Chapter Text
It’s in third year, after Karasuno has just placed top four in the Miyagi Interhigh-Preliminaries, that Terushima Yuuji walks up to Yamaguchi and says, “Hey, you were that number 12, right?”
“O-oh!” Yamaguchi catches himself where he’d swung briefly away from his team to grab a bottle of water — vision tunnelling in on the unexpected acquaintance. He’s a little shorter than Yamaguchi remembers — though Yamaguchi is much taller, now — and peers up at from behind round metal frames and blue-tinted lenses. “Um, yes!”
“Terushima,” Terushima offers, and Yamaguchi nods frantically.
“Yeah, Johzenji captain, I remember! It’s good to see you.” He offers the Johzenji alum an easy smile, raising his hand out for a shake, which Terushima takes, grinning back at him over the tilt of his chin.
“Good game you played,” Terushima says conversationally, once their hands have dropped back to their sides, “I saw those serves—“ he interjects with a low, long whistle that makes Yamaguchi laugh sheepishly. “Wow. You’ve really gotten fine.”
Yamaguchi’s eyes go round with shock. He probably didn’t mean to phrase it like that, right? “Yeah, Karasuno’s gotten really strong, huh!” he forces out, babbling about his team basically second-nature by now, “We, we’ve got some really great second years, not to mention, Hinata and Kageyama are strong as ever, and Tsukki’s got a really cool hybrid serve, now, too, and his blocks are so good, and— he’s 195cm tall now, too, so—“
Terushima breaks him out of it with a chuckle that sounds indulgent, and Yamaguchi trails off, helplessly returning a small, slightly more unsure laugh of his own.
“Look, Capt,” Terushima grins, “I’ll level with you. You’ve got a fine team and something to be proud of, for sure, but I really gotta honest that I mostly came to chat with you.” Yamaguchi feels the blush flare hot across his cheekbones, useless to tamp it down, and caught off-guard by Terushima’s forwardness. He’s actually — rather sweet, too. “Just thought I’d let you know. Captain to captain, right?”
“Um, right!” Yamaguchi can only stare at the faint glare of the open contact screen blinking up at him. Terushima holds his phone out patiently with his proffered hand; Yamaguchi snaps his wide-eyed gaze up to really look at him. With his hair grown out a little more in the absence of a high school dress code, it’s a little more curled at the edges, fluffier — and his big glasses make him look like almost an alternate reality, bad-boy version of Tsukki.
Tsukki!
“Oh my god!” Yamaguchi exclaims. Terushima blinks, startled, though he doesn’t fully withdraw his hand. “Terushima-san, I’m sorry— I can’t, um!”
Terushima’s expectant smile wavers a little at its corners. “Hm?”
“My boyfriend’s over there!” Yamaguchi blurts. He isn’t prepared for how genuinely crestfallen Terushima looks; guilt washes over him, and he’s about to apologise, when he realises that he’s just blatantly lied.
He can’t lie that Tsukki’s his boyfriend— even though he really wishes that he was, no, oh god, it’s exactly because he wishes that he was, that it absolutely, totally, completely, CANNOT be Tsukki! It would be some sort of jinx, or unethical, maybe, and Yamaguchi can tell that his own breathing is starting to come in extremely heavy, a mix of anxiety, leftover adrenaline from the game, and from thinking about Tsukki as his boyfriend, which he isn’t—!
”I’m dating Kageyama!” Yamaguchi near-shouts.
“…oh,” Terushima frowns. “That’s… unexpected.”
“I-is it really?” Yamaguchi tries for a laugh, high-pitched and distinctly squeaky. Where was Hinata when you needed him? Now would be an amazing time to be struck in the head with a volleyball; but of course, no such luck. He soldiers on, “K-Kageyama’s really handsome! And good at volleyball… a-and he’s my vice-captain, so we’ve been spending a lot of time together, and um…”
He’s saved the rest of his explanation by Kageyama jogging over, seemingly summoned by how many times his name has just been dropped. Unfortunately, what this means is that Kageyama has now jogged over.
“Yamaguchi?” he asks, “Everything okay? We’re going to start heading back soon.”
“Hi, Kageyama,” Yamaguchi squeaks.
That’s the blessed thing about Kageyama. Anything off the volleyball court, anything non-volleyball related, he’s much less perceptive. Or maybe he’s just used to Yamaguchi and all of his oddness, by now. Either way, he doesn’t notice, or doesn’t acknowledge, the weird pitch in Yamaguchi’s tone or the way there was no reason for his voice to catch over saying Kageyama’s name. He just nods to Terushima and says, “Oh, I remember you. Hello.”
Terushima looks a little out of it himself, and Yamaguchi’s guilt returns tenfold.
“Uh, yeah,” he replies cordially. Then, nodding towards Yamaguchi, adds, “Captain over here was just telling me that you two are together.” Yamaguchi’s brain just about whites out.
It’s over, Yamaguchi thinks, feeling quite light in the head. I’m going to die right here, and then Kageyama will have to be captain, and Tsukishima will be his vice, and they’ll kill each other, and then no one will set to Hinata — and he’ll go berserk, and —
“Oh. Yeah,” Kageyama says agreeably.
“Yeah?” Terushima echoes.
“Yeah?” Yamaguchi squeaks.
Kageyama scowls, brows pulling down into that terrifying glower that means he doesn’t get something. “What’s weird about that?”
Terushima’s eyes go wide behind his lenses — evidently noticing that Kageyama’s face has other facets than just handsome, including several for scary. “Woah. I didn’t mean to overstep, my bad. I was just surprised, I could’ve sworn…” And here, as his gaze snaps back to Yamaguchi, it’s less put-out and more lightly perplexed, which is odd, to say the least. He frowns, clicking his tongue piercing against his teeth in a gesture of consideration — and Yamaguchi swears that when Terushima self-consciously runs his hand through his hair, he mumbles something to himself that sounds like: “I even went lighter for this.” Which doesn’t make any sense at all, of course. It makes even less sense that his gaze then bounces over to Tsukki — which makes Yamaguchi yelp.
“Y-yeah! I guess it is a little surprising, but it really wouldn’t be a-anyone other than Kageyama!” Yamaguchi yips, plastering on his brightest smile and what he hopes is a passable imitation of heart eyes and not wild desperation as he looks at Kageyama. “Like, literally no one at all!”
“Yes,” Kageyama says, rather matter-of-fact. His expression is, amazingly, entirely deadpan. “We make a good pair.”
“Yes!” Yamaguchi asserts, so forcefully that both Terushima and Kageyama look startled. “Don’t we! Make a good pair, I mean? We’re a good pair,” Yamaguchi repeats, “Me and you, Kageyama.” Fuck. Yamaguchi tries for a smile, it’s definitely, crooked, he has to look insane right now.
Kageyama gets sort of an odd look on his face, and for a few horrible moments of silence where Yamaguchi really thinks he’s truly gone and botched it now, he considers Yamaguchi. Then, he gently raises his hand and presses the back of it, firm, to Yamaguchi’s forehead, and with his other hand, brings fingers to brush over Yamaguchi’s cheek. “I think, let’s get you on the bus to cool down, soon,” Kageyama tells him. “We played hard today, and I know you haven’t been sleeping well.”
Yamaguchi nearly stutters at the contact, Kageyama’s touch light and almost tender. Their years together at Karasuno have softened him; he’s no less blunt, and Kageyama has always cared, but recently he’s really been learning to show it, too, and times like this it still catches Yamaguchi off-guard, not disbelieving, but more of something soft and fond unfurling in his chest.
To his audience of two, he just says, “O-oh, okay.”
“We’ll get going then,” Kageyama decides for them. He nods at Terushima. “Johzenji.”
