The squeak of the gym doors, the smell of rubber, the sultry summer competing with the crunchy chill of autumn. Ai could smell body odor melding with the scent of deodorant. She heard the squeal of rubber soles against the shiny wooden floors of the gymnasium. It was cooling down, sure. The leaves were turning different hues and the air in the morning was less humid and a bit crisper. When She walked with Kuroo and Kenma to school, she had Kuroo's long sleeved warm up jersey on over her uniform. She would hold hands with Kuroo and watch Kenma play his video games as they walked. Yes, this transition between summer and autumn was connected with memories Ai never had before. She looked forward to waking up for school now. She didn't spend all of her nights holed up in her room, drinking. She had a boyfriend, friends, and most importantly, her life had the stability that she didn't realize she never really had before.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. This happy moment between summer and autumn was no exception. It all soured the day she came back home with Kuroo after volleyball practice to find Akihito at the door, prepared to buzz the doorbell. Her hands clenched but released when Kuroo put a hand on her shoulder as if to tell her to play nice.

With a short sigh, she faced Akihito Yoshida with neither a smile nor a scowl. "Hello, Akihito." She greeted him with no formalities or honorifics.

He nodded at her, a little shaken. When he turned to her, she could see the bruise across his cheek. Her eyes widened for a moment and she hastily unlocked the door to her apartment. She rushed him inside, and tugged him into the kitchen. "Kuroo," she barked, Kuroo knew what she needed and immediately opened the cupboard under the kitchen sink to retrieve the first aid kit. "Thanks." She grabbed a beer out of the fridge and opened another drawer where they kept the clean tea towels. She wrapped the can of beer in the tea towel and set it on the counter before rummaging through the kit for antiseptic spray. There was a little bit of scraping on his cheek, but not enough to warrant a bandage. "Close your eyes," Ai ordered before spraying antiseptic on his cheek. "You baby," she mocked as he hissed at the sting "it can't hurt any worse than being hit, now can it?". She pressed the beercan to his cheek. "Now," Ai said, going back to the fridge to pull out two more cans of beer, "what happened?"

They all sat on the couch, Ai had her legs thrown across Kuroo's lap and leaned her head onto his chest. She had changed out of her uniform into one of Kuroo's shirts and a pair of leggings. Kuroo couldn't have drank more than half of his beer in the few sips he took throughout Akihito recounting the events of the past week. Ai drank her own beer without any semblance of amusement as she listened. She was neither surprised nor disappointed. Her father had always been a deadbeat, but despite her lack of reaction to the news, she had never suspected him to be capable of something like this. All while she had been growing up he had never been physically or particularly verbally violent, even when drunk. Ai couldn't even imagine what had happened to throw her father off the edge.

But of course, it was when he lost a large sum of money and Akihito refused to give him any of the money his mother had left him to fuel his father's gambling habits. Hearing this painted her father in a new shade. Not the neglect and careless indifference that she had seen growing up, but the snapping of a brittle rubber band. She sighed, even if she didn't like Akihito, there was no way she was going to kick him out. "Did you call the police department?" Ai asked, setting her empty can down.

Akihito shook his head. He had a small bag of things with him along with his school bag, but Ai could tell he wouldn't go back even if she forced him to. "I didn't know what to do." He seemed a bit stunned, not that his father had been violent with him, but that he was now having to deal with the aftermath. "I did call my mother, she didn't answer so I left a voicemail." Akihito said.

"Well," Ai said, "I'm hungry, let's order some food." She pulled out her phone and slid her debit card out of the back of her phone case. "Are we feeling fast food, or?" She asked, waving her hand around.

"Burgers are good, whatever you get just get a lot of it. Your mother's coming home in a half hour, right?" Kuroo said. She nodded her head.

"You eat meat, right?" Ai asked Akihito, less hostile than before but still not overly friendly. Akihito nodded his head. "Okay Kuroo, go get changed and we can go get some food." Her boyfriend grinned at her and placed a kiss at the crown of her forehead before getting up to leave.

Once Ai and Akihito were alone, Ai's posture changed. She seemed more prickly than before. "Now, I am only saying this because I know my mother would object if I didn't but you're staying here tonight and my mother and I will find a way to get you out of this situation." She said it without a hint of hospitality. Ai did not like Akihito, but she would tolerate him because she despised her father more and knew that her father deserved every bit of what was coming to him. "Of course, we will have to call your school and ask them to excuse you and send your assignments via email if they can." Ai explained. "But in the meantime, you can live here with us, probably."

Akihito nodded his head. "I wouldn't want to be a burden." He said.

Ai snorted, "Oh please, if you didn't want to be a burden, you wouldn't have shown up at my house." She stood up and stretched. "It's not a big deal, there's a fold-down couch in my mother's office, but she's barely home to use it." Akihito stood up and followed Ai as she crossed over to the door and shoved her feet into a pair of slides. "She got it for Kuroo, but he usually just sleeps in my room." Ai grabbed her house key and held the door open for Akihito. Kuroo was leaning against the railing when they exited the apartment.

Kuroo had his volleyball warm up jersey slung over one shoulder, Ai snatched it and promptly wrapped it over her shoulders. She and Kuroo practically wore matching outfits, considering half of her clothing was stuff she stole from him. Ai was surprised at how nonchalant Kuroo was being about hanging out with his girlfriend and her half-brother. He asked Akihito some basic small-talk questions about his favorite subjects and of course sports, but Akihito wanted to play basketball, not volleyball, which reminded Kuroo of Bokuto, which somehow brought him back to the time that Bokuto dared him to eat an entire watermelon in ten minutes.

