Archive of Our Own

“This is embarrassing,” Yuutarou hissed. “Put me down!”

Tobio ignored Yuutarou’s objections and carefully carried him up the flight of stairs leading up to their apartment. The narrow stairwell was not conducive to maneuvering Yuutarou’s long limbs to avoid jostling them, but Tobio was willing to take as long as necessary to accomplish just that.

Once they reached the landing at the top, Tobio eased Yuutarou onto his good leg and absorbed his limp weight with his proffered shoulder. Together, they lurched into the apartment and went straight for the bedroom, shoes and all. By the time Yuutarou was safely splayed on the bed, he was breathing hard and his face was pinched in discomfort. “Okay, maybe the carrying wasn’t a terrible idea.”

“You need to rest.” Tobio gathered up the spare bedspread from the closet and folded it up, tucking it underneath Yuutarou’s surgically repaired and casted leg. “The doctor said to keep it elevated.”

Yuutarou scowled and jerked as much of the blankets over himself as he could. “Will you knock it off? I have a broken leg. I’ll live. I don’t need to be coddled.”

Closing his eyes, Tobio counted to ten and repeated to himself over and over that this was to be expected. While Yuutarou was in surgery to repair his broken leg, fractured in multiple places along his tibia after slipping on a set of icy steps and falling down almost the full flight of stairs, a doctor had pulled Tobio aside. Not his surgeon, but a counselor who operated out of the hospital to assist people with the mental aspect of long-term recovery.

They talked a while. Dr. Fukushi asked Tobio about Yuutarou, about them, and Tobio talked more in one sitting than he could remember doing in his entire life. After absorbing a long history of the two of them and Yuutarou in particular, Fukushi had fallen silent for a long while until Tobio started to fidget with nerves.

“Kindaichi-kun is going to struggle with the lack of independence,” the doctor explained. “From what you’ve told me, he seems to shy away from relying on other people.”

Tobio lowered his head and sighed. “Which is probably my fault.”

Fukushi gave him a kind smile. “You’ve known each other for over half your lives, and you’ve shaped each other in many ways. It’s not a condemnation, Kageyama-kun. It’s just a fact.” He clapped Tobio on the shoulder. “He’s going to object to needing help, and he might say some things he doesn’t really mean. Just remind yourself when you need to that it’s pain and fear talking, not him.”

“Thank you. I will.”

Bearing all of that in mind, Tobio pulled off Yuutarou’s shoes and helped him into pajamas. By the end of the process, Yuutarou’s teeth were clenched and both their nerves on edge, so Tobio fished the bottle of painkillers from his jacket pocket. “I’ll get some water.”

After Yuutarou was settled into bed, Tobio retrieved their lone spare futon from the bathroom cabinet and rolled it out next to his usual side of the bed. He dropped his pillow on top of it and started getting ready for bed himself. It was barely after nine, but the day had been a long one filled with panic and anxiety. He was exhausted, and he couldn’t imagine how Yuutarou felt.

“Uh, what are you doing?” Yuutarou sat up and scratched his head.

Tobio plucked Yuutarou’s old bathrobe to use as a blanket and settled onto the futon. “It’s better if you sleep alone for the next few days until the swelling goes down.”

Yuutarou shifted on the bed until he swore from jostling himself. He poked his head over the side of the bed and frowned. “Tobio, it’s freezing down there. Just get in bed. You don’t move in your sleep, so I really don’t think you’re going to kick my bad leg.”

“No.” Tobio shook his head adamantly. “It’s only for a few days, but I would do it as long as it took.”

Something softened on Yuutarou’s face, and he gave Tobio a dopey smile. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I love you.”

The words soaked into Tobio’s chest and lingered while he waited for Yuutarou’s breathing to even and slow before he let himself give in to the rigors of the day.

The next few days were difficult for both of them, but the part Tobio noticed the most was the restlessness that coiled up in Yuutarou while being confined to bed or the couch. Usually an active person, Yuutarou was relegated to being sprawled out on the bed staring at the ceiling between bouts of suffering through Tobio’s meager attempts at cooking.

In fact, the only times when Yuutarou seemed like he wasn’t bored out of his skull were when he was perched on the couch binge-watching cooking shows. It gave Tobio an idea that would make his own inevitable return to work a little easier on Yuutarou while he was still banished to another few weeks’ worth of mandatory rest.

