Chapter 1

"It's not fair."

Kuroo sighed at the ceiling with an only slightly-audible note of exasperation. He considered himself a fairly patient man on a good day, but even he had his limits.

Still, he rolled over onto his side, settling his cheek against the pillow to face one very pouty Bokuto Kotarou, arms stretched out to hold his phone aloft over his head, thumbs dragging over the screen, absently zooming in and out.

"What isn't?" He asked, coaxing his tone to be every bit as gentle and sympathetic as Bokuto needed to hear right now. Honestly, sometimes he was such a saint, he amazed himself.

"Why does he have to be so goddamn pretty all the time? It should be illegal," Bokuto groaned despairingly, swiping across the screen to peer intently at the next candid photo in his lineup.

Of course, this was about Akaashi. Kuroo could have guessed as much before Bokuto had even opened his mouth, from the permanent pout scrunching up his face and the intermittent, pining sighs he'd been releasing for much of the past half-hour or so. At this point his crush was so crippling and completely obvious, it was a miracle the entire Fukurodani team wasn't in on it by now. In fact, he suspected the majority of them were, with the exception of one, oblivious and admittedly rather pretty setter.

"Hmm," he hummed thoughtfully, amused as always by the desperate, almost drowning expression that took over Bokuto's face as he scanned over elegant, half-lidded eyes and floating wisps of dark hair along the curve of Akaashi's jawbone and the delicate shell of his ear. "Maybe you're being punished."

Wide, owlishly blinking eyes flitted over to him in alarm, and Bokuto sat up halfway, bracing his elbows against the bed.

"Punished?" He echoed, seeming distraught by the very idea.

"Yeah, like Tantalus or something," Kuroo mused dramatically, folding an arm under his cheek to prop himself up, "Cursed to always want but never have; tortured by thirst for all eternity - "

"'M not cursed," Bokuto frowned, scrolling through his phone again with almost childish stubbornness, "And I'm not thirsty for Akaashi."

Kuroo snorted loudly, covering his mouth with one hand and pushing off his pillow with the other, "Sure you're not."

"I'm not!" Bokuto insisted.

"Oh yeah? How many pictures of him are on your phone?"

Bokuto's finger hovered over the screen indecisively, as if weighing the pros and cons of deleting his entire camera roll before having to answer that.

Kuroo raised an expectant, jibing eyebrow, and Bokuto huffed a sigh, positively sulking and letting his phone drop onto his chest in defeat.

"287," he mumbled, locking the screen and fixing his sullen golden gaze on the ceiling overhead.

Kuroo let out a low, impressed whistle. "That's quite a collection..." Nudging Bokuto's leg teasingly with one socked foot, he fixed him with the gossiping smirk he'd been using on him - quite effectively, he might add - for several weeks edging into months now. "How many of those was he actually aware of you taking?"

Bokuto bit his lip petulantly, and for a moment, Kuroo thought he might outright refuse to say, but then he crossed his arms and covered his face with them, like a little kid caught in a lie, "Counting the selfies with him, probably six."

"Six? Out of almost three hundred? Damn," Kuroo snickered, "I didn't know you were such a creepy stalker; get out of my bed."

"'M not a stalker," came Bokuto's muffled protest, and with a quick contraction of his stomach muscles, he sat up as well, letting his long arms fall into his lap along with his abandoned phone (really more of a digital Keiji Akaashi photo archive at this point). "He just...looks so nice when he's smiling, or setting the ball, or lecturing the first-years -"

"- or blinking or breathing or taking up space, I get it," Kuroo waved him off with an impassive yawn, reaching up to ruffle a hand through the back of his perpetually-unkempt hair, "So why don't you ask him out instead of making a documentary about him?"

Bokuto squirmed where he sat, the beginning of a flush creeping across the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears as he lowered his head to hide his flustered expression.

Kuroo couldn't help a smug grin, leaning in close until he was right up in Bokuto's face, able to feel the tick of his eyelashes against his cheeks and almost taste his breath.

"Hey," he murmured, pitching his voice teasingly low as he lightly knocked their foreheads together, "Is the big, bad Fukurodani captain too shy to ask his little kouhai out?"

"Shut up," Bokuto grumbled, trying and failing to turn his face away as it only continued to flood with color, "It's not like that."

