d fall to pieces if not for Kuroo’s hands cupping his face. He twists his fingers into Kuroo’s shirt, normally confident grip struggling for purchase against the fabric before it settles at the small of his soulmate’s back. As they kiss, their soul bond grows, twin tendrils of pleasure running back and forth between them until one is indistinguishable from the other, until they are almost like a single mind, two people melded into one.

“You absolute pain in the ass,” Akaashi says when they pull away, touching the spot on his lip that Kuroo nipped in the last second of an otherwise fairly chaste embrace. They smile at one another like stupid kids for a while, but then Akaashi, for apparently the first time, fully takes in the sheer lifelessness of the locker room. “Kuroo-san, where’s the rest of your team?”

“They’ve already left. Better for you, right? You didn’t have to confess to me in front of a bunch of other people.”

He frowns and scoots closer so their arms touch. “Something happened.”

“It did.”

“Will you talk to me about it?”

No, he nearly says, he won’t. He doesn’t want to even think about it. But then he remembers that first night that their bond opened, when he more or less claimed that being soulmates meant at least explaining the barebones of a situation to one another, so he talks.

“We lost our game,” he begins. “I’m sure you saw the last few minutes of it. And that’s terrible, obviously. I don’t have to tell you how it feels to lose like that. But at the very end of the game, after we had cleaned up the bench and packed our equipment, I expected to follow everybody over to the audience to thank them like we always do. When I turned around towards where the captain should have stood, though, he was gone. All the third years were.”

“I see they’re still treating douchebaggery like a professional sport.”

“They just left us. The last I saw of them was their silhouettes walking out the auditorium doors. And of course somebody had to lead the team, because they don’t deserve to get abandoned like that, so I tried to step up and at least give them a good sendoff. But I just feel like…”

He trails off, frowning down at the concrete beneath his sneakers, and Akaashi slips his hand into Kuroo’s. “You feel like what?”

“I just wonder why it keeps happening to me.” He lets out a quiet sigh, running his thumb over the back of Akaashi’s hand. “A big thing my dad has always kind of driven into my head is that it wasn’t my fault, what my mom did to me. That I couldn’t have done anything to make it happen and I couldn’t have done anything to stop it. Still.” His breath catches, and he takes a few seconds to smooth himself out, determined not to break down. “I’m in a completely new place. New family, new part of the city, new school and friends and volleyball team and all of that. And still it feels like all I attract are assholes, and at this point I’m halfway convinced that I’m doing something to bring them around me.”

“It’s not your fault,” Akaashi says immediately, leaving no room for Kuroo to protest. “It will never be your fault. Your father is right; there’s nothing you did wrong to make it happen.”

“Then maybe I’m just destined for this. Maybe the gods created me to get ragdolled around for the rest of my life.”

Akaashi sighs, and though Kuroo can’t exactly discern the emotion that tingles at the edge of their bond, he’s pretty sure it’s something close to sorrow. “If I had to guess,” Akaashi says as he leans his head on Kuroo’s shoulder.  “When your mother did whatever she did to you, you were pretty much all by yourself.”

“Something like that, yeah.” He walks the narrow line in his own head that separates memory and flashback, trying to recall the details of his early childhood without slipping back into them. Akaashi’s hand in his certainly helps him stay in the present.

“You know you’re not by yourself anymore, don’t you?”

He swivels his head around to meet Akaashi’s gaze, blinking several times as if doing so will help him better comprehend the question. “Of course I do. What makes you think otherwise?”

“Well, sometimes you act like you don’t.” Akaashi’s free hand comes up and sweeps through the air to indicate the empty room. “Right before I walked in, you were sitting alone in this locker room, probably trying to think up some way to solve your problem by yourself.”

“But I—”

“You could have come to our room, Kuroo-san. You know Bokuto-san loves to see you whenever he can.”

“I don’t want to intrude.”

A smile ghosts across his lips, the expression more than a little rigid. “You cannot possibly intrude more than the team parents who insist on involving themselves in every second of our celebrations. When I left, the captain was explaining to someone’s second aunt or something that she can’t ride back on the team bus with us.”

“Those are the worst,” he says, allowing himself to laugh. “Really, though. You all deserve to be happy about your win. You shouldn’t have to worry about me.”

Warm, calloused fingers catch below his chin, holding his head in place, and he can’t help the involuntary rush of excitement that flows through him and his half of the bond. “Stop thinking I’m insinuating anything,” Akaashi says, rolling his eyes, “and just listen to me instead.”

He lets Akaashi take his face in both hands, thumbs gently stroking the skin of his cheeks.

“You are not a burden.” Akaashi presses a kiss to his temple. “You deserve good things.” Another kiss to his forehead. “And you have people who want to help. I came in here to confess even though I know you have things that happened in your past and that you’ll have things you have to work through in the future, because I don’t care about any of that. I… love you, alright? I love you, you absolute fool.”

Kuroo grins ear to ear. “I wouldn’t complain if you said that again.”

“I love you,” he says, voice and expression and soul connection completely serious. “Not some idealized version of you, not the image of you I’ve created in my head. I love you. That’s what a soulmate is, isn’t it? Someone who understands you at your very core and loves you because of that understanding, not in spite of it.”

No matter how many times he opens and closes his mouth, Kuroo can’t form any sort of response to that. He just gapes, wide eyes searching for something on Akaashi’s face or within his mind that tells Kuroo what to say, but Akaashi saves the moment by leaning in and stealing one final kiss.

