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4 — SMILE ☺︎
The afternoon sun is bright and warm on Tetsurou’s face as he holds his mother’s hand and carefully toddles over the rocks. They’re uneven, some of them big and flat but others moving when he steps on them, but his mother doesn’t let him fall.
Tetsurou doesn’t know what he expects to find at the end of the breakwater, but it’s a bit boring. There’s a couple sitting at the end where the rocks slope off into the sea, and seagulls crying overhead, but it’s all a bit underwhelming. His mother points back toward the shore. “Look, Tetsurou, there’s our house.”
Tetsurou looks. Sure enough, there’s their house, the cheerful little mint green house just across the street from the beach. Tetsurou waves at it, wondering if their cat can see him from there. “Mama, look!” he shouts as he looks back down at his feet, chubby hand pointing at the word. “Someone drew a happy face!”
His mother crouches down next to him and guides his hand to trace over the word. Her fingers are warm. “Do you know what that says, Tetsurou?”
Tetsurou screws his face up in concentration before proudly announcing, “Smile!” And he grins toothily up at his mother.
“That’s right! Someone wanted to make your day a little brighter. Did it work?”
Tetsurou thinks for a moment. “Yeah, it did!” he exclaims, smiling again, until his cheeks start to hurt.
8 — FUCK
Tetsurou doesn’t get along with the kids in his class.
The other boys pick on Tetsurou for all sorts of reasons. He’s smart and finishes his work quickly, so they ask to copy off of him, and when he says no because he’ll get in trouble, they make fun of him. They make fun of him for being the youngest in the class and say that his hair is stupid, that his name sounds funny, and that the fuzzy Pikachu keychain he has dangling from his backpack zipper is for babies, even though at least three of them have Pokémon lunchboxes themselves. More often than not, it’s the same boy starting it, or at least egging the others on. James, Tetsurou knows, because it almost rhymes with pain and that’s what James is. A pain. A real pain in the butt.
And the girls…well, the girls say boys have cooties, so they won’t hang out with him, either.
Still, somehow, in the summer between third and fourth grade, he gets invited to James’s birthday party. When Tetsurou tells his mother, she says James might be maturing. Tetsurou doesn’t think so, though. James’s mom probably just made him invite the whole class. There are only twenty of them, after all.
So he walks the five minutes to the beach, where one folding table holds an ice cream cake and cupcakes and another holds a host of birthday presents, all wrapped in brightly-colored paper and shiny metallic gift bags. Tetsurou adds his own small gift—a LEGO airplane, found in the toy aisle of CVS—to the table and puts his towel on the sand. Most of the boys are over on the breakwater, crawling all over the rocks like a bunch of crabs, while the girls are splashing in the ocean.
A boy named Timothy looks up and spots him. “Hey, Tetsu, you can read anything, right?” he calls.
This has to be a trap, but still, Tetsurou perks up at the fact that he’s not immediately being mocked upon arrival. “Well…a lot of things.”
“Can you come read this? It’s a big word and none of us can read it.”
“Yeah, sure.” Tetsurou drops his bag next to his towel and joins the other boys on the rocks. “What’s the word?”
“That one.”
It’s a four-letter word that looks simple enough. F-U-C-K. It must rhyme with duck, or luck. “That’s easy!” Tetsurou says. “It says fuck!”
James immediately jumps off the breakwater and goes running toward his mother, Timothy hot on his heels. “Mom! Mom! Tetsu said a bad word!”
“What?” Tetsurou scrambles off the rocks and runs after him. “I didn’t say a bad word!”
“Yeah, he did! He said the F-word!”
James’s mother looks at Tetsurou with a frown. “It’s very mean to say that word to somebody, Tetsu. Apologize to James.”
“I didn’t say a bad word!” Tetsurou repeats. Wait, is it a bad word after all? How was he supposed to know that? Timothy asked him to read it. Why would Timothy make him say a bad word?
James starts to cry, and Tetsurou resists the urge to stick his tongue out at him and call him a tattletale. “Tetsu,” James’s mother says, putting an arm around her son, “I’m going to have to call your mother and tell her what you did.”
“But I—” Tetsurou sniffs, feeling hot tears sting his eyes. He tries to wipe them away before the other boys see, but they see. They always see him at his worst.
“Tetsu’s gonna cry!” Timothy taunts, and Tetsurou wants to scream at him that James is crying too, very loudly, he might add, so why aren’t they making fun of him? But instead, he mumbles out a “sorry,” grabs his gift off the table, and runs back home as fast as his legs can take him, listening to the jeers from the other boys fade away.
Later that night, he asks his mom if he can pick an ‘American’ name. He doesn’t know how to make the other boys stop teasing him, but he thinks that might be a start.
13 — ZACK IS GAY
There are two new boys in town, and they have eyes like his.
