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“Cut your hair, Seaweed!”
Captain Kirihara Akaya ignored the shout that came from beyond the fence. It was the first day of practice in the new school year which, of course, meant that Akaya’s former upperclassmen had to come jeer him. In particular, the one shouting was Niou… the one that up until a couple weeks before had sported a rattail, like that had ever been socially acceptable. There were rumors that he gave the remains of the rattie to Yagyuu as a symbol of… whatever. Akaya thought it was all super weird.
Akaya pulled back his hair into a sloppy bun, wrapping it up in a hairtie, and then turned to face Niou with his tongue stuck out. “Aren’t you trespassing?”
“Mm, that’s boring - make him captain and he’s suddenly responsible.” Marui leaned back as he spoke, resting his hands on the back of his head. Like Niou, he had trimmed up his hair near his last year of high school but it made him look well put together rather than just… slightly less of a mess.
Akaya pointedly ignored them, turning back to his team. “Alright! Third and second years, we have our first years joining us today. Let’s show them how we do it at Rikkai!” He got some enthusiasm from the team, sure, but the yelling behind him was somehow louder. He kind of hated his upperclassmen. “Get moving, what are you standing around for?” With that, the team dispersed, starting warm ups and stretches.
“Wow, Seaweed. There’s some newbie with hair longer than yours,” Niou drawled, leaning face-first into the fence and curling his fingers around the links of the fence. His lips squished into the fence as he spoke. “Who knew that was even possible.”
With a roll of his eyes, Akaya turned his attention to where his vice captain was speaking to the incoming new club members and processing their club forms. It wasn’t like the person Niou was referring to was hard to pick out from the crowd - for one, he stood a head taller than some of the other new members. He was wearing regular athletic clothes instead of the Rikkai uniform. That was not even to mention his fair skin and long, cornsilk blonde hair that was tied loosely over his shoulder. A little flutter tickled Akaya’s stomach before it was quickly dismissed by childlike glee.
“Uza-Uza!” Akaya’s feet moved faster than his brain as he darted over to the group of newcomers to give Liliadent Krauser a crushing hug. Akaya himself had hardly grown since he last saw Krauser, but he had filled out a bit. He was a self-professed hugging professional. And his English skill had grown, if he did say so himself. Confidently, he said in English, “I am not believing you here today!”
Slowly, almost hoarsely, Krauser replied, “Angel?” His body was stiff as a board, eyes wide, the Japanese summer heat coloring his cheeks bright red. “Your hair…”
Akaya pouted. “Not you, too… I just grew it out a bit.” He reached back to pull down the bun, lingering close to Krauser. His mass of twirling curls settled around his shoulders heavily. “Is it really that bad?”
“...No. No it’s good.” Krauser put his hand to his face, then to his side, then in his pocket as though he didn’t know what to do with it. “Just… good to see you, Angel.”
As much as Akaya could have just sat around chatting with Krauser for the rest of the day, he had a practice to run and the first years were looking at him like they didn’t know what they had gotten themselves into. His third year classmates, by contrast, were laughing at him.
...Niou and Marui on the other side of the fence were making kissy faces.
“...What did I say? Get to work!” Akaya barked, motioning back to the team that was not about to question him when he took that tone. When the attention was no longer on him, he looked back to Krauser with a bright smile. “We’ll talk later!”
“Yes. Let’s.” Krauser finally also smiled, a smile that just touched the corners of his lips, and his eyes grew a bit heavy. Somehow, Akaya felt himself unable to do anything but grin in return.
Liliadent paced his tiny Kanagawa apartment like a tiger in mid-afternoon. It was too small to be particularly suited to pacing, he found himself turning more often than he might like, but his feet moved with nervous energy.
Go back to Japan, he thought. Go enroll in Rikkai’s exchange program, this time. You’ll get to be on the team with Akaya. What could go wrong?
If he closed his eyes, he saw the huge smile, the doey green eyes, and the mass of curls begging to be touched. If he opened his eyes, he saw the same two walls of his tiny apartment in rapid succession. His options were to go to sleep and risk seeing more of that face or stay awake and risk going off the deep end.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, finally flopping into the small couch that occupied what was also his bedroom and kitchen. His legs comically draped over the edge of the couch that was just not made for a person of his stature.
