Chapter Text
Shirabu shifted slightly, resisting the urge to just sit on his hands after the fifth time he’d repositioned them.
They had already placed their orders (miso and tonkotsu ramen with a side of gyoza), and now that there was no menu to occupy his field of vision, there wasn’t really much of anything for his gaze to rest on. Just Ushijima. Just Ushijima with his broad shoulders and the adorable little flush on his cheeks from the cold and good god that jaw—
He wasn’t going to survive this night intact, was he?
For probably the thousandth time that evening he cursed his teammates. At the same time, he desperately wished they were here. Anyone would do. Goshiki would do. He’d be too busy nitpicking everything he did to properly admire Ushijima. Which was a good thing. The less time his eyes spent on Ushijima the better.
A nasty little voice just behind his ear suddenly hissed if that’s the case then why do you download all of Tendou-san’s selfies with Ushijima-san then crop out Tendou-san?
Can it, stupid voice. What do you know?
I know that you jack off to those pictures of Ushijima-san twice a day you thirsty h—
“Shirabu.”
He looked up at Ushijima. Or he would have, if he hadn’t been looking at him already. Shit. How long had he been staring?
“Yes?”
“You were glaring at me.” Ushijima pointed out. He didn’t even look bothered by it. Shirabu wondered if anything fazed this man at all—like if you shot up and kissed him right here right now would he even flinch?—no, bad voice. Shut up. “Is something wrong?”
Maybe surviving the night was aiming too high. Maybe he should focus on surviving this dinner first.
“Nothing!” He replied cheerily, conjuring up a smile, albeit a strained one. “I was just thinking about which movie we’d watch later. I was reading the reviews earlier and they all sounded promising.”
That was a lie. There was only one good movie among the selections and it was a horror-thriller from a renowned director in the genre. The rest were just…sludge. The slice-of-life comedy was as dry as a slice of bread left too long in the microwave, the zombie film had about as much thrill as being pushed down a kiddie slide, and the book adaptation should have just stayed a book.
(Critics’ words, not his, but Shirabu was definitely considering a career in movie review now. Really, where else could he get paid for being an asshole?)
Ushijima hummed thoughtfully, taking a short sip of his water. “As I said, feel free to choose whichever you like.”
Shirabu nodded. Paused and clenched his hands in frustration when he realized they had just been unconsciously tearing neat little lines into his napkin.
Silence. Again. Shirabu wasn’t sure if all the awkwardness was just from his end. It wasn’t like Ushijima looked uncomfortable. Maybe he just preferred the silence? But he’d never seemed bothered when Tendou kept nagging him at lunch, even when the topics got personal, but maybe because that was Tendou.
Shirabu bit his lip at the image of his redheaded senior; who casually wheedled all those personal life stories out of Ushijima, who was the only one, it seemed, who could get him to try out all these silly things from Snapchat filters to participating a pillow fight during training camp, the only one who could sling an arm over his shoulder and call him Wakatoshi-kun in that vaguely flirtatious way that got Shirabu’s blood boiling whenever he witnessed it.
Might as well, right? Might as well rip the band-aid right off and get it over with. His eyes darted to Ushijima’s face, then down to the tattered napkin between his hands, then back again.
“Ushijima-san?” He started, hesitant, waited for the acknowledging grunt before, “Do you…like Tendou-san?”
Ushijima didn’t even blink. “Yes, I do.”
And there it was. There it fucking was, out in the open. He’d just barely managed to hold in the gasp, the sudden shock washing over him like a bucket of ice water. He shot his gaze to the table, rolling them to and fro and blinking rapidly just so the tears wouldn’t well up.
“Tendou is a good friend. He does not look like it, but he’s actually very reliable, and gives sound advice.”
Hold the fuck up. Time out. Wait. Wait. Wait. “Friend?”
Ushijima paused, blinked at him twice.