Tetsurou meets them at tryouts for the volleyball team on his very first day of high school. Timothy is there too, but Tetsurou isn’t afraid of him anymore. No, Tetsurou is tall now, towering over most of the boys at tryouts, including the new ones. One has swooshy silver hair and looks kind of skinny, like he might break if a volleyball came within ten feet of him, and the other is a little shorter, with neat dark hair. The one with silver hair is named Koushi Sugawara, but he likes to be called Suga, and the other one is Daichi Sawamura.
Tetsurou can’t begin to describe the giddiness he feels when he hears names like his own.
“And you?” The captain stands in front of Tetsurou, sizing him up, with the vice captain trailing behind him. “What’s your name, and have you played volleyball before?”
“Yeah, I’ve been playing with a junior team since I was nine, and I was captain of the volleyball team in middle school.” Tetsurou swallows, the weight of everyone staring at him making his mouth dry and his voice stifled.
“That’s good.” The vice captain makes some notes. “Sorry, what was your name again?”
Tetsurou opens his mouth to say his American name, but he catches Daichi and Suga looking at him, and he swallows it down. “My name is Tetsurou. Tetsurou Kuroo.”
“I thought you wanted people to call you Tyler,” Timothy says.
Tetsurou shoots him a glare and says it again, feeling his confidence start to grow. “My name is Tetsurou Kuroo. Tetsu is fine, too, but I don’t go by Tyler anymore.”
The vice captain pauses with his pencil hovering over the clipboard. “How do you spell Tetsurou?”
Tryouts go about as well as Tetsurou expect them to. Suga turns out to be a surprisingly sharp setter, and Daichi is brilliant with receives. Tetsurou himself does a pretty decent job of blocking the captain’s spikes, and even blocks most of Timothy’s, which gives him a fierce stab of pride, so he thinks he’ll make the team. At least he feels pretty good when he steps into the locker room and starts stripping down to shower.
He’s in the middle of toweling off his hair when Daichi walks up to him in a pair of athletic shorts and nothing else. Oh, man, Daichi is fit. Daichi is really fit. His shoulders are broad, abs lightly defined. And his thighs, holy shit. Tetsurou’s gotta ask what he does to get thighs like that. And despite all of that he’s sort of…cute, too, with his big brown eyes and nice smile.
These are all normal things to think about your potential future teammate, right? It doesn’t mean anything. Nothing at all, he tells himself as he watches Daichi’s wet hair drip onto his shoulders, the droplets sliding down his bare chest.
“Tetsurou?” Daichi says again, and Tetsurou realizes he’s completely tuned him out this whole time to stare.
“Hmm, sorry? I was thinking about, uh, the bio homework,” he lies.
“Oh, that’s okay. I was wondering if…well, my family just moved, and I wanted to know if you could show me around town today? Like, if you have time?”
Tetsurou smiles. “Yeah.”
“Suga?” Daichi calls across the locker room. “Tetsu’s gonna show us around town!”
“I can’t, I have to watch my sisters tonight,” Suga says with a frown. “But I call dibs on Tetsurou tomorrow!”
“You can’t call dibs on a person!”
“Just watch me, Daichi!” Suga singsongs with a little grin.
Timothy snorts as he grabs his gym bag and hoists it over his shoulder. “Gay,” he mutters on his way out.
Suga and Daichi pay him no mind, but Tetsurou stiffens.
He can’t remember when he first heard the word. But he does know that for a while, it meant stupid. It meant something embarrassing, something you didn’t want to be near, something weird. He’d never had it directed at him, though, until now. Had he noticed Tetsurou zoning out while looking at Daichi? Does he know?
“Well, he sounds like a delight.” Suga breaks the silence, sitting on the bench to tie his shoes. “At least he won’t make the team.”
Daichi furrows his brow. “How do you know that?”
“His basic technique sucks,” Suga says bluntly. “His receives were all over the place, his spikes are weak as fuck, and don’t get me started on his tosses. But you!” He points at Tetsurou. “You are a scheming bastard of a middle blocker.”
“Thanks?” Tetsurou can’t help but laugh, and he kind of can’t believe he ever thought Suga looked too delicate and sweet to play volleyball.
“It’s a compliment! I’m glad we’re on the same team. I wouldn’t want to try to get past your blocks.” Suga gives a wide, toothy smile as they all leave the locker room. “Tetsu, where do you live?”
“Ocean Avenue. You know the bed and breakfast across from the beach, the mint green one with all the flowers in front? That’s my family’s.”
Suga lights up. “That’s so cool! Me and Daichi live by the elementary school. But you’ll have to show me around tomorrow.” And with that, he turns left at the end of the street, leaving Daichi and Tetsurou to turn right.
“So, where should I take you first?” Tetsurou says. “What do you wanna see?”
Daichi pauses. “It’s kind of really touristy here, right?” he says. “Show me stuff that tourists wouldn’t know about. How about it?”
Tetsurou grins. “I think I can do that.”
So he takes Daichi downtown, where even after Labor Day weekend, the gift shops and bars are still bustling with tourists. He skips all the overhyped places and drags Daichi to a sweet shop tucked away in a narrow alley. “Mrs. Ellis makes the best saltwater taffy you’ll ever have in your life,” Tetsurou swears as they walk inside. “Hi, Mrs. Ellis!”
