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It starts the day after the Spring Interhigh finals, when Kei walks in on Yamaguchi and Yachi holding hands in the clubroom.
The two of them stare intently at the dimly-lit computer between them, legs splayed out in front and fingers interlaced on Yamaguchi’s lap. They look up and squint at the sunlight Kei has let into the room. Soft music hums from the screen. Kei feels his face start to burn, like a lightbulb left on a minute too long.
“I can leave…?”
Yamaguchi shakes his head, unfazed. “No, we should get ready for practice. Is it already six?” He leans towards the computer and taps the touchpad with his free hand. “Oh shit, Coach Ukai will be here soon.”
They won the Spring Interhigh, and Coach Ukai had demanded they take a break the next day for their own well-being. When the team argued back, he compromised with a nighttime practice so he could tend to the Sakanoshita Store beforehand. Kei had spent his free hours studying in the school library; he had wondered for a moment where Yamaguchi might be, but he hadn’t expected to find him in the dark of the clubroom, and he definitely hadn’t expected to find him holding hands with –
“Yachi-san!”
Hinata swings past Kei in the doorway, meat bun stuffed between his teeth. He turns the light switch on, making everyone shield their eyes. Kageyama follows two steps behind him, chewing on the straw from his milk carton.
“Yachi-san, did you need something from the clubroom?”
“No, no, I was just with Yama-kun.” She gets up frantically as she sees Hinata reach for the bottom hem of his shirt and dashes for the door. “I’ll let you guys change for practice!”
Yamaguchi lets out a soft laugh and gets up from the ground, dusting off his trousers and walking over to his locker. Kei walks over to his locker next to Yamaguchi’s, still slightly stunned from what he just witnessed.
“Kageyama, you should drink more water and less milk! What if you’re lactose-intolerant?”
“Dumbass, I think I’d know if I was lactose-intolerant by now. And why are you eating a meat bun right before practice, you’re gonna get cramps.”
“But I needed an afternoon snack! Coach Ukai said we need to eat to repair our muscles!”
“Cramps.”
“Lactose-intolerant!”
“So,” Kei starts, thinking about how he should phrase his question. “What are… What were you and Yachi-san doing?”
“We were watching Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone . Can you believe Yacchan has never seen the movies before?” He laughs again, and Kei feels his chest tighten. “She’s read the books but never watched the movies because she was scared to see Quirrell take off his turban.”
“Did you guys finish it?” He reaches for his practice jersey and slips it on over his head.
“Yeah, it ended right when you walked in. She did get a little scared at the turban part. but she still watched it all the way through. I feel like she’s either Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.” Yamaguchi starts unbuttoning his school uniform, and Kei looks away, his cheeks warm.
He clears his throat, adjusts the glasses on his face that definitely don’t need adjusting. “So are you and Yachi-san… you know…” He looks at Yamaguchi’s confused expression and sighs. “Are you guys dating?”
Yamaguchi’s eyes widen, and then he tilts his head to the side. “Huh? Why would you think that?”
Kei guesses that his cheeks are now a fine shade of strawberry red. “I mean, you guys are really close, and you guys were watching a movie and…”
“And?”
“And you guys were holding hands.”
Yamaguchi shrugs and closes his locker. “So? I do that with people all the time.”
Kei pauses. “You do?”
“Yeah! We’re just friends, Tsukki.” He smiles at him warmly, then punches him lightly in the stomach. “And if we were dating, you’d be the first to know, stupid. C’mon, let’s go to practice. Do you wanna get ice cream afterwards?”
Yamaguchi wasn’t lying; he does hold hands with people all the time. Kei can’t believe he didn’t notice before, but now it’s all he sees.
He holds hands with Yachi the most, when they’re planning out formations with Coach Ukai or when they’re studying in a group, or when the whole team gets meat buns together after practice. Sometimes Yachi goes home first and Yamaguchi holds Hinata’s hand instead, gently swinging their arms back and forth as he listens to him and Kageyama bicker. Kei even saw him hold hands with Kageyama once, although it wasn’t really hand-holding but more of a comforting squeeze, when he couldn’t seem to set the ball to line up with the first-years. Still, Kageyama seemed unfazed, as if he was used to Yamaguchi’s affection.
Yamaguchi holds hands with people all the time, so Kei finds himself feeling a little small at the realization that his best friend never holds his. He sits next to him on the bus rides to games, walks side-by-side with him to school, lies next to Kei sometimes on his too-small bed when they watch nature documentaries together – but never intertwines their fingers, never even rests his palm on top of his.
Am I that bad that my best friend doesn’t want to hold my hand? he finds himself thinking one night, turning his face into his pillow and letting out a small groan. It wasn’t like they had a falling out, and Yamaguchi hadn’t shown him any distaste recently.
