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To say it catches Kei by surprise would be an understatement.
Tadashi has been working on his jump floater serve for a while. Kei will admit, if only to himself, that he wasn’t as supportive as he should have been initially. He has baggage he prefers to pretend he doesn’t have, struggled with the idea of working the hardest but never being the best because of this nebulous idea of talent. He shouldn’t have taken it out by ignoring Tadashi though. Tadashi knows better than he does what that kind of work put in feels like, what sitting on the bench feels like. Kei is tall and fairly athletic, and it’s served him well, and he hates when Tadashi beats himself up. Couldn’t stand it even when they were kids, wouldn’t let others bully him even though he tried not to involve himself too much, something itching under his skin when he saw Tadashi’s wide, wide eyes filled with hurt, freckles bold on his pale face.
Something similar to that feeling stirs in his chest now, protectiveness, fondness, a familiarity brought from years together, but there’s something else there too.
The whole team is screaming around, but Kei is standing in the middle of them, frozen, trying to process.
Tadashi did it. He got the floating jump serve. Kei feels proud, so proud it’s like his heart could burst. He looks at Tadashi’s beaming face, his teammates thumping him on the back in excitement, and he feels himself flush, his knees go weak. He grasps blindly for the bench behind him with one hand, sitting heavily when he finds it and can guide himself to sit, finding it impossible to look away from Tadashi.
If Hinata is their sun, and Kei is their moon, then Tadashi is all the stars in the night sky, glittering bright, his freckles a collection of constellations Kei wants to trace the shape of.
He’s so fucked.
Kei knows his coping methods aren’t the best, but avoidance has always been his go to. He was so hurt by Akiteru’s lie that he refused to speak to him outside of obligation for years.
He doesn’t mean to. He misses Tadashi like it’s a physical thing, a weight on his chest, but he takes one look at his face and gets overwhelmed with that same feeling, and can’t do anything more but swivel on his heel and walk the other way. His captains try to question him on it, but he waves them off.
He absolutely refuses to explain that he and Tadashi aren’t arguing, but that he’s having a sexuality crisis. He’s never really been interested in anyone before, always more into his studies and volleyball, shrugged it off and figured he’d get to it when he had time. Always found the guys obsessed with girl’s chest sizes to be ridiculous. Now he sees Tadashi shining with sweat after doing sprints and his fingers twitch with the urge to push him up against the wall and plaster them together. How ridiculous.
Tadashi corners him at the end of practice a week into his disappearing act, arms spread wide, and Kei avoids looking him in the face, only for his eyes to catch on his delicate wrists. He drops his eyes, feeling feverish and ridiculous. Did he miss out on the attraction part of puberty only for it to hit him all at once in the most inopportune of times, with his best friend who he would have given anything to avoid this kind of awkwardness with?
“Did I do something?” Tadashi demands, and he sounds angry, but Kei knows him too well. It’s just a bluster for the hurt underneath. “Just—just tell me. Let me fix it. You can’t just avoid me like a child, okay? You can’t just ignore all your problems in the hope they go away!”
“You haven’t done anything,” Kei murmurs. If nothing else, he needs Tadashi to know that. His heart is hammering so hard he wonders how it isn’t visible, and his eyes are fixed firmly on Tadashi’s sneakers. One sock is higher than the other, and it tugs at something in Kei’s chest that he doesn’t like to acknowledge. As uncomfortable as the want to stare at Tadashi in the changing room is, this feeling is much worse, and he’s willing to touch it even less.
“Then why are you avoiding me?” Tadashi sounds exasperated and frustrated. Without really making the decision to, Kei flicks his gaze up to look at Tadashi’s face. Tadashi’s brow is furrowed, his forehead still glistening with sweat, his face blotchy pink and the flush spreading to the neck of his jersey where it disappears. Kei’s eyes get caught there, on his collarbones, on the neckline of his shirt. His breathing feels funny. He desperately wonders if Tadashi blushes all the way down his chest, and he’s sure they’ve trained shirtless in the summer sun before, but suddenly he can’t remember. He never paid attention to the details before.
He does know that Tadashi has freckles all down his chest, less concentrated then his face, but there. Kei wants to map them all with his hands, spread wide across the pale expanse of his chest, feel it rise with excited breathes because of his touch.
