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sportsfest19_mr22019-08-16 01:15 pm
ryousukase) wrote in sportsfest19_mr22019-08-16 01:15 pm
Team 3rd Gym with Kenma: Anywhere is Home
TEAM: 3rd Gym with Kenma
MEMBERS:ryousukase (comic, art), tsukisyama (bullet journal, writing), rronanllynch (writing), tsukeishima (playlist), p3ndejx (brainstorming)
RATING: T
TITLE: Anywhere is Home
SERIES: Haikyuu!!
MAIN SHIP: Akaashi Keiji & Bokuto Koutarou & Haiba Lev & Hinata Shouyou & Kozume Kenma & Kuroo Tetsurou & Tsukishima Kei
SIDE PAIRINGS: None
CHARACTERS: Akaashi Keiji, Bokuto Koutarou, Haiba Lev, Hinata Shouyou, Kozume Kenma, Kuroo Tetsurou, Tsukishima Kei
MAJOR TAGS: None
ADDITIONAL TAGS: space au, found family
SUMMARY: There are some things only found by getting lost in space.
WORK LENGTH: 3 comic pages, 4 bullet journal pages, 2741 words, 1 image, 15 songs in playlist
SCRIPT: text of comic / text of bullet journal
NOTES: thanks for reading, please enjoy! 🚀
Bokuto slinks back to their home base fifteen minutes after he’d said he would. His shoulders are hunched and drooping, his usual unapologetic grin lost in favor of a small, tired frown. Kenma doesn’t offer more than a second glance, too preoccupied with fixing a wire on an engine. Bokuto takes his silence as an invitation, somehow.
“Soooo. There’s good news, and there’s bad news.” Bokuto announces. He stares at Kenma for any sort of response, but he doesn’t offer any. They really don’t have time for this, if they want to make any progress today.
But he’s still staring after what must be half a minute, so Kenma gives in. It must be important, if Bokuto’s talking to him, and not Kuroo or Akaashi, about it.
“What is it,” Kenma says, still not looking up from his work. He’s too preoccupied with figuring out what’s going on to even bother with phrasing it like a question.
Bokuto brightens, back straightening suddenly. All hints of his slump in the last minute are seemingly forgotten. “Which do you wanna hear first! The good news, or the--”
“Either one, I don’t care. Just talk already.”
But Bokuto deflates again before he responds, and Kenma puts down his pliers. Was that… rude? Did he say something wrong? Do they even have the time to think about each others’ feelings when there’s deadlines they absolutely have to make?
“Whooaaaa,” Kuroo says, suddenly materializing in Kenma’s space. He already has a hand on Bokuto’s back and rubbing circles near the nape of his neck, to which Bokuto doesn’t seem to respond to. Kuroo turns to Kenma. “What happened?”
Kenma shrugs. “I don’t know. He came up to me saying he had news, but he seemed… unspirited.”
Bokuto makes a displeased sound into his hands and leans into Kuroo’s touch. Kenma gestures at him for emphasis. “I don’t know what this is all about, but if there’s something you needed to say, just say it.”
“You shouldn’t be so harsh with him,” interjects Kuroo. “He gets really hard on himself when he’s stressed.”
“I think,” Kenma says, taking a deep breath, and letting some of his tension flow out of his system with an equally deep sigh, “We could all afford to be a little harder on ourselves here.”
Kuroo’s eyebrows shoot up. But his voice is calm, steady. “We’re just trying our best, Kenma. Being harder on ourselves won’t magically fix all of our problems.”
“You’re right,” Kenma affirms, picking up the pliers again. “But maintaining the status quo won’t do that, either. We have to be realistic.”
Changing his hand movements on Bokuto’s back to a repeated upward rubbing motion, Kuroo smiles too-pleasantly. “What’s realistic is acknowledging that we’ll only get so far if we don’t try to understand each other.”
“But we don’t have time to worry about each other. All we can afford to worry about is getting out of here alive,” Kenma says, matter-of-fact. He opens the control panel, revealing a bunch of wires he only knows half of the purposes for. Kenma curses under his breath. Where did Akaashi even go off to?
