Chapter Text
Daichi woke up to the smell of someone else’s socks in his face. Whilst that wasn’t particularly unusual, it wasn’t exactly how he preferred to start the week either.
Attached to said socks were Bokuto’s surprisingly large feet. Daichi groaned and rolled over, only to nearly smack his face off of someone else’s pointy elbow. Daichi blinked hazily, and made out a familiar mess of dark hair. Kuroo had commandeered the other half of his bed. Or third.
Honestly. It was hardly big enough for one, let alone three.
Daichi sat up, rubbing away the last remnants of sleep from his eyes. Next to him, Kuroo slept on, face-down on the mattress. He’d somehow managed to wedge his head between Daichi’s only pillow and the wall. A feat that would have been much more impressive if it didn’t happen every other day.
Getting out of bed proved hazardous - Bokuto didn’t stir when Daichi had to crawl over his legs, but he was still very much in the way . He snorted in his sleep but remained curled up on his side at the edge of the covers. Both his upper body and legs were bare, covered only by a pair of disturbingly yellow shorts. Daichi had no idea how he managed to sleep like that - at least Kuroo wormed his way under the duvet.
Daichi shook his head at both of them, and reminded himself that he was far too tolerant of their ridiculous sleeping habits. He stumbled his way over to the bathroom, ignoring Oikawa’s soft rhythm of snores from the far corner of the room. He slept like the dead.
Typically, Daichi’s fourth roommate was already awake and fully alert. Ushijima was shirtless - evidently just fresh out of the shower - but he was almost entirely dry. Daichi could still make out the faint scent of his (thankfully non-offensive) deodorant.
Ushijima glanced up from where he was cleaning his teeth at the sink, spitting out a mouthful of toothpaste before he spoke. He caught Daichi’s eyes in the mirror. “Good morning.”
Daichi nearly grunted back - it was still far too early for him to have to speak - but caught himself at the last moment and grumbled out a rough, “Morning.” His mother would have been proud.
Nearly tripping over the bathmat, Daichi grabbed his towel off the nearby handrail. It was orange and black stripes - courtesy of Bokuto and Kuroo, who claimed ‘it brings out your eyes’ and ‘it matches your morning mood’, respectively. Neither explanation made any sense to Daichi, but he still used the towel. Because it was fluffy. Not because he liked it.
He nodded towards the shower. “Do you mind?” Living with four other boys meant there was little room left for modesty. They only had one bathroom, and between Oikawa demanding half an hour every morning to style his hair, and Kuroo and Bokuto’s… antics, Ushijima was his best option for sharing. At least he didn’t make lewd comments about Daichi’s thighs that made him flush all the way to the tips of his ears.
Ushijima shrugged. “Go ahead. I’m almost done.” He tugged lightly at the towel wrapped around his waist, before reaching for a roll of toothfloss hidden in the mess that was their bathroom shelf. (Daichi couldn’t even blame Oikawa for that one - Kuroo and Bokuto had just as many hair products on it.)
“Thanks.” Daichi turned his back to Ushijima, stripping out of his shirt and shorts before side-stepping into the shower. He threw his towel over the door and stood under the hot spray until he lost track of time. One of his arms ached all over, but he put that down awkwardly lying on it for most of the night.
When he stepped out again, the bathroom was empty. Ushijima had shut the door behind himself, so Daichi quickly towelled off hair hair before spraying enough deodorant to nearly choke himself with the scent of pine and musk.
He took a moment to rub the mirror free of condensation and assess his appearance. Daichi’s black hair was still very much damp and his skin flushed - courtesy of the shower - but had dark circles around his eyes. Again.
Daichi sighed softly to himself. Not much I can do about that. He cleaned his teeth much quicker than Ushijima had, and was out of the bathroom mere moments later.
He was just in time to observe the spectacular event which was Bokuto twitching violently in his sleep and accidentally kicking Kuroo in the back of his head.
Kuroo was startled out of sleep, and pushed himself up blearily with a hand pressed against his dark hair. It stuck up in all directions, and matched Kuroo’s confused expression. He was wearing a black t-shirt with a cat on it (a gift, he claimed, though they all knew he was lying) that had ridden halfway up his back in the night. Kuroo didn’t seem to notice. The dark haired boy blinked a few times before his gaze shifted onto the still sleeping Bokuto. Then his face darkened.
“Bokuto, you -” Kuroo kicked one leg free from under the covers, and used it to push Bokuto off Daichi’s bed in one swift movement, “- stop fucking kicking me awake every morning! If I wanted an alarm clock, I’d buy one!”
He ignored Bokuto’s piteous whines of, “But I was still sleeping,” from the floor, and sat up, stretching in a cat-like motion. He rubbed a hand through the back of his hair, which didn’t do anything to improve it. It still had that distinctive, ‘I slept with my head wedged next to the wall again’ look that Kuroo had so artfully mastered.
Daichi stepped over Bokuto and pulled a pair of boxers out of his drawers. He slipped them on under his towel as he spoke. “By that logic, Kuroo, you don’t seem to want your own bed either - because you never seem to use it.”
