Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tsukishima should be grateful that the several-thousand dollar grant for his three-month research trip to the Bahamas has come through, but he mostly feels dread. He’s not built for field work. He gets sunburned during the twenty-minute walk from his shoebox Tokyo apartment to the archaeology lab in the summer. Buy sunscreen, he writes in his notes, and goes to tell Yamaguchi the good news.

“You got it!” Yamaguchi says, before Tsukishima’s even said anything. “Great, I bought plane tickets last week, I’ll forward you the confirmation.” He pulls his laptop towards him across the table, knocking a pile of sample photos to the floor.

“Why did you do that,” Tsukishima starts, leaving the takeout boxes on the kitchen table.

Yamaguchi waves him off. “It was obvious, Tsukki, even Shimizu said it was a sure thing.”

Tsukishima tries not to let it show on his face how happy this makes him. Shimizu is no slouch. Tsukishima says, “Anyway, it’s settled now…” and lets Yamaguchi talk about his experimental design approach while he digs into the noodles.

Tsukishima planned to read a couple papers on his laptop during the flight, but he first fell asleep and then the only flights that go from Nassau to San Salvador are tiny airplanes with four-seat rows. Tsukishima aggressively wishes he was back at home, in his squashed cubicle on the third floor with the air-con unit that only works half the time. “I hate flying,” he says to Yamaguchi, trying to move his mouth as little as possible, and goes to back to white-knuckling the seatrests as the plane lurches.

Tsukishima’s wedged into the window seat. He tries not to feel resentful when Yamaguchi reaches past him to roll the window-cover up. Even from the awful high angle, the view is amazing - vivid green-blue smudged into the ocean.

“None of that sunscreen is island-allowed,” the airport greeter says, snatching the bottle out of Tsukishima’s hands before he even asks them their names. “Please don’t use it here, it’s against the law.”

Tsukishima already resents him for his perfectly wind-ruffled hair while Tsukishima looks and feels like a rotting log, but this is a lot for him to handle.  The vague feeling of dread Tsukishima’s been carrying around with him suddenly congeals in his stomach. “Of course,” he says, and wants to stride onto the next plane out.

The greeter hands the sunscreen back to him. Tsukishima can’t even look at it, he’s so intensely embarrassed. He stuffs it into his backpack. “We have zinc-based at the field station,” the greeter says, and shoulders his own bag. “Welcome to San Salvador! I’m Akaashi Keiji.”

Tsukishima stumbles miserably after him to the truck, but the ride is so gorgeous his bad mood melts right off with every flash of turquoise water through the foliage.

“Akaashi-san, thank you so much for having us,” Yamaguchi says, and starts gushing about the weather. Tsukishima nods stiffly at Akaashi in the rearview mirror, and Akaashi nods back. Job done.

The actual research station is clean and well-kept. Akaashi speed-walks them through the tour, warning them not to use all the hot water and not throw the silverware into the compost pile outside the dining hall, and drops them off at their dorm. “Dinner from six to seven, don’t be late,” Akaashi says, and then trots off down the dusty path. “We’ll do orientation tomorrow.”

“Wow, Tsukki!” Yamaguchi says, and flies off to open all the windows in their tiny two-bed dormitory, which is outfitted with a bathroom Tsukishima has to stoop to get into and a great view of nondescript white buildings.

Tsukishima takes the time to peel his gross airplane clothes off and throw on a clean tee - by the time he fills his water bottle in the tiny sink and grabs the keys off the table, it already feels damp. He pulls it off his stomach. Three months, Tsukishima reminds himself, and yells to Yamaguchi that he’s leaving.

Tsukishima’s done the same circle around a couple of buildings at least three times before a door opens and a man comes out, leading a toddler by the finger. “You lost?” he says, as the kid hides behind his leg.

“Um,” Tsukishima says, and spends a beat too long staring at how well-defined his arms are. “No?”

“Sure,” the man laughs, and hoists the toddler up on his hip. “I’m Kuroo Tetsurou, the station director.” He shifts so Tsukishima can see the baby’s face. “And this is Sachiko.”

Tsukishima says, “Tsukishima Kei,” and shakes his hand.

“What do you say, Sachi-chan?” Kuroo says. Sachiko shakes her head. “C’mon, make me look good.”

“Hi Tsumi-tuki-shi-san,” Sachiko says, and then hides her face in Kuroo’s shirt.

“Wow, Sa-chan, that one was so good,” Kuroo says, and walks past Tsukishima. He glances over his shoulder. “You coming? It’s dinner time.”

“Dinner,” Sachiko says, and waves one of her fat little fists.

“Dinner,” Kuroo agrees, and smacks a kiss on her forehead.

Tsukishima trails a half-step behind them, so he can sneak looks at Kuroo all he wants.

By the time Tsukishima grabs his tray and sits down at one of the tables, folding his body up so it fits in the white plastic chairs, Kuroo has already gathered a court. “Yakkun, no,” he’s saying to a short blond-haired man next to him. “I am not spoiling her just because I carry her around. She’s three. She gets tired!”

“She barely learned to walk because you never put her down,” Yaku says, and gestures to Sachiko, sitting on Kuroo’s lap and trying to pull the button off his shirt.

“Don’t listen to him, Sachi-chan,” Kuroo says, handing Sachiko a carrot. “You’re great at walking.”

“Walk,” Sachiko gurgles, and gets carrot mush all over the front of Kuroo’s shirt.

“Anyway,” Kuroo says, shooting Yaku a look and mopping at his front with a napkin, “This is Tsukishima, he’s here with us for three months from the University of Tokyo.”

“Um - yes,” Tsukishima manages, and takes a nervous sip of water. “I’m studying coastline change.”

“Cool!” Yaku enthuses, and they talk shop until Kuroo excuses himself and Sachiko. Yaku’s studying the effect of global warming on reef resilience. Tsukishima nods. Not really his thing, but the field isn’t huge. “Not pretty,” Yaku says, grimly, before he switches gears to telling Tsukishima that the last laundry machine on the right is misprogrammed to accept nickels as quarters.

“Does… Director Kuroo know about that?”

“It really adds up,” Yaku says, ominously, and scrapes his chicken bones into the compost bin. Tsukishima follows suit, and escapes back to the isolation of his room to shake out his clothes, smelling strangely plasticky in this salt-moored place.

He drags himself up early the next morning to meet Yamaguchi and Akaashi in front of the cafeteria for orientation.

“Your official welcome to Gerace Research Center,” Akaashi says, and points to the cafeteria. “Keep this door shut, the mosquitos are vicious. We went over composting and meal times yesterday, so I’ll skip over those.” Tsukishima watches a fat buzzing fly do a circle around Akaashi’s head and then zig-zag off. Akaashi doesn’t move a muscle.

“It’s written on our website,” Akaashi says, giving them a critical once-over, “but we’ve been established for forty years now, and we get all kinds of researchers and students year-round.”

“You met Kuroo yesterday, he’s the executive director. Kozume Kenma, you can call him Kenma, is our lab director. He’s also our in-house stat guy, if you need one,” Akaashi says, and pushes a nondescript white door open. “This is the computer lab, it’s the only place the internet works reliably. You can also use the satellite phone here, each of the directors have one. Good morning, Kenma.”

“Hi,” Kenma says, lifting his head from the desk like a cat roused from sleep. His hair is pool-frizzy blond and his roots are awful.

“If you need him, he’s always here,” Akaashi says, and gestures towards the room, small and square. “Oh, we have a yearly photo contest.” He points to the display Yamaguchi’s looking at, a laminated photo of a shrimp on a technicolor backdrop, faded from the sun.

“Tsukishima Kei,” Tsukishima says to Kenma, who’s tracking them around the room with his eyes.

“Welcome,” Kenma says, and then goes back to typing on his computer.

“Follow me,” Akaashi says, propping the door open with a shoulder. Tsukishima miserably follows him back outside into the heat.

“Bokuto Koutarou, who’s out right now, is our research director,” Akaashi says, leading Tsukishima and Yamaguchi to a stone enclosure. “This… critter area… is his doing.” Akaashi makes a face. A huge iguana, leathery and fat, is sunning itself on a rock in the middle of everything.

“Laundry,” Akaashi says, pointing to a low whitewashed building. “Costs money, sorry, repairs aren’t cheap. Make sure you shake out your clothes before putting them in, the sand clogs them.”

A couple paces down the road Akaashi points out the wet lab and a couple classrooms, and the analytical lab. Tsukishima makes peace with the idea he’s going to be spending hours and hours in here. It’ll be just like home, him and the compound microscope in a dimly lit room.

“We don’t always turn the wet lab on,” Akaashi says to Yamaguchi. “Water intensive. You can turn it on by turning this valve though. It’s usually on by later afternoon most weekdays. And this doesn’t apply to you necessarily, but don’t bring back octopus.”

“Yes!” Yamaguchi says, writing this down on a notepad he brought along, the nerd.

“Any questions?” Akaashi asks, once they’ve made the loop back to the cafeteria.

“What’s your job?” Yamaguchi asks. Tsukishima forgot to bring sunglasses, and he has to squint to look at Akaashi against the glare. It’s slowly feeding a building headache.

“Business manager,” Akaashi says, “so make my job easy and don’t break anything.” He smiles at the end, but Tsukishima can still feel his eyes boring into him.

“Bye, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, as soon as Akaashi’s gone. Tsukishima glowers at him as best he can. He feels like a droopy houseplant, shade-starved and floppy.

“Bye,” Tsukishima says miserably, and goes to find Yachi.

“Tsukki, hi!” Yachi says, when Tsukishima pokes his head into a classroom and finds her engrossed in a map of the island, carefully annotated in her neat handwriting.

Yachi’s been here for a couple weeks already, working on some data collection for Shimizu, and it shows - she has a glow to her, freckles dark, hair bleached even blonder by the sun. She and Tsukishima work in converging areas, so she’s his de-facto field partner and has been for what feels like his entire life. They dissected frogs together, way back in intro biology.  

“Was your flight okay?” she asks, folding the map up into a small square and handing it to him.

“No,” Tsukishima says. He hates flying. The phantom feeling of jerky freefall is still following him around.

Yachi pats him on the shoulder. “Let’s get going. I’ll drive slowly, I know you get carsick.”

“Thanks,” Tsukishima says, and follows her out into the sun.

The island is tiny, just over 60 square miles, but it still takes them most of the day to cover it, marking the landforms and assessing the coast, lined with barrier reefs and sandbars. Yachi points out the major bays as they drive by, the windows rolled down. “Kuroo knows all the names, though, you can ask him about anything unmarked,” Yachi says, over the wind.

The water is so blue that every time it reappears in view it shocks him anew, fluorescent and clear. “You’re lucky,” Yachi says, cresting over a hill and killing the engine so Tsukishima can take pictures. “Weather’s nice today, it was raining when I got in.”

Tsukishima is sticky with dust by the time Yachi drops him off at the dorm in the evening, but he forces himself to type his field notes up on his laptop before he showers and collapses into bed, all wrung out and drowsy with heat.

Tsukishima wakes up in grey sunlight and spends a couple hours staring listlessly at the ceiling before he meets Yachi in one of the classrooms after breakfast, so they can do an equipment check and go over the beach assessment plan one last time. She hands him a hat as soon as he walks in through the doorway. “You’re going to need this,” she says, and laughs.

“I know,” Tsukishima grumbles, and shuts the door so he can luxuriate in the air conditioning before he has to spend his entire day crouched on the shoreline, being wrung dry by the sun. He’ll be dessicated by noon.

Yachi marks in red on the map the route they’ve decided to cover, caps the marker, and rolls the map up. “I know I don’t need to remind you, but the sunsc-”

“Zinc based,” Tsukishima says, and snatches the map out of her hands. His ears are burning.

Yachi laughs. “Akaashi told me, I’m sorry!”

“I miss when you were scared of me, Yacchan,” he says, and puts the hat on.

Yachi drives them out to the stretch of beach they’re covering for today, a stretch of white so flat it looks like a coat of paint on a wall. She parks the truck behind a dune and hops out, slamming the door behind her. “Let’s just take it easy today, okay?” she says, when Tsukishima’s eyes have finally adjusted to the sun.

“You don’t have to go easy on me,” Tsukishima huffs, grabbing the GPS out of his bag and clipboard from Yachi’s trunk.

“I’m just saying!” Yachi says, and hands him an extra water bottle before she abandons him for the other side of the island, truck kicking up a plume of dust.

It’s miserable work, beach assessment. Tsukishima’s exhausted by the time Yachi drops back around to pick him up. When he leans down to pull the marker out of the beach, Yachi yelps - “Don’t!” - before he realizes what he’s doing and nearly topples over.

“Sorry, Yacchan,” he says, mortified, and covers his eyes with his hand.

“Tsukki,” Yachi says reproachfully, swatting him with her clipboard. “I told you to take it slow.”

Tsukishima’s so tired he falls asleep on the ride back, slumping over with his face pressed to the window despite his head rattling against the glass over every bump in the road. Yachi shakes him awake what feels like a split second later. “Tsukki,” she says, and he snaps back to consciousness, bleary-eyed and mouth feeling like he took a bite out of the beach.

“Ugh,” Tsukishima says, and nearly falls out of the truck when he tries to swing his legs out of it.

“Rough day?”

Tsukishima’s eyes open at that.

“Tsukki just got in yesterday, the transition’s hard,” Yachi’s saying to Kuroo. His wetsuit is half-on and he’s holding a cooler. There’s a smudge of salt on his cheek. His hair looks awful, dried down to a squashed shark fin.

“We’ve met,” Kuroo says, and waves at Tsukishima, who’s groping around blindly on the truck floor for his glasses. Tsukishima waves back, and reproachfully jams his glasses back onto his nose.

“Let me see,” Yachi’s saying to Kuroo, clasping her hands together.

“Sometimes I think you’re more excited about these things than Sachiko is,” Kuroo says with a laugh, and flips the cooler lid open. “I saw a nurse shark today, hiding under the Fernandez Bay reef, but I couldn’t get a good shot. Found a nice starfish though.”

“Nice,” Yachi says, and flips the lid back down. “I’ve got to go put the data in, I’ll see you and Sachi-chan later!”

“Our pleasure,” Kuroo says, and smiles at Tsukishima as he follows Yachi down the road. Tsukishima tries very hard not to think too much about the open collar of Kuroo’s wetsuit. Kuroo’s a marine biologist. They’re all like that. The suits don’t breathe well on land. That’s all.

Tsukishima’s mildly mollified when he finds out later that Yamaguchi’s an inch from death too. They wander past each other like zombies in the dorm, shaking the sand out from their shirts on the cement porch. “Swimming back is way harder than swimming out,” Yamaguchi says to Tsukishima while he’s laying face-down over the covers on his bed. His wetsuit is in a stinky neoprene heap on the doorstep. “I knew that already, but it was still hard.”

“Go shower,” Tsukishima says, holding his nose from the one chair across the room. Yamaguchi smells like he spent the day marinating in fish carcasses. Seeing as he studies sea worms, this is probably accurate.

Tsukishima barely manages to stay awake to shove some rice and fish into his stomach before he’s out like a light, the sun still casting shadows through the curtains.

When Tsukishima wakes up, his head feels stuffed full of cotton and Yamaguchi’s snoring loud enough to drown out the insects. Tsukishima jams his glasses on and spends the next ten minutes staring at irregularities in the plaster ceiling and trying to summon the energy to get up.

It’s barely five when Tsukishima closes the door gently behind him. The wind’s picked up from yesterday, and the air is swirling around him. It’s a short three-minute walk to the ocean from anywhere on the station. Tsukishima clambers over the bluff and the water’s glass grey in the early light, crawling up the beach in layers.

He’s walking aimlessly down the shoreline when he sees them - two heads, one big and one small, sitting wrapped in a beach towel. Sachiko is between Kuroo’s knees, and all Tsukishima can make out of her is her tiny head poking out of the towel, her cheeks baby round. Kuroo’s saying something to her, eyes fixed on the distance.

“Good morning,” Tsukishima says, when he’s ten feet away and self conscious about it, digging his toes into the wet sand. They both turn their heads, owlish.

“Tsukki, hey,” Kuroo says, and nudges Sachiko.

“Tuki-san,” Sachiko says obediently, and Kuroo wraps her even closer so she’s tucked underneath his chin. Her eyes are huge when she blinks up at Tsukishima. Her nose is so small and perfect-looking.

“Here, come sit,” Kuroo says, and scoots over enough to expose a corner of the beach towel.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt…” Tsukishima says, but Kuroo says, “No worries,” and smiles at him until he does.

“Tuki-san big,” Sachiko says, staring at Tsukishima, once he’s managed to lower himself to the ground without eating a faceful of sand.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” Kuroo says, grinning slyly at Tsukishima over his shoulder, “Who’s bigger? Papa or Tsukki?” Tsukishima raises an eyebrow. He has five centimeters on Kuroo, at least.

Tsukishima watches Sachiko turn her head between them, worrying at her lip. “Papa,” she says finally, as Kuroo tickles her until she laughs.

It’s nice, sitting with Kuroo and Sachiko on the beach, even as the wind picks up and the ocean gets rougher as the sun slides up over the horizon. “Might be a bad day for swimming,” Kuroo mumbles distractedly, rewrapping the towel around Sachiko more securely so she’s cocooned in it against the wind.

“Sun,” Sachiko announces, once it’s balanced on the water like a gold coin.

“Yeah,” Kuroo agrees, frowning at the way she’s turtled her head down. “Okay, Sachi-chan, let’s get going. It’s cold.”

Tsukishima levers himself to his feet, and holds out a hand for Kuroo to take. His hand is rough and warm in the momentary contact. “Thanks,” Kuroo says, and shakes out the towel once he’s on his feet.  

“Papa, sand!” Sachiko says disapprovingly as the grains go flying, running in a circle around Kuroo in her bare feet.

“Sorry,” Kuroo says, and bundles her up again and lifts her onto his hip. “See you, Tsukki.”

He watches them get smaller in the distance, Kuroo pretending to bite Sachiko’s nose and her twisting her face away as the sky grows a scorched pink behind them.

He meets Yachi in the cafeteria for breakfast an hour later, spooning oatmeal into a mug. “All recovered?” she says, poking at his shoulder.

“Yes,” Tsukishima says, and tries not to sound too sullen about it.

