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So Valentine's Day is. An experience.
Shou thinks it's a learning experience for him. He just thinks it's a waste of time, effort, emotions and a ploy dredged up by the capitalist regime they live under so chocolate prices can go up exponentially on a scheduled time and not be questioned by the cowherding masses.
“Lighten up, Tsukki,” Shou, the abominable sunshine incarnate bumps into his arm, amiably fending off admirers arriving in throngs of immovable human wall to flank him on all sides and to ambush him with manufactured sweet words directly exported from the internet.
He is up to here and the day hasn't even started.
Volleyball suddenly becomes the Gossip Circle. People are asking each other what they received. How are your locker looking? Has anyone slipped cards into your pocket and bags yet?
He told them that is dangerous and worrying behaviour. Under statutory law, those are grounds for prohibited behaviour and stalkerish manners. He can request an intervention order if he feels like it, from the court.
“Why is he like this,” Tanaka snarls at him, vulture eyes trying to drill a bullet dead centre between his eyes. Please. Make that happen. Just snipe him the fuck out. This stupid commercialised holiday makes him so tired, and Shouyou chattering by his side doesn't make it any better.
“He just doesn't like the attention,” his friend smiles, the exact same one that he crafted from the time in elementary school when Kei first received his welcome pack of Now You Are Deemed Conventionally Attractive And We Will Profess Our Fantasies Onto Your Person Without Your Permission.
“That's very true,” Sugawara notes, pulling down his vest. “It can get overwhelming.”
“Senpai, how many did you get?” Yamaguchi blinks at him.
“Lots!” Noya offers them broad hand gestures. “A lot are from people he tutored and mentored. They wanted to repay the favour.”
“Wow, oh thanks, Yachi-san!” Shou accepts the neatly wrapped gift Yachi is handing out to everyone in the club. He takes his without the first sign of derision on the day - a huge improvement for him - and places it neatly inside his bag, careful not to crush it.
“I'm off,” he drawls, pushing his way out through the door.
“To where?” Daichi calls out after him.
“To break people's hearts in masses. Tune in later today for more progress.”
“Shouyou, hey, why is he personally rejecting everyone?”
“I'm trying to Pavlov empathy by guilting him to confront each of those confessors but so far it's been ineffective, so, I'm just headed towards Make Tsukki Not An Asshole project management.”
“I can't pronounce keyboard smashes out loud but you should know I am thinking of them right now.”
“I appreciate it, Chikara-senpai.”
By the time the third break tide over, he holds the troublesome record of most hearts broken in the first year cohort. People rever him, as if he is a god, responsible for the heartbreak and idiotic emotional plights of other first year mortals and inferior dunces, so much that there is a makeshift shrine floating around in Class B that he had been actively not trying to see from the bombardment of his classmates trying to show him snapchats of it.
Shouyou thinks everything is hilarious and is completely genuine when there are the few who confess to him. Kei knows that there is a psychological training regime that Shou is conditioning him into, but he is just too damned resistant to the wiles and happenings of those around him that training guilt and empathy into him may as well rank next to trying to get corporations to not exploit its workers. Not possible in the next five office months.
Also. Why are people confessing to him and not Shouyou, sunshine boy supreme, lord of all things nice and gentle, loyal-est of all there is?
Shou is a great boy. Kei would definitely ask him out, give him chocolates, do the whole complicated courting ritual the kids are doing nowadays. He wouldn't give chocolates to himself. He's awful and bitter, a chipped mug of expired coffee on top of really pungent wasabi. Which is why he can't seem to wrap his head around Shou's explanations at the start of lunch, the two of them huddling in front of their lockers, apprehensive of the evidently stuffed locker that is his, brimming with red and pink cards.
“They just like,” his friend gestures vaguely, “the whole mysterious and tall and athletic thing.”
“Shouyou, when am I ever athletic by choice? Look at me. I have glasses. I have a military haircut. I read dinosaur facts for fun -”
“Maybe those are redeeming qualities people enjoy in you on top of the Bitter Asshole facade you carry around.”
“Do not even. And my asshole facade is my redeeming feature. Don't put words in my mouth, Hinata Shouyou, and hold that door, I have the bag ready, if they fall then they fall.”
A storm of letters and postcards and envelopes cascade mostly into the open gym bag he holds under it, but a few topple outside and just lie there, disappointed, but not surprised at him and his rubbish ways.
Shou only whispers Wow, amazing. He doesn't think it's that impressive, being known for being a point of fruitless attraction for forlorn teenagers, but evidently he has different viewpoints from normal humans, so his opinions on this never matter.
“Do I have to answer them all?” He asks, intending it to be a reasonable sound, but everything just sounds whiny to his ears.
Shouyou zips the bag for him, nodding solemnly.
“You have to. It's the law."
Kei thinks the law is bullshit. And he's going to subvert it.
That fell through pretty quickly.
It's not that being a teenager is equivalent to being immune to logic in general. It's that being a victim of Valentine's Day the Marketing Trap, people are under the illusion of chance and hope. No matter how many times he mention that liking someone without knowing what they really look like is a red flag to Do Not Pursue, people continuously sideline him and ask So do I have a chance?
“I don't even know you,” is his answer, perfected at point blank range. “And I don't believe that you like me as well. I appreciate your sentiments, but whatever you wished to pursue will not work out, so I strongly object and refuse it. Have a nice day.”
