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Tetsurou moves into his dorm room on a Friday. By Wednesday of the following week, he has already declared his roommate his best friend for life, started a prank war, and almost set his room on fire twice; the last two points are not related to each other, which would perhaps prove the point of Yaku, one of his friends from his previous university – namely that he’s incapable of existing as an independent human being and should not be left to his own devices. But he has made it his life’s mission to valiantly ignore anything Yaku says about him ever, and so far he’s done well with that.
Bokuto Koutarou, his new roommate, best friend for life, and the reason he has started the prank war with Miya Atsumu from the room across the hall in the first place, bursts into their shared room at six o’clock in the evening on said Wednesday and tells him, urgently: “Miya is out, I just saw him leave his room and leave the door ajar. Now is our time to strike!”
Tetsurou, because he is nothing if not a great friend, leaves his coursework on the table and follows Bokuto down the hall to where Miya’s room door is, actually, ajar; Tetsurou does the honours of opening it to sneak in, and only when he’s already standing in the room does he notice that it is not, in fact, devoid of other human beings.
On the bed leaning against the left side of the door, wrapped in and partially hidden under so many blankets Tetsurou didn’t notice him at first, sits the cutest person Tetsurou has ever seen: shabbily dyed blonde hair falling into an adorable little face, with a cute mouth and the most shining golden eyes Tetsurou has ever laid his own upon, the guy looks up at Tetsurou with a crease in his forehead.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his eyes narrowed.
Tetsurou, because his brain has become utterly useless at the sight of someone so overwhelmingly gorgeous, can only come up with the truth: “Pranking your roommate.”
The guy’s eyes narrow further.
“So that was you,” he says. “You’re the reason we didn’t have wifi for two days.” That was, in fact, not Tetsurou but Bokuto; but it probably still counts.
The guy looks like he wants to skin Tetsurou. It’s unexpectedly hot.
“Uh,” Tetsurou says.
“Bro?” Bokuto makes, confused, from behind him, and sticks his own head into the room. The guy’s eyes narrow even further.
“You’d better leave,” he says. His voice is a threat.
Tetsurou, because he wants to simultaneously do everything this person says, ever, and is still completely overwhelmed with how a single human being can be this attractive, turns around and leaves.
Bokuto makes a confused noise, but follows.
They don’t meet Miya in the hallway on their way back, which is at least a small mercy; Tetsurou spends the rest of his day lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, and thinks about pretty golden eyes.
- -
He sees Miya’s roommate again the next day; he’s just leaving a lecture with Komori, a fellow student and potential friend, by his side, when he almost runs into him, and becomes the receiver of a look of absolute boiling hatred.
Komori, next to him, bursts out into laughter.
“How did you manage that?” he asks.
“Manage what?” Tetsurou asks back.
“The look Kenma just gave you. He’s sort of notorious for absolutely ignoring people. The most anyone ever gets out of him is an averted gaze or a monosyllabic answer. If you’re not Hinata, of course. Or Atsumu, you know, his roommate. They get along pretty well now, or so I’ve been told.”
“Huh,” Tetsurou makes, soaking up that information like a sponge. Kenma. He finally has a name.
“Bokuto and I sort of have a prank war with Miya going,” he says.
Komori laughs again. “Oh, this is gold,” he says, looking deeply amused.
“Well, how do I get on his good side?” Tetsurou asks, because Kenma remains the most beautiful person he has ever seen. He still feels a bit fluttery.
“You don’t,” Komori says, looking like he’s having the time of his life. “It’s almost impossible to make him like you when he’s uninterested in you. But you made him actively dislike you. So, good luck.”
Tetsurou sighs.
“Someone should have told me that he’s Miya’s roommate before I went along with the prank war,” he whines, craning his neck to see if he can catch another glimpse of Kenma. He can’t.
Komori pats his back pityingly, but in his eyes there is nothing but unholy glee.
“That’s what you get for only changing here for your master’s degree,” he says.
Then, he leans closer. “If it’s any help, Kenma’s been single for the entire time I’ve known him, so it’s not like anyone seems to have a chance.”
That does not, in fact, help.
“I could be his first uni romance. I could be his one and only. We could get married,” Tetsurou says, swooning a little bit.
Komori cackles very, very loudly.
“Oh, this is going to be so much fun,” he says.
- -
“I need a change of plans,” Tetsurou declares to Bokuto later that evening.
