Work Text:
Tsukishima wakes up feeling okay in his bones.
He straightens out in bed, neck pressed against the headboard, ankle joints popping down at the other end. The sun is sloping in through the window, warm glow scattered across the ceiling; he watches the light dance over the top bunk. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep last night. Tsukishima has always preferred the moon. Above him, the mattress is quiet. Tadashi has an early class today. Tsukishima gets up and out of bed, alone.
His first lecture of the day is semiotics and material culture. If everything goes well, he could be shaping up to land that internship, the one at the national museum. He would have to adjust his hours, maybe wake up earlier in the day and schedule his classes for the morning hours like Tadashi does to pick up afternoon shifts—his favorite time of day, when the late sun casts its long arc over the glass emporium, museum exhibits bathed in a lazy wash of light. Tsukishima loves the museum, and the internship would land him face to face with real cultural and semiotic artifacts that he’s only ever seen on a slideshow or in a textbook. But what he’s really there for are the bones. As interesting as the Edo period is, the natural history exhibit is Tsukishima’s favorite.
Something about those massive, looming skeletons, pale and gleaming under museum lights; they make something inside Tsukishima shift and creak, dust settling just right. Sometimes he wants to squeeze himself into those hollow bones, curl up and disappear into the blackness, let history swallow him right up. He gets lost in the fossils, antiques towering far above, empty eye sockets seeing right through him. Larger-than-life artifacts make his own life seem so small in comparison, proof that something bigger has come before, will come after, a comfort that he doesn’t have to make big waves, accomplish great things, sacrifice, persevere, lose. It has already been done. Everything has already been done.
It’s just a club, he thinks, unwillingly. He shakes it off. Today is a nice day.
If he’s early, maybe he can corner his favorite TA for a couple minutes to ask about that article from last night, the one about the archaeological site in Brazil that he knows they’ve both been following. Speaking of Brazil, he ought to drop Hinata a text sometime this week. Contrary to popular belief, Tsukishima is not antisocial. He simply picks and chooses where he directs his energy. Normally, that goes towards his parents, his brother, and of course, Hitoka and Tadashi.
Maybe the occasional Kuroo now as well, though not by choice—Tsukishima grumbles silently to himself on his way to the History building—but instead by sheer panic on Kuroo’s part as he calls Tsukishima time and time again, with questions of what’s Tadashi’s favorite color (green, obviously, the idiot could have figured that one out on his own), or how hard should I fight Tadashi for the bill (as hard as humanly possible, obviously, even though Tadashi would want to split it, Tsukishima will not entertain a world where Tadashi should ever have to pay for his own food), or should I wear a collared shirt or will he think I’m trying too hard. The answer is that Kuroo should wear whatever he wants, because Tadashi is smitten with him anyway. Obviously. Does Tsukishima tell him this? No, obviously.
Truth be told, Tsukishima can’t say that he’s completely on board with this whole ‘Kuroo’ thing, not yet anyway. This is Tadashi they’re talking about. Tadashi.
“Tadashi can take care of himself,” Hitoka had chided, eyes twinkling. “He doesn’t need you to protect him anymore.”
“But what if Kuroo messes up?” Tsukishima had argued back, fruitlessly. “He’s done it before.”
“Then they’ll fix it,” she said, like it was a fact of nature and not some volatile, ticking time bomb, threatening to go off at any moment. If only Tsukishima had her confidence.
“Tadashi is worth a hundred Kuroo’s,” he muttered disdainfully. Hitoka laughed.
“Tadashi is worth everything he’s willing to give, and Kuroo-san just as much.”
Tsukishima had looked down at her, insisting, “How do you know, though?”
Her simple admission: “I don’t.”
Hitoka’s phone buzzed in between them and she startled, the simple text notification lighting up her face as if it had hung the very sun in the room with them.
“—But that’s the beauty of it,” she finished quietly, reaching down to send a quick text in return.
Tsukishima leaned back, knowingly. “Is Kanoka-san coming back soon?”
“Kei?”
“Hm?”
“Shut up.”
Tadashi and Kuroo, Tsukishima would need some time to wrap his head around, but Hitoka and Kanoka, now he had no issues with that. In all honesty, he was thrilled for them. He supposes he should thank Shimizu for rejecting Hitoka back in first year, the summer in which the three of them had solidified their friendship, but Hitoka had carried a certain weight with her ever since. It had taken her months to even reach out to Kanoka, but now she was happier than they had ever seen her, buzzing alight with Amanai sent me a heart, or Amanai bought me a cardigan, or the Rabbits are moving into the semi’s!
