Chapter Text
Noya glanced down at his phone as his cab pulled onto a narrow, unfamiliar street and started to slow. No new messages. He chewed on his lip and shoved the phone back in his pocket, peering anxiously out the window. He’d never been this far from home alone before and never in this part of the city at all. He’d made the trip on impulse and had already gotten lost twice, and if this address wasn’t the right one…
But when the cab rolled to a stop, he saw Tanaka leaned up against the side of the building, arms crossed over his chest, waiting for him. Noya breathed a sigh of relief, then paid the cab driver and grabbed his bag off the seat, mumbling a hasty thanks before climbing out of the car. He felt grimy and gross, a long day of travel layered over dried-on sweat. He probably looked like he’d just crawled off his death bed, but Tanaka grinned when he saw him, pushing away from the wall and holding up a hand to draw his attention. “Yo. You made it.”
“Just barely,” Noya said with a tired smile. “The trains here are a nightmare.”
“You get used to it,” he said, holding out his arms. Noya laughed and let himself be dragged into a hug. It was nice. Needed. He tightened his arms around Tanaka’s waist, pulling him close, and Tanaka squeezed him around the shoulders before pulling back with a grin. “Damn. Feels like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you.”
Noya snorted, “Dude, it’s been less than a month.”
“Yeah, and that’s the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other since we were, what, like eight?” Tanaka said, waving for Noya to follow him inside.
It was a fair point. He hadn’t put words or a shape to the feeling, but as soon as Tanaka said it, Noya realized how badly he’d missed his best friend. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been so messed up lately,” he muttered as they crossed the threshold from the street into the bar, the noise of traffic giving way to the soft din of voices, the murmur of TVs turned low and ambient music playing overhead.
Tanaka glanced back over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. “You say something?”
Noya shook his head. “Just talking to myself.”
Tanaka nodded, accepting it as fact, and led Noya through the dimly-lit bar. It was nothing fancy – the kind of place people went to get drunk and be left alone – and in the late afternoon it felt muted, not particularly crowded and populated by a few lone people who looked like they’d already been there a while. Tanaka motioned for Noya to take a seat at the bar, then slipped behind it himself. “So,” he said with a wicked grin, “since I didn’t get to say it in person.” He held up two bottles of beer and cracked the lids off them, then set one on the counter in front of Noya and raised the other in salute. “Congratulations.”
Noya raised his eyebrows. “You trying to get fired?”
Tanaka snorted. “This look like the kind of place that checks ID?”
Noya shrugged because, okay, fair point, and lifted his bottle, mimicking Tanaka’s celebratory posture. “To making the cut?”
“To the best new libero in Tokyo,” Tanaka said, with enough gravitas to make Noya snort. He clinked his bottle against Tanaka’s before raising it to his lips. It was probably a bad idea to even be in the same room as anything alcoholic; it had been a while since he’d had anything to eat or, god, to drink, and he was dehydrated enough that he chugged half the bottle before coming up for air. God, it tasted good, though. And if it took a little less than usual to make him start feeling fuzzy, well, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
“So,” Tanaka said when Noya set down the bottle. “How long are you planning on crashing with me?” Noya’s shoulders went stiff, and he hoped the dim light of the bar hid it. The question didn’t surprise him, but he’d been hoping for at least a little preamble before he had to answer it. “I mean, mi casa es su casa, but your texts were a little vague. I’d like to show you around before you have to go, but I’m working tomorrow and the night after, so-”
“Actually,” Noya said, because fuck if he was going to spend all night with it buried in his chest, waiting to say it, waiting to ask, “I, uh. I was thinking I might stick around. Like, long term? I mean, if you haven’t already found someone to rent the other room, and you still. You know. Want to live together.”
Tanaka’s eyes widened in surprise. “I thought that you and Asahi were-”
“Yeah,” Noya said. “We aren’t.”
“Oh,” he said. And when Noya didn’t look up from the label on his beer bottle, Tanaka breathed out, “Shit.” Noya chewed his lip, waiting for the next question – what happened? – but it didn’t come, at least not immediately. Tanaka lifted his beer bottle to his lips and drained it, then tossed it into a bin beneath the counter, pulled out two shot glasses, and filled them both with tequila. He slid one across the bar to Noya and held up the other in a much less enthusiastic salute. “The room’s all yours, man. Like you even need to ask.”
Relief and gratitude almost took his breath away. There was no way Tanaka hadn’t at least looked for another roommate already – he’d been in Tokyo almost a month and had complained about how expensive everything was every time they’d texted or talked on the phone. He’d never guilted Noya about turning down his offer to share his new two bedroom apartment above the bar, but his job alone wasn’t going to cover rent for both rooms for more than a month or two. And Tanaka had every right to be pissed about it; they’d been talking abstractly about rooming together for years, and after they’d both gotten into the same university, it had seemed like a given – and it would have been, if it hadn’t been for Asahi.
