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When they began to officially date, Yamaguchi knew that Tsukishima woud never be very good at expressing how he felt about her. He typically had three modes of speech: cutting sarcasm, awkward stilted speech, and bluntness so direct and unabashed that even after all these years it shocked her. She had known him long enough to know that pet names and PDA and casual declarations of love were not his style, and she didn't expect that of him.
While that might have been a downside for many people, it wasn't for Yamaguchi. She knew him, better than anyone on the planet, and she knew that his way of saying "I love you" was rarely verbal.
i.
There was never enough fries, she thought morosely as her salt-covered fingers scrounged for any remnants of the once-full fry box.
"If I met a genie," she said, pulling the last fry chip out of the box, "I would wish for neverending fries."
Tsukishima looked up at her from over his chicken burger. "Regular or curly?"
Yamaguchi gave him a highly affronted look, as if offended by the question. "Curly."
He nodded, a shadow of a grin on his face, chewing on the last bite of his burger. He let out a sigh, crumpling the yellow paper wrapper in his hands, and then, after a moment's pause, pushed his full box of fries over to Yamaguchi. "Here," he said, picking up a napkin to wipe his fingers clean. "I'm not hungry."
She gaped at him. "But you're the one who wanted to come here in the first place, Tsukki! You were so hungry. You can't be full after just a burger."
Tsukishima frowned at her. "Yeah, well, I am. Do you want more fries or not?"
It wasn't the first time Tsukishima had "accidentally" ordered more than he could eat and had given his leftover fries to Yamaguchi... nor, she suspected, would it be the last.
Trying to hold back a grin, Yamaguchi nodded and took more fries. Stupid question, really. She could always eat more fries. "Who needs a genie when I have you?" she teased.
The lines of his scowl deepened, but a pleasant pink colour had risen on his cheeks. "Shut up, Yamaguchi."
ii.
Some days Yamaguchi woke up feeling like the world was in balance, like things were going to go well that day, like nothing could go wrong.
Today was not one of those days.
Her hair was ridiculous. Even moreso than usual. Her hair, more made up of cowlicks than not, was especially wild today. She must have slept on it funny or something, because not a single hair on her head would lay flat. Absently, she thought of the Nekoma captain, and how he claimed his wild hairstyle was merely bedhead. She had been skeptical at the time, laughed with Tsukishima about how he could possibly get hair like that simply from sleeping funny, but... Well, she was more convinced now.
She texted Tsukishima that -- he might find it funny. She provided a picture for reference of just how Kuroo-like her hair had become.
On bad hair days like these (which sadly happened more often than she would like to admit), she would simply pin down the few offending flippy chunks of hair with cute hairpins.Yachi had given her a set for her birthday, but those had disappeared into the black hole of Yamaguchi's room. She had no definitive proof that there was an interdimensional portal somewhere in her room, but she certainly had her suspicions.
She tried wetting down the roots of her hair with water, like her mother always advised her, but that seemed to only anger the cowlicks. Unfortunately, she didn't have much more time to play around with in in an attempt to make it decent. She would just have to accept her terrible hair fate and go to school.
Tsukishima was waiting for her at the corner where he always did, the halfway point between her house and his. His headphones were around his neck instead of over his ears today, which signaled he was in a good mood.
"I hate my hair," she grumbled by way of greeting as they began to walk together, still trying to flatten down the errant curls.
He glanced at her. "It looks fine to me."
"No, it's awful."
"If you say so," he said with a shrug.
They had only walked a few blocks before, with an awkward cough, Tsukishima reached into his schoolbag and pulled out something wrapped in a small plastic bag. "Um, here," he said, thrusting it towards Yamaguchi.
Blinking with confusion, she accepted it and pulled off the bag. Inside was a set of midnight blue hairclips, half a dozen, with cute little pale yellow stars and moons on the ends.
"I saw them a few days ago and thought of you," he said, staring determinedly ahead, not meeting her gaze. "And you said that you were having a bad hair day, so... I was planning to give it to you anyways, it's no big deal..."
Yamaguchi grinned widely up at him, bumping into him with her shoulder affectionately as they walked. "Thank you, Tsukki!" she chirped, clutching the package in her hands tightly.