Oh, how she’s endeared herself to Tsukishima over the years. Tadashi vehemently agrees.
“Our little girl, in love,” he had said through fake sniffles, hand pressed against his heart.
Hitoka shoved at him, red flush darting over her nose. “As if you’re one to talk! You came back completely bowled over with Kuroo-san.”
“He pierced his ear for me,” Tadashi reveled, “I was romanced.”
Tsukishima glanced from one to the other, shaking his head incredulously, and Tadashi had tsk tsked at him with a wry grin. “Don’t feel left out, Tsukki, we love you too.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, fighting a smile, glow lit within his chest.
The lecture is good. For once, the sun is at just the right angle to give the History building a splash of pale, natural light. Tsukishima gets up from his seat after the professor has finished her slides, ankles cracking, neck craning for his TA. He sees the back of their head leaving the lecture hall and hastens to follow.
“Hello,” a voice says, and Tsukishima stops in his tracks. He looks down. A student he doesn’t have any memory of looks up at him. She has a small, nervous smile on her face.
“Hello,” Tsukishima returns hesitantly, eyes still following his TA’s retreating figure.
“—in your archaeology tutorial,” the student is speaking. Tsukishima snaps back to attention, forcing himself to focus on her words.
“I wanted to give you something,” she extends her arms and he automatically reaches out. She drops an envelope into his open palms, a small red bag alongside it. He looks back up at her slowly.
“I know we’re a bit old for this,” she says, shyly, “but I wanted to anyway. Happy Valentine’s, Tsukishima-kun. You’re the only one in that tutorial that I really want to see.”
Oh. Today is the fourteenth. God, Tsukishima has always hated this. He nods dumbly, body frozen stiff, letter still sitting in his open hand.
“Thank you,” he says, disjointedly, and tries to meet his eyes. An unwelcome flush is rising up his neck, he knows, and he forces it down. “Happy—happy Valentine’s.”
They stand in the hallway, facing each other. Tsukishima closes his fingers awkwardly around the gifts, and slips them into his pocket. “Have a nice day,” he gets out, and strides past her, not awaiting a response.
TA forgotten, he blinks in the sudden sunlight and turns, feet taking him to the only place he knows, the only people he ever really wants to see, tutorial be damned.
—
He finds the only two people he ever really wants to see on his bed, in their outside clothes, dropping their crumbs all over his pillow. He stands in the doorway and leans against the frame, taking in the sight of them. Just for a second.
Tadashi notices him first, face brightening accordingly. “Tsukki! How was the lecture?”
Tsukishima ambles into the room, dropping his things by his desk. “Good.”
“And the internship, with your TA?” Hitoka asks. “Have you started your application yet?”
Tsukishima purses his lips at this, but only slightly. It does not go unnoticed.
“Tsukki,” Tadashi drawls lazily, sprawled out on Tsukishima’s bed. “Come here.”
He doesn’t need any encouragement. Tsukishima collapses into his bed with a groan, outside clothes be damned, right onto their laps.
“Oh,” Hitoka coos, reaching for him. “You’re going to get it, you know.”
“And then you can be at the museum for as long as you want!” Tadashi adds.
Tsukishima grits his teeth. It feels… awkward, almost, to tell them. Awkward and stilted in a way that the three of them never are, which means that it must be him. He must be the problem.
“It’s not that,” he sighs, “I didn’t get the chance to meet my TA. Hey, did you guys know it was the fourteenth?”
He can feel them share a look over his head.
“Of course,” Hitoka says, slowly, “Amanai and I have plans tonight.”
“Kuroo says he has a surprise,” Tadashi chirps, and oh, Kuroo’s questions make much more sense now. “I’m surprised that you knew, though.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Tsukishima cranes his neck, peering at Tadashi upside down.
Tadashi shrugs. “Just that you never know what day it is. You’re normally so clueless.”
Tsukishima ignores the jibe. “I got this,” he mutters, pulling the letter roughly from his pocket.
Hitoka sighs. “You got a confession, didn’t you?”