Yeah, tequila felt like the right answer. “Thanks,” Noya said, holding up the shot glass. “I really appreciate it, Ryuu.”
Tanaka breathed out a laugh through his nose, clinking his glass against Noya’s. “No need to thank me. Where am I going to find a better roommate than you?”
On the side of the road, maybe. But Noya managed a grin before tossing back his drink, closing his eyes and enjoying the subtle burn. When he looked, Tanaka had already refilled their glasses. “How’s work?” he asked, because if Tanaka wasn’t going to push now, Noya figured he could stand to have fewer inhibitions before the questions started.
“Shitty,” he said, but with a grin that said otherwise. “My sister’s a real slave driver.”
Noya actually laughed at that. “Yeah, letting you wait around outside for your friends and drink on the job. How do you stand it?”
“She’s a lot less chill when it actually gets busy in here.”
“Does it?” Noya asked, tipping back his second shot. “Get busy, I mean?”
“Not till after dark, and usually only on weekends. But it’s a fuckin’ pain in the ass when it does. And she makes me clean the bathrooms. I swear to god you’ve never seen so much piss and puke in your whole life.”
“Skip the bathrooms, got it.”
“Smart man,” Tanaka said, filling a glass with water and setting it on the counter. He left it near enough to himself that he wasn’t pushing it on Noya or even really offering it to him, but it was there, in reach, if he wanted it. Noya took the glass and sipped at the water, and after a moment, Tanaka said, “I’m still on the clock for a few more hours, but if you’re wiped out from the train ride, I can give you my keys and you can crash upstairs until I get off work.”
“I look that bad, huh?”
Tanaka grinned. “And you smell worse. What the hell did you do, come straight from practice?”
He knew it was supposed to be a joke, meant to brush off both Noya’s disheveled appearance and Tanaka’s concern about it, but Noya breathed out a sigh, “Actually, yeah, that’s… I kind of did.”
He was wearing his Karasuno Volleyball Club jacket, but that wasn’t anything unusual. As soon as he said it, though, Tanaka reached across the bar and tentatively pulled the jacket open, revealing the Karasuno High School logo printed on the breast of Noya’s white practice shirt. Tanaka frowned, his face contorting with worry, “Noya, what-” He stopped himself just short of asking, like he’d told himself he wasn’t going to, then apparently decided there wasn’t a way around it and sighed. “What the fuck happened, man?”
Noya held up his shot glass. “One more?”
Tanaka hesitated for a moment, then nodded and poured.
Noya held the glass in his hand and looked down at the golden liquid, wondering where the hell to even start. It was all bullshit, start to finish, and – fuck. Fuck. Just thinking about it, trying to put some order to it, was making his throat feel tight. He threw back the shot and slammed the glass on the bar. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “It’s…” Over. Done. “I broke it off with him. Today. After practice.” And there he was, mad all over again. So mad he was shaking, like he could slam his fist right down through the top of the bar and keep going. He was breathing hard, fists clenched.
Tanaka didn’t say anything. He just waited, let the silence hanging between them siphon off some of Noya’s anger.
“I got my official confirmation today,” Noya said eventually, leaning against the bar and rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, “the fucking, for my scholarship, and all that. And I went straight to his house after practice, cuz like, we were waiting until we knew for sure about the money, right? And I told him, and he seemed happy, and then,” Fuck, fuck, fuck. He was not going to cry about this anymore. Had cried half the way here on the fucking train already and that was more than fucking Asahi fucking deserved. “I said we should head out here this weekend together to start looking for an apartment, and he said he changed his mind, that he didn’t want to move out of Torono.”
“Wait, what ?” Tanaka said, loud enough to earn a glance from someone on the other side of the bar.
“He said I should go, and that he was going to stay.”
“What the fuck ? I thought you two had been planning this.”
He wanted Tanaka’s indignation to make him mad again, but it just hurt, like a punch in the chest, because they had, they had , for so long , and. “He was all set to transfer his job to the Tokyo branch, and we packed, and I had a list. Of places.” He scrubbed at his nose. “I made a budget, we-” his voice was coming out wheezy and breathless, ragged with his own disbelief. “We weren’t going to have to pretend anymore. We were gonna actually finally be able to be together and-” He looked up at Tanaka. “he said he wasn’t ready.”
“That fucking coward.” It wasn’t the first time Tanaka had said it, not by a long shot – it was probably his favorite thing to call Asahi, the insult he fell back on whenever Noya came to him after they’d had a fight. But it was the first time Noya didn’t have it in him to argue the point. The first time, maybe ever, that he agreed.
