Work Text:
“Yaku-saaaan!”
A very familiar voice rings out through the tiny classroom, and suddenly it’s two years earlier and Yaku’s back in the Nekoma volleyball gym in the middle of morning practice. “Lev,” he replies automatically, suppressing a groan. “Wait. Lev?”
He’s grown a few extremely unnecessary centimeters taller. His hair is a little shorter, his face a little more angular, but for the most part, Haiba Lev looks exactly the same as he did the last time Yaku saw him, when he visited Nekoma during a break in his first year of college.
Lev drops his backpack on the desk to the left of Yaku’s and says, “I can’t believe we’re in the same class, after all this time! You’re still...” Lev trails off, and Yaku glares at him because he knows the next word is going to be on the theme of “short.” Lev flushes, then grins sheepishly and instead says, “Well! How have you been?”
“Fine, I guess. Lev...what the hell?”
Because they’re not in the Nekoma gym anymore. They’re in college, and it’s the first day of Intro to Russian. A class which Yaku signed up for to fill his elective credits, and Lev...why was Lev here. He was vaguely aware the two of them were at the same college now, but since Yaku dropped volleyball to focus on school he’d lost touch with a lot of his former teammates.
“You’ve gone your whole life without bothering to learn Russian, despite being half-Russian, so why now?”
Lev grins sheepishly. “Well,” he says, “because I can? It’s a lot easier to learn a language in a class than like, by making my mom practice with me. I never really needed Russian before, but my grandma just came here from Russia to live with us and she doesn’t speak Japanese, so I want to be able to talk to her!”
That’s cute , Yaku thinks, and then, Why did I think that . “Makes sense,” he says instead, and then class starts and they get to work on the Cyrillic alphabet. The class is small, maybe ten or fifteen students, and none of them are heritage speakers trying to get an easy A, which is a relief. Everyone’s starting at the same level. Except Lev, who knows “thank you” and “goodbye” and what a patronymic is.
Yaku hasn’t even thought about foreign languages since high school, and his English grades back then were, while not horrible, not the best in the class either. The professor takes advantage of the fact that everyone’s learned English to some extent over the years and teaches them the letters of the alphabet in order of how similar they are to the Latin alphabet. They start with TOMKAT, vowels, and whatever the fuck Й is. Supposedly there’s a thing going around on the internet about how this is the most efficient way to learn Russian. Yaku hasn’t seen it, but whatever.
They practice writing their names in Russian for a bit. Lev is annoyingly delighted by this. “Yaku-san, look! I could always recognize my name when other people like my mom wrote it, but I’ve never been able to write it myself before,” he exclaims, pointing at the surprisingly neat “Лев Хайба” on his paper.
“That’s nice, Lev.” He looks at his paper, where “夜久 衛輔”, “Yaku Morisuke” and “Яку Морисуке” are carefully written out. It doesn’t even look like the same set of syllables. “What’s that thing your sister used to call you? Does she still do that?”
“Lyovochka! And yeah, she does. She actually can sort of speak Russian, but she has an accent and can’t read it.” Lev writes out Лёвочка under his name, and then Алиса, because he can. “My family moved to Japan before I was born, but Alisa was born in Moscow, so.”
“How’s she doing, then?”
Lev shrugs. “She’s good, I guess. Busy. She’s graduating this year.”
“Good for her.”
Yaku: hey
Shitty hair: !!!! A MIRACLE HAS OCCURRED, THE GREAT YAKU MORISUKE HAS DEIGNED TO TEXT ME FIRST
Shitty hair: AFTER SO MANY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIp
Yaku: are you done
Shitty hair: WHAT COULD I POSSIBLY HAVE DONE TO DESERVE SUCH AN HONOR
Shitty hair: k im done what’s up my dude
Yaku: remember I signed up for russian class?
Shitty hair: oh yeah bc ur still not over ur inadvisable high school crush
Yaku: I did not have a crush on anyone in high school, inadvisable or otherwise.
Shitty hair: i have so, so many receipts proving otherwise
Shitty hair: “I think lev’s sister is pretty, so obviously that transfers over to her brother, and I’m not actually attracted to lev. Yes. this is sound logic”- yaku morisuke, circa 2 years ago
Yaku: there’s no way I actually said that.
