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Three months into his second year Lev comes to a realization. “I have a crush on Yaku.”
“No shit,” Taketora says, then “move Lev, move!” since he's in the line of fire of one of Inuoka’s brutal spikes.
Maybe a round of 2-on-2 isn’t the best time for a revelation. Lev rubs his head once they preserve the point. It rebounded right back across the net, like a cursed game of ping-pong, and in the shock Shibayama didn’t even consider saving it.
“Are you alright?” Kenma asks, while Lev waves off the ice pack their manager offers. He can handle a little bit of pain! It doesn’t hurt at all, really!
Inuoka scoffs. “Did you hear what he said? Of course he’s not alright; he’s got a crush on Yaku!”
Right. Yaku, who graduated in March and wants to play in Russia. Yaku, with his soft hair and big eyes and voice that went soft when Lev complimented him.
Yaku, who’s been ignoring him for months.
There’s no bones about it. Lev’s fucked. “I think I might need that, actually,” he says, reaching for the ice pack.
“Does this mean practice is canceled? So we can counsel Lev through his realization?”
For a minute, Kenma looks like he’s actually considering it. But then Nekomata appears, looming despite his small statue, and they all scatter back to their courts.
Except for Lev, who holds the ice-pack over his head, mourning what’s to become of him.
They help him out after practice.
They being Inuoka and Shibayama. Kenma needed to stream, and Taketora had to accompany Akane to an interview. Fukunaga took one look at Lev, shook his head, and called him freezer-pop before heading off into parts unknown.
(Lev doesn't really get his sense of humor, anymore.)
“So,” Inuoka says, when they’re sitting near the canal, sticky with the popsicles they bought to stave off the summer heat, and not because Fukunaga planted the seed in their heads. “When did you realize you had a crush on Yaku, Lev?”
Lev has to count on his fingers. “About two hours ago.” He’s matter-of-fact about it.
“But we were in practice!”
“Yeah, and that’s when I figured it out!” Both Shibayama and Inuoka stare at him, absolutely incredulous.
“Kenma always says he’s honest, so I guess we should trust him on this.” Shibayama looks pained as he admits it. “But what made you connect the dots?”
"Oh," Lev says, "just, you know."
Inuoka and Shibayama share a look. "No," Shibayama says, "we don't."
Lev squirms where he sits, squatting on the concrete sidewalk just beyond the grass. The sound of the water flowing through the canal and the distant hum of cars fills their ears as they wait for Lev to answer them. They know he will, eventually. They can wait.
It's just confirmation bias, after all; everyone on Nekoma has known that Lev has had a crush on Yaku ever since he stumbled, limb over long, gangly limb, into that first practice and latched onto Yaku like a koala. It was obvious to them all in the way Lev shined brightest when Yaku complimented him, and melted in the heat of his criticism. But steel is forged in flame, and Yaku may as well have been a dragon for all the stronger he made Lev.
Also, Lev couldn’t keep his eyes off of Yaku at graduation. It was embarrassing for everyone involved. Luckily—
“I was just missing him!” Lev says abruptly, wrapping his long arms around his knees and looking pathetic. “I whiffed the last dive and after Tora got it over the net, I thought there was something missing.”
Inuoka snorted. “Yeah, your bo- hey!” Shibayama elbows him harshly in his ribs, shooting him a quick glare.
Lev looks every bit a kitten instead of the lion he claims to be. “I realized that last year, if I messed up that bad, Yaku would’ve said something. And even though I knew exactly what he’d say, could hear it in my head like there was a tiny little Yaku—only, he really wouldn’t have to be that much tinier, right?—inside telling me exactly what I did wrong, and exactly how I could fix it.”
“And then you realized you missed him?” Shibayama asks.
Lev shakes his head. “No, and then I looked around because I thought I’d see him watching us, like he was actually there. And that’s when I realized I missed him.”
Huh. Inuoka had noticed that Lev was looking everywhere except at the ball, just before the spike that took him out of practice for twenty minutes, but he didn’t realize he was looking for Yaku.
