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cookies and your sunshine soul

Summary:

Tsukishima isn’t too surprised when the bird bangs into his window the first time. After all, it’s happened often enough before that he’s put up wards to make sure the birds don’t injure themselves by slamming into a solid wall of glass. Usually they bounce off and flutter away. He’s seen a few of them make the same mistake twice, but that’s all it takes to learn.

This bird, however, is either stubborn, stupid, or both.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Tsukishima isn’t too surprised when the bird bangs into his window the first time. After all, it’s happened often enough before that he’s put up wards to make sure the birds don’t injure themselves by slamming into his full south-facing wall of reinforced glass. Usually they sort of bounce off, and flutter away in a bit of a daze. He’s seen a few of them make the same mistake twice, but that’s all it takes to learn.

This bird, however, is either stubborn, stupid, or both. Tsukishima winces slightly as it crashes into the glass again less than a minute later, and he sets aside the latest thing he’s been mixing and gets up; just in time to see the bird, a very disheveled black crow, hurl itself straight at the glass for the third time.

While it’s recovering from the rebound of that particular impact, Tsukishima opens the door in the wall and steps outside, practically snatching the bird out of the air before it can try the same trick a fourth time. It settles in his hands comfortably, so he closes the door behind him with his foot and walks to the bench, a small thing shaped by a tree he had persuaded to grow sideways. The crow is now preening its feathers, shaking them a bit to get the dust out and putting them back in order with its beak. It hops off happily onto the sideways tree when Tsukishima sits down, fluttering up to perch on the edge of a bird feeder hanging from a branch.

Tsukishima sighs. “I don’t take in strays, you know,” he says to the bird, knowing it’s not true even as the words pass his lips. He usually does get attached to any animal he takes care of—Tadashi always jokes that it’s his one weakness.

The crow puffs its feathers out and squawks at him, flying a short circle around his head before landing back on the edge of the feeder. Settled with its talons gripping tightly, it chatters at him with various bird sounds before spreading its wings, as if it’s trying to tell him something.

The force with which it opens its wings tips it over the front of the bird feeder, and the crow swings abruptly upside down, still holding onto the wire rim around the edge.

Tsukishima snorts. “You really are a stupid bird. You should’ve known not to hold on so tightly to that.”

The crow shrieks in protest, flapping its wings frantically in a wild effort to right itself. Tsukishima decides to take pity on it, and gently holds the bird in one hand while attempting to pry its claws off the feeder with the other. It looks at him reproachfully once he does that, if it’s possible for a bird to look reproachful, but it has very little effect when the bird is still on its back with its legs stuck up in the air. Tsukishima tries not to laugh and flips it upright again.

“If I didn’t know any better,” he says, “I’d say you’re not used to being a bird.”

The crow, now on the bench, bobs its head up and down vigorously, puffing out its feathers in what looks like a display of excitement.

“Did you just nod at me?” Tsukishima asks, incredulously.

The bird repeats the same action.

Tsukishima squints at it curiously, pushing his glasses back on his nose. “Just to be sure… give me a no this time.”

The crow wiggles from side-to-side so enthusiastically it knocks itself over, and Tsukishima has to right it again. He’s sure, now.

“You’re not a crow, not really.”

The crow nods once, looking up at Tsukishima with bright eyes. He almost swears they look brown in the sunlight, although crows usually only have black eyes.

“So you came to me for help.” Another nod. “How did you know I could help you? Or, for that matter, how did you know I wasn’t one of those witches that stuns frogs and crows and boils them for lunch?”

The bird turns in a circle, indicating the clearing full of flourishing plants and gentle witch-lights, and the walls inside his house that are covered in shelves of healing aids and potions, and then gives Tsukishima a pointed look before fluttering over to the door and landing on the ground right next to it.

Tsukishima sighs. “You want to go in, don’t you?” Another bob of the head. “Fine. But if you break anything, I’m not helping you.” The crow puffs out its feathers indignantly and lets out another squawk.

It stays on the floor for about ten seconds once inside, then flutters up to land exactly on the corner of the table that Tsukishima keeps clean, having spilled one too many drinks from that spot when he crowds them off the table or, god forbid, Hinata is over and comes around the corner from the hallway too fast, and, well. He’s broken a few cups that way. Unfortunately, Kageyama, the expert at fixing things, never seems to be around at those times, despite the fact that he spends at least half his time glued to Hinata’s side.

