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Most people don't realize that Kenma's best friend is a hopeless romantic. Kuroo has always had good looks. Boyish charm has worn away into sharp edges, his uninhibited grin has been replaced by a knowing smirk that make men and women alike swoon. People have been assuming things about Kuroo their whole lives, they think that he's a playboy, a heartbreaker, a bad boy. He's always been a charmer, smooth with his words, open with people. He's good looking, his jaw having lost any of the boyish shape, becoming sharp, enticing in a way that make people literally stop on the street to look. His bedhead has never really gone away, despite a weird 6 month period where Bokuto convinced him to gel it down. Eventually, he'd gotten tired of putting in the extra work everyday, and let his hair go back to normal, to Kenma's audible relief. He just didn’t look like himself without that lopsided mop on his head, it suits him, adds to his charm. So, it's no surprise that people are always falling over themselves for him. But Kenma has known this boy his whole life. He knows that Kuroo is hopeless. Gorgeous, sure. But absolutely hopeless.
When they were kids, Kuroo had loved the idea of soulmates. He'd been obsessed with it, always talking and daydreaming and imagining about what it would be like to have one. When he'd woken up the morning of his 16th birthday to a soulmark prominently displayed along his collarbone, it had been fitting. He'd bragged to everyone who would listen about it, wearing loose collared shirts, buttons undone until the teachers yelled at him for it. When he'd suddenly stopped talking about it, Kenma had noticed, okay? He doesn't know what exactly happened for Kuroo to suddenly grow disillusioned to the idea of soulmates, but he'd been oddly grateful for it. So, he hadn't really asked.
The thing is, that when they were kids, Kenma had also liked the idea of soulmates. He'd been charmed by the way that Kuroo talked about it. Like this big magical thing that was guaranteed to happen to you. He'd liked that. When Kuroo got his mark at 16, it made sense, and also made Kenma eager for his own mark to appear. The problem was that Kenma's 16th birthday had come and gone, then 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. With each year that went by, a little more hope died.
As far as Kenma knew, everyone on the planet would get a soulmark at some point. Some people even got more than one. Soulmarks typically appear sometime around puberty, though there were enough cases of people getting their marks earlier or later that it's not super unusual to be 21 and not be marked yet. But the more time passes, the more Kenma has to face the reality that Kuroo has a mark and he doesn't. Soulmates usually get their marks around the same time. Which means that Kuroo isn’t Kenma's soulmate. There's a chance, slim as it may be, that Kenma doesn't have a soulmate at all. Which makes sense, to him. If his soulmate isn't Kuroo, he can't imagine it ever being any one else. He doesn't like people, doesn't want to get to know them, doesn't want to push himself to expand his world bigger than it is now. He's good, and if that means that he doesn’t get a soulmate, fine. He can live with that.
The choice for Kuroo and Kenma to move in together after high school had been an easy one for them. For them, it made complete sense. For their parents, on the other hand... Kenma's parents have been against all of Kenma's decisions for most of his life now. When he told them he wanted to skip college entirely, they'd just about rioted at him. When he'd told them that he'd been offered a paying job to do videogame testing, they'd told him to get his head out of the clouds. When he told them that he was going to move in with Kuroo, they'd tried to tell him that it wasn't a good long term solution. Jokes on them, because it's been three years and Kenma thinks it's going incredibly well.
Kuroo has just finished up his last year of Uni. His internship with the JVL has not officially turned into a job offer yet, but considering that they extended the internship for him past the six month mark, Kenma has no doubts that it will work out. In fact, Kuroo is gone this week for a series of conferences that the JVL is hosting. Kenma misses him, but he's also incredibly proud of his best friend.
It also means that Kenma has the house to himself this week. He's taken the opportunity to do several longer live streams, deep in the bowels of the latest early release that he's been sent. He doesn't do live streams a lot, most are pre-recorded, meant for the developers as they make the games before release, and then he's allowed to share the streams after they've been released. It works out well for him because he gets income for a lot of these videos twice.
This week though is a special promo, an early release, but he's been asked to do the stream live. He's been going nearly six hours straight at this point, the feed alive with activity as he pounds through the latest game.
