Archive of Our Own

Kei doesn’t consider himself a ‘morning person’.

His eyes blink open to the sound of his alarm clock, lazily snoozing it and turning over. Light escapes through the gaps between his curtains, and he can hear the soft pitter-patter of the rain as it hits the sidewalk.

His phone pings with a message — Yamaguchi, no doubt. He fumbles at his nightstand until he finds it, squinting.

From: Tadashi
Subject: raining ???
hi tsukki guess what it’s raining !!! 

A smile tugs at Kei’s lips as he types up a message. Not for the first time, he’s glad for the solitude of his bedroom.

To: Tadashi
Subject: Re:raining ???
I see it. Try not to slip this time

From: Tadashi
Subject: Re:raining ???
no promises (ಥ﹏ಥ)

There’s a few other notifications, a string of Snapchat messages from Hinata and one singular message from Kageyama (about volleyball, no less), but Kei doesn’t bother reading them at the moment. He stumbles out of bed and reaches clumsily for his glasses. He’ll have to bring an extra raincoat today, he decides absentmindedly. Yamaguchi always forgets his own, without fail, every single rainy day since they were ten.

Kei flies through the rest of his routine impassively, muttering his goodbyes to his mother through a mouthful of toast as she insists on him wearing a thicker-than-necessary coat. She shoves an umbrella into his hands as he tucks his headphones into his bag to protect them from the rain. Akiteru tousles his hair before he goes, making Kei frown, and he reminds him to stay dry as Kei locks the door.

To: Tadashi
Subject: No subject
I’m on my way

The cold is biting, unforgiving. Kei almost wishes he had brought a scarf as he reaches up to adjust his rain-speckled glasses. Yamaguchi’s house is a little less than two kilometers away from Kei’s, and his route to school intersects with Yamaguchi’s after about four minutes of walking. 

(The first time, Yamaguchi had made Kei keep track when they were in junior high. Of course, Kei had done it. Begrudgingly.)

(The second time was the first day of high school about a month ago, where Yamaguchi had messaged him asking him to keep track again. Kei had said no.)

(He still did it. Begrudgingly. Again.)

A spare raincoat hangs from Kei’s arm, a thin green one that he hasn’t worn in a while. It had taken a while to convince his mother that it was for Yamaguchi and not for some girl at school, and then even longer for Akiteru to stop teasing him. Of course it was “platonically”, what else would it be?

When Yamaguchi catches sight of him from the other side of the street where their paths cross, he waves enthusiastically.

“Tsukki!” he shouts as he darts across the wet pavement, ducking underneath Kei’s umbrella. Yamaguchi is always his most chipper in the morning, and despite the headache it often brings him, Kei envies his ability to be so… awake.

“Don’t run, you’ll get all wet,” Kei says as he passes Yamaguchi the windbreaker, to which he lights up at.

“Don’t worry, a car splashed me when it passed. There was a huge puddle right by the curb where I was walking, so that’s covered already,” Yamaguchi replies cheerfully as they start down the road. Green is a nice color on him, Kei thinks distractedly as he watches Yamaguchi put on the coat. “Just my socks are wet. I think that’s a new record.”

Kei frowns slightly as he looks at Yamaguchi. His freckles are more prominent than they have been in the past month, with spring coming in. It looks… right, somehow, like Yamaguchi and freckles are intertwined with each other. One cannot be without the other.

His train of thought is interrupted by Yamaguchi bumping him with his shoulder. “—Join our planet, Tsukki,” he teases lightly, his brow furrowed. “What are you thinking about?”

’You’, Kei wants to say, but that’s a little too strange, even for himself. “That English exam we have today,” he says instead.

Yamaguchi’s eyes widen as he drags a hand down the side of his face, groaning. “I’m so gonna fail,” he laments.

Kei eyes him, mildly amused. “We’ve had three English exams so far, and you’ve passed all of them. You were not even remotely close to failing, actually.”

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi defends, “but that was before. What if this one is different?”

“I highly doubt that.”

Yamaguchi laughs, a bright little thing, and it lights something in Kei’s chest, warm against the chill. The two of them continue up the hill towards Sakanoshita Market, leaving behind two twin trails of footsteps in the mud.

Their walk to school is shorter than usual, both of them eager to get out of the rain. Sugawara opens the door for them when they arrive at the gymnasium for morning practice. “Good morning! Don’t worry, it’s a lot warmer in here, I know you’re probably freezing your asses off,” he reassures them.

Kei pulls off his jacket when they reach the locker room, setting his bag and the umbrella down next to Yamaguchi’s things. He tries his best not to stare at the glimpses of freckled skin as he changes from his school uniform to something looser for practice.

Coach Ukai stands by the whiteboard as the rest of the Karasuno team sits in a circle around him. He draws out a new play he wants them to try out with a dry-erase marker, but Kei isn’t really listening. He’s more focused on the way he and Yamaguchi are sitting so close that their shoulders brush with the slightest movement.

Oh well. He’ll probably figure out what’s going on when they start playing.

The rest of morning practice follows as typical. Kei doesn’t find himself paying attention so closely. He does eventually figure out the play Coach Ukai was talking about earlier, after Kageyama bothers him about it.

Instead, he finds himself following the line of Yamaguchi’s jaw, the way the volleyball connects with the heel of his palm, the way the corners of his amber-colored eyes crinkle just slightly when he smiles.

The realization hits him like a semi-truck straight to the solar plexus.

I’m in love with Yamaguchi.

Yeah. He’s fucked.

Kei tries not to think about it.

Which, as he finds out, is growing more and more difficult as the minutes pass.

He clicks his pen for what’s probably seventh time that minute as his teacher drones on about a new math formula they’d learned. He can’t find it in him to pay attention, and it doesn’t help that he’s already finished the rest of the page.

It feels like a breath of relief when the bell rings for lunch. He leans over to zip open his backpack, pulling out a sandwich wrapped in plastic wrap out of the bottom of his bag. Yamaguchi’s desk scrapes against the linoleum floor as he moves it down closer to Kei’s, as they usually do when they eat lunch. 

Yamaguchi wrinkles his nose when he opens his bento. “I hate tomatoes,” he mutters as he prods at them in the corner of the container with his finger, a little heap of cherry tomatoes. “Shit. I think I might’ve grabbed the wrong one this morning.”

Kei looks down at the tomatoes, his eyes flicking back up to meet Yamaguchi’s. “I can take them,” he offers, his voice quiet.

Yamaguchi’s eyes light up, honey-colored and warm. “Really? You’d do that?”

Truth be told, Kei isn’t so fond of tomatoes. He’ll eat them if he’s given them, but that’s about as far as his liking for them goes.

Despite all this, he says, “Yeah. Give them here.”

Yamaguchi smiles at him as he does so, handful by handful. Kei wonders how he never realized before, how he never noticed the smooth curve of Yamaguchi’s smile, the constellations his freckles form on his cheeks.

Kei has heard about the regular symptoms of falling in love, of butterflies in your stomach and anxiety in your veins. He’s seen them in those low-quality movies, witnessed them firsthand when Akiteru had developed a crush on a girl in his calculus class when he was in his second year of high school. It’s just never been something Kei has ever really experienced himself.

But now, he’s realizing, he feels none of that. There’s no fluttering in his stomach when he sits next to Yamaguchi, no anxiety to be found during their easy conversations. Instead, there’s warmth settling in his bones, languid and fond and familiar. There’s his heart beating in his chest, racing to the rhythm of Yamaguchi’s laugh.

Most of all, there’s love, and that’s how Kei knows he’s truly doomed.

Yamaguchi gains four new freckles that July.