Kuroo ignores Kenma’s words, instead taking Kenma’s lack of attention to Kuroo as an invitation to sit next to Kenma and get into his personal space. He pokes a finger into the control panel, but Kenma swats it away before he touches anything.
Kenma shoots him a withering look, prompting Kuroo to shoot him a shit-eating grin. “Kuroo. What are you doing.”
“Trying to understand what you’re going through! It must be hard, having to fix a ship with limited supplies. How can I help?”
Kenma sighs again. This is fine. It might seem patronizing, but this is just empathy, this shouldn’t get a rise out of him, not when the stakes are so high. But somehow, he wants nothing more in this moment than for Kuroo to shut up.
“So what does this one do--” Kuroo starts, reaching toward a blue wire in the middle of the control panel again, but Kenma’s already grabbing his wrist.
“Don’t be stupid,” Kenma says, his hand tightening around the edge of Kuroo’s palm. Kuroo’s pulse beats against the very ends of his fingertips. “If you touch these with your bare hands, you could get electrocuted.”
Gulping, Kuroo shifts away from Kenma and the control panel. “Okay. Noted,” he mutters, uneasily. Kenma can see his frown, knows there’s words on the tip of his tongue that he’s not saying.
Kenma keeps his eyes trained on the panel. “Just say it.”
Kuroo makes a displeased noise in the back of his throat.
“Just say it, Kuroo.”
A pause. A breath, that Kuroo holds for what Kenma thinks is three seconds longer than he should. “Is there anything I can… you know, help you with?”
Kenma puts down his pliers to stare at him. He opens his mouth to say something like, you’ll only really get in the way, or what can anyone do to fix something like this without a background in science, or even you’re already doing plenty by keeping Hinata and Lev from killing each other, but suddenly--
“Kenma? What are you doing?” Akaashi says, gliding toward the ship.
His eyes widen when he takes in the distance between Kuroo and the control panel, then moves to shove him away. “You know it’s too dangerous for them to touch the inner workings of the ship.”
“That’s my bad, Akaashi,” Kuroo says, hoisting himself up from the ground. “Just trying to see if I could help out with anything.”
Akaashi sighs, then pinches the bridge of his nose. “There’s plenty of other things to do around here,” he gestures at Bokuto, who’s curled in a ball on the ground. “Why don’t you focus on cheering Bokuto up?”
Kuroo glances at Kenma, who offers him nothing in return. “Alright, fine. Bokuto? Let’s go.”
“Coming,” Bokuto whimpers, leaving their chance at a breakthrough behind.
“Whoa,” Hinata gapes, grateful he’s out of earshot. He turns to Lev, gears in his brain apparently working overdrive. “What do you think they’re talking about?”
Lev grins. “Wanna go find out?”
“You two are going to stay out of it,” Tsukishima interjects from beside them, crossing his arms. “You’ll only make things worse.”
Hinata turns to Lev for a moment, blinks owlishly, then pulls down on the skin under his eyelid while sticking out his tongue. Lev complements with an equally stupid expression. Or maybe Tsukishima just finds Lev’s face stupid in general.
“You can’t stop us, Sucky-shima!”
“Yeah! We’re going to make things worse, and you won’t be able to do anything about it!”
Tsukishima groans as they race toward the others. All too predictably, Hinata shouts something about Lev getting a head start, and Lev shouts some insult he’ll later claim was an innocuous short joke.
They’re going to kill each other before they get home, won’t they?
Kenma holds out his hand, gesturing vaguely to the tools lined up along the floor. Kuroo holds his hand over one, Kenma shakes his head; Kuroo holds his hand over a second one, Kenma shakes his head. This repeats a few more times until Kuroo’s hand hovers over the right tool and Kenma nods quietly in thanks as Kuroo gives it to him. This is an old routine by now, brought out by necessity (Kenma needing to fix the communicator) and convenience (Kuroo’s designated sleeping spot being next to the communicator). For awhile Kuroo was sure Kenma was going to beat him to death every time he asked what the blue wire was for, but the shorter man hasn’t. Yet.
Kuroo leans back on his hands while Kenma continues to strip wires in front of him.
“Remember when we first got here and you wouldn’t let me help?”
Kenma doesn’t even look up as he answers him, “I don’t let you help now, you just won’t leave.”