When they move away again, Akaashi reaches down for his game ball, twirling it around and around in his hands. “Are you planning on coming tomorrow?”

“For the semifinals? Uh, hell yeah.”

“Could you do something for me, then?” He holds out the ball, practically placing it in Kuroo’s lap. “Could you take this home with you, and bring it back to our locker room before the game?”

He accepts it, but keeps his gaze on Akaashi, pursing his lips. “This isn’t some sympathy move, is it?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I just think it would be… more appreciated at your place. It would be better.”

“Don’t you want to show it to your parents? You don’t want to have it in your room for the night? It’s a huge accomplishment, Keiji, you should be proud.”

Kuroo senses nothing in their connection, not even a faint hint of whatever’s causing Akaashi to make this decision of handing over his physical representation of his standout performance. Kuroo knows that Fukurodani handles the game ball ritual a little differently than most teams, giving the same old ball to a different player each game, so maybe Akaashi thinks that the whole ceremony of receiving one rings hollow compared to getting to keep the trophy forever. Or maybe he lied and does really think Kuroo needs some kind of ephemeral pick-me-up.

Or maybe he thinks nothing at all, which his unreadable expression and unchanged soul bond seem to suggest.

“Okay, fine, I’ll take it,” Kuroo says, running his fingers across the ball’s roughened surface. “But I better see playing tomorrow worthy of this. Win it again. Kick your opponent’s asses.”

“I don’t plan on doing anything less.” He extends his hand and Kuroo takes it, allowing himself to be pulled all the way to the auditorium exit, where he and Akaashi exchange farewells.

As he rides the train home with the crumbling leather of the ball rubbing against the skin of his palms, Kuroo finally gets it, he thinks. Akaashi earned this ball through his own skill and sharp gameplay; it belongs to him, truly, so when Kuroo holds it, he has a little bit of Akaashi with him, even when he’s all alone.

Chapter Text

The thoughts come, like they do sometimes, and Kuroo hides away, like he does every time.

It isn’t as easy to physically barricade himself from others as it used to be, what with him being the captain of a volleyball team that practices six days a week, so he isolates in other ways. He intentionally snaps at Yaku to get the boy to leave him alone, harshly corrects Yamamoto so the spiker avoids approaching him to ask questions, and purposefully ignores all texts and calls from any of his three boyfriends.

He wants someone around, he really does. He hates moving through his days by himself, hates the way his teammates turn away when he passes by, hates walking to school with Kenma silent and distant by his side. But at the same time, he doesn’t want to scare them; it’s better if they’re afraid of him because he’s acting like a jackass, not because of the thoughts that play over and over in his head whenever he sees them.

When winter break of his second year comes around, he has perfected the art of maintaining distance. Bokuto announces with equal parts excitement and disappointment that he’s been asked to a two-week-long All-Japan camp over break, which means he won’t get to spend the majority of his off time with his boyfriends. Kenma then reminds them with much more disappointment than excitement that his parents are forcing him to visit relatives in Kyoto for one week of break, meaning he, too, will be away from the rest of the quad for a while. In response to this, Kuroo barely responds at all, coldly telling them he hopes they have a good time; this makes Kenma mad enough that he yells and saddens Bokuto enough that he goes into his dejected mode and stays there.

Kuroo does nothing about this, makes no move to apologize or explain what’s going on. The week that sees two of his boyfriends off comes, leaving just him and Akaashi. Well, him and Akaashi and his thoughts.

Akaashi insists on the two of them spending time together, even though Kuroo does his best to avoid his boyfriend like a plague. It’s pretty obvious, even without the use of their shared bond, that Akaashi knows what’s going on; it just takes a few days for anything to come of this knowledge.

Eventually, after four days of it being just the two of them, Akaashi pulls Kuroo along on something he calls a date, though it’s clear it’s really much more.

“You’re fucking pissing me off, you know that?” Akaashi says without warning in the middle of this supposed date. He changes his tone so little between this sentence and the last one, when he’d commented on the flower display in a shop window, that it takes Kuroo a few seconds to register the words at all.

“Why’s that?” Kuroo asks. They walk side by side through the shopping area and into a park, shoulders brushing even as Kuroo feels the distance between them increasing.

“Don’t play coy with me. You know why.”

“I don’t, actually.” He reaches up with a hand and swats some of Akaashi’s hair out of his face. “Care to enlighten me?”

Akaashi huffs a sigh and pulls them over to the first bench he sees. Kuroo almost doesn’t sit down, because he knows if he gets stationary then it’ll be harder to ignore the thoughts and harder to direct his boyfriend’s attention elsewhere, but pulling away would look too suspicious.

“Last night, I went over to Bokuto-san’s house,” Akaashi says, leaning back against the bench, tipping his face upwards. It’s always to other people’s places, Kuroo has noticed, first to his and then to Bokuto’s, and never to Akaashi’s, but before he can make a snarky comment about this observation, Akaashi continues. “He’s still in his dejected mode, which he’s been in since last week.”

“Please don’t try to blame that on me. You know how easy it is for his mood to drop.”

“If you’d let me finish, I’ll tell you what part you had to play.” Some part of his neutral façade shifts a little, just enough that Kuroo notices; he hasn’t opened their soul bond since the thoughts started for fear that Akaashi would interpret his emotions and figure out what’s going on, but even without the connection he can detect the genuine frustration beneath that cold, calm mask. “Bokuto-san asked me if I thought you still loved him. He said you don’t talk to him anymore. That you don’t call or answer his texts or even use your soul bond.”