“As in…just a friend?” Shirabu clarified carefully. Because yeah sure everyone might say that Ushijima-san was as dense as osmium but he wasn’t stupid, and if Shirabu didn’t play this sensibly then he might as well just get up on this table right now and announce his feelings through interpretive dance.
“Of course.” Ushijima answered. “Semi would be very upset otherwise.”
…Shirabu was sure that if there was a quota to the number of life-changing revelations one was allowed in one day, then he’d just exceeded his.
“Come again?”
“Semi and Tendou are currently in a relationship.”
He got that. Really, he did. It was just that his brain was a constant feedback loop of HOW WHAT WHEN WHERE WAIT SO THEY WERE THE ONES I HEARD FOOLING AROUND IN THE STORAGE ROOM I FUCKING KNEW IT that he couldn’t really vocalize much of anything else.
“Does that bother you?”
“No!” He insisted. Too loudly. Several heads turned to glare at them and Shirabu shrank back in his seat. Hastily bowing in apology before looking at Ushijima again. “I was just—I mean I had a hunch but I didn’t actually think it was already happening but…”
The food arrived then, cutting him off. Shirabu wisely kept his mouth shut, waiting for the waiter to finish setting up their food and leave before fixing Ushijima with a distressed expression.
“Ushijima-san, are you sure you should be telling me this so casually? Isn’t it…”
“It’s not a secret, if that’s what you’re asking.” Ushijima reassured, murmuring a soft thank you for the food before swirling his noodles. “I think they started in the middle of our second year. They don’t actively promote their relationship, but they never lie when they’re asked.”
“Besides,” Ushijima brought the spoon to his lips, slurping some of the soup, “I don’t really see any reason for them to hide. They’re clearly very happy with each other. And they don’t let what other people say get in the way of that.”
There was a slight edge to Ushijima’s tone, a bite of protectiveness. Shigeru breathed softly, still dumbstruck, still in disbelief.
“That’s…”
He recalled all those times Tendou and Semi were oddly in-sync, despite Semi claiming to never know what was going on in Tendou’s head, those funny and teasing faces they made from across the court, regardless of whether there was a net between them or not, all those times Tendou directed that rare and fond smile at Semi, so different form his usual sinister grin.
“That’s actually amazing.” He finished, smiling slow and easy, and Ushijima only grunted an affirmative, already chewing his first mouthful of noodles.
Suddenly, it made sense, and Shirabu wondered how he could’ve been so blind.
He looked up only to find the answer was right there in front of him.
-
Shirabu nervously brought the popcorn to his lips, teeth working slowly around the puff as the actress trembled on-screen, hand over her mouth and curled up tight in fear. He swallowed with difficulty, trying to get his heart to dislodge itself from his throat and slide back down to his chest where it belonged. No luck. His heartbeat pulsed monstrously loud around his neck, in time with the protagonist’s rattled breaths. The lack of music only made it worse—better?—because Shirabu usually anchored himself to the resonating echoes of the waterphone, pictured someone behind the camera striking a mallet against the rods and suddenly he wasn’t scared anymore, perfectly composed while his friends cowered behind him or beneath blankets.
But now there was no music. There was nothing but her panicked, too-loud breathing. Where was the murderer?
Ten seconds. Nothing. Her hands slowly slipped down to her chest. She was breathing slower now, more normally. Her joints were unlocking and slowly she made to stand. Don’t do it. Shirabu wanted to hiss. Don’t you fucking—
Crack! as a chunk of the door gave under the force of a swung axe. And another. The actress was screaming. So were half of the people in the cinema. Shirabu could only count himself fortunate that he was part of the half that wasn’t.
“Good call.”
Shirabu winced at the first spray of blood, gazed forlornly at his strawberry Fanta, then turned to Ushijima. “What?”
“When she was moving towards the door you said ‘don’t do it’.” Ushijima said, eyes glued to the still-ongoing gore-fest. “I was praising your foresight.”
And there it was again, his heart back in his throat and pumping like that time he drank three cans of Red Bull on a dare. “I—uh…ah…thank you.”
