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It started off, like most of Keiji’s spur of the moment ideas, as a stupid mistake.
He wrote the poem down on a small notecard (the ones that don’t even require an envelope), put down Sakusa’s address for fan-mail on the front, and shoved it beneath the ignored month-old manuscripts in the top right drawer of his deck.
Keiji never really understood why Sakusa has an address dedicated solely for receiving mail from fans. It seems like such a celebrity thing to do, but knowing Sakusa, it probably has something to do with the security surrounding his mail. Or maybe it’s so he could let the mail pile up and just ignore it. What Keiji also doesn’t quite get is why he knows the address by heart and wrote it on the envelope without needing the assistance of a search engine.
“I sent him stuff,” Keiji says, breathless, almost the first second after Iwaizumi answers his call.
He throws himself onto the couch, leans his head back on the cushion, and attempts to calm himself down. Calling Iwaizumi is a good idea. It’s his best one ever, because Iwaizumi’s brain works in rationale. He can think things through and put processes into place and regulate Keiji’s thoughts back to clarity.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Visible World. Handwritten. On a card.”
Iwaizumi has the audacity to laugh in his face, well, alright, not directly in his face, but his old roommate’s consistent and breathless chuckling coming through the phone speaker holds the same mocking sentiment.
Keiji changes his mind within a second. Calling Iwaizumi about this situation can be added to the list of his stupid, brainless, idiotic, ideas. How could Keiji forget that as much as Iwaizumi can walk him through an entire dilemma, he also enjoys making fun of his friends and watching them suffer?
Iwaizumi Hajime.
The perfect emotional sadist.
“You sent Sakusa Kiyoomi ‘Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow flat on the wall’? Are you okay?”
Keiji says nothing, unable to piece something together as a response, because, no, he isn’t really okay and he doesn’t know why he ever thought it was okay to send Sakusa something so, for lack of better phrasing, cheesy.
Not to say that Richard Siken is cheesy by any means–he isn’t—but the act in of itself is more romcom-esque than Keiji wants to vocally admit.
At Keiji’s silence, Iwaizumi laughs again and if Keiji was telling him this in person, he knows Iwaizumi would’ve shoved his shoulder and forced him to say something by now. “I’m being serious, Akaashi! Are you alright?”
“I’m being serious, too,” Keiji grumbles, “fuck you.”
“Why don’t you just tell him you like him?” Iwaizumi asks. Keiji can hear some faint grumbling in the background and can only expect that its Oikawa being nosy as all hell.
Sometimes, (most of the time really), Keiji hates his friends.
But why doesn’t he tell Sakusa?
What would it change?
Nothing much, probably. It’s not as if Keiji stands a chance in being someone in the realm of Sakusa’s affection—all he’ll have to put up with is a rejection. He can handle that, sure.
Keiji’s entire life is composed of rejections, anyway. A huge fraction of his time is spent crossing out words, tossing crumbled manuscripts in the trash with disappointment heavy in his hands. As an editor, Keiji lives to reject. He turns down projects, rejects edits, and essentially forces his writers to start all over.
Sakusa telling him the truth wouldn’t be any different from that.
Keiji will have to start over, sure. He’ll have to find someone else to like, someone else to stay up until early in the morning thinking about and handwriting Richard Siken poems for.
A part of him doesn’t want that, though.
Somewhere, way deep in the depths of his heart, he doesn’t want to deter the path of his attraction. He likes Sakusa, for some undiscovered reason. He’s hardly talked to the guy outside of after-parties that Bokuto has dragged him to in the past, and their conversations have lasted for around five minutes at best. Keiji is positive that Sakusa doesn’t want to hear about literature or editing manga or anything that Keiji has to say, actually.
“Because I’m not an idiot,” he answers, sitting up straight, “that’d be suicide.”
Iwaizumi huffs through the phone, “What’s suicide is you keeping all these pent up emotions to yourself.”
Keiji’s about to respond, but Iwaizumi doesn’t stop there, “All writers are the same. Tying feelings up with rope, then setting them on fire to make phrases out of the ash. You’re being stupid, Keiji.”
He can’t help but roll his eyes at that. “Says the poet making stupid metaphors.”