Tsukishima hums a low assent and his friends quietly suck in their teeth, both no doubt experiencing flashbacks to high school, of messily diverting Tsukishima’s admirers when he inevitably turned down their advances, via Tadashi and Hitoka, of course.
“That cannot have gone well,” Tadashi says, and Tsukishima turns his face into the mattress, glasses knocked askew. He’s ashamed, almost, and the feeling is unfamiliar and unwelcome.
“I didn’t ask for it,” he complains, knowing just how childish he sounds, knowing he wouldn’t be caught dead talking like this around anyone but his two best friends. He can feel them exchange another look above his head and he burrows deeper into his bed, wishing he never said anything in the first place.
A shadow falls over his eyes as Hitoka slips her fingers into his hair softly, absentmindedly. “Don’t mind,” she murmurs. “Stop thinking about it.”
“I’m not,” Tsukishima says, doing exactly that, and he closes his eyes to Hitoka carding her hand across his head, breath slowing.
After a short silence, Tadashi hums. “Were they cute?” He asks, smile in his voice. Tsukishima shoves at him blindly with a heavy arm. Tadashi giggles, and the weight settles comfortably back into Tsukishima’s chest, strong with the warmth of his two best friends.
His body moves as Hitoka shifts under him. He can sense her frowning, and turns to face her the same time Tadashi reaches out and pushes a thumb between her eyebrows, softening the crease that appears.
“Have you guys finished packing yet?” She asks, and Tsukishima and Tadashi exchange twin glances, guilt flashing across their faces.
“You haven’t started yet, have you?”
Silence.
“We leave tomorrow.”
Tsukishima and Tadashi are not exactly men of action, but even they fear the wrath of Yachi Hitoka and her endless, frazzled travel-anxiety. They get to work, confession forgotten.
Later, Tsukishima ends up giving Hitoka the chocolate from the bag he was gifted, so at least it wasn’t fully a waste, he thinks.
—
Thank God for the spring break, Tsukishima decides, after he and Tadashi had thrown random sets of clothing into two suitcases, haphazard and mismatched—they always end up sharing anyway, much to Tsukishima and Kuroo’s chagrin, when they find out they’re wearing something that they both thought was Tadashi’s and instead belongs to each other—Tsukishima jolts himself from the rude thought, safely on the train home to Miyagi, clothes intact and mercifully in his possession.
He leans against the wall of the train, comforted in the rumble of the metal. Scenery flashes through the window like one of Tadashi’s platformer games, bright and smooth and lively, and Tsukishima welcomes the sight, the buzz and hum of the city giving way to the lush green of their rural hometown. He loves the city, loves the lights and the music and the art, but there’s something about the countryside, the rolling hills and the billowing open sky, that just make everything in his head a little quieter, swallowing him right up like a towering museum exhibit, like the gaping eyes of a pale, hollow skeleton.
Tadashi lets out a loud snore beside him, head falling against Tsukishima’s shoulder. He shifts in his seat so Tadashi can rest his head against him properly. They’re nearly back, but there’s no reason why Tadashi can’t get a half-hour more shuteye before they’re swamped in the frenzy that is their and Hitoka’s parents when they arrive at the station.
As if hearing herself in Tsukishima’s thoughts, Hitoka’s blonde head pops up from the seat in front of him, eyes peeking over the headrest. He can see her shuffle around on the cushion to meet his gaze, and he stifles his smile as he watches her clamber up onto her knees so that she’s tall enough to see him.
“Hi,” she says, shooting him an accomplished grin.
“Hi,” he echoes, giving in and smiling back.
The sun reflecting through the window twinkles in her brown eyes. “Are you excited to be home?”
Tsukishima hums. “I am,” he admits. “It’s been a while.”
“It’s only been a month or two,” Hitoka teases, “you big softie.”
Tsukishima hums again, acknowledging nothing. “Do you think the konbini still sells strawberry popsicles?” He asks, into the empty space between them. “Do you think the new volleyball team also goes for wrapped buns after practice?”
Hitoka smiles, an unbridled, helpless thing. “Let's go for walks, shall we?” She echoes, eyes twinkling. “Can we get popsicles and wrapped buns again?”
Tsukishima, powerless, smiles back. “I guess we have to.”
Hitoka reaches in between the seats, fingers outstretched and waiting, and Tsukishima hands her the cord to the headphones slung around his neck, watching her plug it into her phone as she’s done so many times before. She looks up at him expectantly.