“I have to go,” he blurts, and turns, running out of the gym despite Tadashi calling out behind him.
“So I heard something interesting,” Akiteru is saying to him during the phone call they have every two weeks to stay updated.
“What is it now?” Kei asks, voice flat. He doesn’t know what stupid thing Akiteru’s roommate has brought up now.
“Mom said Yamaguchi hasn’t been around for a while now and that you look upset about it.” Kei nearly chokes on his sip of water at Akiteru’s words, coughing harshly. Akiteru keeps talking like his brother isn’t having a near death experience. “Did you two break up?”
“We were never dating!” Kei sounds hysterical to his own ears.
He can practically hear his brother raise an eyebrow. “I was just teasing you, but maybe I hit a little close to home there?”
Kei groans and drops his head onto his desk. He turns his head, looking at his homework spread beside him. He misses studying with Tadashi. He misses Tadashi. It’s not one’s fault but his own and his stupid body and brain. “Something’s wrong with me.”
“I could have told you that,” Akiteru chirps. “But seriously, what’s wrong?”
Kei gazes at his bed. It’s perfectly made, but sometimes he wouldn’t make it before Tadashi came over to study or hang out, and he’d sit there while Kei worked at his desk. He suddenly has mental images of walking over, Tadashi looking up at him with startled doe eyes, Kei pushing him back onto the bed and kissing him deeply, pressing him into the mattress with his weight.
He pushes the thought aside, but the image of Tadashi, sitting on his unmade bed, brows furrowed in concentration, stays with him.
“How much can you want something before it kills you?” he asks, and his brother makes a noise of alarm, but Kei changes the subject, distracting Akiteru from pursuing it too deeply. He’s not ready to touch upon it himself yet.
The next practice, Kei has to make a conscious effort to stare as Tadashi strips, changing into his volleyball uniform. He remembers Tadashi skinny and young, all of eleven years old, all elbows and knees, shorter than Kei but somehow just as skinny. He looks so different now, bones wrapped in lean muscle, still short but his height drawn up until he’s level with Kei’s nose.
Kei jumps when someone claps him on the shoulder, thinking he’s been caught. “Still with us, Tsukishima?” Sugawara asks, and his smile is easy, but there’s something probing about his eyes that makes Kei uncomfortable.
“Of course,” he says smoothly, and starts changing.
Tadashi ignores him the whole practice, and it’s nothing that Kei doesn’t deserve, but it still stings. He stands at the back of the gym and watches Tadashi make a few floater serves, and every time he gets it correct, heat pools in his body. Kei can’t help but glance down, looking at Tadashi’s ass in his shorts, and then flushes when he realises what he’s doing, looking around to see if he’s been caught. No one is looking his way, but Kei is still aware of his own actions far too well.
He takes a deep breath, walking over to the bin full of volleyballs so he can practice some returns against the wall.
“Fuck me,” he hears Tadashi mutter as he walks passed, and stumbles in surprise, throwing his hand out and catching himself on the metal pole of the net.
The entire team clatters to a stop, looking at him in surprise. Kei is probably the least likely to trip over his feet out of any of them, always deliberate in his moments and not excitable enough for his feet to get ahead of his brain. He can feel himself turning red under their scrutiny. He glances away, and sees the ball Tadashi was practicing with having fallen too short of the mark, and realises Tadashi had been cursing his mistake. Of course he was, but somehow Kei just heard the words, and the context behind them got stuck behind the lagging in his brain at the statement itself.
“You don’t all have to stare,” he says. “Don’t you all have shit to do?”
Daichi shakes his head at him, and Tanaka yells about his language and respecting his elders, but they do get back to practice. He can’t help glancing over at Tadashi, who is blinking at him in confusion, hands limp by his sides like he’d forgotten what he was doing. Kei misses him and wants him and feels fond of him in equal measure.
God, he’s like a girl on Valentine’s Day, giving chocolates to the boy she likes that’s never even glanced her way.
Tadashi stares at him like he’s forgotten he’s supposed to look away, and Kei stares back, unable to look away from his eyes. Kei drops his gaze to his lips, parted softly, pink and perfect. He wrenches himself away and moves to the bin of volleyballs.
