"Tea, If You So Please."
From Jo's Playlist: Through Heaven's Eyes from Prince of Egypt
Kuroo was kind enough to let Jo avoid the topic of her collapse for the time being. Her fingernails absently picked at her cuticles in anticipation. She brought her thumb to her mouth and bit at a hangnail as she read the pages of her chemistry textbook, mind far away from the words on the page. She could tell he was curious. His gaze lingered on her. A remnant of poorly covered sympathy flickering in his deep eyes.
She didn't want him to see her so vulnerable.
The window was open with a freezing breeze fluttering the pages, legs crossed across a handmade quilt, and a cup of steaming tea on the sill. It was a cold night. Apparently the last few weeks had been peculiarly warm, and Jo was regretting their agreement of studying.
Another puff of wind swept through her room, making her teeth chatter, bones vibrate, and pages ruffle to a random picture of a diagram. Jo tilted her head up. Kuroo appeared just as chilled as she. His shoulders were curled to his ears as he bent over his notebook with the hood of his deep red sweatshirt pulled up over his hair.
So she took a shot in the dark. "Want to come over and study? It's so cold tonight," she asked, heart picking up pace.
He looked up suddenly. His glasses had slid to the tip of his nose and he pushed them up with a knuckle. "Sure," he said after a beat, grasping for words. "Give me about ten minutes?" He sat up straight, shoulders dropping flat.
Jo tilted her head to the right. The bun on the top of her head flopped over oddly. "Sounds good." He seemed nervous. His fingers drummed on his desk. But his face never shifted from its easy smile.
They closed their windows simultaneously.
Jo bounded down the stairs, fingers gripping the rail with a deathgrip. She followed the trail of music to the kitchen where she found her parents. Brown, heavy paper covered the kitchen table. Paint brushes with chipping wood and fraying bristles were strewn across it, like constellations of the sky. Handmade clay mugs of browns, light blues, and deep greens were filled with water, some murky and others clear. A particularly large mug with the words Coffee sprawled on the side rested beside her mother's bent elbow.
Her mother was perched on a bar stool that had been pulled to the table. Her black overalls were splattered with paint, old and new, acrylic and oil. Her hair was piled neatly on her head, a pencil and pin stuck carefully in the strands.
The overhead light fell on Jo's mother in a way that romanticized her. Where the lines around her mouth faded and the few streaks of gray were gone. She melted into a different person whenever she painted. A woman who was as carefree as the wind. Whom novelists wrote about endlessly between their pages.
And her father was the man with the striking blue eyes who swept her across the world in a hazy dream.
Jo leaned her chest on the door frame, arms dangling loosely at her sides and face pressed in the wood. "Hey, Mom," she said, ignoring her father at the counter. Her mother looked up, eyes focusing from suddenly being brought back from her artistic fever. "Kuroo's coming over to study. Can we use the living room?"
"No," was her father's automatic response. He didn't glance away from his laptop.
Her mother gave her an exasperated look and Jo rolled her eyes to the ceiling, praying that the annoyance would roll away from her chest. "Of course. There are blankets in the chest." Her mother said, waving her paintbrush.
The doorbell rang and Jo shot up quickly, heart tripping over her ribs. "Door's open!" She called. Her mother shot her a hard look and her father paused his rapid typing. She grimaced, sliding her way to the door in her wool socks.
Kuroo ducked in the house quickly, thanking her under his breath. Jo quickly hopped up to the main wooden floor, slipping a tad. "Would you like anything to eat or drink? I'm going to put the kettle on,"
"Water would be nice, thank you."
Her mom didn't look up from her painting fever when Jo poured filtered water in a glass. She set a timer for the electric kettle, pulling out the teapot and setting the bags inside. Her father glanced up.
Blue light from the screen reflected off his narrow glasses. His baby blue eyes studied her momentarily.
Jo shifted on her feet. "Yes?" she never liked it when he was analyzing her. It typically meant he was drawing conclusions that were never far from the truth-even if she didn't know what they were yet herself.