Yaku: I could kill you, you know.
Shitty hair: you could, but will you??? The answer is no
Shitty hair: AND YOU TOTALLY DID I REMEMBERED IT BC YOU WERE SO IN DENIAL IT WAS HILARIOUS
Shitty hair: at least u can admit ur bi now. progress
Shitty hair: anyway you were saying something abt russian class?
Yaku: Lev is in my russian class.
Shitty hair: OHHHHHHH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOD
Shitty hair: this is the best news I have received all day
Shitty hair: no, all WEEK
Shitty hair: fucking thank you for gracing my inbox with this information
Yaku: I regret telling you this
Shitty hair: NO YOU DON’T come over we can get drunk and cry about boy problems like we used to
Yaku: we have literally never done that, ever, in the history of our friendship.
Shitty hair: we did in my head
Yaku: ...Kuroo...what the fuck is wrong with you?
Shitty hair: (*¯ ³¯*)♡
Shitty hair: Kenma says good luck btw
Yaku: thanks Kenma
“Yaku-san, who are you texting?” Lev asks, leaning over his shoulder. Yaku darkens his screen instinctively. Even sitting down, Lev is tall enough to loom over him, and it’s disorienting. He definitely did not miss this.
“Just Kuroo,” he says. “He says hi.”
The lecture resumes, and they don’t get a chance to talk again until half an hour later, when Lev asks, “Do you still have the same number?”
“Huh? Yeah.”
“You never really stayed in touch,” Lev says, carefully. This is new, Yaku thinks. It’s been nearly two hours and he’s yet to hear a comment about his height. Over the last two years, Haiba Lev has apparently learned some semblance of tact. Interesting.
“Yeah, I don’t usually text people first.”
The class is dismissed and Lev stands up, and yikes , this kid is so fucking tall. Yaku jumps to his feet and is disappointed when that doesn’t help matters. Lev slouches a little, and it seems like he’s deliberately trying to make himself smaller. Like an oak tree pretending to be a piece of broccoli. “Well, uh, do you want to get lunch with me? Catch up a bit?” Lev seems nervous. Maybe he’s remembering a year’s worth of receive practice.
“Sure.”
Yaku: I’m getting lunch with him
Shitty hair: !!! keep me updated!!!
Yaku isn’t sure what to make of this new, tactful Lev, so he’s almost relieved when they sit down in the dining hall and Lev blurts out “So why’d you stop playing?”
There’s that bluntness he remembers. “Wanted to focus on school, didn’t want to permanently injure anything, didn’t really intend to go pro in the first place, etcetera, etcetera. There were a lot of reasons.” He’s not bitter about it, really. He picks at his lunch and tries not to think about high school.
“Why did you never visit us? Kuroo-san came back for some of our games. And nationals. Kai-san, too.” Lev is glaring at him, leaning forward and refusing to look away. Yaku feels his heart stutter, a little, and curses the day Kuroo came into his life and decided Yaku had a crush on Lev. This wouldn’t have happened if the idiot didn’t put the idea into his head.
“Hey, I stopped by a few months after we graduated. After that...” Yaku shrugs. “It ended. I don’t really like to think about high school now that it’s over.”
Lev looks...disappointed, almost. What was he expecting?
“How have you been, Lev?” Yaku asks, because he is a polite young man.
“I was captain last year,” Lev says, and ah, that’s probably why he looks disappointed.
“Congratulations. I knew you could do it.” Yaku smiles slightly and feels even more guilty at the way Lev perks up immediately. “Wouldn’t have put you through all that extra training for nothing.”
Lev wilts again. “Right. We made it to nationals for Spring High again. Lost to Karasuno, though.”
“I’m sure you played well, regardless.” It sounds too empty.
Lev puts his head in his hands and mutters something that sounds like “this was a bad idea,” then plows on with, “So! What’s new with you that’s not volleyball related?”
Yaku shrugs. “Not much. I’m a business major. Had a girlfriend for a bit. Had a boyfriend...sort of...for a bit.”
