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At most, their similarity is the amount of times you have to do that thing at the back of your throat to pronounce the k for their names. But Kentarou and Kei are much different, and Kei looks as though he’s a lot like Shigeru, who’d slammed Kentarou onto a wall once, and lectured him for being an idiot.
But Kei does not slam Kentarou onto a wall, nor touch him at all, really. And for all of Kentarou’s want of danger and thrill and fight (he’s in volleyball for it, you know? The runrunrunrun JUMP—SLAM—power) , he finds he maybe likes the gentleness, hiding in indifference if he squints hard enough. Gentle can be not talking—instead standing five feet away, and nowhere near slamming each other into a wall, for anger or for some other reason.
He remembers him from high school, but Kentarou will discard that as a first meeting because in high school, Kei was just beanpole and Karasuno’s beanpole that blocked Ushiwaka. At some point, he had put a name to the face, but he never called him by it until they saw each other again as Sendai Frogs.
Kentarou did a double-take, then. Kei didn’t look like he wanted to runrunrun SLAM. But Kentarou already knew not everyone was like him, or Shigeru, for that matter, who very much liked that resounding, crackling punctuation to things that gave them flavor.
“Tsukishima,” he says, voice carrying over to the man with a grocery bag. Why’d he have a grocery bag? This is training. “Aren’t you gonna watch? The Japan versus Argentina game?” Well, why was Kentarou even asking? This is training. He’s only seeing Kei right now because they’re supposed to be training.
“I’ll watch,” Kei assures from his spot at the door that pretends it is a genkan. And probably because Kei doesn’t like being misheard, he says again, a little louder, “I’ll watch.”
Kei works at the Sendai City Museum. Kentarou learns this from Koganegawa, who learns a bit of everything from everyone, and tells everyone everything he learns. “He likes dinosaurs,” Koganegawa had added, and Kentarou tucked it into the back of his mind like the information was worth it, worth that spot in his mind that was meant for precious volleyball.
Natural blond makes his way to bleached, tennis ball looking-ass blond, and crouches on the floor beside him, against the wall, and leans in but not too much, to watch Hinata Shoyo slam a spike onto the opposite court with his left hand.
“I hate it here,” Kei grumbles. Kentarou lets him have it because they’re not exactly close, and he can’t give Kei an amused side-eye or the arching of a brow or a playful smirk. What he can give is just the constant view of the back of his shoulder that Kei easily overlooks, and he can stay five feet away, spiritually, and not talking. Atsumu sets like a god. Kentarou feels like he’s been doused in formaldehyde and ready for preservation when Kei reaches over to adjust Kentaro’s grip on the phone.
Am I some sort of fucking— his mind stutters —museum artifact? Kei’s touch is feather-light.
“I can’t see shit, Kyoutani-san,” Kei says, with as much familiarity as he can to someone a year older. ‘Shit’ is a start.
“You’re not even fucking looking,” Kentarou scoffs back, aware that anyone on Sendai Frogs is acquainted with his colorful vocabulary. Kei isn’t very far off and he might actually be worse, but he’s got grace and poise and that sparkly stuff that Kentarou doesn’t. Kentarou thinks he says it familiar enough, and distant enough, like he’s five feet away, spiritually.
But Kei is breathing down his neck. And then the next moment he is five feet away literally, and Kentarou can finally let a long sigh go.
“Watching them makes me want to move around too,” says the tall blond museum man—dinosaur-loving man, warming up. Kentarou keeps his eyes trained on Bokuto’s form, and then Hoshiumi’s, and doesn’t realize he’s on the receiving end of Kei’s expectant side-eye. “You gonna keep watching?”
“This moment right here,” Kentarou days dismissively, “this is also volleyball.” And then he shoots a glance at Kei quickly, and suddenly is caught in the net of an unamused stare. He bristles a bit, because Kei looks a lot like Shigeru, who’d slammed Kentarou into a wall once. He doesn’t really want Kei to slam him into a wall. “What?”
The crowd in his phone cheers, and there’s the whistle of a timeout.
