Chapter Text
The first time Kimijima and Touno meet goes something like this:
Touno is thirteen, the oldest in his class, and the pretty girls in higher grades that collect gothic fashion magazines and save up for dresses tell him he has nice hair. Looks aren't that big of a deal to country boys in elementary school, but he's in middle school now, and he should start looking after his appearance if he wants to score big.
(His elementary school friends seem torn between jealousy and discomfort when he informs them of this. He tells himself that means he's mature for his age.)
The tennis team makes it to the nationals, and he's allowed to tag along for moral support. The pretty girls crowd around him and plead with him to bring them back trinkets and clothes, they'll give him money in advance, promise, and because he's cool and understanding he agrees.
Except the club trip isn't exactly scheduled around clothes shopping, so he has to dash from store to store early in the morning, collecting cheap jewelry and a dress in a rush to make it to watch the match in time.
It's all a bit of a revelation to him, to be honest, and when the search for the dress had sent him into a Shibuya store dedicated to the kind of clothes he didn't actually think existed outside of vampire movie sets he'd been unable to resist buying himself a bracelet with pretty red stones that sparkle in the sun like freshly drawn blood. Everyone's going to find it so cool.
So he isn't really thinking of much beyond 'oh shit I am so late and the coach is going to murder me' while he's speedwalking through throngs of people, attempting to dodge enough of them to be able to sprint the last part to the courts.
Unfortunately, he's so busy dodging the adults that he doesn't realise there's a boy standing in the middle of the sidewalk, squinting at the directional signs until he's already ran staight into him, sending the both of them sprawling.
"Ow-" the other boy hisses, in a very American way Touno doesn't think he's ever heard outside of the westerns his dad watches with him sometimes.
"Fuck," he agrees, glancing over at his shopping bag to make sure it has survived the encounter.
"Um. Could you please move?" There's a strange lilt to the way the boy talks. An accent, maybe? His word order is a little stilted too, far too formal, and Touno is just about to ask him why he's being so damn polite because he's not a goddamn fossil when their eyes meet and, oh. Oh.
He's only thirteen, he's never really thought about these things beyond liking the attention the older girls pay to him over his hair, but this kid is pretty. His hair is black and silky, his eyes are wide and round and he's never met anyone with teeth that straight and white before in his life.
A flash of annoyance passes over the boy's face, so quick Touno almost misses it, before melting into a placid smile. "I am sorry if I startled you, but could you please get off of me?"
"Sorry!"
There is nothing cool about the way Touno scrambles to get up on his feet, though he hopes he redeems himself a little when he holds out a hand to help the other kid up.
"Ah, it's alright," the boy says, excessively politely.
Foreign, Touno realises. Maybe he's Chinese or Korean?
"You have a tennis bag," the boy says, eyeing the school-issued bag he'd brought with him as a formality. Sure, he probably wouldn't get to play, but if the team got far enough to keep them here a few days he'd still need to practice. "You wouldn't happen to know where the tennis courts are, would you?"
Touno glances at the street signs the boy had been staring at, which don't have any furigana on them, and suddenly bullying this boy feels like the most important thing he's ever going to do. It's only right, for being so pretty in ways boys shouldn't be.
"Yah, sure," he drawls in the strongest tsugaru accent he can muster. "It's over that way." He points towards where some food courts are, one of several directions written with the katakana kooto in them.
It takes genuine effort not to laugh at the baffled face the boy makes, clearly not capable of following any of the dialect, but he gathers himself admirably and seems to assume the pointed direction is genuine. "Ah, thank you very much. Are you headed the same way?"
Touno shakes his head, not saying anything. He's pretty sure if he does he'll end up laughing himself sick.
"Well then, thank you for your help." The boy leaves, patting the creases out of his school uniform and looking weirdly unruffled for someone who just got run over.
Touno doesn't think much of it for the rest of the day, aside from occasionally grinning to himself wondering how lost the boy got before finding the tennis courts. They're probably not going to meet again anyway.
---
They meet again the next day, on opposite sides of the stands watching their seniors duke it out to see who'd be making it to the semifinals. The boy responds to his cheeky smirk with a cool smile that makes his face look cold in a way that winds Touno's insides right into knots.