Terushima looks a little stunned, still, but he shakes himself out of it enough to recover smoothly. “Yeah, see you,” he tells Kageyama. To Yamaguchi, he says, “It was nice to see you again, Freckles.” He grins again, though its lost some of its polish from earlier. Yamaguchi starts to open to his mouth, to- to apologise or, or something, anything, and Terushima must see it because he waves his hands in a placating gesture. He shakes his head, “Don’t worry about it; a babe like you deserves a star player.” He winks, something conspiratorial between the three of them, and makes to turn away. “You guys had better head off! I’m gonna look for my old team.”
“Bye,” Kageyama says to his retreating form, concise as ever.
By the time Yamaguchi has come back to himself to stammer out a goodbye of his own, Terushima is long gone, and Kageyama is tugging lightly on his wrist to get him to follow him back to the rest of the team. Hinata and Tsukishima are watching them return, the former waves hard when they’re close enough, then bounces up to join them.
“Woah, woah! Wasn’t that the old Johzenji captain?” he asks, bright and curious.
“Yes,” Kageyama tells Hinata. Then he frowns like he’s remembering something and turns to Yamaguchi. “Don’t listen to Terushima,” he says very seriously, “You are very handsome, but you’re a star player too. It wasn’t nice of him to say that.”
Tsukishima’s eyes narrow. “What.”
”Uh- whuh,” Yamaguchi says. Then, “Let’s just, um, get on the bus.”
Hinata saves him from any dispute by enthusiastically throwing up his hand into a salute and yelling, “Yes, captain!” He hasn’t tired of doing this at all since he’d begun the moment Yamaguchi’s captaincy was announced, and it’s very sweet, the amount that it seems to bring him delight.
The walk to the bus goes without incident; Yamaguchi and Kageyama herd everyone up, attendance-taking goes without a hitch. But as soon as Yamaguchi makes to settle into his seat — aisle, next to Tsukki, who’s already occupying his usual space by the window, he knows that he’s going to have much hell to pay in the form of explanations that he knows he doesn’t have, because Tsukki has his questions face on.
“What did he want?” Tsukishima asks. Yamaguchi shifts uncomfortably under his scrutiny — Tsukki gets all intense, sometimes, and it’s par for the course, he’s always been like this, when he wants to know something. Whether he’s interested in a bug Yamaguchi’s caught to show him or he wants to know more about something they’ve just watched in a documentary.
“Oh… um,” Yamaguchi tries to laugh it off. He tells Tsukki everything! It’s always easy to tell Tsukki everything and anything, but right now he’s still just so embarrassed and overwhelmed by everything that just happened. “He just wanted to say hi.”
“Right, of course,” Tsukishima says drily, instantly reading Yamaguchi like a book. And Yamaguchi really does laugh then, genuine, and Tsukki’s mouth curls up at the corner, his own laugh. “He just wanted to say hi, and that’s why it was taking you forever. Who else wanted to say hi, too? Since he had his phone out.”
A lot has changed since Yamaguchi was a scrawny, nervous first-year, and those changes, combined with the volleyball captaincy and a general reputation of being pleasant and approachable, have resulted in a sharp uptick in high school confessions. So it’s true — Yamaguchi is no stranger to confessions, or flirtations, at this stage. But Terushima isn’t a pretty-faced acquaintance from school that Yamaguchi has opened doors for once or twice, Terushima is someone from volleyball, and Terushima is a boy. And this means that— this means that Yamaguchi can be— is! Yamaguchi is attractive to boys. And it’s this realisation that’s rocketing around in his brain, firework-quick and splintering into sparks in all different whizzing directions. Yamaguchi has long since accepted his own attraction to men, but this is the first time he’s realising that that men are attracted to him, and that thought is— well. Because it means, not for sure, but maybe even to Tsukki…
All these thoughts are nothing more than a messy, confusing jumble in his head, and that last, niggling little thought… for obvious reasons, Yamaguchi can’t answer Tsukishima right then. So instead, he just repeats, “Tsukki, he just wanted to say hi.”
“You’re blushing,” Tsukishima informs him. Then before Yamaguchi can even think about what to stutter out in his defense, Tsukishima’s face is close, taking up the entire span of his vision, and he’s tapping his still-taped fingers against the plane of Yamaguchi’s cheekbone. Yamaguchi can feel the fraying on the edges of the tape from where they’ve taken damage in their last game, tickling his skin as Tsukishima traces out a vague W on his face. “Cassiopeia,” Tsukki comments idly. Then he removes his fingers for a second, and they’re back a second later, tapping something out against the base of Yamaguchi’s neck and down his collarbone. “To… Leo minor?” Tsukishima deliberates. “This one’s new,” he says, more to himself, then to Yamaguchi: “You’re blushing, from Cassiopeia—“ tap tap on his cheek, “— to Leo minor, here.” Then he withdraws, disappearing back into the peripheral of Yamaguchi’s vision as he settles back into his seat on the bus. “Terushima wanted to say more than just hi.”
It feels like every single blood cell in Yamaguchi’s body has gone to his brain and he’s going to explode, right there on the bus, and Tsukki’s gonna be wrinkling his nose all like gross! and Karasuno will be scrubbing bits of Yamaguchi off the bus for forever. His tongue is a useless mass of nothing in his mouth, even more than before, because why is Tsukishima so— so cute and so awful and he— he maps Yamaguchi’s freckles? Yamaguchi’s head is well at capacity at this point; brain swimming with images of Tsukki and dating Tsukki, and not dating Tsukki, and dating Kageyama as a means of not dating Tsukki because of boys who look just a little like Tsukki, who aren’t as blonde or as tall.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Tsukishima finally concedes, but Yamaguchi can hear the surl in his voice, the slight curl of displeasure that wisps between them and turns the air just that fraction more frigid, because when has Yamaguchi not told him everything?
Probably when Yamaguchi started liking Tsukishima.
This thought is sobering to Yamaguchi, as he feels something like unhappiness coagulate deep in his gut. He exhales a fortifying, small breath. “He wanted my number,” Yamaguchi admits, “But it wasn’t a big deal.”
This is the sort of thing that Tsukki doesn’t really have interest in; he’s never cared for confessions himself, never bothering to read the love notes that find their way to his desk and locker with startling regularity. When Yamaguchi started to receive them too, Tsukishima had awarded them with the same lack of interest, pocketing candies if they were strawberry-flavoured but otherwise never particularly caring about what Yamaguchi chose to do with his confessions, if he did. So it’s a bit of a surprise that Tsukishima’s looking at him sharply, sulking displeasure traded in for a different, more frowning sort. Even more so when he actually asks, “And what did you tell him?”
And isn’t that just the million-dollar question of the day. Yamaguchi chews at the inside of his cheek — or he catches himself about to do it, and stops immediately, because Tsukki will recognise the tell. “That I wasn’t interested,” Yamaguchi decides, carefully. It’s a safe, casual answer.
And then Tsukki asks, “Why?”
“Huh?” Yamaguchi stares at Tsukishima, who looks nonplussed, and Yamaguchi really might be the one that’s going crazy. “What do you mean, why?”
Tsukishima shrugs, all nonchalant airs. His voice sounds tinny and strange, like it’s coming from the other end of a plastic cup on a line of cellophane when he asks, “Don’t you like boys?”
This is not — this is not the kind of thing that Yamaguchi and Tsukishima discuss. Tsukki knows, of course, that Yamaguchi is bisexual. He came out to all of them, Kageyama, Hinata, and Tsukishima, rather uneventfully on a random school day afternoon when they were having a study session at Kageyama’s house. Yachi had been the first to know, of course, because part of Yamaguchi’s realisation that he could also like boys had been kick-started by his learning that girls could like girls. But sexuality— crushes, these things fall outside of the wheelhouse of subjects for private conversations between Tsukishima and Yamaguchi, just because Tsukki never seems to have cared.
”That’s silly, isn’t it, Tsukki?” Yamaguchi chirps, trying to sound casual, joking. “I do, but that doesn’t mean that I just go around falling for any boy I meet, right? And anyway, I have standards!”