There’s just one thing that’s a little strange. Shibayama looks at Inuoka, and they both shake their heads like they’re thinking the exact same thing. Lev’s talking like Yaku’s dead, or far away. He said ‘I missed him’ with such bone-deep longing; not the way Inuoka sometimes misses Kuroo and his advice, or the way Shibayama misses Kai’s stabilizing presence in their old trio of third years. It’s like how Kenma lets out a shaky sigh and collapses to the floor sometimes after practice and no one’s there to drag him back up, or how sad Taketora was when Akane went on a field trip with her class for a week.
It’s the way you miss someone you care about, no matter how far they’ve gone or whether or not they’ll come back.
But the thing is… “Lev,” Shibayama says carefully, like he’s trying not to scare an animal. “Yaku’s still around though. Doesn’t he visit your apartment like three times a week?”
Inuoka doesn’t know how he expected Lev to react, but he definitely didn’t expect Lev to sigh and flop back onto the grass, starfishing out.
“Yeah he does,” Lev admits.
Inuoka cuts in. “And doesn’t he still use the track at Nekoma?”
Lev nods.
Yaku may have graduated, but unlike Kuroo who took off for college and has an apartment on the other side of Tokyo, plus a busy schedule crammed full of classes and his business club and pick-up volleyball on the weekends, or Kai, who posts selfies of himself with the trees he’s studying in his apprenticeship, Yaku is still in their quiet little ward.
He wants to play overseas so he’s been diligently working on English and Russian with tutors, practicing with Alisa at the Haiba apartment over tea three times a week, and working with coaches to refine his razor-sharp technique even more.
He’s going to be lethal on the international stage one day; they all know it, deep in their hearts, that Nekoma’s blood will set the world on fire one day.
Inuoka and Shibayama share another look, but this time it’s one of disbelief. “Then why do you still miss him?”
“You guys don’t get it!” Lev cries, rolling over to puddle his head in his hands. There are grass stains on the stark white of his uniform shirt. “He doesn’t talk to me.”
Both of them want to interject, because they’ve chatted with Yaku in the last few months—Shibayama texts him regularly for advice, and Yaku even watched a practice match of theirs against Shinzen last month, and joined them for dinner afterwards
But at that dinner, Yaku sat as far away from Lev as possible, and didn’t even look his way, not even once. And in the crowd, though Yaku had cheered for all of them, he only yelled advice at a few of them—not Lev, who misdirected a dig so it flew right at a ref. And—
“He comes to my house, right? To talk to Alisa? But he leaves when I’m coming back home. Sometimes he’s halfway down the street and I call out to him and he just waves. And other times I’ll open the door and he’s pulling his shoes back on, and he’ll just bolt? Like with his shoes half off? Who does that?” Inuoka laughs against his will at the idea of Yaku running down the street, sock on one foot and shoe on the other. Lev looks so uncharacteristically sad, though, that they echo out into silence.
Alisa always has a little half-smile on her face when Yaku leaves. It’s the same one she wears at Christmas, when there are elegantly wrapped gifts under their tiny tree, or at volleyball games when Lev is starting. He hates that he doesn’t know what they mean.
Here’s the thing. Lev owes so much to everyone around him for making him the volleyball player he is today. Someone worthy of being Nekoma’s ace— ”Next year, Lev,” the tiny Taketora in his head says. There’s a mountain of people—from his sister, to his teammates, and the guys from Fukurodani, and even their friends from Karasuno—who’ve helped lift Lev up.
But Lev responded to Yaku best; his demands made him want to become the player Yaku really believed he could be. Somehow, Yaku reached into him and pulled out an athlete.
And back when he started talking about his plans to play abroad, skipping the V-League entirely, Lev thought he’d have a chance to repay him; help him with Russian, or run drills and keep in shape. Anything to return payment in kind. He’d move mountains for Yaku, fight one even, if only Yaku asked for it.