“Sounds like an overreaction,” Kuroo says, and for the first time since this all started, he regrets his words. He knows this asshole persona he’s taken on will only push people away when he wants so badly to reach out. He wants help, he wants someone to talk to, he wants something else to think about besidesthe images and ideas that cycle and cycle in his head.

But he doesn’t want to hurt people. He can’t hurt people, can’t let them know what goes on inside, can’t let them know he’s an awful, horrible person.

So, he keeps acting like the asshole. Like the pain-in-the-ass Kuroo-san that Akaashi always calls him; who knows, maybe that’s the most accurately someone has ever described him. Akaashi of all people would have an insightful view of Kuroo’s true nature, wouldn’t he?

“Do you love Bokuto-san?” Akaashi asks. No preamble, no warning, just a cut straight to the heart of all this. Akaashi wields the knife with the skill of a surgeon and the callousness of a murderer.

And that’s all it takes. Just a single thought about blades sends the thoughts to the forefront of his mind, starts them on their wild tailspin, playing over and over and over again. He shuts his eyes as tightly closed as he can physically manage, hands coming up to dig into his hair.

“Is there something I can do?” Akaashi asks in a hushed, concerned tone.

Kuroo shakes his head and tries to focus on something, anything that will take these awful thoughts out of his mind, but no amount of listening to the far-off voices of people in the park or feeling the individual strands of his hair as they come free from his scalp can stop them. He’s surrounded by all sorts of vulnerable people – little kids on the playground not far away, old people and their tiny dogs walking by, and most of all Akaashi within arm’s reach – and if he doesn’t do something now, he’ll lash out. He knows he will, with this darkness that’s taken over him.

“I have to go,” he croaks out, moving to stand up.

A hand wraps around his wrist, dragging him back towards the bench, and in this state he can hardly protest. When Akaashi speaks again, his voice is close to Kuroo’s ear and noticeably kinder.

“Listen to me, okay?” he says. “The place we’re at right now is secluded, but if you try to run you’ll be in the heart of a busy Tokyo street. You get to choose where you go, and I’ll follow you no matter what you decide, but I want you to try to think about it.” Akaashi crouches in front of him now, face just a few centimeters from Kuroo’s face where he’s bent double over himself. “I know it’s hard right now, but try to think it over.”

“I have to go.” He grips the edge of the bench seat, fingers quivering against the wood. “I have to. I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me. I’m worried you’ll hurt yourself.”

He has to get up, has to leave, but his traitor legs won’t do anything but tremble beneath him, and he knows there’s no way he can even stand. “I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t hurt you, Keiji, I can’t. I have to get away from you so I don’t hurt you.”

“There’s no need to do that, Kuroo-san.” Akaashi sits down on the ground beside the bench, making himself small and nonthreatening, turned sideways with one arm resting on the seat. “You don’t need to run from me. You won’t do anything to me. You never would.”

“But I—”

“But nothing, Kuroo-san. You won’t hurt anybody. You’re not a danger to anyone, I swear.”

This continues for what feels like hours, until he can calm down enough to promise Akaashi that he won’t bolt. Akaashi hauls himself back up onto the bench and asks if he can touch. When given permission, he wraps arms around Kuroo’s shoulders and pulls him in tight, grip firm but gentle, tucking Kuroo’s head beneath his chin.

“Why are you still here?” Kuroo asks, even as he lifts his aching arms and digs his hands into the fabric of Akaashi’s shirt. “I’ve been so…so awful to you. Why did you stay?”

“Because I love you.” He runs his fingers over the back of one of Kuroo’s hands, drawing slow, calming circles over the skin. “And I know this isn’t like you. You don’t just act like this for no reason, which means you’ve yet again been dealing with something all by yourself for a while.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Kuroo feels it then, in the back of his head, the telltale poke of another mind trying to get into his. For the first time in weeks, he obliges, pushing open the gate of his and Akaashi’s soul bond, and even though the rusted hinges of the connection protest a little, he completes the bond. Akaashi holds him even tighter when it happens, and Kuroo senses in his own mind a rush of relief that doesn’t belong to him.

In truth, all he feels is guilt. How the hell could he have done this to his boyfriends, to the people he swears he loves more than anything else in the world, the people he knows he wants to spend his whole life with? How does he expect to live his life alongside them if he bolts at the first sign of difficulty? How could he be so stupid?

Akaashi presses a kiss to the top of Kuroo’s head, nuzzling into his wild fringe of hair. “Don’t feel guilty, either. There’s no need for it.”

“How did you know—?” he begins, before he remembers, oh yeah, they do have an empathetic connection.

“Now tell me something.” Akaashi lets him go, and he straightens himself a little, but he keeps an arm around his boyfriend’s waist. “You kept saying you didn’t want to hurt me. Is that what this whole thing was about? Is that why you stayed away from us?”

“Something like that.”

“Why do you think you’re going to do something to us?”

He reaches out his free hand and takes one of Akaashi’s in it, grasping it with enough force to likely cause pain, but Akaashi doesn’t even mentally protest. “I don’t want to scare you. I don’t want you to see me as dangerous.”

“I don’t think I will,” Akaashi says.

“If you say so. Well, to start off, I have these… thoughts, sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?”

A smile crosses his face; there’s just the tiniest tug of the corners of his lips, but his chest feels a little lighter. “Very funny. But these thoughts aren’t normal thoughts, not like most people’s and not like all my other ones.” He squeezes Akaashi’s hand, and Akaashi squeezes back. “They’re… violent. Horrible, gruesome, violent thoughts.”