Live streams are a whole separate skill set from just gaming, it requires a split attention on the game and the chats that fly-by, a half awareness to keep engaged with the viewers as well as keeping the game going. It's not his favourite, but he's gotten good at it. He's developed a reputation on the scene and a popularity that he doesn't think anyone could have predicted. It's weird, being a "minor celebrity" (as Kuroo puts it) but it's unfortunately true. He's been recognized as his gamer tag out on the street and even in the supermarket multiple times now. It's the kind of attention that he's not great with in person, but he doesn't mind it online.
He laughs as the chat dissolves into some argument or other. His fans and viewers nitpicking over details that don't matter. The problem is, that as he's gotten more famous, people have demanded more and more from him. They want to know who he is, when he first dyed his hair, what his other hobbies are, his opinions on every little thing they can think of, his relationship status, everything about his elusive roommate, and his soulmarks. It was exhausting at first, but he's developed a pretty good balance of tuning out certain parts of the conversation, and putting his foot down about things that are no one's business.
For some reason, his fans have only continued to multiply. Even after he showed them his grumpy true self, his popularity has continued to grow. The interest in his personal life is another reason why he doesn't do tons of live streams. If he lived alone it would be one thing. But they've been really careful to not have Kuroo appear in any videos (there's been some close calls). Kuroo's face is pretty well known in Japan, albeit in different circles than Kenma's fanbase typically are. But they keep everything separate on purpose, and it's just easier to do livestreams when he's not here.
However, the chat on his stream tonight seems to have noticed the absence too, and they keep spamming about it.
Where's the hot roommate??
Omg, yes. Send in the "totally not his boyfriend"!
They've done a pretty good job of keeping Kuroo separate from all of this, but he did walk in on an early livestream without his shirt on exactly one time. Luckily his face had been out of frame, and he'd only been walking by, so it had only been a shot of his side, nothing too personal or revealing, not even his soulmark in frame. But the moment where Kenma had seen him in the camera and utterly frozen, only his eyes tracking the movement of him across the screen is immortalized in memes that pop up over the regular in Kenma's life. He'd had to address it after people kept assuming that that was his boyfriend. He also knows that once the chat starts talking about him, they won't let it go until he says something.
"Yeah, my roommate is gone this week for work." He comments in passing, then turns their attention back to the game, "What do you guys think, left or right?"
A hundred people give their opinion, but like always, he goes left first. After a few minutes he backtracks, "Alright, as expected, looks like the boss room is down that hallway. Lets see what the other path has in store for us before we continue that way. So far every level has had a few more clues before we take on the boss, so I'm thinking we'll find a new low level monster in one of these- yep. There it is."
He continues to play, keeping up his idle chatter and commentary, and keeping a half an eye on the chat as he goes.
20 minutes later he's directing his character back to the probably boss room when the chat suddenly goes nuts. New comments pouring in so fast he can hardly read them.
"What's up with you guys?" He asks, leaning closer to try to catch the comments flying by.
Is this happening right now?!
Soulmarlk!????
It's forming right now!
Omg
Soulmark
Where
Soulmark!!!!!.??
On his neck! I can't beliebe I was here for thjs
"What?" He asks, turning his head to the monitor that shows the webcam feed. He doesn't look at it often, doesn't need to, as long as the camera is working. He takes in his own confused face, scanning the image of his long hair slipping loose of its bun, baggy sweater slumping down at the neck. Sure enough, there at neckline is a rapidly forming red line. His eyes widen, and he moves, automatically tugging the neck of his sweater down to see more before realization properly hits and he swears, slamming his hand over the mark to hide it. He jumps up, standing above the camera so they can't see the panic fully coursing through his veins.
What the actual fuck?
He can't do this. He can't panic right now. He's still on the clock. Still in public, the camera still on, even though it can't see his face now that he's standing.
He slams on the pause button on the game, keeping his other hand cupped protectively over his neck and mark.
"I- a break." He says quickly, slamming the pause button on the whole stream, hitting disable on the comments. He jerks free of the headphones and runs from the room.
The light of the day has all but disappeared, leaving the rest of the apartment in near darkness. When he turns on the light of the bathroom, he has to blinks hard against the sudden flood of harsh light. He yanks the collar of his shirt down, getting a good look of the still darkening mark forming around his collarbone.