He decides to ask Yamaguchi himself after they drop off Yachi at the bus stop the next evening, as he watches their hands untangle from one another and wave goodbye.
“It’s kind of cold tonight, Tsukki. Are you sure you don’t wanna borrow my scarf?”
“I’m fine.” He pauses. “Why don’t you ever hold my hand?”
Footsteps come to a halt behind him. Kei turns around to see a confused – maybe amused? – expression on his friend’s face. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Shit. “You hold hands with Yachi, obviously, and Hinata and Kageyama too, but not with me.”
Yamaguchi raises his eyebrows. “Are you jealous?”
Heat rises to Kei’s cheeks, and he curses himself silently for not borrowing Yamaguchi’s scarf to cover them. He turns back and continues walking. “Never mind. It was a stupid question.”
“ Tsukki, ” Yamaguchi whines. Hurried footsteps echo off the concrete and he’s right by Kei’s side again. “I thought you didn’t like it when people touched you. Like, when Suga-san would ruffle your hair in our first year, or that one time in elementary school when someone tried to give you a hug and you shoved them into a desk.” Kei sees him shrug out the corner of his eye. “I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
Of course Yamaguchi didn’t hate him; he knew Kei better than he maybe knew himself, and he was being considerate by giving him space. Shit , Kei thinks again, he’s too good . “Well, I wouldn’t mind if it was you. I think.”
A chuckle escapes from Yamaguchi’s mouth and hovers comfortably over their heads. “ Okay , Tsukki. All you had to do was ask, you know.”
Before he can think of a response, Kei feels fingertips slide over the inside of his wrist, then his palm, then in the spaces between his fingers. The warmth is tangible, like he’s playing with embers from a fireplace. Kei tries to remember how to breathe.
“At least this way maybe you’ll be warm, since you won’t take my scarf,” Yamaguchi pouts, but his eyes grin enough to make up for it, glowing brighter than the streetlights illuminating their path, brighter than the dangling moon in the quiet sky.
“Shut up, Yamaguchi,” Kei breathes.
“Sorry, Tsukki!”
“Mm, I don’t understand the question.” Hinata scrunches his nose and drops his head on the table with a soft thunk . “Why does math exist .”
Kageyama chews on his straw. “Move your head, I can’t see the problem.”
Hinata turns his head towards him, the left side of his face smushed on the table. “It’s not like you’ll be able to solve it anyway– Ow , Kageyama! I’m not lying !”
“I’ll never forgive you for making me study with these two,” Kei deadpans to Yamaguchi, flipping through the pages of his English textbook. After Hinata and Kageyama begged him to help them pass their tests to go to the Tokyo practice their first year, they’d studied together every Thursday with Yamaguchi and Yachi at the coffee shop across from the bus stop. Most of the time Yachi helps the two with their homework, though, so Kei doesn’t really have that much to complain about.
“Just a few more months, Tsukki.” Yamaguchi scribbles a few bullet points next to him, eyes squinting and brows furrowed. His freckles are tinted with the natural pink in his cheeks that appear whenever Yamaguchi’s stressed. It’s cute, makes them glow more prominently against his complexion. Kei looks away, afraid of how long he’ll stare if he doesn’t, and brings his focus back to the paragraph he’s been trying to understand for the last half hour.
Barely five minutes later he hears an exasperated sigh, and suddenly he feels fingers slip into his. He stiffens, startled by the contact; heat courses through his veins, up to his ears, down to his fingertips.
Beside him, Yamaguchi seems completely unfazed, yawning and resting his head on Kei’s shoulder. “Studying is so draining.” He absently caresses the outside of Kei’s index finger with his thumb, scrolls through his phone with his other hand. Kei wills himself to stay calm. The textbook has never looked more interesting.
“Don’t you have a test tomorrow?”
“Minor details, Tsukki. I’ll study again in like ten minutes.”
On the other side of the table, Yachi has joined the duo in their frustration, biting the end of her pen as her eyes dart all over Hinata’s worksheet. Kei hopes they stay frustrated for longer, that they don’t look up and see his flustered expression and his best friend’s nonchalance. If only they had been studying just the two of them, in his room with the one flickering light that Kei’s too lazy to fix, the one that Yamaguchi always ridicules him for. But maybe then he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from squeezing Yamaguchi’s hand, from getting lost in his hazel eyes that glisten like the surface of the ocean, from telling him how he’s caught in his orbit and doesn’t know whether he wants to ever leave.
Something thin tickles his wrist. Kei looks down to see Yamaguchi doodling on the back of his hand, phone abandoned on top of his notes. Kei holds his breath and watches the pen glide across his skin. Yamaguchi draws stars – no, snowflakes? – from his wrist to the crevice between his ring finger and pinky, connecting them with branch-like lines. They look like dandelion fluff, or really tiny shower loofahs. Kei asks if they’re the latter.