(It isn’t a big deal, anyway—Hinata always apologizes for ten minutes straight, while Tsukishima reassures him with exasperated fondness that he has dozens of glasses and mugs and it isn’t that big of a deal. Hinata bounces back pretty easily after that, although he doesn’t seem to learn from his previous mistakes; kind of like the crow that tried to fly directly into his window four times, and which is currently peering at the materials strewn across his desk.)

Tsukishima slides the contents of his desk to one side, giving the crow more space to hop around on the tabletop, and ducks into the hallway to pull down a heavy book from his shelves, one that has a place on the dusty top shelf next to his early journals from when he was learning the basics of potions and spellcraft, and of course, healing. He’s very glad he hasn’t had to use it often—due to the weight, which is made worse by putting it on the top shelf, really, why did he do that—but he needs it now, because he’s not sure what the problem is.

The crow is poking at the stuff on his desk when he returns with the book, its beak tapping on a beaker that Tsukishima has actually been using to rinse out paintbrushes. Painting is, after all, an easy hobby when he’s surrounded by perfect nature scenes, even if he’s not incredible at it. He lets the book fall on the desk, and the thud startles the crow away from the glass.

“It’s a good thing you’re a short bird,” Tsukishima comments, “or else you might have actually tried to drink paint water. One of my—” He hesitates for a moment. “—friends has almost done that before, actually.”

The crow’s feathers fluff out again, and it pointedly hops away from the muddy-looking water, pretending it wasn’t interested. Hinata had done almost the same, actually, but he’d gone as far as to pick up the beaker and stare at it. He definitely appreciated the glass of water Tsukishima got him a lot more. (His smile was so bright it was almost infectious.)

Tsukishima flips open the cover of the book, waving a hand in front of his face to dispel the dust. "Alright," he mutters. "Chapter on birds that aren't birds… no, too unclear." He looks critically at the crow, who has gotten bored with the various pens on his desk and is now sitting with its legs sticking out in front of it. "Crows don't sit like that, you know," he says, and flips to the chapter on soul transfers.

Half an hour of reading later, with the crow occasionally peering over his arms to look at the book, Tsukishima thinks that maybe, just maybe, he knows what's happened.

“Alright,” he starts, pointing at the crow. “My best guess is that either you were a bystander with a weak soul—” The crow squawks in protest. “—and you got pulled into a wizard’s spell by accident, or you’re a wizard, probably an apprentice, and you tried a spell that was too hard for you and it backfired.”

The crow hops from one foot to the other, as if thinking, and then nods a few times.

Tsukishima takes a deep breath and then lets out a long sigh. “You wizards with your complicated spells,” he grumbles. “This is why I stick to things where the worst that can happen is a plant wilts, or I have to stick to what I know to heal someone instead of trying something new.” He pushes his chair back from the desk and stands up, and the crow looks at him curiously. “I’m going to get something to eat,” he explains. “This might take a while.”

In the kitchen, he hesitates in front of the cupboard, wondering what a crow-that-isn’t-a-crow would eat. Eventually, he just shrugs and grabs a tin of orange shortbread cookies. He makes them himself—he usually has to make a new batch every time Hinata comes over, as the wizard-in-training eats half the tin and feeds a few more to the birds for good measure. The birds might not appreciate them nearly as much as Hinata does, but he’s never seen one get sick from eating the cookies, so it should be fine.

He sets the tin down on his desk and opens it, and the crow flutters its wings and hops into the air, squawking in delight. Tsukishima stares at it for a moment incredulously before laughing, and the crow almost falls over in surprise.

Tsukishima takes a cookie out of the tin and sets it on his desk, watching with a smile as the bird demolishes the cookie in a matter of seconds. “You know, my friend loves those cookies too. He’s an apprentice wizard just like you probably are.” Come to think of it, he hasn’t seen Hinata in a day or two, or heard from him recently—

The crow hops up and down and squawks with new intensity, doing the nodding gesture so vigorously it nearly knocks itself over. Then it does knock itself over, and Tsukishima picks up the creature, staring at it more closely. Its eyes are definitely brown, he decides, and instead of the normal iridescence, some of the feathers on its wings shine almost orange in the sunlight filtering through his wall of glass. The crow beams at him, still squawking happily with crumbs on its beak.

“No way,” Tsukishima says, almost in disbelief—but then again, he’s probably seen weirder things. “Hinata?”