“Is that all you’re having?” Kuroo asks, popping out of nowhere to slide his tray down next to Yachi. His plate is full. He has three bananas. Tsukishima makes a face.

“Not hungry,” Tsukishima mumbles, looking down into his coffee mug. He should’ve waited for the next pot, the dregs are bitter.

“Ran into Tsukki this morning, for the sunrise,” Kuroo says to Yachi, digging into his eggs with a gusto that has to be exaggerated. Nobody is that hungry this early in the morning. Tsukishima watches the line of his throat as he swallows and has to shake himself out of it.

“Oh, jet lag,” Yachi says, giving Tsukishima a sympathetic look over her coffee, still sleep-rumpled and in pajamas. Her jaw opens around an enormous yawn. “Sorry. Where’s Sachi-chan?”

“Asleep, finally. Kenma’s watching her,” Kuroo says, stuffing the last of his food down. Tsukishima is mildly horrified. He puts another spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth. Kuroo leaves to go get seconds. Tsukishima stares at his flat stomach underneath his thin tee as he goes. Where does it all go?

“Anyway, Tsukki,” Yachi says, dumping another packet of sugar into her coffee. “Let’s take a rest day, you have three months anyway.”

“Fine,” Tsukishima says, giving up on the oatmeal and going to scrape it into the compost bin.

He spends the rest of the day holed up in one of the classrooms, laptop plugged into the wall, staring at numbers on a spreadsheet until he starts seeing double. He forgets to eat lunch - by the time he looks up at the clock again, it’s dinnertime.

He runs into Yamaguchi on the way back to the dorm, coming back from the coast, hair crusty with sand and salt. “Hurts to move,” Yamaguchi says, and manages to peel one arm out of his wetsuit. “Found two of them today, though.”

“Nice,” Tsukishima says loyally, even though he personally finds segmented sea-worms revolting and hopes he’ll never see one in person again. He is a very good friend to Yamaguchi.

“I dropped them off in the wet lab, if you want to look,” Yamaguchi says, with the hopeful air that he always has even though he’s known Tsukishima since they were in elementary school.

“Maybe,” Tsukishima says, and internally shudders.

Kuroo is enthusiastic when Yamaguchi brings it up at dinner. “Christmas tree worms?”

“Yes,” Yamaguchi says, clutching the edge of the table in excitement. “Coming, Tsukki?”

Tsukishima tells himself it was mostly futile anyway. Of course he was going to end up looking at the worms, for Yamaguchi because they’re friends, and because he needs to check some equipment specifications in the analytical lab. No other reason.

“Haven’t seen one of those guys in a bit, I’ll bring Sa-chan around too,” Kuroo says, taking Sachiko’s tiny plastic spoon from her and scooping up mashed potato with it. “Eat that, sweetheart.” She obediently puts it in her mouth upside down.

Tsukishima tags along with them from the cafeteria, watching Sachiko run ahead of them in little hops and jumps, unsteady on her feet.

“What’s this place called, Sa-chan?” Kuroo asks her, when she runs right up to the door.

“Um,” she says, turning around in a circle. She looks up at Tsukishima pleadingly.

“Wet lab,” Tsukishima says, because he’s not in the habit of bullying toddlers.

“Wet lab,” Sachiko says, running to hug Kuroo’s leg. Yamaguchi laughs.

“Hey,” Kuroo says, pretending to be mad with his hands on his hips as she runs away with squeal.

“I know it,” Sachiko says, jutting her lip out.

“Uh-huh,” Kuroo says, scooping her up and pushing the door open.

The wet lab sounds like an aquarium when it’s on, water running all around the room and the hum of the motors. The concrete floor is washed dark and gritty with sand. Most of the tanks are empty, stray pebbles bumping gently along the glass bottoms.

“Look at that, Sachi-chan,” Kuroo says, squatting down so she can look into the side of the tank.

She puts her hand on the glass. “What is it?”

“Christmas tree worm,” Kuroo says, setting her down on the floor. “That’s not how you say hi.”

“Sorry,” Sachiko says, snatching her hand away and hiding it behind her back. “Sorry, worm-san.”

“No running in the lab, okay?” Kuroo says, standing up to fiddle with the controls on the wall.

“Okay,” Sachiko says, staring wide-eyed through the glass. They don’t particularly look like worms, spiralled up with their brightly colored branches waving gently in the water.

“That’s it?” Tsukishima says to Yamaguchi, quietly.

“That’s it,” Yamaguchi says, and hands Tsukishima a plastic bag of substrate, dry and chalky. “Analyze this for me?” Tsukishima scowls at him and grabs the bag.

“Fine,” Tsukishima says, belated, and spends the next hour in the analytical lab, listening to the rhythmic whir of the desktop centrifuge, parsing out the salt and grit into neat layers.

Tsukishima gets sunburned at the end of his first week.

“Even if it’s cloudy you can still get sunburned,” Yamaguchi says, watching Tsukishima fight his way out of his t-shirt, hissing with every movement.

“I know,” Tsukishima says waspishly, tearing the shirt off over his head.

“Okay,” Yamaguchi says peaceably, and grabs his goggles and snorkel off the end table.

Tsukishima is miserable and prickly throughout the entire day, skin stretched tender.

“Oh, no,” Yachi says, wringing her hands when Tsukishima tells her, gritting his teeth. “We can take a day off today!”

“It’s fine,” Tsukishima says, even though he wants to lie on his stomach right under the air-con and never move again.

“I don’t know,” Yachi says, looking at the angry pink under the loose collar of his shirt.

“Yacchan,” Tsukishima says, exhausted and irritable, wanting to jerk away and hide, “It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Yachi says, putting her hands up in surrender. Tsukishima feels a flash of guilt, irrationally annoyed.

“Tsukishima-san,” Akaashi says, from the next table over, shuffling his papers into a neat pile. Tsukishima twitches. “Take over babysitting for me today, will you?”

“We have more than enough time,” Yachi says, looking up at him hopefully. Tsukishima curls his toes, needled like he always is when Yachi starts tiptoeing around him.

“I know, okay,” Tsukishima says, wanting very badly for the conversation to end. He feels like a surly child instead of a PhD student, disgruntled without reason.

He catches Yachi on her way out. “Sorry,” he says, looking down at the ground.

“Oh, Tsukki, it’s really not a problem,” Yachi says, smiling. She thinks he’s talking about missing research, which makes Tsukishima feel even worse.

“Okay,” Tsukishima says, lamely, and wants to throw himself into orbit.

He spends the next five minutes stewing in formless irritation, prickly all over, heat smothering him like a blanket before he meets Akaashi at Kuroo’s door, and then puts it firmly behind him.

“Tsukishima-san,” Akaashi says, nodding at him. He’s wearing a t-shirt patterned with sea turtles and Hawaiian flowers but still looks composed. “Here.” He hands Tsukki a plastic bottle of aloe, bright green.

“Be careful next time,” Akaashi says, light, and Tsukishima feels appropriately chastened.

“Hey, Keiji,” Kuroo says, opening the door, half-eaten banana in one hand. “Oh! Tsukki.” Tsukishima is wearing his loosest shirt, stretched formless and soft. There are marble-sized holes all along the bottom that get larger with every successive wash. Kuroo’s wearing a wetsuit. Tsukishima can see the sharp slash of his hip even through the neoprene.

“Tsukishima-san is taking over for me today,” Akaashi says, primly. “Sunburn.”

“Ah,” Kuroo says, sympathetically, and Tsukishima can feel his gaze like a physical thing, sliding hot across his collarbones, blasted red.

“Morning,” Tsukishima mumbles, and tries not to trip over the doorstep.

“Sa-chan,” Kuroo calls, walking them to the tiny kitchen, “look who it is!”

“Tuki-san,” Sachiko yells. There is banana mush on her nose.

“He’s going to watch you today, okay?” Kuroo says, bending down to kiss the top of her head.

“Okay,” Sachiko says, slapping her sticky hand down onto the tray.

“When I l-e-a-v-e don’t let her see, okay? Just say Papa’s gone, say b-y-e,” Kuroo says, rummaging through the fridge with his back to Tsukishima.

“What Papa,” Sachiko says, twisting in her chair.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” Kuroo says, and beckons Tsukishima to the fridge. “Lunch,” he says, pointing to a tupperware labeled neatly with the date, “and snack.” Another tupperware, smaller. “She can have two j-u-i-c-e-s. Just two.”

“Emergency binder,” Kuroo says, breaking off a piece of his banana with two fingers and handing it to Sachiko, pointing to it on the bookshelf. “And Kenma’s in the computer lab.”

“Got it,” Tsukishima says, feeling harassed already, watching Sachiko get banana in her hair.

“She’s a good kid,” Kuroo says, suddenly, watching her go cross-eyed trying to get it out and smearing it everywhere.  

“I know,” Tsukishima says, looking at Kuroo’s face watching her.

“Thanks, Tsukki,” Kuroo says, after a beat, and smiles at Tsukishima then.

“No problem,” Tsukishima says, stomach afire.

“Okay,” Kuroo says, giving Tsukishima a lingering look Tsukishima doesn’t know the meaning of, and then smacks a kiss onto Sachiko’s forehead. “Gimme some luck.”

“Okay, Papa,” Sachiko says, voice suddenly little and wobbly.

“Be back tonight,” Kuroo says, as her eyes start filling. “Bye,” he mouths at Tsukishima, waving.

“Sachi-chan,” Tsukishima says desperately as her little face starts crumpling. “Papa’s gone, let’s say bye.”

She puts his arms up, and he picks her up, awkward, even as he can feel her sticky hands on his sunburn. “Bye, Papa,” she wails, crying in earnest.

Tsukishima holds onto her, so small and warm, until she’s cried the collar of his shirt wet and lifts her red face up. Her nose is running. “Juice?” she croaks. Tsukishima can still see the unshed tears caught in her tiny eyelashes.

“Juice,” Tsukishima agrees, and puts her down so he can go get it from the fridge.

After she’s sucked the juicebox flat and chewed the straw until Tsukishima took it and threw it away, Tsukishima watches her sit on the floor and watch him.

“How old are you?” Tsukishima asks her.

“Umm… ten,” Sachiko says, eyes bright.

“You’re three,” Tsukishima says.

“Okay,” Sachiko says. “See Ken-ma?” Tsukishima can still see the dried tear tracks on her cheeks.

“Okay,” Tsukishima says, and hands her a stuffed animal rabbit lying abandoned on the floor so he can hyperventilate and read the emergency binder, cover to cover.

“Now?” Sachiko says, a minute later, as Tsukishima’s scanning the staggering number of emergency numbers Kuroo’s listed. She’s holding up two mismatched shoes, one white sandal gone grey with dust, one red sneaker.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima says, crouching down so he’s not towering over her like a mountain man, and picking out two matching shoes to jam her feet in.

There’s a tube of baby sunscreen on the counter that Tsukishima applies dutifully to her chubby arms and face, Sachiko closing her eyes. He gently wipes the white streaks off with one finger and ties her sun-hat in a careful bow under her chin before they go out the door.

“Wait,” Sachiko says, when Tsukishima’s carefully locked the front door behind him. She points inside, face distraught.

He unlocks it for her again. She kicks her shoes off and runs inside, and comes back with a plastic baggie of hair ties and a pink plastic comb clutched carefully in her fist.

Tsukishima puts her shoes back on for her, one after another. He feels gangly in a way he hasn’t felt since middle school, too tall to be handling something so small and fragile. “What’s that for?”

“Hair,” Sachiko says, like Tsukishima is the child.

Kenma looks up from the computer when Tsukishima pushes the door open. “I’m babysitting,” Tsukishima says defensively, when Kenma looks silently from Sachiko’s beaming face to Tsukishima’s.

“Oh,” Kenma says. “Good morning. Tsukishima, Sachi.”

“Ken-ma,” Sachiko says, walking carefully over to his desk. She holds the plastic baggie up. “Hair?”

“Hmm,” Kenma says, while Sachiko shakes the baggie and bounces up and down.

“Please,” Sachiko says.

“Okay,” Kenma says, and stands up to lift her off the ground to sit on the bookcase behind him.

Tsukishima half works on his research and half watches Sachiko. “I like your hair,” she says, running the plastic comb through it as Kenma stares at the computer screen in front of him.

“Thank you,” Kenma says, clicking on something, and Tsukishima can see his slight smile.

Tsukishima’s reread the same sentence three times when Sachiko says, “Find goose egg.”

“Who’s watching you today?” Kenma asks her. His hair is in a mess of tiny bunches, clipped haphazardly with ladybugs and jellyfish. Sachiko’s pink comb is hanging aloft in a snarl. It looks like it hurts, but his expression hasn’t changed at all.

“Tuki-san,” Sachiko says, after a beat. “Tuki-san, see goose egg?”

Tsukishima looks at Kenma. Kenma says, “I’ll come,” and works the comb and knot out of his hair in the next three seconds. He hands the comb to Tsukishima. “She always drops it.”

Goose Egg is a cat, Kenma tells Tsukishima as they walk aimlessly around the station. Sachiko’s holding onto Kenma’s finger.

“Goose Egg is white,” Sachiko tells Tsukishima, craning her head all the way up to look at him.

“A stray,” Kenma says, and they wait patiently for Sachiko to open all the doors and check under impossible spots - the potted plant, grimy with salt, outside the cafeteria, inside the huge conch shell by the iguana pen.

Tsukishima’s starting to feel tired, walking in minced steps behind a meandering three-year old. He still feels hot and uncomfortable, despite the sun-hat and the shade. “Last one,” Kenma tells Sachiko, glancing at Tsukishima’s face. Tsukishima wants to say thank you but can’t find the words, watching Sachiko nod seriously and pull Kenma along.

Sachiko opens the wooden chest where the station’s extra snorkeling equipment is kept, assesses it, and then closes it again. “All done,” she says, and skips back to Kenma’s side.

“Maybe next time,” Kenma says, and walks Sachiko and Tsukishima all the way back to Kuroo’s house just in time for lunch.

Kuroo comes back before dinner. Sachiko drops her crayon to beeline towards the door. “Papa!”

They both watch him rinse the salt off his wetsuit and his hair with the hose on the front porch.

Tsukishima opens the door for him when he turns the hose off, shaking his hair like a dog. “Okaeri,” Sachiko says, running barefoot onto the porch.

“Hi, Sa-chan, no don’t touch, I’m all wet,” Kuroo says. “Did you have fun today?”

“Yes,” Sachiko says, and Tsukishima tries not to feel too proud.

“What did you do?” Kuroo asks, toweling his hair off. Tsukishima watches the flex of his arms.

“Ken-ma, coloring,” Sachiko says. “Juice.”

“Oh yes, juice, very important,” Kuroo says, and leads her by a finger into the house.

After Kuroo’s wiped off her feet, one after another, he looks at Tsukishima, hovering near the door. “Thank you, Tsukki.”

“No problem,” Tsukishima says, smiling at the face Sachiko makes at him, all scrunched up.

“A smile, huh? Does only Sa-chan get those?” Kuroo teases, getting to his feet with a groan.

“Yes,” Tsukishima says, feeling a little thrum go through him.

“Yes,” Sachiko says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Thanks again, Tsukki,” Kuroo says, ruffling Sachiko’s hair. “See you at dinner?”

“Yeah,” Tsukishima says, hoping his sunburn is bad enough enough to mask the flush he feels creeping up his throat.

“You’re lucky it’s the off-season,” Kuroo says to Tsukishima that night, bringing a beer bottle up to his lips. They’re sitting on the snack bar’s screened-in patio, one that’s strung with lights and mosquito netting.

“Lucky it’s hurricane season?” Tsukishima says, watching a droplet of sweat fall off the edge of Kuroo’s jawline as he drinks.

“Yeah, potentially deadly wind, but no school kids,” Kuroo says, and laughs. “The snack bar is overrun with them usually.”

He doesn’t sound upset about it. Tsukishima can hear Yaku and Yamaguchi talking from a bench a couple paces away, and the saturated sound the island air carries, full of buzzing and rustling and wave-crashing. Tsukishima didn’t plan around any school field trips but he’s glad to be Kuroo’s only newcomer. He takes a too-large gulp of beer and feels his throat round out around the burn as it goes down.

In no time at all Tsukishima’s three drinks in, and sweating through the thin cotton of his shirt. He’s tipsy enough that he’s finally figured out how to ignore the phantom feeling of mosquitos along his legs. Part of it is Kuroo’s fingers on his wrist, fever hot.

“You know,” Tsukishima is saying, “the coastline paradox.”

“No, I don’t know,” Kuroo says low, stroking his thumb along the knob of Tsukishima’s wrist. Is he doing it on purpose? Tsukishima can’t tell. He can see the lantern above them reflected in his eyes, two spots of orange.

He clears his throat. “It’s a fractal. If you measured in kilometers, the coastline would be so much shorter than if you measured it in meters. And so on. Because of the Euclideans. The curves.”

“The more you look the more there is,” Kuroo says, after a moment, eyes burning on Tsukishima’s face.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima says. He can feel his bare thighs sticking uncomfortably to the chair when he shifts. Kuroo cuts such an appealing figure in the fading light, so handsome it makes Tsukishima’s throat tight. For a wild, freefalling moment, Tsukishima wishes he could reach out and grab onto him.

“Well,” Kuroo says, smiling, and pushes his chair back. “It’s getting late. Thank you for teaching me something today, Tsukki.”

Tsukishima watches him walk away, watches that easy lope, and presses the condensation-studded bottle to his cheek. He closes his eyes, briefly, and then walks himself home.

“You work with Kiyoko?” Yaku says, looking up from the computer to interrupt the conversation Tsukishima and Yamaguchi are having ten feet down the table about department lab space back in Tokyo. The lab they’ve been banished to doesn’t even have working floor drains. Tsukishima has been rehashing a particularly awful morning three months ago when one of the tank pumps had broken and he had to wade, ankle deep in water mixed with sediment, to get a notebook he had left the night before.

“She’s my advisor,” Tsukishima says, and tries not to feel too offended when Yaku becomes visibly more impressed.

“Great researcher,” Yaku says, “Love her work on coastline temperature gradients.”

“She’s the reason I’m here,” Tsukishima says, and think about how he has a model to build, but instead he’s been watching Yaku run the same temperature simulation on the only computer that has the CPU to handle the size of Tsukishima’s parameters and picking over department drama crumbs with Yamaguchi.