If he smacks them a little too hard against the wall, no one comments on it.
“Tsukki,” Tadashi cries out softly, lithe fingers grasping at his back. “Tsukki, please.”
“It’s special when you call me that,” Kei is saying, and he runs his mouth along Tadashi’s neck, down the tendon, across his collarbones, brushing over his sternum. He can feel blood rushing down, and he wants Tadashi so badly, but it’s not urgent. More than anything, he wants Tadashi to feel good. He wants to be the one to make him feel good.
“Please,” Tadashi is babbling. “Please, please.”
“Yes, yes anything you want.” Kei frames Tadashi’s face in his hands, and kisses him deeply.
Then wakes with a jerk, drenched in sweat, so turned on its frankly embarrassing. He buries his face in his hands, bemoaning his life.
He turns on his phone, squinting in the light. The time blinks back at him as 3:43 am. For one delirious moment, he considers calling Tadashi, knows he’d answer Kei on impulse, forgetting he’s mad at him, and Kei could close his eyes and listen to his voice.
He knows how furious Tadashi would be when he woke up fully though, how he’d curse Kei out and call him a coward like he deserves.
Kei flops back onto the bed, arm draped across his eyes. He tries to go back to sleep, but his mind is stirring with thoughts of Tadashi, and his arousal is only getting worse, not better.
He tentatively lets himself remember Tadashi in his dream, needy and flushed, voice plaintive. He basks in it, lets his hand drift downwards and tries to block out the guilt. He imagines his hand is Tadashi’s and when it brushes lightly over his stomach, trailing lower, he gasps, hips bucking. He slips his hand into his pajamas bottoms, and his hand is too big, the fingers too long and thick, but he holds desperately onto the fantasy that it’s Tadashi. That Tadashi is sitting beside him, hand around him, eyes intent on his face for every sign of Kei’s reactions. “Look at you,” he’s saying, and Kei gasps, hips bucking into his – Tadashi’s – hand. He feels so desperate his skin is flushed hot with it, and he pants open mouthed, overwhelmed.
He fists himself once, twice, three more times, thinking of Tadashi, of Tadashi’s eyes, Tadashi’s chest and freckles and blush, his ass, his fingers, and spills into his own fist.
As soon as he’s come down from his high he feels guilty, but practicality comes first. He guiltily cleans himself up with some of the tissues from the box on his bedside table, then ducks out to the bathroom he and Akiteru used to share to wash his hands. If only he could wash his heart and mind of the deed he’s committed, his betrayal of Tadashi’s trust.
Tadashi keeps ignoring him, Kei keeps guiltily jerking off to thoughts of him and then feeling terrible about it immediately after, unable to look him in the eye every morning practice. Not that they were making much eye contact in the first place.
It all comes to a head about 3 weeks after his revelation.
“Tsukishima,” Sugawara says, and Kei turns to look at him, “I need your help carrying something out of the supply closet.”
Kei grunts, following Sugawara, though not without a suitable amount of grumbling. “What, you can’t move it on your own?” Sugawara knows he’s mostly posturing, though.
“I would say sorry about this, but I’m really not sorry,” Sugawara says, and Kei looks at him in confusion before Tanaka and Nishinoya jump out from behind a pommel horse just next to the doors, pushing him into the room.
“Hey!” he cries, indignant, whirling around just in time to see the doors close. The doors rattle, and Kei guesses they’re doing something like sticking a broom through the handles to lock him in.
What. The. Hell. He’s on a team full of psychos.
He turns slowly, surveying the room. He sees a tangled volleyball net, a bag full of soccer balls, and a group of hurdles all leaning on each other before he sees Tadashi, staring at him, mouth parted in surprise.
Oh. Now the abduction makes sense.
Tadashi blinks when he realises Kei is looking at him, and he hunches into himself, defensive. Kei hates that, used to seeing it on Tadashi, but never directed at him. He gets angry in response, too often his go to emotion. “This wasn’t my idea.”
“I know,” Tadashi says, sounding small. Kei hates that, and his anger turns on himself for making him sound that way. “I know you’d rather be anywhere else than locked in here with me.”
If only he knew how untrue that was. “Don’t put yourself down like that,” Kei snaps, instinctive.