“It was a great metaphor and you’re just mad that I’m right,” Iwaizumi says, “plus poets and writers aren’t the same. Poets work through their emotions by writing poems to people. You’re just copying lines that reflect what you feel.”
It truly is a stupid metaphor, one that hardly makes any sense, and if Keiji had his red gel pen in his hand, he’d slash right through Iwaizumi’s words.
“I’m not even a writer, technically,” Keiji grumbles. He has a few pages of an open-ended manuscript and scattered poems saved on his computer (he wants to say that he's working on a collection, but hardly), and he doesn't believe that’s enough to classify himself as a writer–especially when in comparison to Iwaizumi, who has a few collections out on the shelves.
“Which makes you even more susceptible to clogging yourself with pent up emotions. All that reading and reading and reading with no outlet,” Iwaizumi sighs dramatically, then falls quiet for a moment.
“Just tell him.”
Just tell him , Keiji repeats in his head.
As if it’s that easy.
As if Keiji’s going to take advice from someone that spent nearly five years pining over the same asshole and didn’t go through various times of—
No, no that won’t work, and he isn't going to listen to Iwaizumi at all. Keiji will have to do this his own way.
“Bye, Iwaizumi.”
He hangs up before his old roommate has the chance to say another word.
—
It’s not even three days later that Keiji sends Sakusa another card.
This time with only a quote, although far more on the nose, rather than a full poem—because somehow that’s less embarrassing. At least, it feels less embarrassing; that is until Keiji returns to his apartment from the post office, flops back onto his bed, and realizes that he’s only given Sakusa Kiyoomi one line—a line that says; “Even before you touched me, I belonged to you; all you have to do was look at me”.
And even though the quote is real, it reflects the genuine nature of his situation, it’s a fucking obscure thing to send someone anonymously.
Keiji nearly jumps out of bed, reaching for his jacket and shoes to throw them on and run back down to the post office, to get the card before it’s sent off and burn it—burn it to hell.
But when he trips over his own two feet and tumbles onto the floor, feels the bruises already starting to bloom mid-springtime on his calves and elbow, Keiji knows that it’s a lost cause.
The card.
A chance with Sakusa.
Life.
He sits on the floor, holding his half-on untied shoe in his right hand, and starts to cry.
—
Other notes get sent, all with varying quotes.
Siken, Glück, Neruda, O’Hara, the list doesn’t end.
Sometimes he’s drunk when they get tipped into the mailbox, other times he’s entirely sober and shouldering his phone while talking to Bokuto, tears brimming his eyes.
“You’ll never tell him, right?” he asks one early morning after telling his best friend the entire ordeal—his feelings, the notes, the way Keiji doesn’t want to feel anything for Sakusa at all.
“Never,” Bokuto answers, mid-yawn.
“Okay.”
“Keep sending them, by the way.”
Keiji raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
“He likes ‘em. Keeps bringing ‘em up.”
It only takes hearing that for Keiji to run to his desk, rip a random sheet of paper out of a notebook and start writing.
I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world . — O’Hara.
Keiji runs down to the mail drop-off box in his apartment building, completely barefoot, and sends it off.
—
When Bokuto invites him to a post-match dinner, Keiji considers drowning himself in the shower. He doesn’t, much to his own surprise, and instead gets ready for the dinner. He considers putting on makeup, a little eyeliner and light foundation, but opts out of that decision—Bokuto will definitely call him out if he shows up looking anything but post-work stressed.
Keiji shows up to the small corner-city restaurant ten minutes late, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and his navy cardigan slightly off his shoulders.
“You made it!” Bokuto yells, jumping up from his seat, when Keiji makes his way over to the table.
Usually, Keiji would sit next to Bokuto when meeting the team out for dinner, but there’s something off about the way Hinata and Atsumu are sheltering his best friend. The stupid grins that they have on their faces. The empty seat right next to Sakusa.
It’s a setup.
It’s an absolute fucking setup.
“I made it,” Keiji says, narrowing his eyes at Bokuto before slowly (carefully) sitting next to Sakusa.
Bokuto winks and Keiji really wants to kick him under the table.
“So, what are ya currently workin’ on, ‘kaashi?” Atsumu asks once Keiji is settled in his seat, leaning forward on his elbows, chin perched on his cupped palms.