Kuroo laughs but doesn’t take it personally. It took him awhile but he realized that’s just how Kenma is.
“Yeah, but before you threatened to electrocute me to death! Now I know that you won’t actually do it. Maybe.”
Kenma exhales roughly, which is as good as full belly laugh. Kuroo preens smugly but Kenma cuts him off before he can say something obnoxious.
“I wouldn’t have done it before either,” he mumbles, “I was just stressed. And scared.”
Kuroo leans forward, even though Kenma still isn’t looking at him. He can tell now, though, that he’s avoiding eye contact because he knows the weight of what he just said.
“I was scared too, Kenma,” Kuroo nudges Kenma playfully, “but now I know we’re in good hands.”
Kenma rolls his eyes.
“Thanks, Kuroo.”
“I meant Akaashi, actually.”
Kenma finally looks at him then, just to shove him back a few inches. Kuroo rocks back forward laughing, undeterred.
“I can still electrocute you, you know.”
Kuroo is still cackling a minute later when Bokuto walks in, drawn by the sound of Kuroo’s excitement and Kenma’s torture.
“I heard Kenma groaning so obviously I had to come help torture him!” he throws himself into the ground, resting his head on Kuroo’s lap.
Kenma sighs before attempting to reach over them to grab a tool himself, but Bokuto snags him on the way, pulling him into their pile. Kenma’s screams of anguish are muffled into Bokuto’s arms, but he makes no move to run away. When he’s finally freed he sits back and tries to smooth his hair out, glaring half-heartedly at the two of them only to get matching shit-eating grins back.
“I can still electrocute you, too.”
Bokuto laughs even louder than Kuroo did, chuckles echoing off the walls of the ship around them.
“Okay, but can you wait until after dinner? Tsukishima, Lev and Hinata are cooking,” Bokuto pauses, “oh right! That’s why I’m here. Dinner’s ready.”
Kenma looks back at the communicator pensively, mentally calculating the benefits of skipping an admittedly delicious dinner to keep working on it. But before he can get too far, Kuroo is pulling him out of his thoughts, literally and metaphorically, as he drags him to his feet.
Bokuto’s already halfway out the door, but he turns back at the last moment.
“I gotta get Akaashi!”
Kuroo’s responding wolf whistle is cut off by Kenma pinching his side, but his smirk doesn’t falter. Bokuto’s face creases into a genuine frown in response.
“No! We could die at any moment here!”
Kenma rolls his eyes again. Kuroo is a little worried for his eye safety at this rate.
“Everyone could always die at any moment when they’re awake, Koutarou.”
Bokuto frown deepens, only to flip completely to a smile when Akaashi’s voice drifts into the room.
“Actually, you’re more likely to die in your sleep than awake.”
Kenma rolls his eyes (again! Kuroo is seriously concerned for him) but visibly brightens at Akaashi’s entrance and morbid fun facts.
“Keiji, can you look at this-”
Kuroo cuts him off and drags him to the door, Bokuto following with Akaashi in tow.
“No! Not until we eat dinner,” Kuroo and Bokuto fall behind Kenma and Akaashi, making sure they don’t turn around and return to their project.
Akaashi pulls out a schematic of Lev’s ship, and Kenma leans in to get a closer look.
“I think we can take the engine from his backup generator and use it to power the communicator,” Akaashi begins, before Kenma cuts him off.
“We could just reroute the power from his ship to the communicator here,” Kenma points to a spot on the schematic, “and here. Less work for you in the long run. And sorry. For interrupting.”
Akaashi offers Kenma a small smile.
“It’s okay, it was a good idea anyway. The rest of my sentence was about how to do it so it’s irrelevant now. Thanks, Kozume.”
Kenma hums in response, blush creeping up on his cheeks at the praise, but he’s saved from having to give an equally genuine response by their entrance into their makeshift cafeteria. Lev is standing at one end of the ship, while Hinata is stretching at the other.
Hinata opens his mouth and lets out a banshee shriek, before running at Lev who catches him smoothly and hoists him over his head. Their combined laughter fills the ship as everyone else applauds their impressive acrobatics. Even Tsukishima is smiling, even though his hands stay motionless at his side.