“Uh?” Bokuto, in the process of putting ice cream, a chocolate breakfast bar, orange juice and a tuna and mayo onigiri ball into a blender, says. Komori, who has come over to witness the happenstances, is perched on Bokuto’s bed, watching.
“I appreciate your dedication to making Miya’s life miserable,” Tetsurou says, because he does. They’re planning to empty Miya’s protein shake and fill the bottle with the concoction Bokuto is currently creating; Tetsurou is very curious on how it’ll taste and has called dibs on taking the first taste sip.
“And I think we need to keep that dedication up,” Tetsurou says, because he doesn’t want Bokuto to get the wrong idea here, “but we need to do it in a way that doesn’t impact his roommate.”
“Uh,” Bokuto makes again.
“But still lets me see him as much as possible,” Tetsurou adds, because that’s important. Komori cackles.
“Bro?” Bokuto asks.
“Kenma is my soulmate,” Tetsurou says, a bit dreamily, “and I’m going to marry him. And for that, I need to make him like me first.”
“Maybe you should start with making him feel neutral about you instead of hating your guts,” Komori says. “You know, baby steps.”
“I’m lost,” Bokuto admits, dropping a wilting piece of spinach into the blender. “But bro, if you want to marry him, you’ll marry him! I’ll be your best man!”
“That’s the spirit!” Tetsurou says. “Now, how do we make this shake absolutely disgusting? I want Miya to scream in anger.”
“This is like watching a live train wreck,” Komori says. “Absolutely fascinating. Please go on, I’m going to be the background witness to your courting process.”
- -
They successfully replace Atsumu’s protein shake. The next morning, the entire floor gets awoken by enraged shouting.
It takes Tetsurou a few minutes to get his bearings, then he grins at Bokuto, who is sitting up blearily in his bed.
“Success!” he says. The shouting from down the hall subsides.
“We’re so good!” Bokuto says, and holds his fist out across the room; Tetsurou almost falls off his bed while stretching to bump it.
“We are so good!” he says.
There’s a loud knock on the door. Tetsurou raises his eyebrows at Bokuto, who raises his eyebrows back, and, grinning, stands up and goes to open the door.
Standing there, knocking, is, however, not one Miya Atsumu; no, it’s Kenma.
He looks adorable: wearing fluffy socks, ratty joggers and an oversized pullover he’s basically swimming in, hair put up in a messy bun, half of it escaping to messily frame his face.
He also looks furious: eyes narrowed, mouth downturned, forehead scrunched up.
“You,” he says, “need to knock it off. I don’t care that much about Atsumu’s well-being, but if you cost me sleep one more time, I will personally strangle you in your sleep.”
With that, he turns around without giving Tetsurou the time to respond. Tetsurou stands there, gaping.
“At least he wants to touch you? He’d have to touch your throat to strangle you, right?” Bokuto says, commiseratingly.
“He’s so hot,” Tetsurou says, unable to tear his eyes away from Kenma’s retreating form.
- -
Getting Kenma to stop hating him is unexpectedly complicated.
Tetsurou has a certain amount of base confidence in himself; he’s got this far in life, after all. He got his bachelor’s degree at a renowned university, and he got into this one for his master’s degree without issue; he’s had a few really hot girlfriends and one really hot boyfriend in his life, he’s good at volleyball, smart, tall, and typically doesn’t have a hard time making friends. Case in point: Komori has taken to hanging out with him a lot.
He used to be pretty shy, as a child; but with growing age came growing confidence and the realisation that he’s actually a rather outgoing person and genuinely enjoys spending time around other people, a lot.
So far in his life, he’s never had issues getting people he’s interested in to like him back.
Kenma, though, proves to be a challenge.
He narrows his eyes every time he sees Tetsurou; he only talks with him to scold him; he refuses to greet Tetsurou back when they meet each other in the hallways; and so before long, it’s been two months, and Tetsurou has made zero progress, and knows absolutely nothing about Kenma that he hasn’t found out through covertly staking Kenma out in the university café (“I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but have you thought about how he might react if he notices you staring?” Komori says, clearly trying to suppress a grin) or Komori’s intel.
So this is what Tetsurou knows about Kenma:
He’s smart. Really fucking smart. He takes lectures with professors that are known to write almost-impossible exams, and he’s been invited to present some of his term papers at academic conferences, and he has a thing for strategy video games and plays those as if they were the easiest thing in the world.