It wasn’t like he was oblivious to attractive people - puberty was taking its course with him as it did with many boys his age. No, he had even had a couple “girlfriends” later in middle school, though it wasn’t really “dating” so much as “hanging with.” He didn’t think it had ever lasted more than maybe five or six weeks. However, if Akaya had been this attractive back when Liliadent was twelve, he was definitely oblivious. He had been far more preoccupied with trying to understand Akaya, back then (both existentially as well as just… literally).
He sighed, closing his eyes and flopping his arm dramatically over his eyes. Akaya wanted to talk later. He’d probably want to talk any time he could corner Liliadent. Liliadent found himself torn between the instinct to gravitate to him as well as to run away as fast as he could.
Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.
“Hey, Uza-Uza, I had a great idea!” Akaya leaned into the locker beside Krauser’s in the clubhouse, his arms loosely folded over his chest under the Rikkai logo. He, admittedly, kind of hated the high school uniform that doubled-down on the bee aesthetic (he could hear Hiyoshi and Zaizen in his head making buzzing sounds), but he also was twitching in excitement to see Krauser suit up in it. Rikkai was a symbol of pride to him and he couldn’t believe Krauser was going to be part of it.
Krauser paused, his arms half-in the uniform. He might be the only person on earth paler than Akaya, Akaya mused noticing just how fair skinned his shoulders and the thick, platinum blonde hair on his arms that was hard to see despite being so thick. Akaya didn’t get that kind of hair - he was a bit jealous, it was super masculine. “What’s that, Angel?” Krauser replied, but his eyes were focused intently on the interior of his locker.
Akaya leaned closer to look into the locker to see what Krauser was looking at and found himself face-to-face with Krauser who was staring at him wide-eyed. He seemed to be suffering from the summer heat, again. He was probably used to air conditioned buildings back home. It had to be hard to adjust. The startled Krauser leaned back a bit and Akaya also leaned away, confused. Was he not allowed to look?
“Uh…?” Akaya said, his mind having gone completely blank.
Krauser pulled the jersey over his head and started putting on the jacket. He couldn’t be too overheated if he was putting on the jacket.
“Oh… yeah.” Akaya cleared his throat, resuming leaning on the locker. “We should play doubles. No one would stand a chance. Especially not Hyoutei. Since we’re going to meet with them in Kantou, probably, I’ve been thinking…”
“Yes, I would love that, Angel.” Krauser interjected, yanking his tennis bag up from the floor. “See you out there.” He closed the locker abruptly and brushed past Akaya to make a very swift exit from the clubhouse. He nearly bowled over another member coming in the door as Krauser was exiting - given his size, he was like a human wrecking ball.
Akaya’s lips turned downward in a pout. “What the heck, man?” He grabbed his own tennis bag and ignored the strange looks he got from his teammates.
“Shit,” Liliadent swore, worrying that this was rapidly becoming his favorite word in the English language. As he thought, facing Akaya head-on was difficult and running away had clearly upset him. Akaya had more or less ignored him for the rest of practice except for the occasional worried look when he thought Liliadent wasn’t looking.
He was supposed to be in class. Instead, he sat on the steps that led up to the roof. Normally, the teachers didn’t give him too much trouble (though he had already failed a uniform check for his blonde hair and the way the uniform didn’t fit him quite properly). His classes were either entirely too hard or a joke and he was struggling to find the sort of school balance he was used to back home.
A weight sunk deep into his stomach when he heard the soft sound of footsteps coming up the stairs below him. He saw the head of curls turning the corner around the staircase before he saw the rest of him. Akaya looked surprised to see him, hesitating a moment at the landing before taking a few more steps to him.
“You found my spot,” He joked, sitting down on a step four down from Liliadent. Light from the windows highlighted his eyes with little reflections of the windows in the corners. “I come here to be worried about things. Which is like… basically always, these days.”
“Which class should you be in?” Liliadent relaxed, the worry over Akaya overtaking any of his own feelings of internal keysmashing. He moved down two stairs so his feet rested near Akaya’s shoulders.