“But now you’re here for a different reason,” Yamaguchi says, giving Yaku a look Tsukishima doesn’t understand.

Tsukishima is right in front of both of them. He raises an eyebrow. “What reason.”

Yamaguchi grins. Tsukishima hates it when he’s like this. “To learn. About places, people and things. Obviously.”

“I hate you,” Tsukishima says conversationally, but he can’t help the flush of energy that rolls over him when he thinks about Kuroo’s attention that night, all on him.

“It’s a small island,” Yamaguchi says, giving Yaku another look over Tsukishima’s shoulder. If he leans any further against the table he’s going to knock a jar of shitty ballpoint pens over. Tsukishima will not help him pick any up.

“Yup,” Yaku says, popping the p. He hits run on his simulation again. Tsukishima opens his laptop and refuses to say another word.

“Hey,” Tsukishima hears someone say, when he’s tapping the sand out of his shoes. It’s a mostly futile exercise. He looks up to see Kuroo heading his way down the beach, wetsuit half unzipped, goggles around his neck. Tsukishima whites out for a second. The stomach on that man.

“Hey,” Tsukishima manages, and busies himself sliding his shoe back on. He can blame his red cheeks on the sun.

“Ocean’s calm today,” Kuroo says. “Up for a swim?” It’s so hard to look directly at him under the sun, bronzed and shining. He zips up the wetsuit in a casual shrug that makes Tsukishima want to die.

“No,” Tsukishima says, and can’t tell whether he’s sad about it or not. “Finishing up this section.” He points to the marker a hundred feet down the beach.

“Oh, am I bothering you?” Kuroo asks, buckling his fins on. He’s smiling. Tsukishima watches his lips move. His teeth are so white against his skin.

“Yes,” Tsukishima deadpans, just to see Kuroo’s eyes crinkle. Kuroo shuffles towards him, and reaches out a hand to fix the brim of Tsukishima’s hat.

“Don’t get even redder, lobster-san,” he says, and then snaps the goggles on over his eyes and nose and wades into the glittering water. Tsukishima watches him get smaller and smaller into the distance, until he disappears into the reflecting sunlight.

“Tsukishima-san,” Akaashi says, poking his head into the classroom where he and Yachi are flipping aimlessly through a reef fish guidebook, pointing out the ugly ones. Yachi’s face is still twisted in indignation from when Tsukishima had pointed at a lint-colored pufferfish and said, “That’s Hinata.”

“Yes,” Tsukishima says, snatching his hand away from the book like he’s done something wrong. He hasn’t. He thinks. He always feels like he’s a child that’s been caught with illicit dessert when Akaashi is involved.

“Oh, Yachi-san,” Akaashi says, nodding at her. “Would you two mind helping me check the snorkeling equipment? We have a school coming next week, and Kuroo’s busy.”

“I don’t snorkel,” Tsukishima says, stupidly.

“That’s okay,” Akaashi says, giving him a strange look. “It’s just checking goggles for leaks.”

“Yes!” Yachi says, and puts the book gingerly back on the shelf.

“Thank you,” Akaashi says, and directs them to the sink outside the wet lab. There’s a huge mesh bag of goggles on the ground. “Just hold them underwater, see if you can see any bubbles.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes, filling the sink up, disentangling the bag strings.

“Is this your job, normally?” Yachi asks Akaashi, watching him pull a series of tiny screwdrivers out of a bag and set them carefully on the bench.

“Bokuto-san does this normally,” Akaashi says, focusing intensely on the pair of goggles in front of him.

“Where.. is he?”

“Research fellowship,” Akaashi says, briskly. “Great Barrier Reef.”

“Oh, wow,” Yachi says, hands stilling. Tsukishima takes the goggles from her slack hands as she turns to Akaashi. His fingers are already pruning from being underwater. “When he is coming back?”

“Four days,” Akaashi says, and smiles. “He’s excited to meet Tsukishima-san.”

“Oh,” Tsukishima says, feeling thrown off. He dumps the last of the goggles into the sink to have something to do with his hands. “I look forward to it.”

“Good,” Akaashi says, and goes back to answering Yachi’s questions while Tsukishima’s fingertips turn ghostly white from the cold water.

“Hey, Tsukki,” Kuroo says when he catches Tsukishima fresh from the beach, when Tsukki’s lightheaded from the sun and slamming the door of the truck shut. Kuroo’s out of his wetsuit for once, in a research station tee and ratty old board shorts faded to white.

“Hi,” Tsukishima says, and trips over his own ankle. Kuroo catches his elbow. They’re standing very close.

“Are you free tonight? Wanted to show you something,” Kuroo says, looking at Tsukishima very intently. He’s so handsome this close that it makes Tsukishima’s teeth hurt.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima says, and feels his heart rate pick up.

“Okay. Great. Meet me at the iguana at nine?” Kuroo says, and smiles crookedly at him.

“Sure,” Tsukishima says, helplessly.

“He told you to meet him at the iguana at nine so he can show you something,” Yamaguchi says later, skeptically. He’s updating his field notes on his laptop across from Tsukishima, sitting in the shade outside the snack bar.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima says, carefully, so that his voice doesn’t betray how giddy he is about it.

“Well… I think I know what he’s going to show you. His di-” Yamaguchi says, and starts laughing before he even gets the whole sentence out.

Tsukishima tries to stand up but bangs his ankle on some part of the table and has to sit down again. “You are not funny.”

“Whatever, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, grinning at him. “It’s still the most action you’ve seen since we started our PhDs.”

“Ugh,” Tsukishima says, but he’s smiling despite himself.

When Tsukishima shows up to the iguana enclosure ten minutes early, Kuroo is already there waiting. “Tsukki, hey,” Kuroo says, and hands him a flashlight. “This is going to be a bit of a walk.”

The bugs are out full force in the early night, and Tsukishima can hear the frogs chirping quietly all around them. “Okay, this way,” Kuroo says, shooing Tsukishima in line behind him. It takes Tsukishima a second to realize they’re walking on the side of a highway, cars driving by ten feet from them, fast enough to make the hairs on Tsukishima’s neck move.

“Look up,” Kuroo says, oblivious, as the headlights of a car driving by light him up briefly in silhouette. Tsukishima obediently glances up and immediately feels flattened by the endless curve of the sky hanging above them, deep purple and pinpricked densely with stars.

“You can’t always see it,” Kuroo’s saying, as Tsukishima’s neck starts aching from the angle. “It’s really clear today.”

“Is this,” Tsukishima says, and has to clear his throat, “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

“Nope,” Kuroo says, stopping and shining the flashlight down the side of the road, into what looks like is just a dense bramble patch.

“No?” Tsukishima echoes, as Kuroo says, “This way,” and leads him onto what can only be loosely considered a path, overgrown and prickly with brush, ominously blurry in the dark.

“It’s been a while,” Kuroo says, snapping a branch in front of them in half. Tsukishima’s legs feel scraped raw by the time they stumble out the other side. Kuroo’s still unfairly composed. Tsukishima feels like he’s been through nature’s blender. There’s a mosquito bite between his shoulder blades that’s throbbing in sync with his head.

“Here,” Kuroo says, and shines the flashlight in an arc.

“What?” It’s hard to make out the surroundings - nights are never this dark in Tokyo, but they’re an impenetrable black in the Bahamas. They’re standing on a rocky outcrop, right on top of the ocean. Tsukishima can barely make out the trees on the shore and the sliver moon, out across the water.

“It’s an old calcified reef,” Kuroo says, scuffing his toe against the ground. “We’re standing on it. When the tide comes up at night all these tide pools form.”  

“Oh,” Tsukishima says, and crouches down to look at the ground, punched through with holes.

“Cool, huh?” Kuroo says, sounding pleased, and Tsukishima can hear him scrambling over the rocks. “C’mere.”

When Tsukishima gets there, shining the flashlight carefully at the ground and navigating around all the foot-sized holes, Kuroo’s pointing at a shallow pool of water ringed with flat white barnacles and crusted with sponges. “They’re like little worlds,” Kuroo says, wistfully, as they watch a snail shrink back in the flashlight beam.

It is pretty cool, Tsukishima admits grudgingly, even though it smells like old fish and earth and the bottoms of his feet hurt through the soles of his shoes. The coral is sharp and jagged where it’s broken off.

“Tsukki,” Kuroo says from a little ways away, pointing the flashlight deliberately at Tsukishima’s face. Tsukishima turns his face away with a grimace. Kuroo laughs.

“What,” Tsukishima says, when he’s standing next to Kuroo, who’s crouched down at the lip of the pool, prodding the surface with a finger.

“Come down,” Kuroo says, and Tsukishima does even though his knees protest.

“Now what,” Tsukishima says, looking at the Kuroo’s face in profile in the dark, the slope of his nose and the faint stubble coming in on his chin.

“Look,” Kuroo says, pointing at something in the water. Tsukishima looks. It’s more of the same - brown splotches of different kinds, pebbles and shards of coral, lumps of grey. “A chiton.”

Tsukishima doesn’t see it. “Ah,” he says, and turns his face sideways to see Kuroo looking right at him. His bottom lip is so full. Tsukishima’s so close to him that he can see each of Kuroo’s individual eyelashes in the weak light. His eyes are half-lidded. Tsukishima drops the flashlight, and reaches for it automatically, toppling over onto his side. He lands hard on his hand, and feels the pain immediately.

“Tsukki!” Kuroo’s saying, grabbing at his shoulders to haul him upright. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Tsukishima says, and then finds that he’s sliced his palm open, blood wet and dark.

“Hold on,” Kuroo says, and grabs at his wrist. “Tsukki!”

Tsukishima grits his teeth. It’s good it’s dark, so Kuroo can’t see him flushing. “It’s fine.”

“Shit,” Kuroo says, dismayed, “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, stop,” Tsukishima says, mortified. He can feel the blood dripping off his hand. Kuroo’s still holding onto it.

“How about this,” Kuroo says, and sticks his tongue out, obscene.

“What the hell?” Tsukishima says, and yanks his hand away to wipe it on his shirt.

“Saliva’s an antiseptic,” Kuroo tells him, like that justifies him wanting to lick Tsukishima’s cut.

Tsukishima’s voice sounds too high when it comes out. “That’s gross.” He wraps his hand up in his shirt. The stains might not ever come out, but Tsukishima seriously doubts any of the shirts he brought with him will be wearable again in polite company, marinated as they are in sweat and salt, so it’s not a real loss.

“It’s science,” Kuroo says, guiding Tsukishima by the elbow back to the path like he’s gravely injured himself, holding two flashlights in one hand. At least Tsukishima saved the flashlight. If it had rolled off the edge of the reef and into the ocean, he’s not sure what he would have done. Left the island in embarrassment.

“I’m fine,” Tsukishima says, quietly, and then louder again over the strange sound of gushing water underneath their feet, waves sloshing in hollow places.

“I know,” Kuroo says, and smiles at him then. “But it’s getting late anyway, and you should really get some antibacterial on that cut.”

The journey back is even worse, all thicket and highway and muggy insect clouds. By the time they’re back, Tsukishima’s exhausted. His feet have gone beyond the point of pain to just numbness, feeling like two pieces of rubber sewn onto Tsukishima’s ankles. Kuroo drops him off at his dorm and returns a couple minutes later with the first-aid kit, grimacing sympathetically.

“Sorry,” Kuroo says, watching Tsukishima unstick the shirt from the cut, hissing quietly. “Shit.”

“It’s really not your fault,” Tsukishima says, embarrassed that any of this is happening , that he thought he'd get a kiss tonight, that instead the most attractive man he's ever met is watching him dab neosporin on his hand.

“Mmm,” Kuroo says, and knocks Tsukishima’s hand out of the way to apply the band-aid, fingers dry and warm.

“Good night,” Tsukishima says, after Kuroo’s finished, and then more quietly, “thanks for showing me.”

“Anytime. Good night, Tsukki,” Kuroo says, touching Tsukishima’s shoulder briefly. “I’m really so sorry about your hand.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tsukishima says, and feels surprised when he hears the words from his own mouth, wild with adrenaline.

Kuroo’s mouth turns down. “Be careful.”

“I will,” Tsukishima says. He can feel his heart beating against his chest. He watches Kuroo disappear up the path into the night.

Tsukishima unlocks the dorm door. “I know you were looking, you’re so nosy.”

“What did you even do?” Yamaguchi says, sitting in the single chair with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Cut my hand,” Tsukishima says, collapsing on the bed.

“How,” Yamaguchi says, exasperated.

Now that Tsukishima’s off his feet they hurt even more. He turns his face so he’s not speaking directly into his bedspread. “We walked on the edge of a highway, went through some bushes, looked at some grey blobs on a dead coral reef, I fell and sliced my hand open.” Bizarrely, Tsukishima feels like he wants to cry. His eyes hurt. “When we were about to kiss. I think.”

“ What ,” Yamaguchi says. “Wait, what blobs?”

“Chitons,” Tsukishima says. “Chitons, Yamaguchi.” His eyelids weigh ten thousand pounds.

“Sounds like your date went well,” Yamaguchi says, after a beat of silence. “You saw some cockroaches of the sea.”

“You study the worms of the sea. Good night,” Tsukishima says, and then drags himself up so he can change out of his blood-stained shirt and wash the phantom feeling of thistles and bugs off his legs. He stays awake for what feels like ages, staring in the dark, getting a thrum in his chest whenever he thinks about the stars spread out above them, Kuroo’s face next to his, the look on his face in that moment, looking at Tsukishima.

Kuroo and Sachiko are holding court in the cafeteria at breakfast, Sachiko standing in her chair, waving her little hands and talking to an enraptured Yaku. Kenma’s on her other side, typing away on his cell phone. Tsukishima never knows what he’s doing with that thing. Only the satellite phones have service. Tsukishima’s own cell phone is now essentially a very fragile, water-susceptible camera that he has to carry around in a plastic ziploc bag. The last hundred photos he has are of blurry pieces of the coastline for reference.

Tsukishima sits next to Akaashi, alone at the corner table. Akaashi raises an eyebrow when Tsukishima sets his bowl down. “Me, over Kuroo? I’m grateful.”

Tsukishima slides down an inch or so in his seat. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Akaashi says, and taps out another quick sentence before he looks at Tsukishima over his laptop screen. Akaashi’s wearing a wetsuit this morning, the arms tied around his trim waist. He’s wearing a t-shirt. Kuroo’s never afforded Tsukishima that mercy.

“So,” Tsukishima says, watching the brown sugar in his oatmeal congeal. “Um.”

“It was a date,” Akaashi says, probably out of pity. His eyes are razor-sharp, and Tsukishima’s ears start burning immediately. Suddenly Tsukishima is very absorbed in eating his breakfast. He’d just complained to Yamaguchi yesterday about how much he misses miso, but oatmeal is great. Tsukishima loves oatmeal.

“Anyway, Tsukishima-san,” Akaashi says, handing him a napkin. “Cards tonight?”

Tsukishima wipes his mouth. He’s always out of his depth when he talks to Akaashi. At this point he’s mostly used to it. “Sure.”

“Bokuto will be back,” Akaashi says, and Tsukishima can see his tiny smile.

“Okay,” Tsukishima says, mystified.

He waves to Kuroo and Sachi on the way out, and gets that little stutter in his chest when they wave back.

It turns out Bokuto and Akaashi are married. “Oh,” Tsukishima says, because it feels rude to be surprised about that. They’re sitting outside the snack bar, the breeze coming off the sea ruffling through Tsukishima’s hair.

“He didn’t tell you?” Bokuto says, looping his arm around Akaashi’s. “We don’t wear the rings, usually, they’re not ocean proof.” He’s wearing a thin tattered tank that Tsukishima is determinedly trying not to look directly at.

“You lost yours while diving, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says, but leans into him.

“Yeah,” Bokuto says, sadly, and expertly deals the cards out.

Tsukishima loses two rounds to Akaashi before he musters all of his courage and tries to ask about Kuroo. “So yesterday,” Tsukishima starts, and watches Bokuto and Akaashi give each other side glances, quick. “Um.”

“I said it was a date this morning,” Akaashi says, doing an effortless bridge without even looking down.

“I love it when you do that,” Bokuto says, putting his chin in his hands, watching the cards fly.

Tsukishima deflates. “Okay.”

“He likes Kuroo?” Bokuto says, watching Akaashi deal the cards out, so quick his hands blur.

“Yes,” Akaashi says, sparing Tsukishima a critical once-over. Tsukishima has been here for a little over a month. It’s embarrassing that Akaashi can lay him flat open like a book with no effort at all.

“Right here,” Tsukishima says, and pops the tab on his beer. Few conversations in his life have been more excruciating.

“I know,” Bokuto says, and then turns towards Akaashi. “He’s cute.”

Tsukishima hopes the low light is enough to mask the furious red his face must be turning.

“Hey!” Yachi says, opening the door, saving him from a response. It clatters shut behind her. Tsukishima slumps over the table. “Can you deal me and Yamaguchi in? He’s coming!”

“What’s with your hand?” Bokuto says at the same time, eyes comically large, and snatches Tsukishima’s wrist up from the table. Tsukishima tries to twist it fruitlessly out of his grip. Tsukishima has just met this man. He wants to go back to his dormitory and hide, like a bat.

“I cut it,” Tsukishima says, grumpy. Even thinking about last night fills him with nameless emotion.

“Leave him alone,” Akaashi says peaceably, waving Bokuto off. “Sorry, Tsukishima-san.” Tsukishima rubs his wrist and tries to remember how to play this game so that he can stop having to wash dishes as penalty.

“But you can’t swim then,” Bokuto says, as Yamaguchi shows up and shoves his butt right next to Tsukishima’s on the bench. Tsukishima braces his feet against the floor and glares at him. Yamaguchi smiles back.

“Tsukki hates swimming,” Yamaguchi says, trying to look over Tsukishima’s shoulder at his cards. Tsukishima twists away.

Bokuto is horrified. “Why?”

“It’s your turn,” Akaashi says, and picks out the cards from Bokuto’s hand and lays them down for him.

“I don’t like it,” Tsukishima says, trying to evaluate the pros and cons of playing double queens. Akaashi probably has a higher double set.

“Is it because you’re bad at it?” Bokuto says, ignoring the game completely.

“Maybe,” Yamaguchi says. Tsukishima tries to kick him under the table and catches Yachi instead, perched across him. She gives him a wounded look. Tsukishima mouths, “Sorry,” at her.