“Like what?”

“What do you mean ‘like what’? I tell you I’m thinking about violence and you want to hear more about it?”

“Sure.” Akaashi shrugs, and Kuroo can tell through the bond that he isn’t faking his nonchalance. “Why not? They’re just thoughts, aren’t they?”

“I – what – no, they’re not just thoughts.” His brows knit together, frustration and confusion sparking through their bond, and still Akaashi remains impassive. “You want to know what I picture? You really want to know?” Akaashi nods, silent. “Fine, I’ll tell you. I think about killing you. And Kenma, and Bo, and my defenseless grandparents, and even the innocent little first years I walk past on my way to class.”

“Killing us how?”

“Are you crazy?” He gawks at Akaashi, not bothering to hide it and not caring how stupid he probably looks. “Are you genuinely insane?”

“Maybe,” Akaashi says, and smiles.

“Fine, whatever, since you’re so sure about this.” Even though he’s said this, he doesn’t really want to speak about the thoughts out loud, because he’s sure Akaashi has no idea what he’s getting himself into. And yet, Kuroo wants so badly to tell someone, just to let another person know what’s going on. “I think about killing people in whatever way I can, really. Like, last night when we were hanging out together, I pictured myself pushing you out of my bedroom window. Just opening up the pane and shoving you out of it. And you landed on the street two stories below, and you hit it so hard, Keiji, you just—”

“Do you want to do it? Kill me, I mean. Do you want to kill me?”

Oh, gods, there it is. He should have known not to say it, because it’s crazy, it’s psychopathic, and now Akaashi’s probably scared shitless of him. “No, no,” he says, almost begging, even though he’s not sure what he’s begging for. “I wouldn’t ever fucking do that to you, I swear.”

“Then it’s not a problem, is it?”

Of all the things he expected, this is not one of them, and he’s so taken aback by that response that he can’t even form one of his own. Akaashi must sense his total shock through the bond, because he laughs, actually laughs, a quiet and melodic sound that Kuroo’s never even heard before. He just can’t comprehend that, a person laughing without fear after hearing a graphic story of their own hypothetical death.

“You’re always gentle, Kuroo-san. Do you know that?” Akaashi tips his head to the side, the ghost of a smile still on his face, though something sad lies beneath it. “Maybe a little too gentle. You treat Kozume-kun like he’s going to break sometimes. Just ignoring us for a few weeks sent you spiraling, didn’t it? Just the thought of causing any of us the slightest bit of harm was destroying you.”

“Get to your point, please.”

“My point is, it’s not in your nature to truly hurt people. You provoke and tease and play around, but you apologize if it goes too far. If you really were going to become a serial killer or something, I don’t think you’d be so irritatingly nice.”

“But—” His breath shudders, mind racing and racing but going nowhere at all, because this doesn’t make any sense. Akaashi’s calm doesn’t make any sense. “What if I do something by accident? What if I hurt you and don’t even know it?”

“Accidents happen, there’s nothing you can do about that.” Akaashi raises the hands they’ve clasped together, kissing the back of Kuroo’s and giving him a knowing look, like that gesture has more meaning than just a show of affection. “And if you’re thinking about the likelihood of you snapping and doing something awful, do you know what we’ve been doing for the last twenty minutes?”

“Having a breakdown, mostly. And then talking, I guess.”

“What else have we been doing?” he asks, and lifts up their joined hands.

Touching, Kuroo realizes. Holding hands. Holding each other. Certainly not committing homicide and being the victim of a homicide, that’s for damn sure. He groans and drops his face into Akaashi’s shoulder, mourning his sudden and apparently all-consuming stupidity that’s developed over these last few weeks.

“People who do horrible things think about doing them, sure,” Akaashi says. “But they don’t feel guilty about it. They don’t have a conscience about it, usually. And for people who seem to just snap, there’s never a snap, just an escalation, if a quick one.” His expression again looks very knowing, but it doesn’t seem to point at Kuroo at all. “It always escalates. Always.”

“Most people don’t think about these things, though.”

“Maybe they don’t.” Akaashi lets go of Kuroo’s hands and pushes himself to his feet, nodding at Kuroo to follow him. “To be honest with you, I don’t completely understand what you’re talking about. I don’t exactly know what these thoughts are, or why you’re having them. But.” He knocks their shoulders together as he walks, glancing at Kuroo out of the corner of his eye. “I do know that I won’t let you hide anymore. You’ve got to let us know when things go wrong, okay?”

“But I don’t want to scare—”

“Please,” Akaashi says. Their arms brush together again, but this time they stay close enough that the contact doesn’t end. “Please tell us. Tell me. I want to know. I’ll help you when you have problems. Believe me when I say I’ve heard so much worse. So please let me know.”

“Okay, I will.” He lifts up a fist with the pinky finger sticking straight up. “Pinky promise?”

And Akaashi cracks a grin, the most genuine one he’s ever shown, the corners of his eyes crinkling from the force of it. “What are you, four?”

“Swear to me, Keiji. Come on, don’t wimp out.”

They lock their fingers together, their promise sealed in the highest degree, even as Akaashi laughs hard enough that his shoulders shake.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t remember why he ran. He certainly wasn’t in the right state of mind to think about these sorts of things when he first decided to take off, and now, an unknown distance away from home at eleven o’clock at night, he can barely recall how he got here.

Rain pelts his face as he runs, the sticking of his frigid shirt to his skin indicating that he’s been out in the storm for at least several minutes. He throws his arms up over his head to try to see past the onslaught, but he can make out little more than the outline of darkened houses on either side of him and the golden halos of glowing streetlamps that blur beside him as he rushes past.