The training camp with the schools in Tokyo is strenuous, to say the least. Karasuno keeps losing, no matter how many times Hinata and Kageyama use their freak quick. If he’s being honest, Kei’s getting seriously tired of doing diving saves and running laps in the sun.

Summertime brushes Yamaguchi’s light tawny skin like a kind breeze. Freckles form on his face, little spots joining the old ones. They dance when he smiles.

With Kei, it’s more like a typhoon.

“You’re sunburned all over your shoulders,” Yamaguchi comments. He’s sitting on his heels across from Kei on his futon, his brow furrowed as he reaches forward to run a hand over the usually pale skin, pink from the burn. It stings under Yamaguchi’s fingertips.

Light from the sunrise spills into the room where Karasuno has been staying for the duration of the camp. Futons cover nearly the entirety of the floor, accompanied by their bags littered haphazardly wherever they could find unoccupied space.

It’s quiet — unusually so. Kei has always been a light sleeper and Yamaguchi wakes up earlier than most people, which leaves the both of them awake before the rest of the team. Kei doesn’t mind the silence.

(He doesn’t mind the company, either.)

Kei huffs, frowning at him. “I burn easily. You know this.”

Yamaguchi laughs as he digs around in his duffel bag, eventually fishing out a bottle of sunscreen. There’s a brand new freckle on Yamaguchi’s ring finger, right underneath his cuticle, and Kei keeps note of it as Yamaguchi pops open the cap.

“Here, I’ll- um, that is, if you want me to,” Yamaguchi offers, his voice trailing off into just above a whisper, unsure. 

“If you’ll let me” goes unsaid.

Kei stares at Yamaguchi’s hands, speckled with sunspots, before flicking back to his copper eyes. “Okay,” he says. “Go ahead.”

Yamaguchi nods, and Kei shifts on the futon until his back is facing him. There’s a pause — Yamaguchi hesitating, Kei’s sure of it — and then there’s the softness of Yamaguchi’s palms against his sunburned skin.

They don’t talk; Kei doesn’t quite trust himself to say anything. The only noise is the chirping of the cicadas outside in the dawn, the faint sound of the wind rustling the reeds.

Yamaguchi’s touch is like gossamer, fleeting. He’s gentle, and Kei wants nothing more than to pull him closer, to count all of the freckles on his face and arms and knees. To know what it’s like to be loved by him.

“Done,” Yamaguchi says lightly, interrupting Kei’s train of thought. Then he offers Kei the bottle of sunscreen awkwardly. “Uh- you could probably get your face yourself.”

“Right,” Kei manages as he takes it from him, desperately trying not to think about Yamaguchi’s lithe hands cupping his jaw. (He fails, of course. He’s become predictable, hasn’t he?) “Thanks.”

Yamaguchi nods, humming. “Maybe we won’t lose today,” he muses as he stands.

“I doubt it.” Kei frowns as he searches for his kneepads in his bag, buried by spare clothes and rolls of athletic tape. “Hinata and Kageyama have been out of it all week.”

“Lower your voice, they’ll hear you,” Yamaguchi warns, grinning as he laces up his shoes.

“Please,” Kei says with a dismissive wave of his hand, smearing sunscreen across his cheekbone with the other. “Hinata sleeps like a log. And Kageyama’s not much better.”

Yamaguchi claps a hand over his mouth to muffle his bright laughter, trying not to wake anyone up. Kei hides a smile of his own as he gets up, looking away.

Fukurodani beats Karasuno later that day with a two-point lead on them. Karasuno runs another lap up the hill.

Kei gets another sunburn. Yamaguchi gets another freckle.

“Is she seriously giving us an exam, like, right when we get back from summer break?”

Kei sits at his desk in the corner of his bedroom and thumbs at the corner of the page he’s on of one of his books, one about animal biology that’s been gathering dust on his shelf since March. Meanwhile, Yamaguchi sits on the other end of the phone, studying for a geography quiz they have coming up.

“If you study, you’ll surely pass,” Kei replies, half-paying attention as he turns to the next chapter.

“What else do I possibly need to know?” counters Yamaguchi, his words rough from the connection. “I know the way to school and back, to Shimada Mart and Sakanoshita. I know the way to your house.”

Kei tries to pretend like this last sentence does not affect him as he reads the word ‘the’ on the page over and over and over, his brain stumbling.

(He horribly, horribly fails.)

“It’s probably good to know more than just four locations, Tadashi,” he says instead.

“Shut up.” There’s a quiet sigh, and then the shutting of a textbook. “I give up on this. What are you doing, Tsukki?”

“Reading,” Kei tells him. “Did you know lobsters are cannibals?”

“No, I did not,” is Yamaguchi’s exasperated answer, “and I actually probably could have lived my entire life peacefully without knowing that information.”

“You’re welcome.”

Yamaguchi laughs, and its warmth isn’t lost over the connection. Kei huffs out a laugh of his own, keeping his thumb between the pages where he left off and closing the book to see how much farther he has until the end.

“I can’t believe qualifiers are coming up.” Kei hears rustling and the squeak of a bedframe and assumes that Yamaguchi must have moved from his office chair to his bed. “I’m so nervous, are you?”

Kei hums noncommittally. “We’ll be playing Seijoh again.”

“Right,” Yamaguchi says, and his voice is unsure, wavering. Kei’s brow furrows, remembering when Yamaguchi had been brought onto the court as a pinch server, when the volleyball had caught the net instead of flying over.

“You’re thinking about our last match with them, at the preliminaries, aren’t you?” Kei says, before he can stop himself.

“Tsukki…?” Yamaguchi trails off, and Kei takes this as a sign to keep going.

“Look, I’m not Suga-san, and I’m definitely not Daichi-san,” he continues, fiddling with the spine of his book. “But Tadashi, I know you. You’re passive, and kind of foolish, sometimes—”

“This is really making me feel better, thanks,” deadpans Yamaguchi, but Kei isn’t finished, not quite.

“—but you’re also hardworking, and a damn good pinch server at that. I told you, before…” He pauses, slightly shocked by his own outburst. “…you’re really cool, Tadashi.”

There’s a tense silence following this, and Kei contemplates hitting the ‘End Call’ button just to escape it. But then there’s the sound of Yamaguchi’s soft laugh, barely audible over the phone call.

“You know, I never believed for one second that you’re the sour person people make you out to be,” he says, and his tone is fond, easy. “You’re something else, Tsukki.”

“That’s definitely a roundabout way of putting it.”

“It was a compliment—”

“Yamaguchi, nice serve!” Sugawara calls as Yamaguchi tosses the volleyball up, the heel of his wrist connecting with it and sending it over the net.

The ball wavers in its path, characteristic of a float serve, until it falls towards the right. Tanaka leans to receive it, staggering back slightly with the force of the ball. Kageyama reaches up, setting it to Asahi from across the court.

Kei eyes the ball, darting to the left. Kageyama usually sets it closer to the net for Asahi. If he times it just right…

He jumps up with his arms raised to block the spike. The volleyball slams against deft fingers, and—

“Oh, fuck—”

Pain shoots through his fingertips down to his palm, and he cringes as he lands harshly on the flat of his feet. Everyone pauses where they are, and Kei can feel their eyes on him boring holes into his skin. The volleyball bounces to the ground, forgotten.

Asahi is the first one to speak, his eyes widening. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—”

Coach Ukai stands up, coming over to the scene. “What’s going on?”

“I think I sprained my finger,” Kei mutters through gritted teeth. He offers his hand to Coach Ukai for him to see, and he hums.