But Yaku…didn’t ask for it. He doesn’t ask for anything at all, really, and it’s making him lose his mind.
Later, once they wave Lev off down the street towards home—and they’ve bought him a sympathy ice cream, because really, a giant like him shouldn’t look that sad—Inuoka and Shibayama stop to compare notes.
“That didn’t—” Inuoka says, at the same time Shibayama says “There’s no way.”
Because if Nekoma’s worst kept secret—from everyone except the man himself—was Lev’s crush on Yaku, then Nekoma’s second worst kept secret was Yaku’s crush on Lev.
“Something’s wrong,” Shibayama says. But before Inuoka can step in and say he’ll fix it, Shibayama stops him with a look. Frosty, like he stole it from Yaku himself. “It’s on them, now.”
Lev doesn’t get what Yaku’s deal is, but now that he’s in love with Yaku—or, knows that he’s in love with Yaku—it’s even more excruciating. Before, he thought he was just upset with Yaku ignoring him because, well, it was Yaku! Of course he wanted Yaku’s attention, both the good and the ugly. He’d take anything Yaku gave him.
Unfortunately Yaku hasn’t been giving him anything at all. It started after graduation; Lev had bounded right up to him when all of the third years emerged from school and hugged him tightly, taking advantage of his surprise to lift him off the ground and spin him around. The most miraculous thing of all was that Yaku hadn’t yelled at him after, or kicked him or anything; he just laughed while they spun, and the sound made Lev feel lighter than air.
When Lev finally put him down, his cheeks had just the faintest blush on him and he muttered a soft “Thanks,” before the fray (Yaku’s extended family) pulled him away.
In hindsight, being in love with him probably had a lot to do with the way Lev watched him disappear into the crowd for a long few minutes, a hand clasped over his mouth and his heart beating fast. He felt warm and light, and wondered if his face was as red as Yaku’s. He kept trying to find Yaku afterwards, but they kept just narrowly missing each other; Yaku meeting Kuroo’s grandparents while Lev got tangled up in Kai’s battalion of young cousins, accidentally getting dragged to opposite sides of the team photo, and then the third years going to the gym for one last rally. When they left, shoulder over shoulder, Yaku turned toward Lev for a second, with his mouth open, like he wanted to say something. But then Kuroo laughed with his rooster’s cackle and Yaku turned away.
But also in hindsight, it was the beginning of the end: a week later, Yaku started practicing his Russian with Alisa and ignoring Lev.
A really nasty thought was beginning to take root in Lev’s mind. No one had been surprised to hear that Lev was in love with Yaku—
“Well,” Shibayama says, soft, “love is maybe a little bit stronger than I was thinking.”
“But it was pretty obvious, Lev! The way you always followed him around like a lost little kitten!” Inuoka’s broad smile gentling the hidden insult.
—and if Lev was that obvious to everyone, especially Inuoka, he wondered how much Yaku knew…
But his fears only catalyzed at training camp, a week plus a few days after his own revelation.
It’s an overnight hosted by Nekoma, with a couple of the schools around them. Karasuno and Ubugawa couldn’t make it, but Fukurodani with their weirdly intense setter and Shinzen were. Kenma accidentally-on-purpose leaked the fact that Kuroo had cleared some time in his busy schedule to come down and help them all, and—”Does that mean Yaku’s coming too?” Lev asked while they all circled around Kenma, who looked both bored and frightened. Kenma just let out a sigh and nodded, and told Lev not to look so eager, it was off-putting—and so was Yaku!
Although Yaku’s still around, he hasn’t really visited practice at all; just matches when he finds the time between studying and working and training. It’ll be nice to have his evenhanded expertise and his heavy handed correction and his cute little face and would he blush again if Lev picked him up and—
No! Lev shakes his head. He's gotta get it together. It'll be enough to have Yaku interact with him again. There's no way for him to ignore Lev when he's helping out at a training camp, after all?
"Hey, Yaku, can you-"
Bang! the door slams to gym three.