"But Bokuto-san ," Kuroo pressed, affecting a much higher, nasally exaggeration of a certain second-year setter's voice and batting his eyes coyly, "You didn't have any trouble asking the big, bad Nekoma captain out, did you? You're so brave …"

"That's different," Bokuto insisted hysterically, waving his hands about and trying to scoot back from Kuroo's entirely necessary invasion of his personal space, "Besides, we're not -"

" Bokuto-san, " Kuroo repeated, this time rolling his voice into a silky smooth purr, stalking closer on all fours and bringing their lips a hair's breadth apart, surveying him through half-mast, mischievous eyes, "That mean old alley cat could've eaten you alive…"

For several seconds, Bokuto just stared at him blankly, perched at the very edge of the bed in almost certain danger of tipping off of it, and then all at once his face split in a grin and he started shaking with suppressed laughter, hunching his shoulders and poking his tongue out between his bright white teeth. Only when Kuroo sat back slightly did it burst out of him in great snickering gusts, and he fell against Kuroo in a rush, all but tackling him and pinning him down under his greater body weight.

"Dude, if that was supposed to be a pickup line…" he began threateningly.

"What, it didn't work?" Kuroo panted, a little short of breath not least because his lungs were currently sandwiched between the mattress and 78 unyielding kilograms of solid muscle and sinew.

"It doesn't even make any sense," Bokuto pointed out, drawing himself up importantly with an edge of laughter still wrapping around his voice, "Cats don't eat owls."

Allowing his unguarded smirk to shift slowly into a leer, Kuroo craned his neck and hooked his free arm around the back of Bokuto's.

"Sure they do," he said sleekly, tracing his tongue along his lower lip with a deliberately suggestive southward glance.

He watched Bokuto's gaze drop quickly, lingering on the taut lines of his neck and sweeping lower, lower...he heard his throat click as he swallowed. "You're actually evil, you know that?"

"Mother tells me every day," Kuroo quipped soberly, snagging his fingers in Bokuto's hair and tugging lightly, "Now get down here and kiss me, you gross stalker."

"I already said I'm not a stalker," Bokuto grumbled, but obliged nonetheless, dipping his head down to sweep up Kuroo's mouth in a slow, thorough kiss.

When it was over, somewhere in the reconnections between hot, shallow breaths and eagerly playing tongues, Kuroo found himself looking up at that owl's dumb, beet-red face, and couldn't hold in a resigned chuckle to himself.

"What?" Bokuto asked breathlessly, allowing Kuroo to attempt to straighten his disheveled hair for him, though he only managed to mess it up even worse.

"You're not gonna miss this?" He prompted casually, skimming his fingers down Bokuto's neck and shoulder and drawing him closer, "If you do end up snagging your pretty little setter's heart?"

Were it possible, he imagined Bokuto might have flushed even darker, and he quickly averted his gaze. He didn't answer right away, but Kuroo thought he could guess what he might have said. We were never supposed to be serious. This is only temporary, we both know that.

"Dumbass," he smirked dryly, reaching up and poking him in the face, "I'm kidding."

Bokuto shot a doubtful glance his way, but it was replaced with a wide, sheepish grin so quickly that Kuroo wondered if he'd imagined it.

"Don't worry about it," he went on, attempting to wriggle out from under Bokuto's considerable bulk, to no avail, "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it; you just try not to get a restraining order before then. Leave the rest to me."

The next time he looked, Bokuto's face had filled up his entire field of vision, and he was peering at him intently from about a centimeter away, eyes nearly crossing at the close proximity.

Kuroo raised an eyebrow skeptically, and scooted back a bit to better take in his curious expression.

"You're always so down for being my wingman, man," Bokuto noted thoughtfully, tipping his head to one side in a quirky, birdlike fashion, "Why?"

"I don't suppose you'd believe it's out of the pure, angelic kindness of my heart," Kuroo deadpanned, sitting up halfway - as much as he could manage with his lower half pinned under Bokuto's powerful thighs, "Or maybe I've got a thing for fey, emotionless volleyball players myself and I'm just using you to get close to one."

Bokuto's eyebrow twitched, and the stubborn, childish pout was back on his face. "Fine then, don't tell me," he huffed theatrically, tossing his nose in the air and crossing his arms over his chest, "I was just asking..."

"And I'm just answering," Kuroo shrugged, a careless smirk sliding easily into place on his face, "I have my reasons."

"Why do I hang out with you again?" Bokuto sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with evident frustration.

"Because I'm hot and funny and fabulously charming?" Kuroo suggested helpfully, "Besides, you're hopeless without me, that's why I'm your wingman."

"Is that why?" Bokuto groused, before adding in little more than a mumble, "...I'm not hopeless."

"Says the guy with three hundred unsolicited photos and exactly zero dates," Kuroo said smoothly, "Admit it, you need my help in a really big way."

Bokuto's lower lip was already jutting out, but his expression didn't turn pitiful until his eyebrows joined in, as he started to sit back on his heels. "So what's your plan?"

Triumphantly freeing his legs that had started to lose feeling from under the heavy bastard's thighs, Kuroo folded them leisurely and shot him a conspiratorial grin.

"Bro, I am so glad you asked."

TBC