“Nothing,” Kei shrugs, turning away and stretching his arms behind his shoulders. His shirt lifts with the movement. Kentarou watches like a hawk for all of two seconds before he’s whipping his head away and watching Oikawa send a death serve over the net. Sakusa receives it again.
XXX
Kei used to be a little more than wary of Kentarou. Mad Dog, the Grand King had called him—the wrench in Aoba Johsai’s well-oiled, well-coordinated team. He looked like a delinquent, but the kind of delinquent that would put you behind bars instead. Like he knows what crime looks like because it takes a criminal to know one, and you’re locked up, suddenly in the cage of his piercing, honey gaze. Maybe the trap is a beehive, and you’re a human, still, and deathly afraid of bees.
Ah, but, Kei isn’t scared of that sort of shit. When he tried out for Sendai Frogs, Kentarou looked like he had mellowed, leaning nicely against the railing to one side, idly chattering with the team’s libero. He didn’t look like that growling, insubordinate second-year Oikawa had proudly, responsibly thrown into the game to throw Karasuno off. And it did work, because Kentarou was raw power. Maybe like Iwaizumi, but sharper—rougher on the skin like a shirt made with shitty textile.
Nevermind Iwaizumi, actually, who was a calm, rolling ocean that possessed the strength of seas. Kentarou was a forest fire and illegal mining; and extinction; and EXPLODE.
Now though, he just looks like something that would be enticing to a dog. Maybe a happy dog instead of a mad one, because it takes one to know one and Kentarou probably wouldn’t like mad dogs.
“Ah,” Kei says without fire, when they bump in the middle of running around a mostly empty gym and he lands on top of Kentarou. Nothing surprises him anymore, but it does raise the question of how they had gotten much closer; close enough to end up like this.
Kentarou looks like a fire hydrant, if you threw a tennis ball at it. His skin flares red, maybe because of shyness. It might mostly be shyness, Kei thinks, because if Kentarou was embarrassed he could’ve just knocked Kei right off him and scrambled away, but he doesn’t, and he just lays there all tomato-looking and trying not to touch Kei at all.
Grace and poise and all that sparkly stuff, Kentarou discovers, can in fact coexist with one well-angled, ill-wishing, sky-fallen smirk. And then Kei is laughing, like he didn’t just douse this whole thing in gasoline, and pushes himself off of Kentarou.
XXX
Kentarou takes the ventricle and atrium on the right, and Kei takes the ones to the left. They are both exceedingly good at volleyball. Individually, there’s Kentarou’s sheer force of will and sometimes, he even uses his brains. And then there is Kei who is careful as he is calculative—who is scary when he doesn’t try and is hellspawn when he does.
“Pain in my ass,” their captain, on the opposing team of the by-pair match, laughs. He’s good too; has been playing volleyball just a bit longer than either Kei or Kentarou, but those two are a heart and all they do is beat and beat and beat.
And pump blood. The combination of them—their collaborative victory—pumps blood right into Kentarou’s veins.
“One touch!” Kei yells, and Kentarou follows up with an amused and loud, One fucking touch! before he saves the ball for Kei to set. It’s a show of support and a great way to taunt every other one of his opponent-for-now teammates. Kei always shoots him that look; that I’m gonna slam you onto the wall for being such a dumbass look—but it’s always a little dulled, and today, it’s completely not there.
Skewered somewhere in the ribs that surrounds the air of them both, is gentle. There, in the cracks of a fond indifference, if Kentarou squints hard enough.
It’s his turn to yell One touch! and Kei digs it like he meant to look exactly how he had, but then again everything Kei does looks at least a little deliberate. Kentarou smirks in response and sets the ball to Kei, and natural blonde does a feint and shoots bleached, tennis ball looking-ass blond a smirk of his own.
Kentarou’s blood pumps. He really does love volleyball, and all the runrunrun—JUMP. SLAM. Power. He looks at Kei and they’re both flushed and drenched in sweat and enjoying it; both nowhere near tired. At least there’s that similarity. Maybe if they keep this up enough they won’t have to yell One Touch and just do it, and not be five-feet-apart-and-not-talking.