He feels the smile fester and wilt on his face when Tsukishima doesn’t rise to the bait, just looks at him, considering. Eventually, he asks, with clinical clarity, “And Terushima falls short of those standards?”
“You’re being mean, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi scolds — these days, that works just as well, too, sometimes. Tsukishima is oddly pliant to his leadership. “You’re teasing.”
”I’m not,” Tsukishima refutes flatly. “But I’ll stop since you think so.”
Yamaguchi worries at his lip, staring into the plasticky blue back of the bus seat in front of him. “Aah, Tsukki,” he chuffs, “You're being unfair.”
“Which is it?” Tsukki asks. “Mean or unfair.”
”Both!” Yamaguchi pulls his mouth into an exaggerated expression of annoyance; he knows Tsukishima is watching him watch the bus seat. “I already told Terushima I wasn’t interested, so I don’t want to have to reconsider him again anymore.”
The bus starts up at this point; the low purr of the engine rumbling through the structure of the vehicle and vibrating through Yamaguchi’s bones. With a dragging yawn, the bus begins to crawl out of their lot to begin the journey back to Miyagi. Tsukishima is already fiddling with the wires of his headphones, unwinding them carefully from where they’d been stashed away in his gym bag. His face is tilted away from Yamaguchi, expression impassive — he says, “I’m going to sleep, so you can use these if you want.” Yamaguchi knows to recognise this as Tsukki’s version of placation, which he takes gratefully when he pinches the white Sonys between his fingers and accepts them from his friend, who shifts and folds his arms into a sleeping position a little more obviously than strictly required. It’s far from the first time Yamaguchi has watched him sleep on the bus — he managed to get over feeling like a total creep after the first few times in second year — but he doesn’t think he could ever get tired of Tsukishima’s face; cataloguing each new little dent, ridge, spot and scar as he sweeps his gaze over his friend in a calming almost-ritual. He’s very pretty — Tsukki, when he’s got his glasses folded and put away, the normally stern lines of his face relaxed when he’s resting. In the setting sunlight, Tsukki’s hair is a pale and flaxen halo, he looks like a statue, or a god. When Yamaguchi thinks of him in those terms, he muses, he really must be far gone for him. But this is nothing new, and when it comes to Tsukishima, Yamaguchi has never been anything but patient. And if Tsukishima knows that he watches him sleep on the bus, he’s never let on.
“Alright, great job everyone, and get some rest! I’ll see you all at practice next week and we’ll have a proper discussion then,” Yamaguchi smiles warmly as he dismisses the team, all in various states of exhaustion and disarray as they chorus a messy assent and call out their goodbyes in a disorganised scatter, filing out.
This would have been all well and good, if not for the fact that Yamaguchi had forgotten that Kageyama was far from the only Karasuno member who had been nearby during his exchange with Terushima. In a more ideal reality, this misunderstanding is a forgettable little blip that no one ever brings up ever again, ever. Ever. As things happen instead, this far unluckier universe sees their skittish first-year wing spiker, Kobayashi, stammering, “C-congratulations on your r-relationship!” He sinks into an impressively perfect ninety-degree bow, then squeaks, “I’ll support you no matter what, as captains, and as lovers!” He darts out of the club room, and the door slams shut.
Yamaguchi is deathly pale. He can only thank every single star in existence right now that it’s just him and Kageyama, because Hinata had potentially sustained a mild sprain right at the end of their last match and Coach Ukai had wanted a closer look, just in case. Being the only other non-captain third year, Tsukishima had been thoroughly unwillingly roped into waiting around, in case Hinata needed assistance.
“He’s a little nervous,” Kageyama comments. “I think Tsukishima’s ugly face is really getting to the first years.”
“You think,” Yamaguchi barely manages.
”Yeah,” Kageyama nods, then frowns when it catches up to him. “What did he mean lovers?”
Yamaguchi weighs out the option of telling Kageyama the whole truth. The situation is a little awkward, sure, but nothing catastrophic, since it isn’t actually Kageyama that he has feelings for. And then he’s involuntarily heating up thinking about actually having feelings for someone else entirely.
In the meantime, Kageyama seems to have puzzled out his own confusion, because when Yamaguchi snaps himself out of it enough to return his attention to the matter at hand, Kageyama is deciding, “Like… volleyball lovers.” He says this slowly, nodding as he finishes that thought like it makes perfect sense. Somehow, it’s that that sets Yamaguchi off — the fact that it would be so easy to get away with his lie by virtue of… by virtue of whatever cooks up in Kageyama’s devastatingly volleyball-centric brain. It could be done with just like that — like nothing, and that makes something unpleasant click in Yamaguchi’s brain, because it isn’t nothing to him. He’d told a lie — a big one, a big stupid one, because of something; because he likes Tsukishima, a lot, and those feelings are— those feelings are…
It all wells up, weighty and intense in Yamaguchi’s chest. Since he’d realised that he could actually be dating boys but somehow wasn’t dating him, his feelings have been tethering more and more into the territory of being painful. He had been running from his feelings for so long he hadn’t even realised it, and then they’d caught up to him, suddenly, all at once, in the middle of a perfectly sunny day, in the shape of Terushima and a single lie.
“Kageyama,” Yamaguchi asks weakly. “Why did you tell Terushima-san that we’re together?”
“Huh?” Kageyama frowns. “He was asking if we’re captain and vice-captain, right?”
“Er, no,” Yamaguchi says.
“Oh,” Kageyama looks like he’s genuinely not figuring this one out. Yamaguchi sighs. It checks out, in a way — everything is volleyball, to Kageyama, and he probably wouldn’t understand why someone they know from volleyball would be asking about anything other than volleyball. Suddenly, Yamaguchi feels very listless.
“He was asking about if we’re dating,” he sighs.
Kageyama’s head whips up. “Huh? Why would he ask that?”
“Because—“ Yamaguchi exhales. “Because I told him that we are, but—“
“What?” Kageyama barks, which Yamaguchi was expecting, but he wasn’t expecting the way Kageyama looks — frenzied, almost, not angry, just inexplicably, very alarmed. “Why would you say that?”
“I didn’t mean to!” he blurts loudly, panic and shame spiking as he waves his hands at Kageyama, “He asked for my number and I didn’t want to give it, and I couldn’t say anyone else!”
“So you don’t actually like me,” Kageyama half-states, half-asks, his panicked expression from earlier smoothing out into clear relief.
“No, I don’t,” Yamaguchi reassures him bitterly. “I like—“ he swallows, then spits it out, confirming it to himself as much as Kageyama: “It’s Tsukki that I like.”
Kageyama nods approvingly. “That’s good.” Then — like milk souring, his whole expression twists into something indelibly sickened. “Tsukishima?”
Horribly, this one utterance — pointed, questioning — cuts through Yamaguchi like an accusation. The thought of his affection in relation to worth makes his heart catch in his throat, his blood rushing loudly in his ears. Against his will, the sharp sting of tears builds behind his eyes, threatening to spill over at any provocation and he forces himself to swallow around a breath. Humiliation burns across his face.
He hadn’t realised that it would feel this bad.
“Please don’t look like that,” Yamaguchi begs faintly. “Please don’t sound like that. Tsukki is— he’s, I just—“
”Hnnghh,” Kageyama says, strangled.
“I know it’s pathetic,” he confesses quietly, “I know he’s out of my league, I really just—“
And he’s interrupted by a terrific wheeze.
Then Kageyama says, “HUH?”
Yamaguchi is too stunned to even flinch at the sudden raised voice directed at him, tears stilling in his eyes as he stares at Kageyama’s outburst in confusion. “Yes?”