From anyone else, that could have insinuated several things. But Daichi meant exactly what he said. There were five beds in their shared dorm, but only four were ever actually used.
Kuroo rotated between Daichi’s and Bokuto’s, occasionally crashing out on Oikawa’s when the other was feeling particularly generous (not often). There was even one morning Daichi had caught him sleeping in Ushijima’s bed. (With or without Ushijima, Daichi wasn’t sure - the aforementioned boy had already gotten up for his morning run by that point.)
Kuroo literally never slept in his own bed. He was like a giant cat that preferred to settle itself in the most convenient warm patch. And they were all far too used to it by now to argue when one of them woke up entangled with Kuroo’s gangly limbs.
He gave Daichi a sheepish grin that didn’t match his words. “Sorry, not sorry.”
Daichi’s mouth thinned into a tight-lipped expression. He was about to respond when Kuroo continued.
“Nice abs, by the way.” The dark haired boy waggled his eyebrows. “I’m really appreciating the view.”
“It’s even better from down here.”
Flushing, Daichi glanced down at the floor to see Bokuto staring up at him, propped up on his side like some underwear model from a fashion magazine. (This was one of the few times that he truly resented the fact that Bokuto never slept with a shirt on.) His oddly-dyed grey and black hair wasn’t quite a messy as Kuroo’s, but it was getting there.
Bokuto gave Daichi the exact same leering expression as Kuroo. The effect was only slightly ruined by his mismatched socks.
Daichi felt the colour start to creep up to his cheeks as well, and barely resisted the urge to cover himself. Oh, they’d take great delight in that. “It’s far too early for this,” Daichi grumbled. He pulled at his towel so that he could throw it over his shoulders, ignoring Kuroo and Bokuto’s scandalised gasps as he quickly moved back into the bathroom to rehang on the rail. They were both still chuckling to themselves when he came back out.
“I agree.” Ushijima didn’t even look up from his book as he spoke, simply turning a page from where he sat on his bed. “Put some clothes on, Sawamura, before they combust in a mess of teenage hormones and morning stupidity.”
Daichi pulled a face, but he moved across the room to their wardrobe, ignoring the two idiots’ appreciative humming noises as they stared at his back. He pulled out the first shirt he came across. At this point, Daichi didn’t even care if it was his or not - he just wanted to cover himself up as quickly as possible.
“A crime against humanity to cover up such a fine specimen.” Daichi didn’t have to turn around to know that Kuroo would be shaking his head dramatically, and Bokuto nodding in agreement.
“The only crime against humanity is the words that leave your mouth,” Daichi muttered under his breath, pulling on the trousers that made up the other half of their uniform. He grabbed the nearest tie but made a point to pick out his own blazer from where it hung in the wardrobe. A slightly too tight shirt he could deal with. Kuroo’s too long arms in the form of a blazer he could not .
Neither of them heard the words, and he was fine with that. Instead, Daichi turned back with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “Thanks for volunteering to get Oikawa out of bed this morning. That’s really going to save me a ton of time.”
Next to the wardrobe, Oikawa snored on. He was still lying in the same position that he’d been in when Daichi had entered the bathroom.
Kuroo and Bokuto simultaneously flinched back from the look in Daichi’s eyes. They both glanced at each other before speaking. Daichi would have found it comical in any other situation.
“Um, Sawamura -”
“I don’t think -”
“Want to go get breakfast, Ushijima?” Daichi cut across both of them, turning to the other boy. “Maybe we’ll beat the crowd for once.”
It really would be nice to go early for a change. Oikawa took forever to haul out of bed, and he kicked worse than anyone. And the task of making sure he was up on time usually fell to either Daichi or Ushijima, because Bokuto and Kuroo simple didn’t care if their roommate was late for first class.
But Daichi felt bad. He knew how late Oikawa stayed up every night, juggling his need to maintain high grades that would satisfy his scholarship, as well as a variety of other things. (No one was entirely sure what Oikawa got up to in his free time. Or at least, no one was sure what he did for all of it.) Daichi respected Oikawa’s dedication to his studies.
That didn’t mean he enjoyed waking him up every other morning.
Ushijima grinned at him. “Sounds good.” He closed his book and stood up to shuffle round the room and gather up a few other things. Daichi wasn’t sure why Ushijima bothered - he was already fully dressed and had packed his bag the night before. What else could possibly be missing?
Daichi finished knotting his tie as Kuroo collapsed onto his stomach again. The dark haired boy pulled himself over so that he could lean over the side of the bed and face Bokuto. His hair was still a state, but his eyes were much more alert than they had been earlier. “Janken?”
Ushijima moved over to the door as Kuroo and Bokuto began the most intense game of rock-paper-scissors Daichi had ever seen. Bokuto finally sat up into a straight-backed seiza position, his eyebrows faintly creased with the determination to beat Kuroo - who had a similarly serious expression on his face.
Throwing the last of his things into his bag, Daichi slipped on his shoes and quickly slid out of the door - Ushijima holding it open - just as Bokuto let out a loud squawk of displeasure.