“Why not?” Tadashi cries, throwing his hands up. “You just stopped talking to me, no reason, no explanation. You say I didn’t do anything but you won’t look me in the eye, hell, you can barely stand to be in the same room as me!”
“It’s difficult for me,” Kei says, stiff.
“What is?” Tadashi drops his arms. “I thought we were friends. You’re supposed to talk to your friends about these things.”
“We are friends.” Kei approaches Tadashi, wanting to reassure him of this at least, even if he’s not sure they’ll be friends for much longer, if he says what he thinks he’s about to say. The words choke in his throat.
“Then why?” Tadashi’s eyes brim with frustrated tears, and Kei wants to kiss him so much it hurts.
So he does.
He cups Tadashi’s cheeks, like he’s wanted to for weeks, possibly for much longer but something he refused to acknowledge then. He brushes his thumbs over his cheeks, where his freckles are dusted like paint on canvas, and he leans in and presses his lips to Tadashi’s. His heart is beating so hard he thinks it may burst from his chest, and he’s so nervous his hands tremble.
It’s only a moment before Kei pulls away, fearful of Tadashi’s reaction, looking at him with worry and apprehension. Tadashi is blinking, looking stunned and confused. Kei wants to kiss him again until that expression melts away and he kisses back, but he’s not entitled to anything, let alone Tadashi who might as well have hung the moon. He makes himself take a step back instead, waiting for the verdict.
“Fuck,” Tadashi says, blinking up at him, and the confusion is fading into awe, though he still looks stunned. “Is this real?”
“Yes,” Kei says, unsure of where this is going.
“I’ve wanted you to do that for years.”
Kei takes a moment to process that, staring at Tadashi who is looking up at him with an expression almost like reverence. Then it hits, and he lurches forward, grabbing Tadashi by the hips and steering him backwards.
“What -- ?” Tadashi is saying, before his back hits the wall, and then Kei is leaning down and kissing him, hard.
Tadashi whimpers, hands going up to Kei’s hair. He nearly knocks his glasses askew, and Kei pulls back, ripping them off his face and putting them down on the nearest surface. He’ll find them later.
“Tsukki –” Tadashi starts, and Kei ducks back in, latching his mouth onto his pulse point. “Kei.”
Kei shudders, hearing his first name on Tadashi’s lips. He wants to make him say it over and over.
“Wanted this, wanted you,” Tadashi is babbling, hands scrabbling over Kei’s scalp. “So long, god, do you know what you look like?”
Kei detaches himself from Tadashi’s neck. “Do you?”
Tadashi snorts, but Kei cups his cheek, turning his head to make eye contact and holding him there until Tadashi is gazing back, paying attention. “You’re the most gorgeous person I’ve ever seen,” Kei says, and Tadashi flushes and opens his mouth, but Kei won’t let him brush it off. “You have beautiful green eyes, soft hair, your body is perfect. Your freckles kill me.”
Tadashi snorts, but his face is red. “You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not, I’m –” Kei stops, hesitating, his face turning flushing hot in embarrassment. “I’ve been jerking off to thoughts of you for weeks now.”
Kei won’t look at Tadashi, sure he’ll be pushed away now for being a creep, for being the worst kind of friend. He feels a hand on his face, turning it to face Tadashi, and he could pull away but he follows the gentle guiding gesture, looks into Tadashi’s eyes.
“Holy shit,” Tadashi breathes, eyes wide with disbelief. “You’re serious.”
“You’re not mad?”
“No,” Tadashi says, wonderment on his face, like the idea to be so would never occur to him. “Now please kiss me.”
“Since you asked so nicely,” Kei says, unable to hold back his snark, but Tadashi just pulls him down by a fistful of his hair, too used to his bullshit.
Kei falls into the kiss, blissful and floating on it. Tadashi opens his mouth and he dives in, brushing their tongues together. He feels like a starving man and Tadashi is a feast. Like Tadashi is water in the desert, like he is air to someone choking. He can’t get enough of him, every touch a gift, overwhelming and never enough to satisfy simultaneously.
He slips his hands underneath the hem of Tadashi’s jersey, palms flat on the skin of his hipbones. He skims one hand up his stomach, feeling the taut skin, and Tadashi shivers, head dropping back and breaking their kiss.