On the very edge of his field of vision, he makes out a metal fence of some kind, bathed in muted light from a series of small spotlights lining its perimeter, and breathes in relief. The fence encircles his subdivision’s tiny swimming pool, meaning he didn’t travel too far away before he got his wits back.

He wastes no time in climbing over the low fence, careful to walk around the edge of the pool even though he’s pretty sure the people who look after it put the cover on at the end of last summer; he can’t be too cautious about this, considering the fact that he can hardly see a meter in front of him. A small covered shelter sits to one side of the pool, usually used for parties or other events even in the offseason, though now it’s empty and pitch-black and its wooden picnic benches are ice-cold, as he learns when he takes a seat on one.

As much as he wants to, he can’t bear to call his father right now. The more he calms down enough to question why he’s out in this horrible weather in the first place, the more he recalls the events that led up to it.

In other words, he remembers the fight. He remembers all of the things he screamed at his father, all the names he called him in such a short period of time, such a condensed moment of anger and frustration that he knows will have consequences a long ways down the road. He realizes now that he’d gotten upset over something as stupid as curfew, which he’d broken anyway after coming home late from Kenma’s house. He made a mistake running away at all, stomping out of the house like a bratty toddler instead of cooling off somewhere safer, and he gets that now.

No, he can’t face his father, not because he thinks his father will yell and rant and lecture, but because he thinks he won’t. His father will probably cup Kuroo’s face in his hands, tears gathering in his own eyes, and ask to talk about this issue in a peaceful way. He always forgives, is always patient, even after all the shit Kuroo has pulled over the years, and Kuroo doesn’t think he can handle so much love after what he’s done.

Still, he doesn’t want to sit out here in the cold, rainy night all by himself, so he calls the one person who specifically told Kuroo to reach out if he needed help.

“Are you alright?” Akaashi asks after picking up on the second ring, in lieu of a more traditional greeting. “What’s going on?”

“I fucked up, I really fucked up. I know it’s late, but do you think you could… come meet me?”

Fabric slides against fabric in the background, followed by the sound of something being zipped up. “Of course. Where are you? It’s really noisy, wherever it is.”

“It’s that pool near my house.”

“I’ll be there in ten, alright?”

“Okay.” A gust flutters the small sections of his clothing that haven’t already plastered themselves to his skin, and he shivers against it. The rain that the shelter had previously protected him from changes direction with the wind and nails him right in the face, feeling like icicles as it hits, and he scoots further down the bench. “And, um… thank you, Keiji. You didn’t have to do this.”

“Don’t mention it, I was out anyways. Just try to stay warm. I’m getting on the train now.”

They talk about very little of substance for the rest of the call, which is mostly taken up by Akaashi asking for directions and Kuroo explaining in barely comprehensible sentences what happened to cause him to run away. Then Kuroo spies a silhouette coming up the pathway to the pool, holding something dark and broad over their head in one hand, and their cellphone with the flashlight turned on in the other. The person leaps the fence with graceful ease, the umbrella above them barely tipping as they make the jump and land silently on the other side.

The moment Akaashi sees Kuroo sitting beneath the shelter, he quite literally jumps into the air a little and breaks into a sprint, discarding his umbrella on the concrete as he wraps Kuroo in a tight hug.

“What’s all this about?” Kuroo says, laughing despite their circumstances, because Akaashi is never so aggressively tactile.

“Oh, fuck off.” Akaashi tosses something onto the picnic table, a backpack by the looks of it, and begins to dig around inside it. “You say that like it’s some weird reaction, like it’s weird for me to be worried about my boyfriend. Look at you, you’re freezing. Take this.”

“Sure, mom.” He grins as Akaashi hands him his Fukurodani warmup jacket. “Oh, wow, is this thing lined with fleece or something? It’s really warm.”

Akaashi rolls his eyes and goes to fetch his umbrella, which he sets up at the end of the bench to block some of the rain. “I have no idea what they make those things out of, but I do know that you don’t actually care the production of goddamn sports jackets. You’re really trying to divert my focus from the conversation we need to have.”

“Damn, not even pretending to take it easy on me. You know, sometimes I think you wake up most mornings and choose violence.”

“Really, I should be going to sleep right now, so I can get up on time tomorrow and choose violence.” He sits down across from Kuroo and reaches over the table to flick his forehead. “And you should be going to sleep right now, too, so you can get up tomorrow and choose to be an insufferable asshat.” His eyes crinkle at the edges, his face framed in shadow from the meager light of the cellphone placed between them. “You’re regretting something, aren’t you? What made you come out here?”

“You’re getting really good at reading my emotions.” Kuroo’s grin turns into a more genuine smile, and he run his hands over his water-soaked hair. “Our bond isn’t even open.”

“Answer the question, Kuroo-san.”

He sighs and leans forward, placing his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. “We had a fight. My dad and I.”

“Right,” Akaashi says. “You said you went over to Kozume-kun’s house and forgot to come back before curfew.” He looks down at his hands, which have already begun to tangle their fingers together, as if he has a question and they have the answer. “Your father is… good to you, right? Would he ever do anything to make you want to leave?”

“No, absolutely not. It isn’t like that at all.” He places his hands over Akaashi’s, holding them there until Akaashi stops viciously twisting his fingers around one another. “My dad’s the best person I know, but sometimes I don’t realize it before I do something stupid, and shit like this happens.”