"Yaku, I've gotten better at dives, but do you have any notes-"
Skrrr! Yaku's sneakers turning on the linoleum.
"Let's eat together-?"
Clang! Cafeteria trays clattering to the table.
Okay, so maybe Lev was wrong.
Dead wrong.
Yaku somehow avoided him the entire training camp. Didn't say a word to him, kept his lips shut tight and turned away whenever Lev so much as breathed in his direction.
Even when Lev collided with a first year middle blocker from Fukorodani and sent them both flying across the court, Yaku was quiet. And he was sure that would draw Yaku's ire: an insult, a punch to the stomach or a reprimand.
But no. Absolutely nothing, from Saturday morning till noon on Sunday.
There was one thing he found weird, though. Sometimes he felt a weight on the back of his head. Cold, like Yekaterinburg winters. Almost like he was being watched.
Only every time he turned around, the only thing he saw was Yaku, looking away from him.
Like always.
This is fine.
It's fine. Lev isn't mad. He's not upset.
"I'm not mad!" he says, slamming a spike down in front of a terrified Taketora.
( "Dude…")
"I'm not upset!" With a too-wide grin on his face, digging into the lunch he packed that morning and eating it ferociously, while Inuoka looks on in horror.
( "No one said you were, Lev.")
"I'm not devastated and heartbroken, like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me, and I don't know how I'll move on," Lev claims, flopping down on Kenma's bed. He pulls Kenma's second favorite blanket over him, curling up into a burrito like it could hide him from the world.
Kenma glances up at him from his POP. "How did you get in my house?" he asks, no alarm in his voice. And then, a little stilted, like comforting someone was a foreign feeling: "You don’t have to lie to me about it. It’s weird.”
"I'm not lying to you!"
"Um…"
"You don't have to lie to yourself, either," Kuroo says.
"A ghost!" Lev cries, falling onto the floor.
"Just Skype.” Kenma’s attention is already back to his game. He and Kuroo video chat on the weekends. When their schedules align, they turn on Skype and go about their lives. Kuroo works through his never-ending pile of homework while Kenma plays games or looks through his stock portfolio.
Kenma also may have neglected to let Lev (or anyone else, really) know about this.
"I'm totally fine!" Lev is in a tangle of blankets on Kenma's floor, like a fish caught in a net. He's not doing fine. His voice comes out muffled because his head is stuffed in one of Kenma's pillow cases. The more he struggles, the worse it gets. "It's not a problem that Yaku's ignoring me and doesn't want to be my friend anymore because he figured out I like him!"
Kenma looks torn between rescuing his blanket and delighting in watching him struggle. "Love him, you mean."
“Why does everyone keep saying that!”
Snap. Both Yaku and Kenma turn toward his computer. The pencil Kuroo holds has broken clean in half, and shock is written across his face. "What do you mean Yaku's ignoring you?"
"You were at the training camp, Kuroo. You saw." Lev sounds weak and crackly, like he's close to tears. Nekoma's lion wears his heart on his sleeve. "He didn't want anything to do with me!" There's a sniffle. Lev sniffles .
"But wasn't he….Kenma! Come on, you were there too! Back me up on this!"
Kenma will be honest. He wasn’t really paying attention to the habits of his former seniors at the training camp; between the pressure of keeping a handle on his own yearmates—Tora kept sneaking away to text Tanaka sad kaomoji that he stole from Akane, and Fukunaga practiced his stand-up routine on a captive audience of Shinzen first years who found him hilarious—and actually captaining his team, he barely had enough time in the day to think.
But he did notice, occasionally, that Yaku kept staring at Lev. And he remembers thinking that it was weird, because he only did it when Lev wasn’t looking back at him.
“I don’t think Lev knows, Kuroo.”
“Are you serious? Is Yaku that much of an idiot? Do you- hey, is he alright?”
But Kenma's can’t respond, because he’s staring in horror at Lev, who’s just burst into tears on the floor of his bedroom, like he's finally letting it out
"Kenma," Lev rasps out between gasping, overdramatic sobs, "I think my leg is broken!"