He likes to wear oversized clothes, and he drinks unholy amounts of energy drinks and coffee, and he always looks ready for murder before ten in the morning – and generally when he looks at Tetsurou – and he really doesn’t seem very sociable at all, but he gets this small smile when his friend Hinata talks to him, and Tetsurou wants to make him smile like that for him so badly he feels a little bit insane over it.
He yawns in this way that reminds Tetsurou of a cat, and he sometimes falls asleep on top of his notes, and if he studies on his own he’ll get distracted and start playing games on his PSP or phone halfway through nine times out of ten, and Tetsurou wants to kiss him.
Tetsurou wants to kiss him so badly; he wants to kiss him like he’s never wanted anything before, and when he isn’t thinking about his university classes or making Atsumu’s life hell, he’s always thinking about Kenma, and he wants a spring wedding because Kenma seems like the type to despise both the cold of winter and the heat of summer in equal measures, and he wonders if Kenma’s hair feels as soft as it looks.
In other news: he is royally fucked.
- -
It’s a Wednesday, and Tetsurou is sitting in the university café, overly exhausted; he and Bokuto spent the night thinking about pranks they could play on Atsumu, and the short of it is that they didn’t look at the clock and go to bed until four in the morning.
Tetsurou has a big assignment due the next day, too, so he’s half-falling asleep on the table he has hogged.
It’s probably a testament to how tired Tetsurou looks that he has it to himself as of yet; the rest of the university café is absolutely filled to bursting, every seat taken. Getting a good table here is all about being early, on most days.
In the university library, you’ll usually find a table courtesy of it being absolutely massive; in the university café, there is only a very limited amount of space, and considering the amounts of people who like to drown their sorrows or exhaustion in coffee or tea while they work, that space is typically filled.
He’s yawning at his laptop, considering whether he should simply take a nap before continuing to work, in the hopes that that will make him feel more equipped to deal with this assignment, when someone unceremoniously sits down in the seat across the table from him.
Tetsurou looks up, about to say something about the rudeness of that – the polite thing is to ask whether not the seat is taken and whether or not Tetsurou would feel comfortable sharing it if it isn’t – but his words die in his throat when his eyes meet Kenma’s, looking at him almost-violently, like he’s daring him to say something about it.
“Kenma,” Tetsurou says, and then wants to punch himself for the rudeness of it.
“Kozume-san to you, or better yet, don’t address me,” Kenma hisses and pulls out a stack of books so tall it makes Tetsurou wince in sympathy.
“I apologise,” he says, and then shuts up, as much as he wants to do the opposite of that. He wants to talk to Kenma: ask him a million different things, learn everything there is to know about him. And yet, at the same time, he feels entirely unprepared to talk, suddenly feeling like anything that might come out of his mouth could only make him look stupid, not at all like someone Kenma might want to marry.
So instead, he starts focusing on his assignment.
Kenma gets up an hour later; Tetsurou thinks he’s about to go sit somewhere else or leave, but then he realises that Kenma left all of his stuff. And indeed Kenma is back a few minutes later, a steaming mug of hot coffee in his hand, and gets back to work.
They work like that, in quiet unison, for another two hours, Kenma’s glare at his textbooks getting more frustrated by the minute; then Tetsurou gets up, to get himself another mug of tea, and decides to bring Kenma back sone more coffee; he looks like he needs it.
Kenma looks up when Tetsurou sets the mug down in front of him, and his expression melts out of angry frustration and into surprise for a second.
He doesn’t say anything, just narrows his eyes at Tetsurou; but the narrowing of his eyes doesn’t seem angry, like it usually does. Instead, there is something assessing about it.
He takes a sip of the coffee, and his eyes slip back to his textbooks, and then both of them get back to work; but there are butterflies in Tetsurou’s stomach, and he feels weirdly antsy, and when he gets himself another beverage an hour later, he gets yet another coffee for Kenma – decaf, this time – and something hot and pleased unfurls in his stomach when this gets Kenma to stop glaring at him entirely for the rest of the studying session.
- -
On Friday, Tetsurou puts purple hair dye into Atsumu’s shampoo and a stack of energy-drinks at Kenma’s bedside table, as a pre-apology.
On Monday, a purple-haired Kenma stares rage-filled at Tetsurou in the university hallway, and Komori starts laughing so hard he starts tearing up.