He hummed. "Nothing." His typing continued. The kettle began bubbling furiously, hissing at a low pitch.
Ignoring the spider like crawling along her neck, she poured the steaming water into the handcrafted, light pink teapot and set the timer. Most of their mugs and teacups were crafted from hand by her grandfather on her mom's side. The entirety of that side of the family were splattered with paint. Clay embedded under their nails and smith forges rosied their cheeks.
Jo picked up some of her mother's creativity but not much. She enjoyed embroidery and did simple acrylic painting, but that was the extent. She closely resembled her father, though hardly in looks.
Before the move Wednesday nights had been reserved for their musical hearts to be free of their cages. Both would pull out their guitars (her father would play the piano too) and play any song upon request. Jo's voice was in tune but hardly as lovely as her father's, who sang like a modern Frank Sinatra, or older Michael Buble. For a tough, scarred man, he had a soft side reserved solely for his family.
She missed those nights. Her mother would paint and they would sing well into the night. But lately they have all grown too busy to do that.
The buzzing timer pulled Jo from her revere and she carried the teapot to the living room. Kuroo had set up his space quickly at the low coffee table. He looked up from arranging his textbook and notebook.
He was a smudge of black and brown in the vibrant living room. It was filled with artifacts and nicknacks from all around the world. Pictures and bookshelves lined the back wall and a sliding glass door took up the one directly across from the entrance. A nicely sized TV on a low stand filled with video games took up the last wall.
Jo knelt on the red turkish rug. "I'll go grab my things and your water," she said with a smile. She hurried and grabbed her books, balancing the glass of water precariously utop her physics textbook.
The living room was absolutely miserably chilly. To combat it, Jo grabbed an armload of homemade quilts and various woven blankets from Mexico. She let them flop on the ground with a thud, startling Kuroo.
He eyed the colorful blankets, picking up a green and blue one. "Where are these from?" he pulled it around his shoulders.
Jo settled across from him, tucking a quilt around her legs and a blanket around her shoulders. "Mexico, mostly. I think some are from Spain,"
"What did you say your dad does?"
"He works for the embassy. But my brother got the Mexican blankets when he was down there for a mission trip years ago,"
Kuroo furrowed his brows. "Mission trip?" he said the words slowly, as though he had never heard the two placed together before.
Worried she had said the wrong thing, Jo hurried to explain. "It was with our church back in the US. We send a team to a children's home and help provide housing and any other necessities they need. We also minister to the kids in a fun way,"
Kuroo wrapped his long fingers around the water glass. "I thought your family was Jewish?"
Jo scratched the side of her cheek. Religion in her family was complicated at best. "By birth, my mom is. But she also grew up Christian. It's messy and complicated, but she follows customs of both, to put it plainly,"
He still seemed confused, but Kuroo nodded. "And you," he trailed off. Jo prepared herself for the inevitable question that always set her heart racing. "You're also Christian?" he blinked at her curiously.
Jo nodded firmly. "I am," her fingers picked up her pen.
He tilted his head to the side, hair falling into his curious eyes. "Why?" he asked it softly. As if it were a whisper from his heart he didn't know he was uttering.
Jo took a heavy breath, curving her spine comfortably and letting her eyes roam. A warm feeling settled over her chest, pushing the humming anxiety at bay. "Without a Creator, I can't make sense of it all. Even biologically we're a miracle. Everything around us is too precise, too exact to be made out of chance. That's why I love science so much," she tapped her fingers on her textbook. "It all points back to a Creator who loved us so much that He set a plan to save us when we created a mess."
Something passed over Kuroo's face. A shadow darkened his eyes and his mouth pulled in a straight line. Worried she upset him somehow, she hurried, "I don't want to force my beliefs on you. It won't change anything between us. My heritage is just important to me," she finished quietly.
Kuroo shook his head. He leaned forward, the cloud gone from his face. "If it's important to you then it's important to me. I haven't met many Christians. It's different,"
Another wave of warmth spread throughout her chest. Jo quirked her lip up and tilted her head to the side. "I understand. Ready to study?"