"I'll call you back." Kenma ignores Kuroo's protests to turn the laptop off, before turning to the tear soaked burrito on his floor and sighing. How's he supposed to get a whiny giant to the hospital?
"Am I dying, Kenma?" Lev croaks.
"I wish I were," Kenma says.
Lev twisted his ankle when he fell off Kenma's bed.
"Two weeks rest," he says, thumping his chest from his seat along the sidelines, his new crutches propped up against the wall. "And then I'll be back at full capacity! I didn't even cry once."
Kenma rolls his eyes. Tora nudges him. "What was Lev doing at your house?"
"Your guess is as good as mine."
Being injured is sometimes annoying, mostly boring, and occasionally really nice. One of his classmates took pity on him and bought him lunch that day, because he was already running too late in the morning to pack food on his own.
But making his way home is more exhausting than a long rally against Karasuno, and he's grateful there's a dry summer ahead so he doesn't have to learn how to use crutches on ice or rainy cement. He's huffing and puffing by the time he makes it to the door of his apartment, up one (very annoying) flight of stairs and down a long hall.
The night before, when a very tired Kenma (and “Mama Kenma!” “Please don’t call her that, Lev.”) accompanied him back from the hospital with his ankle wrapped up and a new set of crutches to his name, Alisa took one look at him and knew he needed coddling. She made him lie down in his bed and gave him a stack of pillows to keep his leg propped up, and then they spent the rest of the night eating from her secret stash of Russian snacks and watching old Cheburashka movies, until Lev fell asleep.
He woke up that morning already running late but with his blanket pulled over him and a package of milk bread and a can of coffee on his nightstand. Alisa works early in the morning, so she must have gotten them way earlier than Lev can even fathom being awake. And it made him feel warm inside, to be cared for.
“Alisa!” He calls, pushing the door open not with the energetic swing he’d hoped for, but the lethargic and soft jostle of someone still learning how to navigate.
There’s no answering yell from his sister, no sound of K-dramas from the television or strong tea brewing, or any of the telltale signs of life that Alisa fills the Haiba home with.
There is a letter on the coffee table, though.
Lev,
Something came up at work and unfortunately I will not be home till late.
There’s food in the fridge for you, and I set up some snacks and drinks in bed.
Stay safe, and there might be a surprise for you!
Much love,
Alisa <3
“Aww,” Lev says.
The thing about disappointment is that it’s easy to shake off when you’re happy all the time. When it’s just a stone in your shoe or a drop of rain on a warm summer day, it doesn’t really ruin anything. There’s nothing to ruin. The rest of you is so flooded with happiness or joy or contentment, or a hundred other positive feelings, that disappointment is drowned out. A small fish in the biggest possible pond.
But when you’re Lev—when the last three months have been the slow realization that the mentor you lo- like probably hates you, and your ankle is swollen and sore, and you’ve had a hundred little tragedies all piled up inside of you—it’s hard to ignore the ache in your chest.
Even as Lev stumbles through the motions of grabbing and eating the dinner Alisa left for him, pulling a chair up to the sink to lean against while he washed the dishes he used, and then drags his backpack and crutches to his room to do homework while resting on his bed, the only place long enough for someone as tall as him to rest comfortably, he feels it. That hollow pain inside of him, so unlike the dull ache in his ankle or the sharpness he felt in it yesterday when he first twisted it.
It’s like something burned a hole inside of him. Like when you raise a magnifying glass to the sun on a bright summer day, and use the beams to set an ant aflame. A slow burn, with one clear, definitive cause.
When Lev opens his workbooks to do math or English or focus on anything but his injury, he realizes why he feels so empty, too; someone took his heart out of the hole and is carrying it with them, far away.
Someone’s knocking at his door.
Lev looks between his ankle—elevated—and his crutches—just a little bit out of reach. "Just a minute!" he says, trying to figure out a way to get down that would end up with him in the least amount of pain.