Yamguchi laughs softly. “They do kinda look like them. But no, they’re flowers. Acacias.” He continues to add details: little circles dotting the edges, a few tilted leaves. “I like the yellow ones.”
“Mm? Do they mean anything?”
Maybe Yamaguchi blushes, or maybe Kei’s projecting his own nervousness. “I’m not sure. I just think they’re pretty.” He extends the stem of the flowers down to the inside of his wrist, leaves the point of his pen to linger. Kei wonders if he can feel his pulse, rubbing against the walls of his arteries like tectonic plates before an earthquake, slipping, slipping, slipping.
Yamaguchi retracts his hands from Kei’s arm, smiling quietly, and turns back to his notes. Kei traces the marks he’s left behind.
Volleyball only becomes more rigorous as Nationals creeps closer, and practice matches are as draining as ever. Kei always felt especially tired after playing Date Tech, and today was no different; even without Aone and Futakuchi, their iron wall has no cracks, and their spikes only continue to improve. Kei looks down at his palms, calloused and raw, and reaches into his locker for his protective tape.
“Tsukki, break is over.”
Yamaguchi stands in the doorway of the clubroom. His hair’s in a low ponytail curled next to the right side of his neck, loose strands brushed to the side of his face. The turquoise practice jersey he wears hangs sideways on his white T-shirt, slipping off his right shoulder. His eyes travel down to the tape in Kei’s hands. “Do you need help?”
Before Kei can say anything, Yamaguchi walks over and takes it from his hands, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “C’mon, sit down so I can do it for you before Coach Ukai yells at us for holding up practice.”
Silence dances comfortably around them as Yamaguchi rips off pieces of tape and wraps them gently around Kei’s bruised fingers, humming a tune that Kei recognizes from one of Akiteru’s old CDs. Fingertips tap against his palm, and the pain there dissipates as if it had never been there to begin with.
“Today’s game was pretty rough.”
“Mm.”
“But your blocks were really good.” One more piece of tape around his index. “I mean, you’re good all the time, but today especially.”
“Mm.” They shift in unison towards each other as Yamaguchi moves on to his right hand.
“Do you wanna watch a documentary later? I think there’s a new one about the Arctic melting and climate change.”
Kei clicks his tongue. “Sounds good.”
“I think my parents watched it last night, and they said it was really informative, and they don’t usually like documentaries, so.” He looks up just for a moment, hazel eyes sinking into a tired, warm smile. “That means we’ll really enjoy it, right?”
Kei doesn’t know how to tell Yamaguchi that he enjoys anything they do when they’re together. He enjoys their walks to-and-from school, their impromptu Friday movie nights from middle school that moseyed their way into tradition. He tolerates their weekly study sessions with the rest of the third-years because he looks forward to the quieter homework nights during the rest of the week, when their lanky limbs crowd Yamaguchi’s dining room table and the kitchen light brings out the evergreen tints of his best friend’s hair. He likes this moment, as Yamaguchi gently wraps Kei’s worn-out fingers and he gets to examine the freckles spilled across his cheeks. They’re specks of stardust, the finest grains of sand in Kei’s desert. He wants to tuck them into an hourglass and wear it on a chain around his neck, to hold onto every second Yamaguchi has given him before he decides to slip away.
Yamaguchi presses the last piece of tape gently into the pad of Kei’s pinky. He moves his fingers back down to the center of Kei’s palm and stays there, like a butterfly resting on a petal. Kei feels his own butterflies fluttering frantically in his stomach and prays they won’t fly away, reveal themselves to his best friend and tell him, you idiot, Kei’s been in love with you for years! He’s just too scared to lose you! Please don’t let him lose you!
Kei blinks at Yamaguchi’s fingertips, still fluttering against his palm.
Maybe, just maybe, Yamaguchi has his own butterflies to rein in.
A quiet knock at the door. “Yama-kun, Kei-kun?”
Yamaguchi’s face wavers momentarily, then slips into a smile that leaves Kei wondering if he imagined the previous expression. He turns towards the door. “Sorry, Yacchan! We’ll be down in a minute.”
Yachi nods and exits, her footsteps padding away. Kei’s heart beats too loudly in his ears. Neither of them move.
After another minute Yamaguchi stands, fingers enveloping Kei’s. Kei lets him pull him up, lets him lead them out the door. The butterflies slowly invade his mind.
They don’t talk during the rest of practice, and as soon as he’s done changing Kei puts on his headphones, clicking the volume up till he can’t hear his own footsteps brushing against the pavement. He senses Yamaguchi walking a few steps behind him and feels a wave of relief when he doesn’t go down the road leading to his own home. Eventually he appears by his side and takes his hand, and Kei lets him.