His ears are ringing, blood pounding through his whole body too fast. Lightheaded, barely breathing, or maybe breathing too much too fast. Fuck! What the fuck?
He blinks hard, draws his fingers over the new mark, but it doesn't change, doesn't disappear. It's really there. Kenma just got his soulmark. The panic takes a back seat to realization all at once, because he knows this. The mark is completely and utterly familiar to him. It's a mark he's known for most of his life. It's a maroon coloured silhouette of a stretched cat, curled around his left collarbone, tail trailing up to his neck. It's a perfect match for the mark that Kuroo has had since he was 16 years old.
Kenma takes a deep breath.
He can't do this right now. Hes still on the clock, still streaming, he can't pause for too long, he has commitments to finish this section of the game today, another livestream event tomorrow. He's still breathing too hard. He looks at the reflection of his own eyes, tries to force the panicked look away, but his skin is still incredibly pale, bright red spots high on his cheeks.
"Fuck." He splashes water on his face. He can do this. Just power through the next level. He can do this.
He re-ties his hair, then grabs a hoodie and swaps shirts, the neckline of the hoodie will hide everything. He can't believe this. He hesitates in his office, standing back from the frozen screens, looking at the frozen chat that he disabled. The fans will have already made screenshots, memes, whatever. He can't stop it.
He grabs his phone, dialling Kuroo. The phone rings and rings. He hangs up when it goes to voicemail, then tries again. He checks the time. It's 8pm, Kuroo is probably at a networking event or dinner- right, a dinner. It's his last night in Nagano for the conference. Kenma listens to his voicemail greeting impatiently.
"Kuro. I." Fuck. He can't do this over voice message. What is he even supposed to say? "Fuck. I-" he swallows hard. "I need you to do me a favour. Something happened on the stream today. I need to talk to you in person before you see it online. Just. Call me- or. No. I know you have notifications set for news for me. Turn it off. Don't look at it. Just. Actually. Just. Turn off your phone. Please." He can't make any of this better. "I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything is... just. Please. I'll see you tomorrow."
He hangs up the phone, rubs his hand roughly over his face. That was a disaster.
He pulls up the texting with Kuroo. Don't check your phone. Listen to my voice message before you do anything else. Please.
It might not be enough. The notifications are probably already rolling in. He needs to get back online and get ahead of it all. He went through fairly intense media training before he started livestreaming for the game developers. He can do this.
He sits back down, puts his headphones on. Takes a deep breath, and unpauses the stream.
"Okay. I'm back." He's terrified of the chat right now, almost wants to leave it disabled. He clicks it back on and turns the game back on.
He ignores the chat entirely. Focuses wholly on the game, the number of viewers had taken a sudden bump, people showing up out of nowhere, but as he continues to be his normal self and just play, refusing to engage with the chat or even look at it, the viewership drops back down to the numbers it was before everything happened.
Kenma focuses all his attention on defeated this level's boss as quickly as possible.
"This will be the last level for tonight." He tells them all, knowing that he's shutting it all down early, but he can't. His focus is shot, and his character struggles with the boss more than he should before Kenma finally gets through the level and to a good stopping point.
He goes through the play screens for the level, the dialogue scenes without really seeing any of them. When it's over he just... Sits there.
He needs to address this. Needs to do it now. Wishes to all hell that one of the media consultants that he's worked with before were there to give some advice about how to handle this. "When in doubt, be honest." had been one of the pieces of advice he'd received early on, and he's definitely in doubt now.
"Guys." He starts slowly, raising his head to look into the camera directly. "Guys, listen. I haven't looked at the chat, that's probably obvious. I'm not going to, either. You guys are not just my fans, but my community. I need..." He licks his lips. "I know to a lot of people, they think of soulmarks as public domain, as something the public should have access to. I don't think that. I've always thought of soulmarks as a private thing, an intensely personal thing that should be kept private. I'm really-" He winces. He hates this. His hands clench.
"I'm really upset that any part of this experience for me has been for public consumption. I know a lot of you are really excited, really curious, whatever. I know you'll be already doing... Screenshots and making memes and whatever all else." His face hurts, its so scrunched up, and he knows it's displaying every ounce of his feelings right now, he was never good at hiding his emotions. "All I can do is ask that you please, please, just respect my request for privacy in this. If you're making content around what happened with my marks today, please, just- just. Don't." He squeezed his eyes shut.