So before they were off to a doctor’s appointment, Tobio handed off a spare apartment key and his credit card to Kunimi when he came to drop off some much-needed quality takeout. They didn’t exchange any words, as they had arranged everything earlier that morning, and Yuutarou seemed none the wiser.

They returned to the apartment a few hours later, and it wasn’t until Yuutarou propped his crutches against the wall and eased onto the bed that he noticed the new addition in their room. “Uh, where did that come from?”

“I had Kunimi pick it up.” Tobio elevated Yuutarou’s leg as usual and looked at anything but the gleaming black remote on Yuutarou’s nightstand. “I have to go back to work next week. You need something to do.”

Yuutarou grumbled something under his breath and sighed. “We can’t afford this thing. It has to go back.”

Tobio’s hands stilled. “What?”

“The TV is too expensive,” Yuutarou said flatly, crossing his arms. “I can’t go back to work for another month, and you’ve been here — not working — for almost two weeks. In what realm of reality can we afford a new TV?”

Scrubbing his face with his hands, Tobio growled into his palms. This wasn’t how he pictured this going at all. In his imaginings, Yuutarou was happy to have something to keep his head from exploding, Tobio would get to sleep in the bed again, and maybe he could make Yuutarou forget about his leg for an hour or so.

Somehow, he didn’t think this conversation would be ending in sex.

“Why are you mad?” Tobio rolled his eyes. “I want you to be okay. I love you. Why should I care about how much it costs? It’s just money.”

“Just money?” Yuutarou slammed the feet of his crutches onto the floor and thumped his way around the bed to glare at Tobio. “Not once in your life have you ever had to worry about choosing between food and a bus pass. You don’t get to tell me that it’s just money.”

Tobio stared, jaw hanging open, and dropped to his seat on the bed. What Yuutarou said wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t entirely ignorant about their finances. Yuutarou handled the bills and grocery shopping, but Tobio knew they weren’t struggling to make ends meet to the point where sixty-thousand yen couldn’t be paid off in six months or so. There was no way Yuutarou didn’t realize that on some level.

Just remind yourself when you need to that it’s pain and fear talking, not him.

Taking a deep breath, Tobio stood and framed Yuutarou’s ruddy cheeks with his hands. “We’ll be fine. You know that, and you know this isn’t what is bothering you. Now lay down and let’s watch the next season of Iron Chef.”

Yuutarou gaped at him wide eyed. “When did you get so cool?” He let the crutches drop to the floor, and he banded his arms around Tobio’s waist. “You’re right. I’m frustrated, but not with you. Now come hang out with me before you run off to work again.”

“Yeah.” Tobio smirked and swept Yuutarou off his feet and into his arms, but instead of demanding release like the last time he did that, Yuutarou latched onto him and crushed their mouths together. They didn’t let go, even while Tobio adjusted Yuutarou’s leg pillow. It was half an hour or so before they got around to watching Yuutarou’s new favorite show.

But when they did turn on the new television for the first time, Yuutarou’s eyes lit up as he watched the chefs battle each other and the clock. Tobio couldn’t quite pay attention to the show — not when Yuutarou was slowly becoming himself again for the first time since his accident. That was what he really wanted to see.

“Did you hear that?”

Tobio stopped in the middle of setting dishes on the table to quiet the house. They didn’t have any guests over and the TV wasn’t on, so it was probably a good thing he didn’t hear much. “Hear what?”

Yuutarou was scanning their living space like he was expecting an intruder to appear out of nowhere, but simply shrugged eventually. “Maybe it was just my imagination. Forget it,” he said, and as he turned to the dinner plates laid out before him his entire face seemed to lighten, the act of ‘forgetting’ easily becoming a piece of cake. Or, in today’s dinner’s case, a wonderfully-prepared salmon. “Let’s eat.”

Like any other day, their forms seemed to relax the moment they sat themselves at the table. Yuutarou wasn’t quite sure what it was—maybe the distinct memories of cooking, leaning against each other as they examined the recipe before changing it anyway; or of washing dishes side-by-side, not-so-accidentally brushing soap onto the other’s arm until the froth was all over their noses; or of light-hearted mid-meal conversations, the topics ranging from “How was your day?” to “No, you make chicken teriyaki better”—but he always did feel tranquil here, like one look at Tobio and the food they were about to share could make the biggest of problems go away.

The one today was a little more persistent, though. A muffled knock echoed above their simultaneous thanks.