“No,” Tsukishima says, over Bokuto’s laugh. He puts his last card down and feels the satisfaction flood him. “I win.”

“I knew you could do it, Tsukki!” Bokuto says, and jumps up to try to put him in a headlock.

“Nicely done,” Akaashi says, marking the chores sheet, pointedly doing nothing to stop Bokuto from knocking Tsukishima’s glasses off his face.

Yamaguchi throws open the dormitory door first thing in the morning and says, “No swimming today.” He manages to sound dejected about it, even though all he’s been doing lately in the time he’s not swimming is lying about, stiff and sore. Tsukishima peeks around his head. The sky’s an ominous cloudy grey. He watches the palm fronds flatten sadly in the wind.

“Hey!” Kuroo says, jogging into view, holding his hair out of his face with one hand. His face is unusually serious. “Storm warning today, the electricity might go out. We have backup generators, but if it happens meet in the computer lab, okay?”

They both nod. Kuroo’s face softens. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Tsukishima says, and savors the way Kuroo’s mouth moves when he smiles.

“Shouldn’t be too bad,” Kuroo says, still looking at Tsukishima. “It’s mostly missing us.”

“Good,” Tsukishima says, and wishes he had something else to say, fidgeting with the hem of his sleep shirt.  

“Okay. Take care,” Kuroo says, and goes to knock on Yaku’s door down the street. Tsukishima closes the door and lingers over it.

“Wow,” Yamaguchi says, putting socks on while sitting on Tsukishima’ bed. “You like him.”

“Get off,” Tsukishima says, without any real effort.

In the time it takes him to brush his teeth, the sky goes from overcast to dark. Tsukishima has to switch the light on to find his shoes on the floor.

“We’ve been mostly lucky,” Yamaguchi says, looking out the window. “It is hurricane season.” Tsukishima can hear the wind buffeting the walls.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima says, grabbing the flashlight from the table. “Let’s go eat.”

Breakfast is an unusually somber affair. Akaashi is there, grim-faced, nibbling at an apple and typing sporadically on his laptop. The cafeteria door is rattling in the wind. The lights are on, but everything is grey cast. Tsukishima eats a quarter of a boiled egg and abandons it.

“I have to go check on the generator,” Akaashi says, closing the laptop with a snap. A boom of thunder goes off. Tsukishima twitches. “Make sure you close your windows.”

Tsukishima and Yamaguchi pass the rest of the day aimlessly sitting around in the computer lab. The internet isn’t connecting. Tsukishima picks at his data spreadsheet and spends a twenty minutes trying to change the typeface, only to find out they all look the same. He peeks at Yamaguchi’s laptop. Yamaguchi's playing solitaire. Yachi’s fallen asleep slumped over the table, head pillowed in her arms.

Kenma gets a phone call. Tsukishima and Yamaguchi both turn towards the shrill beep, piercing in the quiet. Yachi lifts her head sleepily. “Hello?” Kenma says, the satellite phone comically large in his hands. Whatever the other person says makes his face tighten up, and he says, “Don’t panic, I’m going to look,” and hangs up.

Lightning flashes, lighting up the room an eerie white for a brief second. They all wait for the thunderclap before Yamaguchi says, “What happened?”

Kenma’s quiet for a second, deliberating. Tsukishima can feel his heart rate ratchet up. “Sachi’s missing.”

“What,” Yamaguchi says, dismayed.

Yachi clutches her face. “Since when?”

Kenma looks at the phone on the desk. “Don’t know. I’m going to look for her.” All three of them watch him pull the door open against the wind and disappear into the dark.

Yachi makes a whimpering noise. “She must be so scared.”

“Should we help look?” Yamaguchi says, face pale. He closes his laptop.

“Everyone will be looking,” Yachi says, worrying her lip. “Maybe it’s better to stay put.”

Tsukishima hears all of this distantly. “I’m going,” Tsukishima says, heart tightening, and runs outside.

He forces himself to slow down, bracing against the wind. Sachiko doesn’t wander, he thinks, and painstakingly lays out the station in his mind, all the places she knows and the doors she can open. He can feel the panic rising in him.

It’s probably only been a few minutes, but his lungs are burning from the exertion. It hurts his throat to keep sucking down air, his feet churning up sand and gravel on the road, the grasses biting against his calves in the wind.

“Sachiko,” Tsukishima yells, feeling the words fly away in the wind. “Sachi-chan!” He skids to a halt, sending gravel flying. He wrenches the wet lab door open.

“Sachi!” It’s quiet in the wet lab, all tanks drained and the water turned off. Tsukishima opens the storage closet, closes it again. Next place, he thinks, and locks the door behind him on his way out.

Tsukishima’s running out places to check, and his voice is going hoarse. He can feel himself developing a blister on the ball of his foot where he can feel a pebble in his shoe. The snack bar sign’s been blown off the signpost. He has to step around it carefully, squinting in the dark. '“Sachi,” he coughs, and rounds the corner to find her pressed up against the snack bar underneath the awning.

She’s crying, her shoulders shaking with the effort. Tsukishima can barely make out her face in the dark. “Sachi-chan,” he says, crouching down in front of her. Thunder sounds. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and she twists away. Tsukishima’s panicking now, watching her cry. “It’s me. Tsukki-san.”

“T-tuk-ki-san,” she sobs, recognition dawning. Tsukishima hugs her. He can feel her tears wet against his neck.

“Your papa’s looking for you,” he says, rocking her awkwardly, trying to find a way to pick her up. Kuroo does it so effortlessly but Tsukishima’s struggling.

He finally manages it, and has to take a heart-stopping second to reorient himself in the dark, balancing Sachiko’s weight on his hip.

“Sachiko!” he hears. Tsukishima can’t tell who it is or how far away they are.

“I found her!” he yells, as loudly as he can, trying to bounce Sachiko in a way that he hopes is comforting. He takes a step in what he thinks is the direction of the computer lab, and Kuroo’s suddenly right there, arms out before Tsukishima’s even registered him.

“Sachiko, Sa-chan,” Kuroo’s saying, over and over again, as Tsukishima passes her to him. Tsukishima can’t tell in the low light but he thinks Kuroo’s shaking, wiping Sachiko’s tears away, holding her close. “Are you okay?” Tsukishima watches her head wobble.

“Y-yes,” Sachiko says, and then bursts into tears again.

“Don’t scare me like that,” Kuroo says, voice thick, putting his chin over Sachiko’s head and closing his eyes. He opens them a second later. “Thank you, Tsukki.”

“Of course,” Tsukishima says, and feels like crying a little bit, watching Kuroo shake.

“Let’s get out of the wind,” Kuroo says, and uses his chin to point in the direction of his house. He has both arms wrapped around Sachiko still.

It starts raining, slowly at first, fat droplets pricking the back of Tsukishima’s neck, and turns into a full downpour the last ten feet before Kuroo’s door. Tsukishima bolts the last couple steps and sits down hard, chest heaving from exertion and adrenaline, on their front step. Kuroo doesn’t look much better, setting Sachiko down on the step, checking her for injuries.

Kuroo scoops her up again and goes inside. Tsukishima follows behind, quietly shedding his soaked shoes on the doormat. When he catches up to them, Kuroo’s still holding Sachiko, and speaking on the phone. “Tsukki found her,” he says, eyes finding Tsukishima’s across the dark kitchen. “Yeah. She’s fine. Thank god. We’re going to stay here. Sounds good. Bye.”

Kuroo collapses in a kitchen chair, tilting his head back. “Don’t do that again,” he says to Sachiko, lying quietly against his chest.

“Okay,” Sachiko says, quiet. Her eyes fill again. Tsukishima can see them glittering. “Papa, I’m so-”

“Hey,” Kuroo says, straightening up, rubbing her back. “It’s okay. Don’t cry. Next time just stand still, okay? And yell, like we practiced.”

“Yes,” Sachiko says, and buries her head in his shoulder again. Kuroo sighs, long and deep.

“Thank you again,” Kuroo says, as Tsukishima sits across from him.

“Anytime,” Tsukishima says, and really means it.

“It’s my fault,” Kuroo says bitterly, closing his eyes briefly. “Told her to stay and wait for Akaashi when we were making storm preparations. I never confirmed Akaashi got my message, she wandered off.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Tsukishima says, quietly, hating the strain on Kuroo’s face.

“Yeah,” Kuroo says, and they’re both quiet for a stretch, listening to Sachiko make snuffling noises and turn restlessly before she drops off gently into sleep.

“Wish I could do that,” Kuroo whispers, and lifts her up again. “Be back soon.” Tsukishima watches him disappear down the hallway. He sits in the dark and listens to the rain lash against the windows until Kuroo comes back, rubbing his arms against the chill.

He gives Tsukishima a towel to dry his hair, and a clean shirt, washed soft. Tsukishima buries his nose in the collar when Kuroo turns his back to him and inhales, deep. “Sorry you have to stay tonight,” Kuroo says, handing him a packaged plastic toothbrush, patterned with cartoon giraffes. He can hear the storm roaring outside.

“I don’t mind,” Tsukishima says, filter shot by how tired he is, and immediately blinks awake.

Kuroo laughs, low, and catches Tsukishima in hug. Kuroo puts his cheek against Tsukishima’s neck. Tsukishima has to forcibly relax every muscle in his body, instantly tense with surprise. He can feel his pulse rabbiting. Kuroo’s arms are so warm. Tsukishima wants to stand here forever.  “Thank you.”

Tsukishima squeezes back, and hopes that it tells Kuroo everything he can’t say right now.

There’s a brief scuffle over sleeping positions when they part. “Take the bed,” Kuroo says, jaw set.

“It’s your bed,” Tsukishima says, turning around to head for the couch in the living room.

Kuroo blocks his path. “No, I’ll take the couch.”

“Kuroo,” Tsukishima says, “I’ll take the couch.” He doesn’t say anything about how Kuroo looks awful, eyes bloodshot and face pale after Tsukishima’s gotten used to seeing him tan under the sun.

Kuroo sighs. “Okay.”

The slope of his shoulders is so exhausted and sad that Tsukishima reaches out a hesitant hand to squeezes Kuroo’s arm in what he hopes is a reassuring way.  “Good night, Kuroo.”

“Good night,” Kuroo says, and tries to smile at him. It comes out in a slow sleepy blink.

Tsukishima sleeps like a rock, until he’s woken up the next morning by a piercing hunger. The storm’s mostly cleared up - Tsukishima can see the silver edge where the sun’s fighting through despite the determined drizzle.

Kuroo’s already up, Sachiko on his knee at the table. They’re both watching him climb his way into consciousness, grope blindly for his glasses on the coffee table. “Good morning,” he croaks, and has to clear his throat.

“Good morning,” Sachiko says, looking at Kuroo. Kuroo turns her face with his hand so she’s looking at Tsukishima again. “Um,” Sachiko begins, darting another glance at Kuroo. “Thank you for, for finding me.”

Tsukishima’s heart is a balloon. “You’re welcome.” He sits up, swinging his legs off the couch. His feet are cold from hanging off the edge all night.

“Go on,” Kuroo says, smiling at Sachiko. Tsukishima is briefly hypnotized by the stubble he’s sporting. She hops off his knee and runs directly at Tsukishima. She climbs up on the couch, stepping on Tsukishima’s hand under the blanket, and bumps her lips against Tsukishima’s cheek.

“Mwah,” Sachiko says, and Tsukishima tries very hard not to die at how cute she is. He hugs her instead.

The next week passes uneventfully. Tsukishima gets roped into helping Bokuto pick up all the downed palm fronds off the paths, suffers indigestion from how much he wants to be near Kuroo always, and works determinedly on his research. He’s run into a statistical analysis snag, and Tsukishima draws up lists of possible options and then crosses them out one by one, an old stat textbook published in 1992 open on the table in front of him. Tsukishima’s intensely aware of the warmth Kuroo gives off, sitting next to him.

Kuroo’s been watching Tsukishima fail at paying attention to boring statistic proofs and instead focus on the sliver of space that exists between their knees under the table, when Kuroo says, “Weather’s good today.”

“What does that mean,” Tsukishima says, flat, even though he knows perfectly well what Kuroo means.

“C’mon, let me take you out,” Kuroo says, grinning.

Tsukishima isn’t brave enough to flirt back, if that’s what Kuroo’s doing. He settles for, “I don’t have a wetsuit.”

“And I have extras!” Kuroo says, already standing up.

“I’m taller,” Tsukishima says.

“They stretch,” Kuroo says. “You can’t get out of this one. Sorry. It’s the calmest it’s been in weeks.”

Tsukishima rolls his eyes. “Okay.” Tsukishima’s a creature of habit. He hasn’t changed since middle school, when he grew a half-meter in three years and an attitude to match. Kuroo doesn’t need to know that he’s the only reason Tsukishima says yes.

“Great. Meet you back at the trucks in ten,” Kuroo says.

“Twenty,” Tsukishima says. He needs to ask Yamaguchi to teach him how to use a snorkel again, without letting on why he needs to know.

“Fifteen,” Kuroo says. “I’m good at negotiating now that I’ve got a three year-old.”

Tsukishima suspects that that’s always been the case. “Fifteen,” he says, and walks a little bit faster back to the dorm.

Kuroo throws the wetsuit at him when he gets back, leaning up against the side of the truck. He’s shirtless. Tsukishima braced himself for this but that doesn’t mean he’s prepared. He’s self conscious when he puts the wetsuit on, sticking his legs into it one by one, embarrassed by the generous amount of ankle exposed. He zips it all the way up and gets into the truck next to Kuroo.

“You’re going to get hot like that,” Kuroo says, looking at him sideways. It’s shameless, the way he looks, driving with one hand, the windows rolled down. Tsukishima wants to reach out and hold his hair out of his face, where it’s stuck to his forehead.

Tsukishima tells himself it doesn’t mean anything, and drags the zipper halfway down. He can’t bear to check whether Kuroo is looking.

Kuroo parks on the side of the road, and tosses Tsukishima a mesh bag. “Should have everything, but check.” Tsukishima counts two flippers, crusted with sand, a pair of gloves, a pair of goggles, the plastic yellowing with age, and a snorkel, bright pink.

“All here,” Tsukishima says, and follows Kuroo over the bluff.

Tsukishima fumbles with the goggles for a good two minutes until Kuroo says, “Sorry about that,” taking the goggles out of Tsukishima’s hands and loosening the band expertly. “Kids don’t always rinse the sand out and it gets caught in the grooves.” Kuroo’s face is right in front of Tsukishima’s. Tsukishima can see the specks of sand caught in his eyebrows.

“There,” Kuroo says, cradling Tsukishima’s head so he can loop the band around.

“Thanks,” Tsukishima says, mouth dry.

Tsukishima’s only been on the south side of the island a few times before, back when he and Yachi profiled it on an especially windy day, sand biting into the backs of their legs. “French bay,” Kuroo says, rinsing out his goggles in the knee-deep surf. “It’s usually turbulent, but we’re lucky today.”

Tsukishima can see the line of the barrier reef in the water, where the aquamarine deepens to a darker shade of blue. He wades over to where Kuroo’s crouched in the water, and tightens his goggles around his head until he can feel the buckle digging uncomfortably into his temple. Better than an eyeful of seawater.

“Follow me,” Kuroo says, like Tsukishima would ever go astray, and kicks off.

It’s always strange, going from land to water, no matter how many times Tsukishima’s done it before. He has to coax himself into breathing through his mouth, get used to the feeling of floating, weightless, half-above the water.

Kuroo motions to him underwater, and Tsukishima follows him, ankles already sore from the flippers. The sand below looks impossibly bright, like the sun’s poured down the coast and settled along it like honey. There’s a stretch of empty water before the reef, dotted with unassuming brown sponges and split-second masses of silvery fish glinting briefly out of the fog and then disappearing again.

The reef itself is a dark wall when they approach it from the side, festooned with soft pillowy corals and looping branches of stiff yellow sun-side, crawling with fat starfish and huge flat fans waving gently in the current. There are grey-blue fish in swarms, moving lazily from sponge to sponge, tiny silver fish with dark spots, and a huge parrotfish the size of Tsukishima’s torso, rainbow and massive, eye the size of a golf ball.

Looming above the reef are the dead staghorns, bleached bone white and ghostly. They’re so brittle it almost hurts to look at them, jutting at right angles into the water.

Kuroo motions to Tsukishima and he tears his eyes away from the bleached staghorns to kick off after him. They break the surface. “There’s a ton of fisheries this time of year,” Kuroo says, around the snorkel and the saltwater. He motions with his head and floats face-down again.

There’s a column of coral, littered with tiny fans and tubers, surrounded by miniature fish - tiny translucent shrimps smaller than Tsukishima’s pinky nail, a miniature black triangle with fluorescent blue spots, the most delicate-looking cowfish Tsukishima’s ever seen, giraffe spots all intact.

They float over the reef for what feels like hours, kicking lazily. Tsukishima feels greedy about it, like his eyes have too much to see, memorizing the way a huge brain coral looks, round and ruffled with intricate folds.

He’s been watching the same red fish dart in and out of a coral cave for a while when Kuroo grabs his hand and motions towards the surface. “We have to go,” Kuroo says, sounding regretful. He’s still holding Tsukishima’s hand.

“Okay,” Tsukishima says, and has to let go so he can follow Kuroo back to shore.

It feels like the ocean spits him up on shore, limbs feeling like rubber and twice as loose, flopping ungracefully onto the sand. His lungs are burning from the exertion of swimming back in, against the current. He can already feel the sunburn setting in on the backs of his exposed ankles, in the slice of skin above the dive-boot.

Kuroo sloshes over to help Tsukishima take the flippers off. Tsukishima’s too tired to protest, fighting the goggles off his face, trying not to swallow a mouthful of saltwater as the layer of trapped water in the lenses escapes the suction with a pop.

“Yamaguchi was right,” Tsukishima gasps, exhausted, as Kuroo fishes a stray flipper out of the ocean.

“About what?” Kuroo says, distracted, counting equipment.

“Swimming back in,” Tsukishima says, and wishes he had something more interesting to say, something that would make Kuroo laugh or leave him breathless, how Tsukishima feels right now, dizzy and lightheaded and glutted with sensation.

“Yeah,” Kuroo says, rinsing his hair out in the ocean so it’s slicked back against his scalp. “It’s hard to leave, isn’t it?”