“Then, is there a reason you called me instead of going back to him? I mean, you are in your own subdivision, you should know your way to your house.”

“I’m not ready to go back,” Kuroo says, the words a whisper, half-hoping that Akaashi won’t overhear.

Akaashi does overhear, though, because he glances back up with confusion in his eyes. “Your father is very kind to you, but you don’t want to go back to him? If he’s as good as you say, won’t he be worried about where you are?”

“Yeah, he will, and I know I’m a dick for not letting him know that I’m fine. But it’s because he’s such a nice person that I’m not ready to go back yet.”

“But you will go back, won’t you?”

“Of course. I’ll probably go home in the next hour or so. But not yet.”

“You’ll have to forgive me, Kuroo-san, but I don’t understand.” Akaashi fixes him with a more sympathetic look, though one still tinged in uncertainty. “If you regret what you did, and you know you’ll worry him if you stay away, and you don’t want to worry him by staying away, then I don’t understand why we’re not going back right now.”

He turns outward, focusing on what parts of the rainfall he can make out in the near-darkness beyond the shelter. “Do you ever feel like you don’t deserve to be treated well?”

Akaashi, gods bless him, actually takes a few seconds to think before giving Kuroo’s partially rhetorical question an answer. “Sometimes, I suppose. Bokuto-san seems to think I’m the best thing he’s ever come across in his life, and Kozume-kun is always willing to spend time with me even though he’s not big on socializing, and you stay up late with me some nights talking about things that only really interest me. So, I suppose I feel that I don’t deserve those things, at times.”

“But have you ever really fucked up your relationship with someone in some way, and then had the person whose relationship you fucked up just outright forgive you? Like, you expected them to blow up in your face, but instead they told you it was no big deal?”

He frowns again, biting at his lower lip. “I… can’t say I have, no.” Even this late at night, though, he catches onto Kuroo’s meaning and his eyes go a bit wider. “But I can certainly imagine it, if that’s what you’re feeling.”

“I’m feeling something like that, yeah. It defies all logic, really. Like, I know what I deserve, which is my father shouting at me because of what I did, but when I get home, he’ll just be super nice and understanding about this whole thing.” Kuroo places his hands over his face, his words coming out muffled when he speaks again. “It feels wrong to me. It feels like I’m getting something I didn’t earn.”

“You don’t have to earn your father’s love,” Akaashi says, voice barely louder than the storm around them and yet forceful enough that Kuroo instantly believes him. “I think your father knows that. He knows you aren’t perfect, and it seems like he’s fine with your imperfections.”

“So what, I get to just keep running away, and he has to keep acting like it’s not a big deal?”

“But you aren’t going to keep doing this.” Kuroo watches Akaashi out of the corner of his eye, finding that the patches of light and darkness dancing across his face makes the setter almost intimidating to look at head-on. “If you didn’t care about your father’s feelings and ran just as a way to manipulate him, then things would be different. But you didn’t run for that reason, did you?”

“I… no, I didn’t. I wasn’t even thinking about what I was doing.”

“Do you want to do it again?”

“Hell no. I lasted, what? A half hour? I’m already freezing and miserable and regretting everything, so no, I won’t be pulling this shit again.”

Akaashi’s hands snake across the table, meeting Kuroo’s and intertwining with them. “Then I don’t think your father’s forgiveness is undeserved. If you recognize what you did was wrong and feel remorse for it, then in this situation I don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to be forgiven.”

“I’ve fucked this whole thing up, though, what if nothing’s ever the same—”

“And what if it is? You say your father is a kind person, someone who’s willing to move on from this whole thing. It sounds to me like you’ll get a second chance. It’s not too late to go back home.”

Kuroo sighs, spending the next several minutes just listening to the patter of rain against the wooden roof over his head. Akaashi doesn’t speak, but Kuroo can feel him watching, waiting for the right moment to start talking again.

It doesn’t matter if he talks or not, though, because Kuroo always knew he would go back home anyways. He just needed someone to push him.

“Hey, Akaashi,” he says when the rain dies down a little.

“Yes, Kuroo-san?”

“I’m going to head home now.” He pushes off the bench to stand, tugging Akaashi’s jacket tighter over his shoulders. “And I’d like you to come back with me.”

Akaashi tips his head to one side, drumming his fingers over the tabletop. “Why’s that?”

“Because it’s eleven at night.” Akaashi’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and he turns his phone on to confirm the late hour as Kuroo continues. “I know you already came all this way, but I don’t want to send you back at almost midnight. It would be kind of a dick move to show my thanks by letting you hop on a train this late and probably get mugged.”

He shrugs, standing and tossing his backpack over his shoulder. “My parents should be fine with that. Are you sure your father will want me, though? You’re about to have a pretty personal conversation.”

“That’s why I want you around, for moral support. And my dad won’t mind you coming over at all, since Kenma does it all the time. I even have an extra futon.”

So they walk back to Kuroo’s house, holding hands around the umbrella handle that they both grasp. When Kuroo hesitates at his own front door, overcome with an anxiety that nearly prevents him from knocking, Akaashi keeps a calming grip on the back of his shirt, the constant pressure enough to convince him to go forward and face the challenge ahead.

Chapter Text

Summer training camp has gone better than he expected, Kuroo thinks as the sun sets on the last full day. Kenma and Yamamoto aren’t at each other’s throats like they were during last year’s camp, choosing now to just avoid each other when they can and ignore each other when they can’t. Kuroo doesn’t have a gaggle of malicious third years breathing down his neck anymore, and the new first years who came in are an absolute breeze to deal with; Inuoka and Shibayama mostly just watch shit go down instead of getting involved in it, and Lev, for all his childish overexcitement and propensity towards accidental insults, is a genuinely good kid who means no harm.