Tsukishima obediently puts on his headphones, and her giggle is lost to the silence. She fumbles with her phone for a few seconds, a song beginning to play in his ears. A smile twitches at the corner of his mouth as he recognizes the first song he ever recommended to her, all the way back in high school when they sat on the front steps of the gym waiting for Shimizu to arrive with the keys. Seems like he isn’t the only one feeling a little sentimental today. He relaxes in his seat, leaning back into the headrest, Tadashi’s head slipping further into Tsukishima’s neck.
The song quietens for a notification to sound, a soft ding over the music track, and he opens his eyes reflexively. Hitoka’s face is alight in a happy smile, a spread of pink on her cheeks as she holds her phone in both hands, small fingers typing away. He softens at the sight of her so lost in her own world. Kanoka is a year older and in an entirely different circle to them, playing volleyball professionally while Hitoka pursues her undergraduate degree, but they seem to fit together so seamlessly that Tsukishima marvels over how long it took them to get together in the first place. He and Tadashi are important to Hitoka, he knows that, knows it as much as he feels it every time she looks at them, barges into their dorm room, comes to watch his games every Friday, or goes with Tadashi to get his ears pierced yet again , but little has made her look like this so often and so much, all bashful and hopeful and stunning over something that is hers, and hers alone. She keeps Amanai both close to her chest and on her sleeve, and Tsukishima will always be grateful for everything that Kanoka has brought his best friend.
So, he doesn’t understand the twinge in his chest as he watches his best friend tap, tap, tap away, and averts his gaze to the window, guilt festering in his stomach over a scene he feels unfit to intrude on, something deeper within beginning to stir, has been stirring for years, something that he can’t and won’t put a name to, not here. Not now.
As if sensing his discomfort, Hitoka turns the music up. Tsukishima turns to face the window, watching the scenery flow by, feeling distinctly okay in his bones.
—
Tsukishima, Tadashi, and Hitoka are paraded away from each other and into their respective family cars before Tadashi can even fully blink awake, or before his stain of drool has completely dried on Tsukishima’s shoulder after they separate. (“Tadashi-kun!” Akiteru had yelled, waving feverishly through the car window. “Akiteru-niisan!” Tadashi had yelled back, gleeful, sleepy, waving just as frantically.) Even Hitoka is flustered, having to run over and bang on the passenger-side window of Akiteru’s car, and Tsukishima rolls down the window for Hitoka to thrust her hand through the opening. In the commotion, Tsukishima had accidentally taken Hitoka’s phone, music still playing faintly in his ears.
Akiteru smiles sheepishly behind his sandy hair as they drive down the station road, phone safely returned. “Sorry about dragging you away from your friends,” he says, hands on the wheel. “Okaa-san is excited to see you home.”
“I’m excited to see her, too,” Tsukishima responds, choosing not to say what they both know, that Tadashi and Hitoka will be over in the blink of an eye anyway.
Akiteru says it instead, grinning all the while. “I’m home now, though,” he adds, “you guys can’t use my room for sleepovers anymore.”
“Sleepovers,” Tsukishima repeats incredulously. “It’s fine,” he says, straightening in his seat. “We always used my room, anyway.”
Akiteru shoves at the side of Tsukishima’s head with a light hand. “Kei,” he says, through a laugh. “You’ll always be fifteen, you know?”
Tsukishima looks back at his brother, both his hands dutifully back on the wheel. “I know,” he says, sinking back down into the passenger seat, ever the little sibling. He watches the countryside fly past his window beneath the milky blue sky.
“How’s school?”
“School is good. How’s work?”
Akiteru lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Work is work. It’s good.”
Car rumbling around them, asphalt miles drifting by beneath the wheels, Tsukishima and his brother settle into a comfortable silence.
“It’s good to have you back, Kei.”
“It’s good to be back, nii-san.”
—
“Kei!” Tsukishima’s mother smothers him before he can even step into the house, pulling him into a hug. He leans down agreeably, burying himself in her brown hair and breathing deep. She giggles into his neck. They watch Akiteru struggle up the front steps, Tsukishima’s suitcase in his hands.
“What did you pack in this, rocks?” He pants, and Tsukishima lets out a quiet laugh of his own.
“It’s probably Tadashi’s rocks,” he offers, and Akiteru drags the bag inside with a huff.