He nodded, clearing his throat and shifting his pencil and calculator. "Let's tackle this."
The tea had run low by the time they decided to call it a night. Jo fell on her back in a swirl of blankets with a huff. Kuroo also fell back, hair spilling wildly upon the green threads. She turned her head, grinning at him from underneath the table. "I feel like my head is about to explode," she said.
Kuroo pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. "All I have are math equations swirling in front of my eyes," he said, a breathy laugh escaping him. His arms fell over his head with a thump and he stared blankly at the ceiling.
They stayed like that for a few calm, silent moments. Jo stayed on her side, shifting from studying him to picking at the threads of the red turkish rug. "How's your dad?" she asked.
Kuroo shifted. He pulled a baby blue quilt up around his waist, fiddling with the edges. He then pulled a pillow down from the couch, stuffing it behind his head and settling in. He was stalling, Jo realized.
"He's doing fine," he said at last. "Should be getting to work right about now." His tone was carefully indifferent. His face oddly blank while it typically held much life and expression.
"I'm sure he works hard," Jo said.
His face tightened. "He does."
"Your grandparents doing alright?" she asked.
Again he took a moment to respond. "They're also fine. Probably in bed right about now."
Jo nodded, her cheek rubbing against the scratchy carpet. He was a closed book. No, he was a shut in the library. His eyes were the grime covered windows, allowing quick peaks to the mysteries inside. But his mouth, the door, was locked tight.
And she was the curious girl who desperately wanted inside. To trace her fingers along broken, worn spines of the books. To carefully flip the yellowed, brittle, papers. To memorize the inky words.
"What happened this morning?" he finally asked. Softly, gently. As though the question would break her.
Jo was not ashamed of her spell. It was just so embarrassing and for some reason she cared that he saw her at her weakest. Maybe it was because he was a near stranger. A stranger in her house, under her blankets, in a room her family cherished the most.
She took a deep breath. Tendons pulled in her neck and chest, causing a sharp pain to thrum through her shoulders. "I have some heart issues," she said. "I was pushed a little too hard. I'll be going to the doctor here and there for more tests to make sure there are no other underlying issues." She avoided his gaze. He had turned his head to study her.
He hummed. "That sucks. I'm sorry about that,"
It did suck. And he didn't try to fix the situation. Didn't tell her to get stronger, to work harder, like Matteo had once said. He just let it be what it was: a sucky situation.
It wasn't much later when Jo yawned and Kuroo said he would head back home. He helped her take the dishes to the kitchen, where her mother had left her painting to dry. Kuroo lingered by the table, studying the canvas carefully.
"Who did this?" he asked, pointing at the still glistening project.
Jo glanced over from the sink, where she washed out the mug and teapot. "My Mom,"
In the dim light of the lone kitchen glow he was yet again, a smudge. Charcoal gray and deep red bent and swirled into a boy who held intelligence in his shoulders and confidence in his stride.
But somehow, she got the inkling he was alone. Terribly alone. His mannerisms said otherwise. His lopsided grin and charles charm screamed player and confidence. And maybe he was those things. But a shadow lingered in his footsteps. And the more she listened to him talk, how little he spoke of himself, the more she wondered.
Jo came up beside him, moving quietly. Without thinking, she brushed her hand along his shoulder down to his mid-back. "Everything okay?"
He blinked. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." He blinked a few more times, rapidly. He gave her a sidelong grin. "I'll see you in the morning."
And just like that, all vulnerability was gone. The door shut.
Jo walked him out, locking the door behind him. As she showered and changed for bed, she couldn't shake the peculiar look on his face. The carefully masked sorrow as he studied her Mom's painting.
A painting of a lion pressing his mighty forehead against that of a little lamb.
AN: I was hesitant to reveal this as part of Jo's character. Because honestly, I know it will make some people upset. And I do apologize if that is the case, but please remember that though this is a fanfiction, it is also a story. A story of acceptance of yourself and others. Please let me know what you think.