He breathes out, slow and long, then goes into his usual sign off. "Don't forget that there's another stream tomorrow morning so we can finish off the next couple levels. See you then."
He swears softly under his breath as he closes out of the stream. The chat is still going, but he can't bear to look at it. Normally, he lets the chat run for a while before closing it down too, but tonight all he can do it close it all down now. He takes a few shaky breaths and goes to the kitchen. He wants to curl up in bed and not move until the last possible second tomorrow- his body still a rollercoaster of the adrenaline and panic and the fallout from all that. But more than anything he knows he'll regret it if he doesn't eat something now. He's been streaming for six hours straight, and Kuroo isn't here to look after him, so he has to do it himself. He sighs. He can do this.
.
.
Kuroo has never been more worried in his life.
Kenma: Don't check your phone. Listen to my voice message first. Please.
"What the fuck?" Kuroo whispers, reading the message again. It's not just the cryptic words, or the fact that his phone has a bunch of other notifications too. He'll always check Kenma's messages first. The really concerning part is that little 'please'. It's not like him to plead for anything.
The concern only sinks deeper into his bones when he listens to the voice message.
"Something happened... I need to talk to you in person... Don't look at your phone... Turn it off... Please... I'll see you tomorrow..."
Kuroo bites his lip. A dozen different notifications are calling to him, he wants to know what's going on, wants to prepare for whatever this is. But Kenma said please. And there's almost nothing he wouldn't do for Kenma. He pulls up their texting chat without checking any other notifications.
Kuroo: Message recieved. Turning off phone now. Call the inn if you need me tonight before I get on the train tomorrow morning.
He makes sure it says sent, and then he powers the phone off.
He'd see if he could get on a train tonight instead, but without his phone, that's not going to happen. Fuck, he has a feeling he's in for the longest night of his life.
.
.
After Kenma sees Kuroo's message he feels a hundred times better and worse at the same time. He turns his own phone off, terrified of what the internet is saying about him and his mark right now.
Then he anxiously waits for morning to come.
.
.
There's a note on the door of their apartment. 'Livestreaming' it says simply. Kuroo's foot taps anxiously at the floor. He appreciates the note, because he was half a second from slamming the door open and sprinting to wherever Kenma is. This tells him to slow down, to breathe. He can't talk to Kenma until he's done his stream anyway. But at the same time... Isn't all of this happening because of a livestream yesterday? Is he really okay with streaming today? Is it a planned stream or is it in response to whatever happened? Kuroo's heart is still jack-rabbiting all over the place.
Get it together, Tetsu.
He takes a long, deep breath, exhaling all the way out before inhaling and quietly opening the door. He calls out a whispered greeting, out of habit and not expectation, not surprised when he doesn't get a response. He breathes in the scent of home and listens. He can just make out the sounds of a video game being played, and the sporadic sound of Kenma's one-sided conversations. Kuroo breathes slowly, then shakes himself. He puts away his shoes and jacket, then takes his bag and dumps it on his bed, he'll deal with it later.
He goes to Kenma's office, surprised to see the door is open. Kenma always shuts the door when he's streaming, but not today apparently. And when Kuroo goes to stand in the doorway, he's even more surprised to find that Kenma has his gaming chair turned so he can see the doorway, and see Kuroo when he appears.
Kenma's eyes focus on him immediately, his mouth opening around words that he doesn't say. For once in Kuroo's life, he has no idea how to read the look on Kenma's face. Kenma has always been incredibly expressive, but right now he looks like he has a thousand things to say and no way to say any of them. Kuroo raises his eyebrows, about to say something himself, but is interrupted by the sound of an explosion coming through the computer speakers. Kenma whips his head back to the screens, fingers in rapid motion across the controls as he gets his character to a safer location. Kuroo leans his shoulder on the doorframe and waits. He doesn't really expect Kenma to look back over at him, but after a couple minutes he does. He offers a small, chagrined kind of smile, which Kuroo returns easily. If Kenma is smiling, even a little, it means everything is okay. Kuroo waves Kenma back to his screens and pushes off the wall to go back to the kitchen and start making food.
"Okay, guys, this is the last level for today." He hears Kenma say.