“...English.” Akaya smiled sheepishly. If there was any class that he absolutely should not have been skipping it was English and they both knew it. “I just couldn’t stop thinking about this morning. Did I mess up?”
“Mess up? No.” In the moment, Liliadent felt his Japanese failing him again. How did he convey that it wasn’t something Akaya was doing, it was his stupid face. He both couldn’t accept that Akaya was completely obvious to the effect that he had on people, specifically Liliadent, but also didn’t want to be the one to break it to him.
You should know this, he thought furiously, powerless to stop Akaya from moving up two steps to sit next to him in the stairwell. How am I even supposed to begin?
Akaya dropped his head on Liliadent’s shoulder, leaning bodily into him. “Kay, but you better not just be saying that.” Akaya’s body was like a furnace, radiating its own heat that was equally soothing and unnerving,
But the flight reflex lost. Liliadent found himself resting his arm around Akaya, his hand finding its way to his logic-defying curls. His stomach churned anxiously and he couldn’t bring himself to actually look down at Akaya as he spoke. “You surprised me, is all. I didn’t expect… you, Angel.” If he said any more, he would definitely be exposing more than he was ready to.
He felt Akaya’s shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath under his arm. Too deep. He looked down at Akaya’s face to see that he was definitely one hundred percent asleep. It had always been his greatest talent to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, but this… this was really inconvenient.
Sighing, Liliadent resigned himself to his fate of waiting it out.
“So then guess I fell asleep. I don’t really remember much.” Akaya precariously held the phone between his cheek and his shoulder, laying on his back with his Switch held above his face. The sound of Off the Hook singing (in whatever squid language was called) on his screen mixed with the sound of general chaos coming through the phone on the other end of the line. He caught Jackal on a break during his shift helping out at his father’s restaurant on a very busy night.
“I think you can take him at face value, Akaya,” Jackal said reasonably. His advice was usually very reasonable. He was generally very reasonable. “If he tells you everything is okay, I’m sure it is.”
Of course what Jackal was saying made sense, but something was still tugging at the edge of Akaya’s mind. “But, if everything was okay he wouldn’t be acting so weird.” Akaya would be the first to admit that he and Krauser hadn’t always been the best at communicating which is what led to all the problems they had when they were younger, but this still didn’t feel right.
“I have to get back but - why don’t you just ask him” extremely reasonable Jackal suggested. “And hang in there, Akaya. You’re doing a good job.”
“Kay, I will. Thanks.” Akaya just let the phone slip below his shoulder as the call ended and stared listlessly into the brightly colored mayhem of Inkopolis. “Yeah, I’ll just ask him,” he told Marina and Pearl. “It’s that easy.”
Liliadent’s heart beat with a deep, steady pounding of a large drum. The tribal rhythm migrated from his chest to his throat, now once more cornered by Akaya in the clubhouse. This time, Akaya waited for the two of them to be the last ones in the shower after practice. His curls were limp and glued to his shoulders and face by the water, his skin flush from the heat.
“Did you hear me?” Akaya was getting impatient, it was clear in how his shoulders squared and his hand clenched into a fist. Liliadent couldn’t say with any sort of confidence that he had heard Akaya at all. Akaya took a half-step toward him - why did he have to be so physical about everything?
“No - I,” Liliadent stopped himself before he stuttered like an idiot, brushing his own hair down against his shoulder just to do something with his hands. All of his cool confidence seemed to be for nothing in the face of this wild spirit he was faced with.
Akaya’s eyes flickered with something unreadable and he came closer - closer than he really ought to be since his sense of personal space was frankly broken - and asked again, “I just wanna know what it is making everything so weird. I know you said I didn’t do anything wrong, but you’re just acting like I bit you.”
“You didn’t bite me, Angel.” Liliadent finally out of care to give, let out a long breath and explained, “You are beautiful. More beautiful than before. It is confusing.”
“...Huh?” Akaya sputtered, finally, blessedly, leaning back a bit. “Huh?”