“A poetry collection,” he answers, staring down at his food.
“Oh?”
“About what?” Hinata perks up, bouncing in his seat a little too hard and making the table shake.
“They’re just scattered poems right now,” Keiji says, “I’m trying to work towards a central theme of foxes, though.”
Atsumu tilts his head a little to the right, “Foxes?”
“In regards to emotions, yes.” Keiji looks up, insecurities slowly falling behind the shield of his passion for writing. “They like to sneak their way into the crevices of a heart, into the trickles of blood within your veins. Foxes are sneaky, as is love. That’s what I want to write about.”
A strange silence settles over the table. Bokuto glances over at Atsumu, then to Hinata, then to Keiji—who has already dropped his eyes back down to his food. Embarrassment washes over him quickly, running down from his temple to the tips of his toes. He shouldn’t have said anything. They don’t genuinely care about his writing—this all contributes to the big set up and Sakusa hasn’t said anything once. Keiji wants to get up, walk out of the restaurant, and never talk to any of the people at the table again.
That is until the sound of chopsticks hitting glass fills the silence.
“That sounds really nice, Akaashi,” Sakusa says, looking over at Keiji. His eyes shine with interest, with honesty. “I’m excited to see the finished product.”
Keiji nearly chokes on his own spit, but manages to sputter out, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Sakusa says, “I’ve actually been receiving a lot of poetry lately from a fan. It’s been really intriguing. Maybe you know some of the poets?”
“Most likely.”
This isn’t happening. This whole thing.
Dinner.
Poetry.
Foxes.
Keiji refuses to believe that this is actually happening. There’s no way in the world that Sakusa knows that it’s him—he wants to, needs to , believe that.
“There was this one line that really stuck out to me, let me try to get it right.”
“Okay.”
Sakusa holds his chin for a moment, glances up towards the ceiling, then nods. “Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined”
Keiji nods and acts as though he’s pondering about the poet. He knows exactly who it is, but the quick response would be too easy, it’d send too many signals, it’d tell Sakusa that he knows exactly who wrote that quote because Keiji is the one who sent it to him.
“Oh right,” Keiji says, “that one. It’s Ocean Vuong.”
“Do you know the name of the poem? I’d love to read the whole thing.”
“I can’t remember off the top of my head, sorry,” Keiji answers with a shrug.
He knows exactly where it’s from. It’s from Vuong’s novel, not from his poetry collection. But, again, Keiji can’t give off too much, he can’t give Sakusa even a glimpse at who might be sending those letters.
Because that would be the end of everything. It would be the collapse of Keiji’s mental solace, which he hardly has to begin with. It would kill him, absolutely destroy him from the deepest point of his gut. He can’t give in like that. He has to keep this a secret, even if Bokuto did tell Hinata and Atsumu about the entire thing, even if those three idiots set this entire thing up just to get Keiji to confess.
He won’t confess.
He won’t say a goddamn thing.
Because Sakusa isn’t going to find out.
“If you ever remember, let me know,” Sakusa says before turning back to his food.
“Of course.”
A sharp pain spreads across Keiji’s calf and he snaps his head up to see Bokuto staring at him with wide eyes. He tilts his head towards Sakusa a couple of times and kicks him again, a little less power behind the attack this time.
“What are some of the uh… the other quotes you’ve gotten? Y’know, since I write poetry and study it, I’d probably be able to point you to a lot of works that you might like. If you’re really interested in poetry, that is, you might not be, but—”
Keiji doesn’t even try to fight the blush that starts to coat his cheeks—there’s no point in it. His entire face heats up at the realization of his impertinent and nonstop rambling. The more he talks, the worse things get for him.
"I'll have to find some of the notes and run the quotes by you."
"Alright."
The rest of the meal passes in awkward silence. Nobody even bothers to try and break it—Keiji is more than positive now that this is pointless, a waste of time, a waste of heart.
On the way out of the restaurant, Keiji punches Bokuto's upper arm and whispers, quite menacingly, "Fuck you for doing that."
"You wouldn't have done anything on your own!"
"Because I don't want to do anything."