The crow stops cawing and fluffs out his wings, satisfied. He looks slightly less satisfied when Tsukishima puts him back down on the desk, closes the book in order to return it to the shelf, and pushes back the short curtain above his workspace.

There’s no window there, of course—it’s an indoor wall, meaning the other side is a spare bedroom for his friends (yes, they are his friends, he can admit that to himself at least) when they come over and stay the night. Rather, the curtain hides a mirror; both because Tsukishima doesn’t like seeing his reflection, and it’s a certain kind of mirror that can be distracting sometimes.

Right now, he intends to use it for a short bit of scrying. He taps on the frame a few times to make sure it’s working, picks up the crow, and concentrates, his eyes half-closed. It takes a bit, but eventually, in the haze induced by late afternoon, the dust on the glass, and his partly obscured gaze, the mirror shudders and the view changes. Instead of a clear picture of Tsukishima standing there with a bird in his hands, it now shows him a reflection of all the souls in the room—there’s his own, of course, a quiet green that leans toward the sunny windows, and there’s the smaller, smudgy green and brown plants; but those are practically invisible compared to the glowing soul in his hands, which looks like a soft ball of condensed sunlight. Tsukishima is glad he has his eyes partly closed—this soul is blinding, which just confirms his earlier guess.

Hinata has the brightest soul he’s ever seen. It almost seems like Tsukishima’s hands should have third-degree burns right now.

Tsukishima sighs. “What am I going to do with you?”


What he’s going to have to do, apparently, is find Hinata. Not that he's wrong about the bird—the bird definitely has Hinata’s soul in it—but after looking through the stupidly thick book again, and flipping through his notes as Hinata uses his little crow beak to point to things, Tsukishima thinks he has a decent idea of what happened.

Step one: Hinata has a homework assignment where he’s supposed to summon a familiar. Tsukishima remembers hearing him complain about this to Kageyama—while they’re in the same class, Kageyama found his familiar, a black wolf, on accident when he was five, so he’s exempt from the assignment.

Step two: Hinata does the spell, sort of. That’s where the crow comes in—he does manage to summon his familiar. If they weren’t in the sort of situation that would make it an asshole kind of move, Tsukishima would have joked that they really will be familiar with each other.

Step three: Hinata fails the spell, sort of. He’s the type to just try something without reading all the instructions, and a few times this has resulted in Tsukishima bandaging up burn marks on Hinata’s hands, admonishing him to remember safety wards, and moving his flowers into less breakable pots. This time, it resulted in the magic backfiring on the apprentice wizard, essentially zapping his soul out of his body.

Step four: Hinata’s soul hijacks the crow and turns to the nearest person he knows that can help; which, apparently, is Tsukishima.

Which brings them to the current problem: finding Hinata’s body. Asking Kageyama isn’t an option, because he didn’t have to do the assignment, and he’s awful with directions anyway (Tsukishima learned that when Hinata convinced him, Kageyama, Tadashi, and Yachi to go to an amusement park, and Kageyama got them hopelessly lost while trying to find food). Yachi would probably be good at this sort of thing, but he’s not sure how to ask her for help.

It takes him another fifteen minutes, and Hinata another two cookies, for both of them to realize an obvious solution: Hinata can just retrace his flight (hopefully) back to where he did the spell, and hope a bear or something hasn’t dragged his body off. (Tsukishima doesn’t mention that bit to Hinata, though. It would just scare him, which wouldn’t help the birdbrain think clearly to lead the witch there.)

Hinata seems to be paying attention when Tsukishima explains the plan, and excitedly bumps into the window again a few times before Tsukishima continues to explain that he needs supplies in order to fix this little mess. He gives Hinata one more cookie to keep him occupied before putting the tin away. Then, of course, he has to explain that it’s getting dark and they should probably wait until morning.

When he wakes up, it’s almost still dark out; but then, he has no idea where they’re going to have to go, or how far, so an early start is better. He steps out into the main room, expecting the crow to be hopping around enthusiastically, but Hinata is curled up, head tucked into his wing, on one of Tsukishima’s sweatshirts that he had left on the floor. It’s a dark green hoodie that almost blends in with the soft shadows thrown on his floor by the early light filtering through the trees, and Hinata looks so peaceful when he’s not jumping around loudly—

Tsukishima clears his throat and nudges the crow with his foot. “Wake up, birdbrain.”