“I’m sorry,” Tetsurou tries.
“Fuck you,” Kenma says, slipping into clear English just to curse at him properly, and it’s such an unexpected turn-on that Tetsurou can only stare for a second.
“You look good with purple hair,” he tries, and that makes Kenma actively snarl as he turns away, and Komori laughs so hard he doubles over.
“Oh gods,” he says, in-between laughter, “this is incredible. Kuroo, if you ever do manage to marry him, I’m putting this into my wedding speech.”
“Why would you think you’d get to make a speech,” Tetsurou says, grumbling. The purple hair makes Kenma look both dangerous and like an anime protagonist; it’s an unexpectedly good look on him.
“Oh, I’m making one whether you want it or not,” Komori says cheerfully.
- -
On Wednesday, Kenma surprisingly sits down across from Tetsurou in the university café again. His hair is still purple where it was dyed blonde before; he doesn’t acknowledge Tetsurou at all, with neither words nor a look. Instead, he just takes out his studying materials and starts in on them.
That’s fair, Tetsurou supposes, and decides not to bother him.
He does, however, get Kenma a new beverage whenever he gets one for himself. It doesn’t make Kenma look much more friendly, but he takes them without comment.
It probably says a lot about Tetsurou that Kenma even accepting drinks from him makes him feel this hotly pleased.
- -
On Friday, Kenma sits down with him in the university café again; and then the Wednesday after that; and before long, it becomes a routine.
Kenma is still openly hostile when Tetsurou messes with Atsumu in a way that messes with Kenma, and he still doesn’t greet Tetsurou in the hallway, and he still doesn’t say a single friendly thing to him, and sometimes he’ll glare; but he starts sitting down with Tetsurou even when there are other free spaces, and Tetsurou will take what he can get, when it comes to Kenma.
Komori still finds the entire thing hilarious.
- -
Five weeks into this odd routine of theirs, Tetsurou brings self-made baked goods to the university café, and when Kenma sits down across from him, he offers him some.
“Oh,” Kenma says, and then: “sure.” No thank you; but he bites into the pastry with a look of utter bliss, and Tetsurou cannot begrudge him a single thing.
“What are you working on?” he asks; the first time he’s asked Kenma anything while they were studying together.
“My bachelor thesis,” Kenma replies, and Tetsurou takes another good look at the stack of books Kenma has brought with him again; some of them on mathematics, some of them on game design, and then two thick guides to editions of a pen and paper role play game.
“Oh?” Tetsurou makes, as encouragingly as possible. “Tell me more.”
Kenma takes another bite of the pastry, and then says, very quietly and yet more agreeable than Tetsurou has ever seen him: “I’m comparing the overlap between a computer game genre and a genre of pen and paper rpgs, specifically the role of mathematics.”
“That’s so cool!” Tetsurou says, very enthusiastically and loud, before he can stop himself.
Kenma looks at him with narrowed eyes again, and for a moment Tetsurou wants to apologise for his outburst; but then, slowly, the left corner of Kenma’s mouth lifts, drawing it into a small smile.
“Yeah, I think so too,” he says, and Tetsurou’s entire body feels like it’s filled with butterflies, top to bottom, his heart racing, his palms sweating.
He’s never wanted anything as much as he wants to kiss Kenma in this very moment, his chest aching with it.
They study in silence for the rest of the afternoon; but every now and then, Tetsurou will look at Kenma and Kenma will look back, none of the open hostility Tetsurou is so used to in his gaze, and Tetsurou feels warm and joyous and entirely overwhelmed.
- -
“I think maybe we should stop pranking Miya,” he tells Bokuto that evening; he can’t stop thinking about Kenma’s tiny smile. He doesn’t want to do anything that could jeopardise him getting another one.
“Bro,” Bokuto says, looking disappointed, a bit like a dog that’s just been informed it won’t be getting a walk or head scratches.
“I feel like I’ll die if Kenma stops talking to me,” Tetsurou says, and feels stupid about how it’s not even an over-exaggeration. “I can’t risk making him mad again, bro, I can’t.”
“Tetsu,” Bokuto says, affectionately. “Okay, all right, we’ll get you your man.”
- -
It would be an over-exaggeration to say that Tetsurou and Kenma start talking regularly; but it’s also not the case that they never talk. It’s always Tetsurou who initiates conversations, never Kenma; but sometimes Kenma will tell him what exactly he’s working on for his bachelor thesis on that specific day, and sometimes Kenma will tell him about video games that have nothing at all to do with his bachelor thesis.