His school wins, but the boy walks off with a perfect posture and an unbothered smile before Touno can rub his face into their victory. (Or maybe, like, apologise for being a dick.)
---
It's not until he gets back home he realises he's lost his new bracelet.
---
In his second year, Touno wins.
Well, not the nationals, maybe, but life in general? Yeah, he's totally winning that.
First he makes it onto the regulars, and not even as reserve. The captain tells him he's got the talent to go far (with, granted, some caveats about personality and teamwork, but Touno is too busy looking at his shiny new jersey to listen to tacky locker room pep talks), and he's generally taking care of their singles 2 slot for the whole school tournament run.
Then the cutest girl in their year asks him out, and sure, the shy teenage girl thing doesn't really work on him, but she'll probably get over it? And like, all the boys in class are totally jealous. He is the alpha now.
And then their history teacher tells them about the french revolution, and sure, it's mostly a footnote in their classes, but Marie Antoinette tried to flee Paris and got sentenced to death, and Touno fell in love with a fantasy of the guillotine's blade.
Within weeks he'd devoured every book their local library had to offer on historical trials ending in execution.
Anime shirts and cheap flannels bought by his mom phased out of his free time wardrobe, replaced by leather straps and chains, never too overstated, just far enough past the borders of normal it made people look twice.
He was, he thought to himself, becoming a man.
The boy he'd met at nationals the previous year scarcely crossed his thoughts, and it took him a second to recognise him on their opposing team's bench, next to their coach.
He wasn't on their active lineup. Touno didn't try very hard not to look smug at that, but he did try at least a little bit.
He's wearing eyeliner this time, and his eyes no longer look wide and doe-like the way they had before. He watches the matches with a cold calculation that clashes weirdly with the chipper friendliness he dials up whenever anyone talks to him.
Maybe Touno's overthinking this.
They win, the boy's team loses, and if Touno notices he's got really nice legs when he stands up to console his teammates then nobody has to know.
Especially not his girlfriend.
---
The whole girlfriend thing doesn't quite last into his third year, but that's okay. She was a little too sweet for him, he's more into the feisty ones.
He's a little confusing to his classmates these days; he's fashionable in a city kind of way, grows his hair past his chin and special orders books on iron maidens and viking law. He hangs out with the girls rumored to have bled a rat out for a dark magic ritual, and his voice doesn't so much drop as grow louder, and a little more maniacal.
He's also their school's star athlete.
Oh he's not the captain or anything, nobody is quite stupid enough to put him in charge, but he's fast and skilled and his focus on the courts scares the shit out of people.
It's even better against opponents he's played against before; he can smell the fear in the air, see it in their eyes. They know he'll hit balls where their joints will protest returning them, send them whizzing where their only options are losing the point or eating the ball with their face.
He loves being dangerous.
History is frought with beheadings of the rich and powerful who fell from grace, but Touno has read enough to know that humans have invented a hundred more creative ways to kill.
He may have been born in the wrong century entirely to apply any of them to people, but he's in the right one to channel them into tennis. He's pretty sure it'll make him unbeatable.
Except he's a third year now, and he can't just wave other competent players off as just older anymore. If the curly blond with the glasses and the pretty one with the platinum hair had been spread throughout their lineup instead of crammed together in doubles the Osakans might have ended their run at the nationals real early this time.
Which, considering they're the only ranking team from Aomori, would have been embarassing. The terror twins, who would have been serious competition in their regional run if their teachers hadn't made the mistake of putting them in charge, would never let him hear the end of it.
There's a lot of demons in the Tokyo circuit that being on an away team leaves them ill prepared for, but they claw their way up to the semi-finals with several hard-earned victories.
He picks up a necklace with a dragon's breath opal pendant in a store on the morning of his next match, because a dodgy fortune teller tells him his lucky color is purple. He's not superstitious, but there's no harm in getting a little extra luck on his side if it also makes him look good.