“Don’t stop touching me,” he says.
“If given the choice I never will,” Kei replies, and Tadashi shiver again. The hand in Kei’s hair clutches tighter. Kei nips at Tadashi’s throat. “How long do you think they planned to leave us in here to sort it out?” He murmurs, not pulling far enough back to lose contact.
“I think they thought we’d ignore each other first, so a while,” Tadashi says, and his voice vibrates over Kei’s lips.
“Long enough, then,” Kei says, dropping to his knees, ignoring Tadashi saying for what?
He hooks his fingers in the waistband of Tadashi’s shorts, lifting one eyebrow at him in a sardonic show of his question. He already has a feeling of the answer, but he would never do something Tadashi didn’t explicitly and enthusiastically want him to.
“Yes, please, god,” Tadashi says. He looks like he just got struck by a two by four, chest heaving, eyes wide and shining in the dim light. Kei feels something sharp in his chest that he doesn’t know what to do with.
He pulls down Tadashi’s shorts and gets his mouth on him, and Tadashi gasps, hands in his hair grabbing tightly. If he does his best to make Tadashi loud, to try to get as much out of him before he spends himself, then no one needs to know but himself.
Their teammates find them sitting calmly on one of the gymnastics mats, cross-legged and talking softly. Kei glares at him when the doors open.
“Glad that’s sorted out,” Sugawara says. “If you need someone to kill, pick these two.” He points at Tanaka and Nishinoya.
“Hey!” They shout in unison.
“We’re going home,” Kei says shortly, grabbing Tadashi by the hand and pulling him to stand with him. Tadashi stumbles, and Kei can feel him looking at him, probably wondering why he’s essentially holding his hand in front of other members of the club. He’s not much for physical affection.
He drags Tadashi out after him, still by his hand. He hears his teammates calling out after them, wanting to know details of why they were fighting and how they made up. He pulls Tadashi into the changing room, since they’re still in their uniforms.
Kei steps back, dragging his shirt over his head, and feels gratified that when he steps away Tadashi is staring at him, eyes glued to his chest. He stops, and Tadashi’s eyes flick back up to his face. He blushes, looking away. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve been trying not to stare at you while changing for weeks now.”
“Try doing it for years then,” Tadashi says, and he looks back at Kei now he’s been giving permission. He reaches a hand out, tentative, then bolder when Kei holds still for him.
“You should have said something.” Kei waits, drawing in a sharp breath when Tadashi touches him, sliding his palm over his skin. It feels cold in his wake, and he feels like he could burn alive, his core heating up at the touch. He feels addicted to Tadashi’s touch, his attention.
“How was I supposed to know if you would kick me to the curb or not?”
“I would have killed anyone how hurt you.” Kei means it, despite the surprise on Tadashi’s face.
“You know,” Tadashi says, suddenly shy. “I never returned the favour back in the supply room.”
“You don’t have to –”
“I want to,” Tadashi cuts him off. “I want you so badly. I’ve wanted you so badly. God, the amount of times I’ve fingered myself in my bed and tried to imagine it was your hands.”
Kei can feel his whole body turn hot. “Tadashi –”
“Sorry, if that was too much, but you said you’ve thought of me, and well –”
“How long?” Kei demands. He throws his shirt to the floor, and pushes Tadashi against the lockers, pulling the neckline of his shirt aside, pressing on the growing bruise there.
“Kei, that’s – it’s embarrassing, you don’t need to know, you wouldn’t –”
“How long?” He demands.
“Three years?” Tadashi hazards.
Kei pulls back. Tadashi looks nervous. “We’re going home,” Kei says, and Tadashi’s face falls, “so I can strip you in my own bed.”
Tadashi blinks at him, once, twice, and then he’s ducking out of Kei’s hold and scrambling to get dressed in his street clothes. Kei admits that it’s flattering.
His mom brightens when he walks in the door with Tadashi at his heels. “I haven’t seen you in a while, Tadashi! I’m glad you’re doing well.”
“We’re going upstairs,” Kei says. His hand is locked around Tadashi’s wrist, and Tadashi is pink on his cheeks, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Alright, you boys have fun,” his mother says, waving them off. She doesn’t know what they’re doing, but Kei feels a bit embarrassed at the declaration anyway.