He’s so fucking smart; Tetsurou knew that, of course, but it sometimes punches him in the stomach, how incredibly smart Kenma is. He’s observant, too, and he gets this determined little crease between his eyebrows sometimes, and he’s not very sociable, usually, but the way his eyes light up when he mentions his friends makes Tetsurou feel shaky with desperate want.
Tetsurou has never wanted anyone this badly; he didn’t know, until he met Kenma, that one could want other people this badly.
Love, so far, has always been a fun little thing for him: a few butterflies, some flirting, the pleased and excited feeling of having a date go well; but Kenma. Kenma makes Tetsurou feel like he’s falling, and like he’s flying, all at once.
Tetsurou looks for him everywhere, all the time; sometimes, he’ll catch the sight of Kenma’s hair, the purple mostly faded out of it by now, from across the hall, and his entire body clamps up with a spike of longing so overwhelming it almost brings him to his knees.
Every little thing Kenma tells him makes him want to learn more; every time Kenma gives him one of his little smiles, Tetsurou wants to kiss him. On some days, he feels like he might die if he doesn’t get to touch Kenma.
He feels insane with it, absolutely and entirely overwhelmed, his mind a litany of please, please, please. And stupid, so stupid: because the more they talk, the more Tetsurou realises that he’ll never have a chance with Kenma. How could he ever give this wonderful man everything he deserves? He would try, oh, he would lay the world at Kenma’s feet if Kenma let him; but there is no way that Kenma could ever want him, if Kenma even wants people at all.
And that’s fine. It’s fine.
Tetsurou already gets so much; conversations with Kenma, and Kenma’s little smiles, and sometimes, for just a minute or two, Kenma’s entire attention. It would be greedy to ask for more.
- -
Tetsurou is up late, procrastinating on an essay by mindlessly googling, when he stumbles across the information: a small gaming convention is going to be in a city close to theirs in just two weeks’ time.
It’s two in the morning. He’s tired, stressed, and still hasn’t finished the essay that’s due the next afternoon.
It’s quite possible he doesn’t need any of those reasons to do what he does, but that’s what he blames it on anyway.
Four days later, he gets two weekend passes in the mail.
- -
Having the passes is one thing; bringing it up to Kenma another entirely. They don’t hang out outside of studying together. Tetsurou still doesn’t know why Kenma even studies with him in the first place. They barely even talk most of the time.
This is completely preposterous; Kenma might even already have tickets.
And yet, now that he has them, he can’t not ask.
He and Kenma study together again a couple of days later; Tetsurou’s stomach is tight with nerves.
“Have you heard of the Soul Gaming Convention?” he asks, trying to will his voice not to shake.
“Yes,” Kenma says. “I’ve been there a few times. I always really enjoyed it.” He barely volunteers information about himself; every time he does, it fills Tetsurou with an insane amount of joy.
“Well,” he says, his heart beating so very, very fast in his chest, “I happen to have two tickets. I was wondering if you’d like to go with me?”
Kenma’s gaze snaps up. He just looks at Tetsurou. Then, slowly, his entire face lights up in a smile: one bigger than any Tetsurou has seen before. It’s so much; Tetsurou suddenly feels light-headed, like he might pass out. He doesn’t think there is a way to look at Kenma smiling like this and sturdily hang on to consciousness.
“Sure,” Kenma says, tone of voice nonchalant, but his eyes are shining so brightly, and Tetsurou is in love with him. He is so, so in love with him.
- -
Tetsurou picks Kenma up at his dorm room early on Saturday morning; Kenma is wearing a t-shirt that Tetsurou is almost entirely certain is merch for an indie game he hasn’t heard of, and the colour in his hair has faded out to a shining silver that builds a beautiful contrast to the gold of his eyes. He’s alert and excited: it’s only eight o’clock, but Kenma is brimming with energy. Tetsurou has never seen him this excited this early in a day; it’s infectious.
They get to the convention centre by nine thirty, which is a good time to get in line; the convention is set to open at ten.
Many of the other people already there are wearing cosplays; Tetsurou, in his simple black jeans and red t-shirt, feels abruptly underdressed. He spent almost two hours this morning deciding what to wear, before frantically calling Komori, who cackled at him for ten minutes and then hung up. He ended up going with something simple; a button-up seemed like too much for a gaming convention, although Tetsurou has never been to one before, so how would he know.