---
The fourth time Touno meets Kimijima Ikuto goes sort of like this:
---
It isn't as violent as their first meeting, not as chilly as their second, and he isn't staring quite as sadly as he was the third. In fact, he's not the one to seek the boy out at all this time.
He's in front of a vending machine, idly playing around with the pendant of his new necklace as he tries to decide on a drink. (grape juice isn't really his thing, but then, it is purple…)
"It's Touno-kun, isn't it?" a pleasant voice pipes up behind him, just soft and smooth enough that Touno doesn't startle, even though he hadn't noticed anyone approach at all.
The accent has faded entirely, and while still more formal than anything Touno would adress someone his own year with, the stilted clunkiness to his speech is gone. Whether he's Chinese or Korean or something else entirely, he's acclimatised well.
"What's it to you," Touno says rudely, partially because he's rude and partially because he's caught off guard by how perfectly subtle the boy's eyeliner is, and the way his skin seems to have a shimmer to it. Is he actually wearing make-up to a school sports tournament?
"No need to get defensive," the boy says, holding his hands up and smiling a disarmingly nice smile. Touno remembers the calculated coldness on his face when he'd watched the game last year, and thinks that if his current pleasantness is fake he might just have a future in acting.
The boy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bracelet with a red bead on it, and holds it out towards him.
"I believe this is yours." It's not just his eyes, damnit. His fingernails are perfectly maintained, and he's wearing some see-through glossy coat over them. Touno can respect that sort of dedication to appearances, even if the polite adherence to social norms oozing off this guy kind of rubs him the wrong way.
"The fuck do you still have that for?" he asks, genuinely baffled, because sure, it was a cool bracelet but he'd also bought it for all of one thousand yen two years ago. It wasn't exactly a precious lost heirloom, and it didn't look like one either.
"I would have returned it to you earlier," the boy says, eyes crinkling with mirth, and fuck, this guy is actually really charming and Touno isn't ready to deal with that. "But I was a little peeved at the time, I'm sure you understand."
Right. Because he'd given him bad directions, like a dickhead.
Looking at him now, all perfectly groomed class president type sugar, Touno is absolutely convinced he deserved it. Good job, 12-year-old self.
"You always keep random strangers' shit?" Touno asks, because he has to say something.
"Just the ones that leave an impact," the boy says with a wink, and that's so bad Touno doesn't even pretend not to groan.
The boy laughs, and there's something syrupy, almost artificial about his laugh, but before Touno can process that he's suddenly right there, up in his face.
"You've got an eyelash-… there," he says, wiping a finger over Touno's face and holding it up for him to see, far too close for him to actually see much of anything, before stepping back out of his space.
It's like a goddamn shoujo anime cliche. Touno gapes at him like a fish out of water.
He's not really a people person in the way some people are, there's cues and insinuations he misses, usually because he doesn't care to see them. He's not sure he's reading things right, wouldn't take any poison on the gamble, but…
The twinkle in the boy's eye as he steps back, glances Touno over from head to toe, feels mean.
Nothing else about his demeanor hints at malice, there's no other clues that the strange moment, loaded with so much tension that Touno reaches up just to make sure his hair isn't standing up with some sort of static, was anything but some odd misunderstanding.
"I just came here to give you back your bracelet," the boy tells him pleasantly, glancing over his shoulder where a pack of other kids in the same tennis uniform hover, waiting. "But it's been a pleasure to meet you, Touno-kun."
His voice is smooth and pleasant as he says it, and Touno gives him a wide-eyed nod.
"By the way," the boy calls over his shoulder, a few steps away, "my name is Kimijima. I look forward to playing you."
---
Because of course, once he meets up with the rest of his team the coach announces the lineup; singles 1, Touno-Kimijima.
Touno is going to kill him.
---
Killing Kimijima is actually a pretty straightforward affair. A few quips that are too polite to really land aside, Kimijima plays just as politely as his gamely handshake before the match. The only real hurdle on the road to his impending demise is that for all that he plays an incredibly boring hand, he plays it impeccably.
"You should watch your temper," Kimijima calls out, looking far too relaxed for someone who is losing a fast and loose game that will cost him his shot at the nationals. Touno aims a ball right at his nose in retaliation.