Bokuto gives Keiji this stupid all-knowing grin that he hates and shakes his head. "Stop lying to yourself, 'kaashi. You deserve this."
"Shut up."
"I'm serious!"
Keiji goes to shove him into the street, right into traffic, but a cough from behind them pulls Keiji's attention away from trying to murder his best friend. He turns around to see Sakusa looking directly at him, an unreadable expression on his face.
"Can I ask you a few questions?" he asks. "It's about the quotes."
"Oh, sure," Keiji answers, a little too quickly.
He ignores the way Bokuto jams his knee into the back of his calf, practically forcing him to stumble up to Sakusa, who doesn't even blink at the awkward air between them.
"So there's this one that I just remembered," Sakusa says as he starts to walk back towards the restaurant. Keiji follows him until the end up by the side of the building, far enough away from the front door that they aren't bothering other guests or getting in the way of people exiting.
"Perhaps, we are the outliers, the dapples of stars far out in this northeastern bruise of a sky," he quotes. "Where's this one from?"
Keiji glances at his shoes and hears Bokuto's words playing over and over again in his head. You deserve this. Keiji really wishes he could believe him, but there's this field of self-doubt that Keiji can't cross just yet. The weeds grow too high and he's not ready to face the snakes slithering between the stalks, reading to snap at his ankles and fill him with the poison of reality. He can't tell Sakusa about this line. He can't tell him that it's from his own hand, his own mind.
"Nowhere," he answers, crossing his hands behind his back and clasping them together.
"What?"
"It's just a line." Keiji takes a deep breath, "It's not from anything special."
"Oh."
“Listen, I haven’t been very honest with you, Saku—”
“You can call me, Kiyoomi, Keiji.”
The look Sakusa— Kiyoomi gives him renders Keiji speechless. A little bit of illumination comes from those perpetually dark eyes, the ones Keiji has been trying to avoid for weeks. There’s no avoiding them now. Kiyoomi is staring right into the very crater of his heart and running away would be impossible—as if Keiji ever wants to ever run from Kiyoomi, anyway.
His feet remain planted, back against the wall
“I mean,” he goes on, “you’ve been sending me love poems for months, anyway. Why not just get rid of the formality act?”
“Oh,” Keiji says, his jaw nearly touching the floor. “Wait, what?”
Kiyoomi laughs harder than Keiji has ever heard, the stretched ringlets of his hair bouncing along with his laughs. “It was obvious, Keiji.”
His cheeks immediately flush. “Was it?”
“Not at first, but then the writing started to sound like you. How you talk, how you voice your thoughts,” Kiyoomi says, leaning against the brick of the restaurant. “That’s how I knew—because it was you .”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Kiyoomi shoots him a little grin, “oh.”
“I’m, uh, sorry, Sakusa—”
“Kiyoomi,” he corrects.
Yeah.
Right.
That.
“I’m sorry, Kiyoomi. I know this probably puts you in a really weird position, because I’m close with Bokuto and you don’t feel the same, which is perfectly okay and I respect that, but it has to be awkward to deal with this because of this proximity and I’m sorry. For that and for sending the poetry in general. It had to get annoying, right? I’m sure it got really annoying—”
“I’m not asking for an apology, Keiji,” Kiyoomi says, standing up straight again and turning to face Keiji.
“Oh,” Keiji says with a little nod, “okay.”
“Okay?” Kiyoomi raises his eyebrow as if there’s something more for Keiji to say.
Nothing crosses his mind, just the way Kiyoomi’s moles dot his forehead in the same manner constellations dot the midnight skies and Keiji can’t help but wonder if there are even more scattered across the plane of his back, or the span of his chest, or anywhere else that Keiji can’t currently see.
“Okay,” he repeats stupidly because there isn’t anything else sitting on his tongue
He’s apologized. He’s poured his entire heart onto the concrete beneath them, has let the blood pool around their feet and seeps through their shoes and stain their skin. There’s nothing more for Keiji to say.
“You’re not quoting anything again, are you?” Kiyoomi asks.
Keiji blinks, then shakes his head—the foundation of their relationship was built on the backs of poetic quotes, and when an old quote from a terrible book filters through his mind, Keiji can’t connect those dots; it’d be embarrassing to admit that they’ve mimicked something from such a trashy novel. “No. I’m not.”