Shouyou tells him he's mean, as they sort through all the cards and account for everyone who confessed. They mutually - shockingly, even Shouyou, who came late to club and left early - agree to carry the task of returning the sentiments of those who sent the cards in, even one as caustic as he is.
“And another year,” Shouyou ties a ribbon around a stack of envelopes.
“Good riddance,” he sighs, but remembers. No. “There is also White Day.”
“Thinking of giving presents to someone?” Shou looks up at him, trying to wrangle the ribbons into some semblance of order.
Kei thinks it's precious, but Shou is allergic to that moniker nowadays, but he looks precious. Everything. Head to toes. All of it. Sun eyes and warm mouth and unabashed words. The intensity in volleyball and the tenderness in the grip his little baby fingers clasp people in when he apologises to them, but I can't return your feelings.
Kei knows fuck all about feelings and hormones, but the observations he made, the signs he gave, are all symptomatic of, well, love, as the books would refer to as.
“Something like that,” he mutters. And is promptly shoved at with a neatly packaged box with dinosaur prints.
“Um, what,” he examines it. It's cute.
“Happy Valentine's Day, nerd,” Shouyou smiles at him, a twist to his lips, something different and barely held together.
At his blank face, Shouyou shoves him again, stealing his letter bag.
“You're smart. Figure it out.”
“Being book smart doesn't actually mean being clairvoyant, I just want you to know -”
“Kei,” Shouyou is a youkai lantern, a bridge between the world of established facts and the world of unknown thrills. He vacillates, and he offers Kei two options. Stay in safety, or go.
He accepts the box. But doesn't make any move forward or back. Just stay rooted where he is, on the top of the bridge.
“I'll read it thoroughly,” he promises. Makes nothing more of it.
Valentine's goes, and White Day comes.
And well, Kei thinks he has his answer. Has for a while now, but then Shou, with all of his silly theatrics, would run his mouth and push him back to the Friend Zone.
The letter is shockingly, and endearingly straightforward, in all Hinata-esque fashion. Natsu wrote him a letter that followed the exact same style, and he's convinced that it's a family trait.
To my friend, my protector, the one I definitely didn't want but need.
It's all sorts of cute. And Kei wants to put his head through a locker because of it.
I'm writing this, not because everyone is writing a letter, but because I have been enamoured with you. Had for a while now, and I've come to terms with it.
He threatens to hide Shou's shoes at the top locker in the change room to make him promise to meet up at Kei's locker.
Nothing had to change. I just want you to know, because in spite of everything, you are my friend first, the one I trust, and everything more. Whether we go forth or regress, I don't mind. As long as I have you with me.
“Yo,” Shou pops up from around the corner, clothes nicely freshened and properly worn for once. That's big. Kei stops him and gives him a few head pats, just to be condescending, but at least half a pat in there was in genuine praise, so Shouyou can pick apart which is which in his free time.
“Hello, orange abomination,” he greets back easily, breezing around Shouyou's punches. “I have a response for your letter.”
“Oh no,” his friend freezes, buffering in real life time. “No, no, no, no, no, nothing has to change -”
“I'm banning that phrase from your dictionary, oi, genius, listen up,” he doesn't have a letter, because he writes awfully and would rather not do it at all.
“I wrote it so we don't have to talk about it,” Shou laments.
“Wow I feel so sad, cry me a river. Make yourself look sharp, you wrote the bloody thing, I'm only giving a brief feedback,” he exhales.
And breathes it in. This is Shouyou. They grew up together, and well, maybe nothing has to change. But Shouyou doesn't need to know that.
You are to me aspects I am missing and enrich me as a person. You are to me the very last stretch towards the end goal and the violets we hunted in middle school when we skipped out to see Aki-nii played. We spent years chasing the stars and wanting to rewrite the past, but I just want to be in the here and now with you.
“I agree that spending time together is important, absolute to the certainty of success, but,” he looks at their hands. They are not holding hands. That should change. In a bit.
“But?” Shouyou punches him.
He catches the fist with a palm, too much grace and familiarity in their conjoined lives.
“But I want to spend tomorrow and every day after that with you, and time may erase the past that we try to preserve, but I know that tomorrow can't take away the fact that I will be here, by your side.”
Shouyou tries to do a timeout gesture with a hand loosely in a romantic hand holding position, going slightly pink and red.
Kei waits. It's going to take a while. He himself isn't the picture of composure as well.
And then Shouyou drops to the ground, hand still in his grip.
“I'm banning you from using stupid sappy romance on me,” is the mumbled response. “It's bad for my heart.”
“Die mad about it, then,” is his knee jerk response and he got a tap to the back of the knee for that one.
“For someone so emotionally wholesome, how did you miss out on me entirely?”
“I'm smart in every aspect of my life except for the part that is my life.”
“I want to shame you but I realise that I am the exact same. Carbon copy. Thing 1, Thing 2.”
“It's okay. We can share the brain cell we have between the two of us and figure our way around.”
“Shouyou, that might be the most pragmatic and on brand confession I heard, as of date.”
“I think the kids nowadays, hold on, grab the seat, call it Romance.”
“I think you should spend less time on the internet.”
“And I think you should talk less, but here we are.”
“Due to personal reason, I will be dying mad about you gaining snark.”
“I will draft an appropriately aggrieved eulogy at the funeral reception.”
“Just bike properly, genius.”
“Whatever you say, nerd.”