Chapter Text
Kei blamed the summer sun.
He blamed it on the blinding, scorching, irritating sun.
The heat wave began earlier in the week, every news station warning viewers to protect their skin. UV this, sunscreen that. But nobody seemed to have any precautions to protect his sanity. What level of SPF did he need for that?
He sucked in a sharp, hot breath, trying to calm himself.
The sun made him do things.
Usually, he was just easier to irritate, easier to infuriate. But this was a new level of madness not even he could have predicted. No, jeez, he'd never even dreamed of it.
"Sorry, Yamaguchi." He said as levelly as he could. He stood up, straightened out his indigo tank and baggy white shorts with some semblance of control, and hurriedly walked—tripped out of the Yamaguchi residence.
No one came after him. And he thanked every deity he knew.
But now he was back out in this disgusting, unbearable, sickening heat. He couldn't believe he'd just—it just looked so inviting—he never meant to actually—
Kei jumped as a car passed, the sudden growl of the engine startling him out of his self-induced spiral of regret and, much to his chagrin, excitement. He took another breath of scalding air.
The blonde raked an unsteady hand through his hair as he trudged along, trying to remember why he'd had a sudden lapse of judgment, a sudden lapse of sanity, a sudden lapse of being Tsukishima Kei.
Everything was normal. They'd gotten fruity ice pops from Yamaguchi's freezer—the last strawberry one for Kei and one of the surplus of grape flavored popsicles for Yamaguchi—and they sat in the shade of the navy blue awning in Yamaguchi's backyard. They had shared stories about their last day of class—"so Hinata bit Kageyama's hand" and "he really is just some small animal" and "right right? And then Suga tried to"—and everything was normal as far as Kei could tell.
But then Yamaguchi had to be a slow eater and an avid storyteller.
Kei had already finished his ice pop five minutes ago while Yamaguchi was still relaying the whole "biting turned to dodgeball classroom style" fiasco and still licking at his melting grape ice pop. The blonde had more or less lost interest in the story, keeping the other boy entertained with a few acknowledging hums and nods, but the heat waves were getting to him. He could feel the sweat rolling down his back, his tank sticking to him, soaking into his skin. In all honesty, Kei had probably just wanted another popsicle, but he didn't like grape.
"Tsukki!" Golden eyes snapped away from the melting treat to focus on Yamaguchi's brown eyes. "Your mouth is all red from the popsicle," he laughed. "Is mine purple?"
If his mouth had been empty, Kei theorized, it wouldn't have happened. If he hadn't finished his own ice pop minutes ago, it wouldn't have happened. If Yamaguchi had just kept his mouth closed, it wouldn't have happened.
But as it had happened, by chance—or by unwittingly clever planning and seduction, he wasn’t quite sure yet—Yamaguchi had just taken a rather large chunk of his grape popsicle right before calling his name. And as soon as he innocently asked, "is mine purple?" the boy opened his mouth to reveal a melting chunk of grape ice sitting deliciously on his purple stained tongue.
Kei groaned as he remembered it. He'd gone mad.
And just as soon as Kei's eyes locked onto the piece of ice showcased in Yamaguchi's mouth, he quickly, smoothly—ugh, had he ever been that smooth in his life?—placed a finger under Yamaguchi's chin to lift his face and in one fell swoop, he leaned down to scoop out the ice with his eager tongue, relishing in the cold, sweet aftertaste as he tried to gently suck and lap at any of the remaining coolness in the hollows of Yamaguchi's cheeks and on his startled tongue. When the inside of his mouth was beginning to blister and burn as hot as Kei felt, he'd pulled back with irritation.
Then realization.
Yamaguchi's grape popsicle had been forgotten, dripping to a sticky mess on the boy's hand, but he looked unfazed, or rather, unaware of anything except Kei's alien, but seemingly not uninvited, activities. The boy's eyes had glazed over as he took a tentative, unsure lick of his lips.