“That’s…” Kageyama struggles with what he wants to say, mouth twisting unhappily and he parses through what he’s thinking, but his eyes are on Yamaguchi and his expression seems urgent, like he really needs Yamaguchi to believe him. “Tsukishima is so…” he pulls a face that’s a startlingly good impression of Tsukishima’s snide expression right before he’s about to deliver a particularly cutting remark, “And you’re so… you’re you.”
Yamaguchi is so surprised by Kageyama’s Mean Tsukki impression that he completely forgets to be hurt for a moment, instead choking out a shocked laugh. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying—“ Kageyama’s mouth fixes determinedly into a firm line. “I’m saying that you’re too good for Tsukishima!” he shouts.
Now this declaration makes Yamaguchi stop short, heart thudding to a sudden halt in his chest, and jaw slack as he can do nothing but look at his friend in surprise. He’s hyper-aware of the wet tracks on his cheeks and the slight soreness of his eyes as time pauses for the moment where they both seem to freeze up at Kageyama’s words.
“I— that’s not—“ Yamaguchi tries, stammers. He’s the captain, he’s the one who’s meant to be talking, between the two of them, he feels like he’s the one who needs to fill up the space. But he can’t seem to speak; no words coming to mind, too surprised and with no proper retort either.
Kageyama gets a determined look about his face, and like its exploding out of him, he blurts, “I know you don’t think so! Because you’re— you! But you’re really great. And everyone likes you more than Tsukishima.”
”Tsukki’s not that bad,” Yamaguchi says defensively on well-honed impulse.
“No,” Kageyama grumbles, and the disgusted twitch of his mouth is actually so pronounced that it’s unbearably comical. “But he’s not that good either.”
Yamaguchi bursts out into a laugh then; short, sharp, and slightly hysterical. When faced with it like that, it’s hard not to accept that Kageyama is right, in all of his blunt, earnest, honesty. As the person who knows Tsukishima best, when Yamaguchi forces himself to sit down and think about it — really run all the snapshots through his mind’s reel — it’s an inescapable truth that Tsukishima is and always has been an acquired taste, and all the first-years still punctuate his name with an honorific.
“Okay,” he says, coming down mutely from his burst of emotion. “You don’t think it’s stupid?”
”I don’t think that it’s stupid that you like him,” Kageyama clarifies honestly, “I think he’s stupid.”
Yamaguchi snickers. “Just so we’re clear.”
”Just so we’re clear,” Kageyama echoes his agreement.
Yamaguchi huffs a small laugh, rubbing at his face blearily, and sinking down to the floor as a sudden wave of exhaustion washes over him. He presses his back against one of the locker-room benches, folding his knees into himself.
A shadow falls over him almost immediately. “Are you… um. Okay?” Kageyama offers awkwardly, peering down at him from where he blocks out the bright ceiling light.
“Yeah,” Yamaguchi turns his face to rest his cheek against the top of his knee, looking up at his friend. “I just… I’ve never admitted my feelings out loud before. It was hard… harder than I thought it would be.”
Kageyama sinks down next to him, copying his stance and folding his own legs up into himself. “Is it okay though?” he asks. Then he pauses, rephrases himself, “Do you feel better after telling me?”
“I… I think so,” Yamaguchi replies unsurely. “To be honest, this is all really new to me. Tsukki and I have been friends for a really long time, so this is kind of scary. It’s like… I don’t want things to change, because they’re good, but I think I like him so much that I do want them to change— um. Kageyama?”
Kageyama is staring at him, eyes round with that same frenzied light in them as before, looking like Yamaguchi has just handed him the answer to all the cosmic questions of the universe. “Yeah,” he says.
“Yeah?”
Kageyama nods. “I… since you told me. I’ll tell you too. I also… what you said about things being kind of scary. But also about liking someone a lot. I… with… with Hinata… I—!”
“You like Hinata?” Yamaguchi finishes the thought aloud for both of them, gently teasing, a singsong lilt to his voice as the tension in the room eases into something much more lighthearted. The way Kageyama’s face flames positively scarlet really is something, Yamaguchi notes, and he feels something warm in his chest for his friends, and for himself — it feels nice, to not be alone. Especially when he hadn’t realised that not being alone in his affections was an option all along.
“Y-yeah,” Kageyama manages to spit out, churlish. “He’s just, I dunno. I guess I’ve never met anyone like him.” His gaze drops to the floor, his hands fisted tightly at his sides as he can’t bring himself to meet Yamaguchi’s gaze. “At first I thought that Hinata gets me like nobody else, on the court. It’s easy to think that way. Because he — he always receives my sets. And then— and then I realised, off the court too.”
It’s earnest, and it’s so Kageyama. It’s sweet.
"That's really sweet," Yamaguchi tells him, smilingly. He can't help how that makes him feel; it's nice, that Kageyama feels so tenderly towards Hinata, nice that Hinata has someone who feels like this about him. He wonders if Tsukishima would agree. If he would think it was nice to have someone think about him like this.
"Yeah," Kageyama urges, "So what you said. About liking someone so much. I understand."
If he would mind that someone being Yamaguchi.
Pushing that thought aside, Yamaguchi makes himself grin. "It seems I made the right choice for vice-captain."
Kageyama looks thoughtful when he agrees.
They split off at the junction in front of Sakanoshita, and he makes the rest of the walk home.
A lone figure, illuminated by the moonlight, and Yamaguchi thinks he would know that silhouette anywhere, and he thinks pretty, pretty, pretty, giddily. On their own, his steps quicken as he feels dizzy about the fact that Tsukki wanted to see him, had waited out here in the front of his house…
Tsukishima looks up with the approaching patter of Yamaguchi’s footfalls, and he reaches up behind his head to pull his headphones off.
“Tsukki!” he half-calls, half-questions as he comes into earshot. “Why didn’t you go home?”
Wordlessly, Tsukishima holds out a plastic bag to Yamaguchi and it rustles at the motion, bright white in the dark and crinkling between them. Yamaguchi accepts it on impulse, fingers curling around it to feel out the shape of two round bottles, still cold, condensation wet against his palms.
“Tomomasu!” Yamaguchi chirps delightedly, as he retrieves the bag fully from Tsukishima’s grasp to rifle through, “Thanks, Tsukki!”
Tsukishima makes a quiet sound of assent as he watches Yamaguchi do this, then begins to explain. “I… walked Hinata home,” he admits with a grimace. “He’s fine, but I could tell it was hurting him, and it would’ve been annoying to see him call me names on the group chat later if I hadn’t helped.”
“You’re such a liar, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi teases, pleased as he pulls out the bottle of watermelon-flavoured soda. “You can just say you were looking out for Hinata!”
“Whatever,” Tsukishima grumbles. “I’m just glad it wasn’t the other way around. He would’ve bounced all around and knocked me over and twisted my other foot as well.”
Yamaguchi grins when he sees that the other bottle in the bag is the white peach flavour. Tsukki doesn’t even like tomomasu, because they don’t have a flavour he likes, but he always gets the white peach one if he’s buying a bottle for Yamaguchi, because the packaging is pink, which is the closest he can get to strawberry. “If it was the other way around, Tsukki, I would have never let it get that far,” he tells Tsukishima seriously as he passes the peach tomomasu over. “As soon as the bus docked, I would’ve made Kageyama give the debrief, and I would’ve carried you all the way home as your capable captain!”
Tsukishima snorts at that as he extends his hand to take Yamaguchi’s offering; and their fingers brush, dampened by the condensation against the bottle and neither deliberate nor pleasant, but it still makes Yamaguchi’s skin tingle warmly.
“Except unlike Hinata, I’m not three volleyballs tall,” Tsukki drawls, a little arrogantly with an undertone that tells Yamaguchi that he’s joking, playing along for his benefit. “So I might still end up with a second sprain, in this scenario, too.”
“I’m 182 centimetres now, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi chirps, caught up in the exhilaration of their back-and-forth, happy to exist in this bubble that’s just them, talking about nothing. He works open the cap of his drink and takes a big swig — artificial candy watermelon sweet on his tastebuds. Liquid courage; when his mouth comes off of the lip of the bottle, he smacks his lips, tastes sugar, and says, coy, “And my arms and legs are really strong now.”