So, naturally, something has to come up on the last day to ruin his streak of unusually good luck.

It happens during the last individual practice of the camp, just when things are finally starting to get exciting. Lev occasionally figures out how to connect with the ball, Karasuno’s little Chibi-chan finally makes a few stellar blocks, and Tsukishima actually shows the barest amount of interest in their present scrimmage.

Then Akaashi sends up a truly horrible toss. Normally, Kuroo wouldn’t say anything negative about most people’s sets, because even the worst setter is still better at throwing the ball up than he is, but the toss Akaashi makes quite literally shoots out horizontally, landing at his spikers’ feet instead of up near their heads. It’s so unlike him in its poor quality that it disquiets even Bokuto, who for once isn’t complaining about a missed spiking opportunity.

“You good?” Bokuto asks, taking a hesitant step towards the setter.

Kuroo only hears part of the reply, some explanation of Akaashi’s hands being sweaty and the ball slipping out of them at an odd angle, because Lev jumps in front of him, hand raised for a high five like the other team making a basic mistake is cause for celebration.

On the other side of the court, Bokuto hovers over Akaashi, eyes wide with concern. “You know, if you need a break—”

“I’m fine,” Akaashi says, a little too sharply. He corrects his tone and tries again. “I’m alright, Bokuto-san, I promise.”

They settle back into their match, which the six of them get so invested in they forget to keep any kind of score. That doesn’t matter to Kuroo, who’s ninety-nine-point-five percent sure his team won, score or no score, because Tsukishima made a monster block in the middle of the last set that he was way too nonchalant about. Playing like that doesn’t come from losers.

Meanwhile, their opponents failed to click tonight like they had even just yesterday. Most of this, truthfully, came about because of Akaashi’s sets; ever since that one weird toss, all of his throws started careening a little wide. Hinata especially had trouble with this, after getting used to Akaashi’s consistency throughout the week only to suddenly have to chase far too many rogue balls. Bokuto, who has a little more flexibility that his protégé, but only a little, hardly faired any better.

And Akaashi himself – well, Kuroo thinks he looks a little too pale.

As the other players chat while they gather their things (or, in Tsukishima’s case, stuff everything into their gym bag and run so they don’t have to talk to anybody), Kuroo watches Akaashi closely. He notes how the setter stumbles a little just reaching down to grab his bag, sees how badly his hands shake as he ties his shoes.

Then Bokuto spontaneously remembers, as he has done every night this week, that if they don’t hurry they’ll miss out on dinner, and he leads Lev and Hinata on a frantic sprint towards the dining hall. That leaves only Kuroo and Akaashi standing in the threshold to the 3^rd Gym.

The first hint that something is really wrong with Akaashi is that he doesn’t turn off the lights in the gym as he steps out of it. Ever since they first started practicing together in this place, he’s always been the one to turn them off, even coming back to check like he did that one time last year when he found Kuroo in the middle of a flashback. But now he just leaves, not even glancing back as he makes his way down the stairs.

The second hint is much more obvious. When Akaashi steps off the bottom stair and onto the sidewalk outside the gym, he nearly trips over his own feet, confusion evident on his face once he somewhat regains his balance. Then his legs give all at once, his shoulders slumping, and Kuroo leaps forward to wrap arms around him just as he pitches forward.

By the time they land on the ground in a tangle of limbs, Akaashi is conscious again but clearly dazed. He doesn’t protest when Kuroo helps him up onto the bottom step of the 3^rd Gym, gently pushing down on his shoulders until his head rests between his knees.

They stay that way for several minutes, Kuroo rubbing soothing circles against Akaashi’s back and instructing him to take deep breaths, and Akaashi squeezing his eyes shut and dragging in shaky gasps. “Kuroo-san?” He swivels his head around a little as he tries to get his bearings, blinking hard. “What’s going on?”

“You’re good, just stay like that for a little longer.” His hand leaves Akaashi’s back and lands softly at the base of his skull. “You passed out, but I don’t think you hit anything. How do you feel?”

“Dizzy,” he murmurs, words slurring a little.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’d bet you were dizzy while we were playing, too, weren’t you?”

He nods and tries to sit up, but apparently even that slight movement was a bad idea, because it has him clutching his head with a groan. His skin is ghostly white, and he sways a little even just sitting still; Kuroo has to actively work to keep him from falling over again.

When it becomes evident that he can’t support himself, Kuroo tucks Akaashi’s head in the crook of his neck, one hand pressed between the setter’s shoulder blades and the other carding through his hair. Akaashi sighs and sinks into the embrace, bringing his own arms up to wrap weakly around his boyfriend’s waist. His entire body trembles with the motion.

“I feel like shit,” he says in his usual matter-of-fact tone, like he’s commenting on the weather.

Kuroo pulls away a little and plants a kiss on Akaashi’s forehead. “I know, I hate it for you. It’s this damned heat, probably. A full week of playing all-out in it will wear on anybody.” His mind chooses that very moment to supply him with a memory of an event, or rather, of the lack of an event. “Actually, come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing you in the dining hall for lunch. Please tell me you ate something.”

Akaashi’s wits have returned to him enough for him to look guilty. “Not since breakfast, no. I did this to myself, didn’t I?”

