Archive of Our Own ^beta

They’re numbered in his head, the moments when Sakusa Kiyoomi knew his fate was sealed, and there are six of them.

One: That moment in the bathrooms in junior high, when he sees a taller, older boy wearing a Shiratorizawa jacket drying his hands carefully and thoroughly, before folding his hand towel with the damp side in and slipping it back into his pocket. Kiyoomi doesn’t know his name, but it doesn’t take long to find out. He slips out after him, forgetting for the moment that he’d been waiting for the other boys to leave so he could get down to business, and watches him join his teammates by the entrance to the courts. Wakatoshi-kun, they call him, and his coach calls him Ushijima. Ushijima Wakatoshi, Kiyoomi thinks, watching the Shiratorizawa Junior High team as it files through the door and onto the court. Later that day, Ushijima scores four service aces in a row off Kiyoomi’s team, and Kiyoomi asks him how long he’s been playing volleyball.

“I don’t remember,” Ushijima says. “Since I could walk, I think.” He pauses, then asks, “How do you put a spin like that on your spikes?”

That’s time number one.

***

Two: There’s a time at a training camp when some enterprising coach decides to see what will happen if he mixes everyone up and makes them play out of their usual positions. Ushijima has been made a middle blocker, which Kiyoomi scoffs at, since it means sacrificing his backrow attack when he gets rotated out for the libero. Obviously, that isn’t the point of the exercise, though – Kiyoomi just thinks, however, that if you get a player as specialised as Ushijima, then it’s silly to waste him on this kind of thing, and how is he supposed to see how Ushijima’s spiking form has improved if he isn’t playing opposite hitter?

There’ll be other opportunities, he supposes, as he lifts his arms, forcing himself into the unfamiliar stance of a setter and sending the ball over to some guy from a school in Aomori Prefecture who flails it over the net with a lot more force than skill, where it meets Ushijima’s hand with a painful-sounding smack.

Kiyoomi can tell there’s something wrong before Ushijima’s feet hit the ground – he’s holding his right hand close to his chest, and Kiyoomi momentarily forgets how to breathe when he sees the thin trickle of blood run down between Ushijima’s knuckles.

He’s still staring in horror as he hears the coach behind him, saying, Miyadera, take Ushijima to the –

“I’ll take him,” he blurts out, and the coach must agree because he somehow finds himself standing in the infirmary – he hadn’t even realised that at some point he must’ve grabbed Ushijima’s wrist in order to drag him along down the corridor more quickly, and he drops it immediately, as if his fingers are a hot iron that might leave a mark on Ushijima’s skin.

Kiyoomi stands in the corner, feeling as if his head is about to float away while his stomach sinks into the floor, and watches as a cheerful nurse swiftly and efficiently wraps a dry-eyed, uncomplaining Ushijima’s fingers in a bandage, with neither of them apparently having any idea whatsoever of the hideous thing that has just occurred. Oh my God, he thinks. Oh my God. That set was bad, so the spike was off, and now I’ve destroyed Ushijima-san’s finger, I’ve destroyed his career –

“There now, Wakatoshi-kun, nothing to worry about – it’s just a little sprain, and the nail is torn a bit. Keep it bandaged, and it’ll be fine,” the nurse says, patting Ushijima on the head and calling him Wakatoshi-kun as if he’s a little boy and not a sixteen-year-old who’s already significantly taller than she is.

“Thank you,” Ushijima says, resting his hand on his knee, as Kiyoomi’s eyes roll back in his head. He feels like he could start frothing at the mouth at any moment.

“Well, you just sit here a minute and rest, Wakatoshi-kun. You’ve been a very brave boy. Your friend can stay with you. I’ll be back in a minute,” the nurse says, patting Ushijima on the head again before she bustles out of the room.

Kiyoomi isn’t sure whether it’s the head-patting or hearing someone say Wakatoshi-kun so often in such a short space of time or the fact that the nurse just called him Ushijima’s friend, but as soon as she’s gone, his brain apparently short-circuits, and he idiotically blurts out, “Wakatoshi-kun, I’m sorry –”

If he could eat the words back out of the air he would, but then again, if he could just drop dead right there on the spot, he would probably do that as well. He hates it when people say things like that. But Ushijima just glances up at him, blinking, and asks, “What are you sorry for?”

“It was a terrible set,” Kiyoomi says miserably. “It was too awkward for the spiker to hit, and so –” He gestures helplessly down at Ushijima’s bandaged finger. Kiyoomi wants to tell him that he’ll change the bandages every night for the rest of the camp if Ushijima wants him to, or he’ll bring him his meals so he doesn’t have to move his finger around unnecessarily, anything, anything so that –

“It’s fine. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Ushijima says, sounding supremely unconcerned. He pauses, and his eyes flicker, catching the harsh white light of the infirmary’s fluorescent bulbs. “And you can call me that if you want to.”

***

Three: Kiyoomi never drifts off in class – he takes it very seriously, since he knows that his assumed career path in volleyball could come to an end at any moment, with a bad landing, a fall, a sprain, or any number of other seemingly small misfortunes. It would be extremely stupid on his part to behave as if a career in sport is assured to him, no matter how carefully he takes care of himself and his body – people get hit by out-of-control trucks every day or struck by lightning or infected by a flesh-eating virus or beaten up in the street for having been perceived to be insufficiently minding their own business. Anything could happen, but that doesn’t mean Sakusa can’t do certain things to board up his life the way you’d board up your house for a storm.

But this time, time number three, he finds himself drifting nonetheless: it’s history class, and they’re studying Chuushingura, and the teacher has written words like devotion and loyalty and fealty up on the board. As Kiyoomi dutifully copies them down, he finds himself wondering what that would be like, to die for loyalty, for the object of your devotion. There’s nothing he can think of that he’d die for, even if he lived in a period of history where that kind of thing was expected, nor anyone he’d want to die for his sake; not at least until he suddenly finds himself in the midst of a daydream in which he, the noble lord, is unjustly dead at the hands of a rival, and Ushijima Wakatoshi, his loyal retainer, having bided his time, is now taking his chance to avenge him in the middle of a snow-dappled night, his breath turning to trailing mist in the darkness, the snowflakes catching in his hair and on the tips of his eyelashes, hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword as he awaits the passing of his enemy - until, revenge completed, blood spattered across the snow, he gratefully follows Sakusa into death; or perhaps it’d be better if he wasn’t dead, or not yet anyway – perhaps it’d be better if they were together on a battlefield, and at the very last second, Sakusa instinctively steps in and takes a blow meant for Wakatoshi-kun, and then Wakatoshi-kun kills his attacker before taking him in his arms and lowering him to the blood-soaked earth, cradling him as he dies, and telling him in a soft and gentle voice that –

Kiyoomi almost swallows his tongue as the bell rings, and he makes a bizarre kind of wet snorting sound that makes Tsubuku at the desk next to him laugh at him and imitate it every time the bell rings for the next three days. Nonetheless, it’s moment number three, and Sakusa remembers it.

***

Four: Shiratorizawa’s cheer squad has followed them to Tokyo for the Spring Tournament, and Kiyoomi can hear the undeniably feminine cries of Waka-kuuuun! when Ushijima’s name is called and he runs out onto the court; he’s never really thought he has anything much in common with his age cohort, but right now, sitting there in the stands, Kiyoomi thinks he’s never had so much affinity with a group of teenaged girls in his life. But it’s not socially acceptable for him to wave a little fan or scream at the top of his admittedly limited vocal range, so he just sits, pulls his chin down into his collar, and stares.

***

Five: Kiyoomi is studying when Komori bursts in through his bedroom door, saying, “Come with me to Odaiba.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t even look up. “No,” he says.

“Band-Maid are doing an appearance at a mall there, and Mum said I could go, but only if I brought someone with me,” Komori says, as if this new information might somehow change Kiyoomi’s mind, which it doesn’t – aside from all the other reasons that make such a venture unappealing, malls are disease vectors and he has a literature test coming up, so he doesn’t have time to go to a mall and get sick – even less than he does usually – due to other people’s lax standards of hygiene. “Everyone else is busy, so it has to be you.”

“I’m busy,” Kiyoomi tells him, marking a page in his novel with a purple sticker (purple for character observation) – obviously he doesn’t actually have to read outside of the selected passages in the textbook, but he believes in doing things thoroughly, so here he is, reading Natsume Souseki’s Kokoro in full and actually being extremely busy.

“Come with me,” Komori persists, “or I’ll find out where you hide your diary and mail it to Ushiwaka.”

Kiyoomi sits bolt upright, staring at him. “What?” he hisses through clenched teeth.

“Oh, so you do actually keep a diary,” Komori says, looking mildly surprised. “I said that as a joke.”

Kiyoomi can feel his face heating up. “That wasn’t –”

“Yes, it was.” Komori’s grin is triumphant. “Come on, come see Band-Maid with me – I mean, they dress as maids, so maybe they’ll clean something. You’d love that, wouldn’t you.”

After Band-Maid’s performance – during which they cleaned nothing – Kiyoomi finally manages to get out the question that’s been plaguing him like a wasp ever since Komori burst into his room this afternoon. “How did you. About Wakat— Ushijima. How did you know?” He cannot quite bring himself to look at Komori as he squeezes the words out of his larynx, every pore on his body opening in mortification.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the way you always look like this –” Komori makes a face like one of those slow-swimming googly-eyed fish when Kiyoomi glances across at him “– whenever he’s around.” Which at least, Kiyoomi supposes, answers his question.

“So,” Komori says a couple of train stops later, his tone conversational, “you want me to be your wingman or something?”

Kiyoomi stares at him, everything within his soul rearing back, spitting and hissing. “No,” he eventually manages to splutter out.

“All right, all right. I was just asking,” Komori says peaceably.

Half an hour later, when Kiyoomi is finally home again, he digs his journal – it’s not a diary – out from where he has it stored in a box with a stack of innocuous-looking old school textbooks, then takes it and hurls it in with the combustible rubbish.

Two hours after that, and he’s steeling himself to dig it back out again.

Ordinarily it wouldn’t count since Ushijima wasn’t even there, but it’s the first time he realised that someone else knew, the first time he’d talked about it with someone else and pulled the secret thing he’d been kindling within himself out into the light – so it’s number five.

***

Six: That smile from across the net during Sakusa’s debut game with the MSBY Black Jackals against the Schweiden Adlers – and Sakusa finds himself helplessly, pathetically smiling back and probably looking like one of those googly-eyed fish while he does it. He knows Komori is probably throwing something at the TV in his EJP Raijin dorm room right now, but he just can’t help it.

So that’s six. There’re others, but those are the ones that stick out.

***

When Coach Foster calls him, Miya Atsumu and Hinata Shouyou into his office after the last Jackals practice of the season, Sakusa already knows what he’s going to say before he says it. It’s not like he wouldn’t be able to tell – there’s been ongoing buzz about older players retiring from the national team for the past three months, and really, there’s no other reason why he, Miya and Hinata would otherwise be called in to see the coach together.

“I got a phone call from Hibarida Fuki today,” Coach Foster says from behind his desk, “as a courtesy ahead of a formal request for the three of you to be released in order to attend the next Japanese men’s national team’s training event.”

Beside him, Sakusa can vaguely detect an aura as whatever power source within Hinata that generates his boundless stamina and energy starts to go into nuclear meltdown, while Miya just mutters something that sounds suspiciously like ’Bout freakin’ time, which is probably a large part of the reason he hasn’t been invited before now. Sakusa, for his part, just nods; he’s not going to pretend he wasn’t at least somewhat expecting this, even if he can manage to be a little more gracious about it than Miya (which is a low bar to clear) – it was always more likely than not, anyway, considering his career up until now. He’s a perfectly good player, and he knows it.

“You’ll get the details in a letter once the formalities have been taken care of,” Coach Foster continues after a moment, a moment in which Miya manages to somehow preen without moving a muscle and Hinata’s reactor core reaches critical. “But I don’t think I have to tell you what an opportunity this is for each of you.”

No, he doesn’t, Sakusa thinks, as the three of them troop out of his office again, with Hinata chattering loudly about how attending the event means playing with the Bokuto Koutarou, as if he’s somehow managed to forget in the past five minutes that he already plays on a team with the Bokuto Koutarou; in fact, they all had dinner at a fairly nice restaurant with the Bokuto Koutarou last week, during which the Bokuto Koutarou got so excited about a fruit platter that he fell over and knocked a shouji screen out of its railing.