Tobio frowned. “Wait, was that what you were talking about?”

“Yeah,” Yuutarou said, slowly picking up his chopsticks. “But it was only a bit of noise, right? Could just be the neighbors.”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

A soft snort and the exasperated smile on Tobio’s face was more than enough to bring a grin onto Yuutarou’s, just about ready to scarf down a good helping of delicious home-cooking, but as quickly as they brushed the noise off, the usual calmness of the meal was chased away, in the form of plastic clattering to the ground.

The few jars on the counter were only used for the biscuits that Tobio sometimes liked to buy to give them something to nibble on and right now only one of them was filled, one of the empty ones now lightly rolling back and forth on the floor. Their eyes followed the movement before they wordlessly locked, asking each other unspoken questions that neither of them were sure they truly wanted the answers to, until Yuutarou found it in himself to stand up.

“Okay, that isn’t normal,” he muttered, picking the jar up and placing it back on the counter, somewhere the wind would never be able to control it—not that it already had. Tobio’s expression was milder as he returned to his seat, but kept glancing over at the counter anyway.

At the very least, dinner finally managed to happen, the faintly-tense atmosphere fading the more food they chewed, the more stories they told. Tobio’d once tended to focus more on the food during mealtimes but he always told Yuutarou stories animatedly, adorably forgetting details and then interrupting himself to add them in eventually. Yuutarou, in turn, loved showing Tobio things he’d seen and taking note of his reactions. He never did well with sad things, but he did like seeing decorated insects.

“I saw one yesterday that was blue with brown legs,” Yuutarou said, setting his bowl of rice down for the briefest of moments to retrieve his phone, “and the antennae looks kind of like eyelashes—WHOA.”

Effectively smashing into their plates, a large, dark cat charged onto the table with purpose, without missing a beat took the still plentiful remains of salmon into its mouth and proceeded to rush onto the carpet and out of the kitchen, presumably to devour its catch in peace.

Yuutarou and Tobio sat frozen.

“Did—did a cat just take our dinner?” Tobio demanded.

“Uhh, yeah?" Yuutarou said, though he couldn’t quite believe it either.

“What the—how did it even get in?”

“No clue.”

"How do we steal the fish back?”

“You want to steal the fish back?”

“We were eating it! Rude-ass cat," Tobio grumbled, getting to his feet and following after the thing while Yuutarou remained seated as if transfixed, and in a way he kind of was. Not a lot of people could boast that dinner was interrupted by a random cat, after all. The entire vibe of the experience was a little different from what he was used to in this kitchen, but maybe they could turn it around. Who knew? Maybe once Tobio got past the whole ‘it stole dinner’ thing, they could add the little furball to the family.

"Yuu! It pooped on the bed!"

Scratch that; this cat was awful. "What?" Yuutarou cried as he bolted out of his chair.

The apartment was small, but functional. It was the kind of apartment that everyone would find comfort in it, because it looked like the people that lived there; Kunimi had dropped on the flattest tone his compliments on the good choice of location, furniture and colors, and had declared it a home way too sweet for him. At first Tobio didn’t think he needed to be that theatrical over some logistics but as the weeks passed by and as the months began to feel like normalcy, he could see what he meant by a “sweet home”.

The TV was a gift from his parents, as congratulations for their move-in together. Yuutarou wouldn’t have accepted it if he were given the choice, but since Tobio was the one who brought it and plugged it before any discussions on the matter was considered, he had to take the gift (and Tobio used that excuse to say they could afford another TV set in their bedroom). On days they were particularly exhausted, they would sprawl on the couch and lazily watch whatever show that was on, or comment on the matches broadcast on the sports channel, with only the lights of that part of the apartment on, drowning them in a tranquil atmosphere. The coffee table was always ornated with some drinks—soda, energy drink, or just water, for the evenings they didn’t feel like getting up and leaving their comfortable zone to grab something in the fridge. Hinata would say that it defeated the purpose of refreshing your throat and body with a cool drink, but he admitted it was rather clever for stupid and lazy people (“Kageyama is the stupidest!”).

