Work Text:
Yuutarou doesn’t know what to say at all when Kageyama Tobio knocks on his door. It’s been two years since high school ended, and certainly a lot longer than that since they were ever on ‘visit each other at their houses’ terms.
However, something about the way Tobio is wilting before his eyes keeps Yuutarou from telling his old frenemy-slash-rival exactly which circle of hell he can go to. Sighing, he blurts, “What do you want?”
Tobio doesn’t raise his head, and when his shoulders start to shake, Yuutarou realizes with no small amount of alarm that he might actually be crying. Feeling about as useless as teats on a bull, Yuutarou lets his mouth run on autopilot while he desperately scours his brain for something — anything — that could make the most stolid person he knows weep.
He gets to Accidental Castration before Tobio finally whispers, “My dad died this morning.”
“Oh, shit.” Yuutarou swallows hard and opens the door. “Come on. Let me get you something to drink.”
As he shepherds Tobio over to the couch, Yuutarou’s brain whirs at lightning speed. Once upon a time, they had been friends. Yuutarou remembers Tobio’s father, a man who worked too much and smiled too little. Kageyama-san had always liked Yuutarou, though. Something about being full of good traits he wished he was able to pass onto his own son.
Okay, that doesn’t feel any better.
Yuutarou busies himself with fetching a tall glass of milk from the kitchen. Somehow, he thinks this will help Tobio more than anything his stupid mouth can punt out. Tobio cradles the cup in his hands and sips at it, and after a little bit of rocking back and forth, his erratic breathing calms and his body stills.
There has to be a reason Tobio came here and not to one of his undoubtedly better friends. He doesn’t even think they can even be classified as anything beyond civilized acquaintances. Not sure how to proceed, Yuutarou relents and asks. “I’m sorry your dad died, but why are you here?”
Tobio takes a long drag from his drink and sets the mostly-empty glass on the kotatsu. “No one else will understand.”
“Oh.” It isn’t hard to identify the source of that assumption. Yuutarou has almost forgotten, has tried for years to push it from his mind, but he knows exactly why Tobio thinks no one else will understand. “You never took any of your new friends home, did you?”
“No one at all,” Tobio chokes. “He almost sent me off to boarding school after that day.”
Nodding in comprehension, Yuutarou murmurs, “Yeah. I was worried about something like that. When he came home and found us, I wanted to die. I was so embarrassed and scared.”
Shaking his head, Tobio let out a garbled sound Yuutarou could almost mistake for a laugh. “He wasn’t mad at you. Just me, and mostly just because it could have been a lot worse.”
“Oh, man, I remember.” Yuutarou recalls a day nearly ten years before when two budding friends from Kitagawa Daiichi Middle School tried and failed to cook for themselves, and they may or may not have set fire to the Kageyama household kitchen. “I thought he was gonna kill us both, but he just...picked off the burnt parts of what we cooked and ate it.”
Their eyes meet, and both of them laugh at the memory.
Yuutarou sighs. “I don’t know what to say. I wish I did.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Tobio leans back on the couch and heaves a heavy breath. “I don’t know why I came here. You were just the first person I wanted to see.”
Mirroring Tobio’s sprawled posture, Yuutarou hums. “Not sure why, either, but it’s okay. I may have spent a few years wanting to kick your ass, but I’m not a dick. At least I hope not.”
Tobio closed his eyes. “I told a couple of people that story and they were horrified. They didn’t understand it’s just what he was like.”
“Yeah.” Yuutarou rolls his head to the side to look over at Tobio’s drained face. “Hey, I really am sorry, man. Your dad was kind of weird like you, but he was definitely a good guy underneath it.”
Yuutarou gives into an impulse to reach over and cover Tobio’s hand with his, and eager fingers tangle with his. “Stay as long as you want, Tobio. I’m not going anywhere.”
The unfamiliar lilt of Tobio’s given name lingers on Yuutarou’s tongue, but here it feels right. They sit there together unmoving for a while until an idea sparks to life. Smiling, Yuutarou sits up and says, “Hey, you wanna go make dinner with me? I promise we won’t set the kitchen on fire this time.”
Eyes wide, Tobio smiles in a way that Yuutarou hasn’t seen in years, if ever. It’s a crooked thing, maybe even a little dopey, but it transforms Tobio’s entire face. For the first time since he had arrived, Tobio is at ease.
This is a Tobio that Yuutarou can get used to, and he can’t believe he’ll get a second chance to do just that, let alone that he wants one. Life never turns out the way one plans, and as they catch up on life and other things while chopping vegetables, Yuutarou can’t help but mark that it’s not always a bad thing. This time, it’s not bad at all.