Tsukishima knows exactly what he means.

The days have blurred together into one long string with varying weathers, punctuated by minor research fires that Yachi turns the metaphorical hose on while Tsukishima turns pale, and Tsukishima’s ongoing… something… with Kuroo.

“A bunch of people are going to visit sand dollar beach tomorrow,” Yamaguchi says to Tsukishima over dinner, eating half a hamburger in one bite. Yamaguchi’s gotten progressively hungrier and hungrier as the trip’s gone on. He, unlike Tsukishima, is always in and out of the ocean, lugging buckets full of seawater for testing and swimming back and forth and in and out. The most strenuous thing Tsukishima’s done is crouch on the beach for an hour once, hiding under the brim of his sunhat.

“Okay,” Tsukishima says, making plans to commandeer the nice computer in the lab from Yaku.

He has to wait for Yamaguchi to finish swallowing before he says, “Kuroo will be there.” and stares at Tsukishima pointedly across the table.

If Tsukishima were a cat, his ears would be flat against his skull.

“Just thought you should know,” Yamaguchi says, starting in on his mountain of potato salad.

“Sure,” Tsukishima says, and takes an angry bite of his sad salad, the lettuce halfway wilted.

Yamaguchi says, “This is a good thing.” He’s not talking about the excursion, and Tsukishima stares at the hole in Yamaguchi’s shredded shirt collar.

“I know,” Tsukishima says, the back of his neck heating up, and steals Yamaguchi’s pasta off his plate.

The next morning a whole group of them pile into Kuroo’s truck, Sachiko in her little sun-hat in a car-seat, Kenma shotgun, Akaashi, Yamaguchi, and Tsukishima crammed in the bed with Kuroo’s hoard of items - wet wipes, towels, a first-aid kit, a pile of Sachiko’s plastic toys, including a lime green sea turtle-shaped mold, packets of juice and tupperwares of sliced apples and carrots, enough bottled water to last several summers.

“He used to be worse,” Akaashi says mildly, moving an unopened box of diapers to the side. “Babies need a lot of things, but Kuroo is also Kuroo.”

“Where’s Bokuto?” Yamaguchi asks, bracing his arms against the side of the truck as Kuroo starts the engine.

“Already there,” Akaashi says.

Sure enough, they hear Sachiko’s scream of “Bo-san!” as they draw near, truck rattling over the gravel road.

“Hi princess,” Bokuto says, wearing the the skimpiest tank top Tsukishima’s ever seen, throwing open the truck door to unbuckle Sachiko from her car seat.

“Hey,” Kuroo says, laying the trunk flat, as Bokuto holds her in the air and starts making plane noises with his mouth.

“Papa!” Sachiko screams, gurgling with laughter. “I love Bo-san!”

“Great!” Kuroo says, laden with two tote bags and a backpack. Tsukishima scrambles down from the bed of the truck and follows him onto the beach, this one round and silk-smooth, blue water a shimmering disk.

“Sunscreen, Tsukki,” Kuroo says, tapping Tsukishima on the shoulder and offering him the bottle.

“Thanks,” Tsukishima says, focusing on how their fingers touch briefly, before Kuroo’s off to take Sachiko’s shoes off and adjust the string of her hat.

It seems absurdly luxurious to pick sand dollars right off the beach, perfectly circular. There are piles of them on the water’s edge, half-buried in sand.

“Used to feel lucky just to find a piece of one,” Yamaguchi says, stacking five on the edge of his towel, lining up the holes.

Kuroo laughs. “Finding whole sea biscuits, that’s the real prize here.” He tosses Yamaguchi a pair of goggles and a snorkel. “Get going, recruit.”

Yamaguchi mock salutes and takes off for the water.

“Don’t understand you water types,” Tsukishima says, digging his toes into the sand and watching Yamaguchi and Bokuto have an animated conversation ankle-deep in surf, Sachiko on Bokuto’s shoulders.

“Of course not,” Kuroo teases, leaning back on his hands. “Lab rat.”

Tsukishima scowls at him. “I’m here, aren’t I.”

“Yeah,” Kuroo says, looking at him in a way that makes the back of Tsukishima’s neck feel sun-warmed.

Tsukishima’s fumbling with his tongue trying to find something to say when Bokuto interrupts them, depositing a protesting Sachiko in Kuroo’s lap. “I’m going to dive for treasure,” he says, tickling Sachiko’s chin so she accidentally kicks Kuroo in the stomach.

“What treasure,” Sachiko says, scrambling upright, digging her elbow into Kuroo’s solar plexus. Kuroo makes a pained face at Tsukishima over her shoulder.

“Baby,” Tsukishima mouths at him.

“Sea biscuits,” Bokuto says, tapping his chin with one finger and pretending to think about it. “Maybe some clams.”

“Clams!” Sachiko says, rolling off Kuroo onto the towel. “I was in one.”

“Sure was,” Kuroo says, grabbing her before she takes off and uncapping the sunscreen.

Tsukishima raises an eyebrow.

“Later,” Kuroo says, squirting way more than necessary onto his hands. Bokuto laughs.

“Papa tell me,” Sachiko says, wiggling around as Kuroo tries to wipe the streaks off her chubby arms.

“I forget, how does it start again?”

“You were swimming,” Sachiko says, her little mouth a moue. “And then you saw a big clam.”

“How big?” Kuroo says, twisting the cap on the sunscreen and reaching into his bag.

“This big,” Sachiko says, putting her arms out as far as they go to the sides. Kuroo fishes out his water bottle and uncaps it.

“Water, Sa-chan,” he says, and she obediently opens her mouth to drink.

“Now story,” she says after a moment, moving her mouth away and spilling water down her front, stamping her foot and wiping her mouth with a sandy hand.

Kuroo already has a wet wipe at the ready. “I went up to the clam, and then as I got closer and closer, I saw something inside.”

“Me,” Sachiko says, satisfied. “Like a pearl.”

“Exactly,” Kuroo says, kissing her on the nose. “My little treasure.”

Sachiko is quiet for a few seconds. “I wasn’t scared though.”

“Of being in the clam? No?”

“No.” Sachiko says. “Papa?”

“What?”

“I’m happy you got me. Can I have a carrot?”

“Of course,” Kuroo says, face so affectionate Tsukishima feels like an intruder looking at him.

After they’ve packed up and headed home, Sachiko sleeping exhausted in the back seat, Kuroo says, quietly, “I got her a year after I started my PhD.” He’s staring straight ahead at the road. Kuroo and Sachiko are the only other ones in the car - the rest had gone back with Bokuto.

Tsukishima feels comfortably warm and tired, like he could close his eyes and melt into the seat. He makes what he hopes is an encouraging noise, looking at the hollow that Kuroo’s collarbone makes when he shifts gears.

“Her mom’s not in the picture,” Kuroo says, low, looking at Tsukishima out of the corner of his eye. Tsukishima’s pulse is in his throat. He can feel warmth collecting in the base of his spine where it’s pressed against the seat. He’s hyper aware of each breath, the scant movement of his chest.

“She never was,” Kuroo says, turning into the station parking lot, taking the turn gently.  

He turns the engine off, and turns around to look at Sachiko’s sleeping face, her hair an unruly halo. “Got a call one day,” Kuroo says, and smiles ruefully at Tsukishima. “You know how it is.”

“No,” Tsukishima admits, with a half-smile and a shrug.

Kuroo laughs at that, unbuckling his seatbelt.

“But,” Tsukishima says, watching Kuroo get out the truck. Kuroo pauses, one hand on the door. Tsukishima swallows. “I’m glad she found you.”

Kuroo smiles at him. “Me too.”

They’re quiet as they unload the truck, Kuroo lifting Sachiko onto his hip, smoothing back her hair. Tsukishima’s been looking for the similarities in their faces guiltily for weeks, comparing Sachiko’s chubby face to Kuroo’s, wondering if their noses are the same, their eyes. He still can’t tell.

He walks Kuroo to his door. Kuroo hesitates, Sachiko drooling on his shoulder, taking the tote bag Tsukishima’s carrying and setting it on the kitchen table. “Do you - want to stay for a beer, or something?”

“Tired,” Tsukishima admits, watching Sachiko turn her head, sleepy. “Tomorrow?”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Kuroo says, like Tsukishima hasn’t been trailing him around for weeks, like it’s a chore for Tsukishima to sit quietly with him and watch the sun turn him golden.

“Good night,” Tsukishima says, afraid of how big his heart feels in his chest.

“Night,” Kuroo says, shifting Sachiko when she makes a noise.

Tsukishima wants so badly to press a kiss on his mouth. He settles for saying, “Good night Sa-chan,” and closes their front door quietly behind him.

“I don’t want to profile beaches anymore,” Tsukishima says to Yachi the next morning, when they’re standing on the three-hundredth beach on San Salvador, with their measuring and mapping equipment. He has to collect the data in order to make a predictive model, which sounded like a foolproof plan in July, when Tsukishima had submitted this to Professor Shimizu for approval. Now that Tsukishima has to physically haul 192 cms of himself onto the beach, under the sun, every day, he has some regrets.

“Uh-huh,” Yachi says, shading her eyes in the sun. “You’d rather profile, u-um, Kuroo-san’s -”

Tsukishima covers his face. “Stop.”

“His butt,” Yachi says, and laughs. “Oh. Um, I don’t mean, that you only like him for his - physical traits. You could also profile him, um, emotionally -”

“Yachi,” Tsukishima says, and snatches up the clipboard she’s holding. His face feels a thousand degrees. “I’ll get started.”

Yachi’s right, though. Tsukishima - really likes him. It’s been a long time, since Tsukishima’s made any new friends, longer still, since he’s been in a relationship. He smiles at Yachi, making a cute concentrated face as she squints at the horizon. It’s nice, he thinks, digging a toe in the sand and watching the ocean greedily swallow the imprint. To want Kuroo. To want something again.

There aren’t that many things to do on a tiny island, Tsukishima finds. Between Tsukishima’s time in the analytical lab and Kuroo’s job, there’s precious little time for anything else.

Tsukishima starts tagging along with Kuroo on his downtime, washing grapes and de-seeding them for Sachiko to eat in the Kuroo residence kitchen sink while Kuroo gives her a bath, handing him tools one after another when he’s changing a tire on one of the trucks.

He’s stuffing his laundry into a bag in the dorm when Yamaguchi comes in, freckles sun-darkened and yawning. “Hey,” Yamaguchi says, and watches Tsukishima work for a couple seconds before he says, “If you’re doing laundry…”

“Fine, give it here,” Tsukishima says, and throws the half-full bag at Yamaguchi’s face.

“Thanks Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, grinning, catching it with no effort at all. “Great swim today. Snapshot reef was clear! Get Kuroo to take you.”

“No,” Tsukishima says, ignoring how the casual mention of Kuroo’s name makes him feel shimmery like soda water.

“No, Kuroo won’t take you, or no, you don’t want to go?” Yamaguchi says, muffled, from where he’s pulling laundry out from the bottom of his travel bag.

“Both. I don’t know. The second one,” Tsukishima says, perching on the edge of the bed so he can make sure Yamaguchi isn’t giving him anything completely gross.

Yamaguchi stands up, making a face. “You two are so gross. You’re doing laundry with him, aren’t you? You hate doing laundry.”

“No,” Tsukishima says. The soda water is back, sloshing around in his stomach and making Tsukishima’s chest feel funny.

Yamaguchi raises an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Tsukishima relents, and hides his face by pretending to be immersed in his phone.

“Nice try, you don’t even have signal,” Yamaguchi says, and starts throwing all two hundred of his rank t-shirts into Tsukishima’s laundry bag. “Anyway, have fun,” he sing-songs, and drops the bag on Tsukishima’s lap.

“Good-bye,” Tsukishima says, as Yamaguchi laughs.

Kuroo’s already waiting for him at the door of the laundry room when Tsukishima manages to stagger his way there, his own bag at his feet.

“Tsukki,” Kuroo says, and presses against him, briefly, like a cat would.

“Hi,” Tsukishima says, and makes a beeline for the right-most machine.

“Cheap laundry is more important than the boyfriend, I see,” Kuroo says.

Tsukishima tries to breath around the boulder lodged in his solar plexus. He turns around to look at Kuroo, who must see something on his face, because he says, “I’m sor-”

“No,” Tsukishima says, wild with euphoria, face hurting with the effort to keep the smile from splitting his face right in half.

“No?” Kuroo says, and before can finish whatever he was going to say, Tsukishima says, “Yes.”

“Oh,” Kuroo says, and he’s suddenly so much closer, hair backlit to gold in the slanting rays from the solitary window. “I’m getting some mixed signals here.”

“Were we dating this whole time,” Tsukishima says, staring at Kuroo’s face.

Kuroo makes a face at him. “I don’t know.”

“I was dating you,” Tsukishima says, and it feels like releasing something he’s held to his chest the entire time, worn smooth with want. Tsukishima gets to watch Kuroo’s eyelids go half-lidded.

“Me too,” Kuroo says, eyes searching on Tsukishima’s face.

“Okay,” Tsukishima says, and puts a hand on the back of Kuroo’s head.

“Mm,” Kuroo says, one of his little satisfied noises he makes, contemplative and soft, and leans up to put their lips together.

Yamaguchi sees them holding hands later, staring at Kuroo’s thumb skimming across his knuckles. He gives Tsukishima a thumbs up from across the road and Tsukishima makes a face but can’t stop his smile, stretching the corners of his mouth up.

“What are you smiling at?” Kuroo says, tilting his head sideways, cat-like. “Me?”

“Maybe,” Tsukishima says, tilting his head the opposite way. He pecks Kuroo on the lips and feels ten feet tall and radiant when Kuroo swipes an affectionate hand across Tsukishima’s face, the palm of his hand warm and dry.

“So you’re dating now?” Yachi asks Tsukishima when he’s in the middle of debugging his computer model two hours later, pushing the undo key repeatedly. He jabs it once more for good measure before looking at Yachi over the monitor. She must have come from Sachiko - her hair is in four pigtails.

“Nice hair,” Tsukishima says, zooming out and despairing at how the edge of the beach drops suddenly into nothingness.

“Thanks,” Yachi says, smiling, reclipping a stray hair with a clip in the shape of a ladybug. “But Kuroo?”

Tsukishima shrugs. “Yeah.” He can’t help smiling.

“Tsukki!” Yachi says, and runs all the way around the table to hug him.

“How do you already know,” Tsukishima says halfheartedly, feeling the little shiver that always goes through him when he remembers that Kuroo’s his boyfriend. Tsukishima can’t even think the words ‘my boyfriend’ without melting around the edges. He grips the computer mouse tighter.

“We’re literally on an island, Tsukki,” Yachi says. “And Yamaguchi told me.”

Tsukishima narrows his eyes at her. “Gossips.”

“No,” Yachi says, unconvincingly, wringing her hands. Tsukishima’s spent a lot of time in the lab but he has eyes that look at things besides Kuroo, so he’s pretty sure there’s an island watch set up for them.

“Sure,” Tsukishima says, and accidentally deletes a layer off the map and has to take a couple fo deep calming breaths before he can fix it.

“We’re happy for you,” Yachi says, so earnestly Tsukishima turns red.

“Ugh,” Tsukishima says, but he’s smiling. Yachi leans over his shoulder to help him with the model, and it feels like he can see the world in startling detail, bright and clean edged, all around him.

Things with Kuroo don’t change that much. Kuroo still nudges their knees together under the table, and loops his arm through Tsukishima’s when they’re walking, and coaxes him into snorkeling and cave-going.

A busload of undergraduates come on a windy Thursday, and Tsukishima watches Kuroo put on his professor face and tease them about being nice to Akaashi. Tsukishima can hear them stomping around outside and chattering in the breeze when he’s hunkered down in the computer lab, drawing nonsensical scribbles on his notepad while he waits for Kuroo to finish.

Yamaguchi laughs at Tsukishima when he sees him. “Sharing is caring,” Yamaguchi says, and tries to unplug the good mouse from Tsukishima’s computer. Tsukishima narrows his eyes at him. He knows he’s talking about more than the mouse.

Kuroo comes to collect Tsukishima from the lab ten minutes later, and Tsukishima leans into him, just a little bit more than usual.

Tsukishima’s memorized the way his nose curves, and how he looks like filmy with sleep - eyes glazed, mouth slack, warm and rumpled, how Kuroo’s mouth curves up, crooked, when Tsukishima’s said something especially enticing. He feels like he’s snorkeling again, trying to take in a glut of imagery in a temporary pocket, inside this three-month bubble before he has to lift his face, gasping, out of the water.

“Let’s go on a date,” Kuroo says to Tsukishima on an off day. There’s a smear of something on his left cheek that Tsukishima wipes off with his fingers. Applesauce, from Sachiko’s breakfast.

“You’re just saying that because it’s too windy to go look at sea worms,” Tsukishima says, to hide how pleased he is.

“Sea worms can be a date,” Kuroo says, in what he probably thinks is a reasonable tone.

“Whatever,” Tsukishima says.

“Let’s go to the church,” Kuroo says. “They have service on Sundays. It’s mostly singing. I haven’t been in a while and Luisa keeps asking when I’ll show up again.”

It sounds suspiciously nice, compared to walking for forty minutes in the dark, next to a highway, through the world’s densest scrub, and on a calcified reef. So of course after Sachiko has flung herself into Kenma’s arms for the day, Tsukishima’s put on the nicest shirt he’s brought, and they’ve done half of the easy walk through a grassy field, the sky opens up.

“Ugh,” Tsukishima says, as Kuroo takes off running, dragging him along. It’s raining so hard he can’t see two feet in front of him, Kuroo’s hand slippery in his. The sound of it is everywhere, a roar against the leaves and road and rooftops. They’re soaked within seconds.

They splash onto the concrete floor of a wooden shelter. Tsukishima’s white shirt has gone transparent. His shoes are so wet from running through puddles that they’re creating another one all on their own.

Kuroo’s shirt is stuck to the contours of his stomach. He catches Tsukishima looking, and smiles wide and toothy.

“Stop,” Tsukishima says, putting his hands over his face. He hates touching his glasses, usually, but they’re a lost cause. There’s nothing dry to wipe them on.

“Stop,” Tsukishima says again, panicked, as Kuroo advances on him with a leer and chases him straight out from under the roof into the pouring rain.