“How is Tadashi-kun, anyway?” Tsukishima’s mother asks, “I do miss that boy. And Hitoka-chan, too.”
Tsukishima smiles. “They’re good, okaa-san. They miss you too.”
His mother shakes her head at that, twin smile plastered over her own face. “Now you’re just being nice. Come on, come inside!”
He steps over the threshold, brushing his knuckles against the doorframe as he enters.
“Tadaima,” he murmurs.
“Okaeri,” Akiteru responds. Tsukishima is home.
After the three of them have settled around their old dining table and Tsukishima’s mother has laid a bowl of neatly-cut fruit in front of them, a pair of toothpicks standing straight up so they may share, Akiteru leans back in his seat.
“You will not believe the day I had,” he starts, and Tsukishima is fifteen again, just like his brother said, sitting around the dinner table after a day at school to hear what his big brother has been up to.
“—With my girlfriend and I,” Akiteru laughs, and then looks down as his phone buzzes on the table, screen lighting up with a blurred selfie.
“That’s her now,” he says gently, small smile on his face. “Let me take this real quick.”
“She’s quite lovely,” Tsukishima’s mother tells him, after his brother has left the room. “I think she suits our Akiteru very well.”
Tsukishima hums. “He seems happy.”
“He is,” she says with a mother’s smile. “What about you?” She asks, turning to Tsukishima, “Anybody caught your eye?”
Tsukishima tries to stifle the flash of annoyance he knows flits across his face. “No one.”
“Not even any of your friends?”
He shakes his head, discomfort growing in the pit of his stomach, willing Akiteru to return.
“What about Hitoka-chan? She’s a nice girl!”
Tsukishima lets out a small laugh despite himself. “Hitoka wouldn’t be interested.”
His mother frowns, and Tsukishima resists the urge to put a thumb between her brows. “It’s alright, okaa-san,” he says, as placatingly as he can manage. “I have her, and Tadashi.”
“You’ve always been close with Tadashi-kun, hm? What about him, are you sure there’s nothing going on with him?”
“No,” Tsukishima says, exasperatedly. “No, there’s not. Besides, Tadashi’s with someone.”
“Oh,” his mother coos, “it’s alright, Kei, you’ll find someone else.”
“No—” Tsukishima starts, and stops just as suddenly. “It’s not—nevermind. It’ll be fine.”
Akiteru strides back in sometime amidst their mother’s muttering. “As I was saying,” he says, settling back into his seat, dopey smile still plastered over his face. “We had to eat the whole thing…”
—
The oddest people can be found right at home, Tsukishima finds, after he’s been released from the clutches of his loving family and has set out on a quick walk, craning his neck to catch the neighborhood's evening sunset. Headphones loped around his neck, he strolls down familiar paths behind a familiar sun and pictures cream sweaters under black gakurans , popsicles and wrapped buns, laughter so bright and loud that it can only belong to high schoolers with their whole lives ahead of them, and behind them as well. Tsukishima has settled nicely into university life, but the second he graduated from Karasuno he had realized what he lost.
Still, the past has a funny way of coming back. “Ushijima-san?” He asks suddenly, automatically, catching sight of a head of brown hair atop a tall, broad frame.
Ushijima Wakatoshi turns around, pulling a single earphone into his hand. “Tsukishima-kun,” he rumbles, eyes widening in recognition.
Tsukishima blinks rapidly. “Aren’t you in Tokyo?” He berates himself in his head. Ushijima is obviously not in Tokyo.
“I’m back for a little while,” Ushijima turns to face him fully. “I requested leave. The Shiratorizawa alumni—” he says, holding the name in his mouth like it’s something precious, “They wanted to have a reunion at home.”
“Oh,” Tsukishima says, picturing the Shiratorizawa volleyball team as he remembers them, tall, imposing, clad in purple and white and a weariness that can only come with winning and winning until the ceiling is no longer a goal but an obstacle. Although, he supposes, that hadn’t been able to stop Ushijima. And speaking of—
“How’s—how’s Kageyama?”
In all honesty, Tsukishima knows fairly well how Kageyama is doing. Himself, Tadashi, and Hitoka watch the Adlers’ games every Saturday and play Tobio-bingo over takeout and soju. Tadashi had won the last time, having marked a line successfully through Kageyama accidentally frightens a young fan, Kageyama tries a setter dump on Goshiki-san (they were playing the Rockets), Kageyama flubs the words to the national anthem, and Kageyama loses his temper at Hoshiumi-san. The benefits of co-captaining together, Tsukishima supposes, are that Tadashi often knows their old vice-captain best.