“Yeah, that’s a sprain. Fuckin’ annoying things, they are. Sit out for the rest of today, kid, yeah?” Coach Ukai pats him on the shoulder solidly, and Kei nods, heading over to the bench.

The practice match ends shortly afterwards, as they were already close to match point before Kei had injured himself. Daichi’s team wins by a couple points or so, to the chagrin of Sugawara on the opposite side. Kei is pretty sure Asahi is five seconds away from crying out of pure guilt, and Nishinoya follows him around while repeating reassurances.

“Asahi, it’s fine, it’ll heal,” Nishinoya is saying in the locker room as Kei pulls on a clean shirt. Asahi groans as Nishinoya pats him on the back.

“I injured him, Noya, oh God, I’m gonna have to quit volleyball forever—”

“Again?” Daichi teases, eyebrows raised.

“Asahi, get your head out of your dramatic ass,” Sugawara adds lightly from the other side of the room. Tanaka can be heard loudly cackling.

Kei laces his shoes gingerly, trying to avoid worsening his sprained fingers. Still, it doesn’t stop him from hissing out a curse between his gritted teeth every time his hands so much as move.

When he looks up, Yamaguchi is standing there, a roll of athletic tape in his palm. “Ennoshita-san had some spare,” he says. “He says you should tape your fingers.”

Kei nods, reaching out to take it from him as he sits down. “Thanks, I’ll…”

He trails off as Yamaguchi sits next to him, cross-legged, and takes his hand carefully in his palm, his head tilted in a silent question of ‘where?’.

Oh. Okay.

“Third and fourth,” Kei says faintly, still trying to regain himself. Yamaguchi nods, letting go of him to pick at the end of the tape. “You know, you really don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Yamaguchi cuts him off. There’s determination in his gaze, and Kei swallows.

In the end, he begrudgingly offers him his injured hand, looking away. Yamaguchi blinks in surprise as he takes it, as if taken aback by his own sudden show of stubbornness. Blush threatens to creep up Kei’s neck, and he desperately tries to make it dissipate by pure strength of will.

Yamaguchi pulls off a length of tape about as long as his forearm, tearing it with his teeth. He presses Kei’s third and fourth fingers together, and Kei winces at the pain at his knuckles. Gingerly, Yamaguchi wraps the tape around and around Kei’s fingers reaching just under his nails, holding them in place together.

“It’s done,” Yamaguchi says, looking at him. “Does it feel alright?”

Kei shrugs noncommittally, rubbing his knuckles and flexing his fingers and attempting to placate his heartbeat. “Mm, seems fine to me.” Then he nods towards the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

It takes a few moments for them to get their things together, the rustling of their bags the only sound as Yamaguchi puts on his jacket. Kei lingers by the doorway, subconsciously waiting for Yamaguchi to come with him.

It’s like instinct. Wherever Kei is, Yamaguchi is often there, too.

The sun is setting, and the sky is reddish-orange. Practices have been later than usual recently, in preparation for the qualifiers in just a few weeks. Yamaguchi’s amber eyes look golden in the sunlight, and Kei allows himself to stare, if only for a moment.

They pass by Sakanoshita Market, where Kei can hear Kageyama and Hinata bickering from inside. Hinata’s bicycle rests against the side of the shop next to two bags sitting on the ground, one of them turned on its side. When Hinata sees them, he waves through the shop window. Yamaguchi gives him a thumbs-up, while Kei just rolls his eyes.

Then Yamaguchi elbows him in the ribs, and Kei sighs, shoulders rising and falling. He gives a reluctant wave of his own, making Hinata grin wider. He is then immediately distracted by something Kageyama says, which throws the two into another squabble.

Yamaguchi snickers. “Look at them go,” he murmurs. “If they keep that up they’ll argue themselves into an early grave.”

Kei shrugs. “Eh. Means less problems for me.”

“Practice would be a lot quieter, that’s for sure.”

Yamaguchi leans against him as he laughs, which does wonders for the little bonfire in Kei’s ribcage. He scoffs out a laugh of his own as they reach the bottom of the hill and into their neighborhood.

“Hey, uh… thanks for taping my fingers for me,” Kei says as they cross the street, his voice quiet. Then he looks at Yamaguchi sideways. “But you know I can do it myself, right? I’m not that incompetent.”

Yamaguchi turns a little pink, his cheekbones coloring prettily. “Of course. You’re right, sor—”

Kei feels himself smile, and it comes so natural with Yamaguchi in a way that’s like with no one else. It only serves to fuel the growing fire in his chest, blazing fervently.

“I’m kidding,” Kei says with a roll of his eyes. “God, Tadashi.”

“Sorry, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says sheepishly with a smile of his own, but Kei waves him off, humming.

“You apologize too much,” he says. Yamaguchi opens his mouth, and Kei knows him well enough to know that he’s about to apologize again. And so he adds, “Don’t say it.”

Yamaguchi pauses. Then—

“Sorry, Tsukki.”

“For the love of God…”

Yamaguchi laughs a little, bumping Kei with his shoulder lightheartedly. It’s nice, Kei thinks to himself. The gentle familiarity that comes with knowing someone.

The streetlights begin to turn on as the two reach the point where their routes diverge, with the sky leaving only scarlet remnants of the earlier sunset. Yamaguchi bids him goodbye, the outer corners of his eyes wrinkling just a little as his familiar smile tugs at his features, leaving Kei reeling as he waves back.

He loves him; this is not a novel revelation, yet he feels the same sort of twinge thinking about it now and when he had first realized it. Kei’s fingertips ache, and it spreads down through to his forearms and into his veins.

But there’s nothing he can do about it, he knows. He’d be kidding himself if he thought there was, tricking himself into believing a childish delusion. And he has no interest in doing that.

So Kei moves on the only way he knows how, and keeps walking.

Spring arrives, and so does graduation.

The mere thought of it leaves a bittersweet taste in Kei’s mouth. Things will change; he has long acquainted himself with this immutable fact. But among the dregs of worry that trouble him is a small flicker of hope for the future, for what comes next.

The second-years have already appointed the new team captain for the upcoming volleyball season: Ennoshita, as Kei had already guessed. He’s glad for it though; the thought of the ever-unpredictable Nishinoya as team captain makes his stomach churn. Tanaka is chosen as Ennoshita’s vice captain, and Yachi becomes Karasuno’s sole manager.

(Upon finding out he was picked for the role, Tanaka had taken off his shirt and swung it around in the air above his head in celebration while Nishinoya ran excited laps around the gymnasium, to everyone else’s mild horror.

“Put your shirt back on,” Ennoshita had said, closing his eyes as if this experience alone had taken several years off of his lifespan.)

Kei receives the yearbook in the morning among the other first-years in his class. None of them are all that crazy about signing each other’s, knowing that they’ll all be back in just about a month. He flips through pages and pages of individual photos of people he’s never talked to, through group photos for all the clubs he’s never joined. Eventually, he reaches the boys’ volleyball picture, just above the photo for the girls’ team.

Kei runs his fingers over the picture, all of them standing in order of their jersey numbers. He vaguely remembers taking it, remembers Takeda-sensei taking five minutes just setting up the camera until Coach Ukai had gotten up from his chair to help him out. He remembers Hinata complaining about being in the back row, and Sugawara pestering them all to smile.

He finds himself between Hinata to the left and Yamaguchi to the right. His lips are pulled down in a slight frown, despite Sugawara’s pointed reminders. Yamaguchi, on the other hand, is smiling — it’s not quite one of his wide grins that Kei has gotten accustomed to, but a smaller one, most likely just to appease Sugawara. His freckles are faint from the reduced quality of the photo, but Kei thinks he likes it better this way, where Yamaguchi’s freckles remain something only he can look at.