“Tetsu! You have a friend today.” The woman behind the counter beams at them, tucking a few loose strands of hair back into her bun. “Your usual?”
“Actually, I’m gonna let Daichi pick what he wants.” Tetsurou tugs Daichi to stand in front of the counter, pointing at the rows of jars of sweets lined up behind Mrs. Ellis. “You pick the flavors. I like them all.”
“Oh.” Daichi’s brow furrows in thought. “Can I try, um…chocolate, marshmallow, strawberry, blueberry, and caramel?”
“You got it.” Mrs. Ellis puts the requested sweets in a plastic bag, tying it off with a bit of curling ribbon. “Just take it, dear, we had a school group come in earlier and they almost wiped me out.”
“Thank you!” Tetsurou drops a few dollars in the tip jar anyway as they leave. “So, where are you from?” Tetsurou asks as Daichi picks at the ribbon to get to the candies.
“We just moved from a suburb twenty minutes from the city center,” Daichi tells him. “My dad got transferred to this school district, so that’s how we ended up here. He works in the middle school. And Suga’s my best friend. We met in first grade.” He lowers his voice. “There’s not a lot of Japanese people here, are there?”
Tetsurou shakes his head. “For a long time, it was literally just me and my mom. I got made fun of a lot, so I asked my mom if I could pick an American name.”
“That’s why that guy called you Tyler.”
“Yeah. I picked Tyler when I was eight because it sounded kind of like Tetsurou and it was easy to remember.”
“When did you go back to your real given name?”
“About two hours ago.”
Daichi pauses. “That’s when tryouts started.”
Tetsurou gives him a small, hesitant smile. “Hearing you and Suga use your names made me feel a lot better about mine.”
They reach the breakwater just as the sun begins to set and color the sky orange. “This is really cool,” he tells Daichi. “You can walk on the rocks, all the way out to the end.”
Daichi follows Tetsurou’s pointing finger. “What’s at the end?”
“Nothing.” Tetsurou laughs. “I thought there’d be something at the end, too. But it’s fun to walk on.”
“And I’m not gonna fall into the ocean and die?”
Tetsurou catches Daichi eyeing the single rope that serves as a handrail and laughs again. “Nah, you won’t die. Unless you hit your head on a rock when you fall. Let’s go!” Tetsurou leaves his backpack and gym bag on the sand, sprinting across the beach and clambering up on the rocks. Daichi follows him, a little slower, and holds onto the rope once he’s standing on the rocks.
“Oh, this isn’t bad,” Daichi says, shifting his weight back and forth, as though to ensure the rock won’t wobble under his feet.
“You gotta be careful, though. Some of them move if you step on them, so don’t fall.” Tetsurou hops along, stepping across the rocks without even thinking. He’s gone up and down the breakwater so many times, the safe routes are burned into his brain like the network of the streets.
“Hey.” Daichi stops again, tracing at some of the graffiti under his feet. “People write on the rocks?”
“Oh yeah, all the time. I don’t even notice it that much anymore. The town keeps trying to paint over it, like that’ll help.” Tetsurou chuckles, but Daichi doesn’t, staring at some writing under his feet. Tetsurou squints at the three words and feels his stomach drop.
Daichi’s frown deepens. “That’s shitty.”
Tetsurou could throw up. Great, so Daichi looks at ‘gay’ like it’s a dirty word, too. And to think, he seemed so nice. Tetsurou opens his mouth to say something, but all the words are stuck in his throat. How can he tell Daichi off for being a dick without revealing the secret feelings he’s been harboring for years? He can’t. There’s no way.
But then Daichi’s talking again. “If he is gay and he didn’t write it, then someone outed him. That’s not cool,” he says, rubbing at the graffiti with the sole of his shoe.
“He’s probably not,” Tetsurou says, trying to sound disinterested. “I mean, people have been saying that for years.”
Daichi hums. “This town isn’t cool with gay people, huh?”
Tetsurou shakes his head. “Nah. But I don’t think anyone around here is gay, anyway.”
Daichi shrugs. “You never know.” And then he keeps going, arms out to balance himself as he walks over the breakwater, leaving Tetsurou to wonder who he might know who’s actually gay.
16 — BOYS VBALL STATE CHAMPS 2012
Being on the varsity volleyball team is simultaneously the weirdest and best thing that’s ever happened to Tetsurou. For the first time, he feels like he actually belongs. He has friends he gets to see all the time, friends he fights with but always makes up with, friends he hangs out with after school to buy sweets and jump in the ocean and get burgers at midnight with.
He keeps growing, too, topping out at 6’2 by the end of his sophomore year, and he finds that his height combined with his status as a student-athlete makes him rather popular. Funny, how the same kids who made fun of him in elementary school seem to respect him now. But he can’t find it in himself to complain.