Tsukishima looks down at him through his lashes and through the protection of his thick lenses, shadowed and illuminated in unequal part under the street-lamp. Visibility is low, but it’s enough that Yamaguchi sees Tsukki’s gaze cast itself over his arms, and then drop lower to run over his legs, and still in his volleyball shorts under his sports sweater he suddenly feels very bare.
“Mm,” Tsukki acquiesces, contemplative, and ducks his head to unscrew the cap of his pink tomomasu. They’re still outside the gate to Yamaguchi’s house.
“Did you want to sleep over…?” Yamaguchi asks shyly. This wouldn’t be— isn’t an exceptional question, ordinarily. Tsukishima sleeps over all the time. But Tsukki shakes his head, no, swallowing around his soda even as his mouth twists a little at the taste; he doesn’t like it. Yamaguchi doesn’t know why he doesn’t just buy something else, but this is just how things had shaped up and then always been.
“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t feeling weird or anything,” Tsukishima divulges coolly, even as he averts his eyeline to somewhere above Yamaguchi’s shoulder, “Because of today.”
Yamaguchi puts his tongue between his teeth, sucking in a breath. Exhales at Tsukishima's expectant expression, when he finally trains his eyes back on Yamaguchi. "Because of volleyball, or because of Terushima?" he pries carefully.
Tsukishima shrugs. "Whichever. Is volleyball in the habit of asking for your number?"
"Tsukki," Yamaguchi puffs out a little amused huff, carrying his breath into the air and with it an edge of exasperation only partly false.
"Look," Tsukishima interrupts suddenly. "I know this whole... thing is new to you. Liking boys. Because you told us about it. I don't know if I know a lot about it, but I just wanted you to know that you can tell me things if you need to."
There's a moment where there's nothing but the warm, electrical hum of the old lights lining the street; Yamaguchi stares at Tsukishima, mouth slack around his surprise, and chest warm around Tsukki's awkward concern — Tsukishima kisses his teeth, impatient and embarrassed, but he holds Yamaguchi's gaze, a stubborn show of his conviction in what he's offering Yamaguchi. It's adorable and terrible all at once, and Yamaguchi swallows, pushes his tongue over his teeth and finds that the taste of his soda has more or less disappeared, leaving him with nothing but Tsukki's eyes on him and the dizzying buzz of affection in his veins, from the top of his head all the way down to the tips of his toes and curling most of all in the warm home in his chest.
"That's all," Tsukishima declares, giving in to the silence first. Turning away. "I'm going home."
“Okay, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi wonders at Tsukishima's retreating back, broader than ever. “Thanks, Tsukki.”
It settles between them, their shared secret, something soft and comfortable. Neither one of them bring it up again in explicit terms, but there’s an unspoken camaraderie between them; Kageyama nudges at Yamaguchi’s ankle with his foot when he’s been looking at Tsukishima too long. Yamaguchi putting in requests for a couple extra hours on the court so that Kageyama and Hinata can stay behind for their extra practices together.
Then about a week later, right as the bell of the last class rings, Kageyama bursts into their classroom and shouts, “Yamaguchi, I gotta get milk!”
“What the hell could this even be about,” Tsukishima deadpans. Yamaguchi snickers along, because this is something for just him and Tsukki, even though he does have a pretty good idea of what this could be about.
“Please come with me.” Kageyama pants. “To get milk. Yamaguchi.”
Yamaguchi slides his gaze over to Tsukishima and exchanges a look with him; they’ve been friends so long that they’ve got a million unspoken words between them, but it’s only recently that each silent exchange has started to feel significant, special. It’s something that Tsukishima has only with him, and it’s a reminder each time of how he wants so much more of Tsukishima to be only for him. He tears his eyes away. “Um. I’d better go with him,” he says, nodding at Kageyama. “I’ll see you at practice, Tsukki?”
Tsukishima looks like he couldn’t care less. “Sure,” he says.
He walks with Kageyama down to the vending machine in silence — though Kageyama is visibly radiating some sort of restless energy, alternating between having his eyes trained on the floor and then glaring sideways at Yamaguchi. They’ve been working together long enough for Yamaguchi to know that this isn’t his angry glare but his thinking very hard glare; and he tactfully opts not to push Kageyama. If he came all the way to his class to accost him before practice, he’ll find it in himself to spit it out eventually. He’s clearly working himself up to it.
Yamaguchi doesn’t care much for milk, but he doesn’t really want a soda right before training either. Gaze roving over the options, he thinks for a moment before sliding in his coins and punching in his selection.
When he stands back up with his drink in his hand, Kageyama is on the other side of the machine, looking apprehensive.
“Why did you say it was me?” Kageyama asks without preamble. Yamaguchi knows what he’s talking about immediately, and he sounds genuinely curious. “There’s lots of other guys on the team. Or you could even have said someone that Terushima doesn’t know.”
“Oh,” Yamaguchi says, as if he hasn’t already thought this over loads of times in the privacy of his own mind when he’s really going over every most recent embarrassing thing he’s done. “I guess it was more of a process of elimination. Even hypothetically, Hinata’s not really a good choice for a fake boyfriend, don’t you think? No— sorry!” he laughs at Kageyama’s face, “Really, he’d be a terrible actor, all exaggerated and ‘GWAH, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, FOR REAL!!!!!! YAMAGUCHI!’ and Yachi— well! I just couldn’t do that to Yachi!”
Kageyama thinks about this, then eventually nods, like he’s turned Yamaguchi’s answer over in his head and it makes acceptable sense to him. “I guess you’re right,” he agrees, “I’ve only thought about Hinata as a real boyfriend, so I guess I hadn’t considered that he’d be a bad fake one.”
”That’s—“
“Okay,” Kageyama tells him, “Well, I thought about it. If I needed a fake boyfriend, I would probably say you, too.”
”Oh.”
“Yeah,” Kageyama nods. “You’re a really good volleyball captain, you’re nice to people, and you’re very handsome, Yamaguchi.” He lists these things carefully and thoroughly, in a tone of voice that indicates that these are factual truths to Kageyama, perhaps also arranged in order of personal importance.
Yamaguchi glances down at the drink in his hand, where its soaked into the edges of the sleeves of his school uniform a little. It sticks to his skin, unpleasantly damp. He looks back up at Kageyama.
"I need you to be my fake boyfriend," Kageyama announces.
The spot on his sleeve has spread to the white uniform shirt underneath, a rapidly darkening splotch. When he looks up, again, Kageyama, who has just asked him to be his boyfriend, is still standing there.
“Woah,” Yamaguchi croaks. Then some sort of emergency captain instinct kicks in, and he remembers that Kageyama responds well to clear direction, so he instructs, “Explain?”
“We should practice,” Kageyama proposes. “Since we both like people.”
”We don’t know if they even like us back,” Yamaguchi argues automatically.
Kageyama doesn’t look at all swayed by this point, and instead looks at Yamaguchi with a very straight expression. “When we make our team execute plays, we don’t know if they’ll actually be successful in games,” Kageyama tells him, very sagely. “But we make sure that they have the practical capabilities necessary.”
“You really do think of everything as volleyball,” Yamaguchi blurts.
“…yeah?” Kageyama wonders, baffled. “How do you think about things?”
Yamaguchi’s head has begun to spin, at this point. It’s a good question — how do you think about things? He’s been trying his best not to, at all, and Kageyama’s suggestion of strategy is, when he actually thinks about it, a step up from doing nothing at all.
“I want to figure out how to be a good boyfriend,” Kageyama is continuing with his pitch in earnest. “I know I’m not the best at noticing things about people. So I want to try.”