Bokuto nudges him, “You know you can show some enthusiasm, right? We won’t tell anyone.”
Tsukishima rolls his eyes as he starts loading food onto the table, but Bokuto continues to pester him undeterred, poking him repeatedly.
“What’s for dinner?”
It’s a sign of Tsukishima’s patience and growing tolerance of them all that he doesn’t turn around and leave with the food, but instead places the last plate before looking between the platters and Bokuto pointedly.
“Nothing.”
Akaashi lets out a snort from where he’s putting down napkins.
Bokuto pouts, looking at Akaashi and Tsukishima in turn so they each get to appreciate the full force of it.
“You two,” he adds a pointing finger to his pout, “are the worst. You shouldn’t have the same sense of humor. It’s killing me. It’s killing your friend, Tsukki!”
“Bold of you to assume that I’m your friend.”
Hinata appears behind Tsukishima, jumping up to yell in his face more accurately.
“Liar! You just said we were,” Hinata pulls out air quotes for dramatic effect, “cooking dinner for our friends!”
Tsukishima puts his hand on Hinata’s forehead, keeping him at an arm's length away to limit the amount of yells to the face he’ll receive in the future. Hinata easily bats it away, going to high five Lev who’s doubled over with laughter.
“I’ll kill both of you, you know that right.”
Lev and Hinata are still laughing, even as Hinata hides behind Lev and Lev throws his arms wide dramatically, “I’ll protect you, Hinata!”
Kuroo walks between them, pushing Lev back into Hinata and they both collapse on the floor in a heap of giggles.
“Can we please eat?”
Kenma looks up from where he already has a full plate, a piece of fruit in his hand.
“Uh.”
Bokuto follows suit, grabbing a piece of fruit and taking a huge bite out of it, “You know, it’s amazing we found this food! And that it’s good! And edible!”
Lev pauses in his food shoveling to interject, “It was all because of Akaashi and his obscure knowledge of pre-interstellar crops.”
Hinata nods enthusiastically, mouth too full of food to respond.
Tsukishima nods too, though significantly less enthusiastic.
“I found some logs when I finally got into the hard drive on our ship. Apparently these plants are consistent with the fauna found on a long dead planet “earth” that used to be populated but faced a man-made extinction event years ago.”
Kuroo lets out a soft “oof” while Bokuto mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like “can we get an f in the chat”, but it's Lev that speaks up.
“Do you think we’ll get credit for rediscovering it when we get saved?”
“If,” Akaashi corrects him without even looking up from his meal, “if we get saved.”
“When.”
Six pairs of eyes look at Kenma with surprise at his declaration. Finally it’s Bokuto who opens his mouth.
“What?!”
Kenma looks away and focuses intently on the ground in front of him.
“I said when. We’re gonna get out of here and go home. Together.”
Hinata’s smile explodes across his face and his eyes light up with joy at Kenma’s confidence in his answer, before dimming slightly.
“You know, this kind of feels like home now, too.”
Kuroo laughs.
“If we chose to be here maybe.”
Akaashi hums thoughtfully, before looking at all of them in turn.
“Maybe we didn’t choose to be here, but we chose to stay together. I think that counts for something.”
Bokuto is staring at him with starry eyes, and even Kenma looks a bit stunned. Kuroo is the first to shake himself out of the shock, so he reaches for his cup of purified (thanks to Tsukishima and Akaashi’s brilliance) water, and raises it.
“To staying together.”
Everyone raises their glasses in unison, smiling at each other as they do. When Kenma raises his, he’s looking at Kuroo.
“To home.”
MEMBERS:
ryousukase (comic, art), tsukisyama (bullet journal, writing), rronanllynch (writing), tsukeishima (playlist), p3ndejx (brainstorming)RATING: T
TITLE: Anywhere is Home
SERIES: Haikyuu!!
MAIN SHIP: Akaashi Keiji & Bokuto Koutarou & Haiba Lev & Hinata Shouyou & Kozume Kenma & Kuroo Tetsurou & Tsukishima Kei
SIDE PAIRINGS: None
CHARACTERS: Akaashi Keiji, Bokuto Koutarou, Haiba Lev, Hinata Shouyou, Kozume Kenma, Kuroo Tetsurou, Tsukishima Kei
MAJOR TAGS: None
ADDITIONAL TAGS: space au, found family
SUMMARY: There are some things only found by getting lost in space.
