Chapter Text
Being a professional athlete with a decent social media following came with a lot of things.
There was the recognition offline and online, the articles detailing his every appearance in public, the fans that screamed in capitalised letters when he replied to their tweets and the occasional proposal in his DMs.
But what interested Ushijima the most were the TikTok videos and Twitter threads analysing him and talking about his ‘personality’. They always discussed his love for milk because he had a milk box at every game, how he was a quiet and shy kid in school and how he had a sweet tooth because his teammates once shared in an interview that he gave them chocolates every month.
Those facts amused him because they couldn’t be more wrong.
It was true that he had a drink of milk before every game, but that was because everyone had them. Kageyama was the one to convince their team that drinking milk would improve performance and after reading the academic articles Kageyama had sent their group chat, Ushijima agreed. Except, he preferred to not eat or drink inside the changing rooms so he would bring his drink outside once he was dressed.
Ushijima could see where the second fact stemmed from. He admitted that he was not the loudest of chatterboxes, but he would not say that he was ‘shy’ or ‘quiet’. In fact, when it came to topics surrounding his interests or expertise, Ushijima often found himself going on and on. Rather than ‘shy’ and ‘quiet’, Ushijima would call himself ‘observant’ and ‘silent’, preferring to watch his friends interact and occasionally interject from the sidelines.
The third fact was slightly comical to the man. It was true that Ushijima gave his team (and sometimes MSBY) chocolate treats every so often. But to say that he had a sweet tooth was completely false. Ushijima was not a fan of most sweets. He just so happened to be married to a chocolatier that was very good at his craft.
And that was where Ushijima felt like the media was wrong the most often.
In every single article, tweet and video Ushijima had seen of himself, no one had mentioned the most important fact about him.
He was completely, totally and irrevocably in love with Tendou Satori.
In Ushijima’s mind, he was not ‘ Ushijima Wakatoshi; Professional Volleyball Player ’. He was ‘ Ushijima Wakatoshi; Husband to Parisian Chocolatier, Tendou Satori ’. Not to discredit himself or his achievements, but Ushijima firmly believed that his biggest success was being able to spend the rest of his life with Tendou. He had been with the same man since they were 16 and the fact that his first love remained his only love was unbelievable to him.
In fact, he was slightly insulted that no one had pieced together their relationship. Sure, they had not revealed themselves to the public, but the hints were there. A few old pictures on his Instagram, some liked Tweets of strangers praising Tendou’s bakery and even some ‘suspicious’ comments on their older posts.
Heck, they recently moved in together and their apartment screamed ‘married couple’ but the folks on the web mistook it as a ‘best friends turned roommates’ situation. Ushijima couldn’t believe it.
Maybe it was because they were overshadowed by the queer strength of his peers. Before officially coming out, anyone that spent more than thirty seconds on Miya’s Instagram or Kageyama’s Twitter could tell that they were very gay for their fellow athletes. If Miya’s neverending pictures of Sakusa didn’t scream ‘gay pining’ then the fact that the only tweets on Kageyama’s ‘liked’ tab were Hinata’s tweets definitely did.
Ushijima could see how the public had not sussed out his and Tendou’s ‘slightly more than normal’ skinship in their posts, when there were TikToks of his teammates grabbing ass after ass.
It didn’t matter all that much anymore since the pairs had agreed to go public with their relationships sometime soon. He and some of the others had wanted to conduct an experiment and see which of their announcements would make the most noise in the volleyball community.
His marriage to Tendou, Miya and Sakusa’s engagement, Kageyama and Hinata’s adoption or Oikawa’s plan to retire after one more year due to his knee injury and to take care of his one year old. Ushijima’s bet was on Oikawa since the man was dropping a retirement and marriage announcement on top of revealing that he had a daughter with JNT’s athletic trainer.
It was fine that they would not be in the spotlight. Ushijima did not care for that. All he wanted was for the tabloids to get one thing right. For them to know that the most important thing in Ushijima’s world was his wonderful and amazing husband.
Said husband was currently laid out on Ushijima’s right arm, drooling on it. Though, Ushijima couldn't feel the wetness at all. His entire right arm was numb and had been numb for the past hour he had been awake, watching his husband sleep.
Okay, well. He wasn’t watching him non-stop . He stared at the ceiling and out the window occasionally… but mostly kept his attention on Tendou. Call him a ‘simp’ or whatever.
He couldn’t help it. The sunlight filtering through their window was illuminating Tendou so perfectly that he looked angelic. Ushijima was glad that they chose an apartment so high up with no other buildings blocking the sunlight. Tendou’s soft, red hair appeared even more vibrant with the backlight and his skin looked perfect. Too perfect for someone who refused to stick to a skincare routine no matter what Ushijima said.
