no refunds! || kuroken

not desperate

hello!

if u remember i had a rivals to lovers au that i put out but i wanted to change the ship to bokuaka so i took it down for now! instead i have written this kuroken fake dating au with some very cliche tropes in mind i promise i won't delete it this time ;-;

yes this is based on that one ad lmao

this isn't my first time trying out a haikyuu au but the same disclaimer still applies! please bear with me if things don't match up, are too unrealistic, etc. ;-; let me know and i could always rewrite! this is kind of a premature beginning and i don't really know the direction i wanna take this but i have a basic idea so we'll build off of there!

my twitter is @kaashihq if you guys wanna be friends, or if you'd rather not, my cc is in my profile here. i hope you enjoy this! it's really fun to write so i hope you have fun reading it!

p.s. characters are aged down to help with connections! instead of being in their late twenties they're just in their late teens

p.p.s. kenma has siblings in this fic for the sole purpose of added stress and embarrassment regarding kuroo - they're made up and significantly minor! sorry if that's weird, i know he's an only child canonically but it's just for fic purposes!

...

It's not that Kozume Kenma was desperate for a boyfriend.

Really , he wasn't. Anyone familiar with him knew more than enough how okay Kenma was with being single.

He was perfectly content with being by himself for the rest of his life if he could, playing Daxter on his PSP until dusk peeked behind the horizon at him and silently yelled for him to finally go to bed. He was good with not having to deal with the stress of trying to keep another person by his side, to talk to them for more than five minutes at a time, or getting pushed out of his comfort zone for so long, just for them to probably break up later and fracture his heart to where it wouldn't work the same again after that, no matter how many relationships he gets into.

He's heard so many stories of people getting married, only to find out they didn't love each other the same way they did when they first met too late down the road. And then they get divorced.

Or worse - married again.

In other words, Kenma did not believe in love and knew that life didn't stop for anyone no matter what, that it would keep going and he would die anyway, so he might as well waste no time and do what he wanted, keeping up with the drag of the world and stopping for nobody, either.

And he knew it was selfish, but he would just rather be by himself.

It was more of the fact that he was desperate for any opportunity to keep being left alone when he goes to his family's house in November.

The holidays— the time of the year when pretty reds and delicate orange watercolor splashed the leaves that fell from trees, when it felt like the world was slow and infinite in the way time seemed lackadaisical, when the breezes that billowed from the north drummed warmth into his chest in the afternoons — felt like it couldn't come fast enough.

One of Kenma's favorite times of the year had quickly become his most dreaded, and despite brushing his mother's questions off about where his boyfriend is, or fiance (husband, maybe?) last time, he couldn't help but think about her since then. She was constantly in his head after those awful three weeks, her voice like a patch of steel wool sitting in the back of his brain, scratching up his thoughts and ruining his nerves raw the more time passed.

And the fact that she asked in front of everyone, bringing their attention to him and causing judgments to silently settle on his shoulders while he blushed like red stop lights made him want the earth to spontaneously open up and swallow him whole so he wouldn't have to deal with the post-humiliation of replaying that scene in his head until he got over it.

In front of his cousins and siblings?

Maybe it was because that wasn't the first time she asked, and he knew it wouldn't be the last, but fucking hell. He was nineteen already. Didn't she think if he wanted a partner, he'd have one already? Didn't she think that maybe she should stop asking because it was weird to be so invested in your kid's love life?

Didn't she think?

Kenma wasn't new to people always wanting to know more than they should about him, and he knew it was mean to actively try and keep his business to himself - because it was his business - but he couldn't help but think that he should open up more. It wouldn't be so bad. He was very enigmatic (but if you asked, he would tell you it wasn't true), shadows trailing alongside him wherever he walked, his dyed hair surrounding his head so nobody would see his face and ask him if he was okay.

He was okay. Just didn't like talking so much, and that was okay, too.

The only person who he really gave a shit about was Hinata, but even then, he sometimes felt like a bad friend when Hinata would show up at his doorstep, cheeks dusted with a gentle shade of rose from both the run to his apartment and all the things he had to shout about, starting with Kenma! Why didn't you text me back? Do you hate me?

And Kenma would say yes just to be annoying, Hinata would make a dying whale sound out of his collection of many that reverberated around his apartment and sank into the walls as if it were made for housing Hinata's voice only, and Kenma would go out with him to make it up, a small smile plastered on his face as he listened to Hinata excitedly tell him about his day.

Kenma also thought about just bringing Hinata to his family's holiday dinner, as well.

What was the harm?

The two were very good at being a pair, at being together. They'd spent countless hours with each other and were rarely apart. If Hinata was alone, he would always be asked about Kenma, and vice versa.

Having known each other since their first year of middle school, Kenma has learned that it was sometimes okay to let people in.

But only sometimes.

And despite having regrets about middle school, Hinata definitely wasn't one of them.

He'd known Kenma like the back of his hand, the ins and outs of all of his quirks, how to make him laugh and what he was feeling based on the shift of his eyebrow, or how quickly he looked away from people. Kenma had always been thankful for Hinata, anyway, to have someone other than himself that he could rely on, that didn't mind his quiet nature and liked to listen to him, too, even if he didn't have anything to say. Hinata loved him like it was nothing, like it was routine, despite all of his silence and vastness and intimidation, and it made the butterflies in his stomach dance to see him beaming every day, despite knowing him for the past 6 years.

Kenma didn't like relationships because he didn't want to juggle another person in his life.

But Hinata would be the first and only exception.

Ever.