His third year on the team is like a dream come true. They make it to the state championship finals thanks to Suga’s setting, Daichi’s receives, their captain’s crazy strong spikes, and some nutty freshman who’s got a serve like a cannon. Daichi insists Tetsurou deserves some credit too, for his blocks, but Tetsurou always laughs and shrugs it off. He pretends Daichi’s compliments don’t mean anything to him, even though his face heats up and he feels like he wants to smile for seven days after Daichi praises him.
The final game takes place in a school all the way on the other side of the state, so they leave school after lunch the day before to make the drive. Tetsurou gives their coaches a lot of credit for somehow managing to endure a three-hour bus ride with twelve hormonal, energetic, chaotic teenage boys.
Finally, after a bus ride punctuated by Suga starting bus-wide sing-alongs of ‘The Wheels On The Bus’ and ‘The Duck Song’ during every lull in noise, the bus pulls up in front of a small hotel, and the boys spill into the formerly calm, clean hotel lobby. Tetsurou ignores the little skip in his chest when he’s told he and Daichi are rooming together.
Well, and Suga too. But that’s okay.
Daichi insists they take the stairs up to the third floor, since they won’t have time to do much practice tonight. Suga laughs in his face, grabs the room keys, and hops into the elevator, leaving Tetsurou to drag his bags up the stairs with Daichi.
Suga’s already inside and has claimed an entire bed for himself. “I kick in my sleep,” he says by way of explanation.
“So, I guess we’re sharing,” Daichi says, immediately flopping onto the other bed and holding his arm out to Tetsurou, who takes a running leap onto the bed with a shout, giggling as he crashes into Daichi. He’s warm and solid against Tetsurou’s side, body humming with his laughter, and Tetsurou has the fleeting, terrifying thought that he’d like to spend more time under Daichi’s arm like this. A lot more time.
Then Suga’s throwing a pillow at them and telling them to move over so they can all watch a movie together. Daichi reaches over Tetsurou and pushes him onto the floor. “You wanted your own bed so much, go be in it,” he says imperiously. “Also, since when did you kick in your sleep? You never used to do that.”
That implies they’ve shared a bed before. Tetsurou tries not to be jealous of that, knowing it was probably just as kids. He hopes. Suga scrambles back onto the bed, throwing himself on top of Tetsurou and Daichi, laughing at the ugly squawking noise Tetsurou makes.
“Get your elbow out of my ribs, bro!” Tetsurou whines, twisting away and hearing Daichi grunt under him.
“You’re on my arm, get off my arm!” Daichi huffs, wiggling his arm out from under Tetsurou’s body. “Suga, this is your fault!”
There’s a heavy knock on the door and then Coach Smith’s voice. “Boys, we’re not the only ones in the hotel! Keep it down!”
“Sorry!” they chorus before bursting into laughter again. Suga clambers off of them, and Tetsurou gasps in a breath.
“I live!” Tetsurou gasps dramatically, pointing a finger in Suga’s face. “Could you live with yourself if you killed your favorite scheming bastard of a middle blocker?”
Daichi’s face turns contemplative. “The state finals are tomorrow,” he says.
“Holy shit, right?” Tetsurou says. “The volleyball team’s never made it this far. Like, ever, in the history of this town.”
“Can we actually beat these guys? They’ve been state champs for the last five years straight.”
Suga scoffs. “Yeah, but they’ve never played us before!” He flops onto his back, spreading his arms out and smacking Tetsurou in the face. “They won’t know what hit them.”
Two days later, they return to school as state champions, and all day, they’re praised for representing their town well. There’s no practice after school, but Daichi approaches Tetsurou on the way home with a can of spray paint.
Tetsurou’s eyes widen. “Daichi, you bad boy! What are you planning?”
“How about it?” Daichi grins like an imp, and Tetsurou’s never been able to say no to him.
They go out to the breakwater, finding a wide rock with enough space to proclaim their victory to all who would walk by.
They take turns writing each word, snickering the whole time. Daichi finishes off the last 2 and stands up with his arms crossed, looking proud of their handiwork.
“Hell yeah!” Tetsurou shouts as he jumps in the air. “State champs! State champs!”
“We’re the best!” Daichi adds. Their voices echo across the water, and Tetsurou is sure the whole town can hear them, but they’re high on winning and doing something a little crazy. For all the graffiti Tetsurou’s seen here over the years, this is the first time he’s actually adding to it.
“I’m king of the world!” Tetsurou screams, dissolving into laughter and looking at Daichi to see what he’ll scream next.
The smile is gone, replaced by a cloudy expression that Tetsurou’s barely seen. Not even when the team was five points behind in the final set had Daichi made that face. “Daichi?” he prompts.
Daichi takes a deep breath, then another. Then: “I’m gay!”
Tetsurou freezes in place. “What?”
Daichi says it again, a little louder this time. “I’m gay!”
Tetsurou’s jaw drops, his brain turning to mush. ”I—that’s—“
“I know this town isn’t cool with gay people, but I can’t keep pretending,” Daichi explains quickly, cheeks red as he turns to Tetsurou and grabs him by the shoulders. “If you’re not okay with it, just tell me now, but we can’t be friends anymore.”