“Hey, Omi-kun, it must chap ya hide that you’re only getting called up now, while Bokkun and Aran-kun have been playing on the national team for a couple of years now, even though they weren’t rated as high as you in high school,” Miya says, grinning at him. “Right?”

“Not really,” Sakusa mutters, pulling his chin down into his collar. “Why, does it chap yours that Kageyama Tobio got called up last year?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Miya says, looking at Sakusa as if he might be slow on the uptake. “But I’ve decided I’m gonna try and be nicer to him, so he might put in a good word for me with his sister.”

“Oh, didn’t you hear, Atsumu-san?” Hinata says, somehow managing to look both smug and apologetic at the same time. “Miwa-san is going out with Haiba Alisa now.”

“Wait, what?” Miya asks, his lazily half-lidded eyes actually going wide with shock for a moment. “Haiba Alisa, that gangling freak from Nekoma’s sister? Haiba Alisa the model?”

Sakusa tunes out both of them as they fall into discussing the love lives of everyone they’ve ever met, since they’re both incurable gossips and neither of them even tries to pretend otherwise. He hadn’t been lying when he said he wasn’t bothered by anyone else getting called up to the national team before him – the team has different needs at different times, and until now he hasn’t been the right person to fill them. That isn’t what’s on his mind at all. What’s on his mind is –

“Oh!” says Hinata suddenly as they reach the changerooms, and Sakusa swears the little tufts of hair on the top of his head curl upwards slightly, like a little dog pricking its ears. “Do you think Ushiwaka will be there too?” He turns his head to look around at Sakusa, as if he, somehow, would know.

Sakusa sinks a little lower into his collar. “I don’t know. Possibly.”

Of course he will be. Ushijima Wakatoshi has been a fixture of the Japanese men’s national team since he was nineteen years old. Obviously he’s going to be at the training event.

Sakusa can hear Miya and Hinata continuing to yell their conversation at each other from opposite sides of the changeroom, and he tunes in just long enough to hear Miya saying But see, that’s what I’m saying, you put makeup on Tobio-kun and he’d be way prettier than his sister, and then, a minute later, Well, you say that, Shou-kun, but not all of us have esports sugar daddies who’ll pay for us to go skylark around Brazil for two fuckin’ years, and decides no, he doesn’t really need to hear any more of this and departs without bothering to say goodbye.

He exits the gym, heading out into the sticky humidity of the Osaka summer. He’s always hated the heat – it makes wearing long sleeves annoying, and his face gets all sweaty underneath his mask. He’s not really thinking about that right now, though, as he makes his way towards the metro station. No, what he’s thinking about is how this is the first time in years he’ll be in close proximity to Ushijima Wakatoshi for a sustained amount of time.

Of course, he sees him at the occasional event or once or twice a season when the MSBY Black Jackals play the Schweiden Adlers. But in the past, there’d been training camps, U19s events, and twice-yearly national competitions to stew himself in, stuck in the idiotic adolescent agony of both wanting to spend every available moment with Ushijima and wanting to run very far and very fast away from him (though the former had always won out, of course) – or at least there had until Ushijima’s final year, when someone, i.e., Hinata Shouyou’s team, had knocked Shiratorizawa out at the prefecture level.

That had been years ago, and Komori would probably say to build a bridge and get over it, but Komori says a lot of things, and Sakusa would, if not for the fact that he had probably, possibly made a deal with himself that year that if Itachiyama and Shiratorizawa had ended up playing each other in the finals, he was going to… say something. To Ushijima. He hadn’t gotten as far as figuring out what exactly, but Shiratorizawa hadn’t ended up going to nationals at all, so it was all moot. It’s not like he holds a grudge against Hinata personally for it – that’s pretty much impossible, since Hinata wouldn't notice it, and what's the point of that? It’s very much more possible to hold a grudge against Kageyama Tobio, but the fact that Sakusa doesn’t tells him that things probably worked out for the best.

Sakusa doesn’t believe in fate, exactly, he just thinks that if something is going to happen, it’s going to happen no matter what – and likewise, if something’s not going to happen, well then, you’re shit out of luck. And this thing had not happened.

With the benefit of hindsight, Sakusa’s grateful for it. Looking back now, he’s not sure what he’d even been thinking. It’s patently, painfully obvious to him now that the steps towards any attempt at moving in that direction are: Confession -> Polite confusion on Ushijima’s part -> Desperate, self-inflicted heartbreak on Sakusa’s. It’s not leaving something unfinished if he already knows how it’s going to end; it’s not leaving something unfinished if he never even started it to begin with.

The train rattles its way into his station, and Sakusa steps off, walking the fifteen minutes home to his apartment building. Things are fine like this, he tells himself as he opens his door, steps inside his apartment and carefully takes off his shoes. Sakusa has reached a state of comfortable equanimity about his feelings. He can deal. His infatuation with Iizuna Tsukasa eventually simmered down into friendship, after all. And he’s done other things – he’s had whole entire boyfriends since he last spent any real amount of time with Ushijima Wakatoshi. So he’s over it.

There’s honestly nothing left to think about.

***

Sakusa had just assumed the training event would be held in Tokyo, since they usually are, but it seems this one is different, which is why he’s currently on a hire bus pulling up outside a guesthouse in the middle of nowhere in Miyagi Prefecture. The cacophony of the rest of the attendees of the training event – I’m gonna twist you into a fuckin’ pretzel, Miya is yelling at… honestly, it could be anyone, but it’s probably Suna – can’t be drowned out, so Sakusa’s mainly been suffering through it, though at least Kiryuu had attempted to extend some empathy towards him, sidling into the empty seat next to him and offering him some kind of biscuit (which Sakusa had declined, though he’d done it politely, since he actually kind of likes Kiryuu). Komori, on the other hand, has been just as loud as everyone else, and he’d only shrugged and grinned when Sakusa had caught his eye and glared at him, shrugging as if to say, What do you want me to do about it?, the ass.

This training event, it had been explained in the email he’d been sent, was being run by the newly promoted training coach, Iwaizumi Hajime, as a little experiment in team building, since there’d be an influx of new call-ups soon and they needed to get used to each other and bond a bit. Scrolling through Iwaizumi’s qualifications, listed at the bottom of the email, Sakusa couldn’t help but feel a little impressed: he played volleyball right through school, graduated from Nittaidai, interned in America with the Irvine Polar Bears, worked there for a while, and has been working with the national team ever since he got back to Japan. His name rings a bell somewhere in Sakusa’s memory, but he can’t quite place it.

He’d been told the Schweiden Adlers players would be joining them on the shinkansen in Tokyo, and he absolutely doesn’t crane his neck nor does he feel a stab of disappointment when only Kageyama, Heiwajima, and Hoshiumi get on the train – since, as they explain, Ushijima is already in Miyagi doing some recruitment event for Shiratorizawa’s volleyball team and will meet them at the accommodation.

So that was five-and-half hours and two entire modes of public transportation ago. And now, finally, just as the sun is getting over the mountains, they’re pulling up outside the guesthouse where they’ll be staying, which is a short walk from the elementary school where they’ll apparently be practicing.

The bus stops, and they all pile off it, Hinata bouncing down the steps in joy at finally being free from a confined space, and Bokuto yelling something about the fresh country air. Kageyama blinks, looking around owlishly like he might’ve been asleep. Hoshiumi is already looking around defiantly with his lower lip downturned as if he’s expecting the trees to tell him he’s too short to be here.

A moment later, though, and none of that matters, because the door to the guesthouse opens and out walks Ushijima Wakatoshi, and Sakusa realises all too late that no, he’s made a huge mistake, and he’s not over this at all.

Sakusa imagines that Ushijima would look the same whether he was standing on a volleyball court or on the edge of a cliff. He’s never met anyone capable of such stillness before. Sakusa can’t relate – there’s a buzz in his brain that never lets up, not even when he’s sleeping, calibrating and recalibrating all the most dreadful things that could conceivably befall him, imagining every possible worst-case scenario. Ushijima seems to dwell entirely within reality – a reality where there’s always a certain number of steps towards any given goal, and there’s absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t take them and reach it. Sakusa wants a moment of that silence, to be pulled into that orbit and enfolded in that stillness, that total and utter lack of doubt.

He knows he shouldn’t, but Sakusa allows it, if only for a moment: the blissful blankness that descends over his mind as he stares at Ushijima in the lingering, humid warmth of the evening air. This sudden stillness, though, is far more unnerving than the constant, singing hum of his thoughts – stillness like he’s been dropped into a small pocket of infinity, and in which he simply stands there and stares at the way the soft orange light of the falling dusk catches on the curve of Ushijima’s cheekbones as he walks towards them; the way it turns his eyes a dark, olive-flecked gold and slips through his hair like the hand of a lover.

“Crepuscular,” says Kageyama, staring at the sunset – because, as he had explained when he’d suddenly used the word phlegmatic on the bus and everyone had stared at him, Hinata had gotten him one of those stupid word-of-the-day calendars for his last birthday, which is, Sakusa suddenly decides, something he will absolutely never forgive him for.

“Iwaizumi,” Ushijima says as they offer each other a bow, and Hinata yells “Iwaizumi-san!” and rushes over joyously, like a golden retriever crossed with a chihuahua. And ah, Sakusa realises, they must’ve all known each other in school. Which means Iwaizumi has probably known Ushijima for about as long as he has. Maybe even longer.

Sakusa is still watching as they fall to chatting with each other, when he suddenly feels a slap on the side of his shoulder and turns in outrage to see Komori, of course, grinning like a donkey as he grabs Sakusa’s arm and begins yanking him over towards the guesthouse.

“C’mon,” he says, before Sakusa can even begin to tell him to get his filthy hands off him, “if we don’t move now, we’ll miss out on a decent room.”

***

There are no decent rooms, as it turns out, because it’s a group sleeping arrangement, and so Sakusa ends up stuck in with not only Komori, but also Miya, Suna Rintarou, Hinata and Kageyama, all jammed in like sardines in a tatami room that is absolutely not designed to house a bunch of professional volleyball players.

After they put their bags away, there’s a formal introductions session in the main room, where Iwaizumi introduces himself and his two assistants, Watanuke and Suisha, and has the players introduce themselves, though most of them have been at least peripherally aware of each other for quite some time now.

The eating arrangements are communal too, so at dinner Sakusa has to watch as Bokuto and Miya re-enact the spaghetti-eating scene from Lady and the Tramp with their noodles, while Hinata just about dies of laughter and Ojiro Aran looks disgusted and tells them it doesn’t work if freakin’ both of them are the tramp.

“Go trim your beard or whatever that thing on your chin is supposed to be,” Miya retorts as he wipes off his face.

“At least I can grow one,” Aran tells him. “Tell me, is there in fact a time when you’re planning on entering puberty, huh?”

“See, this is what I love about you, Aran-kun,” Miya says, looking at Aran with what might actually be genuine admiration in his eyes. “No matter how long it’s been, you can always get me with a comeback. Consider me told.”

Sakusa hopes that means Miya might finally shut up, which he does, and the table descends into the sounds of chewing. For a moment, anyway.

“How is Kita-san?” Ushijima asks from the end of the table.

Sakusa pricks up his ears. Kita-san? Kita-san?!

“Oh, he’s fine,” Miya says, a smarmy grin spreading itself across his face. “In fact, he asked me to tell you that he, quote, ‘sends his regards.’”

Ushijima nods. “Please let him know I return them, and I’m glad to hear he’s well.”

“Rice farming suits him,” Aran says, collecting the last of his noodles with his chopsticks. “He’s actually learned how to use a mobile phone so he can send me pics of, like, tadpoles and things. Some kind of duck he saw.”

“I can imagine it does,” Ushijima says, before he arranges his chopsticks neatly next to his empty bowls and plates, says his gochisousamadeshita, and stands up to take his tray to the rinsing station before returning it to the kitchen.

“So the love story of the century is still going strong, then. Ain’t it sweet?” Miya says, grinning his idiotic lop-sided grin as he stares after Ushijima’s departing back.

Sakusa feels a grain of rice slide down the wrong tube. Or possibly he just starts choking on thin air. Either way, by the time he stops coughing, his eyes are watering and Hinata has rushed over to offer him water, but somehow Sakusa is still hearing the conversation going on from beside him.