This newfound selfishness tugs at something in Kei’s chest, and his brow furrows as he shuts the yearbook. He’ll have to examine that further later.

The bell rings, signaling the end of classes. Everyone gets up in a rush, eager to escape the stuffy confines of the classroom. Kei lingers there until his gaze reaches Yamaguchi like a gravitational pull.

The boys’ volleyball team gathers in the club room for one last unofficial practice. The third-years go around signing their underclassmen’s yearbooks, and Yachi is red enough to rival a tomato when Shimizu gives her a hug. Daichi squeezes Ennoshita’s shoulder gently with a smile as they line up to bow.

“Thank you for everything!”

Their second year of high school starts only a few weeks after, and volleyball practices with it. Karasuno’s boys’ volleyball team receives three new first-years on the team that year. They’re all full of spirit and eager to play, a little too excitable for Kei’s liking. One of them is especially adept at defense, and Kei had heard Nishinoya planning to teach him the Rolling Thunder on his way out of the locker room. 

Things will change; he has long acquainted himself with this immutable fact. People leave, people return. The flowers bloom.

Kei moves on, just like the rest of the world.

“I hate math,” Yamaguchi groans.

Kei is sprawled out on his bed, his math homework laid out on the sheets among his textbooks for his other classes. His phone is propped up against the pillows, where he can hear Yamaguchi complaining.

There’s a clattering noise as one of Kei’s pencils tumbles off his comforter and onto the floor, and he mumbles a swear as he leans over to pick it up.

“It’s not so bad,” Kei says when he’s retrieved it, scrawling out a long decimal on the page.

“You’re only saying that because it’s your best subject.”

Kei hums noncommittally. “Did you get five for the third one on the back?”

“There’s a back?”

Kei can’t help but laugh a little as he listens to the hurried shuffling of paper on the other end of the phone, slightly crackled from the less-than-desirable connection. It is then promptly followed by a string of curses.

“Fuck me,” Yamaguchi laments, and it’s muffled. Kei thinks it’s from Yamaguchi dejectedly pressing his face into the pillow.

“I’d rather not.” Kei erases the seven he had just written with the other end of his pencil when he notices it looked more like a one. “Did you get five?” he repeats.

“I would love to give you an answer, if you would let me do the actual problem.”

A few minutes pass as Yamaguchi solves it, and Kei listens to the faint scratch of lead against paper. Yamaguchi’s humming a song, something soft and lilting that Kei doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t dare speak; instead he lies there listening, pointedly ignoring the way it lights a match in his ribcage.

“I got seven,” Yamaguchi answers when he’s finished.

Kei mulls over his work. His math usually isn’t wrong, he usually does it all in his head and it comes out correct, but there’s always a chance—

“I divided wrong,” he tells Yamaguchi when he’s caught his mistake. “You’re right.”

Yamaguchi makes a little surprised noise. “Never thought I’d hear those words out of your mouth.”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry, Tsukki,” says Yamaguchi, not sounding one bit sorry at all.

Kei’s analog clock on the wall ticks steadily as they work through the rest of the math homework. His open curtains let the afternoon sunlight through until it dims with the sun falling below the horizon. The sunset paints the sky orange and pink, the backdrop for the bare trees in the wintertime.

He catches Yamaguchi humming again, when they’ve moved on to their English assignment. It’s a different song than before, a slower melody this time, and Kei finds himself pausing in his writing to listen. He catches bits and pieces of the lyrics, some broken-up Japanese in between.

The comfortable silence is eventually punctuated by Yamaguchi’s yawn, when the sun has long set, replaced by the moon and the stars. They’ve been done with their homework for hours now, but Kei doesn’t mind the company.

“Go to sleep,” Kei says, his own eyelids feeling heavy as he rests his chin on his pillow.

“You saying that makes me want to stay up even longer,” retorts Yamaguchi, but the bite of his words is lost as his voice dips with another yawn.

“My phone is about to die.” As he says this, it buzzes with a notification that he has five percent of battery left. “Please go to bed.”

“Boring,” Yamaguchi complains, his voice a rough drawl from drowsiness. “Good night, Tsukki.”

Kei hums. “Night, Tadashi.”

Kei knows exactly what day it is when he wakes up.

There’s a considerable cluster of valentines and gifts on his desk when he arrives at school by Yamaguchi’s side, by no means monumental but not insignificant, either. Kei files through them methodically, setting the letters, of varying lengths, aside and keeping the chocolates for later.

Yamaguchi receives exactly four confessions that day, and Kei counts each one, keeping a record in a little folder in his mind. If he’s being honest, he isn’t wholly surprised. Yamaguchi has always been pretty, but recently, his shoulders have broadened slightly and he’s gotten a few centimeters taller. He’s… grown into himself, Kei thinks.

The first confession in Kei’s record is from a short brunette girl, who offers him a rose and a box of chocolates. Kei watches Yamaguchi’s reaction carefully, dissects the way his brows shoot up just slightly in surprise and how his lips curve into an apologetic smile when he rejects her.

The second is another girl nearly as tall as Yamaguchi. Her hair is dark with thin, wispy bangs, her eyes pale green. She gifts him another box of chocolates, a smaller rectangle-shaped one that Yamaguchi cradles in his hands like a wounded bird. Her face falls almost inconspicuously when Yamaguchi rejects her as well, and perhaps this is just Kei’s imagination, but her gaze drifts over to him standing by Yamaguchi’s side as she nods, understanding.

The third is not in person, but rather a letter from someone anonymous, left on Yamaguchi’s desk during lunch. Yamaguchi doesn’t allow Kei to read it (“That’s so unromantic, Tsukki!”), but Kei observes the crease between Yamaguchi’s eyebrows, the blush that creeps up on the tips of his ears.

At Kei’s raised eyebrow, Yamaguchi says, “The word choice is definitely, um… creative.”

“Probably for the best they remained anonymous?” 

Yamaguchi laughs as he folds the letter, delicately sliding it back into the envelope. “If I wrote something like this, I would, too.”

The fourth is at the end of the day, as if the person had spent the entire day mustering their courage. A girl manages to catch Yamaguchi when he and Kei are walking out of school, her face flushed red despite not having said anything yet. She doesn’t make eye contact the entire time, staring at her shoes as she shoves a rather large box of chocolates into Yamaguchi’s hands. She looks on the verge of crying when Yamaguchi rejects her.

“You rejected all of them,” Kei notes, when he and Yamaguchi are walking home together, like they always do. “You didn’t like a single one of those girls?”

“Not really,” Yamaguchi says with a shrug. Then, with hesitation, “I’m… kind of. Already. With someone else.”

The words feel like a dagger straight into Kei’s side. “Dating?” he manages between his rapid heartbeats.

Yamaguchi shakes his head furiously, the tips of his ears turning pink beneath his hair. “No! No, you would be the first one to know if I was,” he assures him quickly. He sighs. “I don’t think they even like me back.”

The mere possibility of Yamaguchi facing unrequited love is unfathomable to Kei, but perhaps that is just his heart talking for him.

“And if I’m being honest,” Yamaguchi continues quietly, “I’m not, um. That into girls?” The words lilt up into a question, unsure.

Kei’s heart jumps up and into his throat at that, his heart rate spiking for a fraction of a second. “Neither am I,” he admits, his voice just as faint.

Yamaguchi’s eyes go wide for an instant, and if Kei hadn’t been paying attention he probably wouldn’t have caught it. Silence falls upon them like a blanket.