Tetsurou opens his mouth to say that no, he could never judge Daichi, that he’ll be his friend forever if Daichi lets him, but all that comes out is: “I’m gay, too.”
The words leave his lips in a quiet rush before he knows what he’s said. But Daichi’s staring at him with wide eyes, hands still on his shoulders, and then he reels Tetsurou in for a hug.
“I’m so proud of you,” Daichi whispers to him. Tetsurou wishes he had the words to say how much that means to him, how he never would have had the strength to admit it to himself if it weren’t for Daichi, how for the longest time, gay was a dirty word, something you didn’t want to be at all costs. How Daichi changed all of that for him.
But he doesn’t know how to say that, so he just wraps his arms around Daichi’s shoulders and hopes Daichi understands.
17 — SUGA, PROM? ♥ DAICHI
Daichi and Suga come out at school a week after the volleyball team’s victory at states. Daichi must look too intimidating to bully, so Suga gets the worst of it. Tetsurou thinks it’s because people perceive him as weaker because he’s got a softer look about him. The girls say they shouldn’t have been surprised—“I mean, just look at him”—and the boys call him all sorts of derogatory names, sometimes directly to his face. But Suga keeps his head held high through it all, somehow.
Timothy, the prick, thinks it’s a good idea to go after Suga after volleyball practice one day as they’re leaving the gym. Tetsurou sees red when he sees Timothy lunge at his friend and throws his bag to the ground, ready to jump in, but Daichi puts a hand on his shoulder to keep him back. And they watch as Suga calmly punches Timothy in the gut, whispers something into his ear, and then picks up his bag, leaving Timothy in a crumpled heap on the concrete. “Ready to head home?” he asks with a bright smile, like he didn’t just incapacitate a guy six inches taller than him.
Tetsurou wishes he could be brave enough to come out with Suga and Daichi. He envies Suga’s easy grace and snappy comebacks, and admires Daichi’s stoic confidence, and wishes he could be more like them. But they’re different. They’re not like Tetsurou, who’s grown up in this tiny shitty tourist town and has to live with the expectations and reactions of—well, everyone who’s ever known him. Every time he thinks he can work up the courage, he overhears another less-than-savory comment about Daichi or Suga, sees some invasive graffiti on the bathroom wall, and he pulls back.
He’s afraid.
Suga and Daichi assure him that it’s okay, that there’s no pressure to come out soon or even ever, that he can wait until he’s in college and far away from this town, that he should do it when he feels like it’s safe to. But is there ever really a safe time or place? Tetsurou would rather do it sooner rather than later, because he thinks keeping it to himself for the rest of his high school career might hurt more than whatever abuse might stem from coming out.
Several months later, Tetsurou comes out in a Facebook post that he drafts and re-drafts at least six times and finally posts over spring break. Daichi sits with him in his living room, whispers kind encouragements into his ear and holds him after he presses post and slams his laptop shut and starts to shake.
The reactions aren’t all positive, but they’re not all horrible, either. The women who volunteer in the town library keep asking him when he’ll get a girlfriend and try to set him up with their granddaughters. He’s picked last in gym class despite being a state champion athlete, and the other boys make a show of putting distance between them in the locker room afterward. A freshman on the volleyball team, their backup libero, goes to Coach Smith and tells him he’s not comfortable having Tetsurou on the team. Tetsurou only finds out about this when Coach Smith sends the team an email informing them that said libero has been removed from the team and that any sort of discrimination will not be tolerated.
Only Daichi knows that he calls crying after reading the email once, twice, just to make himself believe it.
And his mother—his mother hugs him just the same as she always has, and tells him she loves him and wants him to be happy.
At the start of their senior year, Suga tells Tetsurou and Daichi that he wants to start a GSA club at school. Daichi agrees, but Tetsurou isn’t so sure. They’re the only gay kids in school. Who would join?
But Suga starts the club, gets the volleyball coach to be their advisor, and finds an empty room to meet in at lunchtime, and the first meeting draws thirty-one people, all of whom stay on as permanent club members. Suga’s over-the-moon delighted and Tetsurou could cry at knowing that this many people support them.
Now that senior prom season is in the air, Tetsurou has made up his mind to finally make his move. He thinks he has a shot. He’s been hanging out with Daichi one-on-one a lot lately, and there’s no better time to confess than prom season, right? He’s armed with a backpack full of cans of spray paint and he’s ready to declare his intentions to the world. He climbs up on the breakwater, practically sprinting to the end—and stops short.
The six rocks at the end already have writing on them, bright red letters declaring someone else’s intentions.
He turns on his heel and runs home, and for a split second he’s back to being eight years old, running away from James’s birthday party because of graffiti he read on the breakwater, trying his hardest not to cry.
He stumbles through the side door and trips over a pair of shoes left in the doorway to fall flat on his face, and he just lies there, heels of his hands pressed to his eyes like he can hold the tears back that way. That’s how his mother finds him, curled up in a ball on the living room floor, and she takes him in her arms and strokes his hair and promises that he’ll be okay.