Kei hadn't done anything else, but he swore he could feel another wave of grape along his tongue as he watched Yamaguchi.
"Sorry, Yamaguchi."
And now here he is: walking home in the smothering heat with an irritating grape flavor in his mouth that won't go away.
He hated grape.
---
Kei was baking. No, really. He'd actually gone to the store, grabbed some ingredients from the local convenience store, and he started baking. He had a large bowl (probably too much) of homemade whipped cream sitting in front of him, and inside the oven was a rising Apology Cake. He was calling it that, but he's not even sure if an apology was the right thing to do. Sure, he'd thoughtlessly crossed the thin line between best friends and lovers. Sure, he'd stuck his tongue—no, okay, yeah. An apology was the right thing to do.
The blonde pulled out strawberries from the fridge and began to wash them, taking care to set aside the perfectly shaped ones in a separate bowl.
"Something smells delicious in here!" Kei's mother exclaimed as she stepped into the house, a large bag of groceries around her arms and beads of sweat dripping down her cheek.
Kei rushed over to her, abandoning his strawberries and lifting up the heavy bags. "Cake." He replied simply, lending his arm to her.
Mrs. Tsukishima smiled gently, knowingly. "A fight with Tadashi?"
Kei stiffened.
"Y'know, you always bake strawberry shortcake for him, but isn't that your favorite dessert?" She asked teasingly.
Kei stood his ground as she slipped out of her blue sandals and placed them to the side. "I'm afraid I'll poison him if I make anything else." Kei sighed as he started to lead them both to the kitchen, his mother's hand hooked onto his arm.
"Why don't you buy him something nice for a change?" Mrs. Tsukishima hummed as she gingerly opened the bag of groceries he’d set on the kitchen table and began to empty its contents.
Kei frowned. He'd never even considered it, but the answer was easy.
"It's not sincere enough." He said as he busied himself with rinsing strawberries once again.
Mrs. Tsukishima giggled, "'It's not sincere enough!'" she mimicked, childishly lowering her voice to his pitch and speaking with much more emphasis than he did, "My gosh, you're such an honest kid." She let out another laugh before giving him a light pat on the shoulder. "Be sure to apologize to him properly, okay?"
Kei forced his mouth into a hard line at the sound of his mother's amusement, the tips of his ears turning red with embarrassment. Okay, yes, this was an apology cake, but how did his mother know he was at fault? And why, for crying out loud, is he being laughed at if this was so normal?
"Ooh!" Came an excited cry from the front door. "Something smells delicious! Is that cake?" There was a brief silence as Akiteru made his way to the kitchen. Before he even made an appearance, he hollered, "Kei, what did you do this time?"
The younger boy stared at his arriving brother, unamused.
Akiteru gave him back a grin. "Look, you only ever bake when you've messed up." He pointed at the cake as if it were evidence. "If Tadashi had messed up, you'd be walking into walls with a scary face and won't hear anything we say and eventually you come home with an Unspeakable Something."
If Mrs. Tsukishima wasn't laughing yet, she sure was now. "Aki! Don't tease your brother too much! Look, he's going red!" Their mother gave Akiteru a light slap on his chest as she lightly pretend-shoved him out of the kitchen. "Besides, I think it's cute that Tadashi finds all these dinosaur things to give him. Though now I can't ever get him anything, because I'm afraid he already has it!"
"And to think I’m the reason Kei started to like dinosaurs to begin with!” Akiteru sighed, pressing a hand to his chest and looking towards the ceiling fondly as if he could see the images of their childhood in the air. When Kei let out a snort in response, the elder of the boys narrowed his eyes and grinned mischievously. “But it’s not just dinosaurs either." Akiteru supplied with a teasing grin and a subtle wave of his eyebrows. “Tadashi has his own way of being sincere too, right Kei?”
Oh. That did it.