“Hey, I got a ton of chocolate today. If you come over, we can share,” Kei tells Yamaguchi after a moment, who lights up.

“Oh, sure, Tsukki!”

This is how Kei finds himself in his living room on Valentine’s Day, homework spread unceremoniously across the kotatsu next to several opened boxes of Valentine’s chocolate. Kei eats all the strawberry-flavored ones, which Yamaguchi teases him for from his spot at the bench in front of the piano shoved in the corner of the room. 

Kei mutters a string of numbers under his breath as he jots down a decimal, quickly drawing a line over the last two numbers to indicate that it repeats. He frowns. That doesn’t seem right, it should be—

His train of thought is promptly interrupted by a mangled chord ringing out from under Yamaguchi’s fingertips. Kei cringes.

“Harmonious,” Kei quips dryly as he stands up, and Yamaguchi shifts down the bench to make room for him to sit.

“Okay, well, I only know Ode to Joy, and that’s about where my abilities end.”

“Are you sure? That chord you played just now sounded pretty good to me.”

“Shut up.” Kei huffs a laugh as Yamaguchi swats at his arm blithely. “Like you could do better,” he says with a roll of his eyes.

“I could, actually,” Kei corrects him, and Yamaguchi sighs exasperatedly.

“So play something.”

“I haven’t touched this piano since I was thirteen, Tadashi.” It’s true — the instrument serves more for decoration than anything nowadays. He plays every now and again, when his mother makes him when they have guests over, but his already little passion for it has dwindled down over the years.

But Yamaguchi is already opening the drawer of the table beside the piano, thumbing through the dusty books filled with pages and pages of pieces, some he’s learned and others he hasn’t. Eventually he selects a thicker one at the bottom of the pile, flicking through until he picks one of the songs at random, and Kei decides that if it’s Yamaguchi asking he doesn’t mind as much.

“‘Les ombres de lune sur la montagne’,” Yamaguchi reads off from the top of the page, his accent jumbling the French words a little. He props it up against the music stand. “Sounds fancy. Do you know this one?”

“Vaguely,” Kei says, but he’s settling his right foot on the damper pedal anyway.

He’s certainly rusty; it shows through his playing. His hands have grown since he’d learned it, and he doesn’t quite have to bend over backwards to reach the octaves anymore. But the key signature is, frankly, atrocious to read and the counter rhythms have him squinting at the sheet music.

And then there’s the problem of Yamaguchi sitting next to him, too close for Kei’s heartbeat to handle. Their elbows brush together as Kei reaches up the piano for the higher notes, and it trips him up a little every time, his fingers fumbling to play the correct melody. He’ll be lucky if his heart doesn’t burst a hole through his ribs by the end of the song.

The piece ends in a quiet chord as his left hand drifts up to treble clef. It rings out in the silence, a simple fragility.

“Beautiful,” Yamaguchi says quietly, and Kei almost wishes the word was directed at him and not the song. Almost.

“I messed up a lot.”

Yamaguchi jabs him in the side with his elbow. “It’s fine, I didn’t notice.”

Kei continues on anyway, pointing at the places he had screwed up, starting with the middle of the second page. “Measure fifteen,” he says, “meas—”

“Tsukki.”

“—ure twenty seven, measure forty four…”

“Oh my God. You did fine.”

Kei scoffs out a laugh as Yamaguchi reaches out a freckled hand to play a discombobulated chord.

“Careful,” deadpans Kei, “if you keep that up you might surpass me.”

“I’m practically Mozart.” He plays yet another horribly jarring combination of notes, and Kei’s not really sure if there’s any rhyme or reason to it anymore. “Yamaguchi Mozart,” Yamaguchi muses, and it’s accompanied by one more cacophony.

“His first name was Wolfgang, actually.”

“Wow, that’s unfortunate.”

Yamaguchi leans against his shoulder a little the way he sometimes does when he laughs, and the painfully casual contact might just be enough to send Kei into cardiac arrest.

His heart makes itself known, beating wildly underneath his fingertips. Kei wonders if Yamaguchi would be able to feel it if he touched him, the pounding of it beneath the skin. He’s not really sure if he wants Yamaguchi to feel it, if he wants him to know the truth his treacherous heart betrays for him.

No matter what he doesn’t say, his heartbeat, uninhibited in his chest, says it for him.

Kei’s third year of high school creeps up on him like a shadow.

The departure of Ennoshita and the other third-years is just as bittersweet as the year before. Nishinoya performs one last Rolling Thunder as a proper send-off, which earns the praise of no one except Hinata, of course, as well their new underclassman libero and Yachi, the latter most likely out of pity. Kei receives the yearbook once more, and the third-years happily sign it on the last day of classes.

Yamaguchi is unanimously elected as team captain, with Kageyama by his side as his vice. Kei was originally offered the role of vice captain, but turned it down immediately. 

“Why not?” Yamaguchi had asked him.

Kei had just leveled him with a stare. “Yamaguchi, if you think that I would be a good vice captain,” he had said, “your stupidity would rival Hinata’s.”

“Hey!” Hinata had shouted upon hearing his name.

So Kageyama had gotten the role instead.

It’s more fitting this way; Yamaguchi is more fit to boost morale and encourage their kouhai to improve with every coming day. He’s kind, approachable. Kageyama, rather, is better with the technical aspects of volleyball, explaining the plays concisely and supplying Yamaguchi with the practical terms when he comes up at a loss.

(The thought of Kageyama attempting to encourage the team is more unnerving than anything else.)

Hinata becomes the ace (and subsequently more insufferable), or at least as close to an ace he can be with Karasuno’s unconventional playing style, like he’s always wanted. Karasuno’s boys’ volleyball team receives four more players from the incoming class. None of them are all that outstanding, at least not to Kei, but neither was he when he first started playing volleyball, as Yamaguchi had pointed out to him when he’d told him so. In order to fill the gaps left by Tanaka and Ennoshita, a few more of the underclassmen are promoted to being regular players on the court.

“You all have great potential,” Yamaguchi says on the first day of practice when he addresses their new players, after they’ve all stretched. His eyes are bright, his posture confident, and Kei feels an unexplainable surge of pride in his chest. “As long as you don’t follow Hinata’s example, you will all be just fine.”

“Hey! I’m a great player!” Hinata protests.

“I meant as a person. Anyway,” Yamaguchi continues pointedly, “any questions can be directed to me, Kageyama, or Coach Ukai and Takeda-sensei. Thank you.”

Coach Ukai shifts over to explain the drills they’ll be doing for practice that day as Yamaguchi takes his seat next to Kei, as he always does.

“How was I?” Yamaguchi asks, leaning closer to whisper in his ear.

“You were… really great,” Kei answers honestly, his voice equally quiet. “I mean it, Tadashi. You’re really cool.”

Yamaguchi practically beams at him, and Kei wants him to do that all the time. He wants to be the reason he does that all the time. Yamaguchi opens his mouth to respond, but—

“—Hey, lovebirds!” Coach Ukai shouts, effectively putting an end to their conversation. “Practice is starting now. And Captain, no playing favorites.”

Yamaguchi just smiles sheepishly, but Kei notes with a rapidly increasing heart rate that he makes no move to deny it. He’ll have to examine that later. “Sorry, Coach,” Yamaguchi says.

Coach Ukai just waves them off gruffly. “It’s your starting serve. Go play, or whatever.”

Yamaguchi’s time of being a pinch server has refined his jump float serves into something to marvel at. It soars over the net once it connects with the heel of Yamaguchi’s palm, wavering in its path until it falls to the right.

One of the second-years darts to receive it, breaking the formation of the other team. Kei smiles to himself as he moves down the court, his knees bent in preparation to jump.