I want to try, is a cornerstone of both Hinata and Kageyama's existences, Yamaguchi knows this. It’s something that he’d spent a lot of his first year envying them for, their talent and their drive and their success; there’s something so inevitable about their pull, that Yamaguchi wonders if Kageyama feels that way about his feelings too. That he and Hinata are something given, gradual, certain — that he just needs to try, practice, reach, and it’ll be his to have.
From the start, Tsukishima has never been something meant for Yamaguchi; from their meeting on the playground, to working up the courage to peer round the corner into middle school volleyball practice, pointing out Akiteru's shoes, Yamaguchi has always wanted, has always worked to be in the same room as Tsukishima at the same time. It was never meant to be them; he thinks about being the odd one out in their first year, thinks about every practice with Shimada, every missed serve. He thinks about teaching Tsukishima his float serve in second year, about Yachi whispering lowly to him that Tsukishima had been the first to nominate him for captain. Tsukishima waiting outside of his house at ten at night in the cold, with two bottles of drink that he doesn't even like.
Kageyama's eyes are clear, determined. He's asking Yamaguchi to try with him.
Trying is within his reach too.
“Okay,” Yamaguchi resolves. Their eyes meet. “Let’s do it.”
Except, the thing is that being fake boyfriends is actually a lot harder than Yamaguchi had thought it would be. For one, there’s barely any reason for them to be different than usual — Yamaguchi already spends all of club giving orders alongside Kageyama, and then there’s the fact that it becomes evident soon enough that neither Yamaguchi nor Kageyama really know what to do as boyfriends.
“Just now,” Kageyama whispers harshly, “When I told you to help Kogane with the net, should I have said, ‘Could you help Kogane with the net, b—‘“ Kageyama stammers over his own words, blushing. “‘—babe?’”
“Uhhhh,” Yamaguchi genuinely has to think about this. “Do you feel like we’d be the sort of boyfriends to call each other ‘babe’ in public?”
There’s a pause as they both take some time to consider this.
“I don’t think so,” Kageyama decides seriously.
“Maybe we’re going about this wrong,” Yamaguchi offers. “Maybe we should keep in mind some sort of… reference. Like for being a couple? What would uh, what would a married couple be like?”
”My parents aren’t around,” Kageyama says, matter-of-fact and frowning in consternation, genuinely seeming more bothered by their lack of model example than by his familial circumstances. “I don’t know.”
“And I don’t have a dad,” Yamaguchi adds, bummed. “So.”
”Damn,” Kageyama curses, sounding truly disappointed. “Ground zero.”
Yamaguchi thinks. “Okay, well, it doesn’t have to be verbal cues, right? he says, “You don’t really talk that much, anyway. So maybe, uh, what if we just kept doing what we’re doing but whenever we interact… we just kinda smile at each other a little? Like maybe you’ll pass me water and I’ll go like,” Yamaguchi pauses, holds eye contact with Kageyama, and stretches his mouth into a smile, toothy around a little huffed laugh.
Kageyama stares for a moment, then, testingly, mimics Yamaguchi with a smile of his own.
“Oh— ooh,” Yamaguchi winces. “Maybe uh, maybe not that.”
“I think it’s a pretty good idea actually,” Kageyama says.
Yamaguchi snaps his fingers. “Ooh, okay, how about I smile, like all dopey-like, and like—“ he mimes a swoon, buckling his knees a little for effect, “And you can— you can stare!”
Kageyama stares. “Just stare?”
”Yeah!” Yamaguchi enthuses, “You’re kind of a big starer! So maybe you should just stare… longer! Like you can’t look away.”
“Oh,” Kageyama nods. “I get it. Because I like looking at you.”
“Yes,” Yamaguchi exclaims. “Great! You get it.”
Practice concludes on this note, and Yamaguchi finds himself in high spirits as he wipes the sweat from his brow and walks towards the club room. Tsukishima is sitting in a corner, unwrapping the tape from his fingers, and he looks up when Yamaguchi approaches. Yamaguchi beams at him, and stops at the locker right in front of him. He opens it and deftly rifles through the mess of his school uniform and sports bag where they'd been hastily stashed earlier. He fishes out the drink he'd bought earlier at the machine, shutting the locker door to reveal Tsukishima still on the other side of it. “Hi, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi sings as he closes the distance and sinks down next to his friend. “I’m sorry I had to leave earlier. This is for you.” He presses the packet of lukewarm strawberry milk into Tsukishima’s hand, which he clutches obediently. His eyes dart to look at what Yamaguchi’s passed to him, then up to his friend’s face. Tsukishima purses his lips and nods a curt thanks.
“What did Kageyama need?”
”Milk!” Yamaguchi cries, in an imitation of Kageyama’s plaintive tone from earlier. Tsukishima’s mouth turns up a fraction at this, which is basically a grin.
He finishes peeling off the last of his tape and swaps the roll out for the packet of strawberry milk instead. Yamaguchi watches as he divests the straw of its plastic, long fingers working deft and precise. The ring finger of his left hand is slightly crooked from when it never really set back properly over a year ago. “You’re so weird, Yamaguchi,” he murmurs, punching the straw through its foil circle.
“Sorry, Tsukki,” he trills, not much intent behind it, second nature.
“Hmm,” Tsukishima hums noncommittally. As he takes a sip from the milk, the straw floods faintly pink through its translucent white shell. He tilts his head, eyes sharp and considering. Without putting the packet back down, he opens his mouth and states, speaking around the straw, “That’s the second time, in two weeks.”
“Huh?” Yamaguchi tries not to blush — he really likes this particular expression on Tsukki, he gets all handsome when he’s like this, like he’s examining an interesting bug. I’m crazy, Yamaguchi thinks.
Tsukishima holds up two fingers, his pointer and middle, for Yamaguchi to see. “Twice in the last two weeks, you’ve had something you couldn’t tell me.”
“Aa-ah, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi protests weakly, “I’m the captain now… if people tell me their secrets, I have to keep them!” He tries not to think about if this extends to his own secrets, or not, because he knows that it’ll show on his face and Tsukki will know.
Tsukishima never takes his eyes off him, just keeps studying him, like if he looks at Yamaguchi long enough, he’ll see what he needs to, or find whatever it is that he’s looking for. It's difficult; watching him watch Yamaguchi like he's the only thing in the room, if only because he really wishes he could be the centre of Tsukki's world, where he apparently counts Yamaguchi's freckles and all the things he doesn't tell him. It's a lot.
“Guys,” Yamaguchi calls, clapping his hands loudly together to capture the attention of the room. He rises from where he was sitting and doesn't look to see Tsukishima's reaction. He announces loudly, “Kageyama and I are treating meat buns, so we’ll see you at Sakanoshita, okay?”
“Woah, you’re the best!” Kobayashi cheers.
Hayama, one of their second-years, chimes in with an excited, “Yamaguchi-senpai, Kageyama-senpai, you’re like— you’re like our parents, or something! Awesome!”
He breaks off into a terrified look, and a glance in the direction of where he’s looking reveals to Yamaguchi that Kageyama has zeroed in on their poor junior with a deeply intense expression. He walks up on Hayama, body language interrogative.
“Parents?” Kageyama parrots. “Like a couple?”
”Err… sure?” Hayama offers.
“Nice,” he whispers to himself, loudly enough that everyone can hear him. He withdraws from Hayama, who sags in relief and confusion, turns to Yamaguchi and offers him a thumbs up. It’s all very blatant. “Good.”
Tsukishima's voice is both acerbic and droning as ever when he asks, "What?" He's squinting as he looks between his captain and vice-captain with the faintest scowl to his features.
Yamaguchi makes a mental note to treat Hinata to a meal or something, one day, when all of this is over, because he has a startling penchant for timing so perfectly convenient that Yamaguchi can't help but wonder if some god out there really is looking out for him, through oddly-specific Hinata-only distractions. “YAMAYAMA!” he chooses to yell at this moment, something inevitable, brandishing his finger at Kageyama. “I BET YOU CAN’T EAT MORE PORK BUNS THAN ME.”