Hinata ends up flipping over on his back and flailing his wings—well, he’s awake, at least—and Tsukishima is sure that if he was back to normal he would be pouting and complaining about the nickname right now. Instead, he just caws at Tsukishima until the witch takes pity on him and picks him up to set him properly on his feet.

Breakfast is a little unusual, with Hinata pecking at a corner of a piece of toast on the table. There’s a level of excitement under the simplicity of the scene, but Tsukishima has a bag packed with supplies, food, and a change of clothes if necessary, so he’s not very worried.

The only part that has him worried (only slightly, you understand) is this whole soul business. Sure, he can scry for the presence of souls fairly easily. He can sometimes tell when something is wrong with one of his plants that way. But putting a soul back where it belongs is not something he’s ever done before. It would be way too easy to mess up.

As much as he complains about Hinata being annoying, he doesn’t want to mess up anything to do with his soul. The consequences of that—no, he refuses to consider the consequences. They will find Hinata, and this will work.

Despite his feigned indifference, Tsukishima fusses over the plants in his window for long enough that Hinata flies up and flutters his wings in his face.

Tsukishima spits out a few tiny feathers. “Okay, I get it. We’re going.” He locks the door behind him, texts Tadashi instructions to water the plants if he takes too long, and they go.

As a witch that focuses on nature magic, Tsukishima has been glad in the past to live a decent way into the woods and out of the city—he’d had to study in the city a few years back, and the stress had wilted any plant he tried to take care of. Now, though, being sort of in the middle of nowhere is mildly inconvenient. Hinata would have set up his summoning spell anywhere that had enough peace and quiet, which is, well: the entire forest. Luckily, Hinata seems to remember his flight so far, with occasional encouragement from Tsukishima in the form of pieces of a shortbread cookie.

After a few hours, Hinata stops on a branch, his small bird body rocking back and forth as his chest heaves. He caws at Tsukishima, and it almost sounds whiny.

“...you’re tired, aren’t you?” Tsukishima sighs. “It is nearly noon, I suppose your tiny wings have to work extra hard to keep up.” He takes off his backpack and rummages in it for some food, before turning back to Hinata. “Sorry,” he says quietly, and hands over another piece of cookie.

He sits on the ground to eat his own sandwich, and Hinata perches on his leg (once he’s done with the cookie, of course, Tsukishima doesn’t like getting crumbs all over him and Hinata knows this). Once he’s done with that and shoulders his backpack again, Hinata flutters along.

It’s actually not too much farther before they come upon a small clearing covered in scorch marks, the ground burned especially dark in a circle that suggests Hinata used at least one safety ward—

And Hinata, laying flat just outside of the circle, limp like a ragdoll. Tsukishima’s breath hitches in his throat at the sight. It’s almost like he was thrown there, with no care whatsoever, and there’s soot on his face and leaves in his hair and god, Tsukishima hopes nothing is broken. When he gets closer, he sees the burns covering Hinata’s arms, and the rash on his neck that might be from a magical fever or poison ivy, he can’t tell. Worst of all, there’s a quietness to the body, almost like he’s dead—really, that’s not far from the truth, aside from the slight rise and fall of his chest.

The crow lands next to Hinata’s body, and he’s unnaturally still, staring at—well, himself. It’s true, Hinata would never have seen himself like this before: mirrors are all backwards, and photos can’t capture everything.

Quietly, Tsukishima puts his bag down and kneels next to Hinata’s body. “I know,” he whispers to the crow. “It’s weird.” He lifts up Hinata’s head to brush the leaves out of his bright hair, and then edges his other arm under his legs to pick up the body and set him down in the center of the clearing. He figures it makes sense to put him right where the problem started, and for good measure, he picks up the crow and sets him right in the middle of Hinata’s chest. Then he gets out most of the stuff he brought with him.

First, of course, he sets up multiple wards—to make sure the soul doesn’t float off untethered, to contain the magic if anything goes wrong, the whole deal. That’s the easy part. He’s tempted to say the hard part was bringing along that thick book in his backpack, but this isn’t the time for joking around. He pours the rest of his first water bottle into a bowl, flips to the page in the book, and concentrates.

Scrying is even easier when he’s surrounded by the quiet forest, and he can still see the sunshiny color of Hinata’s soul in the crow’s frame. Well, that’s what he’s trying to fix. Through partially closed eyes, he reads a few phrases off the pages of the book, slowly so he can be sure of the pronunciation—this isn’t his area of knowledge, and he wants, no, needs everything to be perfect. He feels a small spark of triumph when he senses the energy in the air, contained in a bubble around the center of the clearing.