Serve-and-block.

Yachi moves to change the scoreboard.

Inevitably, with Kei’s last year of high school comes the long-dreaded question:

“What are you planning on doing once you graduate?”

It’s not so much that Kei hates people for asking it; he can’t blame them for being curious about his future. It’s more so that he hates thinking about it, because then it brings the problem of Yamaguchi.

People drift apart after high school, Kei knows this. It’s unavoidable, really, just simple distance decay. The further two things are, the less likely they are to interact. He’s turned this over and over in his mind, among all the words he’s left unsaid.

If Kei’s being honest, he’s afraid.

(That’s something else he’ll never say out loud.)

Kei flicks through the channels on the television in Yamaguchi’s living room, trying to find a documentary among the plethora of news stations. Yamaguchi sits next to him, spinning a volleyball between his palms to keep his idle hands busy. Their shoulders brush with the slightest movement, and if it were anyone else Kei would have shifted over by now.

But it’s Yamaguchi, and Kei has long acquainted himself with the undeniable fact that if it’s Yamaguchi, he doesn’t seem to mind it as much.

Then, of course, Yamaguchi asks him that dreaded question.

“What do you want to do after high school?” Yamaguchi asks him. Kei stops, the television momentarily pausing on a rather disinterested news anchor.

“Why are you asking me that?”

Yamaguchi shrugs, the volleyball stilling as he looks at Kei sideways. “You’re smart, Tsukki,” he says admiringly. “Really smart.”

Kei huffs a laugh. “I try not to think about it.” He goes back to skimming through the channels, continuing, “I might go to Sendai. It’s not so far away.”

Yamaguchi’s eyes widen. “We’ll be together.”

Kei’s brain stutters into shut-down. “What?” he manages.

“Sendai. I wanted to go there, too,” Yamaguchi clarifies with a breathless laugh. “You know, this whole time, I was worried about us drifting apart but… it doesn’t look like that’s a problem anymore.”

“And even then, you’re pretty hard to get rid of,” Kei teases, once his brain has caught up with reality. This gets him an elbow to the ribs. “Ow.”

“Sorry, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says with a cheeky smile, not sounding one bit apologetic at all. Kei rolls his eyes.

“I…” Kei swallows, thinking. “I want to keep playing volleyball,” he decides after a moment. “I want to study science.” And I want to be with you.

Yamaguchi’s eyes brighten as he prompts Kei to elaborate. “Chemistry? Physics?”

“Biology,” Kei says immediately. “That’s what… I think that’s what I want to do.” Heat crawls up the back of his neck, and he clears his throat. “What about you?”

Yamaguchi shrugs, leaning back against the pillows. “I’m not really sure yet,” he admits when he shifts. “My parents have been bugging me about it, but… I don’t know. Maybe literature? Or mathematics?”

“You’d be good at that,” Kei tells him truthfully. You’d be good at whatever you tried.

Yamaguchi turns a little pink. “You’re just saying that,” he says, glancing away.

“Tadashi, I’m not really in the habit of doing things I don’t feel like doing,” is Kei’s swift response. He thumbs the ‘next’ button on the remote, settling on a documentary about echinoderms. “You know that.”

“I know that,” Yamaguchi echoes, a small smile playing on his lips.

“So mean, Stingy-shima!” Hinata complains, muffled by a mouthful of pork bun. “Won’t you miss me?”

Kei stifles a sardonic laugh from his spot against the wall. “I’ll miss the entertainment, if anything.”

The Karasuno boys’ volleyball team lingers outside of Sakanoshita Market to round off the end of the season, nikuman in all of their hands (with the exception of Hinata, who had eaten all of his in one go). It’s a tradition that started with Daichi and the others in his year, built on by Ennoshita, and now continued by Yamaguchi and Kageyama.

Kei watches on amusedly as one of his underclassmen attempts to catch his nikuman in the air with his mouth. “They remind me of you,” he comments to Hinata.

Hinata puffs up with pride. “Thank you. I’m a great senpai.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

Kei tunes out Hinata’s objections as his gaze finds Yamaguchi instinctually. He’s standing by the counter inside of the shop, a wad of money in his palm. His hair has grown further past his ears, enough so that he’s able to tie some of it in a small ponytail, and his freckles—

“Are you ever gonna tell him?” Hinata asks Kei, interrupting his train of thought.

“Tell who what?”

Hinata rolls his eyes dramatically. “Tell Yamaguchi that you like him, stupid,” he says, and Kei thinks that Hinata’s being terribly hypocritical, but alright. “You guys are, like, straight out of a shoujo. Well, maybe not straight. The point is—”

Kei raises an eyebrow at him. “And you’re so familiar with shoujo manga because…?”

Hinata shrugs. “Kageyama reads them sometimes. Oh shit, don’t tell him I told you that. The point is,” he repeats, flushing, “when are you gonna make a move?”

“Why are you so invested in my love life, exactly?”

“Kageyama and I have a bet,” Hinata admits, rubbing at the back of his neck. Kei scoffs.

Go figure.

The door of Sakanoshita Market swings open. “Are you being nice?” Yamaguchi teases Kei as he walks over, effectively ending Hinata and Kei’s earlier conversation. 

“Of course,” Kei says dryly. Hinata squawks in indignation.

“‘Nice’ my ass! Guess what, Yamaguchi, he won’t help me on my calculus test and he won’t even miss me when I go to Brazil!” Hinata is an array of flailing limbs as he usually is when he talks, and Kei leans out of the way to avoid getting smacked in the shoulder.

“It’s not my fault you suck at math,” is all Kei says as he finishes eating his nikuman.

“You’re proving my point!”

Yamaguchi shakes his head at their antics, laughing slightly to himself. “Maybe you could ask Yachi-san?” he offers.

Hinata lights up at the suggestion. “Great idea! Hey, Yacchan,” he calls to Yachi, who’s speaking with their new first-year manager, “will you help me study for calculus?”

“Um,” Yachi squeaks with a nervous smile, “sure?”

To this, Hinata pumps a triumphant fist in the air and nearly punches an approaching Kageyama, returning from the vending machine with a peach-flavored soda.

“Dumbass! Pay attention to your surroundings!” Kageyama chides him. This, predictably, throws the two into one of their usual tirades, and Kei sighs as he shifts so he and Yamaguchi are side by side.

“Feeling alright?” Yamaguchi asks, prodding him with his elbow lightly.

“Just can’t believe it’s almost over,” Kei tells him honestly, glancing away. Yachi has now abandoned her conversation with the other manager in favor of frantically trying to stop Hinata and Kageyama from bickering, and their underclassmen are up to their typical rowdy mischief in the remaining sunlight.

Yamaguchi hums, moving to lean against Kei’s arm but falters at the last moment as if thinking better of it, and Kei’s brow furrows at this observation. “I know the feeling,” says Yamaguchi softly. “But we’ll be together, yeah?”

Kei swallows, nodding. “Yeah.”

The streetlights begin to turn on as the sun sets, dipping beneath the horizon and coloring the sky red and yellow. Eventually, the team starts to disperse at the sight of the darkening sky, and Coach Ukai shoos them out of his shop with a yawn.

“See you all tomorrow!” Yachi exclaims, waving them goodbye, and Yamaguchi gives her a smile as he and Kei walk together in the same direction.

“Bye Yacchan! Bye Yamaguchi!” Hinata can be heard shouting in the distance. Then, significantly mellowed: “…Bye Tsukishima.”

Kei rolls his eyes as he looks away and at Yamaguchi, nodding to him. “Let’s get out of here?”