WORK LENGTH: 3 comic pages, 4 bullet journal pages, 2741 words, 1 image, 15 songs in playlist
SCRIPT: text of comic / text of bullet journal
NOTES: thanks for reading, please enjoy! 🚀
- ✧ -
character profiles
- ✧ -
Bokuto slinks back to their home base fifteen minutes after he’d said he would. His shoulders are hunched and drooping, his usual unapologetic grin lost in favor of a small, tired frown. Kenma doesn’t offer more than a second glance, too preoccupied with fixing a wire on an engine. Bokuto takes his silence as an invitation, somehow.
“Soooo. There’s good news, and there’s bad news.” Bokuto announces. He stares at Kenma for any sort of response, but he doesn’t offer any. They really don’t have time for this, if they want to make any progress today.
But he’s still staring after what must be half a minute, so Kenma gives in. It must be important, if Bokuto’s talking to him, and not Kuroo or Akaashi, about it.
“What is it,” Kenma says, still not looking up from his work. He’s too preoccupied with figuring out what’s going on to even bother with phrasing it like a question.
Bokuto brightens, back straightening suddenly. All hints of his slump in the last minute are seemingly forgotten. “Which do you wanna hear first! The good news, or the--”
“Either one, I don’t care. Just talk already.”
But Bokuto deflates again before he responds, and Kenma puts down his pliers. Was that… rude? Did he say something wrong? Do they even have the time to think about each others’ feelings when there’s deadlines they absolutely have to make?
“Whooaaaa,” Kuroo says, suddenly materializing in Kenma’s space. He already has a hand on Bokuto’s back and rubbing circles near the nape of his neck, to which Bokuto doesn’t seem to respond to. Kuroo turns to Kenma. “What happened?”
Kenma shrugs. “I don’t know. He came up to me saying he had news, but he seemed… unspirited.”
Bokuto makes a displeased sound into his hands and leans into Kuroo’s touch. Kenma gestures at him for emphasis. “I don’t know what this is all about, but if there’s something you needed to say, just say it.”
“You shouldn’t be so harsh with him,” interjects Kuroo. “He gets really hard on himself when he’s stressed.”
“I think,” Kenma says, taking a deep breath, and letting some of his tension flow out of his system with an equally deep sigh, “We could all afford to be a little harder on ourselves here.”
Kuroo’s eyebrows shoot up. But his voice is calm, steady. “We’re just trying our best, Kenma. Being harder on ourselves won’t magically fix all of our problems.”
“You’re right,” Kenma affirms, picking up the pliers again. “But maintaining the status quo won’t do that, either. We have to be realistic.”
Changing his hand movements on Bokuto’s back to a repeated upward rubbing motion, Kuroo smiles too-pleasantly. “What’s realistic is acknowledging that we’ll only get so far if we don’t try to understand each other.”
“But we don’t have time to worry about each other. All we can afford to worry about is getting out of here alive,” Kenma says, matter-of-fact. He opens the control panel, revealing a bunch of wires he only knows half of the purposes for. Kenma curses under his breath. Where did Akaashi even go off to?
Kuroo ignores Kenma’s words, instead taking Kenma’s lack of attention to Kuroo as an invitation to sit next to Kenma and get into his personal space. He pokes a finger into the control panel, but Kenma swats it away before he touches anything.
Kenma shoots him a withering look, prompting Kuroo to shoot him a shit-eating grin. “Kuroo. What are you doing.”
“Trying to understand what you’re going through! It must be hard, having to fix a ship with limited supplies. How can I help?”
Kenma sighs again. This is fine. It might seem patronizing, but this is just empathy, this shouldn’t get a rise out of him, not when the stakes are so high. But somehow, he wants nothing more in this moment than for Kuroo to shut up.
“So what does this one do--” Kuroo starts, reaching toward a blue wire in the middle of the control panel again, but Kenma’s already grabbing his wrist.