The next bit apparently involves some sort of astral projection to whatever level of existence souls exist on—he’s not sure about the technicalities of that bit, but it isn’t too hard, and then it’s just a slight nudge, and

something

shifts.

Tsukishima reels back, fighting a sudden wave of nausea. The energy that was so tense before has all disappeared—used up in the spell, most likely, and his vision is a little blurry, but the crow hops off of Hinata’s chest and caws a few times, and it sounds like a very normal crow. Tsukishima pushes back the fuzzy feeling in his head to peer in his bowl, except, well, all the water is gone. Evaporated, probably, somewhere in the completion of the spell.

At least, he really hopes it’s completed, since there weren’t any further instructions beyond hope for the best

There’s a groan, and someone kicks Tsukishima’s knee, and he forces his eyes open again to see brown eyes, blinking open at the sky, and then focusing on him.

“Tsukki…?” Hinata says, his voice cracking. “Did it work?”

“Obviously,” Tsukishima manages, going for his usual sarcastic tone, but instead it comes out choked and sounding like he’s on the verge of tears. Oh. Maybe he is about to cry, he realizes as he reaches up to fix his glasses, which nowadays always seem to be crooked.

Hinata looks like he’s reorienting himself, tilting his head gradually to look around the clearing before pushing himself up on wobbly arms to a sitting position. He winces, and Tsukishima remembers the burns on his arms and turns to his bag, but Hinata catches him by the edge of his sleeve and pulls him back.

Tsukishima lands with his legs folded up in an uncomfortable position beneath him, and his knees bump into Hinata’s shins momentarily, but Hinata pulls him into a hug and he forgets all that: forgets his sharp and bony limbs on the hard ground, forgets the dirt on his hands and in Hinata’s hair, forgets for a moment that he was ever worried this would go wrong. After all, Hinata is always saying the most important part of any magic is caring; and he can admit it, he cares about Hinata.

In spite of the burns on his hands, Hinata hugs him tightly, his face pressed into Tsukishima’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he mumbles. “Thank you, thank you, thank—”

Tsukishima sighs. “Stop saying it like you’re surprised. Of course I would help you.”

He almost regrets voicing this thought when Hinata springs back, a gleam in his eyes and a bright grin filling his face, as it usually does. “What, are you admitting you care about me?” he exclaims.

Unable to find the right words for a moment, Tsukishima brushes some of the dirt out of Hinata’s hair and presses a short kiss to his forehead. “Of course I care about you, stupid,” he says, turning to his backpack to hide his reddening face, and to get out bandages as well as something for the burns. He doesn’t quite meet Hinata’s gaze as he wraps up his arms, but he can feel the other boy beaming at him, so he relaxes a bit. He finishes and tucks in the bandages, which will probably make for a great story about Hinata’s homework assignment, and then looks up again.

Hinata smiles at him, bright but never really obnoxious. “Thank you, Tsukishima,” he says earnestly, and then bounces to his feet. “Hey, can we head back now, I’m probably—” He’s interrupted by his stomach growling.

“Hungry?” Tsukishima guesses. “Yeah, I bet it’ll be faster since you’re not using those tiny wings to keep up.”

“Oh, right!” Hinata gasps and looks around the clearing, swooping down on the crow when he spots it. Surprisingly enough, it sits calmly in the wizard’s hands, letting out a small warble. “The entire point of this assignment was to find my familiar,” Hinata starts saying. “It would really suck if I forgot to take this guy with me!”

Tsukishima rolls his eyes fondly. “That’s exactly the kind of thing Kageyama would call you an idiot for.” He closes up his backpack, with everything neatly back in it, and settles it on his shoulders again.

Hinata huffs out a breath. “Well, Kageyama can’t say anything about this spell, because he’s never had to do it. And I bet he’s never had to put a soul back where it belongs, either, so that makes you a lot cooler than him.” He settles the crow on his shoulder, and grins widely as he takes one of Tsukishima’s hands.

“...Right.” Tsukishima can’t exactly argue with Hinata like this, when he looks so bright and happy and, most of all, safe. “Let’s get back.”


When they make it back to Tsukishima’s cabin in the evening, Tadashi is standing there, talking to the plants and fidgeting with his hands every few seconds. He lets out a small squeal when he sees them and nearly tackles both his friends in a hug.

