Chapter Text
Ukai Keishin was not—and had no interest in becoming—a father.
There were a number of exceptionally logical reasons for this.
Firstly, Ukai didn’t actually enjoy the company of children—in fact, he found children to be generally unpleasant. They were loud, and rude, and annoying; and, to top it all off, had the baffling ability to become sticky in places that no person should ever become sticky.
Secondly, children were disruptive. Ukai had a routine to his days, one that he very much appreciated, and he dreaded the thought of his (mostly) peaceful existence being disturbed by a pack of quarrelsome brats. Children, invariably, asked questions. Ukai hated being asked questions, especially nonsensical ones that he couldn’t answer.
Thirdly, Ukai hadn’t even been able to keep the goldfish his brother gave him as a joke alive, and so had much less faith in his ability to look after a child. Children, after all, were usually more intelligent than fish, and quite a bit faster on their feet, too.
For these reasons, Ukai had for many years deliberately and successfully avoided putting himself in situations where he was responsible for children. He declined his aunt’s requests to babysit; he lost the invitations to his friends’ children’s birthday parties; he used protection. He managed twenty six—happily childless—years.
Of course, all his careful strategizing went out the window the moment he agreed to coach the Karasuno Men’s VBC on a permanent basis.
At first, he didn’t think it would be that bad. His team were highschoolers; surely they could look after themselves, right?
Wrong.
It took Ukai approximately two and a half days at Karasuno to realize that the VBC was only functional through sheer willpower, spite, and their Captain’s impressive lung capacity. Half the team were unapologetically reckless monsters who didn’t know the meaning of the word fear, and the other half were merely pretending to be responsible so they could get away with doing something ill-advised the moment his back was turned.
It proved exhausting, looking after them. Ukai sometimes felt like he was trying to empty the ocean with a leaky bucket, trying to keep one kid or another from dying or panicking or supergluing their hands together. He could’ve made things much, much easier for himself if he confined his responsibilities to the team to the volleyball court—if he was their coach, and only their coach, and nothing more. If he maintained his distance.
But Ukai had never believed in doing things halfway.
He couldn’t maintain his distance, he had to get involved, because Hinata didn’t eat right, dammit, and Kinoshita would be twice the player he already was if he gained some confidence in himself, and Tsukishima would care more if someone just gave him a shove in the right direction—
Ukai Keishin was not—and had no interest in becoming—a father. He’d somehow become responsible for fourteen children regardless.
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- Sawamura Daichi
In Ukai’s opinion, Sawamura Daichi made for an excellent team Captain. He had achieved that perfect, nebulous blend of considerate, inspiring, and absolutely not to be crossed: driven enough to arrange practice on his own, mature enough to ensure that everyone got home safely afterwards. Even outside of practice, he was the obvious foundation of the team—the outstretched hand that shielded them from harm, the solid ground beneath their feet. He was a leader, a mentor, a guide.
(He had also, apparently, conducted an unholy bargain with some power of the night in exchange for the ability to quell his rowdier teammates with a single glance. Ukai was kind of jealous, honestly.)
And—as exceptional as he was a Captain, Sawamura was an equally exceptional student and upperclassman. He got good grades in his college prep courses. He was never late. He bought the entire team meat buns once a week despite his rather meager allowance. In short, he was the kind of kid Ukai would’ve hated back in highschool, because he was doing it all, and doing it with apparent ease.
But Ukai remembered being seventeen, and no seventeen-year-old—no matter how mature or responsible—had it together one hundred percent of the time.
He was proven right one cool night after evening practice, when he found himself leaving the school grounds later than usual. Normally, he departed right after practice ended so he could start his shift at the shop, but his mother had agreed to cover him once a week so he could stay and talk to Takeda about the team’s progress.
(He was . . . proud of the little monsters, he really was.)
He stepped outside, already fishing around in his pocket for a cigarette, when he happened to glance back up at the school building. The clubroom light was still on, casting soft illumination out over the night-darkened yard.
Ukai frowned. The third-years took it in turns to lock up, which meant that one of them was still up in there, doing god-knows-what at—he checked his phone—eleven o’clock at night.
Growling with irritation, Ukai took the steps up to the clubroom two at a time. He clearly recalled telling all his players to go home and rest at the end of practice. He also clearly recalled what the teenage libido was like, and fervently hoped he wasn’t about to walk in on some sort of late-night clandestine hookup. It would probably scar him for life.
But when Ukai threw the club room door open, a reprimand already on his lips, he didn’t find an illicit teenage affair: he found Sawamura, alone, slumped over on one of the benches and obviously dead asleep. Ukai cursed and grabbed for the door, but he was too slow. It slammed into the opposite wall with a thud, rattling the lockers against one another in a screech of metal.
To Sawamura’s credit, he didn’t flail or shout; he simply sat up, mumbled, “Mom, I’m going ,” and then promptly fell off the bench.