Kenma, next to him, is scanning the room with bright eyes; when the queue finally starts moving, Tetsurou feels like he can see the excitement coming off of Kenma in waves, even though he holds his body deceptively still.
This is Kenma’s day, so Tetsurou lets Kenma choose the direction as soon as they enter the convention hall, simply follows him as Kenma makes his way from stall to stall.
Tetsurou’s heart hurts in his chest, watching Kenma, eyes bright, move with an alertness he’s never seen on him before. It’s devastating, to see him like this, so bright and beautiful, and know he isn’t Tetsurou’s.
Tetsurou imagines him all dressed up on their wedding day; imagines him with a gold band on his finger; imagines taking him to the shrine on New Year’s Day, and only wishing for another year with him.
He can’t believe that if he’d decided to do his master’s degree at his old university, he might have never met Kenma; he can’t believe that there could be a universe out there where he doesn’t know that Kenma is the brightest person in every room, even when he’s sitting quietly and unnoticed to the side. Surely, he must be in love with Kenma in every single universe there is.
He almost can’t remember what it was like before he knew Kenma; before he spent hours of every day just being overwhelmed with how much he feels for Kenma. It hasn’t even been a year, but it feels like a lifetime now.
Tetsurou watches Kenma try out a new VR game, and then they come across a stand where you can duel someone with pre-prepared Yu-Gi-Oh! decks, so naturally they have to play. There is a weird sort of nostalgia about it; Tetsurou remembers that back in primary school, he’d play with his friends during breaks.
Kenma lets Tetsurou go first.
“You’ll need the advantage,” he tells Tetsurou.
“Just you wait,” Tetsurou says, “I’ll beat your ass, Kozume.”
“Call me Kenma,” Kenma says. He says it so calmly, as if it were the simplest thing; to Tetsurou, it is anything but. His brain powers down. He’s too dazed to even reply properly.
Kenma absolutely obliterates Tetsurou two games in a row.
It’s late by the time they stumble out of the convention centre; almost ten in the evening, just minutes before closing.
It’s dark outside, but the air is still warm. Kenma looks exhausted next to Tetsurou, stumbling a bit, but his eyes are still so incredibly bright, and Tetsurou likes him so much he feels stupid with it.
He shouldn’t say anything, he knows he shouldn’t; there’s no way Kenma feels the same way, and they still have the journey home in front of them. But then Kenma looks at him, and he’s smiling, and Tetsurou has never felt about anyone the way he does about Kenma.
“I like you so much,” he says, because it suddenly feels like he has to, “fuck, Kenma, I like you so much.”
Surprise flits across Kenma’s face. Kenma stops in his tracks, and Tetsurou doesn’t know what that means, or what he’s doing, but he can’t stop the words from tumbling out.
“I’m sorry, I know this is too much and the worst possible moment,” he says, “but sometimes I look at you and realise that I can’t imagine my life without you anymore.”
“Oh,” Kenma says.
“I’m sorry,” Tetsurou says again.
And then Kenma smiles: in a way Tetsurou has never seen before.
“You know, when I met you, I thought you were an asshole without regard for other people,” he says.
“I know,” Tetsurou says, a bit miserably.
“But you really aren’t that at all, are you? Well, sometimes maybe.”
“I’m sometimes an asshole, but I have so much regard for other people. I have so much regard for you,” Tetsurou says.
“Yeah, I’m starting to get that,” Kenma says. And then, a bit huffily: “I’m not getting up on my tip-toes, so if you want to kiss me you’ll have to lean down.” His cheeks are red.
“Oh,” Tetsurou says, feeling abruptly light-headed again, like someone has punched him in the stomach. And then, because there’s nothing he wants more in the world, he leans down to kiss Kenma.
Kenma’s lips are a bit chapped, and his hair really is as soft as Tetsurou has imagined, and Tetsurou has absolutely no idea how he got here, but what he does know is that he’ll never, ever let Kenma go, not now that he has him.
It isn’t until he’s graduated, master’s degree in hand, that Kenma tells him he only started studying with Tetsurou because the amount of rage Tetsurou made him feel somehow helped him concentrate. By then, he and Tetsurou have moved into a small flat together, so all things considered Tetsurou thinks it turned out quite well for him.