“Nii-chan,” Kei growled warningly. His shoulders were raised, as if offended and ready to attack, but neither mother nor brother seemed alarmed. No, not when his face was as red as the strawberries on the kitchen counter, not when his mouth was fighting to stay dominant and angry, despite the corners of his mouth betraying him in momentary upward curls. “You didn’t.”
He was so sure they would never find them! This was becoming simultaneously humiliating and laughable.
“Hm?” Mrs. Tsukishima tilted her head to the side, wondering what was being said and wanting to be in on the teasing. “Do tell, Aki.” She stepped in line with Akiteru as she leaned in close to him, waving him down to her ear.
The older blonde leaned down towards his mother, the grin never leaving his face. “You know those art prints on Kei’s calendar and on his walls and in his textbooks and on his corkboard?” Kei didn’t appreciate the obvious emphasis of just how much of Tadashi’s prints he had on display.
Mrs. Tsukishima lifted a single elegant eyebrow in curiosity. “What about them?”
“Aki-nii!” Kei exclaimed, his voice—embarrassingly—shifting in pitch mid-cry. “Don’t tell her! And why are you going through my stuff?”
The grin got wider. “They’re letters, Mom.”
Finishing blow.
Kei let out an aggravated, defeated groan as he slumped onto the kitchen counter, hiding his burning face with his hands.
“Letters?” She exclaimed excitedly. She’d never known. She’d noticed them ever since Kei’s first birthday celebration with Tadashi, but she never bothered to look behind the art. “But I thought those were just birthday presents? You know how much Kei likes those—what are they, dear? The simple art style?”
“Minimalist.” Kei grumbled, his head dangerously close to the sink. He vaguely wondered if he could fit his head into the garbage disposal.
“Right! Minimalist art things.”
Akiteru nodded in agreement. “Yeah, some of them are, honestly.” He thought about them for a minute. “A good number of them are just ‘Happy Birthday, Tsukki!’ and then some cheesy best friend message, but there are some that are just full of text.”
“Aki-nii!” Kei cried, finally lifting his head. “Invasion of privacy!”
“I didn’t mean to read it!” Akiteru defended, raising his hands. “It’s just that one fell off your wall one day, so I was about to put it back up, when I saw the massive amount of text on the back, and then I realized it was 2 of 5.” He chuckled nervously and then began speaking rapidly, as if finally feeling a bit guilty about it. “And then—Tadashi’s incredible at writing, you have to admit, but he just rambles—so I felt like I just had to read the rest, and that’s how I figured out they all had text on the back.” He smiled sheepishly and lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. “Sorry, Kei.”
The blonde sighed, took off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Just,” He didn’t even know what to say, “Just pretend they don’t exist?”
Kei glanced up when he didn’t hear a response, only to see that the blurry outlines of his mother and brother had melded together, the outline of his mother shaking ever so slightly. He narrowed his eyes and replaced his glasses, realizing that in fact, Akiteru was now doing the exact opposite of what he had just asked.
“No!” Their mom gasped, as if she were listening to the most scandalous news she’d ever heard.
“That’s it!” Kei stomped his foot, admittedly a little too childish for his tastes. “No more of this! Out! Out of my kitchen!” The boy hurried over to his brother, turned him around sloppily and gave him a none-too-gentle shove and push out into the living room. “Don’t you have better things to do?”
“But Kei!” Akiteru whined in response, though he let himself be pushed out. “This is our brotherly bonding time!”
Kei rolled his eyes, his mouth ready for the most sarcastic, sardonic, mocking tone he could conjure. “And I’m in love with Tadashi.” The blonde shut his mouth immediately, suddenly catching his slip of the tongue. He never called Yamaguchi “Tadashi.” He’s also never joked about loving him either. Impossible. He didn’t. Another lapse of being Tsukishima Kei? What was happening to him?
The elder boy finally resisted him, practically forcing Kei to slam into his brother’s back. Akiteru turned to face Kei at that time, his expression surprised and bewildered.
“You mean to tell me you don’t?”