“Kageyama-kun is well,” Ushijima tells him, “He’s settled into the team very nicely.”
Tsukishima nods, not doubting it for a second. As stilted as Kageyama is, there’s nothing like the V-League and the ‘Monster Generation’ to get his head on straight.
“He mentions you all, often,” Ushijima adds.
Tsukishima blinks in pleasant surprise. He didn’t think they had been forgotten, but a mention may as well be a confession, for Kageyama. It wasn’t that their old vice-captain had dropped off the face of the earth, but there was something about him that meant he was best at side-by-side time, lying in the grass, or passing a ball back and forth, studying in confused silence, or sitting on a bus together and letting the engine rumble them into peaceful lethargy. He missed Kageyama too, Tsukishima realizes.
“Tell him that we’re thinking of him too, please,” Tsukishima responds, a small warmth in his chest.
Ushijima nods solemnly, figure strong against the orange of the sky. “He will be happy to hear it.” Then, “You should come and see him, sometime.”
Tsukishima hums. “We will,” he says, meaning it. The hills of Miyagi had beckoned them home as quickly and easily as they left; already he can feel old hungers stirring, old company missing when they should be here, with him.
“He will be pleased. During training, he often speaks of you. And ‘Yamaguchi-kun’, and ‘Yachi-san’, and,” Ushijima’s mouth betrays a hint of a smile, “‘Shouyou’.”
Tsukishima lifts a brow and says nothing. They have not strayed too far past high school, after all.
“Hinata-kun comes up the most. Kourai-kun is not the most fond of it.” Ushijima continues. “He seems to miss him.” Then he stops, eyes shadowed wryly. “I should not be telling you this.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Tsukishima says, with the ghost of a smile.
Tadashi and Hitoka will be over the moon when he tells them. They’ve been betting on this for years.
“Enjoy your reunion, Ushijima-san,” Tsukishima says. “Anyone we know?”
“Eita,” Ushijima muses, “Reon, and Taichi are coming up. Goshiki couldn’t pull away from training, neither Kenjirou from his studies. Satori,” he says, and then pauses. “Satori is away.”
Tsukishima reckons that Ushijima looks a lot like Kageyama in this moment. “They will be happy to see you,” he says.
“And I, them,” Ushijima replies, a pleasantness back in his voice. “Goodbye, Tsukishima-kun.”
“See you around,” he returns, looping his headphones over his ears as Ushijima continues on his run.
The sun is setting before him as he heads towards home, dipping beneath the mountains in lieu of the cold spring night, but something inside of him burns nonetheless.
—
They are, of course they are, waiting for him on his front steps.
“Tsukki! You took forever,” Tadashi groans, head in Hitoka’s lap, legs splayed over the threshold.
“Sorry,” Tsukishima says as he walks up to them, “I took the scenic route.”
Hitoka smiles, fingers running through green hair. “Your family went to bed. They sleep early.”
“No,” he replies. “We just sleep late.”
He steps over Tadashi’s lanky body, pushing the front door open. Yellow floods the faces of his best friends, who squint and let out twin grumbles at the light.
“Come on,” Tsukishima says, as gently as he can muster. “Get inside. It’s cold.”
They get inside.
Upstairs, they immediately try to dog-pile onto Tsukishima’s childhood bed.
“Outside clothes,” he hisses. Tadashi opens Tsukishima’s luggage and leafs through it until he finds a set of his own. Hitoka sheds her jacket, clothes beneath shielded from the outdoors. They dog-pile onto Tsukishima’s childhood bed.
They have gotten bigger. The bed was always too small for them. Now it is even smaller. Tsukishima sighs, contentedly.
“What took you so long, anyway?” Hitoka murmurs, quiet and snug and warm.
“Bumped into Ushiwaka,” Tsukishima admits, and he tells them what happened.
Tsukishima yelps as Tadashi’s fist shoots to the ceiling. “I knew it!” He crows triumphantly, fringe flopping into his face. The motion makes all of them shake on his small mattress.
“Oh, everyone knew it,” Hitoka hushes him. “It was only a matter of time.”