“What happened?” he asks, and starts talking rapidly at them. “You just said to come over and water the plants, so I talked to them to figure out which ones need watering, and they said you left with a shiny bird—oh, is that it?” He pauses and holds out a finger to Hinata’s familiar, which readily hops onto his hand. “Anyway, you left basically alone, and—hold on, if you left here by yourself then when did…?” He trails off in confusion, and his gaze drops down to where Hinata is still holding Tsukishima’s hand.

Tsukishima sighs, knowing he probably has to explain the whole thing. “It’s a little complicated. As for whether that is the shiny bird, yes and no.” He watches Tadashi’s expression grow increasingly confused, and suggests they go inside.

He has to drag the chair from his desk into the kitchen so all three of them can sit down, but finally he can set down his backpack. He pulls out the heavy book that he’s had to carry all the way out into the forest and back, flips to the pages he used earlier, and slides it over for Tadashi to read as he starts talking.

“It was my fault, really,” Hinata interrupts before he can say anything. When Tsukishima glares at him, Hinata shuts himself up by taking a cookie from the tin and shoving it in his mouth with an appreciative hum.

“I was just sitting here working, so it is actually his fault,” Tsukishima agrees. “But I had to get up when a dumb bird kept flying into my window…”

“...and here we are,” he says, leaning back in his chair. Hinata had insisted on adding bits to the story at certain points, mostly stuff like how weird everything looked when he was seeing it as a bird (while holding up his new familiar to demonstrate) and how cool and nice Tsukishima had been. Tadashi raises an eyebrow at Tsukishima when Hinata describes him as nice, but otherwise he’s a great listener.

Tadashi leans forward and pats Hinata on the arm. “Well, I hope you learned something from this experience,” he says in a mock-serious voice.

Hinata brightens. “Yeah! I learned that Tsukishima’s cookies taste great even when I’m a bird!”

Tsukishima stares at him for a long moment. “I think Tadashi meant, you shouldn’t try spells that are too dangerous for your skill level.”

“Oh, okay. That too.” Hinata just takes another cookie. “But even if something like that happens again, you’d help me, right?” He gives Tsukishima a wide-eyed look that’s so earnest he can’t possibly say no. If he didn’t know better, he’d say it’s witchcraft.

Tsukishima sighs softly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d help you.” He can feel Tadashi staring at him, but Hinata’s smile is practically magnetic. His best friend can grill him about this later.

In fact, Tadashi’s phone beeps, reminding him that he apparently has something very important to get to, and he settles for edging in a few quietly pointed questions as he leaves, accompanied by the threat of poison ivy in Tsukishima’s socks if he tries to avoid the conversation.

When Tsukishima returns to the kitchen, Hinata flashes an empty cookie tin at him before grinning mischievously. “I know what the important thing is,” he says in a sing-song voice like he’s withholding information.

He knows Hinata can’t keep a secret for long, so he just waits, leaning in the doorway.

“It’s a date with Kageyama,” Hinata finally blurts out (after a few seconds, that is). “He told me all about it in class last week.”

Tsukishima’s mouth drops open slightly before he recovers himself. “Is that so,” he says, sliding back into the empty seat at the table. “I have to say, out of our little friend group, I didn’t expect—”

“Me either!” Hinata exclaims. “I didn’t even know they liked each other until Kageyama brought up the date, and he’s my best friend!”

“—I didn’t expect them to go on a date before I could manage to ask you on one,” Tsukishima finishes with a smirk, and he watches as Hinata’s face turns crimson and he lets out a squeak like a teakettle close to boiling over.

“We- well, uh, well,” Hinata stammers, “actually, if, uh if you technically counted this, then—”

Tsukishima reaches over the table and takes Hinata’s hand. “It’s fine, they can brag about that. I’d rather not have the privilege of saying you almost died on our first date: people might think I’m even more intimidating,” he jokes.

“I don’t think you’re intimidating,” Hinata protests.

Tsukishima scoots his chair closer. “That,” he says in a low voice, “is because you like me, and I like you, and that makes me stupidly soft when you’re around.” Then he kisses Hinata.

He tastes like orange shortbread cookies.

Notes:

this fic is really just Tsukishima flipping Hinata-as-a-bird right-side-up so many times, because Hinata is bad at being a bird. kidding, kidding, there's plot too. (but it happens four times, so honestly...)