Out of nowhere, Tendou opened an eye. Ushijima hadn’t even noticed that his partner had begun to wake up or that he was awake enough to stare right into Ushijima’s soul. Tendou smirked and inched closer to him.
“Toshi?”
“Yes, my love?”
“Have you been staring at me again?”
“I would never do such a thing, my love.”
“Sure. I believe you.”
Despite already being awake, Tendou snuggled in closer to Ushijima and clung onto him like an octopus. Ushijima loved mornings like this, he really did. Unfortunately, their alarms had gone off an hour ago and they had to get started on the day.
The Adlers had a dinner event at Hirugami’s house later that night and all of their partners were invited. (Not like Hoshiumi’s partner had a choice since the dinner was at his own house). Tendou wanted to make homemade desserts to bring since his treats had been limited to chocolates that would not go bad in transit.
Despite the large difference between the two’s skillset, Ushijima offered to help. The fact that Tendou allowed him to help was a testament to their love. Ushijima was a wonderful cook and the whole team would show up to his place when it was his turn to host dinner. Unfortunately, he lacked any taste for sweet dishes.
In addition to that, he was the type of chef to guesstimate the ingredients he used in cooking, which meant that he would do the same for baking. Except, he was not as versed in how baking worked and often his desserts would come out a little… off.
Knowing full well what would go down, Tendou still let his husband help out in the kitchen.
(Though, he did plan to delegate the mixing and chocolate-dipping duties to him.)
Considering that they had to make enough desserts for a group of hungry professional athletes and their partners (most of whom were also hungry men) and did not have the ingredients for it, they had to start their day off early.
Clearly, things weren’t exactly going to plan.
“Satori, we need to get up.”
“No. You’re comfy. You’re my new pillow.”
“Love, we have four.”
“So? You’re my favourite one, then.”
Ushijima resisted the urge to stay in bed with Tendou for the rest of the day and cancel their plans. Most of them were smitten with their own partners, they’d understand. After a few seconds, rationality won over impulsivity and Ushijima attempted to convince Tendou to get started on the day again.
“Satori, my love, I need to use the bathroom.”
“No.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t use it. You’ll be fine. What are a few kidney stones going to do to you?”
“Satori, please.”
“Use the bottle beside the bed.”
“Satori, I’m begging you.”
“Beg harder.”
The athlete sighed. The only option left was to physically pull Tendou out of bed. Ushijima was pretty strong but Tendou was still a fully grown man. He was not as lanky as he was back in high school, so it would be a little different from the days Ushijima literally picked Tendou up to carry him to class against his will.
Gathering up his energy, Ushijima pushed himself up and swung his legs off the side of the bed. As expected, Tendou’s grip on his right arm tightened and numbed his arm even more. Thank God he was left handed. The athlete had a fleeting thought that if he ever needed a tourniquet, he could just call Tendou.
Ushijima stood up and took a few steps away from the bed, watching in amazement as Tendou’s body just flops along. Slowly sliding off the bed and onto the floor with his upper body suspended as he continued to grasp Ushijima.
“Satori, you are not a fish and neither am I a fish hook. Please let go of me.”
“You’re a strong man. You got this. You won’t even notice I’m here.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“You just need to believe hard enough.”
“Satori, please.”
Ushijima was now right in front of their bathroom door. He wasn’t bluffing, he actually did need to use the bathroom. They were married so he could just bring Tendou in with him. It wasn’t as though they’d never used the bathroom around each other before. But they just moved into their new place so there were boxes everywhere. There was no space in the bathroom for a sleeping man since their toiletries were still packed and not in the cabinets.
Crouching down, he tried to pry Tendou’s fingers off his skin but all that did was make his husband open his eyes and glare at him.
“If you let go, I’ll buy you that air fryer you wanted.”
As though Ushijima had uttered the magic words, Tendou immediately released his grip and flopped onto the floor, using one of the many boxes as a ‘pillow’. If Ushijima had known that would work, he would have used it a lot sooner.
At least he could move freely and with Tendou on the ground, he might not take as long to wake up. Their room was warm and they had a carpet so he didn’t have to worry about Tendou freezing. He’d just wrap a blanket around the man.
Stretching and yawning as he walked into the bathroom, Ushijima prepared to start the day. He was a man of routine so he planned to go on his daily morning jog first. Tendou would probably wake up in another forty minutes, which gave him plenty of time to get some air and come back.
What he failed to think about were the boxes placed inside of the bathroom and since he had his eyes closed as he yawned, he walked straight into them. As inertia and gravity usually went, he fell forward. Thankfully, he managed to stop himself from hitting his head on the sink but his side did take a pretty big hit from their toilet.
“Toshi? You okay in there?”
“I’m doing wonderfully. Thank you very much, my love.”
“Perfect.”
Embarrassed, Ushijima pushed the boxes under the sink and began his morning routine. If he was lucky, Tendou wouldn’t remember anything when he woke up.