“Stop what,” Kuroo says. He keeps blinking around the raindrops that get caught in his lashes, circling Tsukishima in the rain like a big jungle cat.

When Tsukishima kisses him, his lips are still a little salty.

They’re both shivering by the time they make it back to station, and the rain’s passed on. Now it feels like there are rainbows springing up everywhere - in sky, in the evaporating puddles on the ground. Tsukishima has his arm slung around Kuroo’s neck. Kuroo’s holding his hand. It makes Tsukishima warm deep in his chest, even if his extremities feel like cold limp fish.

“Welcome back,” Kenma says, where he’s sitting on Kuroo’s porch, with Sachiko standing next to him, watching them approach like a sodden three-legged race.

“Did you get caught in the rain?” Kuroo asks, side-stepping a puddle.

“No,” Sachiko chirps, and runs up to them after Kenma helps her down the big step in front. “Papa, what’s that?”

He’s holding Tsukishima’s broken shoe in his other hand. Tsukishima had tripped on a nonexistent rock in the road and the rubber sole had come off, somehow. His foot hurts from walking over pointy gravel.

“Tsukki’s shoe,” Kuroo says, handing it to her.

Tsukishima frowns. “Don’t touch that, Sachi-chan.”

“Okay,” she agrees, dropping it on the ground and stepping on it.

“How was church?” Kenma asks, waving Sachiko back onto the porch.

“Didn’t make it,” Kuroo says, kicking off his shoes and putting them against the porch railing to dry. It probably won’t work, and he’ll have to pay to dry them in the laundry building.

“You seem happy, though,” Kenma says, tilting his head to the side. Sachiko mirrors the motion, tilting her entire torso. Tsukishima tries not to feel too jealous. She’s never copied him before.

Kuroo squeezes Tsukishima’s hand. “You could say that.”

“I did say that,” Kenma says, pulling a face.

“Kenma,” Kuroo says, advancing on him with his arms outstretched. His hair is somehow still dripping, even after the sun in the walk back.

“Do not,” Kenma says, and locks himself in Kuroo’s house.

Tsukishima’s goodbye party takes place two weeks before he has to leave, because Yamaguchi is leaving tomorrow, and Yachi’s leaving in two months. “Why isn’t this just Yamaguchi’s goodbye party,” Tsukishima says, very reasonably.

“Party!” Bokuto whoops, and pounds Tsukishima too hard on the back and hands him a beer.

It turns out to be a very thinly veiled excuse to have Tsukishima wear a very ugly crab hat that says “Gone Crabbin’”. Kuroo shows up with it, smiling deceptively.

“Nope,” Tsukishima says, and starts trying to weave away. “What does that even mean.”

“It means I love you,” Kuroo says very seriously, and that drops Tsukishima’s heart down somewhere near his knees. He gapes at Kuroo for the three seconds it takes Kuroo to cross the five feet Tsukishima’s managed to run, reach up to jam the awful hat onto his head, and kiss him, gently, on the lips.

“Nice,” Bokuto says, and puts up a fist for Kuroo to bump.

Tsukishima sits down on the nearest chair, hard.

Tsukishima is lying next to Kuroo, pressed shoulder to shoulder, sheet tangled around his ankles. Their pinkies are linked. He feels like he’s in a dream, eyelids sticky with sleep.

Kuroo turns on his side to press a kiss to Tsukishima’s temple. “I’ll take you to the airport tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Tsukishima says, stomach clenching viciously.

“Hey,” Kuroo says, propping himself up on one elbow and turning Tsukishima’s face towards him with one hand, so tender it makes Tsukishima feel hot and fragile all over. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Tsukishima says, overcome.

“Whatever happens, it happens. But please hold onto us, okay?” Kuroo says, drawing a thumb across Tsukishima’s cheekbone, so earnest in the dark that Tsukishima surges up to kiss him on his beautiful mouth.

The morning dawns golden. When Tsukishima wakes up, he’s alone - he can hear Kuroo talking to Sachiko in the kitchen, banging the cupboards closed and the sound of running water. He shuffles in, yawning, and cups Kuroo’s elbow at the sink, shy.

“Good morning,” Kuroo says, smiling at him over his shoulder. Tsukishima pushes his hair out of his face for him.

“Good morning,” Sachiko says, waving her spoon at him.

“What’s the plan, Sa-chan?” Kuroo asks her, already pulling the cereal out of the cabinet.

“Cereal,” Sachiko says, imperiously, picking up her plastic bowl with her other hand.

“Do you hear something?” Kuroo asks Tsukishima.

“Please,” Sachiko says, “Please!”

Tsukishima pours the cereal out for her. “Here,” Sachiko says, holding her fist out. Tsukishima obediently puts out his hand. She gives him a rainbow marshmallow, gummy with sweat from her hand.

“Thank you, Sa-chan,” he says, and eats it under her watchful eye.

Kuroo wants to go the airport two hours early, even though it’s the only flight leaving the whole day and there are no lines to speak of. Tsukishima watches the extended choreography involved when three year-olds leave the house -  running to the bathroom multiple times, checking to make sure the clothes are on right, packing extra tissues and different shoes - with the kind of intensity that scares him, like every second is immeasurably precious.

He must be grim-faced, because Kuroo catches him around the waist on the way to making sure Sachiko’s doing okay by herself in the bathroom. Tsukishima leans into him, and he pecks Tsukishima lightly on the underside of his jaw before continuing on. Tsukishima slumps into the doorframe.

He takes a picture of the doorway, Kuroo’s shoes in a tidy row, Sachiko’s tiny sneakers and sandals patterned with ponies in a haphazard pile, Tsukishima’s house slippers - feeling reckless and sentimental. It burns the back of his eyelids. It’s just a pile of sandy shoes. Tsukishima takes two more, just in case.

“Okay, coming, we’re ready,” Kuroo says, hauling Sachiko to the door by her armpits.

“You’re leaving?” Sachiko says to Tsukishima. “Like Bo-san?” Tsukishima crouches down so they’re eye to eye. He can see the similarities between her and Kuroo now, the slope of their eyes, their ears. Their hair, thick and unrepentant.

“Yes,” he says, and braces to watch her face screw up. “Maybe a little longer.”

“How long?” Sachiko says, voice wobbling, and Tsukishima pulls her into a hug.

“Long,” Tsukishima says, and feels his own tear ducts smarting.

“Papa,” Sachiko says valiantly around a sob, “make Tuki-san stay.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Kuroo says, and Tsukishima can feel his fingers on the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t do that. I wish he would stay too. Tsukki has to go, okay?”

“Okay,” Sachiko says, and then bursts into tears.

Kuroo finally gets them all to the truck, Tsukishima’s hard-shelled suitcase, strangely alien, thrown securely in the back. The drive is quiet.

After Kuroo’s bought Tsukishima an overpriced airport coffee and they’ve sat, holding hands and touching shoulders, on a bench for an hour while Sachiko inspects the water fountain and runs in circles around the fruit stand, Kuroo says quietly, “You should go in.”

“Okay,” Tsukishima says. His voice comes out pinched.

They walk towards the gate. Tsukishima hugs Sachiko close. He kisses Kuroo good-bye. He says, “I love you.” And then he gets on his flight and watches the island shrink until the plane lurches above the clouds.

Yamaguchi picks him up at the airport, wearing jeans and a t-shirt. “Tsukki,” he says, waving him over. Tsukishima’s harassed and dead-eyed after the flight, smelling sunscreen and flipping through an endless gallery of Kuroo’s face he’s amassed in his mind.

“Had a nice flight?” Yamaguchi says, wheeling Tsukishima’s luggage to the taxi for him.

“No,” Tsukishima says, and it comes out rawer than Tsukishima intended.

“Sorry,” Yamaguchi says, punching him gently in the shoulder. Tsukishima lets him rattle on about department drama and how his worm study’s going on the drive back to his apartment, feeling groggy and exhausted, the air gritty his lungs.

His apartment’s gone musty in the time he’s been away. He has to crack the window open, and there’s a layer of grime on the sill from the city, sticky and grey. He forgot a single lime in the fridge and it’s gone hard and brown like a rock.

He emails, “Just got in,” to Kuroo, and then brushes the plane off his tongue and sleeps for thirteen hours straight.

The next morning he goes straight to the nearby market. He ate frozen things, canned things for months - soggy vegetables, limp greens, slightly mushy carrots that left a film on his teeth. Side effects of living on an island with all the food flown in. He pays for a cucumber and bites right into it, savors the crisp crunch that it makes in his mouth. He goes a little crazy in the supermarket, buying dried seaweed and fresh corn, an expensive plastic tub of cherry tomatoes, his favorite miso he had a dream about three weeks in, a whole head of lettuce, spring green.

How long has it been since Kuroo lived in Japan? Tsukishima doesn’t know. He thinks, suddenly, of the little kitchen in Kuroo’s house, the fridge door that hung a little loose so the jars would rattle ominously every time it was opened. He swallows the misery down. And buys another jar of miso paste, to send.

He’s been checking his email since he woke up. He’s in the kitchen, putting the groceries away, when his phone dings. “We miss you already,” Kuroo’s sent, along with an image that doesn’t load, no matter how many times Tsukishima clicks the button.

It’s hard, dating someone who lives thirteen hours behind you, on a remote island with spotty cell service. It’s hard and awful and makes Tsukishima want to do something uncharacteristic, like drive to the coast and scream at the wrong ocean for hours and hours, when they’ve set up a time to video call over the course of a week and five back and forth emails, only to have the internet go out. Tsukishima shakes his phone and forces himself to type out an email with what he was going to say, and imagines the way Kuroo would look at him, and laugh at the right times, and make fun of the stress pimple Tsukishima’s developed on his forehead.

He stares at the pimple in the mirror when he’s brushing his teeth in the morning. He didn’t think he’d tanned at all but it’s surely fading.

In the seconds after he wakes up at the morning it feels, briefly, like the three months had all been one long dream, too bright and colorful to have ever been real. He has to drink several glasses of water from the faucet in the sink, one after another, before the lump in his throat fades away.

“This is a start,” Professor Shimizu says, when he meets with her the next week.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima says, rotating his computer model of the island. He imagines a tiny Kuroo and a tiny Tsukishima with an even tinier Sachiko, sitting on the pixelated beach. All the beaches are numbered on the model and in his paper, but Kuroo had sat Tsukishima down with a map and told him the names. Fernandez Bay, with patch reefs. French Bay, where Kuroo had taken Tsukishima to swim that first time. North Point, where Tsukishima had swallowed so much seawater he’d almost vomited on the beach when Kuroo kissed him, tasting of brine.

“Send me your paper. I know you have a draft done,” Kuroo says over the phone later, voice crackly through the line. Tsukishima presses his cheek closer to the phone, and feels stupid about it. He’s thousands of miles away.

“No,” he says, scraping the rest of his dinner into the trash. He’s never been big on cooking, but the euphoria of being freed from cafeteria-style fixings hasn’t worn off yet.

“Yes,” Kuroo says, and Tsukishima imagines him smiling.

“No, not until it’s done,” Tsukishima says, and leaves the plate in the sink so he can haul his computer closer to him. The second round of reviews has come in, and it fills him with exhaustion, looking at all the cross-outs and comments in red in the margins.

“Okay,” Kuroo says, subsiding, and Tsukishima tricks himself into thinking he can hear the station around him, coming alive in the morning - the birds, the hum of the air conditioners, the ever-present noise of the waves.

“Have a good day,” Tsukishima says, putting his forehead down on his laptop keyboard.

“You too,” Kuroo says, sounding very far away. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Tell Sa-chan I miss her,” Tsukishima says, and very determinedly does not cry because he misses his boyfriend and his sort-of daughter and the way it felt effortless to get up in the morning with the sun.

It’s a miserable winter.

Spring comes around with another round of discussions and edits and people picking holes in Tsukishima’s research that he has to darn by staying up outrageously late in the lab with Yachi, inputting streams of numbers into his model and holding his breath. It’s no way to live, he tells Kuroo over text, jabbing the re-deliver option every five minutes until it finally goes through.

Kuroo doesn’t respond, because the power is probably out, again. It doesn’t stop Tsukishima from checking his phone and email on the hour every hour. It’s become so sad that Yamaguchi and Yachi have given up on teasing him about it, and have started adopting tragic expressions when they catch him thumbing his phone awake.

Tsukishima will remember that it was sunny that day, and the watermelons at the cart outside the lab were half off. Yamaguchi was in line. Tsukishima was waiting for him, under the building shadow, when the email came in. The subject line was ‘guess what?’, which seemed awfully bold of Kuroo. Tsukishima opened it, and then had to suffer the indignity of walking around with a smile hovering right under the surface for days.

Kuroo and Sachiko show up at his doorstep on a particularly sunny day in June. She’s four now, she tells Tsukishima proudly, and has a new dress Akaashi-san bought for her before they left. She calls him Tsukki-san now. Kuroo kisses him soundly with an arm around his waist, says, “Missed you,” and falls asleep in Tsukishima’s unmade bed.

“I like carrots,” Sachiko says imperiously, and tries to pull his fridge door open. Tsukishima opens it for her.

“I know,” Tsukishima says, and lifts her onto the counter and hands her one to wave around in the air while she watches him boil water and chop vegetables and shake salt carefully in little dabs to make lunch.

“I like you,” Sachiko says, smiling so her entire face becomes one radiant sunbeam.

Tsukishima can’t speak for a second. “Me too.”

Chapter Text

“You learn things,” Sachiko says, swinging her arms back and forth in the middle of the department store. Her sneakers are yellow and look like ducks. Every time she reaches for them before they go out Tsukishima feels a little thrill of happiness, because he picked them out online and spent an agonizing couple of weeks worrying they were going to be too big or too small, and they fit just right. “You go in the morning. you eat lunch.” She says the last sentence with a reverent breath.

“Eat lunch?” Tsukishima asks her offhandedly, trying to decide between white and blue striped dish towels or white and grey striped dish towels.

“Yes,” Sachiko says, tiny voice going high in excitement. “Bento.”

Later, when Kuroo is drying the dishes using the white and blue striped dish towel, Tsukishima says, “Who’s going to make her lunch?”

Kuroo bumps a cabinet door shut with his hip. “Me, of course.”

“What do you mean of course,” Tsukishima says, a little wounded.

“Tsukki,” Kuroo says, leaning up against the counter, “I cook us dinner every night.”

Kuroo also makes them big breakfasts over the weekend and sometimes brings Tsukishima hot lunch in his tiny baby professor office, Tsukishima will admit this. Kuroo can make hearty rice dishes, curry, and a very good sukiyaki Tsukishima once had a dream about. But that does not mean he can cut apple slices to look like little rabbits.

Tsukishima opens his laptop and searches, beginner bento guide. “I will do this,” he says, and Kuroo raises his eyebrows and finishes putting the dishes away.

Tsukishima takes Sachiko with him back to the department store to look at bento boxes. The Kuroo-Tsukishima household has two, but they’re black and red. Sachiko says, “I want pink ones,” and they spend twenty minutes debating the pros and cons of the one with cherry blossoms and the one patterned with jumping white rabbits.

“I like bunnies,” Sachiko says seriously, holding it up to eye level. Tsukishima is crouched across from her on the department store floor with the cherry blossom one.

“But the cherry blossoms are very good for spring,” Tsukishima says.

“Yes,” Sachiko says, brow furrowed in concentration. They buy both.

The week before Sachiko is due to start first grade, Tsukishima grimly goes to the market and comes back with all the things he can vaguely remember eating as a chubby-cheeked child - pumpkin, apples, kabocha squash, organic hot dogs, cherry tomatoes red like jewels, three kinds of furikake, so many things it takes him two trips. Kuroo watches these proceedings, amused.

“Are you cooking for her entire first grade class?” Kuroo asks him, clearly not putting enough energy into grading his graduate students’ papers. Tsukishima can see two grammar mistakes, and he’s looking at it upside down.

“It’s an art,” Tsukishima says, and sends Kuroo back to the store to get black sesame seeds.

“To-san is making me lunch?” Tsukishima can hear Sachiko say from the living room, and then she’s running into the kitchen.

“Hey!” Kuroo says, and Sachiko says, “Sorry,” and slows to a brisk walk.

“Don’t run in the kitchen,” Tsukishima says, because he has nightmares of her forming a habit and getting taller and then running into the counter and hurting her perfect face.

“Sorry,” Sachiko says, and then she climbs up on a stool to look at Tsukishima’s painstaking apple process.

“It’s harder than it looks,” Tsukishima says, wielding the knife awkwardly to cut the triangle ears.

“To-san,” Sachiko says, looking down at the lopsided apple slice and then up at Tsukishima’s face, “It’s for me?”

“Of course,” Tsukishima says, heart cracking tenderly, and then spends the next two hours peeling, coring, scoring, and slicing apple wedges to look like rabbits, until the ears lift up correctly and are perfect, sharp triangles.

“You know you can’t make these ahead of time, right?” Kuroo says, appearing at Tsukishima’s elbow five apples later, sweeping the heap of apple peels into the compost and mopping the counter with a rag.

“I know,” Tsukishima says, feeling winded from concentrating so intensely, and they eat apple slices until they’re sick of them.

Tsukishima can already make tamagoyaki, because he’s a college graduate. And rice, because they own a rice cooker. He crosses them off the list he keeps on the kitchen counter. Over the next five days Tsukishima washes and slices a greater number of vegetables than he’s ever chopped before in his entire life, peppers of all colors into thin strips, a pumpkin into Sachiko-sized bites, tomatoes of all shapes, mounds of green onion, carrots to look like stars. He breads chick and pork and bites of tuna and fries them, skittish around the burbling pot of oil on the stove.

Halfway through all of this, Bokuto calls him. “Heard you’ve been making bento,” Bokuto crows over the phone. They’re on video call, but all Tsukishima can see on screen is one of Bokuto’s eyebrows and his hairline.

“Yes, well,” Tsukishima says, angling the phone so the chicken carcass in the sink isn’t in view, “Sa-chan’s starting first grade, and Kuroo is probably color blind.” Bentos need to be at least five colors. Tsukishima is pretty sure Kuroo would send Sachiko to school with rice and just one side dish. One!

“You don’t have to tell me,” Bokuto says, sounding as disapproving as Tsukishima’s ever heard him, and then he launches into a two-minute long speech about bento-making. “I make bento for Akaashi,” Bokuto concludes at the end of it. “I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing.”