“What’re you talking about?” Aran asks, in a tone that suggests he’d really rather Miya not actually tell him. “What love story?”

“It was after the first round of the Interhigh games, in Kita-san’s third year,” Miya says, grin getting wider. “We were all standing around watching one of the games, and Kita-san said – and I fuckin’ quote – ‘That Ushijima-san from Shiratorizawa seems like a very interesting person.’”

Sakusa blinks. Is that all? What on earth is Miya even talking ab—

“Whoa,” Aran says, blinking, sitting back in his chair. “Shinsuke said that?”

“I know, right?” Miya’s grin gets even wider.

“He’s never said something like that before,” Aran admits, though it seems a little reluctantly.

Sakusa can feel the tips of his ears burning. Vaguely, he becomes aware of Komori shooting him concerned glances from the other end of the table.

“You can’t tell me he’s not standing in his rice fields thinking of Ushiwaka every time he gazes up at the sunset,” Miya, the hideous beast, continues. “You know it’s true.”

Of course he is, Sakusa thinks as he stares down at his rapidly cooling rice. Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t stare at sunsets and think of Ushijima? And who wouldn’t be in love with Kita Shinsuke? He’s perfect. He’s utterly perfect. Sakusa can still remember the time he’d come into the stadium changerooms early to make sure they met his standards of cleanliness and found Kita Shinsuke standing in the middle of the room, a bottle of bleach in one gloved hand, a scrubbing brush in the other. Oh, he’d said, as Sakusa had stood there, palpitating, I’m sorry. I was just finishing here. I didn’t want us to leave it in a mess for the next team. Then he’d taken off his gloves and dropped them into the bin, before packing away 1) his perfectly folded towel, 2) a new, unopened packet of Salonpas patches, and 3) a portable nail maintenance kit into his utterly pristine sports bag and departing, leaving Sakusa heavy-breathing in his wake. Of course Ushijima would love him, Sakusa thinks, wretchedness and despair welling up in his chest. Kita Shinsuke is the ideal man. They’re perfect for each other.

“No. No way,” Aran says. “That can’t happen. You can’t have Shinsuke and Ushiwaka in the same place at the same time for too long. It’d upset the Earth’s balance – everyone else would just be able to feel their worth as a human being degraded by the second. It wouldn’t be good for the ecosystem.”

“But you can picture it, yeah?” Miya persists in a way that’s completely uncalled for, leaning forward, grin stretching across his face. “Yeah?”

And yes, unfortunately, Sakusa can picture it. He can picture it all too well: Kita Shinsuke, rice farmer, returning home at lunch time after rising at the crack of dawn to go and nurture the tender green beginnings of life in his fields; calling out Dear, I’m back, as he hangs his wide straw hat by the door and unwinds his scarf from around his neck before easing off his boots and stepping beyond the threshold of his – his and Wakatoshi-kun’s – cosy little home; they’d eat lunch together in contented silence, and Kita would clean up the dishes after since Ushijima, presumably, had cooked, and then he’d say something like, Oh, would you mind? I’m short-handed. Would you come and help me load some sacks of rice into the back of a truck or whatever it is rice farmers even do, dear? And Wakatoshi-kun would say, Of course, dear, and then he’d follow Kita out to the shed where the sacks of rice are kept, lifting the first one up firmly but gently in his gloved hands, slinging it with practiced ease over his shoulder, cradling it in the crook of his arm, snug against the swell of his bicep, as he carries it across the –

“If you don’t want your renkon, can I have it?” Komori’s voice crashes into Sakusa’s daydream/self-imposed torture session, and Sakusa has to jerk his tray away to evade the chopsticks that suddenly swoop down over his food.

“I’m eating,” he snaps. “Leave me alone.”

He lowers his head over his tray and does his best to tune out whatever disgusting topics of conversation Miya has moved on to now. Thankfully, he seems to have dropped the subject of Kita and Ushijima and their obvious love affair, though unfortunately Sakusa knows Komori isn’t stupid enough not to have noticed the effect it had on him, just as he wasn’t stupid enough to miss what had happened this afternoon, and the fact that time and distance haven’t cured Sakusa of this… this thing at all, and he can already tell that the moment when Ushijima emerged from the guesthouse is going to be time number seven, even though he hasn’t been keeping track of those for years.

“Mm. Nectareous,” Kageyama says, as he eats the final piece of his cut-up persimmon.

***

Hinata is doing his impression of Miya Atsumu – Ya filthy fuckin’ shit-pig, ya have a mouth like a fuckin’ sewer, interrupt my fuckin’ serve and I’ll fuckin’ kill ya, rrrrrraaa! which is the only time Hinata ever swears – when Sakusa returns from the bathroom after doing his teeth, skin, hair, and nails, and Miya Atsumu is pretending not to be insanely flattered that he’s been deemed worthy of one of Hinata’s impressions and saying things like Hilarious, ya little shit, now do a bug that’s been squashed flat by my fuckin’ fist.

Sakusa watches it for a little while, because Hinata is funny, and he takes requests too, which is great, because he does an uncanny Hoshiumi (no words required, he just stands there with his head thrown back), a passable Bokuto (which he admits is a challenge since there isn’t room to do a cartwheel in here, but the HEY HEY HEY is perfect), and though he tells Kageyama he was a lot more fun to do in high school, he still manages to get his frowny face down, even to the minuscule line between his eyebrows. Sakusa is sitting there, weighing up how much shit he could tolerate getting from Komori if he said Do Wakatoshi-kun, just to see what Hinata would think is noteworthy about him when there’s a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” Sakusa says, getting up from his futon.

When he opens the door, he finds Ushijima on the other side of it. Sakusa blinks, opening his mouth, but before he can get a word out, Ushijima says, “I apologise for interrupting, but would it be possible for you to keep the noise in this room to a more reasonable level? Kiryuu has sensitive hearing, and he’s trying to sleep.”

Sakusa snaps his mouth shut again, his teeth clicking together. Ushijima doesn’t sound angry, and his expression is fairly mild, but still, mortification creeps up Sakusa’s throat. Especially since these are actually the first words Ushijima has spoken to him since he got here.

“I’m sorry, Ushiwaka-san! It won’t happen again! Please apologise to Kiryuu-san for me!” Hinata calls out from behind him, and Sakusa turns to see him folded into a bow, standing on his futon with his sheets tangled around his ankles as if he just jumped straight up in his hurry to apologise.

“Yeah. Soz,” Miya calls out, waving a hand lazily. “It was Shou-kun’s fault really, though.”

Komori and Kageyama offer their apologies too, and Suna just kind of… nods a bit. Sakusa belatedly realises he has yet to say anything at all, but when he turns around he finds himself staring at the empty space that had just a moment ago held Ushijima.

Sakusa blinks, surprise rippling through him, before he simply closes the door and turns away. Hinata is hugging himself as Sakusa sits back down on his futon, wondering what just happened.

“He’s still scary,” Hinata says, shivering. “He’s really scary!”

“No, he’s not,” Sakusa and Kageyama both say at exactly the same moment, though Kageyama doesn’t appear to notice it.

“He’s fine once you get to know him,” Kageyama continues, frowning. “It’s just his face.”

There is nothing wrong with Wakatoshi-kun’s face, Sakusa wants to snap at him, but he’s aware of Komori’s eyes burning a hole in the side of his head, so he says nothing.

“You say that now, but you were scared of him in high school,” Hinata retorts. “Don’t deny it! And you wanted to go to his school, but you couldn’t get in.”

“The entrance exam was insurmountable,” Kageyama says, unselfconsciously. “Anyway, I didn’t want to go to Shiratorizawa because Ushijima was there. It was where my grandfather went.”

“He’s not scary,” Miya says, lounging back on his futon like he’s some kind of feudal lord – and Sakusa is suddenly caught in the dilemma of wanting everyone to realise that Ushijima is not scary, he’s just incapable of sugar-coating his words or smiling when he doesn’t mean it, and wanting Miya Atsumu in particular to find him very, very terrifying indeed. “I mean, you were pretty good friends with him at one stage, weren’t ya, Omi-kun?”

Miya turns his eyes to Sakusa, and Sakusa can see the lazy curiosity stirring in their depths – but what the hell had Miya meant when he’d said at one stage?

“Kiyoomi and Ushiwaka are like two peas in a very weird pod,” Komori says, before Sakusa can get a word out. He turns to him, raising an eyebrow. “They’ve always been that way. Haven’t you, Kiyoomi?”

“I guess,” Sakusa says, swallowing down the unease he can feel rising in his throat.

***

The next morning after breakfast, Iwaizumi and his two assistants lead them all down a long country road to the small elementary school, with its tiny gym and outside track and field area that’s basically a flattened patch of ground – The idea is, Iwaizumi had explained, that you’re going to make the most out of whatever you have.

Sakusa and the rest of the Black Jackals are used to this kind of thing – Coach Foster is American after all, and Iwaizumi did his formative training in America, so this isn’t anything new to them, and to be honest, Sakusa slightly suspects from the way Hinata is looking around with big, excited eyes that even more than training with the national team, he’s actually looking forward to getting back to basics, and Miya has always said he prefers the simple things in life, so this’ll be his chance to prove it.

Iwaizumi sorts them into groups, telling them he’s going to separate them as much as possible from their regular teammates so they’re forced to work with different people from what they’re used to. The upshot of this is that Sakusa finds himself on a team with Kageyama, Hinata, Ojiro Aran, Yaku Morisuke, Chita Tomomichi and Hyakuzawa Yudai, facing off against a team consisting of Ushijima, Miya, Komori, Kiryuu, Sokolov Sakuma, Nitta Tomohiro, and Hoshiumi Kourai.

“I admit,” Iwaizumi says as he looks back and forth between Kageyama and Hinata with what has to be the most brilliantly sunny smile that Sakusa has ever seen, “I shouldn’t have put you two together, since you played together in high school. Call me nostalgic, but I just wanted to see that freak quick of yours again.”

“My quick with Kageyama-kun is even faster,” Hoshiumi points out, as if anyone might have been wondering, but Hinata just puffs up his chest and says they’ll see about that, and the game gets started with Kiryuu’s serve.

It’s interesting, Sakusa thinks, watching Miya Atsumu and Ushijima working together. Miya has never made any bones about the fact he thinks he’s the best setter in the league, and it’s true, Sakusa has to grudgingly admit, he immediately sets to Ushijima the way a spiker like him should be set to, high and slow, and Ushijima slams it over the net with the spiking form he’s been developing over the past few years, now perfected after a wobbly start that had made Sakusa’s throat feel all tight when he was reading about it back in university.

Not even Yaku manages to dig a shot that powerful, and the ball ricochets off his forearms and slams into the wall, all before Ushijima’s feet have returned to the court. Yaku curses slightly under his breath, while Hinata calls out Don’t mind!

Ushijima wears his confidence and power like he wears his skin. There’s nothing self-conscious or arrogant about it – it’s just a fact, and it’s a fact Ushijima is aware of, after so many years of being told that yes, he actually is that good. Sakusa does his best not to stare, but it doesn’t help him much, at least until he hears Hoshiumi make an annoyed little grunt next to him, and he turns to see him, well, not pouting, but it’s a close-run thing.

“Ugh, he’s so annoying,” Hoshiumi says from the other side of the net, directly in front of him. Just as Sakusa begins to bristle, he continues. “It’s terrible being on a team with him. All the tosses should come to me – I want them all for me – but I also just want to watch him spike. It’s… so annoying.”

And Sakusa finds he has absolutely nothing to say to that.

He digs Ushijima’s next spike himself, though – he can feel it right down to his bones when the ball hits his forearms, but it’s still a solid receive. It makes sense, though, since it was not being able to deal with Ushijima’s spikes and serves in the first place that led him to practice so hard – he couldn’t let a challenge like that go unmet, a task like that go unfinished. He glances up, absolutely not making googly eyes but wanting to see it there in Ushijima’s face: the acknowledgement that he’s met a good match in Sakusa, that he’s someone worthy of Ushijima’s notice.

What he sees instead is the side of Ushijima’s face as he turns away from him to say something to Kiryuu, and he doesn’t look at Sakusa at all.

***

The dark roots are beginning to show beneath the bleached-straw colour of Miya’s hair, which clearly bothers him if the way he’s fussing at it in the bathroom mirror is anything to go by.

“I heard that if you bleach your hair too often, it dies off and you go bald,” Suna says blandly as he wanders by, while Miya mutters something about sneaking out to go get a home dye kit.