"That's just unnecesary," Kimijima complains affably as he sidesteps the ball, swishing his racket around his wrist elegantly. "You could hurt someone."
"Oh I plan to," Touno growls at him as the unpire calls for them to switch places.
He's not sure why he's so angry, honestly. There's something about Kimijima's nonchalance, the audacity to not care about a match Touno has been training for all year on top of the way he'd pulled the rug out from under Touno's self image earlier.
'Surely I can't be gay' is an absolutely useless train of thought to be having in the middle of a goddamn tennis match.
"How scary~" Kimijima says with an airy laugh, like he's dismissing some small child, and Touno is very tempted to just say screw the match entirely and just strangle him instead. It'd be worth the disqualification, probably.
Instead he hits his nastiest serve, fully intending to clip Kimijima's shoulder.
"Your aim is getting sloppy," Kimijima sing-songs at him across the court, hitting the ball back seemingly with ease, and something weird happens.
The opponent's stands, which have been gravely watching their representative weather evisceration, seem to sense some sort of turn in the weather. The silence shatters; a girl with a stunningly loud voice begins chanting their school's slogan, the others clap in unity.
Touno isn't one to get distracted by the crowds, usually, but the suddenness of the shift is unsettling.
Kimijima hits a cutting slice, still looking frustratingly put together, and darts up to the net to intercept the next ball.
"It's a pity anger makes you careless," Kimijima calls out, and does this guy just not. stop. talking? "I could get used to seeing you like this, Touno-kun."
Touno came prepared for frustration, for anger, for fear. What he didn't come prepared for? Flirting.
It's not even too overt. It's not like Kimijima is saying he wants to fuck right out there on the field or anything. Still, his mind flashes back to that odd moment by the vending machines, and he's out of it just long enough for the ball to arch over his head and primly bounce in the corner of the field, barely inside the lines.
Fifteen-love.
He's fucking with me, Touno realises, and his vision sparks with anger. He's not sure how or why, but he's absolutely sure Kimijma is deliberately messing with his head.
Shrieking in anger, he hits another ball, meaner, nastier than before, fully intending to hurt.
Kimijima, the asshole, hits it back. And the next, and the next.
Touno's stamina isn't bad, but rage is draining him faster than he's prepared for as Kimijima turns the tide on him, switching between condescension and faux friendly remarks with a hint of flirtation to them, a barrage too constant for Touno to regain his footing.
He's forgotten all about mundane things like scores by the time the umpire calls the game, much more preoccupied by wanting to claw that perfectly smug smile of that perfectly smug face with its perfectly smug water-resistent make-up on.
It feels surreal, after the confused anger-embarrassment-hunger of the past… he can't even begin to guess how much time elapsed since the match started, and he's not sure how to process that he's lost.
Auto-pilot has him walking towards the net, grasping the hand held out to him, and he's halfway to forcing out an insincere 'thanks for the game' when Kimijima opens his fucking mouth.
"I'd say good game, Touno-kun," he says sweetly, soft enough there's no way anyone but them can hear over the thunderous applause from the stands. "But you play as poorly as you give directions."
It's not particularly cutting as far as insults go, but the delivery comes with a perfectly lovely smile and a friendly wink that make for such a bizarre contrast that Touno won't think of a decent retort until hours later, on the bus home.
He was right, he thinks mutely as he watches Kimijima walk off to join his celebrating teammates. This guy is mean.
This knowledge, unfortunately, does not detract from his attractiveness at all.
---
Watching from the stands during the finals later, Touno cannot fucking believe he lost against this guy.
Kimijma's techniques are shaky. He's similarly chatty the next time he plays, but without an apparent psychological hook to try and trip his opponent with he loses without much fanfare.
If Touno hadn't let him get into his head he would have crushed him like a particularly pretty bug. Somehow that only makes things worse.
Fuck this, he thinks as he stares at Kimijima, who doesn't look as frustrated about losing as he should have. There's no way he's going to give him any more of his headspace.
He's going to go home to Aomori, and purge this asshole from his brain.