“Okay,” Tsukishima says, feeling like if he just keeps agreeing, Bokuto will eventually get to the point he was trying to make and wrap up the call so Tsukishima can go back to butchering his chicken.

“Tsukki,” Bokuto says seriously, “You need to make animal onigiri for Sachi-chan.”

One of Tsukishima’s hands involuntarily clenches into a fist. He knew he was forgetting something.

Animal onigiri are hard. Roll rice into ball, the internet says. And then add all the impossible little ears and whiskers and stripes, the website Tsukishima’s on says. It’s easy!

“This is not easy,” Tsukishima whispers to himself, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand because his fingers are covered in rice goo. There are probably nori flakes permanently embedded underneath his fingernails.

Tsukishima washes his hands, sweeps all the nori scraps into the compost as best he can, and then calls his brother.

“Nii-san,” Tsukishima says, trying not to clench his teeth when Akiteru picks up on the second ring. “The.” Akiteru waits patiently. “The - animal onigiri. How do I.”

“There are molds,” Akiteru says, sounding confused. “Why -”

Tsukishima hangs up on him and is out the door in under a minute.

“Do you need to make all these animals,” Kuroo says when Tsukishima’s come back from the store and has laid all his purchases out on the counter. They both look at the 5000 yen of animal molds that Tsukishima’s wrested from the hands of imaginary hordes of elementary school moms.

“Kuroo,” Tsukishima says, unwilling to admit any weakness, “Yes.”

On Sachiko’s first day of elementary school, Tsukishima packs her two perfect apple rabbit slices, two-eggs worth of tamagoyaki rolled with a sheet of seaweed in the middle, an onigiri shaped like a panda with tuna in the middle lined with frilly green lettuce, and the roundest cherry tomato in the rabbit-patterned bento box. He ties it with a matching furoshiki and watches Sachiko, reverent, stow it carefully in her red school bag.

“Gimme some luck,” Sachiko says to Kuroo, and smacks him on the forehead with a kiss. Tsukishima closes his eyes, briefly, pierced through with the memory of watching Kuroo say it to Sachiko so many times. She does the same to Tsukishima in the brief second his eyes are closed. “Bye Papa, bye To-san!”

“Bye,” Tsukishima manages to croak, and then pulls himself together so he can go get the dish towel for Kuroo to bawl into.

Chapter Text

Kuroo’s never been alone before, as long as he can remember. He met Kenma when he was five and he’s always had him within arm’s reach, through volleyball club and school and subsequent college applications. At Tokyo University he’s had Bokuto and Akaashi, the marine biology department, and the sea. And now he has Sachiko, with her ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes, everything perfect and as it should be. And over that summer, one of the summers of the infinite San Salvador summers, he had Tsukishima Kei.

“You still have him,” Akaashi says, annoyed. Kuroo can hear the air quotes he’s putting around ‘have’.

It’s true, which Akaashi and Kuroo both know. But now that Tsukishima’s fourteen hours ahead by time zone, nineteen hours away by plane, and working on his thesis eighty hours a week - San Salvador’s sunrises are a little less exciting, reefs a little less new. And Kuroo’s bored. No, that isn’t exactly true, he’s as busy as he always is, and -

“You’re lonely,” Akaashi says, cutting Kuroo off.

“No,” Kuroo insists, picking up Sachiko’s wooden blocks off the ground to have something to do with his hands. She likes to have him build the same tower and play at knocking it down.

“Oh, Kuroo,” Akaashi says pityingly, and leaves him to it. “We can talk about this later, but I’m busy now.” He closes the door gently behind him, like Kuroo’s a cat that will spook at the noise. Akaashi’s nearly always very busy, a byproduct of limited funding, but Kuroo’s pretty sure he’s leaving to go swan about underneath Bokuto’s adoring gaze.

He checks his phone for an update from Tsukishima. Two text messages, both noncommittal good mornings. Sometimes the spotty service sends messages twice, or hours late, or not at all. Kuroo pockets his phone with a sinking feeling clutching at his stomach and goes to put on the rice for dinner.

*

“Kenma,” Kuroo says, knocking on Kenma’s dormitory door after dinner. He knocks three more times. “Kenma.” Another time for good measure. Kenma’s always home at this time. Kuroo’s never acted on this information before, but he’s not above using the element of surprise to get what he wants.

“What,” Kenma says, cracking the door open so Kuroo can see only a sliver of his face, and one luminous pupil.

“It’s creepy when you do that,” Kuroo says, trying to pretend like he isn’t trying to shoulder the door open. “Hey. Let me in.”

Kenma is clearly bracing against the door. “What do you want.”

“Nothing!” Kuroo says out of reflex, and then really puts his back into it. “Can we talk?” He still has a good ten centimeters on Kenma, twenty pounds of muscle, and a good deal of desperation, so he manages to bully his way into Kenma’s living room.

“What,” Kenma says, regarding him warily after closing the door.

“It’s about my relationship,” Kuroo says, and then drifts towards the door in case Kenma tries to bolt.

Kenma makes a horrible face. “I knew it.”

Kuroo stares at him. “How?”

“How,” Kenma repeats, and then covers his face with his hands. “You’re moping, Kuroo.”

“What?” Kuroo says, and automatically starts digging through Kenma’s cupboards for loose tea.

“Stop doing that,” Kenma says, batting Kuroo’s hands away from the cabinets. “And why do we have to talk about this, go talk to Akaashi.”

“Akaashi’s busy,” Kuroo says, and finds that the words taste awful. Bokuto is back. Tsukishima very likely won’t ever be back, and the thought sucks all the air out of his lungs. He puts Kenma’s kettle on the stove.

Kenma’s forehead is going to crease permanently if he keeps this up, and Kuroo’s about to open his mouth to tell him as much when Kenma says, sternly, “Go sit down.”

Kuroo goes, because Kenma’s looking at him out of the corner of his eyes, slanted like a cat’s, like how he used to on the volleyball court in high school - cataloging everything, drawing conclusions. And at this point, after everything, Kuroo will simply sit, and listen.

*

Tsukishima sends his research paper draft after a couple weeks of needling. Kuroo prints it out, because it feels right to be able to touch and hold something that Tsukishima’s spent pained days working on, condensed from the three months he spent on San Salvador. With me, Kuroo’s mind supplies. It feels good to feel the heft of paper in his hands. He staples the papers together with a resolute clunk.

“What’s that?” Sachiko says when she sees Kuroo flipping through it after dinner. She runs across the room to hug Kuroo’s knee.

“Tsukki’s paper,” Kuroo says, and pokes her nose. She wrinkles her face, resting a cheek against Kuroo’s bare knee.

“Glasses,” Sachiko says suddenly, and scrambles up into his lap. She puts a hand in his face. “Give me.”

“Hey,” Kuroo says, trying to bat her arms away as gently and firmly as possible, and failing because toddlers have determination and nothing else. He gets smacked in the face, and the glasses come off. Kuroo’s eyes are watering.

Sachiko lets out a triumphant screech. The glasses are too large for her face, and don’t hook properly on her ears. Her nose is much too tiny to hold them up. They fall to sit around her chin. She makes a cute impatient noise.

“I need those,” Kuroo explains patiently, tapping her on the nose. “Papa needs those to see. Next time ask nicely, okay?” Kuroo can hear Yaku in his head, going on about parenting techniques and how Kuroo’s so soft Sachiko will be spoiled rotten.

“Okay,” Sachiko says, smiling, and Kuroo smacks a kiss on her forehead that turns into hugging, that turns into her falling asleep on his chest while he flips through each careful section of Tsukishima’s thesis. He’s a particular writer, and Kuroo can tell where Tsukishima had labored over the phrasing, or the correct annotation. The one error Kuroo finds, a little draft mark Tsukishima had forgotten to erase, is a note that says, ‘ask Kuroo later’ about the beach names. Kuroo thumbs over it and finds it so charming he’s smiling without realizing it.

*

Since the day Tsukishima had left San Salvador, and even a little before that, when Kuroo had been blindingly in love and somewhat willing to look at the shadows it cast, he had known that eventually he and Sachiko would have to move. Probably to Tokyo, where Tsukishima is likely to settle down and grow the sturdy roots of the intellectually stimulated, where Tokyo University could continue feeding him research and lab space until it had home-grown 191 cm of professor.

They hadn’t talked about it, because they had known each other for three months at that point. And they still haven’t talked about it, because something about conducting a conversation of that enormity over Kuroo’s staticky and brick-like satellite phone seems suboptimal, even for someone with the emotional resilience of Kuroo Tetsurou. And either way there isn’t much to talk about, because it eventually all circles back to one question, from which one conclusion could be drawn.

“You were always going to have to move back eventually,” Akaashi says, very reasonably. Akaashi had been waiting for Kuroo on the beach when he had eventually hauled himself out of the ocean, sloughing off sheets of saltwater and coughing. The water was choppier than Kuroo liked, and he was dizzy from being rocked, and from the thoughts circling around and around in his mind - or rather, just one thought.

“What,” Kuroo says, tearing off a glove and mopping his face with one hand. His fingertips have gone wrinkled and ghostly white from the salt. Kuroo sits down on the beach, hard.

“I said,” Akaashi says, running a hand through his hair, “Tokyo has the best pre-schools.”

Kuroo glares at him balefully from underneath his fringe. His lips feel pickled from the ocean brine. “Okay.”

“I’ll drive you back,” Akaashi says, levering himself up off the beach and dusting his hands and the back of his thighs off with an efficient swipe.

“How was your survey,” Kuroo says after five minutes of churlish silence, valiantly attempting to keep up a conversation despite the ambush.

Akaashi spares a cutting look at him over the shoulder, and backs the truck neatly into its spot. “I’m telling you this because you know this, you’re just being,” - Akaashi waves the clipboard vaguely in Kuroo’s direction, which predictably bruises Kuroo’s ego - “move first, then ask.”

“Fine,” Kuroo says, and then because he’s never met a nest of any kind he didn’t poke, says, “When are you and Bo getting a kid, you know when I leave Sa-chan’s coming too.”

Akaashi smiles. It’s horrible. “Soon. Don’t worry about us, Kuroo-san.”  

*

It’s a lot less dramatic than Kuroo had originally thought it would be. When he had thought about it before, it had been a strange knot of unknowing, where each piece depended on the next and into infinity. If Tsukishima was serious about Kuroo then Kuroo would move, but Kuroo would only be serious about it if Tsukishima was serious about it, even though Kuroo knew he was serious about it, and Kuroo could then look discerningly at what “serious” even meant, like he could litmus test their relationship and then match the color on a box to find an answer. If it came out a sunny yellow pH 5, he and Sachiko would move.

In the end Akaashi was right, which Kuroo is secure enough to admit is usually the case. It’s time to move back to Japan, because Sachiko deserves a childhood of having play-dates and packed lunches. Kuroo feels like the Bahamas are another world, so different than the inner city that he grew up in, but to Sachiko it is the entire world, which could only last for so long. Akaashi forwards a list of pre-schools, semi-jokingly, but Kuroo’s aware and also grateful that Akaashi has probably vetted them and recommended Sachiko to them.

So the answer is easy, and obvious. In a month, after Kuroo hands off the director title to Bokuto, the Tetsurou household will move to Tokyo, into a third-story two-bedroom apartment in a quiet neighborhood with easy access to the subway. It is also a brisk ten minute walk from Tsukishima’s apartment, something Kuroo is peripherally aware of, but also determined not to consider unduly, feeling like if he looks at it too intensely, grasps it too closely, it will dissolve like mist.

“It’s ten minutes from your place,” Kuroo says to Tsukishima over the phone not ten minutes afterward, feigning casualness. Tsukishima sounds exhausted over the phone, but also happy, Kuroo thinks. It’s hard to tell without looking at his face.

“Wow,” Tsukishima says over the phone, and sounds a little wistful. Kuroo is probably projecting. It’s difficult to tell even basic emotion over the phone with all the interference.

“And I’ll be interviewing for a faculty position at Tokyo,” Kuroo says, launching into a long-winded version of his plans, in order to paper over the moment, in case Tsukishima’s not ready to have this conversation. He probably isn’t. He’s skittish, and nervous, like a wary bird Kuroo has to hold every muscle still to coax into pecking bits of birdseed from his hand.

It makes sense, when Kuroo thinks about it. Tsukishima’s younger, and at a different point in his life. Kuroo asked Tsukishima to hold onto him and Sachiko, right before Tsukishima had left, and Tsukishima has, and right now that’s enough.

*

It takes longer than Kuroo had expected for him to let the research center go. Partly because he has to fill his position, and then Bokuto’s position, and tie up all the loose ends associated with that. Mostly because Kuroo’s grown comfortable without realizing it, settled down and cultivated a thick layer of barnacles and a colony of shrimps. There’s a rhythm to to the research center, a long cycle that takes a year to spin round, but Kuroo had sunken into it so thoroughly it’s become second nature to wake up and simply know what needs to be done.  

After he’s signed a new, shiny lease in Tokyo and sent Tsukishima an email that turned into a three-hour long phone conversation, the island’s different. The water is brighter, somehow, a brilliant turquoise that makes Kuroo’s eyes ache looking at it, dazzling under the sun. The reefs are more brilliant than ever, and Kuroo’s eyes are sharper, like the imminent loss has peeled back a layer to say goodbye.

*

It’s strange being back in Tokyo again. It’s been some time since he was back. Kuroo narrows his eyes. How many years has it been? At least three. Sachiko spent her first half year here, and now she’s four. It’s overwhelming, for a strange and disorienting minute. The slick glass of the buildings, the criss-crossing power lines above his head, the hoots and horns and thrumming sounds that a city makes. Kuroo can feel himself tensing involuntarily, toes curling in his sneakers, hand tightening on Sachiko’s smaller one. And then he blinks and the feeling passes. This is Tokyo, where he grew up and went to school, where he drove to the hospital at three in the morning and left eight hours later with the most important girl in the world.

“Papa,” Sachiko says, and then taps him politely on the thigh when it takes him a second to reorient himself. “Papa.”

“Yeah sweetheart?” Kuroo says, watching the blinged-out storefronts zipping by outside the cab window.

“Where are we going to live?” This was a point of contention. Sachiko didn’t fully, one-hundred percent believe that the house in the picture Kuroo had shown her was real. After all, the carriages and castles and magic hats in her books were definitely fake.

“In the house Papa showed you,” Kuroo says, and unlocks his phone so he can show her on the map.

She’s fussing, and Kuroo doesn’t blame her. After looking critically at the photo Kuroo shows her, and the little red dot on the map, Sachiko says suspiciously, “Will Tsukki-san be there?”

“No,” Kuroo says, feeling a headache beginning right behind his forehead.

“Why not?” Sachiko says, and crosses her arms across her chest. Kuroo has no idea how she still has the energy after the plane. He feels like a good jostle would take him clean out.

“Because,” Kuroo starts, and really doesn’t know how to continue. Because Tsukishima is not living with them? Because relationships are hard even if both people are probably in it for the long haul? Kuroo settles for, “Because Tsukishima lives with Yamaguchi-san.”

“Oh,” Sachiko says, subsiding. She perks up a second later. “Can we go see him? Call him, Papa,” she says authoritatively, and points to the phone.

Kuroo is exhausted, and their house does not have beds. Their things are mostly waiting for them there, but the beds are still in pieces that Kuroo had planned to put together. Reflecting on this, it had always been wishful thinking on his part.

He’s already opened the Contacts app when he remembers to say, “What do you sa-?”

“Please,” Sachiko says promptly. “Sorry. Please!”

Tsukishima picks up on the second ring, slightly breathless. “Kuroo.”

“Hey,” Kuroo says, and his throat feels kind of tight. Tsukishima’s voice is so much clearer now that they’re in the same country. “I know this is last minute, but we’re on our way from the airport, and I’m really tired…”

“Oh!” Tsukishima says, cutting Kuroo off. “Please come stay.” And then he rattles off the apartment address, which Kuroo knows, and the passcode for the gate, which Kuroo repeats carefully.

“Tsukki,” Kuroo says, after Tsukishima has unnecessarily apologized, slightly awkwardly and very charmingly, for being in his office because of his job during Kuroo’s unwarned-for request, Kuroo mumbles, “Thank you. See you soon.” His voice comes out raw.

Sachiko had been tapping on the hand Kuroo’s using to hold the phone since Tsukishima picked up, and has now finally had enough. She plucks the phone from Kuroo’s hand, and says, entirely too loudly and directly into the microphone, “Tsukki-san!”

Kuroo nods off, listening to Sachiko’s little exclamations and her weird disjointed stories, until the cab pulls up to Tsukishima’s apartment and the Tetsurou household spills into Tsukishima’s neat apartment and Kuroo deposits himself directly into Tsukishima’s bed.

*

Tsukishima’s apartment is small, and it’s clear he’s still in school. There are a stack of textbooks Sachiko’s height piled neatly next to the coffee table. Upon further inspection, the coffee table is two crates, sanded down without any splinters. Kuroo checked the edges, and the wall outlets, the locks on the doors, how slippery the kitchen tiling is with socks on. Tsukishima’s covered the outlets with tape and put a rubber grip rug on the kitchen tile.

“You prepared?” Kuroo says, and watches Tsukishima’s ears turn a delightful pink.

“You’re supposed to,” Tsukishima says, staring stonily at Kuroo.

“Your ears are pink,” Kuroo informs him, and reaches out to tug one.

Tsukishima does not respond, because his mouth is suddenly otherwise occupied.

There’s a lot of work associated with a move, Kuroo finds. He knew this, abstractly, before, but now that he’s spending fourteen hours a day obtaining silverware, socket covers, new trim for the broken bits in the corner of the living room, and frantically hoovering up new issues as they arise - Kuroo can definitively say that moving is as hard as obtaining a doctorate degree. Harder, maybe.

“Your PhD, maybe,” Tsukishima says, raising one eyebrow.

“You spend eight hours a day just typing,” Kuroo says, wiggling his fingers. “So hard and difficult. Your hands must be so tired.”

Tsukishima does not dignify this with a response.

*

It’s nice to date again, to be able to text Tsukishima and get a response within minutes, to ask Tsukishima to babysit Sachiko and have him say yes. On most days Kuroo will ask Tsukishima to come over for dinner, and Tsukishima will say yes. Tsukishima says yes an awful lot, and each time he says yes to Kuroo, Kuroo can feel himself smiling.