"Oh shit," the person on the other side of the door says. It's not Alisa, who would have just used her key to get in, and it's not any of his teammates. "I forgot! Hang on, one second." It's half-familiar, and hearing it sends a wave of warmth through Lev's body, almost like—
The lock clicks open, and there's the sound of shuffling and then a few quiet footsteps, before Yaku's suddenly at his bedroom door, looking awkward and shifty in a dull orange t-shirt that clashes with his sandy blond hair.
—Like it's his erstwhile crush, who he hadn't heard from in a while.
But it doesn’t make sense. Yaku only comes to his apartment if he’s trying to practice Russian with his sister. “If you’re looking for Alisa, she’s not here.” Lev tries not to sound huffy, but he’s never been good at holding back his feelings. He’s banned from even thinking about talking to the refs, according to Kenma.
Yaku rolls his eyes. He’s got something in his hand, but he hides it behind his back when he notices Lev squinting at it. “I know she’s not here, dumbass. She told me where to find the spare key.” Their spare key is hidden at the top of the doorframe; the Haiba’s can reach it easily, but how could Yaku— “Don’t ask,” he grits out.
Lev can’t understand why Yaku is here. He hasn’t spoken to him in months, beyond a greeting or an apology when they had to edge past each other in the narrow entryway. The pain in his chest grows. “Then why are you here?” Why is Yaku in his room? Why is Yaku staring at him like he’s the idiot, when Yaku’s the mean one who doesn’t like him anymore, and gave up on him for some reason even though he spent a whole school year believing in Lev like no one but his sister had ever done before.
"I got this for you," Yaku mutters, padding over to Lev's bedside. He's wearing orange socks. There’s a face on the toes, too, with ears and stripes. It’s a tiger, Lev realizes. Yaku’s here, and he’s wearing the cutest little socks, and it’s all too much. “Are you crying?” Yaku stops just by his bed, looking terrified.
“No,” Lev sniffs, wiping away tears. “Why would I be crying?” Yaku’s expression melts, and for just a brief second—so fast Lev wouldn’t have caught it if he weren’t staring directly at him—it looks fond, with a gooey smile and the softest eyes Lev’s ever seen him have, before he schools his face and looks blank again.
Actually, scratch that. This is the second time Lev’s seen him that soft, because the first time was at Yaku’s graduation, after he’d spun him in circles. He wonders what Yaku sees, because clearly he hates him now.
“Here,” Yaku says, turning away. He shoves something into Lev’s lap, and it’s the closest they’ve been in months so Lev loses his mind entirely and grabs Yaku’s hand.
Yaku’s wrist is small but strong; Lev’s fingers can wrap around it with room to spare, coiling like a snake to keep him close. For a moment Yaku looks like he’s going to flee, skittish eyes and the flighty disposition of a colt, but then he sighs and relaxes into the grip, still with that careful expression.
His ears are bright pink, though.
With his free hand, Lev examines his gift. It’s a small stuffed lion, with a soft mane and a long tail, and a cute smile on its face.
“A little bird—” Kenma, probably ”—told me you got hurt, so I thought I should bring you something,” Yaku says. Lev’s still staring down at the toy, with its soft fur and delicate, embroidered eyes. He starts babbling to fill the silence. “I know it’s stupid, but I thought you might like it, because it’s cu-” Yaku bites his tongue, cutting off whatever he was going to say, “kinda dumb looking, just like you.” He’s still not looking at Lev, who’s also not looking at Yaku.
“It’s not stupid,” Lev says. The lion is kinda dumb looking, and if Lev were a little less fragile he’d take offense to that. As it stands, he’s just grateful that Yaku’s talking to him again, and the toy does a lot to fill in the gap where his heart should be, even though this whole situation is confusing him. “It’s perfect.” He lets go of Yaku, and tucks the lion in under the bedsheets next to him. “He’s strong, just like me!”