They silently take off their shoes, put down their bags. Kei takes them to the kitchen and they lean against the counter while listening to the crackling of the popcorn in the microwave. Yamaguchi reaches for a bowl and Kei slides the popcorn out of the bag and they move in sync, hands still interlocked, not a step out of place. They let go of each other to take turns showering, to change into their softer clothes for the night, to crawl into Kei’s bed and set up the documentary on Yamaguchi’s laptop. But as the narrator drawls about melting ice caps, Yamaguchi leans his head on Kei’s shoulder, slides his fingers delicately into his. Kei feels like melting himself.
“Do you wanna go get breakfast tomorrow? It's Saturday.” Yamaguchi whispers about a half hour in, his eyes locked onto the screen. His words tickle the skin underneath Kei’s sleeve. Both of them watch as a polar bear cub slides across the ice.
“Sure.”
“We can get waffles with strawberries.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. I think I might fall asleep, Tsukki.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
A few minutes later Kei hears quiet snores. The polar bear on the screen waits quietly in the water behind an unassuming seal, head tilting back into a pre-pounce position. Kei pauses the documentary and puts the laptop as safely as he can on his nightstand. Beside him, Yamaguchi is the epitome of calm, hair tousled and wispy from lying on Kei’s shoulder. Kei takes his head gently and lowers it onto the pillow previously cushioning their backs. Yamaguchi’s mouth opens in a small oval shape as he exhales, blanket moving with the steady rise and fall of his chest.
Their hands lie under the covers, still interlocked; Kei feels Yamaguchi’s pulse against his wrist.
The light switch flickers off, and Kei lies down, wide awake from the melody of his rapidly beating heart and his best friend’s steady breaths.
Kei wakes up to warm eyes and fingertips tapping on the back of his hand. Sunlight seeps through the tiny cracks in his blinds and hugs them around the shoulders. Yamaguchi scrunches up his nose and breathes a content sigh, turning away from Kei’s gaze to lie flat on his back.
“Good morning,” Yamaguchi says softly, eyelids fluttering shut in his sleepy haze. His hair is even more messy than it was the night before, like cotton wisps from a school poster project.
He’s so pretty. “Good morning.”
The sunlight moves from their shoulders and catches the specks scattered onto Yamaguchi’s cheeks. The hourglass tugs at Kei’s neck and settles against his chest.
Kei leans forward and presses his lips softly in the nook between Yamaguchi’s right eye and the bridge of his nose.
If someone asked Kei what words he would use to describe himself, he wouldn’t think to choose “reckless.” Aside from the snarky jabs he makes at his teammates, he thinks before he acts – on the court, in his classes, around his family. Around Yamaguchi especially. But it’s early morning, and Kei can’t think straight, and all he knows is that he wants to feel Yamaguchi’s freckles against his lips one more time.
Yamaguchi stares at him, eyes flying around every corner of Kei’s face, searching. Kei reaches into his lungs for air.
“Sorry,” he whispers. He’s not. I’m not .
Kei watches as Yamaguchi gets up slowly on his right elbow and stares down at a random patch on the bedsheet. Maybe I should say it again , he thinks, but before his mouth can listen to his brain there’s another pair of lips on his. Blurry stardust clouds his eyes.
Nothing flutters. Nothing slips.
Kei thinks he might burst into flames.
Yamaguchi pulls away before Kei can process the sensation, and he leans slightly into the lost contact. He looks up at his best friend, whose eyes stare down at his lips.
“Hey,” Yamaguchi says.
“Hey.”
“Was that okay? I didn’t ask you before I did that.”
Kei raises his eyebrows. “I kissed you first.”
“Okay, okay, just making sure, because you didn’t kiss me on the lips, it was near my eyes, and I just. Wow. Hey.”
“Hey. Sorry for not asking you first.”
“No, no, it’s fine, it’s completely–” Yamaguchi leans down to bring their lips together for a second time, and Kei can’t control the smile forming on his face. It’s short and sweet, soft like Yamaguchi always is, always has been. He brings his free hand up to Yamaguchi’s cheek and kisses him again more firmly, caressing the freckles under his lower lash line.
They pull away three seconds later when Kei’s stomach grumbles and Yamaguchi laughs, the vibrations of it tickling his cheek. Yamaguchi leads him as they crawl out of bed, and they let go of each other to change into their softer clothes for the day. They head out of Kei’s room and take turns brushing their teeth. They silently put on their shoes, leave their bags.
But as they walk down the street towards the restaurant with the strawberry waffles they discussed the night before, Yamaguchi looks up at him with bright hazel eyes that glisten with the morning dew of a yawn, leans his head on Kei’s shoulder, slides his fingers delicately into his.
Kei lets the butterflies consume him.