Lev tilts his head. “Boyfriend?” he says.
Whoops.
Yaku rubs the back of his head and looks away, uncomfortable with the way Lev’s looking at him now. “Yeah, I’m. Bi. So. I like guys too.” He hasn’t had to do this in a while, he thinks. The coming-out thing. But, for some ungodly reason, he trusts Lev, so it just slipped out.
“Oh! Okay! Me too!”
He wasn’t expecting that. “Oh. Well. Cool.”
Yaku’s phone vibrates.
Shitty hair: how is it
Yaku: Uh.
Shitty hair: Good or Bad
Yaku: Mostly good I think?
Shitty hair: did you tell him you like him yet
Shitty hair: DID YOU ASK HIM OUT
Shitty hair: IT’S BEEN LIKE 2 YEARS YAKKUN COME ON
Yaku: s t o p
Shitty hair: NEVER
Yaku throws the remains of his lunch in the trash can and picks up his backpack. “Well,” he says. “This was fun. See you Wednesday, I guess?”
Lev is staring into space, distracted by something. “Wednesday?” He echoes, and then says, “Oh right! Russian class!” He jumps up. “Hey, Yaku-san, do you want to come to my house someday to practice Russian with my family?”
Yaku blinks. “Uh. Right now the only thing I can say is ‘hi, thank you, and bye.’ Maybe after a few more weeks.”
“That makes sense!” Lev stands and moves towards Yaku like he’s going to hug him or something, and then apparently thinks better of it, and pulls his arms back. “See you Wednesday,” he says instead, sounding again like he’s holding something back.
Yaku: I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life
Yaku: giving you my phone number is one of them
Shitty hair: </3 </3 </3 so cruel, morisuke, so cruel
Yaku: also, I don’t have a crush on lev you just made me think I do because you’re evil
Shitty hair: SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON LEV THEN
Shitty hair: kenma owes me 500 yen he thought you wouldn’t admit it until the next time you hung out with him
Shitty hair: kenma’s so rarely wrong...this is an Occasion
Yaku rolls his eyes at his phone screen and then looks around. He’s in his dorm room again, having finished his classes for the day, and it’s still the first day of the semester so not much homework to do. His roommate, Sugawara Koushi, is in class. Which he’s profoundly grateful for, because Suga can smell emotional turmoil and will probably have him spilling the whole story the moment he gets back.
Yaku: anyway.
Yaku: what do I do now
Shitty hair: ask him out, duh
Yaku: it’s not that simple
Shitty hair: yes it is
Yaku: ... can I call you I don’t feel like typing this out
Shitty hair: k
“I think he’s upset with me for not showing up to Nekoma’s games,” Yaku says when Kuroo picks up. “Or something like that. He brought it up at lunch and like...I dunno. It’s awkward.”
Kuroo hums. “I think he thought you didn’t care about Nekoma, and by extension, about him.”
“Well, that’s dumb,” says Yaku, and he hears familiar staticky laughter on the other end.
“This is Lev we’re talking about, right?” Kuroo says, and Yaku snorts. “Just like. Show him you’re interested. Initiate conversations. Invite him places. Be nice to him.”
“That’s going to be weird though... Speaking of weird, he didn’t call me short once! We were interacting for like, three hours, and he didn’t make a single comment about my height! He almost did at first but I glared at him and that was enough to make him not say it! What the hell!”
“Character development,” Kuroo deadpans. There’s some kind of clattering noise on his end, and Kuroo swears. “Sorry, Yaku, I’m at work-study at the lab and some idiot dropped a flask so I gotta help clean up. Anyway, you have a whole semester to learn pick-up lines in Russian. You can do it. And if you can’t do it you have me and Kenma and probably Sugawara to help.”
“Kuroo, I swear to god.”
“Bye!”
Yaku hits “end call” and feels a little less unmoored than before. His phone vibrates again.
Overgrown Child: yaku saaaaaaaaaaan
Yaku: hey Lev.
Overgrown Child: ヾ(*'▽'*)
Yaku: do you need something or
Overgrown Child: jst wantrd 2 say hi!
Yaku: ...okay
Well that was weird.