“Eager,” Yamaguchi remarks lightly, to which Kei scoffs out a laugh.

Both Kei and Yamaguchi have their driver’s licenses now, having turned eighteen only a few months ago. Akiteru had so graciously (his words, not Kei’s) insisted on giving them driving lessons, despite Kei’s pained objections. So pragmatically, there is really no reason for either of them to be walking home. But Kei likes the routine, likes the steadiness of the unchanged, and the fact that Yamaguchi is here walking next to him makes him think that he likes it, too.

The two of them fall into a comfortable silence as they head down the hill and towards their neighborhood. It’s one of the things Kei likes most about spending time with Yamaguchi; he never feels obligated to say anything the way he sometimes does when he’s around some of his other peers. Usually it’s Yamaguchi who does the talking, or they just enjoy each other’s company the way they do now.

It’s times like these that Kei quietly thinks about loving Yamaguchi, and how he’s pretty sure he’s never done anything but.

Yamaguchi wishes him good night, covering his mouth with the back of his hand to mask a yawn. Kei shifts a little as he watches Yamaguchi leave, rooted to the pavement.

Something nags at his mind, some sort of unfamiliar ache—

Kei reaches in front of him to catch Yamaguchi by the wrist, and Yamaguchi startles at the touch as he turns around to face him. “Is everything—” he starts, but—

Before he can realize what he’s doing and rationally stop himself, Kei leans forward to press his lips soundly to Yamaguchi’s.

The worst part about it is that it’s good. If he’s honest, Kei has never understood the appeal of kissing; what the hell could be so life-changing about touching your lips to someone else’s?

And yet, with Yamaguchi, he likes it. He likes the feeling, likes the perfect slot of their lips together like it was always meant to be. It’s quite the cruel joke, that the one thing Kei wants the most is simultaneously the one thing he cannot have.

Kei pulls away, just as quick as he had started. His veins turn to lead, coursing with something, something that Kei refuses to identify. He drops Yamaguchi’s wrist as if it had burned him.

“Uh- I’ll see you tomorrow, Yamaguchi,” he says, turning on his heel to head down to his street.

The only thing Kei hears before he leaves is Yamaguchi’s quiet, “See you… tomorrow.”

Kei pretends like it didn’t happen.

He and Yamaguchi walk to school together like they always do. Kei can’t help but feel a little comforted by the familiar routine, despite the whirlpool of anxiety that has decided to make a home for itself in the pit of his stomach.

Along with it is that same something lingering in him, some sort of foreign desire he’s not completely used to. He’s put it in its own category in his mind and shoved it to the back where he won’t have to think about it.

It’s fine. Kei has other things to worry about.

It doesn’t help that Yamaguchi is being uncharacteristically quiet. He’s always more talkative in the morning, which, for Kei, usually brings a whole new headache to his already sleep-addled mind. But right now, he wants Yamaguchi to talk to him more than ever, just to confirm that they’re okay.

So when his cell phone rings with an incoming call from Yamaguchi later that night, Kei accepts it.

Yamaguchi speaks immediately when Kei picks up, his voice breathless and urgent. There’s the rustle of footsteps and the sound of the wind. “Open your door.”

“What?” Kei sits up, his posture bolting straight and his eyes wide. “Are you running?”

“Yes,” Yamaguchi pants, “now open your door. I’m four minutes away, but I think I could make it three if I really sprint—”

“Tadashi—”

The call ends with a beep, and it rings out in the silence of Kei’s bedroom. 

Well. There’s no turning back now, he supposes.

The doorbell rings three minutes later, the sound insistent. “Kei, would you mind getting the door?” his mother shouts from the kitchen as he comes down the stairs.

“Sure, yeah,” he says, his voice too caught in his throat to say anything more. His heart thrums in his ears steadily, and Kei desperately tries to will his hands to stop shaking as he opens the door.

And of course, true to his word, standing there in the doorway is Yamaguchi.

“You didn’t open the door,” is what Yamaguchi starts with, his chest heaving and his dark hair damp from the light rain.

Kei swallows thickly. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think I’m doing here?” Then Yamaguchi gestures at the inside of Kei’s house. “This way, you can’t run away.”

“Again” goes unsaid, hanging in the air idly.

Yamaguchi’s gaze is firm when he holds his, sparks of stubbornness in his eyes. He’s bold, bolder than he used to be, and Kei would find it in him to be proud if he wasn’t so damn terrified.

Which is why Kei is the first one to break away from the eye contact, glancing at the glowing kitchen lights inside, at his mother by the sink.

“Come outside,” he tells Yamaguchi eventually. 

Shock flickers over Yamaguchi’s face as he nods, as if he wasn’t expecting Kei to say yes. Kei closes the door behind him as he slips past and onto his front lawn, with Yamaguchi following him. The rain has let up, momentarily pausing, and the grass is dewy.

“You’re angry with me,” Kei says. It’s not a question; he knows it’s true. There’s poignant frustration in Yamaguchi’s tawny eyes, and it’s palpable, like Kei could reach out and take it from him. It’s mixed with another emotion that Kei can’t identify. Usually, Kei can read Yamaguchi as easily as he can breathe, but there’s something he’s missing, something that would make everything else make sense…

“No shit,” Yamaguchi says brusquely, tilting his head up slightly to look him in the eye. He takes a step forward, and Kei steps back instinctively and onto the sidewalk. “You kissed me.”

“I won’t deny that,” answers Kei, fighting to keep his tone even. His hands are trembling again, and he clasps them behind his back to conceal them. “It happened.”

“Yeah, it did.” There’s a crease between Yamaguchi’s brows, and his fists are clenching and unclenching where they remain by his thighs. “You can’t do something like that, something so fucking reckless and not give me any time to respond!”

“I know, and I’m sorry—” Kei starts, but Yamaguchi cuts him off immediately, barrelling on.

“You can’t do something like that and run away,” Yamaguchi continues roughly, his voice lowering as he looks away, “not when I like you, you damned idiot, Kei—”

Kei startles at the use of his given name, and then the weight of Yamaguchi’s words hit him like a bag of sand, knocking the wind clean out of him. He gapes at Yamaguchi, whose shoulders are rising and falling steadily with each breath he takes, whose face is flushed pink.

“You…?” Kei asks, trailing off. He doesn’t dare speak the words into existence, in case doing so makes Yamaguchi change his mind. In case doing so makes them untrue.

“Yes,” says Yamaguchi emphatically, like it’s obvious. (Kei would tell him to give him a little more credit than that, but. Well.) “Yes, I like you.”

“But you said- in our second year,” Kei says, his brow furrowing as he remembers. “You liked someone.”

Yamaguchi laughs breathlessly. “Tsukki, that was you.”

“Oh.” Kei makes a mental note to stop hanging around Hinata and Kageyama so much, because at this rate he’s starting to believe that their idiocy is contagious. He glances at his front door, looking back at Yamaguchi. Then Kei holds out a hand experimentally, offering it to him. “Do you want to come inside?”

Yamaguchi brightens when he takes it, lacing their fingers together. Kei’s heart beats wildly in his chest as he stares at their intertwined hands, all tension melting from his shoulders. It’s good, he decides.

“Okay,” Yamaguchi says, and Kei leads him into the house and up the stairs into his bedroom. He doesn’t let go of Yamaguchi’s hand, and Yamaguchi doesn’t pull away, either.

The mattress dips beneath their weight as they sit on Kei’s bed in the lamplight. They’ve sat together like this on his bed numerous times before, but there’s something different about this time — maybe it’s the hurried rhythm of Kei’s heart. Maybe it’s their hands, entwined together.