“HUH?” Kageyama growls back, not a second thought given to the absurdity of the provocation. “OF COURSE I CAN, DUMBASS.”
”YOU’RE ON.”
This issue of a challenge immediately renders Tsukishima irrelevant, and sees them at Sakanoshita shortly, with a mountain of pork buns in front of them after several threats of various injury from Coach Ukai. Yamaguchi snickers. Normally, at this point in the conversation, it would be his cue to exchange snide, if not resigned looks with Tsukki before they’d excuse themselves shortly, to spare themselves the spectacle of Hinata v. Kageyama: Pork Bun Showdown, as well the subsequent fallout of Hinata and Kageyama: Pork Bun Throwup. But he’s at Kageyama’s side today, and he’s feeling kind of saccharine about the surprising easiness of their little con, so instead, he sits down and decides to pick pork buns one-by-one off the pile.
He tears each fluffy white bun clean in half, exposing the dark, saucy filling within, heat curling smoky and grey into the frigid air-conditioning of Sakanoshita’s interior. He puffs gently over the hot inside of each bun half, passing each one up to Kageyama as he scarfs them down at a truly single-minded pace, determined to one-up the object of his affections.
“Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima’s voice breaks his attention away from his task. Tsukki’s got a little crease between his brow and a scrunch to his nose, looking both a little bit disgusted and a little bit confused. Cute, Yamaguchi thinks. Tsukki says, “What are you doing?”
“They’re silly, Tsukki!” Yamaguchi laughs, as Kageyama snatches another half out of Yamaguchi’s hand and just about shoves it down his throat. “You can help Hinata out, I think he needs it!” he chirps, cheerily snarky. Some of the first years cheer on their pick of favourite senpai, with Hinata being undeniably more popular, while the second years who are far more acclimatised to their seniors efficiently squirrel away their portion of free buns.
“YAMAGUCHI!!” Hinata wails in betrayal, though through a mouthful of pork bun it sounds more like “AAAMMAAAEEEH”.
Hinata loses by a fair margin. You would think that after a certain number of bathroom-related incidents, he would comprehend the limits of his stomach even a little bit by now. But Hinata has grown and changed in a lot of ways over the years; this isn't one of those ways.
"I won," Kageyama informs him, looking very smug indeed as Hinata agonises and wails to his left. Yamaguchi is starting to realise that this is their own form of flirting.
"Good job," Yamaguchi coos, indulgently. He doesn't expect the way that Kageyama actually ducks his head, bashful.
“You’re a really good volleyball captain, you’re nice to people, and you’re very handsome, Yamaguchi.”
No way. It dawns on Yamaguchi that Kageyama, regardless of that they're pretending to date, truly does find him attractive. The fact is as unbelievable as it is thrilling. His head fills with a pleasant sort of adrenaline rush, and this possesses him to lean over into Kageyama's space, knocking their knees against each other when he raises his thumb to the corner of Kageyama's mouth and swipes away a stray splatter of sauce.
The breath that Kageyama sucks in is audible, this close, Yamaguchi sees how his pupils dilate.
Fingers curl around Yamaguchi's hand, and with a harsh tug, there's space between him and Kageyama again.
"You don't have to baby him outside of club hours," Tsukishima criticises balefully. He lets go of Yamaguchi's wrist with a scoff. "This is lame. I'm going home."
"You're no fun, Stingyshima!" Hinata complains, but Yamaguchi watches him pick up his school bag and leave, speechlessly. He can count the number of times that he and Tsukki haven't walked home together after practice on one hand.
He tries to focus back on the rest of the club, the happy chatter of the first years who are settling into their club like shiny new cogs slotting into their places in a well-worn machine, the second years who are finding their own stride as seniors. Hinata and Kageyama bicker at his side. At some point, he retrieves his phone from his bag, chewing on his lip as he runs his fingers absently over its beveled edges, toying with the idea of texting Tsukki, calling him. Someone taps on his shoulder, and Yamaguchi looks up to see that it's Kageyama, who leans in to press his shoulder against his own in a gesture of reassurance. He's a sturdy and warm weight against him, and it helps bring Yamaguchi back to earth; his stomach feels less wound up.
“You should go after him,” Kageyama mumbles, “I don’t think you did anything wrong. But if you won’t feel at ease until you check in with Tsukishima, then you should just do that.”
Yamaguchi thinks he could walk down the path to Tsukishima's house with his eyes closed; it's muscle memory to him, every landmark familiar. He finds Tsukishima right around the last bend, his headphones firmly on. His gait is quick and snappy, and his posture carries tension in its form; the beginnings of guilt chew at Yamaguchi's insides. He hadn't noticed that Tsukki was uncomfortable, whether it had been too loud or too bright or too much at the convenience store.
He picks up his pace, jogging to catch up with Tsukishima. There's no point calling out to him, because if he really is upset, he'll have the music up all the way. Sure enough, when Yamaguchi runs up to his side, he can hear the faint sound of garbled lyrics over something moody, thick and synthy leaking from Tsukishima's Somys.
He sinks his fingers into Tsukishima's sleeve to get his attention, and Tsukishima turns. A multitude of expressions flicker across his face, and Yamaguchi desperately tries to catch and catalogue each one before they all coalesce and mute down, schooled forcefully into Tsukki's neutral mask. He starts speaking before Tsukishima's taking his headphones off, so that Tsukishima can see his mouth moving around words and know that he wants to talk.
“I don’t really care,” Tsukki says flatly, before he can even hear Yamaguchi out, expression drawn into a bored blank. “You can do whatever you want, Yamaguchi.”
Yamaguchi would've snapped his mouth shut if this had happened two years ago, but that isn't who he is right now. "I haven't even said anything, Tsukki," he chastises lightly. "I just wanted to ask if everything is okay."
"It's fine," Tsukishima utters, clearly disdainful.
"Clearly not," Yamaguchi snaps, frayed by both annoyance and worry. "I'm sorry if I wasn't paying attention to you at Sakanoshita, I—“
“To be honest," Tsukki enunciates as he interrupts, every syllable clear. "It’s bothersome if you’re always following me, anyway.”
It feels like he's been gutted inside-out.
“Oh,” Yamaguchi eventually squeezes from the hollow of his lungs. “Okay.”
He shifts, uncomfortable, as they stand there, held hostage by Tsukishima’s declaration. His fingers, as they scrabble and fidget against each other, are cool and dry, and he wishes for just a few nights ago instead, when they were wet and clasped around a white peach tomomasu instead.
He watches Tsukishima walk away, this time with a wholly different feeling in his chest.
Before he even realises what he's doing, he's punching in the series of buttons to dial Kageyama Tobio.
“He didn’t even care,” Yamaguchi gasps into the receiver before Kageyama is even halfway through his greeting.
Kageyama’s voice crackles over the line. “What did he say?”
“He told me to just do whatever I wanted. And that he— that he doesn’t care about what I do, because I don’t, um.” Yamaguchi swallows hard around the next words that he’s trying to sound out, and tears spring to sting around the corners of his eyes.
“He didn’t want to talk,” Yamaguchi sneers miserably. “Interrupted me, and said… he said…” His breathing spikes, harsh, staccato.
“Yamaguchi?” Kageyama asks, clearly alarmed even over the phone.
He takes a few deep breaths, trying to compose himself; they’re embarrassingly loud and on the last heave he chokes on the lump in his throat and his exhale breaks into a gasp as tears start rolling down his face.
“Yamaguchi?” Kageyama asks, panicked. “Wait— okay. I’m— I’m going to come over, okay? Just wait.”