“Our Tobio,” Tadashi mourns, “All grown up.”
“Hinata ought to come back,” Hitoka admonishes. “Everyone misses him.”
“Some more so than others,” Tadashi says with a sly grin, and the two of them burst into quiet laughter. The funny feeling in Tsukishima’s chest grows and withers and grows, a tumor; a heartbeat.
Their laughter, sweet and blissfully unaware, dissolves into comfortable silence. They lay too big on a too-small bed.
“Do you remember when Hinata used to chase Kageyama all around school just to get his attention?” Hitoka asks.
Tadashi grins. “Or when Tobio didn’t know how to get Hinata’s attention without thrashing him stupid.”
Hitoka laughs. “To be fair, I wasn’t much better.” The three of them recall their first year with reluctance, Hitoka trailing a certain dark-haired senpai to the ends of the earth.
“No,” Tadashi drawls, “you really weren’t.” Hitoka gives him a shove, and he nearly falls off the bed.
“Or you,” she insists, dragging him apologetically back onto the covers.
“No,” he agrees, turning to poke Tsukishima in the side. “I didn’t even get a chance.”
“It’s all well and good now, though,” he continues, no doubt thinking of a certain set of gray eyes and a mop of black hair. “I just had to wait a little longer for someone else to come along.”
“You’re talking about me, aren’t you,” Tsukishima says too suddenly, breaking Tadashi’s train of thought. “You liked me. In first-year.”
Tadashi curls into his side, eyes closed and relaxed, unaware of Tsukishima’s building turmoil. “I’m only joking,” he murmurs, “it’s alright, Tsukki.”
“It’s not—” Tsukishima starts, with a frustration he didn’t even know he had, “I don’t—”
Hitoka lifts her head. “Kei?”
“Tadashi, I’m sorry about high school,” he says desperately.
Tadashi turns to look at him. “Tsukki?” He asks, brows furrowed in concern. “I was only joking. First-year was a long time ago.”
“And second-year,” Tsukishima insists. He sits up, and they sit up with him, hair mussed from the bedsheets, faces twisted in confusion.
Tadashi pokes him in the side again, insistently. “And I’m telling you, it was a long time ago.” He blinks confusedly, eyes searching Tsukishima’s face and seeing his discomfort plainly there.
“I didn’t treat you well,” Tsukishima admits, despairingly.
A soft smile spreads across Tadashi’s face. “No,” he says slowly, “you treated me like Tsukki.”
Tsukishima looks up, miserably.
“I love Tsukki.”
Oh, how Tsukishima loves him so. And still, not right. Never right.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, hopelessly, baselessly, and this time they say nothing. The days have been too long lately, and he has felt so tired in his bones. Valentine’s. His mother. Ushijima and Kageyama and the bare bones of Miyagi have yanked him roughly back into the bare bones of himself. There is nothing but himself.
“It’s just—” He starts, and stops again. “I just wish—I wish I wasn’t a bad thing. I wish that I wasn’t bad enough, so that I need someone else. I want to be good—I just want to be good enough. On my own.”
“Oh,” Hitoka says, hushed.
“I don’t know how to do it on my own. I just want to do it on my own.”
He feels stripped bare, like museum skeletons, museum skeletons in his museum closet, all out on display for the world to see. He’s always been gawked at, tall, gangly, sullen, and he refuses to give them reasons to gawk once more.
“I feel like a skeleton,” Tsukishima admits, hopelessly, saying nothing and everything all at once. “A fossil.”
He lets out a baleful, pathetic, laugh. “I just want to be like them. Like you.”
“Oh, Kei,” Hitoka says, so gently that Tsukishima thinks he might shatter, splinter into a thousand pieces, a million fragments of bone. “You are nothing but yourself.”
In his family home, over spring break, in an evening on his childhood bed, Tsukishima cries, flanked by his two best friends; nothing less, and certainly nothing more.
—
Tsukishima wakes up feeling okay in his bones. Hitoka and Tadashi are asleep at his side. Tsukishima wakes quietly, with all the secrets of a hometown, and a love so deep and rich that he has to sit stone still in his body in order to breathe it in. He is enough. They are enough. They are everything in the world that he needs. He traces the crow inked into his arm and watches the sun—just as bright and knowing as the moon of his namesake—slope yellow and delicate through the glass of his childhood window.