“That’s not true. Where did you hear that?” Miya demands to know.

“Osamu told me. That’s why he stopped bleaching his after high school – to protect his follicles,” Suna tells him.

“I don’t believe you,” Miya retorts. “Why wouldn’t ‘Samu have told me that himself, if it was true?”

“I’ll leave you to reflect on what you just said and come to a conclusion in your own time,” Suna calmly replies. He does his own hair – swiping two fingers across his forehead to part his fringe in the middle and that’s literally it – and then turns away.

Sakusa has curls to tame, a routine he follows start to finish every single night unless he wants to wake up looking like something that would probably send Hinata onto the ceiling with fright. He likes doing it – he finds it soothing. But right now, he feels nothing as he slowly works his leave-in conditioner through his hair, root to tip, his fingers feeling stiff and cold. He can already see the bruises forming on his forearms from digging spikes from Ushijima and Kiryuu all day, and his wrists are a little sore from putting enough spin and speed on the ball to evade Komori and his freakish receives. But that’s not the issue.

To be honest, Sakusa doesn’t really want to look at what the issue actually is. He feels like a child. Is he so needy? Is he so pathetic? Is he really sitting here moping just because –

“Hey, Kiyoomi! Better hurry up or you’ll turn into a pumpkin at midnight,” Komori’s frankly infuriating voice crashes into his consciousness. “C’mon, you want me to brush your hair for you or something? I’ll put it in little ribbons. You’ll be so pretty.”

“No, thank you,” Sakusa says acidly, finishing up with his leave-in conditioner and then grabbing his things off the bathroom counter, making to leave. He hadn’t realised everyone else already has. Aside from him and Komori, the bathroom is empty.

“Hey, wait there a moment,” Komori calls out, catching him up as he reaches the door. “You don’t want to tell me what you’re sulking about, as if I don’t know?”

Sakusa stares at him, his mouth dropping open before he can stop it. “What are you –”

“I’ve had a long day and I want to go to bed, so I’ll cut right to the chase,” Komori says, looking Sakusa directly in the eye. “Look. I don’t mean to be rude, but you’ve been pining over him since you were fifteen, and quite frankly, it’s getting kind of painful to watch.”

Sakusa’s mouth snaps shut. Obviously, he doesn’t need to ask who he is, because Komori has always known about this. It’s pointless, but nonetheless, Sakusa can’t stop himself from hissing, “I don’t pine. I appreciate.”

“Well, fine. Whatever you want to call it,” Komori says. “But seriously, Kiyoomi – either act on it or forget about it. Because right now you’re making yourself miserable, and for some reason, I kind of care about your happiness. So pick one.”

Sakusa looks down. He knows he’s really only annoyed because Komori is right, and this is stupid. But it isn’t as if he hadn’t tried. He’d been well on his way to recovery until that moment he’d seen Ushijima standing there in the crepuscular – Oh goddammit, Kageyama – light, looking like that, and he’d suddenly remembered all the reasons why he’d spent every single one of his high school years filling up his diary with his extensive thoughts on the topic of Wakatoshi-kun.

“Anyway, bedtime!” Komori announces, smiling cheerfully. “You can decide tomorrow which one you’re going to pick. But do it quick, because contrary to popular opinion, not even my patience is endless, Kiyoomi.”

***

That’s easier said than done, however – and in any case, Sakusa is starting to think that perhaps the choice has been made for him. The longer the training goes on, the more it becomes apparent that Ushijima is… not ignoring him, not at all, but not… going out of his way to engage him either.

It’s different from how they used to be – Sakusa, even if he’d known Ushijima hadn’t felt the same way about him as he does about Ushijima, had never doubted his friendship. He knew Ushijima had neither the time nor the inclination to suffer through the company of someone he didn’t like, so he’d concluded that Ushijima was spending time with him because he liked him and he wanted to.

In the past, they’d always found a way to sit together to eat – even if they were at team tables, they’d usually manage to sit at the edges closest to each other. At training camps they’d roll out their futons next to each other, and during whatever limited downtime they had they’d stand together at the edge of the court, watching whatever game was in session.

Sakusa watches Ushijima as Iwaizumi rests a hand on his shoulder to give him a minor correction in his form, nods as Kiryuu talks to him at the side of the court, and cocks his head intently when Kageyama comes up with some suggestion or other for whatever drill they happen to be running at the time. He looks as he always does when he’s giving someone his full attention: intent, focused, and courteous. Whatever people say about Ushijima’s propensity to be blunt, Sakusa knows he’s incapable of insincerity, and if he’s giving you his attention, it’s because he genuinely sees something in you worth noticing. Which apparently Sakusa had, but now has lost.

Sakusa doesn’t really deal in if only’s – the past is only valuable so long as it’s telling you what to do differently in the future. So it’s useless to wonder what would’ve happened, or whether, if only Shiratorizawa had been at that last Spring Tournament of Ushijima’s high school career, he might’ve been able to say something that’d catch Ushijima’s attention and keep it. Not that he’d really known what it was, but maybe something would’ve come to him. Perhaps he would’ve found the words, and somehow Ushijima wouldn’t have stared at him with a kind of courteous confusion and said, I’m sorry, Sakusa, but I simply do not feel the same way. At the time, yes, there’d been nerves, there’d been sweaty palms, there’d been staring at Ushijima when he played and wondering where he could get one of those ‘USHIJIMA <3’ fans like those girls in the Shiratorizawa cheer squad had, knowing he’d only have to hide it in the box with his diary – but there’d also been an unmistakeable feeling of hope somewhere in his chest.

Sakusa really despises people who hold on to things long after they’ve ended – he doesn’t like nostalgia or trying to hold on to a rose-tinted past long after it’s gone. He’s a realist, he’s always said so. He’s always watching the world around him and the people in it; he’s always analysing, arranging, and classifying so he can make a decision based on all the available data. And he’s not so stupid as to try to deny the facts once they’re in front of him.

Ushijima’s life has always run on a single, fast track, one that led straight into a career in professional volleyball. Sakusa’s seen the speculation, which is impossible to avoid, that it’s between Ushijima and Kiryuu as to who’ll be the next captain of the men’s national team; he’s read all the articles about the international teams that’re courting Japan’s Cannon and which country’s league will be the one to win him. Ushijima’s life was always running on this one narrow path, and he’s always been at least one step further ahead on it than everyone else. Should Sakusa really be so surprised that in the end, he’s outpaced him as well?

***

There’s a dead gnat in his water when he wakes up at 1:30 a.m. – the same time he always wakes up in the interests of hydration. Sakusa stares down at it in distaste for a long moment, before picking up his glass, standing and making his way past the sleeping forms of his dormmates, through the corridor and down the stairs to the kitchen.

He’s still on sleepy auto-pilot, so while it does register with him that the light to the kitchen is on and the door is closed, it doesn’t really mean anything to him, nor does the slight murmur of voices he can hear coming from inside. Not until he’s pushed open the door at least and come face to… well, back with Ushijima Wakatoshi, though he’s rapidly in the process of turning around from looking at the laptop on the table in front of him. Sakusa blinks, his half-asleep brain still clicking into gear.

“Sakusa,” Ushijima says, beginning to rise.

“—oh, is that him?” Sakusa hears Tendou Satori’s unmistakeable voice hurtling tinnily out of the laptop speakers before Ushijima presses the lid firmly shut.

“I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” Ushijima says, looking as uncomfortably guilty as Sakusa has ever seen him look – which is to say at all, ever. “Miya Atsumu borrowed my headphones for some purpose, and he has yet to return them.”

Sakusa doesn’t quite have the heart to tell him Well, you’ve seen the last of those, Wakatoshi-kun, as he thinks of the scarf, the face mask, the three pencils, and the – for some reason – single glove that have all disappeared into the void that is Miya Atsumu’s total inability to return even a single item that’s ever been lent to him, ever. To be honest, he’s not really sure what to say. He’s not at his best when he’s just woken up.

“Was that, uh. Tendou-san?” Sakusa asks.

Ushijima hesitates for a barely perceptible moment, then nods. “Yes. I talk to him regularly on the Zoom.”

Sakusa blinks. “‘The Zoom’?”

“It’s cheaper than making international phone calls,” Ushijima says, as if that clarifies his having called it the Zoom. “I realise it’s late here, but it’s early evening in Paris.”

Oh, right, Sakusa thinks, as a memory struggles to the surface of his sleep-addled brain. Tendou hadn’t continued with volleyball after high school, even though he was a good enough middle blocker that he probably could have. He’d gone off to Paris to become a chocolatier. For some reason.

“I’m sorry if I woke you,” Ushijima continues – and it may just be Sakusa’s imagination, but does he seem a little… agitated? Well, what passes for agitated with Ushijima, anyway, which means his shoulders look slightly tenser than usual. “I realise it wasn’t very considerate.”

Sakusa blinks again, trying to get his head in order. “No – no, you didn’t. I just came to get some fresh water. That’s all. I didn’t hear anything.”

“I see.” There’s a tiny change in the way Ushijima is standing – a minute relaxation of his shoulders. “In any case, the conversation was over, so perhaps we should both return to bed. It’s the last day of the training camp tomorrow, after all.”

“Mm,” Sakusa says. His brain scrabbles desperately for something else to say – he wants to ask Ushijima why, exactly, there’s this weird awkwardness between them now, why Ushijima seems to have been avoiding him this whole time when he never would have in the past. Unless –

Sakusa has to stop himself from making some kind of weird honking sound as his throat closes up tight enough to choke. Unless, somehow, Ushijima knows, that he’s somehow figured out that Sakusa has, for years –

Sakusa stares at him in horror. It seems so obvious now that he’s thought it. He knows Ushijima would never be deliberately rude about it, but finding something like that out would have to be awkward, even for someone like Ushijima.

Oh my God, Sakusa thinks. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod –

“I’ll just need to shut down my computer,” Ushijima says, opening it up to reveal his wallpaper, which is –

Sakusa can feel his eyes bugging out of their sockets, but honestly, he’s not sure who could blame him, since Ushijima’s laptop wallpaper is what appears to be a picture of Tendou Satori with his back to the camera, wearing nothing at all but a towel slipping down his hips to reveal the barest shadow of buttcrack while he looks back over his shoulder, sticking his tongue out and throwing up a peace sign. The only good thing about it is that Sakusa can definitely tell Ushijima didn’t take the photo himself, since he can be seen in the background wearing his Shiratorizawa practice uniform and staring off to the left. And, on closer inspection, those are definitely communal showers, rather than any more intimate setting like, say, Ushijima’s own bathroom or somewhere like that –

“Ah,” Ushijima says, and he actually both looks and sounds mildly perturbed. “Please ignore that. Tendou set it as the background picture as a joke, and I don’t know how to make it go away.”

“You… don’t know how to change your wallpaper?” Sakusa asks, frowning.

“I don’t have much use for computers,” Ushijima says. “Aside from team emails and the Zoom.”

Sakusa can imagine that. For some reason, the vision of Ushijima sitting in front of a computer just doesn’t work for him.

“If you want to change it, I can show you how,” Sakusa says, because honestly, the idea of Ushijima looking at Tendou’s buttcrack every time he opens his laptop, no matter how infrequently that may be, is giving him a heart murmur.

“Yes. Please. That would be…” Ushijima seems to be searching around for the right word. “A relief.”

“Okay, well, I guess you better tell me what you’d like as your background image,” Sakusa says, placing his cup down on the table next to the laptop and leaning forward as Ushijima sits back down, watching as Sakusa’s hands rest on the keyboard. “Look, it’s easy. You just hit control and click with the touchpad and go to Change desktop background –”

The Settings menu pops up, and Sakusa navigates away from the generic stock photos of animals and nature, though he supposes it’s probable that those kinds of things would actually be appealing to Ushijima. But still, he clicks on Moments, to find that Ushijima has exactly four Moments saved in his photo library: the Tendou picture, a blurry image of what may be a houseplant, a photo of a volleyball, and –

“That one might be nice,” Ushijima says, pointing.

Sakusa swallows. It’s a photo of Ushijima with five of his Shiratorizawa teammates, standing together in a group, grinning at the camera, except for Tendou, who’s sticking out his tongue – again – and Ushijima, who just has the faintest hint of a smile on his face. The wing spiker – Oohira Reon, it takes Sakusa a moment to recall – has his arm slung over Ushijima’s shoulders. It’s obviously evening in the photo, and they’re standing in front of a wide, black lacquered gate, gentle red and yellow light playing through the trees on either side of the stone walkway and sliding off the sloped roof of a chouzuya.