“Don’t be stupid,” Kenma says, his hand tightening around the edge of Kuroo’s palm. Kuroo’s pulse beats against the very ends of his fingertips. “If you touch these with your bare hands, you could get electrocuted.”
Gulping, Kuroo shifts away from Kenma and the control panel. “Okay. Noted,” he mutters, uneasily. Kenma can see his frown, knows there’s words on the tip of his tongue that he’s not saying.
Kenma keeps his eyes trained on the panel. “Just say it.”
Kuroo makes a displeased noise in the back of his throat.
“Just say it, Kuroo.”
A pause. A breath, that Kuroo holds for what Kenma thinks is three seconds longer than he should. “Is there anything I can… you know, help you with?”
Kenma puts down his pliers to stare at him. He opens his mouth to say something like, you’ll only really get in the way, or what can anyone do to fix something like this without a background in science, or even you’re already doing plenty by keeping Hinata and Lev from killing each other, but suddenly--
“Kenma? What are you doing?” Akaashi says, gliding toward the ship.
His eyes widen when he takes in the distance between Kuroo and the control panel, then moves to shove him away. “You know it’s too dangerous for them to touch the inner workings of the ship.”
“That’s my bad, Akaashi,” Kuroo says, hoisting himself up from the ground. “Just trying to see if I could help out with anything.”
Akaashi sighs, then pinches the bridge of his nose. “There’s plenty of other things to do around here,” he gestures at Bokuto, who’s curled in a ball on the ground. “Why don’t you focus on cheering Bokuto up?”
Kuroo glances at Kenma, who offers him nothing in return. “Alright, fine. Bokuto? Let’s go.”
“Coming,” Bokuto whimpers, leaving their chance at a breakthrough behind.
- ✧ -
“Whoa,” Hinata gapes, grateful he’s out of earshot. He turns to Lev, gears in his brain apparently working overdrive. “What do you think they’re talking about?”
Lev grins. “Wanna go find out?”
“You two are going to stay out of it,” Tsukishima interjects from beside them, crossing his arms. “You’ll only make things worse.”
Hinata turns to Lev for a moment, blinks owlishly, then pulls down on the skin under his eyelid while sticking out his tongue. Lev complements with an equally stupid expression. Or maybe Tsukishima just finds Lev’s face stupid in general.
“You can’t stop us, Sucky-shima!”
“Yeah! We’re going to make things worse, and you won’t be able to do anything about it!”
Tsukishima groans as they race toward the others. All too predictably, Hinata shouts something about Lev getting a head start, and Lev shouts some insult he’ll later claim was an innocuous short joke.
They’re going to kill each other before they get home, won’t they?
- ✧ -
Kenma holds out his hand, gesturing vaguely to the tools lined up along the floor. Kuroo holds his hand over one, Kenma shakes his head; Kuroo holds his hand over a second one, Kenma shakes his head. This repeats a few more times until Kuroo’s hand hovers over the right tool and Kenma nods quietly in thanks as Kuroo gives it to him. This is an old routine by now, brought out by necessity (Kenma needing to fix the communicator) and convenience (Kuroo’s designated sleeping spot being next to the communicator). For awhile Kuroo was sure Kenma was going to beat him to death every time he asked what the blue wire was for, but the shorter man hasn’t. Yet.
Kuroo leans back on his hands while Kenma continues to strip wires in front of him.
“Remember when we first got here and you wouldn’t let me help?”
Kenma doesn’t even look up as he answers him, “I don’t let you help now, you just won’t leave.”
Kuroo laughs but doesn’t take it personally. It took him awhile but he realized that’s just how Kenma is.
“Yeah, but before you threatened to electrocute me to death! Now I know that you won’t actually do it. Maybe.”
Kenma exhales roughly, which is as good as full belly laugh. Kuroo preens smugly but Kenma cuts him off before he can say something obnoxious.
“I wouldn’t have done it before either,” he mumbles, “I was just stressed. And scared.”
Kuroo leans forward, even though Kenma still isn’t looking at him. He can tell now, though, that he’s avoiding eye contact because he knows the weight of what he just said.
“I was scared too, Kenma,” Kuroo nudges Kenma playfully, “but now I know we’re in good hands.”
Kenma rolls his eyes.