The line clicks off, leaving Yamaguchi alone in the quiet of his house. He’s right at the top of the stairs on the second floor, and he doesn’t think he has that last bit of energy needed to make it to his room. He presses his back flat against the wall and sinks down against it, something relieving in the motion of giving up as he lets his body go slack and his face crumple into a fresh wave of sobs.
He lets it pour out of him, hard and intense, wave after wave of sharp pain washing acutely over him and spilling through his chest, up his throat, down his cheeks and into the bunched up fabric of his sweater sleeves piled around his knees.
There’s loud, urgent banging on the door.
“Buh?” Yamaguchi sniffles, head snapping up to look into the darkness down the stairs. He scrambles to his feet.
“Coming!” he calls, surprised that Kageyama really did show up, and so soon. He races down the stairs in his socks, sliding to the front door and nearly tripping over his own feet in his disoriented state.
“Sorry,” Kageyama wheezes, doubled over where he’s taking off his shoes at Yamaguchi’s front door. “Didn’t actually know where you lived. Called Yachi.”
“Um,” Yamaguchi says dumbly. Then he snorts a huge glob of snot back up his phlegmy nose. He can feel the wetness around his eyes even as he regards Kageyama. “Don’t mind.”
Kageyama reaches out tentatively towards Yamaguchi, like he can’t decide if he should touch him lest he shatter. “What did Tsukishima say?” The you look really bad hangs unspoken.
“He said,” Yamaguchi wheedles, “Um.” He wraps an arm around his middle shakily, as if this will help him to hold himself together any better. “It’s bothersome if I need to always be following him everywhere, anyway.”
Kageyama very clearly hears the way his voice splinters, then cracks at the end of his sentence, because Yamaguchi sees the way his blue eyes go wide and icy; and then blurry, because Yamaguchi starts sobbing against the vestiges of any remaining self control he had and he’s staring angrily down at the floor feeling wholly pathetic, fat, hot tears spilling and splattering against his floor.
Foggily, he recognises that Kageyama has put his hand on his shoulder and is patting at him awkwardly. “Yamaguchi,” he tries, and Yamaguchi just cries harder. Kageyama lets him.
When the initial crushing wave of emotion has finally dissipated somewhat, enough for Yamaguchi to finally inhale a few ugly, wheezy breaths, he finally looks up at Kageyama’s face and then immediately huffs a laugh at just how serious his friend looks, mouth set into a hard line, jaw tensed.
He startles a little when he processes that Yamaguchi’s eyes are finally on him. “Okay…” Kageyama’s expression wavers, then settles, going almost constipated, like he’s made a particularly complicated decision. He lets go of Yamaguchi and walks over to the sofa instead. “Come here,” he tells Yamaguchi, patting an empty spot. Yamaguchi is quick to acquiesce, not really in the frame of mind to think too much about it. Kageyama makes quick work of piling the pillows onto one end of the couch, then walks them both sideways.
He pulls Yamaguchi into him, and folds them both into the corner of the sofa.
“Kageyama?”
“You’re… you’re really upset, right?” Kageyama asks, an unsure, wavering note in his voice. “So… a good boyfriend would. A good boyfriend would make you feel better!” Halfway through his delivery, the question morphs into more of a declaration, and right as Kageyama punctuates his statement, he yanks Yamaguchi against his shoulder with determined purpose. Yamaguchi’s face is unceremoniously smushed into the collar of Kageyama’s shirt, caught awkwardly between the crook of his neck and the bone of his collar.
“Uh,” Kageyama says from somewhere above him, and then tentative fingers are sinking into Yamaguchi’s hair, sending shivers rocketing down his spine when their gentle pads find the soft of his scalp. And then Kageyama begins stroking, lightly carding through Yamaguchi’s strands, petting at him in movements that mingle into something awkward and soothing and curiously endearing.
“This is how— this is how I’d always imagined I’d pet a cat,” Kageyama blurts. “If a cat ever let me pet it. Is it okay?”
Yamaguchi opens his eyes and Kageyama’s face is startling close, and his cheeks are bright red but his mouth is set and he looks very determined, the way he does when he’s concentrating really hard on drawing up some plays. It’s a little strange but mostly touching.
He sighs.
“Is it bad?” Kageyama hesitates, the frown prominent in his voice.
“It’s— not that,” Yamaguchi protests, “It’s just, you’re being really good at this.”
Kageyama takes a while to respond, then, sounding genuinely puzzled, questions, “You want me to… be bad at this?”
Yamaguchi laughs, something thin and fragile. Then Kageyama is wrapping both of his arms around him, strong and grounding, and pulling him against his chest. Yamaguchi makes a surprised noise; but Kageyama only keeps his grip firm. He’s warm through his clothes, and between Kageyama’s sheer broadness and the thick softness of his well-worn sweater cushioning Yamaguchi all around, it’s easy to burrow into the comforting embrace, in the end. When Kageyama starts rubbing slow circles into his scalp again, Yamaguchi practically melts.
“Is this good?” Kageyama checks.
Yamaguchi sighs, still feeling worn out, but he no longer feels like he cannot breathe and he’s starting to feel human again, decompressing in Kageyama’s hold. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Good.” There’s a satisfied fullness in the way Kageyama sounds as he says this, and then his voice drops, so he can admit to Yamaguchi, “It’s good for me, too.”
Yamaguchi peeks at him, offering him a small, genuine smile. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Kageyama affirms. His fingers have long since stilled in Yamaguchi’s hair, but he removes them now. A second later, Yamaguchi feels him flatten his palms, splayed out as he begins to run them up and down the expanse of Yamaguchi’s back. “I think it’s nice to be able to give someone comfort like this.” He adds, a little gruffer. “It makes me think that I… that I would like touching Hinata like this.”
Yamaguchi closes his eyes and rests his head against Kageyama. “Yeah,” he breathes. “I think that would be really nice.”
Kageyama hums, continuing dedicatedly at his ministrations, kneading at Yamaguchi and pressing them close. It’s an entirely creature comfort, warm companionship, and Yamaguchi thinks that this is the kind of affection that Kageyama, someone who is straightforward and honest, is perfect in giving.
He’s not sure how much time passes. Neither of them had thought to switch on the lights or any appliances at all, so the room is slightly humid and only dimly illuminated by the light leaking through the curtains from the lamps outside. Kageyama keeps him in his arms patiently and without complaint, just lets Yamaguchi settle there for as long as he needs, a liminal space of a friend.
”Yamaguchi,” he murmurs into the silence. “I know we’re fake boyfriends, but you know that we’re real friends, right?” The sheer weight of earnestness in his voice is enough to make Yamaguchi want to start crying all over again.
“I know,” Yamaguchi promises, in barely above a whisper. The moment feels too precious, too important for anything more than that. “If you want…” he offers hesitantly, “You could call me Tadashi. We’ve— you’re probably one of my best friends, other than Tsukki.”
When he cracks open his eyes, he’s met with the hazy image of Kageyama staring at him, eyes wide and blown in the dark and Yamaguchi is almost afraid that he’s overstepped, maybe said something weird. Then Kageyama asks, quiet and serious, “Do you really mean that? That I’m one of your best friends.”
Unhesitating, Yamaguchi promises, “Yeah.”
”Oh,” Kageyama breathes, mouth falling open around the word, reverently. His cheeks are dusted pink, and he looks at Yamaguchi with an expression that’s distinctly pleased. “Same.”
“Great,” Yamaguchi tells him, beaming. Adds, “Tobio.”
Kageyama grins at him, and what do you know — when he isn’t doing it consciously, Kageyama actually has a really nice smile. The ache in Yamaguchi’s chest suddenly doesn’t feel so insurmountable, when Kageyama turns to rest his cheek in Yamaguchi’s hair, scooting them around so that they can both fit cosily into the couch. His knee slots against the back of Yamaguchi’s thigh, a reassuring, warm weight. It’s nice. Yamaguchi yawns.
“I think I might fall asleep,” he warns sleepily.
”I can stay,” Kageyama assures him.