“This was at Zuihouden, during the autumn lights,” Ushijima says. “We visited it as a team one year. It’s a good memory.”

Sakusa nods. It’s a beautiful photo – whoever took it clearly hadn’t taken the photo of the houseplant – and Ushijima looks beautiful in it, in the soft light and deep shadows. If Sakusa had been there, it would’ve been time number… whatever, he’s lost count by now. It makes Sakusa feel, somehow, desperately nostalgic for something he’s never even had: looking at it opens up an ache in his chest – a pain that rolls through him like grey mist rolling down a mountainside, soft, dense, and inescapable.

It comes to him suddenly just how far he’s leaned in towards the laptop screen – close enough that his chin is hovering just a few centimetres above Ushijima’s shoulder, close enough that Ushijima must be able to feel the warmth of his breath sliding past his cheek. Sakusa’s eyes flicker to his left, but apparently Ushijima hasn’t noticed his proximity, caught up as he probably is in the memory captured in the photo. It’s the only reason Sakusa lets himself do it, in the moment before he pulls back – he closes his eyes, soundlessly inhaling and drawing in the scent of clean cotton, plain soap, and freshly washed skin.

“Okay,” he says. “I can make it your desktop background.”

His finger slips, though, as he tries to slide it down the touchpad to select the picture, and he ends up accidentally clicking on the desktop itself and minimising the Settings menu, so he’s just looking at that godawful picture of Tendou again –

“Who on Earth is in the kitchen at this time of night?!”

Sakusa jumps, jerking around as the doors behind them suddenly open, and Iwaizumi’s voice – in an I’m angry, but it’s late so I’m keeping my voice down tone – rings out from behind them.

Sakusa’s brain freezes as Iwaizumi looks between him and Ushijima, the annoyance on his face turning to bafflement.

“Well, I would’ve expected Miya and Bokuto to find some reason for sneaking around in the middle of the night, but you two –” he begins to say, before his eyes fall on the laptop screen and his mouth drops open and he blinks rapidly, before looking away again, as if hoping that staring at the blank white walls might somehow purge his mind of what he just saw.

For his part, Sakusa really, really hopes that somehow, he can just die right now and end his suffering once and for all.

“You know what, I don’t even want to know. You can keep this one to yourselves. Good night,” Iwaizumi finally says, before turning and leaving the room, the kitchen door swinging in his wake.

***

After the final day of training comes to an end, Iwaizumi announces they’ll all be heading out to an izakaya in Sendai for dinner, before hopping on the shinkansen back to their various homes. It’s an excuse to break out of the rigid nutrition programs they’ve been on all season, and most of the players talk excitedly on the bus about exactly what they’re going to order.

“Nobody let Bokkun see a fruit platter,” Miya announces, obnoxiously loudly. “Coach Foster had to write a letter of apology last time that happened.”

“What’s this about?” Iwaizumi asks over the sound of Bokuto complaining that none of that had been his fault and, after having been told the story, says, “Yeah, I’m not doing that. You destroy anything, you’re on your own, Bokuto.”

Sakusa, for his part, sits up the back of the bus with his head pulled down. He’s been unsociable this whole time, and he knows it – even more unsociable than usual. He’s willing to bet that Iwaizumi’s notes on him have Not a team player underlined several times over, and maybe that’s jeopardised his opportunity to be picked as a player for the national team – except he knows full well that no matter how rotten he’s felt over the course of this week, his playing was still good; he still got more scoring shots than everyone except Bokuto and Ushijima, surpassing even Kiryuu, though Kiryuu is coming off an injury and isn’t in his best form. He even earned some praise from Miya in the form of a whistle and Nice work, Omi-kun, and if even Miya is willing to admit he’s playing well, then Sakusa knows he must be in great form.

The izakaya is small, cramped and dimly lit, but Iwaizumi swears by the food here, and the owner seems to remember him well if the way he calls out Hajime-kun! Long time, no see! from behind the bar is any indication. They don’t have a private room, so everyone just grabs a seat where they can. Sakusa has had enough of watching Bokuto, Yaku and Miya’s non-existent table manners, so he hangs back a little, waiting to see where they’ll sit before selecting a table by himself, only for someone to immediately come and sit down across from him. He looks up, annoyance already carving itself into his face –

“Do you mind if I sit here?” Ushijima asks, as if he hadn’t just sat down anyway. A moment later, he reaches across to Hinata and Kageyama’s table, asking, “May I?” and picking up their little brown pot of umeboshi and putting it down in front of Sakusa, since their table is missing one.

Sakusa blinks down at it. Okay?

“Since as I recall, you’re fond of umeboshi,” Ushijima says, by way of explanation.

Sakusa is fond of umeboshi, but he can’t eat them right now, or anything else, since his stomach just sealed itself shut, along with his lungs, all the valves of his heart, and possibly some or other of his less glamorous bodily ducts, too.

“Thank you,” he forces himself to say.

“They have sea pineapple sashimi as a special,” Ushijima says after a moment of studying the menu. “Perhaps I’ll order some. Would you also like to try it?”

He looks up, fixing Sakusa with a questioning gaze, eyes dark in the low light.

Sakusa swallows. He feels like he’s on a rollercoaster or in a car being driven by Bokuto Koutarou, which happened once and never will again. A week of Ushijima apparently ignoring him just as hard as he can followed by… this is making him feel like every single one of his vertebrae is being wildly jerked out of place by some idiot who can’t drive, even though he insists he can.

Maybe it’s Ushijima’s way of telling him that, now that he’s guessed Sakusa’s feelings and made it clear he doesn’t return them, he doesn’t bear him any ill will.

“Are you recommending them?” Sakusa manages to make himself ask.

“I’ve never had them. But someone once told me they were tasty, and I haven’t had the chance to try them before now.” He cocks his head slightly, and Sakusa feels his heart melt. Perhaps literally. “It’ll be a new experience.”

“All right. Fine,” Sakusa says, lowering his head. “Let’s do it.”

The problem is, he doesn’t really like new experiences – at least, not until he’s had a chance to thoroughly research and investigate the experience he’ll be having before he has it. To compensate, Sakusa orders a bunch of boring izakaya staples so there’ll be nothing else unexpected turning up in front of him and then raises his eyes to where Ushijima is politely thanking the waitress.

“I’ve been meaning to say,” Ushijima says, turning back to him. “Thank you for fixing my computer background.”

“It was literally no problem,” Sakusa says, because it was the opposite of a problem. Now Ushijima’s eyes have been saved from Tendou’s buttcrack every time he turns it on. “I hope you’re enjoying your new wallpaper.”

Sakusa hadn’t really meant it seriously, but Ushijima nods with great sincerity. “I am. It brings back good memories of my time at Shiratorizawa. I was fortunate to find a team where I belonged. I’ve been doubly fortunate in finding it again with the Schweiden Adlers.” He pauses, inclining his head. “Are you doing well in Osaka with your team?”

Sakusa pauses, looking down at his fingers, pale against the dark wood of the table. He thinks of Bokuto cartwheeling into the wall of the gym. He thinks of Miya Atsumu screaming down the phone at his brother that he’s a swine, a scrub, a disgusting shit-pig and that he’ll get him for this, whatever this is. He thinks of Adriah Tomas bringing Sakusa his utility bills to read because he thinks he might be in arrears and he has no idea whom he’s supposed to call about this. Traitorously, he can feel his mouth trying to curve into a smile.

“I like Hinata,” is what he eventually says. “But then, who doesn’t? I think if you don’t like Hinata, you’re supposed to surrender yourself to the Hague for trial.”

“Hmm.” Ushijima looks off to the side for a moment. “I used to hate him.”

Sakusa gapes at him. “You… huh?”

“But I was being very childish.”

Sakusa literally cannot imagine that, but all the same, he asks, “Because… because Karasuno beat Shiratorizawa?”

“No, it wasn’t that.” Ushijima’s eyebrows draw together. “I don’t mind being beaten, if I know I’ve played my best and the winning team are determined and the players are skilled. I didn’t mind losing to you, after all.”

Sakusa swallows. He can feel the googly-eyed fish look trying to force its way onto his face. He tries to keep his mind on the topic at hand, which is Ushijima’s mysterious dislike of Hinata Shouyou, a literal sunbeam sent from heaven.

“I didn’t like him because the first time I ever met him, he told me he’d beat me. I thought, if he’s such a short player, he must be extremely skilled to make up for it – another player like Hoshiumi. When it turned out he was not, it was… frustrating. Baseless self-confidence is something that irritates me.”

“But now he’s here, a candidate for the national team,” Sakusa says.

“So it seems. But I’ve known for a long time now his value as a player.” Ushijima doesn’t seem at all ruffled about it. “I’m glad you’re finding being on a team with him rewarding. Playing against any team you’re on is always a challenge. But I admit…” Ushijima pauses, looking away again. “I admit, I’m looking forward to playing on a team with you again. Instead of against you.”

If it had been Miya saying that, Sakusa would have snarled at him not to count his chickens before they’ve hatched and that this was just a training event and he may never even make it onto the starting line-up for the national team or ever be subbed on. But when Ushijima says it, it’s impossible to say anything other than, “Me too,” while the sound of the blood rushing to his head roars in his ears. “Um. Wakatoshi-kun –”

The sea pineapples arrive at that moment, preventing Sakusa from saying whatever half-formed thought would have floated out of his mouth before he could stop it. The waitress places the sea pineapples down in front of them – they look almost like some kind of strange, slimy cut fruit.

“All right,” Sakusa says, staring at it. “Here’s to new experiences.”

The taste is strangely bitter, almost chemical, and the texture is rubbery, like a bad oyster. It’s the kind of thing someone like Miya might say is Sakusa’s dream food if he were feeling like being rude, which he always is.

“Hmm.” Ushijima is looking down at his sea pineapple, an indescribable expression on his face. “I’m not certain this was a good idea.”

Sakusa swallows his own piece down, not sure what to make of the aftertaste or whether a drink of water would make it worse. “Maybe it gets better with exposure,” he says, picking up another piece.

It does not get better with exposure.

Sakusa feels like he should like it – he likes umeboshi after all, and though the two aren’t at all similar, for some reason he feels they run on similar principles. The first umeboshi you eat, the intensity of the salt and the bitterness is surprising even if you eat them regularly. But by the time you’re onto your fourth one, you barely notice it anymore, except for the pleasant tingling of your lips.

He says this out loud to Ushijima, who nods like anything Sakusa just said made sense.

“Hmm. Perhaps you’re right. I think I am starting to get used to them,” Ushijima says, lifting another piece to his mouth before darting his tongue over his lower lip, leaving it wet and glistening.

Sakusa, gallantly, eats another piece too. By the last one, he almost feels as if he’s developed a kind of fondness for them. They’re strange, weird-looking, hard to come to terms with, and they leave him thinking of iodine for some reason. So he feels a kind of kinship with them, maybe.

Sakusa’s not really a big believer in talking while eating – that’s how people choke to death – and so he’s perfectly content to eat in silence when the rest of their food comes, watching as Ushijima consumes a truly insane amount of hayashi rice, pickled vegetables, agedashi tofu, yakitori, Hinata’s apparently mistakenly ordered side of nikujaga, Kageyama’s leftover grilled squid, and spinach and sesame salad. Sakusa has never considered eating as an activity that might make his heart rate pick up before, but apparently Ushijima can make even the simple act of consuming sustenance something that Sakusa thinks he could spend the rest of his life watching.

Perhaps it’s not so mysterious, after all, he thinks, aware he’s resting his chin on his hand as Ushijima picks up the last of his spinach leaves with a quick twirl of his chopsticks in his left hand, lifting it up to his lips, closing his eyes and making the smallest Mmm sound as he –

“Wait,” Sakusa says, lifting his chin from his hand and staring around the now seemingly completely empty izakaya. “Where did everyone go?”

Which is how he comes, fifteen minutes later, to be standing on the empty shinkansen platform as the shinkansen itself glides away down the tracks towards Tokyo. Through one of the tiny lighted windows, Sakusa catches a glimpse of Hinata’s face, wide-eyed and open-mouthed with shock as he stares out at him, followed quickly by Miya Atsumu, waving as daintily as a princess at Sakusa as he passes. To say that his grin had been shit-eating would have been putting it mildly.