“Thanks, Kuroo.”
“I meant Akaashi, actually.”
Kenma finally looks at him then, just to shove him back a few inches. Kuroo rocks back forward laughing, undeterred.
“I can still electrocute you, you know.”
Kuroo is still cackling a minute later when Bokuto walks in, drawn by the sound of Kuroo’s excitement and Kenma’s torture.
“I heard Kenma groaning so obviously I had to come help torture him!” he throws himself into the ground, resting his head on Kuroo’s lap.
Kenma sighs before attempting to reach over them to grab a tool himself, but Bokuto snags him on the way, pulling him into their pile. Kenma’s screams of anguish are muffled into Bokuto’s arms, but he makes no move to run away. When he’s finally freed he sits back and tries to smooth his hair out, glaring half-heartedly at the two of them only to get matching shit-eating grins back.
“I can still electrocute you, too.”
Bokuto laughs even louder than Kuroo did, chuckles echoing off the walls of the ship around them.
“Okay, but can you wait until after dinner? Tsukishima, Lev and Hinata are cooking,” Bokuto pauses, “oh right! That’s why I’m here. Dinner’s ready.”
Kenma looks back at the communicator pensively, mentally calculating the benefits of skipping an admittedly delicious dinner to keep working on it. But before he can get too far, Kuroo is pulling him out of his thoughts, literally and metaphorically, as he drags him to his feet.
Bokuto’s already halfway out the door, but he turns back at the last moment.
“I gotta get Akaashi!”
Kuroo’s responding wolf whistle is cut off by Kenma pinching his side, but his smirk doesn’t falter. Bokuto’s face creases into a genuine frown in response.
“No! We could die at any moment here!”
Kenma rolls his eyes again. Kuroo is a little worried for his eye safety at this rate.
“Everyone could always die at any moment when they’re awake, Koutarou.”
Bokuto frown deepens, only to flip completely to a smile when Akaashi’s voice drifts into the room.
“Actually, you’re more likely to die in your sleep than awake.”
Kenma rolls his eyes (again! Kuroo is seriously concerned for him) but visibly brightens at Akaashi’s entrance and morbid fun facts.
“Keiji, can you look at this-”
Kuroo cuts him off and drags him to the door, Bokuto following with Akaashi in tow.
“No! Not until we eat dinner,” Kuroo and Bokuto fall behind Kenma and Akaashi, making sure they don’t turn around and return to their project.
Akaashi pulls out a schematic of Lev’s ship, and Kenma leans in to get a closer look.
“I think we can take the engine from his backup generator and use it to power the communicator,” Akaashi begins, before Kenma cuts him off.
“We could just reroute the power from his ship to the communicator here,” Kenma points to a spot on the schematic, “and here. Less work for you in the long run. And sorry. For interrupting.”
Akaashi offers Kenma a small smile.
“It’s okay, it was a good idea anyway. The rest of my sentence was about how to do it so it’s irrelevant now. Thanks, Kozume.”
Kenma hums in response, blush creeping up on his cheeks at the praise, but he’s saved from having to give an equally genuine response by their entrance into their makeshift cafeteria. Lev is standing at one end of the ship, while Hinata is stretching at the other.
Hinata opens his mouth and lets out a banshee shriek, before running at Lev who catches him smoothly and hoists him over his head. Their combined laughter fills the ship as everyone else applauds their impressive acrobatics. Even Tsukishima is smiling, even though his hands stay motionless at his side.
Bokuto nudges him, “You know you can show some enthusiasm, right? We won’t tell anyone.”
Tsukishima rolls his eyes as he starts loading food onto the table, but Bokuto continues to pester him undeterred, poking him repeatedly.
“What’s for dinner?”
It’s a sign of Tsukishima’s patience and growing tolerance of them all that he doesn’t turn around and leave with the food, but instead places the last plate before looking between the platters and Bokuto pointedly.
“Nothing.”
Akaashi lets out a snort from where he’s putting down napkins.
Bokuto pouts, looking at Akaashi and Tsukishima in turn so they each get to appreciate the full force of it.
“You two,” he adds a pointing finger to his pout, “are the worst. You shouldn’t have the same sense of humor. It’s killing me. It’s killing your friend, Tsukki!”