The next day, when he walks into homeroom and spots Daichi and Suga talking, he almost sticks his earbuds back in so he doesn’t have to hear whatever happy couple bullshit they’re probably saying to each other.
But Suga spots him and grins, waving him over. “Tetsurou! We have good news!”
Tetsurou already knows what the news is, and it’s only good for two out of three of them. But he shoves the feelings down, pastes on his usual lazy grin, and walks over. “What’s up?” He’s proud that his voice doesn’t waver.
Suga beams. “Daichi asked me to prom!”
Daichi’s smile is a bit more shy. “And he said yes.”
Tetsurou forces out a laugh. “Well damn, you don’t have to make it sound like you’re getting married.” Neither of them laugh. Tetsurou sighs. “I’m kidding. You guys are gonna be really cute at prom.”
And objectively, they will. They’re both attractive people, Daichi with his broad-shouldered manliness and Suga with his pretty features. And they’ve known each other for ages, way longer than Tetsurou’s known them, and Daichi always talks about Suga even when he’s hanging out with Tetsurou, so really, Tetsurou should have seen this coming.
God, he wishes he could be mad. He should be mad. He should be mad at Suga for capturing Daichi’s heart first, mad at himself for waiting so long and letting the chance pass him by. But…all he feels is emptiness.
They’re made for each other, he thinks as he slides into his desk and lets his head flop on the desk as the speaker crackles to life with the morning announcements. They’re so totally made for each other.
Tetsurou spends his senior prom night in his bedroom looking through the brochures that had arrived in the mail with his college acceptance letters and wondering if he should go out-of-state.
20 — IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO START OVER.
Tetsurou returns home for Thanksgiving break during his junior year of college to some surprising gossip.
He overhears it when he stops by Mrs. Ellis’s candy store, needing the familiar sticky sugar fix he just can’t get in New York City, and spots two of the library ladies whispering to each other on a bench.
“—broke up, if you can believe it,” one of them says.
The other scoffs. “I can. It was never going to last, anyway. It just goes to show that kind of relationship isn’t made to last. Now that they’ve grown out of those silly teenage hormonal feelings, they can find themselves nice girls to settle down with…”
Tetsurou’s heart catches in his throat. No one else came out—the town gossip mill would have told him as soon as it happened—so that had to mean…
He bursts into the shop, blurting out the question to Mrs. Ellis. “Did Daichi and Suga break up?”
She startles, loudly dropping a case of taffy boxes. “Well, good afternoon to you, too, Tetsu.”
“Sorry. But I just heard Mrs. Healy and Mrs. Simpson talking outside…” Tetsurou stoops down to scoop up the boxes.
Mrs. Ellis gives him a sad little smile. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?” she says as he stacks the boxes back in the case. “I really thought they were good together. Made for each other, even.”
Tetsurou had thought the exact same thing. “Recently?”
“I only heard today, so Daichi must have told his parents less than two days ago. You and I both know how fast gossip spreads around here.”
Tetsurou just hums in acknowledgement. “You know…I’m not too hungry after all. Maybe I’ll come back after dinner.”
Mrs. Ellis waves him off as he leaves the store, wrapping his scarf tighter around his neck. The old ladies from the library are gone, most likely driven inside by the accelerating winds. Tetsurou stops by the burger place, buys his usual, and takes the bag out to the end of the breakwater.
Back when he was four, the end of the breakwater was boring. In his adolescence, it was a place to hang out and chat with his friends without being overheard. Now, it’s a refuge.
New York City is…well, it’s New York City. It’s crowded and frenzied and relentless in its energy, and he loves that, loves that it’s a challenge for his usually quick mind to struggle to keep pace there. But sometimes, in the small hours of the morning, he lies in his dorm bed with his feet hanging off the end of the mattress and misses the sound of the ocean, misses the sharp sting of saltwater against his cheeks.
He sits cross-legged on the rock, laying his burger and fries out in front of him like a lonely little picnic for one, and takes a bite. Yes. This, out here—this is home.
He polishes off the burger in silence, watching the dull grey waves lap at the rocks, and reaches for the fries.
“Hey, Tetsu.”
Tetsurou drops the entire uneaten carton of fries into the ocean.
There’s a warm chuckle from behind him, and Tetsurou turns around to see— “Hey, Daichi.”
Tetsurou hasn’t seen Daichi Sawamura since the summer after high school graduation. When the end of August arrived, Tetsurou packed his bags for New York City and never looked back. He hasn’t spoken to Daichi since, either, always managing to avoid him when they were both home for break.
Daichi looks more or less the same, just more…grown up. He’s grown an inch since high school, and he’s sporting the stubble of a man who hasn’t shaved in a day, but he’s still the broad-shouldered guy that Tetsurou had a gay panic over on his first day of high school. “It’s been a while. Mind if I join you?”
“Yeah, of course.” Tetsurou folds up the paper bag. “I’d offer you fries, but…” He motions to the water, where a few dozen fish have swarmed the fries sinking into the ocean.