“Hmm,” Ushijima says as the tail lights of the train disappear into the darkness of the night. “This is unfortunate.”

A moment later and Sakusa feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. On pulling it out, he finds a message from Komori, reading ur welcome (* ^ ω ^).

YOU ASS, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU, Sakusa is in the midst of replying when Ushijima’s voice interrupts him.

“That was the last shinkansen of the evening,” he says, glancing at Sakusa. “The next one won’t be until early tomorrow morning.”

“Right,” Sakusa says, looking down. Great. Though of course, Komori would have known that. Whatever he’d been hoping or expecting to achieve here. “I guess… I guess I’ll get a capsule hotel at the station for the night.” Even though the thought of being in such an enclosed space covered in a blanket that who knows how many people have used before him makes him want to peel his skin off and die. And even though capsule hotels are not really designed for someone of his height.

Ushijima says nothing to that – though as he already told Sakusa, he’ll be staying in Miyagi for the next few days anyway, so it’s not really a problem for him. The silence drags on into a fourth second, until Ushijima suddenly says, “There’s no need for that. I have three days approved leave – it was never my plan to return to Tokyo tonight. You’re perfectly welcome to stay with me at my family home overnight, if you wish.” And then, as if this might have been in doubt, he adds, “You will have a room to yourself.”

Sakusa stares at him, his heart leaping straight up out of his chest and into his throat. He knows he should turn the offer down. It’s not sensible of him to accept it. But after a week of feeling like his heart was being slowly squeezed in a vice, followed by this evening’s seeming return to… to the friendship he once would have banked his life on, he can’t help but want more. But maybe it had been his desperate, frantic want that had driven Ushijima away in the first place, even if Sakusa had never had the opportunity or, really, the inclination to act on it. He’d been – mostly – content to remain a friend and rival, and keep whatever else he felt locked away in his heart or scrawled out over the pages of his teenaged diary.

He shouldn’t accept this. It would be imposing, when Ushijima has made it as politely clear as he possibly can that he doesn’t feel the same way.

“I –” he begins.

“We should hurry,” Ushijima says, glancing at the station clock. “The last train will be leaving in the next five minutes.”

And then he turns and walks away, before Sakusa can get a word out to say otherwise.

***

No matter how much Sakusa has simply decided to resign himself to the reality of his unrequited feelings, it doesn’t stop his stomach from clenching uncomfortably as Ushijima leads him from the train station to a set of steps that takes them down to a small, winding street. The pitch black of the night is punctuated only here and there by streetlamps, and the humidity of the day still lingers in the air. Sakusa can hear the sound of frogs from the creeks and the rice fields as they pass, the buildings sparse and few.

“I’m sorry, I should have said it was quite a long journey,” Ushijima says, half-turning to him. “Perhaps you would have preferred to stay in a hotel.”

Sakusa shakes his head. “No. It’s fine.”

It doesn’t seem worth it to explain how much he hates hotels, capsule or not. He simply doesn’t trust them – how clean is it really possible to make a mattress, after so many hundreds of bodies have slept on it? He has faith that any house that Ushijima grew up in will at least be trim and tidy.

“Are you hungry?”

“Not at all.” Sakusa feels a slight smile tugging at his lips. “The sea pineapple was more than enough for me. I doubt I’ll ever want to eat again.”

He glances up as Ushijima lets out a small exhalation into the warmth of the night air. He’s known him long enough to know it’s a laugh.

“It was good to try it, though, wasn’t it?”

“For certain values of good, I suppose,” Sakusa says, wanting to smile despite himself. “At least I won’t die wondering if I missed out on something.”

Ushijima doesn’t say anything to that for several steps, before he finally says, “That’s true.”

They come to a tall wooden gate with a sloping roof; a lantern hanging from one of the pillars illuminates a nameplate reading Ushijima. Sakusa blinks as Ushijima pushes open the wooden door, which creaks like a portent of Sakusa’s impending doom, though it’s probably just swollen from the thick humidity of the air.

“Please,” Ushijima says, “come in.”

Sakusa would most certainly be lying if he said he hadn’t sometimes wondered what kind of house Ushijima grew up in, at least until he went to board at Shiratorizawa Junior High when he was twelve. Walking along the stone pathway through the garden towards the house, however, he’s forced to conclude that nothing he came up with suits him as well as this house does, with its long, sloping eaves, wood-panelled door, and soft-edged, well-kept garden. Ushijima opens the front door, and Sakusa steps into the genkan, as Ushijima turns on the light, flooding the entryway with a soft golden light.

“Won’t we disturb your… your family?” Sakusa asks in a whisper, as Ushijima fetches him a pair of fresh house slippers from a cupboard.

Ushijima glances at him, then shakes his head. “No. My family aren’t here just now. My stepfather is in Kyoto on business, and my mother has travelled to Sendai to run the office while he’s away. They won’t return until next week.” He pauses, in something that with anyone else would be called a hesitation. “Sometimes it’s pleasant to spend some time alone after these team events.”

Sakusa looks down, awkwardness twisting in his guts even as he steps into the house slippers, having neatly arranged his shoes side-by-side. “Then… I’m intruding on your time.”

“No. It’s not an intrusion.”

Ushijima leads him deeper into the house, turning on lights as he goes – and Sakusa honestly feels as if he’s being pulled along involuntarily with a string tied around his heart, or at least one or another of his organs. The house smells like cedar and tatami, the summer heat sunk into its bones, but Sakusa barely even notices how it looks – his eyes are trained on the broad expanse of Ushijima’s back as he follows him down a long corridor.

“This will be your room,” Ushijima says, pausing, before sliding open a shouji and leading Sakusa inside. “Once you’ve put your things away, I’ll be waiting for you in the other room.”

Sakusa doesn’t have to ask What other room? because when he comes out of his bedroom – not having put his things away, because he’s only staying one night and he’s leaving first thing in the morning – he can tell where Ushijima is by the light that filters through the shouji down the hall. He follows it, pushing the screen aside to find Ushijima waiting, just as he said he would be, holding a glass of water for him. Of course. Since hydration is important.

“If you’d prefer tea, I can make some,” Ushijima says.

“No, this is fine.” Sakusa takes it, his fingertips brushing against Ushijima’s before settling on the cool side of the glass. “I don’t drink anything caffeinated so late. I don’t really sleep well as it is.”

“I remember,” Ushijima says, a soft smile on his face. “You’d get up and go for walks around the corridors when you couldn’t sleep at training camps. It led to stories of ghosts.”

Sakusa swallows. He feels like his skin is shrivelling up and his teeth are going to fall out. “Maybe I encouraged them,” he finally manages to say. “It felt good to be a ghost for a while. People tend to leave ghosts alone.”

Ushijima cocks his head, eyes intent. “Did you really want to be left alone so badly?”

“By most people.” Sakusa tries to breathe, but his ribs feel like someone’s stepping on them. To avoid saying anything else even more incriminating, he lifts the glass of water to his lips, before turning away and looking around the room. He thinks he’s only ever been in a house this old before when he and Komori’s family have stayed in ryokan on holidays.

He genuinely doesn’t mean to pry, but as Sakusa stares around the room his eyes naturally fall on a shelf filled with family photos, and he can’t help but drift over to take a closer look. There are some black and white photos of people who’re obviously Ushijima forebears, staring solemnly at the camera, but then his eyes drift far enough along to find a photo of a woman who cannot be anyone other than Ushijima’s mother.

Her hair is cut into a neat bob, with no attempt made to hide the oncoming grey. Sakusa is no particular connoisseur of women, but even he can see she’s beautiful, in a brittle, elegant way. Ushijima clearly got his cheekbones from her – and, it has to be said, his inability to smile artificially for a camera, or to smile artificially at all, ever, which Sakusa personally appreciates. If there’s ever a smile on Ushijima’s face, it’s because the force of some undeniably felt emotion has put it there.

It’s the next photo along, however, that gives him pause. It’s a photo of Ushijima, looking like Sakusa has never seen him look before – he’s on a beach, his hair wet and disarranged, his skin tanned, the sun sparkling on the vast blue expanse of ocean behind him. He’s not smiling, but there’s something indefinably… lighter about him in this picture.

Sakusa hates the beach. He’s completely and fully aware of this. It’s hot and sandy, and who knows who or what has been in the water. The ocean is where sharks live, which by itself is enough to tell him that it’s nothing he wants anything to do with. And yet, looking at this photo, he longs for the beach – for the crash and roll of the waves and the soft, salty spray. For the ripple of the sand beneath the soles of his feet as the water draws itself back, only to hurl itself forward again, crashing in around him like an embrace. He wants to breathe the briny air and see the sun dance across the surface of the dark, endless blue. He wants to dawdle across the fucking shoreline collecting fucking seashells.

It’s all bullshit, and Sakusa knows it – but looking at this photo of Ushijima makes him think that the beach is actually like that instead of a sweltering, sandy hellhole full of screaming children and hideous, slimy mystery items that’ve washed up onto the shore, and that he’d enjoy it. Which is terrible, obviously, and he should stop looking. But it’s too late to disguise the fact he’s been staring, so he stammers out, “Is this in…” He scrabbles around in his brain for the name of the only beach he knows. “Yuigahama?”

“No. That was in California.”

Sakusa blinks. “So… your father took this photo?” He’s known for years that Ushijima’s father now lives in California.

“No,” Ushijima says and clears his throat. “No, Iwaizumi took this photo.”

Sakusa stares at the picture. Iwaizumi-san took this photo?

“I’ll go run a bath,” Ushijima says suddenly, turning away. “It’s getting late. We should rest.”

And then he leaves the room faster than Sakusa has ever seen him go anywhere before, leaving Sakusa staring at his back.

***

As the guest, Sakusa gets the first bath, and Ushijima tells him not to wait for him but to head off to bed as soon as he’s ready.

Sakusa lies on his futon, listening to the sounds of Ushijima’s footsteps on the wooden floor as they approach his room. His heart is hammering in his temples, blood seething through his veins as he waits – knowing he’s deluding himself but unable to help it – for the shouji screen to his room to slide open and Ushijima’s shadow to fall across the floor. Of course it doesn’t – of course, a moment later, he hears the shouji of the adjoining room slide softly in its wooden track, before whispering closed once more. He hears the soft pad of feet on tatami on the other side of the fusuma, the rustle of a futon being laid out, and then nothing more. He bites his lip until he tastes blood, squeezing his eyes shut until red blotches appear behind his eyelids.

Sakusa wants to crawl out of his skin; he wants to somehow disgorge his soul and send it, incorporeal, through the wall and into the next room to watch Ushijima as he sleeps – except for the fact that that would be a terrible invasion of privacy, and Sakusa can’t see himself forgiving someone who made any similar violations of his own sleeping form. But still, he is, somehow, excruciatingly aware of the sleeping Ushijima, despite the nine feet of floor and closed fusuma between them. And he can feel his face flushing because honestly, he’s twenty-three, not fifteen, and yet he’s still harbouring this crush as if he was.

A buzz from his phone drags him out of his misery like a tray of ice dumped down his back. He holds it up, squinting at the screen, only to see a message from Komori reading r u in a hotel room w ushiwaka rn? tell me everything. is it getting steamy yet? if u do not reply i will know it is.

Sakusa stares at it in mute horror, wishing he was at home so he could throw the phone across the room knowing he wouldn’t damage anything important. As it is, with his luck the phone would probably somehow fly right through the paper of the shouji, bounce off the wall and into Ushijima’s room, and then Ushijima will see Komori’s hideous message too.

So instead he types I AM DISOWNING YOU. YOU ARE NO LONGER MY COUSIN. FUCK YOU, his thumbs smashing into the screen with what’s probably an excessive amount of force. Komori must have the fastest fingers in the world, because he manages to both type and send its going that badly huh before Sakusa can turn off his phone and slam it down next to his pillow, turning his back on it and trying to sleep.

***

Words cannot describe the extent to which Sakusa Kiyoomi does not want to fuck this up.

He stares at himself in the mirror as he scrubs his face with ice-cold water. Do not, he thinks, fuck this up.

The morning is already off to a bad start: since his phone was turned off, his alarm didn’t go off, and then his finely honed internal clock had failed him as well. So it’s already eight o’clock by the time he gets up, feeling groggy and angry with himself.