Nice, Kenjirou. A real bag of wits, you are. How long did it take you to come up with that one?
Shirabu was pretty sure hearing voices was classified as a symptom of some degree of insanity. It was just his luck that his inner voices inherited his sass. Maybe this was karmic retribution from all the times he’d dished out shade to Semi and Goshiki. If he promised not to kill them would he be forgiven?
The sounds of an axe chopping into flesh and bone and everything in between finally stopped, leaving the heaving, satisfied breaths of a killer. Shirabu went right back to his popcorn as the scene shifted to her brother, who was on his way home to a house with a dead sister and an axe-crazy murderer. Lovely.
“Who do you think would be the first on the team to die in a horror movie?”
Shirabu almost hacked up the kernel he’d swallowed. Head snapping so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. Yup. That was definitely still Ushijima-san. But where on earth had that come from?
Ushijima angled his head to meet his gaze and Shirabu quickly schooled his expression into something a little less who are you and what the fuck did you to Ushijima-san and little more that was a very interesting question, let me formulate a reply deserving of it.
He took a moment to genuinely think it through. Then, “Goshiki?”
Ushijima’s head tilted curiously. Shirabu resisted the urge to snap a quick photo because cute! Cute! Too cute!. “Why do you say so?”
“He just seems like he’d be tricked into dying first.” Oh, Shirabu could picture it already. “Usually the murderer lures the naïve ones into following him. Then he’d get them into an isolated area and that’s where he’ll kill them.”
(He was sure he was being 100% objective here. Not projecting. Totally not projecting at all.)
“Then again, in some movies they tend to keep that character alive a little longer.” Shirabu continued, hooking a finger under his chin in thought. “Sometimes they’ll use them as a proxy for the audience, since characters of that type will need stuff explained to them a lot.”
Ushijima stared at him for a moment, blinking rapidly in bewilderment. “You’re…quite knowledgeable about this.”
If it were anyone else, Shirabu would have internally preened, responded with an aloof I read. You should try it sometime. As it were, he could only duck, hiding the giddy smile working its way up his face. “I like analyzing tropes. It’s…interesting to see all these patterns in media.”
Ushijima chuckled, the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. The smile was barely there, and the laugh easily sounded like an aborted sneeze, but they made Shirabu’s heart stop all the same.
“I never knew that about you.”
Shirabu swallowed, slowly picked up his Fanta and took a good, long sip. But it wasn’t really helping. Not when Ushijima huddled close like he was sharing a secret, eyes bright with curiosity facing Shirabu instead of the movie, his breath warm against his face...
“Who would stay alive until the end?”
Shirabu nearly choked on his drink.
-
Shirabu didn’t know when exactly watching a movie turned into analyzing the likelihood of survival of our teammates if we were hypothetically thrust into a horror movie plot but in the middle of defending his theory about Tendou being the anti-hero archetype, the cinema’s soffit lights turned on, the end credits slowly rolling up the screen.
“Well,” Shirabu yawned, futilely tamping it down with the back of his hand, “there went the ending.”
“It wasn’t particularly interesting.” Ushijima murmured, also sounding marginally sleepy. “Your story was better, to be honest.”
“Why, because you’re the one who made it alive until the end and led a group of survivors along the way?”
Shirabu punctuated this with a cheeky smile, but as usual, it bounced off of Ushijima’s head, who was already standing up, dusting off popcorn from his jeans.
“I’m the captain.” Ushijima only responded matter-of-factly. “In such an event, it would still be my responsibility to keep you all safe.”
“All the protagonists surviving until the end doesn’t sound like a horror movie.” Shirabu pouted, recalling all the ways Ushijima refuted any possible death scene by saying I wouldn’t let anybody out of my sight or separate from the group or Reon took up boxing, once. I’m sure he can fight him off even if he had a weapon or some other factoid about the others that would conveniently help them survive an encounter with a murderer relatively unscathed.
“You sound a little too upset at the idea of all of us staying alive. Should I be worried?”