As Kuroo starts pulling out ingredients for the meal, he feels himself start to relax. The adrenaline of the message he recieved yesterday, the panic of not knowing what was going on, all melt away at the feeling of being home. He's safe here, and so is Kenma, and that's more than enough for Kuroo.
Kuroo starts the food cooking, and goes ahead and starts cleaning up the kitchen, the days that he had been gone having built up piles of dishes in the sink. Kuroo doesn't mind that Kenma always forgets about his dishes, he'll remember eventually, but he tends to put things to the side and not think of them again. Kuroo doesn't mind, since it at least means that Kenma was eating while he was gone.
Eventually, the distant white noise of the livestream disappears. Kuroo takes the food out of the warmer where he'd been keeping it warm for the last couple minutes, and sets the table. Kenma pads up behind him, socked feet barely making a sound. He comes up to Kuroo directly, bumping into Kuroo's back, hands gripping Kuroo's sweater, forehead pressed between Kuroo's shoulder blades. This is not normal behaviour for Kenma, so Kuroo holds himself still. He'd almost forgotten, in the quiet peacefulness of the apartment, that something major had happened to Kenma yesterday.
He reaches back awkwardly and grabs one of Kenma's hands, loosening it's grip in his shirt and pulling it around himself to rest on his stomach instead. Kenma steps a bit closer, body now pressed to Kuroo's, and brings his other hand around Kuroo too. Kuroo threads their fingers together, just offering the comfort of his touch. They've always been like this, the easy comfort of wordless affection passed between them. Kenma isn't one for words, and Kuroo prefers actions to speak for him anyway, so on the hard days, they curl into each other for comfort, and it's easy to give that to Kenma today.
There's a silent part of Kuroo that has wanted this, has wanted Kenma, for years. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath when the emotions threaten to strangle him, tightening his grip on Kenma's hand. When Kenma's soulmark never manifested, it had wrecked something in Kuroo. He'd always believed that they would be soulmates, and the wider of a gap that came between Kuroo getting his soulmark at 16, and Kenma's not appearing, the more it felt like everything was wrong about the world. He gave up on the idea of soulmates a long time ago, because if Kenma isn't his, he doesn't want one. How could anything feel more right than what they have right here?
As always, he pushes the feelings aside. Right now, there's something far more important to worry about. Kenma sighs, and Kuroo feels it along his whole body, before he squeezes his arms around Kuroo for a second and pulls away.
"You made food?" Kenma asks, peering around him to the pan on the stove.
"Ye-eah." Kuroo's voice cracks in the middle of the word and he coughs to brush it off. Embarassing.
"Thank you. And, sorry about last night. It was probably an overreaction-"
"Hey." Kuroo says, turning around so they're facing each other. Kenma's got the hood of the oversized hoodie he's wearing (one of Kuroo's) over his head, strings pulled tight. He looks a little dumb, nothing fashionable about it, but still unbelievably cute. "Let's eat first, then you can tell me all about it." Kuroo offers. Kenma nods, he looks tired, like he didn't sleep the night before.
Kuroo gets them sitting down, food plated in front of them, and starts eating. It takes Kenma a few minutes before he starts on his own plate, appetite clearly not there (an ongoing problem for him), but soon he's eating at a steady rate, and Kuroo feels himself start to relax. Soon their plates are nearly empty and Kenma's momentum has died down, slowing and poking at the remaining food.
Kuroos leans back in his chair. "So?" He prompts.
Kenma flinches, but takes a deep breath before looking back up at Kuroo. "Like I said, I probably overreacted yesterday. But I didn't know how much the Internet saw yesterday, or what they'd be saying."
Kuroo's eyebrows raise, 'How much they saw'? Kuroo's first thought is that this is about leaked nudes or something, but that's ridiculous. Isn't it? An awkward chuckle escapes him without permission, and he clears his throat to get himself back together. "Right."
"I just- I wasn't sure if they knew... I didn't want you to see it on the internet, and not hear it from me, is all."
Kuroo blinks, because that sounds like... Well, that sounds like it has to do with Kuroo, specifically, which is not something Kuroo was expecting.
"I-" Kenma's darts his eyes up to Kuroo's and then away. He pulls his legs up into the chair, hugs his arms around his knees, folding around them. "My- my soulmark came in."