---
Two months later some fourteen-year-old jackass with bleached-blond hair and glasses goes spectacularly viral and every girl in his class is immediately smitten.
Kimijima-writes-his-own-lyrics-even-though-he's-in-middle-school, they whisper excitedly, clutching cute bag straps in garish pink and yellow, colors his management seems to have settled on for branding. Kimijma-sings-like-an-angel. Kimijma-is-so-amazing.
It's just a name, Touno reminds himself as he angrily stabs his pencil at the dying stickmen in the margins of his notes. This shallow little wannabe idol can't help that he happens to share a name with the biggest asshole on the tennis circuit.
From what he can tell from the posters, aside from the glasses this other Kimijima (apparently his stage name is Kimijee, but that doesn't seem to be catching on) looks exactly like every other tryhard with an agency out there, including the heavy photoshop and dry bleached hair frizz.
Maybe hating this guy instead will relieve some of the frustrated tension that's been knotting up his gut. Probably not, but it's worth a shot.
---
The year gets confusing; his father gets a job transfer to Tokyo, his mother stays behind so he can finish school in Aomori. Once he graduates middle school they come home to a fully furnished apartment in Tokyo devoid of either of them, and it leaves his mother unsettled.
His father's income can suddenly stretch to allow for him to attend a high school with a good fucking team, and the elite among the Tokyo teams turn out to be an incestuous cluster of shared practice sessions and friendly rivalries.
It's nothing like dealing with the terror twins and their team of hillbillies, the only other truly ambitious team in the region.
Fashion boutiques aren't limited to day trips anymore, and Shibuya's many-faced fashion scene welcomes him with open arms, lets him expand on the sharp edges and velvet he fell in love with in magazines.
In the city, being different makes him less the outsider that catches stares and whispers. There's enough people similar to him that people roll their eyes and chalk it up to youth, and what disdain he might get is easily smoothed out with the flattery of curious street style photographers that sometimes take his picture.
He grows his hair out, and pretty girls tell him they love it.
A boy with wildly coiffed grey-black hair and heavy eyeliner adresses the beast Kimijima awoke in his last year of middle school, the same beast that ate him alive from the inside out in frustration when Kimijima never showed up during the school tournament.
Bisexuality, he learns from this boy, is awesome, and there was never anything to be afraid of. People have been calling him the executioner lately, and he's pretty sure that means that if anyone has a problem with it he should just kill them.
The relationship itself is shallow and burns out in less than three days, but the newfound knowledge about his sexuality is here to stay. And really, suck it, Kimijima. He won't be able to use it against Touno anymore.
Kimijima in the meanwhile, -the idol, not the player- is everywhere.
Kimijee never caught on, but Kimi-sama becomes a commonly heard name, as he expands from music into into modelling. There is something deeply disturbing about the first time advertisements featuring a fifteen-year-old boy dominate the Shibuya crossing, and Touno can't help but feel Kimijima's eyes following him the whole time he'sthere.
He finds out that Kimi-sama is a tennis player because his stupid Cola Vita ads use the information to sell their sports drinks. It's confusing, because he's absolutely sure he's never seen this kid anywhere near any tennis meets.
Kimijima's school team isn't ranked, which probably explains that part. The 'genius tennis BOY, all caps' Kimijima primarily dominates in non-school regulated tournaments.
(He's like, this sure he sees Kimijima cringe when they call him that in an interview, but it's hard to tell. He's got a good poker face.)
So really, he shouldn't have been surprised when he hears the first whispers of 'Kimi-sama' among the handful of first years present at the prestiguous under 17 selection camp.
---
There's a few others he recognises. Tanegashima and Irie, the doubles pair he remembers from Osaka, arrogant Byoudoin, Ochi Tsukimitsu, who is just flat out impossible to overlook. The fucking terror twins are there, unsociable and co-dependent as ever.
They're tossed head-first into a test meant to send half of them home, and against all odds several absolute monsters rise to the challenge, especially among those Touno has never heard of.
Oni, a scary looking bastard from somewhere down south crushes Byoudoin up like an empty soda can. Oomagari, a scruffy boy who looks like he'd rather be napping than be here takes out a pretty boy with fluffy hair and a foul mouth with some weird multi-racket style that is probably illegal.