Ushijima…joked. An occurrence so rare that Shirabu’s head snapped up to witness it in its entirety.
“Did you just…” Shirabu stuttered, mouth hanging open. Shirabu could swear, could swear on his own life that Ushijima smirked mischievously, hand reaching up to cover it up with a yawn.
“How are you getting home?”
“My mom is picking me up in the entrance beside the coffee shop.” He replied, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the quick change of topic. “What about you?”
“My mother will also be picking me up.” Ushijima answered, already fiddling with his phone. “She hasn’t texted yet. What about yours?”
As if on cue, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He stood and pulled it out, saw three messages from his mom, the last one asking if the movie had finished already.
“Yeah.” He muttered, wincing at the timestamp of the I’m here text that told him she’d been waiting for twenty minutes. She always did tend to overestimate traffic.
He nearly jumped at the first feel of it: a hand on his lower back, uncharacteristically soft and gentle coming from a person powerful enough to spike a ball at more than a hundred kilometers per hour. He looked down, and indeed there it was, Ushijima’s hand coming up to rest on the curve of his spine, applying a more natural pressure when Shirabu didn’t flinch away. Ushijima was looking down too, an odd fascination in his eyes, his thumb sweeping in a curious arc.
“I’ll walk you.” Ushijima finally said, coaxing him forward, and Shirabu could only nod, mentally smacking his inner voice for the very welcome comment about only a little lower and he’d be touching your ass.
That hand didn’t drop from his back even after they crossed into the bright interior of the mall. It was late. The place was deserted spare for the patrons filing out of the last shows of the cinema. Oddly enough he didn’t feel tense, or ill at ease with the hand guiding his back in what could easily be misconstrued as an intimate gesture if anyone just so happened to glance.
But Ushijima’s hand was solid and warm and…nice…on his back, fitting just right. He wondered briefly how it would feel completely curled over his waist, or his shoulder, or your ass—
Ushijima only spared him an alarmed glance when he smacked his forehead, blinking slowly when he hissed just a mosquito. A very annoying, moment-ruining mosquito under his breath.
-
His mother waved from inside the car just as Ushijima’s hand fell away. Shirabu literally had to bite down the whine of disappointment. He waved weakly when she rolled down the driver side window and shot her head and arm out, suddenly pausing when she realized they were the only two heading towards her.
“Oh? Just Ushijima-kun? I remember Kenjirou saying there would be…more of you.”
“It’s a long story, ma.” Shirabu sighed, pausing by the driver’s window to kiss her on the cheek, before going around to enter the passenger side. Which reminded him: first thing tomorrow, murder teammates.
His mother raised her expertly-drawn brows, red lips pursed, but she quickly shifted to a full-blown smile when she faced Ushijima, who was hovering just outside the passenger door. “Thank you for taking care of my son, Ushijima-kun.”
“It’s no problem at all, Shirabu-san.” Ushijima responded with a bow, ever polite, before turning to him. “Have a good night, Shirabu.”
There was so much Shirabu wanted to say: maybe, let’s do this again next time? with a flirtatious smile just barely edging on suggestive. He wanted to keep pushing, wanted to try his luck a little bit more to see what it got him, but at the same time he was happy. He was inexplicably happy and content and completely fine to wallow in the fizzy giddiness in his belly, the glowing warmth still tingling on his back.
He smiled, completely open and unguarded with how it split open his face and squinted his eyes until he couldn’t see. “I already did. Thank you for tonight, Ushijima-san.”
And this time it was unmistakable. Ushijima smiled at him. Thin lips curved into a sweet little arc. And dear god, it made Shirabu want to kiss him.
Ushijima waved goodbye and bid a final have a safe drive before Shirabu rolled up the window, eyes still magnetized to the shrinking image of Ushijima in the rearview mirror, a dazed smile on his face.
(The spell was rudely and immediately broken when his mother chirped in with a bright You never told me you had a boyfriend, Kenjirou!)