“How long?” Yamaguchi asks him quietly.

Kei can feel blush creeping up his neck as he glances away. “Three years.”

Yamaguchi grins at him. “Five,” he says proudly.

“It’s not a competition, Tadashi,” Kei tells him, mildly amused.

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi concedes, “but it’s not often I get to beat you in something.”

Kei hums. There’s still doubt curling in his gut, pulling at him and tying his ribs into knots. 

Kei doesn’t take risks; he’s calculated, something he’s known for on and off the court. He thinks ahead, of every possible outcome and how to prevail over any obstacle.

But here, now, with Yamaguchi, for once, he’s willing to take the leap of faith. If only he could—

“—Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, and Kei realizes with a start that he’d been saying his name, “what’s on your mind?” He knocks their shoulders together lightly. “You think too much, you know.”

“Better than not thinking at all,” Kei mutters, eliciting a honeyed laugh from Yamaguchi.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Yamaguchi shifts to sit cross-legged so they’re facing each other on the bed. Kei tries to repress the hesitation bubbling up in his veins, tries to ignore the way he feels like an open wound. Vulnerable.

“…I’m just afraid,” Kei confesses quietly, staring at Yamaguchi’s freckled hands holding his own. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Well, don’t be,” Yamaguchi tells him, resolute, and Kei decides that he likes this side of him, determined and stubborn and steadfast. “You have me.”

Kei swallows, looking up to meet Yamaguchi’s warm amber eyes, like stained glass. “Do you want this?”

“I want you,” is what Yamaguchi says, and then he’s kissing him.

Yamaguchi kisses him the way he goes about all things — fervently, with all he has. He’s never been someone to act halfway, something that Kei used to find him foolish for, but learned to admire time and time again. It’s like coming home, in a way: in a world of variables, Yamaguchi remains the constant.

Yamaguchi holds him delicately, tracing his jawline with his fingertips, rough on the sides of his fingers from holding a pen the wrong way all his life. He’s gentle, so gentle it almost kind of aches, and his touch is deliberate where it roams from his face to the protrusion of his hip bones. Their noses bump when they shift, and a laugh bubbles out of Yamaguchi’s lips against Kei’s, sweet and light. He swallows it with the press of his mouth. 

Kei’s hands twitch with want where they linger idly by Yamaguchi’s shoulder blades, unsure of where to go. It’s… unfamiliar, not knowing, but he thinks he might be okay with it, just this once.

Yamaguchi tilts his head down to mouth at the underside of Kei’s jaw and down his neck, his teeth grazing the spot where his throat meets his collarbone. He sucks harshly there, and an odd sort of pleasure-pain blooms from the mark. Kei’s eyes fly open, shocked, and his hands shoot to Yamaguchi’s shoulders.

Yamaguchi pulls away in a hurry, his eyes wide with panic. “Oh God, sorry, I should have… Oh, shit, it’s already- wow, um, I’m so sorry, I should’ve as—”

“Do that again.”

Yamaguchi blinks, his lips parted in surprise, like he’s waiting for Kei to take it back, to change his mind. Kei just levels him with a stare, a silent desire. Then Yamaguchi nods, registering Kei’s words, and then he’s leaning down again to close the gap.

This time, Yamaguchi kisses him higher up the column of his neck, tugging at the skin just under his pulse point. Kei’s sure he can feel the thrum of his heartbeat, the rapid one-two-three like a waltz in his bones.

Kei gently pushes Yamaguchi down against his bed, the frame creaking just slightly as he leans over him. He pecks a kiss to the corner of Yamaguchi’s mouth, feeling him grin against his lips.

When Kei pulls away, he is met with a flushed Yamaguchi, enough to paint his faintest freckles with pink. His hair fans around his head like a halo among the pillows, and Kei lets himself look at him, because this time he is allowed to. This time, Yamaguchi is his to look at.

“If it wasn’t abundantly clear by now,” Kei says, rolling over to lie next to Yamaguchi, “I like you, too.”

Yamaguchi turns to grin at him, intimate. “I figured, but it’s nice to hear you say it.”

I’ll say it as many times as you want me to, Tadashi, Kei thinks to himself deliriously. “Stay the night,” he says instead. “It’s Friday.”

“Like when we were kids?”

“Well, I hope you don’t still need a nightlight.”

This earns him a swift kick to the shin.

“Message received. Do you want—”

“I’ll get the futon,” Yamaguchi offers, cutting him off as he stands up, but Kei is quick to stop him, tugging him back by the wrist.

“Let’s just share the bed. Less effort,” he says. 

I want to be with you, he doesn’t say. I like you, he doesn’t say.

There’s a flicker of understanding across Yamaguchi’s face, and Kei thinks that maybe he knows anyway.

Kei lends Yamaguchi a few of his clothes to wear, since all Yamaguchi has are the clothes that he’s wearing. (“I didn’t really plan this far ahead?” Yamaguchi had said sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck.) After a few moments of searching, he finds a t-shirt and sweatpants in his drawer that he had stopped wearing about a year ago because they were just slightly too short on him. They fit Yamaguchi just right.

Kei sits on his bed and waits for Yamaguchi to finish showering, his fingertips brushing the marks Yamaguchi had left on him. Leftover fragments of adrenaline zip through his blood as he runs his hand down the side of his neck. He can hear the sound of the shower running from down the hall.

Yamaguchi returns not long after, his hair wet and the spare towel draped around his shoulders. Kei wastes no time in tugging him onto the bed and pulling the comforter over the both of them.

“You’re clingy,” Yamaguchi teases, but he lies down next to him against his chest anyway.

“Can you blame me?” Kei mumbles against his skin. He presses a kiss to the smattering of freckles on the back of Yamaguchi’s neck, beautiful constellations on tanned skin. He shifts under Kei’s touch.

Kei rests his chin by the crook of Yamaguchi’s neck, his arms curling around his waist to pull him closer. Yamaguchi smells faintly of his usual cologne and Kei’s own shampoo, of something familiar.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to do this,” Yamaguchi murmurs.

Kei cracks a smile, and he knows Yamaguchi can feel it against his shoulder. “What, lying in bed with me? How forward.”

“No,” he says, and Kei can hear the eye roll in his voice, “spooning. God, get your mind out of the—”

“It’s okay, Tadashi, we’re both eighteen.”

“I hate you.”

Kei’s shoulders shake with quiet laughter as Yamaguchi bends his knee to strike him in the leg with his heel. There’s warmth in the few inches between them, not unwelcome in the February chill. Rain patters against the window, matching the rhythm of Kei’s heart.

“Next time we do this, I want to be the big spoon,” Yamaguchi says, and Kei’s heart does a little backflip in his chest at the prospect of a ‘next time’.

“Okay,” Kei agrees, without hesitation.

Kei reaches up to take off his glasses, and Yamaguchi offers to put them on the nightstand for him. Kei finds himself staring at the freckle on Yamaguchi’s ring finger as he folds his glasses carefully and places them on the table. The room blurs into splotches of color, quickly extinguished when Yamaguchi turns off the lamp.

Yamaguchi falls asleep first, as he always does, even when they were younger. His breathing evens out eventually, slow and easy, and his heartbeat steadies where Kei can feel it at the pulse point on his neck. He wonders if Yamaguchi can feel his own where Kei’s chest meets the space between his shoulder blades. Can he feel how quickly it’s beating?

Kei has always found it difficult to fall asleep, but with Yamaguchi, like most things, it comes easier. He pulls Yamaguchi closer, leaning his forehead on the other’s shoulder as he closes his eyes. Sleep washes over him like the low tide.

In a way, not much has changed at all.