“Can I kiss you?”
The question bounces around in Keiji’s, now empty, brain. It feels so unlike Kiyoomi, but then again, maybe Keiji has never given himself to understand who Kiyoomi genuinely is at his core. It’s undeniable that the flickering images of Kiyoomi he’s known were only from going to games, a couple of after-parties from which Kiyoomi left early, and a handful of post-match dinners where they didn’t say a single word to each other directly. They’ve never even had their own full conversation.
And Kiyoomi wants to kiss him.
Keiji doesn’t quite get it. And maybe this all stems from the source of Keiji’s insecurities, from the fact that he doesn’t believe in receiving love but allowing it to cascade from his lips and onto the floor or from his fingertips and onto the page. He can give it all away, every last inch of himself, but he can’t take anything from anyone. It’s not in his soul—never has been.
Except maybe this once it’s okay. Maybe this one time Keiji can allow himself to bask in the light of requited feelings that Kiyoomi for some unknown reason has. He can allow this to happen, just for tonight.
Tomorrow, he’ll act as if Kiyoomi is nothing more than a friend. He’ll stash all of his unequal heart poundings away until the muscle has returned to a steady, calm tempo. He’ll burn the papers, rewrite the poems, flip his manuscript upside down until every ink stain of Kiyoomi’s name is wiped clean from his work.
It’ll be difficult, but it’ll be for the best.
For both of them.
“Yeah,” Keiji says. “Yeah.”
Keiji has wanted this, thought about this, for what feels like eons now, and when Kiyoomi brings his hands to Keiji’s waist and pulls him in, presses their lips together, the entire world collapses. The world collapses and builds itself back together with the tilt of Kiyoomi’s head, the gentle brushing of their noses, the slow squeeze on Keiji’s hips.
Fragment by fragment, the poetry starts to make sense in Keiji’s head—all the ways that Siken talks about loving and yearning, how O’Hara says “oh god, it’s wonderful”, because it is. It’s absolutely wonderful and Keiji can’t breathe, can’t feel anything other than the sporadic thumping in his chest and the way Kiyoomi’s fingers curve against him as though they were molded by the Greeks to fit his hip and only his.
“You kiss like a poet,” Kiyoomi says when he breaks away from Keiji.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he continues, “that I can feel “three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain” etched into the curves of your lips.”
A grin spreads across Keiji’s face. “Keats.”
Kiyoomi nods. “My roommate in college studied poetry, too. I couldn’t get away from it for four whole years.”
Keiji has never heard much of Kiyoomi’s college years. Truthfully, he doesn’t even know what he studied. These conversations can come later, though, if Keiji can allow himself to step beyond the boundary of shielding himself off from relationships.
“Do you want to come back to my place?” Keiji asks.
After realizing the varied implications of his question, he adds, “For coffee?”
Kiyoomi’s eyebrow quirks up slightly. “For coffee .”
The following morning, after an actual cup of coffee and dozing off a few hours later in bed, Keiji wakes up to emptiness. Shock strikes him first, then uneasiness, then the necessary acceptance that this is how things are supposed to work out between them. One night of everything Keiji’s ever wanted—discussing books, drinking coffee, kissing–is all he’s allowed. He heaves a sigh and pushes himself up on his elbows to find a small post-it note stuck to his bedside table. On it, are a few lines written in curved, slanted letters:
sic erit; haeserunt tenues in cord sagittae,
et possessa ferus pectora versat Amor.
Cedimus, an submitum luctando accendimus ignem?
cedamus! leve fit, quod bene fertur, onus.
Keiji has never once in his life studied Latin, and has never planned to, either. He’s read some of the classics in translation, but the mother language itself has never been interesting to him. Having seen the words in front of him now, scrawled in Kiyoomi’s distinct handwriting, Keij can’t fight the urge to jet to his laptop and go straight to decode the lines.
It only takes a handful of minutes for Keiji’s cheeks to cloud with a hazy valentine blush.
Thus it will be; slender arrows are lodged in my heart,
and Love vexes the chest that it has seized.
Shall I surrender or stir up the sudden flame by fighting it?
I will surrender — a burden becomes light when it is carried willingly.