“Well, it certainly doesn’t help. But, Keiji.” He cups one side of Akaashi’s face in his palm, and Akaashi leans into the touch. “Why didn’t you eat?”

He shrugs and glances away. “I was busy.”

“With what?”

“I kept tossing wide during the morning games. I knew that if I wanted to show any improvement for the afternoon games, I needed to find some time to work on them, and I thought practicing my tosses was more important than... eating...” He trails off, frowning, perhaps recognizing the weakness of his argument.

“It’s not more important when you’re neglecting your needs,” Kuroo says. “You’ve got to give your body fuel if you want to get anything done at all.”

“Practice felt more important.”

“Keiji, look at me.”

Akaashi’s eyes flicker back to Kuroo’s face; they’ve regained all clarity, the haze in them gone and replaced with a weary but steady focus. “You keep using my first name. It’s unlike you, and I’m not sure if I like it.”

“That’s because this is important. You’re far from shortsighted. I know you know that you can’t play volleyball for nearly ten hours straight on barely any food without facing repercussions.”

“Of course, Kuroo-san,” he whispers, eyes fluttering closed.

“You’re taking your position seriously, and I get that.” Kuroo rummages around in Akaashi’s bag and pulls out his water bottle, handing it over. “But there’s a reason all the teams follow a schedule as strictly as we do. It’s to keep stuff like this from happening.”

“I understand that.” He drinks in small, slow sips. “I felt fine then and thought I could handle it afterward, which I obviously couldn’t. It was a simple oversight on my part.”

“And it won’t happen again, right?”

He says nothing, face impassive.

“Damn it, Akaashi!” Kuroo digs his fingernails into the step he’s sitting on, then quickly pulls himself together enough to speak with some level of coherence. “Do you think I liked watching you faint and almost hit your head on the fucking concrete? Do you think I wanna see it again?”

The last piece of Akaashi’s stoic mask shatters, and he hunches over himself, burying his face in his hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about that, I didn’t mean it.”

“I know. I’m sorry, too, I shouldn’t have yelled.” He tips his head back and takes a deep breath in, holding it for a few seconds before releasing it as calmly as he can manage. “You really worried me back there, though. I’ve never seen you like that, and I never want to see it again. But more than that, I don’t want you to think that you… deserved it somehow. Or that it was a necessary part of helping out your team. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself like that. You know that, don’t you?”

Instead of answering, Akaashi crumbles, choking back a sob, and Kuroo once more surges forward to catch him and pull him close. “Talk to me,” Kuroo says. “What’s going on? You’re not acting like yourself.”

“I’m a burden,” Akaashi mutters, the words so quiet that he probably intended to go unheard.

“You’re delirious from low blood sugar, is what you are.” He wipes his thumb across Akaashi’s cheek, clearing one of the few tears that fell through his careful repression. “What makes you think you’re a burden? Did someone say something?”

“No one needs to. I can see it myself. I came to this camp expecting to improve, but I know I’m not any better than I was at the start of it. I’m probably no better than I was at last year’s camp.”

Kuroo gives a half-smile. “Now I know that’s not true, because you jumped in front of my spikes this year. You wouldn’t have done that to save your life this time last year.”

“Yes, I did, and my form was terrible and the ball rightfully smacked me in the face. Confidence is useless without the skill to back it up.”

“And you’re not skilled?”

“Not skilled enough. Not for this team.” He draws in a breath that sounds more like a hiss, gripping Kuroo’s shirtfront. “They all deserve so much better than someone who still plays like he’s never been in a game before. And I can’t… I just can’t give them that. I can’t give them that unless I work every single free second that I have.”

“You can’t be the whole team, you know.”

Akaashi tips his head forward, forehead pressing against Kuroo’s collarbone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, you shouldn’t expect to take all the responsibility for failed plays. Think of Nekoma, alright? Sure, we want a really nice set-spike combo to get us a point, that’s the main goal of our plays, but if Kenma’s set doesn’t work out we have people who can cover for him.”

“But Bokuto-san and everyone else would hit so much better if I—”

“If you what? If you were some perfect setting machine? If you hit your intended target one hundred percent of the time?” He laughs and tips Akaashi’s chin up so they’re facing one another. “That would definitely help, but nowhere on the entire planet will they ever find someone with that much accuracy. Your spikers have to learn how to adapt to different kinds of sets, it’s a necessary part of playing their position well. Otherwise, they’d just run and jump and swing their arms the same way every single time, which, in my humble middle blocker opinion, sounds boring as hell. I know for a fact that Bokuto would complain about it.”

He pulls away from Kuroo’s grasp, leaning his elbows on his knees. “I’ve really gotten in my own head again, haven’t I?”

“It happens to the best of us. But I'll help you make sure it doesn't happen again.”

“Thank you, Kuroo-san.” Kuroo soaks in the smile on Akaashi’s face; it’s small and still a little fragile, but it’s genuine. “For everything.”

“Don’t mention it. As much as you’ve helped me out, I think it only makes sense for me to pay it back.” He stands up from the step, helping Akaashi do the same, then bending down to pick up both of their gym bags. “Now, I think it would be best if we found you something to eat. I heard someone say they’re serving mackerel pike, and I don’t know about you, but I plan to partake in some of it.”

“You’re still obsessed with that stupid fish, I see.” Though Akaashi is still a little shaky on his feet, needing Kuroo’s hand on his shoulder to keep him steady, he seems otherwise fine. And, more importantly, his usual sarcastic tone has crept back into his voice. “Sort of bland, isn’t it?”

“Akaashi, my man, you have got to get over that.”