Kuroo sits back, his mouth parting in surprise, but no sound escapes him. He can hardly breathe. He never expected this, isn't prepared- he swallows hard. "It came in during the stream?" He asks.
Kenma nods.
"They saw it?" He asks again, pained. That must suck hard, especially for Kenma who has always struggled with the fact that his mark hadn't come in yet. It's an intensely private thing, he can't imagine how awful it would feel to have that moment be shared with the whole world.
Kenma shrugs, pressing his forehead to his knees and breathing. "I don't know how much they saw. I haven't really been on the internet since yesterday either."
"Okay. Yeah, that makes sense." Kuroo's already running possibilities through his head, can they stop the social media craze before it really happens? Probably not. They could go after some people who share it without permission, but the fact is that it's out there for the consumption of the whole world now. "Have you talked to your social media rep-?"
Kenma shakes his head, but he's looking at Kuroo now, eyes some kind of desperate. He bites down on his bottom lip. "Kuro-"
Kuroo's shoulders slump. He needs to ask- Isn't sure if he wants to know- "What is it?"
Kenma unfolds himself from the chair, unties the hoodie strings and pulls the collar down to reveal his neck and his collarbone, the peek of a shape being revealed as he does so.
Kuroo's breath catches in his throat, and he finds himself shooting up to his feet. He's across the table in a split second, looming over Kenma as he reaches and tugs the sweater open further, eyes drinking in the sight of the shape there. A shape Kuroo is incredibly familiar with. A shape he has seen in the mirror every day since he turned 16. The silhouette of a stretching cat in a dark crimson hue. It's a match. It's a perfect match for Kuroo's mark.
His eyes jump up from the mark to Kenma's eyes. He hadn't realized how close they were, foreheads nearly brushing. "Ken-" Kuroo is trembling, completely overcome with a torrent of emotions that he's been holding back for nearly a decade.
Kenma meets his gaze steadily, not a bit of fear or hesitation there, a steadfast anchor in the storm of Kuroo's raging emotions.
"It's a match." Kuroo whispers, disbelieving.
Kenma nods, lips quirking into a shocked sort of smile of his own. "Yeah."
"We- we're soulmates."
Kenma bites his lip to hold back a smile. "Looks like it."
Kuroo laughs, breathless, shocked, but so, so happy. "Kenma!" He says, for lack of anything else to say, no other words coming to mind.
Kenma takes Kuroo's face in his hand, squeezing his cheeks together, as he smiles, unrestrained now. "Yeah."
"Kenma!" Elated tears splash down Kuroo's face, sliding down into Kenma's hands.
Kenma's smile and his touch go softer, becoming so, so gentle. He tips Kuroo's face down, brushes their noses together. "Tetsu."
Kuroo shudders, completely overwhelmed. He takes Kenma's face in his own hands. "Can- can I kiss you?"
"Yeah." Kenma breathes across his lips. Then Kuroo tips his head down and captures those lips in his own. The kiss is gentle, reverent, just a press of lips, a gentle caress that says 'Hello. I've been waiting for this for ever.'
Kuroo pulls back, too overwhelmed to keep the kiss up, he ducks his head and presses his forehead into the curve of Kenma's neck. "I've been hoping for so long-" he chokes out.
"I know." Kenma says quietly, threading his fingers into the hair at the nape of Kuroo's neck, pressing a kiss to the side of his hair. "Me too."
Kuroo shudders. Fuck, he'd thought this would never happen. He couldn't be happier. "I'm so glad I didn't find this out over the internet."
Kenma laughs, the sound lighting Kuroo up from the inside. It's his favourite sound in the whole world. "I'm sorry that it was all dramatic though."
Kuroo shakes his head. "It's perfect. This is perfect." He tugs on Kenma's hoodie, "Can I-?"
"Yeah." Kenma leans back, lets Kuroo pull the hoodie over his head, leaving him in a loose t-shirt, leaving his mark exposed just above the hemline. Kenma tugs on Kuroo's sweater, and he does the same, taking off both sweater and the shirt below it to leave his chest bare, mark fully exposed.
Even though it took some time, they're here now. They may have had mismatched timing, but there's no denying it now. They're a perfect match.