Ukai winced. More than one juvenile scuffle during his own time at Karasuno had taught him nothing if not that the floor in here was quite unforgiving. He crouched down to Sawamura’s level, and carefully peeled the piece of paper that had stuck to Sawamura’s face away from his cheek.
Sawamura, wakening to the abrupt realization that he was not in fact at home in his own bed, flushed a deep brick red.
“Coach,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “Oh, gods. Coach, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how this happened—I was so tired—it won’t happen again, I promis e—”
“Relax,” Ukai said gruffly. There were things worth fretting over—their chances at getting to Nationals, the truly concerning amount of yogurt drinks Kageyama consumed on a daily basis, the toothy grin on Tanaka’s face when he’d stuffed an unidentifiable package into his bookbag earlier—but this was not one of them.
He glanced down at the paper he’d liberated from Sawamura’s cheek, raising his eyebrows at the neatly penned lists of warmup exercises for next week’s practices. Sawamura scrambled to his feet, collecting the rest of the scattered papers into a haphazard pile.
“I’m sorry,” Sawamura said again, stiffly. He wouldn’t meet Ukai’s eyes. “I lost track of time. You trusted me to lock up, and I didn’t. There’s no excuse.”
These kids. Ukai despaired of them. When he’d been seventeen, his primary concern had been seeing how much of his father’s sake he could sneak before he threw it all back up. Falling asleep in the club room—once!—wasn’t that big of a deal, in the larger scheme of things.
“It’s fine,” Ukai said. “It happens. Now, about this.” He held the paper up, waiting for Sawamura’s eyes to reluctantly drag up to meet his. “You’ve been writing these out yourself?”
He’d assumed, when Sawamura had come prepared every week with lists of warmup exercises with which to lead practice, that he’d been reusing material from previous years, when Karasuno had actually had a coach to take care of such things.
“Uh, yeah.” Sawamura fidgeted, the shadows under his eyes seeming to grow deeper by the moment. He was so different around Ukai, all the unwavering confidence he used to motivate and/or intimidate his teammates fracturing into cautious respect. Sometimes, watching him command the court like a general at the head of an army, it was easy to forget he was just a kid. “Sorry; if they’re not good, I can rewrite them.”
He extended one hand for the paper. Ukai frowned, holding it out of his reach. “You really shouldn’t be doing this. This sort of thing is the coach’s responsibility. Not yours.”
“It’s fine,” Sawmaura said, still eyeing the paper in Ukai’s hand. “I don’t mind, Coach. It’s not that much trouble.”
Ukai snorted. “Really? I find you passed out up here from sheer exhaustion, and you’re gonna try and tell me it’s no trouble?”
Sawamura flushed. “I—”
Sighing, Ukai retrieved a cigarette from the interior pocket of his coat and lit it irritably. He knew enough about the VBC’s previous struggles from his grandfather, and what he hadn’t known, Takeda had easily filled in. Lacking a coach, lacking funding, lacking the connections to other schools that would have allowed the team to hone their skills, it had fallen to the third years to try and keep the club together any way they could. Which meant that, for many long months, Sawamura had been functioning as Coach as well as Captain. No wonder he’d been up here alone writing out the lists of warmup exercises. He hadn’t known to expect help from Ukai. Probably hadn’t even known that he was allowed to ask for it.
“Kid,” Ukai said, once the sweet smoke had filled his lungs and calmed some of his agitation. It was a bad habit, he knew, but he was now of the opinion that some bullheaded teenagers would probably kill him before the cancer had the chance. “The next time you find yourself doing this sort of thing, come to me first and ask if I can do it. This is not your job. You do enough.”
Sawamura’s face creased into honest confusion. “But I’m the Captain.”
“Yes,” Ukai said impatiently. “Which means you keep your batshit teammates from killing each other, you help plan strategy, you lead stretching. You don’t—”
He leaned forward, and pried the rest of the papers out of Sawamura’s hand.
“—write the warmup exercises. I do that.”
“But you already do so much,” Sawamura said, and it didn’t even sound sarcastic, coming from him. “I don’t want this to be a burden on you.”
Ukai almost laughed, puffing cigarette smoke out of his nose. “This whole job is a burden on me.”
Sawamura froze, and Ukai played his words back. Ah, shit. That hadn’t come out right.
“What I mean,” Ukai said hastily, “is that I get paid for this. And it’s a burden I accept willingly.”
Well, mostly willingly. There had been the small matter of Takeda allowing him no peace for weeks on end, but Ukai had moved past that. He’d never admit it, but it had taken only a single practice for Ukai to fall a little bit in love with coaching, and with these ridiculous, impossible children and their ridiculous, impossible dreams. They reminded him of what he could have been. What he might have been, if he’d tried a little harder.
“Okay,” Sawamura said, still seeming reluctant. “But I can do it, really—”
Ukai almost groaned. He should’ve known Sawamura wasn’t going to let it go. The same intractability that made him an excellent Captain also made him kind of a pain in the ass to have an argument with. “How about this,” he proposed. “Takeda and I get together once a week to talk over the club’s progress. You can join for the first thirty minutes, and we’ll write these lists together.”