In his room, he turns and locks the door behind them. “Do you still want to --?” he starts, but Tadashi cuts him off.
“Yes.” Tadashi is emphatic. “I’ve had fantasies about this for years.”
“So you’ve said. Should I feel guilty for not catching up sooner?” Kei approaches him, and Tadashi puts his hands on his chest as soon as he’s in reach. Kei puts his hands on his hips, thumbing at Tadashi’s hipbone.
“No. You’re worth the wait.” His smile is radiant. “What brought you up to speed, though?”
Kei flushes again, embarrassed. He’s making a habit of it, and it’s not one he’s liking a lot, aside from how Tadashi seems to like it on him. “That’s not important.”
“Oh, now I have to hear.” Tadashi’s smile widens, mischievous, Cheshire cat. “It’s embarrassing, isn’t it?”
Kei would be proud of this bold, teasing streak if it wasn’t aimed at him. “I’d really rather not share.”
“Nope. I have to hear it now.” He fingers Kei’s collar, and Kei gets distracted for a moment.
“I was… attracted to you finally nailing your jump floater serve.” The words are difficult to get out. He doesn’t like being vulnerable, admitting to things he keeps close.
Tadashi just looks at him for a moment, before he throws his head back and laughs. “If I knew that was what would get you, I would’ve learned how to do it years ago.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kei says. “Apparently I have a competence kink, but only when it comes to you.” He takes his hands away from Tadashi’s hips, instead putting them beneath his thighs. He lifts Tadashi, who yelps and wraps his legs around Kei’s waist.
Tadashi glares. “A little warning.”
Kei shrugs, smug. He carries Tadashi to the bed, dropping them both onto it. “Are you complaining?”
“No,” Tadashi says. “But I’d love to hear about that ‘only when it comes to you’ part of your story later.”
“Later?” Kei raises an eyebrow in challenge.
“I think I owe you something I’d like to pay back.” Tadashi slips his heads under Kei’s shirt, and Kei goes along as he strips him of it.
Tadashi looks just as good naked in his bed as he’d imagined. When Tadashi gets his hands on him, it’s far better than any of his fantasies.
They lay together on Kei’s bed, squished hip to hip on his twin, panting and sweating. Kei had gotten Tadashi off again, so Tadashi had insisted on making it even, making Kei tired but satisfied.
Tadashi turns over, laying a hand on Kei’s chest and tracing patterns into his chest. “So… where do we go from here?”
Kei moves the arm that had been flopped across his eyes. “What do you mean?”
Tadashi shrugs, but he won’t look Kei in the eye. “Are we still friends? Are we just friends? Is this a one-time thing? Friends with benefits?” He pauses, going still, the lines of his body stiff and anxious. “Boyfriends?”
Kei almost says Anything you want, but that wouldn’t entirely be true. He doesn’t know that he can be just friends again, not after a taste of this. “I want to date you. I want to take you out, buy you gifts, do the things we did before but with different context. Even if I probably should have taken you out before taking you to my bed.” Tadashi rolls his eyes at that. Neither of them are too caught up with social conventions. “Though, I’d… I’d like a little time before we go public with it. I still need some time.”
Tadashi moves up to kiss him on the lips softly, just a peck. “I can do that. I want to date you too.”
Kei suspected that, but it still warms his chest to hear it. “And even then, just our team and families for a while.”
Tadashi pulls back, looking at him in surprise. Kei has to resist the childish urge to hook an arm around his waist and pull him back in until they’re flush again. “You want to tell the team?”
“You don’t?” Kei can’t help getting defensive.
“I do,” Tadashi says. “I just didn’t think you’d want to. You’ve always been very private.”
“I want to.” Kei reaches out and takes Tadashi’s hand, weaving their fingers together. “They’re sort of like another family. Besides, they helped us get together, in the end.”
Tadashi’s lips twitch on a smile. “Anyone else?”
“Maybe those assholes that helped me decide to focus on my blocking.”
Tadashi’s laugh bursts out of him, full-bodied and sweet, and he leans down to smother it in Kei’s chest. Feeling swells inside of him, and Kei finally lets himself acknowledge it as love.
He thinks he’ll keep that to himself for a while before he tells Tadashi, though.