“Bold of you to assume that I’m your friend.”
Hinata appears behind Tsukishima, jumping up to yell in his face more accurately.
“Liar! You just said we were,” Hinata pulls out air quotes for dramatic effect, “cooking dinner for our friends!”
Tsukishima puts his hand on Hinata’s forehead, keeping him at an arm's length away to limit the amount of yells to the face he’ll receive in the future. Hinata easily bats it away, going to high five Lev who’s doubled over with laughter.
“I’ll kill both of you, you know that right.”
Lev and Hinata are still laughing, even as Hinata hides behind Lev and Lev throws his arms wide dramatically, “I’ll protect you, Hinata!”
Kuroo walks between them, pushing Lev back into Hinata and they both collapse on the floor in a heap of giggles.
“Can we please eat?”
Kenma looks up from where he already has a full plate, a piece of fruit in his hand.
“Uh.”
Bokuto follows suit, grabbing a piece of fruit and taking a huge bite out of it, “You know, it’s amazing we found this food! And that it’s good! And edible!”
Lev pauses in his food shoveling to interject, “It was all because of Akaashi and his obscure knowledge of pre-interstellar crops.”
Hinata nods enthusiastically, mouth too full of food to respond.
Tsukishima nods too, though significantly less enthusiastic.
“I found some logs when I finally got into the hard drive on our ship. Apparently these plants are consistent with the fauna found on a long dead planet “earth” that used to be populated but faced a man-made extinction event years ago.”
Kuroo lets out a soft “oof” while Bokuto mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like “can we get an f in the chat”, but it's Lev that speaks up.
“Do you think we’ll get credit for rediscovering it when we get saved?”
“If,” Akaashi corrects him without even looking up from his meal, “if we get saved.”
“When.”
Six pairs of eyes look at Kenma with surprise at his declaration. Finally it’s Bokuto who opens his mouth.
“What?!”
Kenma looks away and focuses intently on the ground in front of him.
“I said when. We’re gonna get out of here and go home. Together.”
Hinata’s smile explodes across his face and his eyes light up with joy at Kenma’s confidence in his answer, before dimming slightly.
“You know, this kind of feels like home now, too.”
Kuroo laughs.
“If we chose to be here maybe.”
Akaashi hums thoughtfully, before looking at all of them in turn.
“Maybe we didn’t choose to be here, but we chose to stay together. I think that counts for something.”
Bokuto is staring at him with starry eyes, and even Kenma looks a bit stunned. Kuroo is the first to shake himself out of the shock, so he reaches for his cup of purified (thanks to Tsukishima and Akaashi’s brilliance) water, and raises it.
“To staying together.”
Everyone raises their glasses in unison, smiling at each other as they do. When Kenma raises his, he’s looking at Kuroo.
“To home.”
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Main Round Bonus Points
Most Unique Interpretation of the Theme
Most Interesting Presentation
If you would like to nominate this entry for either category, click here!
Rules:
Nominations and the comment round will end on August 25th @ 11:59 PDT!
Comment: Team with the Wind
The character profile is awesome!! Makes you feel like you are watching an anime? or reading a professional manga. The fanfic that follows is also very enjoyable, there is no boring moment while reading, the ending is brilliant!!! Gives a framed sense, which I always love. The playlist included is also nice.
Thank you so much for this entry!! It was a pleasure to read!!
COMMENT: Team Nishiura Birbs
Comment: Team Grandstand
Also, the journal entries were really well done and I enjoyed the character bios.
Comment : Team with the Wind
COMMENT: Team with the Wind
And i'm still screaming about the comic, the chalky lineless style works great and everyone's expressions are incredible. The character profiles were a clever way to explain their background in this au (the handwriting is neat,,). The mix of atmospheric/mysterious vibes and more upbeat ones in the playlist was a nice choice.
I second Iza about your MR entries energy, i'm not good with alignment chart but they sure are in the chaotic line ssdfkj
Comment: Team 29 Balls
The art was gorgeous and I thought the song choices on the playlists for the characters and the mood of your au third gymiverse well.
Great job, and thanks for all your hard work!
Comment: Team Grandstand
COMMENT: Team Oofuri