“Great,” Sawamura said, his face brightening, and Ukai had never seen a teenager look so enthused at the prospect of more paperwork. “Thanks, Coach!”
“Whatever,” Ukai grumbled. “Now hurry up and get out of here. You need to eat and go the fuck to sleep.”
“Right!” Sawamura hastened to collect the rest of his belongings, stomping his feet into his street shoes. Ukai waited for him to flip the lights off and lock up, taking long drags off his cigarette. They set off together along the darkened street, Ukai already miles away and thinking about what he was going to have for dinner. His mother had been on his case recently about the amount of instant ramen he’d been consuming, but Ukai had eaten much worse and survived, so another night of rubbery noodles wasn’t going to kill him. Probably.
“Uh, Coach,” Sawamura said after a while. “Wasn’t that your turn back there?”
Ukai grunted. “Yeah.”
“Then why are you . . . “
“I’m walking you home,” Ukai said. “What if someone tried to kidnap you? There are all sorts of crazy people around these days.” And Ukai would know, seeing that an inordinate amount of said crazy people seemed to frequent his shop, especially on days he was already strung out and exhausted.
Sawamura frowned, consideringly. “Thanks. But, I think I’d be rather hard to kidnap, don’t you?”
That was probably true. Not only was Sawamura built like a brick shithouse, he had also faced down Sugawara high on a sugar rush and threatening to gut him with a spoon with no apparent fear. A man with a backbone like that was probably immune to being kidnapped.
(Then Ukai thought about seeing Sawamura’s face on one of those milk boxes Kageyama was continuously buying him out of, and shuddered. Better safe than sorry.)
“Nothing’s impossible,” Ukai said neutrally, and smoothly redirected the conversation by asking, “Do you have any siblings?”
He was banking on the fact that Sawamura did. Anyone whose protective instincts were so finely honed that they could catch Nishinoya mid-tumble from the upper balcony had to have at least a brother or two.
“Four,” Sawamura said, “All younger.”
Ukai choked on an inhale, sputtering smoke into the night.
“Yeah,” Sawamura said, sounding resigned. “I think that’s why I’m . . . like this.”
There was the faintest hint of guilt in his tone. He was still clearly upset with himself for falling asleep in the clubroom earlier, probably beating himself up for “failing” in his duties. They slowed to a stop in front of what Ukai assumed was Sawamura’s house, a single light burning in a downstairs window. The silhouette of a woman peered out at them—Sawamura’s mother, if Ukai had to guess, concerned about her son’s whereabouts and the late hour.
“Like what?” Ukai asked, instinctively picking up on what Sawamura was implying. “Responsible? Assertive, or whatever? You want your friends to be okay, and you want them to do well. There’s no shame in that. It’s a good thing, that you care so much.”
Sawamura raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been told I’m intense.”
“So what?” Ukai scoffed. “Intense is the word used by unmotivated people to describe the motivated. Who said that to you? Forget about them.”
Sawamura’s second eyebrow joined the first in prodding at his hairline and Ukai grimaced, realizing that he’d been the one to come off as intense. “Just . . . relax, okay. You’re doing fine. You’re doing more than you have to. If you were any less the way you are, either Tanaka or Noya probably would’ve killed someone by now. Or Ennoshita. Kid doesn’t look like much, but he’s got those crazy eyes.”
“Yeah,” Sawamura said. He seemed to be standing just that much straighter.“Yeah, he does. Thanks, Coach. For walking me home. And for, well, everything.”
Ukai waved him off, turning to head back the way he came. “Next week,” he called over his shoulder. “In Takeda’s office. We’ll do the warmup lists, together. Don’t you try and start them beforehand.”
Sawamura flashed him a thumbs up and pulled his bag close to his chest before walking up the path to his house. If Ukai lingered just long enough to ensure the door closed firmly behind him, well. He was just ensuring that the person who composed seventy percent of the team’s impulse control got home safely. It was a form of self-preservation, really. No need to make a big deal out of anything, not even in his own head.
Retracing his steps, Ukai shuffled the papers Sawamura had been drawing up under one arm. Composing the warmup lists himself would probably extend his weekly meetings with Takeda, and cut even further into his precious free time, but Ukai couldn’t really bring himself to care. What if Sawamura had passed out somewhere else instead of the clubroom? Somewhere unsafe, like the bus stop?
Gods. He should probably start making sleep schedules for the kids along with the diet plans, at this rate. He knew damn well Tsukishima at least wasn’t getting enough rest. The boy came into morning practice with eyebags the size of Russia.
Yeah. He’d go home, eat some instant ramen, and start on those sleep schedules. And then, maybe, he’d think about pulling Sawamura aside one day and impressing upon him that he was fine the way he was, intensity and all. That he needed to start looking after himself, too, as well as trying to look after everyone else. After all, someone clearly had to do it, and Ukai found—well, he found that he didn’t mind if that someone was him.