Undeterred, Liliadent plowed forward. “I came here because I missed Japan. I missed playing with you, too. But that’s not why…” He swore under his breath, unable to make the words come out in Japanese the way he wanted. “But then you’re like this,” he motioned with his hand, “and I am supposed to be normal?”
“Like… like this?” Any of the wild confidence driving Akaya a moment before was replaced with wide-eyed confusion. “Because I’m ‘beautiful’?” His voice was progressively pitching up, almost to a shout.
“Yes. You are beautiful.”
Silence fell between them, interrupted only by the patter of the forgotten shower water on the floor. It lasted maybe only a moment, maybe for hours, but was broken by Akaya bolting as though running for his life.
Liliadent deflated. Well, that was supremely dumb.
“I think Uza-Uza was hitting on me,” Akaya sputtered, throwing off his shoes in the entryway as he entered his house, breathless from running the whole way home.
“Mm-hm,” Yukimura replied distantly.
“I think he likes me,” Akaya clarified, since his first burst of emotion had not had the desired impact on his former tennis captain. He had run out of upperclassmen who he would dare call with this sort of problem (Yanagi, Sanada, and Yagyuu were all super off the table).
“Oh.” Akaya waited but there was nothing else from Yukimura.
“Buchou, what do I do?” He made a huge motion with his hand not holding the phone, almost hitting the vase his mother had inconveniently placed on the table in the entryway. At some point, she had put it there to deter him from zooming in and out of the house at a million miles per hour. “I think he might be kinda ‘like that.’”
“Akaya,” Yukimura replied patiently, a hint of humor in his tone. “You’re kind of ‘like that,’ too. What’s the problem?” Akaya immediately regretted calling Yukimura - he knew this conversation was going to be quoted word for word to Yanagi and Sanada, just as he feared. “Why don’t you tell him he’s beautiful, too?”
Well. That kind of made sense, too. “Oh yeah,” Akaya said. “I could do that.”
Yukimura’s soft laughter rang through the phone.
The desperate knocking at his door startled Liliadent away from preparing his dinner. Well, preparing dinner was an overstatement - he had been staring listlessly into his fridge and considering take-out after that disaster of a conversation with Akaya. He went to the door as the knocking became more insistent. Through the peephole he could see that it was the last person he wanted to see - Akaya had somehow tracked down his address. Probably from his club form.
It couldn’t get any worse, right? He opened his door, bracing for the worst as Akaya nearly fell forward from the door suddenly opening. Before Liliadent could say or do anything, Akaya was speaking.
“You’re beautiful, too!” Akaya blurted out, his voice once again almost up to a shout. “Like, really, really beautiful.” His face was bright red, the color spreading to his neck and ears. He rested both hands firmly on Liliadent’s chest and his fingers curled up in his shirt. “I’ve always thought so. I want…”
Akaya’s words trailed off as Liliadent drew closer, placing a kiss on his forehead. “Thank you, Angel,” he said softly. He couldn’t stop the smile on his face or the way Akaya’s clumsy words made his stomach bubble uncomfortably. Until Akaya bit him. Right on the jaw. “What…”
“There,” Akaya said defiantly as he wrapped his arms around Liliadent and settled against his chest. “Now I bit you.”
“...And that’s how you ended up dating someone on the American team.” Kaidou let out a quiet breath, the disapproval clear in his face. Hiyoshi, by comparison, had put his face into his arm a good five minutes ago to attempt to control his laughter through Akaya’s wild tale. The only one that remained oddly silent was Zaizen… which was never a good sign.
“No sarcastic commentary?” Akaya fixed his gaze on Zaizen who was looking back at him from the top bunk… which was when it processed why he had been so quiet. There was a cellphone camera pointed right at him. “Oh my god, did you film that?” Akaya lept for the ladder to attempt to wrestle the phone away from Zaizen who, much like a cat, became liquid as soon as he tried to catch him and was almost impossible to pin down.
When he came away with the phone, triumphant, he immediately raced to delete the video… only to find that wasn’t what was up on the screen.
Take care of Kirihara. He’s dumb, but good, Zaizen sent over Line in English.
In return, Krauser assured him, I will.