But instead of looking at the lion, or at Lev, Yaku is looking down at the hand he just let go of, flexing his fingers and turning his wrist like he can scarcely believe he’s free again. Or, when his face tilts up just enough for Lev to read his expression, like he can’t believe Lev would let him go.
He must notice Lev staring, because when he catches his gaze he pulls himself back up to his full height and clears his throat. The tips of his ears are still bright pink, even though it’s the middle of summer, not cold at all.
It’s the first time they’ve looked at each other like this since graduation, Lev realizes. The first time he’s seen the whites of his eyes up close, and the first time he's able to make out the soft little freckles that line his cheeks. They've only grown stronger over the summer.
Lev gulps, and Yaku shivers. He opens his mouth to say something, but Lev beats him to it. "Why do you practice Russian with Alisa and not me?"
"What?" Yaku looks confused, and Lev absently thinks it's cute. "What are you talking about?"
"And why do you ignore me all the time? Why don't you cheer for me at matches? Why don't you hang out with me anymore? Am I not good enough?" Did you give up on me?
Yaku looks even more confused, but he also looks furious. "Who told you that? Who said you're not good enough."
Now it's Lev's turn to be confused. "No one said that!"
"Then why would you think that?" Yaku goes to punch him in the meat of his ribs, but he pulls back at the last second so he just barely grazes him.
There's a storm inside of Lev waiting to come out. "Because you keep ignoring me!" Because Yaku has spent the last few months steadfastly pretending they have never even been friends, like Yaku was never the catalyst that turned Lev from an athletic guy to an athlete, like Lev never hugged him close on a clear spring day. "And there's no other reason," there's one other reason, but he'll never tell Yaku, "I can think of that would make you do that!"
Lev can't tell if he's yelling or not, but he does dig his fingers into the bedspread, wrinkling it deeper. Yaku's gaze drifts down to his hands, clenched in the fabric, and slowly—like tending to a skittish animal—he reaches out to Lev's closest hand and gently unwinds it, pulling it close to him so he can massage the fingers and wrists. It leaves Lev breathless, Yaku's warm but steady grip on.
"You're tense," he says, instead of answering Lev's question. Of course Lev is tense. Yaku’s holding his hand. "You still need to do your stretches when you're on crutches, you know."
"I know." Nekomata kept reminding him during practice, swatting his knee so he could do the exercises to increase flexibility and get rid of tension.
"I learned this from my new trainer," Yaku says, tugging gently at his joints and relieving him of stress he didn't even know he carried.
A pebble rolls away from the mountain inside of him. Maybe two.
Incredulous and confused, Lev lets Yaku work on his other hand, too. He does it carefully, tugging at each long finger and pressing his thumb into the ball of his hand. They're so small compared to Lev's, but they're so much more talented. They've carried teams further. They'll carry far away teams, too. "Why do you want to go abroad so bad?"
"Because I know I'm good," Yaku says, not looking up from his work. His hands are warm, too, and they make Lev relax. "But I want everyone to know I'm great." There's an edge to his voice; it's the one that's always willing to take on a challenge, always willing to dive deeper, further, faster. It's the steel inside of Yaku that makes him see Nishinoya as someone to learn from instead of just a challenger, and for him to trust Nekoma and Shibayama especially to win for them.
Lev knows this because it's the same steel Yaku forged inside of him.
"You've got so much stress," Yaku says, and he sounds worried. He looks up at Lev, and he must see something in his eyes, or written across his face, because he frowns. "And it sounds like I caused it."
That's perhaps an understatement. Lev nods anyway.
Yaku's grip on his hand tightens, but it's not unpleasant. Somehow, it's grounding. His toes curl nervously into the carpet, the tiger's face getting scrunched up. "I haven't been ignoring you. I know what it looks like," Yaku notices the way Lev was preparing to interject, "but I had my eyes on you the entire time. It just wasn't while you were looking." The warmth on the back of his neck at training camp.
Everytime Lev saw Yaku turn away from him, he had just been looking directly at him.