He fancied himself the best Japan has to offer, but it's looking like he might have to work on it some more. It's exciting.
Kimijima (the idol), is apparently the cat in a drawn out game of cat and mouse with Irie that seems to leave them both annoyed at the end, but he wins. Having seen Irie play seriously (probably) before, even just once, that surprises Touno. He's kind of disappointed the match happened at the same time as his own, actually.
Touno takes out Matsudaira, who just doesn't have the discipline to keep up with him. It's a shame, because he seems to know a thing or two about hair-care, and Touno's is getting so long he welcomes advice to reduce split ends.
Ochi takes out fellow former captain Miyako, the remaining twin is supposedly the older one but Touno has known them long enough to not trust that at face value.
Touno gets assigned the weird room, with Tanegashima, Oomagari and a Mutsu. They're not friends, really, so he doesn't call him out on his deceit, but he's known them like eight fucking years and the younger Mutsu is a little less of a troublemaker. Yuuma hasn't stuck his nose anywhere it doesn't belong yet, so Yuuma is probably not Yuuma at all. Whatever.
Tanegashima becomes Shuuji in the span of like, maybe twenty minutes, and Touno is really glad he's confronted the whole bisexuality thing before coming here, because he's fun and cute and, well, absolutely infuriating, but that's easier to overlook than it should be somehow.
Shuuji's also a bit of a leaf on the breeze, though. He flirts back, but he's so flippant Touno wonders if he's got his shoes lined with lead or something. Surely it's not natural that he hasn't been blown off with the first best breeze yet.
He doesn't even need to be rejected to shelve whatever that might have started beforehand.
Kimijima actually spends very little time at the camp. Apparently he's also filming something nearby, and he gets called away a lot for it.
Touno complains to Shuuji and the other two that Kimijima shouldn't be here if he's not going to take things seriously, and Shuuji spends a solid three minutes doubled over laughing, and refuses to explain why. Oomagari and Yuuma-who-is-probably-Yuuho seem to have already accepted this as normal Shuuji behavior.
It's kind of weird, sharing camp space with a celebrity but somehow never crossing paths.
If it weren't so absolutely unthinkable, Touno would almost assume he's being avoided. But there's no reason for their resident idol to even recognise him beyond his spreading infamy as the executioner of the tennis courts.
Actually, he considers as he pulls out a book on chinese history that google tells him has some in-depth insights about several historical torture methods, that might be it. His reputation isn't very idol compatible. Kimijima probably worries Touno is going to damage his photogenic nose or something.
…If he's aware of Touno's reputation at all, that is, and Touno isn't just imagining things.
---
It's wholly by accident he walks in on Kimijima getting sternly (?) reprimanded by coach Saitou.
"It's not that we're not willing to work with your schedule," he's saying. "But there's a lot of competition to even be allowed to attend here, Kimijima-kun. If you're not here often enough for our training to benefit you, well, I'm not sure why you came here at all."
"My apologies," Kimijima says, sounding… tired? Well, it is past ten in the evening. Training is intense enough Touno would probably be in bed by now, if it weren't for the sudden cravings for an evening snack. It's not the weirdest time to be sounding tired. "I underestimated my, ah, work schedule, I'll e-mail my manager tonight."
"You should wait until tomorrow at least," Saitou tells him with a laugh and a pat on the head. "It's usually the third years I have to warn about overdoing it. You're fifteen, Kimijima-kun. Get some rest, don't skip breakfast, tell somebody no every once in a while."
Touno is pretty sure he's not meant to hear any of this, and decides he should probably focus on an exit strategy instead of listening to Kimijma's uncomfortable assurance he doesn't have trouble saying no (while, of course, not saying no).
He shuffles back quietly and takes a left at the next hallway he comes across, unfortunately forgetting that one ends in a dead end right up until he finds himself looking at the locked door into the equipment storage like an idiot.
At least when he finds Kimijma standing in the midle of the hallway once he doubles back he doesn't look entirely guilty of eavesdropping, even if he does almost walk straight into the guy.