“Your hair hasn’t changed.”
Tetsurou laughs, running a hand through what’s become a permanent bedhead. “It’s hopeless at this point. Best I can do is try to make it look cool instead of messy.”
“It looks good. You look good.”
Tetsurou doesn’t know what to say to the compliment, so he changes the subject. “Uh, sorry about you and Suga.”
Daichi looks surprised. “How did you know?”
“The library ladies. I heard them talking outside of Mrs. Ellis’s.” Tetsurou manages a small smile. “Don’t tell me you forgot how fast the rumor mill works around here.”
Daichi laughs, and something in Tetsurou’s chest unclenches to let him breathe. Of course talking with Daichi wasn’t weird, because Daichi was too nice of a person to make it weird. He didn’t hold grudges. Tetsurou, on the other hand, could be enormously petty, a trait that wasn’t helped by his exponentially pettier college roommate, Eita. “I guess I did. I only told my parents last night.”
“What happened?” Tetsurou asks, fully aware of how nosy that sounds. “You know, if you wanna talk about it.”
Daichi sighs, running a hand through his hair. He’s let it get longer, Tetsurou notes. “I wish I knew for sure,” he says eventually. “I think the distance was hard. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, but I just…it was hard, knowing that if he was having a bad day I couldn’t just go and hug him, and barely having the money to come home for breaks, let alone to visit each other.” Daichi shakes his head with a bitter little laugh. “We couldn’t make it work. It was just too much.”
If Daichi and Suga couldn’t make it work, then what hope was there for anyone else? “You guys always seemed so…perfect. Like you had it all together.” Tetsurou sighs, “I know things aren’t always what they seem, but I really thought you guys were it for each other.”
“Everyone did.”
“How long ago?”
“The end of the summer.”
Tetsurou goes quiet. It was a testament to just how disconnected he and Daichi had become, that he was finding out this news two months later, and from the town gossips, at that. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be.” Daichi cracks a smile. “He’s already moved on, anyway. He told me he’s dating some guy in his sociology department.”
“That was fast,” Tetsurou says without thinking, then winces once he realizes how that might sound. “I mean—sorry, that was kinda rude to say.”
“No, you can say it. I was kind of sad to hear it, too. But…” Daichi sighs, rolling his shoulders back like he used to do when he was stressed on the court. “It’s fine. We said we’d be adults about it, so.”
“But that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“No, not really.”
Tetsurou crumples up his empty burger wrapper, sparing one more thought for the fallen carton of fries. “I should probably head back. How about it?”
Daichi offers him a hand to help him up; after a moment’s consideration, Tetsurou takes it. Daichi’s hands are rougher now, new calluses marring his palms. Tetsurou doesn’t ask.
The graffiti on the breakwater changes as often as the tides, always something new being added or scribbled out. Tetsurou still reads it all, no matter how many times he’s walked over it. It feels like a better record of the town than anything the gossips say—this is where the real feelings come out.
Today there’s a fading Homecoming proposal, a series of initials in hearts, and an elaborate drawing of Obama under an umbrella. And—
“I like that,” Daichi murmurs, pausing to tap at a line with his foot.
“It’s true,” Tetsurou says.
“Yeah, but it’s something people forget all the time.”
Tetsurou peers at him from under a lock of hair that’s flopped into his face. “You should remember that, too.”
Daichi looks back at him, blinking at him for a moment before he smiles. “Yeah. I should.”
25 — MARRY ME?
Tetsurou’s bare hands are covered in red paint by the time he’s done, but he’s proud of his handiwork, if he says so himself. The seven simple letters stare back up at him, a little messy but still legible enough to declare his intent clear as day. He hums out a quiet laugh to himself as he grabs an old rag to wipe his hands off; the last time he’d planned to write anything on the end of the breakwater, he’d been beaten to the punch, had let his chance slip through his fingers. But not anymore.
Suga and Daichi have been broken up for five years now, and Tetsurou’s been lucky to be with Daichi for four of them. As hard as it was, he’d waited, not wanting to seem like he was taking advantage of the situation. So he carried on as normal, offering his friendship and nothing more, until Suga, of all people, called him out on holding back.
“You should ask Daichi out,” Suga had said when they were all home the summer between junior and senior year. “I mean, you guys already text all the time and hang out a lot, and there’s history there, so just do it.”
Tetsurou frowned. “Now’s not the time. I have to go back to New York for my internship next week.”
“If you keep thinking now isn’t the time, then the time is going to pass you by.” Suga stopped, one foot on the breakwater, one in the sand. “Me and Daichi were better off as friends, so I know what it’s like to go from being friends to dating, and I know it doesn’t always work like it does in the movies. So believe me when I tell you that I think you and Daichi would be good together.”
Even with Suga’s blessing, Tetsurou waited a few more months, until Christmas rolled around and he and Daichi were both in town for the holidays. The transition into dating happened over shared cups of hot chocolate, frantic trips to the grocery store for extra ingredients, keeping hordes of little cousins and nieces from getting into the Christmas cookies, and Suga pushing them both under the mistletoe.