Yaku continues, like Lev hasn't had an earth-shattering realization. "It was bad of me to avoid you though. I was figuring some stuff out."
"What kind of stuff?"
"... isn't it obvious?" Yaku sighs, looking pointedly at their joined hands.
"Oh…" Lev gently extricates his hand while Yaku looks on, confused. "I'm so sorry." The hole in his chest widens. The pebbles pile up.
Lev isn't necessarily dramatic. He's just bummed.
"Why are you apologizing?"
Turning to him, Lev parrots his words back at him. "Isn't it obvious? You figured out I had a crush on you, and you wanted to pull away from me to make it go away. And I guess I was too obvious about it, because apparently everyone knew except for me! And I understand that you'd want to avoid me, because it would be too awkward, but I just wish you'd told me or something because it's been really annoying not having you around! If you had just said something, I'm sure I would've gotten over it!" Even as he says it he knows it's a lie. It would have absolutely crushed him, destroyed him, ruined him. He's being realistic about it.
He doesn't think he could've gotten over Yaku if they pretended his feelings didn't exist. He hasn't even gotten over him when he hasn't been around!
"Me too," Yaku says. "You said everyone on the team knew you were in love with me except for you. But you're wrong, Lev. I didn't know either." He says the word love with reverence, like he can't believe it. He reaches out to grab Lev's hand, and Lev lets him.
Lev can't imagine a world where Tora knows something Yaku didn't, but he sure is living it.
"But-"
"And I wish I would have said something earlier. Not so I could stop your feelings, but so that I could do this." And, faster than Lev could run for lunch, Yaku climbs onto the bed, careful to avoid his injured leg, and kisses him.
It's soft. That's Lev's first thought. Meticulous and careful. Yaku must use chapstick.
And then his mind catches up with reality.
Yaku's kissing him.
Yaku's kissing him!
He presses into him, wrapping his arms around Yaku's shoulders and holding him close, just like he did at graduation. Slides his hands up into Yaku’s hair so he can finally know how soft it is, instead of imagining it. Touches the sides of his face to feel his burning cheeks and caress the delicate skin around his eyes. He never imagined he’d get this close to Yaku.
And he feels warm again, and light, even as Yaku pulls away and sighs against his lips, pressing their foreheads together. "I'm in love with you, too, dummy. Can't believe we're both so stupid. Kuroo told me I was too obvious, but I guess I wasn't obvious enough."
"If it's any consolation, I found out a couple weeks ago!"
"I almost confessed to you at graduation!" Maybe Lev should have connected the dots back then, because he could defy gravity with Yaku in his arms like this. "And then I thought that since I'm going away, it didn't make sense to confess. But then it hurt to see you, and that's why I avoided you." Lev lets out a wounded noise, and Yaku pats his cheek.
"That's really stupid of you, Yaku!"
"I know," Yaku says, and he looks contrite. "I spent too much time thinking about the future, when I really should've been taking each day as it comes. There's no telling what's to come, whether I'll make it to Russia or not—"
"You will," Lev says emphatically, because he knows Yaku is more than good enough to make it. Yaku blushes, and it's so cute Lev can hardly stand it. "We can figure out what the future means as it comes, you know? I didn't think that yesterday I'd sprain my ankle, and I didn't know I loved you till a few weeks ago! Who could've predicted that?"
Yaku laughs as the color clears from his cheeks. "Only all of Nekoma, apparently. But I guess there's no time like the present." Then he leans back in, and Lev doesn’t have to think of almosts anymore.
With each kiss, each touch, each thump of Yaku's heartbeat that pounds in time with his own, the same fire that burned a hole in his chest builds him back better than before.
Roughly three and a half months into his second year, Lev comes to another realization. Looking down at Yaku, tucked snuggly against his side and reading through flashcards on his phone, with the little lion doll sleeping beneath him, he can't help but feel it. "Yaku! I'm in love with you! And you love me back!"
Yaku snorts, even as he conjugates verbs in his head. "Of course I am," he says. "Never doubt it for a second."