He doesn’t want to fuck this up. He can’t fuck this up. Not after Ushijima had apparently extended an olive branch to him the way he had. Last night had been the closest thing to their old friendship Sakusa had experienced in years, and he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it. How content he’d be to live just like that, with no particular need for anything more from Ushijima than that.

Or, Sakusa thinks as he comes out into the dining room to find Ushijima laying out breakfast on a low table, the sunlight streaming in through the open shouji behind him, he could just stop lying to himself and admit that no, actually, he’ll never be content with just that. He wants to come out of his bedroom to find Ushijima laying out breakfast for him every day for the rest of his life. Other things, too, but Sakusa thinks these things should be taken one step at a time.

“Ah,” Ushijima says. “You’re up.”

The breakfast is the same kind of thing Sakusa has when he stays at Komori’s family home: rice, miso soup, a piece of grilled fish, pickles, tamagoyaki, green tea. The kind of thing he likes but can’t be bothered to make for himself. They sit together in the golden morning sunlight as it filters in from the garden and eat their breakfast in peace and quiet.

This is dangerous, Sakusa thinks. The last week has ripped up all his very sincerely made resolutions about never telling Ushijima how he feels, even though he knows it’s useless. Even if he didn’t know know it before, he certainly knows it now. He extinguished his hope long ago, when fate saw fit to shoot his dreams down when Karasuno knocked Shiratorizawa out of the Spring Tournament. It should stay dead. He doesn’t need revenant hope wandering through his heart and making him say things that were never meant to be said.

He’ll finish his breakfast; he’ll pack up his stuff; he’ll thank Ushijima for his hospitality. Then he’ll book himself onto the next available shinkansen and –

“I was thinking of going for a walk in the hills,” Ushijima says, turning to gaze at him, the brilliance of the yellow sunlight catching in the tips of his eyelashes and the fine hairs on the back of his forearm. “If you’d like to come too.”

“Okay,” Sakusa says.

***

Somehow, Sakusa knows that when Ushijima said walk, he meant hike, and when he said hills, he meant fucking mountains.

Sakusa isn’t sure whether this technically counts as a mountain, but he feels like it should. Though he actually has no real idea about how high up they are, given they’re surrounded on all sides by lush, dense greenery. This was after making their way between the flat rice fields, with Ushijima getting stopped on a fairly regular basis by the people who lived in the town to tell him it had been a while, that they’re glad to see him back, and that they often watch his games. They also have to repeatedly stop so Ushijima can pat every dog they happen to encounter – which, to be fair, isn’t his fault, since dogs just seem to appear and approach him out of nowhere. On the other hand, they seem vaguely suspicious of Sakusa.

Sakusa can’t tell if it’s better or worse now that they’re under the trees. Better, probably, because at least it’s somewhat shady here? Though it’s also worse because the ground is muddy and slippery; there are little yellow and white flowers sprouting up between the narrow steps of the path, which surely constitutes a trip hazard; and Sakusa is afraid of grabbing the plants if he falls because he can’t remember how to identify which ones are poisonous.

But. He might be sweating out of every pore, and his spinal fluid might feel like it’s about to start boiling his brain, but for some reason he just can’t feel unhappy about it. Maybe it’s the patch of sweat on Ushijima’s white t-shirt, just between his shoulder blades, or maybe it’s watching the striations of his calf muscles beneath his skin as he walks up the steps. No one could blame him for looking, Sakusa decides – everyone he’s ever met, even if they find Ushijima annoying in other ways, for some unfathomable reason, has always agreed that –

“Oh my God,” Sakusa says, stopping in the middle of the path, which is currently blocked by a large, flat, drooping leaf. The leaf isn’t so much the problem, however, as the frog sitting on it. It blinks, shifting slightly on its perch, its slick green body glistening in the sunlight.

Ushijima glances over his shoulder at the sound of his voice, before turning and making his way back down the narrow steps.

“It’s a frog, Sakusa.”

“I know it’s a frog,” Sakusa hisses. “It’s looking at me.”

“I doubt it means you any harm.”

Sakusa narrows his eyes, darting them up to Ushijima’s face. He swears he heard the suggestion of a laugh in his voice, but he can’t tell for sure, since Ushijima is leaning over, picking up a twig, and using it to gently prod the frog onto the large dry leaf in his other hand. The frog obliges him peacefully, because apparently frogs, like dogs, just love him. Ushijima holds it up a little, as if trying to encourage Sakusa to look at it.

“You don’t think it’s cute?”

The frog, its grey eyes steady on Sakusa’s, tilts its head a little, as if presenting itself for Sakusa’s admiration.

“It’s a bit cute,” Sakusa grudgingly admits.

Ushijima places the frog on its leaf off the path, and they continue on up the hill/mountain, following the curves of the path through the trees until Sakusa hears the sound of running water, and they emerge onto the banks of a gently rushing stream. Beyond that is a view of the town below, with its rows of brilliant green rice fields, stretched out beneath the unbroken blue of the sky, until they meet the dark green mountains in the distance, hazy in the heat of the summer sun.

Sakusa blinks, gazing out at it. Despite the heat, despite the fact he’s quite sure there are insects nearby and probably more frogs, despite everything, he feels like he could stay here forever, looking, and he possibly wouldn’t even feel tempted to turn and look at Ushijima, whose presence he can sense just behind his right shoulder.

“I used to come up here when I was young,” Ushijima says after a moment. “I wanted to take the opportunity while I was here to return.”

Sakusa licks his lips, swallowing heavily. “Did you come up here for the view?” he asks inanely.

“Partially,” Ushijima says. “But also because the run up the hill is good exercise. My record from the beginning of the path to here is twelve minutes and thirty-six seconds.”

Sakusa is charmed. Of course Ushijima would remember his exact time.

A moment later, on detecting Ushijima moving away, he turns to see him leaning over to unlace his shoes. He takes off his socks and balls them up, placing them carefully inside his shoes, and then wades out into the stream, the water fording translucently around his calves. He half-turns back to where Sakusa stands, gawking.

“The water is very cool. You should come in.”

It’s entirely possible that Sakusa is about to find out what it feels like to choke to death on his own tongue. He takes two steps forward, then collects himself, remembering where and who he is.

“Are there… eels in there?” Sakusa asks, peering at the water. “I’ll probably slip over and break my wrists.”

“No,” Ushijima says. “There are no eels. And you won’t.” And then he holds out his hand.

Sakusa wishes he were wearing a surgical mask so he could bite his lip in peace, but he’s not, so he has no choice but to wander over to the shaded bank of the stream. This is simultaneously the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to him. He feels like he’s wandered into some kind of shoujo manga fever dream, where everything is perfect but it’s also indefinably terrifying in a way that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up and his skin ripple into goosebumps. But still, he takes off his shoes and carefully steps over the slippery, pillowy moss that blankets the wet stones on either side of the stream and the slender ferns that droop into the water’s edge, and cautiously dips in a toe. The water is actually, somehow, freezing, and it swirls gently around his legs as he wades deeper. The cold is a shock, but after the sweaty, enclosed space of his shoes, it feels almost like a caress.

“This is nice,” he starts to say, turning to Ushijima, but then his words dry up in his throat.

There’s sweat in the shallow dip above Ushijima’s top lip, a spray of freckles across the side of his neck. They’re not obvious except at this minute distance, because although Sakusa is certain Ushijima puts on a sufficient covering of sunscreen before going outside in summer, his skin has always been that soft golden colour that freckles don’t show up on unless you’re really looking. Which Sakusa is now, with a kind of terrible, feral longing in his chest to lean over and put his mouth onto the sweat-slicked skin on the side of his neck and close his eyes and inhale gently, as he ticks off in his head, time number who cares, there’s too many to keep track of now.

He’s painfully aware of the fact that Ushijima isn’t looking at him, though – he’s staring out over the view of the fields and the town and the mountains beyond, his breathing normal, and apparently oblivious to the paroxysm of lust Sakusa is currently experiencing. He’s just looking out at the hills, his face dappled in sunlight, and looking as peaceful as Sakusa has ever seen him.

It’s tempting to let himself be pulled into it – to allow himself to sink down into that stillness, let it close over him like a struggling swimmer finally giving in and letting the water close over his head as he’s borne away by the undertow. But he doesn’t. He struggles against it, keeping his head up, if only barely, and tries to actually process – as in, with his brain – what his eyes are showing him.

Tokyo is hardly devoid of greenery, but it’s not the same as this lush, brilliant green spreading out around him. Looking out over the Miyagi countryside and how settled Ushijima seems to be within it, Sakusa can’t help but think – he can’t help but wonder –

“Wakatoshi-kun,” he blurts out, “did you ever want to live on a rice farm?”

Ushijima turns to him, blinking, a slight frown crossing his face. “A rice farm?”

“Say on Kita Shinsuke’s rice farm,” Sakusa says, the words seeping miserably out of his mouth for some fucking reason, “since he has one.”

“I do not think,” Ushijima says, after a pause during which Sakusa’s soul crinkles up and dies within him, “that Kita-san has asked me to come and live on his rice farm.”

There’s the smallest hint of a ‘?’ at the end of that sentence, as if Ushijima is suggesting that, somehow, he might be mistaken about Kita not inviting him into marital bliss on his rice farm and that he’s perfectly willing for Sakusa to correct him on this point if he has more information about it.

Sakusa’s mind whirrs. Maybe he wants Sakusa to correct him on it. Maybe – oh my God – maybe he’s hoping Kita Shinsuke has sent Sakusa here as some kind of go-between to gauge Ushijima’s interest levels in moving to his rice farm? Maybe he thinks –

“One day I believe I’ll move back to the countryside,” Ushijima says, after a pause during which Sakusa cannot even begin to guess what thoughts he saw tearing across his face. “But for now, I’m settled in Tokyo.” Another pause, and Ushijima’s tongue darts over his lower lip. “I’d like it if one day, when you have some free time, you could show me some of the places you used to go when you lived there.”

There isn’t much to show, Sakusa thinks – mostly places Komori dragged him around to. There were a few places he liked, but Sakusa doubts Ushijima wants to go to his former university’s library or the arcade where Sakusa gained his only junior high cool points because his dexterity meant he could usually win the best prizes for the other kids. Still, he finds himself immediately putting together a lightning-fast itinerary in his head: that café he likes that does the soup he can’t get anywhere else. Shinjuku Gyoen, as if Ushijima hasn’t been there already. That melonpan bakery. Sakusa personally hates owl cafés, but it’s possible Ushijima might like to look at an owl?

“I could write you down a list,” he says. “With addresses and instructions on how to get there. How are you with the trains? You may have to change a few times for some of them.”

“I’d really prefer it if you showed me around yourself.”

“The instructions will be very clear,” Sakusa informs him. “And will include landmarks as well as cardinal directions.”

“Sakusa –”

You definitely won’t get lost if you follow them properly, is what Sakusa starts to say, but he doesn’t get very far, because in the next moment, Ushijima’s thumb is pressing against his mouth, tracing over the shape of his lower lip, while his fingers, warm and calloused, slide over his cheek to cup his jaw.

Sakusa stares at him, his whirring mind going perfectly still. What he thinks is happening cannot possibly be what is actually happening: there is absolutely no way Ushijima Wakatoshi is going to kiss him while they’re both standing almost knee-deep in a cold mountain stream, the steady summer sunlight turning the leaves above them pale green and gold.

But that’s what does happen. They’re the same height, so all Ushijima actually has to do is lean forward and press their mouths together. It’s imperfect at first – Ushijima’s lips settle on the corner of his mouth, as if he’s not certain exactly how Sakusa might react to this, and Sakusa can feel the heat of his own breath against his cheek as he lets out an exhalation of surprise, forgetting, for a moment, what exactly he’s supposed to do when someone kisses him. If it’d been just someone, however, he doubts it’d be the same – it’s just because it’s Ushijima, whom he’s guiltily, furiously dreamed about kissing ever since he learned what kissing even was.

He can’t deal with this. If he tries to think about this logically and rationally, his head is going to fly right off his neck. So instead, he retreats – he retreats into the still, silent place that only Ushijima can engender in him, where he allows all his thoughts to fall away, all his calculations and concerns and critical analysis of pretty much everything he encounters on a day-to-day basis. He lets himself become only this, only lips and teeth and tongue, hot breath, warm desire, and his own desperate, beating pulse, thundering in his ears.