It’s frigid even for mid-January, and the wind sends the sea spray into Tetsurou’s face with every crash of the waves, but he can see Daichi making his way down the breakwater, and he can’t help but smile. Gone is the timid fourteen-year-old who’d clung to the ropes to inch his way across the rocks. This Daichi is confident in his steps, focusing more on keeping his scarf wrapped around his neck than where his feet are falling.
Tetsurou meets him in the middle, holding a hand out. Daichi takes it, squeezing tightly. His hands are freezing, raw and red from the harsh winds. “Hey, Tetsu, you know I love you, but it’s stormy out and the weather guy said there’s a nor’easter blowing in tonight so we should probably get inside soo—”
Tetsurou twists his hands in Daichi’s coat lapels and cuts him off with a quick kiss. “This won’t take long. I have something to show you.”
He leads Daichi across the rocks to the end of the breakwater, letting him see the two words spray-painted on the last rock.
“I was planning to have a whole thing, like a picnic and wine and something really cute and romantic and shit, but then the weather got gross but I didn’t want to wait for a clear day because all I did before was wait, you know?” Tetsurou begins, already feeling his carefully-prepared speech run away from him. “Like, I was gonna ask you to prom way back in high school, but we all know how that turned out. And I’m not mad about it! Because I think we got everything right in the end. I think you’re the right one for me and I like to think I’m the right one for you. And I’ve been thinking about how nice this last year has been, waking up in my favorite place in the world with my favorite person in the world, and I was kind of hoping you’d let me keep doing that. For a while. So…” Tetsurou reaches into his pocket and pulls out the small velvet box, popping it open. “How about it?”
27 — IT WAS HERE WHERE I FIRST LEARNED TO BREATHE.
The wedding is a small ceremony on the beach across from Tetsurou’s childhood home. Tetsurou’s mom cries. Daichi cries. Tetsurou cries. Suga cries. Suga’s fiancé Keiji cries. Everyone cries.
Tetsurou steps up on the breakwater and holds a hand out to his fiancé. No, his husband, now. Daichi smiles up at him, the gold ring glinting in the rays of the setting sun as he climbs onto the breakwater next to him.
“Remember the first time I took you up here?” Tetsurou says with a laugh. “You were clinging onto that rope like you’d die if you took your hand off of it.”
“I was young and stupid then. A lot’s changed.” Daichi’s focus is on the horizon, lips twisted in a thoughtful smile.
“Right. Like how you married me, so now you’re just old and stupid.”
Daichi laughs. “We’re not that old.”
“We complain about property taxes and watch Wheel of Fortune after dinner every weeknight. We’re getting old.” But he smiles softly anyway, tilting their hands so he can see the rings again. He’ll be staring at these for the rest of his life, he can just tell.
The photographer is trailing them at a distance to take ‘candid’ shots, but the farther they walk, the soft click of the shutter begins to fade away. Tetsurou takes Daichi to the end, where he’s written something just for the two of them to see.
“Back when we were planning the wedding, I was looking up quotes about the ocean,” Tetsurou says. “You know, for the signs and stuff. And there was one that I really liked, because it made me think about you.”
“Which one?”
“We didn’t use it for any of the signs. I never told you what it was. But I’m telling you now.” He squeezes Daichi’s hand and points down, at the neat letters stenciled into the rock. “I don’t know who said it. I think it was supposed to be about the ocean. But it made me think about the day we met.”
“Volleyball tryouts,” Daichi says with a nostalgic grin. “I’d just moved.”
“It was the first day I used my real name with someone who wasn’t my mom in five years.” He’ll never forget the feeling of standing there in that gym, how hearing names like his own brought a pang to his chest.
“And then you took me here and I was clinging onto the rope like I’d die if I took my hand off it,” Daichi adds. “Yeah. I remember that.”
“You also basically told me it was okay to be gay,” Tetsurou says, dropping his voice to a whisper. “I don’t know if you remember that or if you even knew. But that was the first time I ever heard something positive. Something that wasn’t saying ‘gay’ like a joke or something bad.”
Daichi pauses. “We came out to each other here, too,” he says. “After we won states and we left the graffiti. I told you I was gay and when you didn’t say anything, I thought it meant you were homophobic. But then you said you were gay too.”
“And you said you were proud of me.” Tetsurou sniffs, coughing out a laugh to distract from the tears springing to his eyes. “That’s why…that’s why the quote made me think of you. Of us. Because it was here, with you, that I felt like I could breathe for the first time.”
Daichi reaches up and cups Tetsurou’s face in his hands. “Tetsu.” His voice is soft, barely audible over the sound of the waves lapping at the rocks.
“I don’t know who or where I’d be if I never met you,” Tetsurou whispers. “But I’m so happy I don’t have to know.”
Behind him, he can hear the shutter sound that means the photographer’s caught up with them. He pays her no mind. He holds Daichi close as they watch the sun disappear, and in the last flashes of light, he smiles.