It wasn't until much later in the day, when she was hunting for her history notebook, that she noticed that a receipt with that day's date on it, bought from the corner store down the block from Tsukishima's house, was also inside of that small plastic bag.
iii.
Her fingers shook as she tapped out the text message. "Can you come shopping with me tomorrow, Tsukki? I want to wear what I bought last time, but..."
Yamaguchi stared at her phone, sitting crosslegged on her bed, waiting for the response. The white background of the text message conversation burned into her retinas. She knew Tsukishima was at home right now, or else she wouldn't have bothered waiting.
Sure enough, a minute or two after she hit send, her phone buzzed wih a reply. "Sure. What time?"
She swallowed, the knot of tension in her throat loosening a bit. "My mom is going out at 2... so maybe 2:30?" she tapped back.
Half a minute of silence, and then a reply. "Sounds good. See you then."
She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Good. She was safe.
The only person who knew that Yamaguchi wasn't the gender she was assigned at birth was Tsukishima. She wasn't ready to deal with... all of that. The judgement, the rejection, the questions... She had just carved out a relatively safe social space with the volleyball team, and for once in her life she had actual friends other than Tsukishima. She wasn't ready to gamble that just yet.
And her mom... well. She knew that Tsukishima would understand, being transgender himself, but her mom... She was the only family Yamaguchi had. She didn't even know that Tsukishima wasn't cisgender, so she couldn't even gauge how her mother would react to finding out that she wasn't. That, again, was too big of a gamble. Not today. Not now, when she was so vulnerable.
But being closeted didn't mean that she wasn't a girl. She liked to wear cute clothes, she liked to look pretty, but going out by herself in those clothes... Too big of a gamble. She couldn't do it. She read the newspaper, and knew what could happen to girls like her.
Tsukishima knew all that. He knew her fears, knew her refusal to risk it all on a shopping trip, and that's why he would drop everything, even a precious weekend day, just to protect her.
(He insisted, gently, when they were alone and she wasn't in danger, that she could kick anyone's ass and that he was simply tall with a mean face, but they both knew that it was as much for moral support as it was for physical defense. "Besides," she had said, snuggling into his side, "Your scary face is what saved me when we first met; I've come to respect its power a lot.")
The next day, at 2:30 just as planned, they met up on the corner. Yamaguchi wasn't dressed extremely femininely -- a cardigan and a skirt, nothing too flashy -- but the walk by herself from her house to the corner still scared her. Every fiber of her being was on edge until her tall blonde knight in shining armour came into sight.
Once they were together, she relaxed. It was her and Tsukki. It was familiar, it was safe. She could be herself, and he would love her for it.
And besides, she thought, as they boarded the train to go downtown, who could even notice the people around you when you were with someone like him?
After she returned home hours later (after borrowing a pair of track pants from Tsukki when she realized that she would have to walk past her mother when she got home), she sat down at her desk, dropping her shopping bags on the messy floor of her bedroom wth a contented sigh. It had been a good day. They had gone shopping, got some cheap fast food... She had even managed to convince Tsukishima into buying a stuffed parasaurolophus toy that he denied wanting even though he kept staring at it with that familiar look in his eyes.
She glanced up at her calendar to see what homework she had to do for the next day. Math, English, Modern Literature... wait. What was that written today?
Yamaguchi's blood ran cold. There, written on the calendar in cheerful green Sharpie, was the title of a new documentary she and Tsukishima were planning to watch that day at 3 o' clock.
It was one that Tsukishima had been looking forward to for months. It was about the link between aquatic dinosaurs and modern day aquatic life, something that fascinated him endlessly. And she had completely forgotten about it to go shopping for clothes.
She grabbed her phone and flipped it open, her thumbs flying over the keyboard as she typed out, "Why didn't you remind me about the documentary?? I totally forgot!!"
Her phone buzzed a minute later, quick as always to reply. "I recorded it, we can watch it tomorrow after school together."
Yamaguchi let out an impatient sigh. "But you were really looking forward to it!" she tapped out. "We can go shopping any time. You should've said no."
This time, the reply took a bit longer to come. "You're more important than a documentary."