Sakusa runs his hand up Ushijima’s back, settling between his shoulder blades, and pulls him closer, tilting his head back and drawing his lower lip gently into his mouth with the barest graze of his teeth. He kisses him deeply, curling his fingers through the damp hair at the back of his head and circling his thumb over the soft, downy skin just in front of his ear, the way he can only kiss him if some part of his mind remains convinced that none of this is really happening and is just a particularly self-indulgent daydream.

By the time they part, Sakusa realises his feet have gone numb from standing in the freezing cold water of the stream for God knows how long, and Ushijima’s lips look kiss-swollen and slightly redder than usual. Sakusa stares at him and wonders what he possibly could have done in a previous life to deserve seeing this in this one. Because he must have been a living saint.

“Sakusa,” Ushijima says. He sounds slightly breathless. “Would you like to come to lunch with me at a restaurant I know of at the foot of this hill?” There’s a barely perceptible pause. “If you would like, we could consider it a date.”

“Okay,” Sakusa says.

***

By the time they get back from the restaurant (a tiny, family-run establishment where the old man and woman behind the bar clearly knew Ushijima and told him at length about how he ought to come home more often), the heat of the summer afternoon is at its peak, and the cicadas are screaming loudly enough that Sakusa feels like his eardrums are going to burst.

It doesn’t seem to matter, though, as Ushijima opens the gate to his home and they make their way down the curving stone path towards the house. Ushijima left the shouji open to stop the front rooms from getting stuffy when they left this morning, and Sakusa’s heart hammers in his ribcage as it comes into view, warmth seeping into his belly.

Sakusa has always realised that his view of Ushijima is not, perhaps, completely in line with how most other people see him – he realises that to other people, Ushijima cuts an intimidating figure, six foot four and built like a train couldn’t knock him over. He’s watched Ushijima’s games, seen how other players react to him, and how much pressure his mere presence places on the opposing team. Even Miya Atsumu had admitted to thinking Ushijima had ~an aura~ back in junior high, though obviously he’d rather die than admit that now or have let it affect his playing even one iota at the time. Sakusa has seen all that, of course, but it’s always been tempered by the knowledge of how quiet and thoughtful Ushijima is, how much he notices and how willing he always is to give advice to other players, and how much respect he’ll accord to people who’ve earned it. He takes everyone seriously, treats the kids who come to get his autograph like they’re small adults, and is absolutely incapable of any form of insincerity.

Sakusa knows he’s nothing like that – he’d once been told he was like a sea urchin, spiky and hard and an acquired taste only. He knows he’s blunt, but it’s not from a desire to be sincere; he just doesn’t have the time or patience for anything else. Kids at his school thought he was weird and treated him accordingly; Komori had gotten used to him because he had to, acquired the taste for him, like a kid whose parents force him to eat olives from a young age. Ushijima had never seemed to notice any of that, though – he’d been calmly, thoughtfully willing to spend time with Sakusa, no matter his oddities and foibles, from the very first moment Sakusa had asked him how long he’d been playing volleyball for, right after he’d seen him drying his hands properly at the All-Japan Junior High Athletics Tournament. Some part of Sakusa wants to show everyone in the world what he sees when he looks at Ushijima; the other, far larger, part of him just wants to jealously hoard it, like a coiling dragon sitting on its pile of gold.

As they reach the house, Sakusa only has to look up at Ushijima, the thought of kissing him again barely coalescing in his mind before Ushijima has turned to him, tipping his head slightly to the side to press their mouths together. Sakusa’s hand runs down his back, resting in the dip of his spine, before, blindly, he walks Ushijima back until the backs of his legs hit the edge of the engawa, and they fall over, Ushijima backwards onto the wood and Sakusa forwards onto him, their legs tangling.

Sakusa had some vague idea that he wanted the kiss to be soft, gentle, like Ushijima had kissed him in the stream, but when Ushijima’s lips part against him, he groans, opening his mouth and kissing him hungrily and desperately, as if he wants, somehow, to press his deepest truth into Ushijima’s mouth, about how he’s always wanted him and he thinks he probably always will.

Ushijima’s breath curls hot and damp against his mouth when he exhales, pulling back. He looks up at Sakusa, his hair a mess and a slight flush of red just beginning to rise over the soft jut of his cheekbones.

“We should probably,” he says, through the heave of his breath, “take a bath.”

Sakusa stares down at him, his chest expanding wide enough to fit the universe beneath his ribs. God, I fucking love you, he thinks, before they disentangle themselves from each other and go inside the house.

***

Waking up in the morning has never been Sakusa’s favourite experience, but he thinks he could learn to tolerate it if it were like this every morning, with the soft-edged light creeping in beneath the paper shutters and across the tatami of Ushijima Wakatoshi’s bedroom floor.

Ushijima still seems to be asleep, his side rising and falling beneath the sheet, and Sakusa sinks himself against the curve of his spine, his chest flush against his back despite the heat, resting his chin on the firm muscle of his shoulder, and closes his eyes again. Usually, he can never fall back asleep once he’s awake, but he’s in the midst of drifting off again when he hears Ushijima’s voice, soft in the quiet of the very early morning.

“Sakusa. Would you like some breakfast?”

“Mm,” he says, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “Okay.”

Ushijima sits up, the sheet falling away from his chest, and Sakusa has to stop himself from groaning – they might be exactly the same height, but Ushijima is ten kilos heavier than him and all of it is muscle. Sakusa refuses to feel guilty as he lets his eyes rove over the flat plane of his chest – though he does swallow a little guiltily at the, well, the three very obvious hickies that are showing on the curve of Ushijima’s neck.

“Um. Sorry,” he says, gesturing vaguely in that direction. God, what if Ushijima hates that kind of thing? What if he goes to the mirror and is horrified or takes it as evidence of latent vampirism?

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Ushijima says, reaching for a t-shirt and pulling it on over his head.

That done, he seems to pause, looking back at Sakusa, his eyes moving slowly over his face. He lifts his hand, and for a moment Sakusa thinks he’s going to brush the tangle of his curls back off his forehead – Oh my God, my bedhead – but instead, he just runs his thumb up in a vertical line, just above his right eyebrow.

“I’ve always wondered,” Ushijima says as Sakusa stares at him, mute, “if those freckles feel different to the rest of your face.”

“And…?” Sakusa barely manages to choke out.

“Not really,” Ushijima says. Then he stands up and, to Sakusa’s intense regret, puts on some pants and pads out towards the kitchen.

It doesn’t really hit Sakusa until later that Ushijima had said he’d always wondered, and by that time they’re in a supermarket buying something for dinner, and it’s not really the moment to ask.

***

The next three days are spent sunk in domesticity. Sakusa doesn’t have practice this week, so he doesn’t have to account for his whereabouts to Coach Foster, but Ushijima is due back with the Adlers in Tokyo on Thursday, and Sakusa is painfully aware of every fleeting second as it passes.

Neither of them can cook particularly well, but simple things are fine, and when they can’t be bothered, there’s always egg on rice, though Sakusa prefers to have his eggs poached before mixing them in with the rice and soy sauce, to reduce the risk of salmonella.

Sakusa lies awake on the last night and tries to imagine how he’s going to go to sleep tomorrow night with only an empty space beside him, the sound of Osaka roaring into life beyond his window instead of the liquid golden light of the Miyagi dawn. But he doesn’t want to think about it, so he traces a gentle line between the constellation of freckles on Ushijima’s back with one fingertip, before lowering his head to press his lips to the soft divot at the base of his spine. The sound Ushijima makes when he does it makes him shiver all the way down to his soul, and he closes his eyes, committing it to memory the way he used to commit his daydreams and staring and moments of such longing they made his teeth hurt to memory, and tells himself that at least now they’re more than just inventions of his fevered imagination, they’re solid and real, and they’re his.

It’s almost enough to console him when they both disembark the shinkansen at Tokyo station, Ushijima to go back to the team dorms in Koganei, and Sakusa to change to the train to Osaka, though he still stares longingly down the tracks long after the platform has disappeared from view.

***

“Well, look who’s back from getting railed from one end of Miyagi Prefecture to the other,” is the first thing Miya says to him when Sakusa sees him in the team gym. “Did you even take the shinkansen back, or did you just ride Ushiwaka here?”

“What the fuck?” Sakusa says, staring at him in outrage. Who had told him that?! He knows for a fact that Miya and Komori don’t really talk, so it couldn’t have been him. So who?! “That is not what I have been doing.”

“Oh, isn’t it? Then what have you been doing? Hmm?” Miya smirks at him, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. “Drinking tea? Pickin’ flowers and holding hands?”

“None of your business,” Sakusa spits back at him. “Maybe I have. You don’t know.”

“Yeah, right,” Miya says, smirking. “You are so full of shit.”

“I am not,” Sakusa hisses – he isn’t! The opposite, in fact.

“Look, Omiomi,” Miya says, draping his arm over Sakusa’s shoulders so Sakusa has to shrink away and lowering his voice conspiratorially, “I know you don’t usually listen when I tell you things, but I want ya to listen to this: you’re not as mysterious as ya like to think.”

Sakusa stares at him. He can feel his cheeks getting hot.

“Why don’t you,” he says, loudly enough for everyone in the gym to hear, “go tell Kageyama Tobio how pretty you think he is, instead of sublimating your feelings onto his sister?”

“OOOOOHHHHHHHH,” he can hear Bokuto yelling as he stalks away, still furious – but also taking quite a bit of private satisfaction in the look of utter shock on Miya Atsumu’s face, almost as if he’d slapped him across the cheek, and goes to find somewhere less populated to exercise.

***

The Adlers do eventually go on break, and so Ushijima comes down to Osaka to visit him – there’s been a lot of talk over the Zoom about what they’ll do and what sights they’ll see, but when it actually happens, they spend the entire first twenty-four hours he’s there holed up in a hotel room with their phones turned off, so anything Komori has to say – which has been a lot – won’t be seen until later, when Sakusa cares less about maintaining his good mood.

Right now, he feels soft and warm and happy, like someone’s come along and smoothed all his sharp edges – like a rounded, sun-warmed stone sitting fat and happy on a beach somewhere. It takes the ocean decades and an endless roll of waves to wear those jagged little rocks down to such a smooth-edged, contented state, but Ushijima has managed with him in about, hmmm, half an hour and three fingers.

He’s not so out of it, though, that he can’t remember something he never did manage to get some clarification on back when it happened.

“You said,” he rasps out, once he thinks he can speak again, “you said back in Miyagi that you’d always wanted to see if my moles felt different to the rest of my face.”

Ushijima nods. “I remember.”

“How long,” Sakusa starts and then cuts himself off, swallowing. “How long is ‘always’? Like… a week? A month?”

“You probably don’t remember,” Ushijima says, after a fairly long pause. “At the All-Japan Youth camp, the first year you were there – I hurt my finger, and you took me to the infirmary. I thought, back then…” Ushijima blinks, trailing off. “I thought they were interesting and that I’d like to touch them. So quite a while, I suppose.”

Sakusa stares at him. Then he starts laughing. He has to laugh, to keep from crying.

“Sakusa…?” Ushijima sounds mildly concerned, and perhaps Sakusa can’t blame him – he sounds like an asthmatic rooster trying to get out its first crow of the day. This is why he’s much more of an internal laugher, even when he sees something really funny, like the time Miya and Bokuto had been engaging in horseplay on top of a gymnastics beam, and Miya had ended up falling face-first onto the floor.

“It’s nothing,” Sakusa says, once he manages to form words again. He can’t think about it. Not right now. Not about how many years he spent cataloguing all the things he thought he’d never have.

Instead, he sits up, pulling himself forward into the cradle of Ushijima’s lap and smoothing his palms over the flat of his back, running his thumb down the line of his spine. Ushijima’s arm settles on his shoulder, one hand tangling in his hair, the other drifting down to the curve of his hip.

It’s only bearable so long as he doesn’t think about it too hard or look at it too closely, how long ago he could have had this. But he tells himself he’s not going to think about it too hard or look at it too closely – he’s going to, for once, allow himself to step into that stillness that seems to follow Ushijima around wherever he goes, fall into that lack of doubt about the present and certainty of the future, and think simply of this moment, with Ushijima’s breath mingling warmly with his own, the sweat drying on his neck, his fingers fanned out over the back of his head.

And when he gets home, he’s going to burn his fucking diary.