no refunds! || kuroken

bang!

It's nighttime.

Kenma's siblings were busy deciding on where to go out to explore the nightlife before Thanksgiving tomorrow, while his parents helped his aunt and uncle at their own house. Kuroo and Kenma would have the entire area to themselves once they left, but Kenma was already kind of tired and Kuroo had been excited to catch up on the latest episode of his favorite cartoon tonight.

Staying home was the best option for them. Besides, Kenma never minded keeping to himself in his old home while he still could.

"You know, you still didn't tell me what kind of tree you were," Kenma says, leaning against the counter while a pie finishes baking in the oven in front of them, keeping up his promise to Kuroo at paying for his services with some form of food.

He was very good at baking sweets, and he hoped Kuroo felt the same (but if you asked if he cared, he would tell you no). It was a butterscotch cinnamon pie from one of his favorite video games, that unfortunately, he lost the disc to before moving away for university. And despite feeling like an enormous dweeb when Kuroo asked about it and got him going off on a tangent, he hoped Kuroo would like the taste of it, anyway.

Kuroo found Kenma's extensive interest in video games very cute.

He told him that he wanted to play it with him one day, and Kenma decided that it wasn't a difficult request at all.

"I didn't?" Kuroo asks from beside him, leaning against the countertop beside the banana rack and facing the opposite way, flicking his thumb in different directions over the screen of his phone.

Kenma glances at the screen as subtly as possible, hating nosey people himself, but not doing much to fight the urge to be the same way. Kuroo is playing Pacman.

"You'd be..." Kenma looks at the pie in the oven, finding his speculation in the ridges of the golden crust. "A pine."

"A pine?" Kenma could practically see Kuroo's eyebrow raise as his candied voice rings over a chuckle. "Like, a pine tree?"

Kenma smiles and nods, finding it kind of silly himself. "Yes. Or an oak. With a big treehouse in it."

"Well, now, I'm curious." Kuroo locks his phone, turning to face Kenma from where he was leaning on the counter. Kenma swallows, trying not to get so nervous as Kuroo's eyes burn holes in his skin. "Why a treehouse?"

Kenma shrugs in dismissal, curling his fingers into his black hoodie as he tries to think under Kuroo's spotlights. "Dunno. It just... feels like you." He repeats from when Kuroo first entered his room a few days ago, and Kuroo groans while lightly pushing his shoulder.

"You're killing me, Ken–"

"Hey, Kenma!"

Kenma's smile immediately drops when he sees his brother walk into the kitchen through the open doorframe, holding onto a white sweater that looked an awful lot like the one Kenma brought for the dinner tomorrow. There was a dark stain on the front of it, almost transparent as if he'd tried to wash it out. Poorly, but he saw the effort.

Kenma's eyebrows come together, not really expecting the shock of his brother holding onto his sweater to make him feel so upset, already feeling irritation boiling in his bloodstream as he stares at the stain.

That was his favorite sweater.

"Hey, loser. I, um..." Kuroo watches as Kenma's brother meekly runs a hand through his dark hair, holding up the sweater in his other hand while strands fall into his face, as if trying to cover him up from Kenma's anger, kind of like Kenma does. "I was going to borrow this for tonight, and wash it before tomorrow. But, uh...you know."