When they got to the fast food place, Ai began rattling off orders like there was no tomorrow. Eight burgers, two orders of twenty nuggets, four orders of fries fries, a strawberry milkshake, three chicken sandwiches, and of course a dozen of the warm cookies. In the end it was probably way more than anyone should order at a fast food place, but the nonchalance of a teenaged girl ordering enough food to feed the entire volleyball team made Kuroo swoon a bit. Even though they tried to conceal it, the cashier was unable to hide their shock. They stood there, waiting for their order, Ai hadn't let either of the boys get a word in edgewise when she was ordering, but Kuroo knew that she had most likely ordered anything she thought Akihito might like. She wasn't the type to eat obscene amounts of food, like Kuroo was. While Akihito was polite, she didn't know how much he needed to eat, and her mother could definitely pack away a few burgers and a box of nuggets after a long day at work.

The food came out in three bags. One held the sandwiches and half of the fries while the other had the nuggets and the rest of the fries. Ai grabbed the strawberry milkshake and the bag of cookies.

They walked home silently and quickly. Ai was just about ravenous when they got back to her apartment. She tore through half of a box of chicken nuggets and a burger before coming up for air. Kuroo watched her with amusement as he ate his own obscene amount of food.

Akihito, on the other hand, was only a quarter way through his burger, watching with utter and absolutely abhorrence. "Someone's hungry today~." Kuroo teased. Ai shot him a glare and unwrapped a chicken sandwich, pausing to take a sip of her milkshake. She took in a large gulp of air.

"I'm stress eating," She poked Kuroo in the nose with a french fry, which he caught with his teeth enthusiastically. "I have no idea how to handle this situation and I have no advice to give."

Akihito finished chewing his bite of burger before responding. "I wasn't expecting you to have all of the answers, I just had nowhere else to turn to." He looked at her with his onyx marble eyes. "I know what I am asking is a lot of you, especially when you consider everything."

Ai paused for a moment before slowly expressing her sentiments. "We are family, Akihito, whether we like it or not. I may not like my father too much, but there is nothing that can be achieved by me taking out my dislike for him on you." She took another sip of her milkshake. "Besides, you're only just as guilty as me for being born to such a terrible father." she smiled at him a bit wearily, shrugging her shoulders. "I think you are a good kid, I just have trouble separating my feelings." She admitted, doing her best to let her guard down.

"Still I-" The opening of the door cut Akihito off.

"Ai, you know how sluggish fast food makes me." Ai's mother complained, ditching her shoes by the door. "Oh hello, Akihito." She pulled the boy into a hug, surprising him. "To what do I owe this surprise?" She looked at his face for a moment and her eyes went wide.

"Mother, Father struck Akihito," Ai passed her mother a chicken sandwich. "I will set him up in the office and we can work things out with his school and work in the morning."

Ai's mother looked like she was going to throw up. "Akihito, did you call the police?" She asked, dropping her sandwich on the counter.

"N-no." Akihito seemed stunned by her concern.

She gripped his face lightly with both of her hands. "Listen to me, if anyone puts their hands on you like that, and they are an adult, you should call the police. I don't care if it's your father, your mother, or your principal. If someone hits you like that unprovoked and you are a child, you call the police, you understand?" Her eyes looked worried sick. Akihito nodded his head.

She said it fervently, in a way that struck Ai. Just what was she so scared of?

Ai curled her arms behind Kuroo's waist as they sat on her bed. She didn't want to be alone, but both of them decided that sometimes Kuroo needed to spend time at his own house. He ran his hand through her ponytail, pulling out her scrunchie. He threaded his hands through her hair. She didn't want to think, much less talk. She pulled him to her so their mouths could meet. All she needed was to feel his lips on hers, his warmth. She didn't need to speak if they were kissing. If they were kissing, Ai didn't have to think about how her half-brother was in the room next door and her father was a child beater.

They parted and she kissed him gently on the eyelids, soothingly. She sat on her knees and pulled Kuroo's head towards her, in a hug. His face ended up in her chest. He took a breath in. "Ai, I think your titties are bigger than Karasuno's manager."

"What?" She asked, not knowing what her boyfriend was going on about. Then it struck her, the groupchat from a while back. "Seriously, Kuroo?" She exclaimed, pulling back and looking him in the eyes. "You're absolutely juvenile."

He chuckled and buried his face into her breasts, rubbing his face in. One of his hands was creeping under the hem of her shirt. "Kuroo," she warned in a low growl.

"Too bad you're wearing a bra, it's not as soft." He reaches up the back and fumbled with the clasp.

"I swear to god," she rolled her eyes but made no attempt to swat his hands away. It took him a ridiculously long time to unclasp her bra. When he managed to get it off, he flung it across the room, it landed with one strap perfectly draped across the door knob.

He went back to nuzzling his face in her boobs through the fabric of her shirt. Of course, when he had gotten back to that, there was a knock on the door. Akihito had a towel draped over his shoulders and he wore a pair of baggy shorts and a white tee shirt. When he walked in on his half-sister and her boyfriend in a very compromising position, he turned bright red, understandably. But within a second, he regained his composure and his face was back to neutral. "The bath is ready."

"Thanks, Akihito." She said, pushing Kuroo's face out of her bosom. "And it looks like your time is up, Kuroo, try again next time."

"Ai, wait!" Kuroo called after her as she grabbed her towel and marched off to the bathroom.