It seems almost silly that Kuroo had worried so much, had paced and bored Kenma to the point of tears.

“Tsukki,” Kuroo says, two months in Tokyo later, leaning over to kiss Tsukishima’s cheek. “You should move in.”

“Yes,” Tsukishima says determinedly. His eyebrows are set resolutely. It’s very cute.

“Oh?” Kuroo says, tilting his head, feeling his lips curve up.

Tsukishima frowns. “Took you long enough,” he says petulantly.

Kuroo, helpless, leans in to kiss him.

Chapter Text

Tsukishima’s considered marriage, sure. He and Kuroo are never breaking up. They have a lovely five-year old child, a stable relationship that lasted through a hellish thirteen-hour time difference with spotty internet connection for nearly a year, and a cute ground-floor apartment with a yard that they’re growing sunflowers in. So when Akiteru probes in what he thinks is a gentle, unassuming way, and what Tsukishima perceives as a bulldozer through a living room wall, Tsukishima says, “We don’t see a reason to get married.”

“Well,” Akiteru starts, hesitantly, having probably read self-help books and consulted one of those psychic scams on how to have this discussion with a reticent baby brother. “I just think-”

“Don’t. Bye,” Tsukishima says, and hangs up.

When he turns around, Sachiko is staring down at her bare feet, fiddling with her fingers. Tsukishima waits for her to speak, because she always comes out with it eventually.

“To-san and Papa aren’t married,” Sachiko says eventually, a tiny wrinkle in between her eyebrows.

“No,” Tsukishima has to agree.

Sachiko frowns harder at this, tiny face screwing up in concentration. Tsukishima has a sudden flash of foreboding. He should have taken the extra step and picked up Akiteru’s call outside, and not in the kitchen, where Sachiko is gluing together pieces of construction paper to look like flowers.

“You should get married!” Sachiko says, expression clearing. “Like a princess.”

Tsukishima knew he should have vetted the daycare more carefully. Two years of avoiding princess content, down the drain in a month. “Sure,” Tsukishima says vaguely, and starts cutting another flower petal. “Do you want pink or orange?”

“Orange,” Sachiko says, sufficiently distracted. Tsukishima gives her a juicebox, just in case.

*

Later, that night, after Tsukishima feels like he’s successfully avoided the topic, Kuroo says, “So Sa-chan said she wanted us to get married.”

Tsukishima buries his head into his pillow, which happens to be Kuroo’s upper arm. Kuroo rudely uses his other arm to turn Tsukishima right-side up again. Tsukishima says to the ceiling, and not to Kuroo’s absurdly beautiful face that he can see in his peripheral vision, “She did say that.” And he gave her a bonus apple juice as incentive to never bring it up again that has now been wasted.

“Tsukki,” Kuroo says, moving his face so Tsukishima has to look at him, “Would being married really be so bad?” He says it so patiently that Tsukishima feels his eyes prick.

Tsukishima resists the strong urge to bury his face in Kuroo’s armpit, where he will feel warm and protected and won’t have to look at Kuroo’s horrible, earnest face and answer his awful questions. “No,” Tsukishima allows, because he lives in an apartment they co-signed, with a child that Tsukishima would rather die than stop seeing, and when he digs deeper past the knee-jerk embarrassment and scrutiny, there exists an image of Akaashi with a smirk and wedding ring watching Bokuto climb out of the ocean.

So maybe Tsukishima would like to have a ring, so he can look at it to remind himself that he likes Kuroo a lot when Kuroo is forcing him to attend departmental mixers with the anthropologists, because Sachiko asked for it, and so he can finally admit to himself in all of its blank frightening largeness that Kuroo is it for him.

“Okay,” Kuroo says gently, letting go of Tsukishima’s shoulder, because he’s letting Tsukishima run away from the topic now. This, more than anything, makes all the static settle down.

Tsukishima grits his teeth. “Let’s.” Kuroo’s looking at him in wonder, which is the only way the next two words make it out. “Get married.”

Kuroo sucks in a breath between his teeth and then melts Tsukishima into the mattress until he goes boneless with delirious joy.

*

“Romantic,” Oikawa says clinically, when Kuroo recounts Tsukishima’s proposal. Tsukishima didn’t know he was proposing. That is probably good, because if any more planning had gone into it, Tsukishima absolutely would have been too overwhelmed to follow through and shelved it for another couple of years.

Kuroo had magicked up Oikawa from some toxic sewer pit the next morning, and now Kuroo, Tsukishima, and Sachiko, in her new red dress, are sitting in Oikawa’s office, which is mostly made of glass and features eight different pictures of Oikawa’s boyfriend.

“I like your dress,” Oikawa says to Sachiko, cutting off Tsukishima’s snippy, “Thanks.”

“It’s new,” Sachiko says, with an admiring look on her face.

“Well,” Oikawa says seriously, “Red is definitely your color.”

Sachiko beams at him.

“Do we need… all of this,” Tsukishima says later, after Oikawa’s hauled an enormous binder onto the decorative glass table and then another one after that. The table wobbles precariously. Oikawa said the word “monogram” and Tsukishima’s already one foot out of this whole thing.

“No,” Kuroo says, at the same time Oikawa squawks, “Of course.”

“Hey,” Kuroo says to Oikawa, probably watching Tsukishima’s face turn the color and consistency of spoiled milk, “Can we talk. really quick.” Tsukishima watches them duck outside, Oikawa gesticulating wildly.

“To-san,” Sachiko says, flipping pages in Oikawa’s binder carefully.

“Yes?” Tsukishima says, and tries to pretend his psyche isn’t imploding under the strain of dealing with the fact that he’s getting married, they have to have a wedding, and Oikawa Tooru is their wedding planner.

“I like this one,” Sachiko says, and points to a wedding invitation shaped like a giant heart.

“Me too,” Tsukishima says, and finds that the heart is cute, and appropriate, and if Sachiko likes it, that it can’t be bad at all.

*

“Maybe we should just elope,” Kuroo says after Oikawa has laid out ten color swatches that all look exactly the same.

“No,” Oikawa says, jabbing his finger in Kuroo’s direction. “I finally get you back after you run off to your island and found a Megane-kun to marry and now you’re going to elope? After we’ve already picked out invitations?” Tsukishima has suffered through what feels like hours of decision making and they’ve only completed invitations?

“Anyway,” Oikawa is still saying, laying out even more samples so aggressively the paper makes a sharp thwacking noise against the table surface with each one, “Sa-chan did most of the picking, maybe she should plan this with me.”

Which is how Tsukishima and his to-be husband became barred from their own wedding planning.

Oikawa comes to pick up Sachiko in the mornings now, which means he and Kuroo don’t need to have an extended dance about watching Sachiko around their university schedules. Unfortunately, it also means Tsukishima has to interact with Oikawa Tooru without the comfortable padding of caffeine and a couple hours of sun.

“Sa-chan,” Oikawa sing-songs, waltzing around Tsukishima’s kitchen and using his favorite mug.

“Oikawa-san good morning,” Sachiko chirps, staring adoringly up at him. Tsukishima spent twenty minutes that morning braiding her hair, and she’s out the door with a “To-san bye!”

Tsukishima does her dishes in the sink and tries not to miss her.

*

“Your five-year old is planning your wedding,” Yamaguchi says, trying to color in an entire white board with dry-erase marker, because graduate students never grow past the emotional age of twelve.

“Don’t say five-year old, it’s Sa-chan,” Tsukishima says, pretending to grade exams but really watching Yamaguchi draw lines.

“She’s five,” Yamaguchi says, giving up and tossing the dead marker into the trash. “Doesn’t that concern you at all?”

“No,” Tsukishima says, because she’s a good kid, and is sparing Tsukishima the indignity of spending time picking out tablecloths. And because Tsukishima is getting married because Sachiko wanted him to marry her dad, which Tsukishima still can’t unpack because the sheer emotion would stop his heart.

Yamaguchi still looks dubious.

“Look,” Tsukishima says, pushing his glasses up his nose, “There’s a professional wedding planner involved too.” Tsukishima has his doubts about Oikawa’s credentials, given that he and Kuroo are friends from college and Oikawa might be the world’s biggest asshole, but Sachiko likes Oikawa-san so very much so Tsukishima will grit his teeth and bear it.

“Wow Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, looking scarily misty-eyed.

“Stop it,” Tsukishima says, and picks up the dry-erase board eraser to have something to do.

“You’re getting married,” Yamaguchi says all soppily, because he is a small forest creature, unaware of any danger. Tsukishima very calmly resolves to volunteer Yamaguchi to be the next semester teaching assistant for introduction to biology.

*

Tsukishima very much does not want to be involved in the wedding planning process. Even thinking the words “wedding planning process” makes him think about Oikawa’s awful office, and he has his plate full with finishing up his dissertation and having a work-life balance. But he does miss Sachiko, which is silly because he sees her every night, but now she has excited stories about Oikawa-san and picking out a princess dress. So maybe Tsukishima does want to be involved, a teensy, microscopic, tiny bit.

“To-san,” Sachiko says one day when Tsukishima’s braiding her hair in the morning, “Um.”

Tsukishima hums.

“Do you,” Sachiko says, suddenly shy, “Want to pick out the cake with me.”

Tsukishima is overcome with emotion.

When Oikawa comes to pick Sachiko up, Sachiko says, “To-san is coming with us today.”

“Oh?” Oikawa says, leering at Tsukishima. Tsukishima does not point out that he is paying Oikawa, which makes him Oikawa’s boss.

“Oh,” Tsukishima says, and makes sure Sachiko’s holding his hand when they walk out the door.

The cake tasting is at a cute little bakery down the street from Oikawa’s office, with a charming scalloped green awning and a hand-lettered menu perched on the street. “Cute,” Sachiko says, bouncing up and down with excitement, eyes huge and wide.

“Good taste,” Oikawa says to her, flipping pages on his enormous clipboard. “We’re here for the 9 a.m. cake tasting.” The cashier jumps. Tsukishima does not blame him.

“You eat each one,” Sachiko explains to Tsukishima as Oikawa arranges all the little cake pieces in inscrutable patterns on the tabletop. “One at a time.” She looks at Oikawa. “Did I forget anything?”

“No, you did perfect,” Oikawa says, high-fiving her.

“To-san,” Sachiko says a little while later, a scrape of frosting on her cheek that Tsukishima gently wipes off with his thumb.

“Yes?” Tsukishima says, trying to discreetly wipe the frosting on Oikawa’s white dress shirt.

“For you,” Sachiko says, pushing a little trio of pink cake slices towards him, each with a tiny sliver of a strawberry on top.

It’s a little hard to breathe. “Thank you,” Tsukishima says, and leans over to kiss the top of her head.

*

One of the only wedding traditions Kuroo’s apparently married to is folding one thousand cranes. Tsukishima isn’t convinced he fully understands how many cranes that is. Kuroo comes back from his office with the customary stack of papers to grade, a kiss for Tsukishima, and a shiny cube of gold origami paper.

“No,” Tsukishima says, when Kuroo places it on the counter.

Kuroo gives him a look. “Yes.”

“Kuroo,” Tsukishima says, wishing he was Akaashi and he could just bat his eyes to make his husband fall over, “Our fingers will fall off. We need those, we’re academics.”

“I’m a marine biologist,” Kuroo says, “And we need fingers for other things.” He smiles at Tsukishima from across the table.

Tsukishima flushes, just a little.

“What are you thinking about? I meant for folding one thousand cranes,” Kuroo says, and Tsukishima tries to throw the stupid cube in the trash.

“Look,” Kuroo says later, after putting Sachiko to bed. “If we just fold fifty every day we’ll be done with time to spare.” He flops down next to Tsukishima on the bed.

“You can fold fifty a day,” Tsukishima says, half-heartedly, because he underestimated how much Kuroo cared about this and now feels like an unfun miser.

“Just a few,” Kuroo coaxes, putting his face right in front of Tsukishima’s, which then obliterates the topic for the next thirty minutes.

Tsukishima’s sleepy and sated afterwards, nudging his face into the crook of Kuroo’s neck. which is of course when Kuroo says, “we need to fold the cranes now.”

“Fuck the cranes,” Tsukishima mumbles.

“That’s our marriage,” Kuroo says, also not moving a muscle.

There’s a pause. “Divorce,” Tsukishima says finally, and then passes out.

Chapter Text

Kuroo is vague about it. “Scam this number,” Kuroo says, jabbing Keiji’s phone screen way too hard.

“Why,” Keiji says, rescuing his phone from Kuroo’s salt-crusted hands. Kuroo lets Keiji wipe the screen on Kuroo’s ratty t-shirt.

Kuroo makes a horrible face. “He killed the jellyfish.”

Keiji stares at him pityingly. All Kuroo has talked about for the past month is his jellyfish in the marine biology lab, how they’re exceedingly delicate and finely-tuned to salt levels and aeration. Keiji once caught Kuroo leaving the house at 3 am to check on them. In a way, he’s glad the jellyfish are no longer alive. Now Keiji can have his roommate back.

“Okay,” Keiji says, and pats Kuroo gingerly on the back. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Kuroo says, and rolls his neck in the casual way that makes all the freshmen in a twenty-foot radius track the movement and then look away, blushing. “I have to get back to the lab.”

“Okay,” Keiji says again, and then escapes to the teaching assistant lounge.

*

Keiji texts the number the next morning, tapping each character out with one fingertip while he eats his toast across from Kuroo at their kitchen table.

Kuroo is still upset about the jellyfish. “I mean, how difficult is it to measure salt? We’re marine biology majors. If he can’t measure salt, he’s going to have a lot to deal with in the future.”

Keiji makes a noncommittal noise. He can’t tell if Kuroo likes his labmate or not. On one hand, labmate has killed the jellyfish and Kuroo is asking Keiji to try to scam him. On the other hand, Kuroo always brings two granola bars, two apples, and two protein shakes to lab meetings on Thursday. Keiji crunches through the last of the toast, and dusts off his hands to hit send.

The text goes off with a whoosh.

*

Keiji gets a text back in his accounting class. He thumbs it open carefully underneath the table. Oh, good grief. Labmate has texted back, “Yes I would love a loan should I send you my information?” and a picture of his credit card, back and front.

Keiji puts the phone back into his backpack, temples throbbing.

“Kuroo,” Keiji says, as Kuroo collapses onto the floor in a sweaty heap, fresh from a run.  

“What,” Kuroo says, face-down into the floor.

“Your labmate…” Keiji says, trying to figure out how to phrase this.

Kuroo lifts his head up, suddenly wolfish.

Keiji looks at him disapprovingly. “What’s his name?”

“Did something happen?” Kuroo says, and drags himself upright to a sitting position.

“Maybe,” Keiji says. “Name?”

“Bokuto,” Kuroo says impatiently. “What did he say?”

“You are a very bad man,” Keiji tells Kuroo, and puts his earbuds in to block Kuroo out.

Keiji looks up Bokuto on Facebook later. He’s clicking through picture after picture of Bokuto and his very defined chest when his phone rings.

It’s Bokuto. “Hello?” Bokuto says. “Is this where to get a loan?”

“No,” Keiji says, feeling very bad about this whole situation. “That was a joke, Kuroo asked me to send you that.”

“Oh,” Bokuto says, sounding way sadder than is strictly appropriate.

“I’m sorry,” Keiji says, feeling the unusual urge to wind a nonexistent phone cord around his finger, coy. He closes Bokuto’s facebook profile on his laptop with a regretful last glance.

There’s a pause, and Keiji considers hanging up.

“You have a nice voice,” Bokuto says suddenly. Keiji can feel blood rushing to his face. He presses his hand against his cheek.

“Thank you,” Keiji says, hyper-aware of how he sounds now.

“Yeah,” Bokuto says, “Talk to you later! Bye!” and hangs up.

Keiji puts his phone carefully face-down on his desk. And then he puts it right side up to text, “My name is Keiji.”

*

“Did something happen?” Kuroo texts Keiji Thursday morning.

“No,” Keiji texts back. Things are always happening. They are none of Kuroo’s business.

“Hmmm,” Kuroo sends back, with a picture of Bokuto’s face stretched into a wide smile.

Keiji catches himself unconsciously making the same face. He leaves Kuroo on read.

*

Keiji asks Bokuto to meet up, to clear any lingering misconceptions about the botched credit card scam.

“Of course I would love that!” Bokuto texts back, with an unconscionable number of smiley emojis. “I work at a tea shop!”

Akaashi opens Bokuto’s Facebook profile again. He looks at the size of Bokuto’s biceps. Tea must be heavy.

The tea shop is tucked at the very end of the university student area, hand-lettered sign crooked and weathered. Akaashi pushes the door open carefully. The inside is cramped, littered with tiny round tables and an eclectic selection of rickety chairs and dusty poufs.

“Akaashi!” Bokuto says from behind the counter, delighted. He’s wearing an apron and a very thin, very tight t-shirt.

“Bokuto-san,” Keiji says, faintly.

Bokuto ushers Keiji to a chair and makes him a pot of tea, the teapot looking much too small and delicate for Bokuto be handling. He rambles for the five precise minutes the tea steeps. Keiji learns that Bokuto got the job at the tea shop because he’s tall so it’s easy to reach the tall drawers, really didn’t mean to kill Kuroo’s jellyfish, and was very, very excited to meet Keiji.

Keiji can feel a slight flush at his cheekbones.

At the end of Bokuto’s break, Akaashi says, “Thank you for meeting me…” and makes to get up.

“I just want you to have this,” Bokuto says suddenly, and uncurls Keiji’s fingers to put something gnarled and lumpy in his palm.

Keiji stares at it.

“It’s a dried lemon slice,” Bokuto says, and Keiji turns it right-side up, a tiny lemon heart.

“Bokuto-san,” Keiji says, staring at it, throat suddenly dry. Bokuto waits for Keiji to speak, which makes Keiji, if possible, even fonder.

In the end, Keiji can’t quite manage it. “Thank you,” Keiji says, and the moment drops from between them like a stone, all the tension leaving the air. Keiji watches it plummet, caught between relieved and wistful.

“Um,” Bokuto says, staring at a fixed point beyond Keiji’s head. “Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to go on another date.”

The way the window is positioned makes Bokuto look like he’s glowing. “Bokuto-san,” Keiji says, tilting his head to the side. “I would love to.”