It was nice. Spending time in the living room meant they had nothing too pressing to attend to; a space that was sort of like a blanket of time wrapped around them to keep them safe and content, allowing them to be less on guard and more carefree. Tobio was satisfied as long as he had the familiar weight of Yuutarou pressed against his side, and if they shared a kiss or two it was a welcome bonus. Yuutarou, on the other hand, expressed many times that just knowing they belonged together in the same home provided him so much happiness that it warped his own sense of what was real and not real, and Tobio had to grumble about boyfriends being overly dramatic, not without a flash of pink on his cheeks.

“One of us has to be the sappy one,” Yuutarou laughed.

“That’s not a rule.”

“Maybe not, but I’m always sincere when I say this.”

Yuutarou looked at him like he was a river of stars, when a few years ago they weren’t even able to maintain eye contact for more than three seconds. A living room that was punctuated with tiny pieces of their life was enough to confirm they were invading that space together—even though cleaning it required more efforts on their part than necessary, they still did it together, again, and that was the most important. Tobio would look at the issues of Volleyball Monthly stacked at the bottom of their bookcase and the various manuals about muscle training, haphazardly thrown in because of the growing disinterest in keeping everything neat, and would think he needed to sort out the mess at one point. Yuutarou didn’t mind it, as he was showing a greater concern for their collection of CDs gathering dust because of the scarce use they made of them. He suggested buying a stereo, once, but between all the furniture and the small space, there was hardly any room left for such an item—they could still start one of their laptops and listen to music just fine, so that wasn’t a big issue, unlike the magazines spilling on the floor.

That bookcase was, in the end, the keeper of their shared life; apart from magazines and CDs, they also gathered through the years books they enjoyed (mostly Yuutarou’s), souvenirs from their trips that they displayed at the top, the medals and trophies won at competitions, and amidst it all, a single frame of their first date, the start of their renewed life.

The cool air that evening was like second skin, as though it had Yuutarou wrapped in a chilly blanket, draping him in winter weather. Outside of the restaurant they had dined at, Yuutarou was joined by Tobio after the chime of a bell.

“Let’s go to the park before we head home,” Yuutarou suggested.

Turned in the direction of the park, Yuutarou halted, almost as though he were waiting. Tobio, perturbed by the uncharacteristic lack of decisive movement, shot him a look before walking closer.

“What?” Tobio asked him, just as Yuutarou used their proximity to his advantage, looping his arm with Tobio’s.

While Yuutarou had never been one to shy away from affection behind closed doors, and though not to the extent of Tobio, he was still a private man. In the company of their friends, he was bold. He would leave touches that were fleeting, but also arguably, too long. The weight of his palms and his reassuring touch would weigh on Tobio’s mind for the rest of the evening.

Outside, they hardly touched. Their days as boys had long passed, and while they had welcomed their new path together with tenacious commitment and an exploration of something more, they kissed their boyish freedom goodbye. Under the public eye, two men couldn’t touch. They faced new obstacles; a fresh stigma that Tobio never really understood, never paid too much attention about. For Yuutarou, like a bubble that was raising to the top, it was a fear he sometimes could not swallow.

Yet, on nights like this one, Yuutarou believed he could be free. After all, they no longer had to fight their battles alone.

“Nothing. Just this. Come on,” Yuutarou said, pulling Tobio closer. With warmth in their hearts and by their sides, they walked to the park.

The oncoming winter brought the beginning of absent leaves, but the park remained beautifully serene. Against the background of the darkening night’s canvas, they found an empty bench to sit at. Tranquility was something they appreciated after the tension and fighting in their high school years. Surrounded by lush greenery and the quiet creaking of crickets, Tobio dropped his head to Yuutarou’s shoulder.

He almost wished they could stay like that forever.

Now, though, they had a house of their own to return to, a pocket in the world they called their own. A park was nice. A home was even better.

“By the way,” Yuutarou started, voice soft and gentle, “happy anniversary.”

Incredulous, Tobio went, “Wha— It’s our anniversary? Fuck. Is that why you brought me to that restaurant?”

Yuutarou laughed heartily. “Don’t worry, it was last week but we both forgot. Anyway, yeah, I thought you liked that restaurant?”

“I do. That restaurant, it was—”

“The first place we ate at after moving in together. Yeah, I know.”

“Is that why you always order that chicken katsudon that’s subpar at best?”

“You got me,” Yuutarou answered, smiling himself silly.

A canvas of stars splayed overhead, Tobio’s head laid on his shoulder, their hands intertwined and hidden in Yuutarou’s jacket — this was what peace looked like. This was how they loved.

“Happy anniversary,” Tobio whispered back.