In Touno's defense, the middle of the hallway seems like it would be a logical collision risk factor.
"Wha- oh. Ah," Kimijima looks startled, then annoyed, then tired, then steps back. There's a facility map on the wall he's standing in front of, and maybe it makes sense he doesn't know the way four days in, because he's barely been around.
"Can't find your room?" Touno asks, because he's late and this guy looks like he hasn't slept all year. "First years rooms are at the last hallway to the right."
Kimijma (the idol, who definitely doesn't maintain his billboard charisma this close) gives him a kind of constipated look. "And you're headed that way yourself, I'm sure."
"Huh? No, I was headed for the kitchen, actually. Got some homework I need brain food to power through." Hopefully Kimijima doesn't know enough about the layout to find the direction he came from strange. He needs a map, after all. He probably wouldn't.
"The kitchen," Kimijima says, sounding strained. "Well, have fun with that, I suppose."
He turns back to the map, like Touno hasn't just told him where to go, and Touno shuffles in place awkwardly. He does have a few more kit-kat bars he could snack on instead, and it feels kind of wrong to leave Kimijima hovering here.
"You, uh, need me to walk you back?" Maybe that's why he asked?
"Would you actually walk me to my room?" Kimijima asks with narrowed eyes, which makes him look strangely familiar. There's layers to the question that Touno might be better at deciphering if it were't past ten.
"Uh, yeah? Not like there's much else to go?" Not with the creepy robo guard dogs around.
There's a pause at Kimijima scrutinises him intensely. It's kind of uncomfortable.
"Sure," he decides eventually, and why was this guy known for his charisma again? He's rally just kind of rude. "Lead the way."
It's an awkward two minutes walk back to their hallway, during which Touno considers trying to make conversation and Kimijima somehow wordlessly stonewalls the attempt.
So, maybe he was right and the guy has been avoiding him. Which is, weird, but he's got long hair and a penchant for yelling about murder. He's probably not really the type budding celebrities would seek out.
"Yo, Atsu~," Shuuji greets from the doorway before walking (fluttering) over to them. "And the local celebrity! Having a nighttime stroll? How scandalous~☆."
Touno's ears burn red at the tips, and he can pretty much hear the suggestive emoji thrown somewhere in there. No human being should be capable of speaking unicode stars out loud, but Shuuji probably doesn't qualify as fully human anyway.
"I'm just helping out out," he bristles defensively. Kimijima snaps out an equally hard "That is not what's happening," at exactly the same time.
"Uh-huh!" Shuuji agrees chipperly. "Totes. Hey, Kimi-kimi, I wanna talk to you for a sec, c'mon."
Touno is not consulted further as Shuuji drags Kimijma to, well, the other end of the hallway, creeps an arm around his shoulder and begins animatedly telling him something.
A little baffled, Touno watches Kimijima go from surprised to confused to… amused? The pair of them glance his way, share a look and burst out into giggles like a pair of schoolgirls.
This is the scariest thing he's ever experienced, and Touno decides that the manliest option he could take here is to flee.
---
Whatever grudge Kimijima had been holding evaporates after Shuuji gets to him, and the next morning he joins their room at breakfast, seemingly content to let a sleepy Shuuji cuddle into his shoulder.
Which is weird, because Touno is pretty sure the conversation they had yesterday was their first one ever, but also because Tanegashima Shuuji is a godless morning person who skips off to the showers before sunrise humming exactly loud enough to wake everyone else in the room. He's pretty sure their annoyance sustains him, keeps his skin clear and his his spirit youthful.
Kimijima, apparently also a morning person, chats with a weirded out looking Yuuma (actually Yuuho, definitely not a morning person) while typing out something long on his phone.
Oomagari looks unimpressed, but it's hard to tell if that's related to anything else. Honestly, probably not.
---
"Kimijma, Touno," coach Kurobe calls out during practice that day. "Doubles practice. Pair up."
It's a baffling choice. They're so different it's guaranteed to end up in a murder-suicide or something equally horrendous.
It's the beginning of the end, thinks Touno Atsukyou, sixteen years old.
He's wrong. It's the end of the beginning.