She stared at her phone, reading and rereading the text over and over. The words got harder and harder to read, and she realized with disconnected surprise that her eyes were becoming wet with tears.
To anyone else, that would have been common sense. But to Tsukishima, who literally planned his life around dinosaur documentaries... It might as well have been a proposal.
iv.
"Didn't you say that it was supposed to be sunny today?" Yamaguchi asked.
"Yup," Tsukishima sighed. The two of them stood at the exit to the school, guarded from the pouring rain by the building. The rest of the volleyball team had already left, either sprinting to get past the rain (although, as Tsukishima had sneered, that did nothing to help) or had huddled under Ennoshita, Asahi, and Suga's umbrellas, that the three upperclassmen wisely kept in their bags at all times.
"Well... We might as well just go," she said with a sigh. "It doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon."
Tsukishima was frowning down at his phone, looking at the weather app on it. "Nope. 100% chance of rain until 2am tonight." He put his phone away with another sigh. "Although, knowing this thing and its reliability, it could clear up in 10 minutes."
"Either way, I'm hungry, and I have a whole bag of chips at home," she said. "We can dry off when we get to my place.
"Alright. Let's go."
The two of them took off, walking quickly even though Tsukishima had said speed didn't help at all. The rain soaked through Yamaguchi's thin t-shirt almost immediately, the cotton sticking to her skin. She hadn't thought to bring her warmup jacket to school, expecting a mild sunny day.
"Fuck, it's raining hard," she muttered, drawing her arms in close to her body for warmth. She kept her eyes forward, focusing on getting home to where it was warm and dry, but saw movement out of the corner of her eye where Tsukishima was walking beside her.
"Here," he said, and before she knew it, the warm, heavy weight of his warmup jacket was over her shoulders.
"Tsukki, you'll get wet!" she cried. Now he was the one clad only in a t-shirt, which, of course, was almost immediately soaked.
"So I'll borrow some clothes when we get to your house!" he said, a slight snarl to his voice. He similarly was staring straight ahead, his bony arms tightly pressed to his torso. "You were shivering so much it was making me cold!" She didn't protest any further. She knew from previous experience that he wouldn't take the jacket back even if she threw it at him.
Later, after they had gotten inside and toweled off, they laid on Yamaguchi's bed together, pressed side-to-side for warmth, watching the Discovery Channel together.
"Next time, don't forget your jacket," Tsukishima said, reaching over Yamaguchi to tug a blanket over them.
"Next time, keep yours on," she challenged, nudging her hips against his teasingly.
"I will if you remember yours," he grumbled, resting his chin on his folded hands. "What kind of asshole would I be if I let my girlfriend freeze to death while I'm nice and dry?"
Yamaguchi rolled her eyes, but leaned over and pressed a cheek to his temple anyways, noting with satisfaction the blush that stained his ears a few moments later.
v.
"You don't have to prove anything to anyone," Yamaguchi said softly, as they walked towards Hinata's house. If she listened closely, she could already hear Tanaka yelling about something inside.
He frowned at her, annoyed. "I know I don't."
"And I mean, if you're not ready, that's okay. I still love you."
"Is it so wrong to want to show them that?" Tsukishima grumbled.
"No, I just..."
"Do you not want to hold my hand?"
"Yes, I do, but do you want to... you know. Are you okay with letting them know about... us?"
He stared directly at her, in that disarmingly blunt way she feared she would never get used to. "I want the world to know about us."
Despite herself, a smile broke over Yamaguchi's face. "Okay. Let's do it then."
With that, their hands slid together, their fingers interlocking easily and fluidly, with all the practiced ease of their time together.
0.
Yamaguchi always fell asleep first. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she was asleep -- a fact that Tsukishima, who sometimes took over an hour to fall asleep, sometimes resented her for.
Tonight, however, it took her a bit longer to fall asleep. Her veins were still thrumming with the alcohol coursing through them, and a happy fog filled her brain and prevented her from turning it off.
Ten minutes passed. Her eyes were shut, her breathing steady, her body still, but her mind still clutched onto consciousness.
And then, she heard it. The thing that Tsukishima whispered every night, after she had already fallen asleep, when she couldn't hear it, when she wasn't awake to react to the words.
"I love you, Tadashi."