“He had all these reasons,” Noya said miserably, “all this shit he’s afraid of. About the rent and the commute and his parents and…” he shook his head, “coming out, I guess, even in a new place where the only people we know are like, fucking, you and Kuroo and Bokuto, like you don’t all know already and like they aren’t the biggest homos to ever don a pair of fucking regulation booty shorts.” He shook his head, leaning heavily against the bar, “And it was all obviously stuff he’d been worried about. Stuff he should have told me months ago.”
“Why didn’t he?” Tanaka asked.
“That was…” Noya shook his head, dropping his eyes and wiping at his nose. “That was what we really fought about. It stopped being about moving in together, or Tokyo, or...” He chewed his lip, shaking his head. “He said he didn’t tell me because he wanted to be supportive of me. That he was proud I got scouted and wanted to… do all the things I wanted, and that he tried, but that he realized he couldn’t. That I- fuck, that I was asking too much? Even though I never… I thought we were making decisions together , but apparently he was just going along with everything I said.” He felt tired, suddenly, so terribly exhausted, and found himself shaking his head in disbelief. “And that’s always it, isn’t it? That’s what you were always saying, and I never fucking listened. That I’ve just been dragging his ass around forcing him to do shit that makes him uncomfortable. I always thought I was helping him, making him a better player, helping him get a better job, because he has so much fucking potential, but apparently I’ve just been fucking bullying him or something, and I guess wanting to start our fucking life together was the last straw.”
“Can I say something?” Tanaka asked, and his deferential tone made Noya look up, surprised and bewildered. He waved a hand, permission to go ahead, and Tanaka frowned, then took a breath and said, “You’re the only person that ever saw a shred of potential in him.”
Even said calmly and gently, the words stung like a lash, and Noya jerked back. “What?”
“Noya,” Tanaka said, “Asahi has the presence of an overcooked noodle and the personality of a damp tissue. He’s our friend, and our teammate, and we all liked him, but you… you looked at him and you saw something that no one else did.”
“What…?” Noya said, looking at him in confused disbelief.
“You saw an ace.”
“He was the ace.”
“No,” Tanaka said, “we called him the ace because he was the biggest spiker on the team, but no one really expected anything of him, until you. You looked at him, and you pointed at him and said ‘you’re the ace,’ and then you turned him into our fucking ace. And then we won nationals, and he graduated, and he was going to become, what, some shop clerk or something? And you dug, and pushed, and found what he was good at, and yanked it out of him, and put in his applications, and got him a job he loves that pays well enough for him to move out of his parents’ house-”
“But he won’t,” Noya said, feeling a little sick. It was like he’d just been told a secret everyone had been keeping from him, and it made too much sense not to be true. “He’s not going to move out,” he breathed. “And that was fine before. I mean, I didn’t expect him to move somewhere else in Torono, and obviously I didn’t want him to move away while I was still in school, but I was counting on this, on us getting our own place when I graduated, because… Jesus, we’ve been sneaking around for so long, and I’m so sick of it. It’s not just that he wouldn’t tell his parents, but he wouldn’t let me tell mine , and…” He ran his fingers through his bangs. “While I was still in school, it was easy. It was easy for us to stay together, because I was right there, and he wasn’t planning on leaving. But as soon as it got hard for him, as soon as he had to actually do something to make it work, he balked. I told him.” He swallowed thickly, leaning on the bar again and resting his forehead on his hand. “I told him I needed him to step up. That I needed him to help me make this happen, because I couldn’t do it by myself, and I couldn’t do it while holding his hand every step of the way, because I’m fucking terrified about this – about moving away from home, and having to do all this new shit in a strange place by myself – but you know what he said?”
“What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t want to hold me back anymore.” His voice broke, and he pressed his hand to his mouth, his words coming out strained, “Like this whole time he’s been a weight tied to my ankles or. Like he’s doing me a f-fucking favor dumping me right before-” He let out a startled sob, unable to hold it back anymore. “He left me, Ryuu. I’m so scared, and he left me alone and acted like it was the most selfless fucking thing he’s ever done.” He folded himself forward onto the counter, hiding his face in his arms as he started to cry.
Tanaka ran a hand down Noya’s back, a whisper of calluses against his windbreaker and the gentle, constant warmth of his palm rubbing soothing circles. When Noya’s tears finally ran dry, Tanaka said, “You’re the best thing that ever happened to him, and he’s an idiot for letting you go.”
“He said he was afraid of disappointing me,” he mumbled into his arms. “That he didn’t think he could live up to my expectations.” He looked up, eyes bleary, “But I just wanted him to be happy . To be what I knew he could be.” He shook his head, because nothing made sense anymore, “Am I an asshole? Did I fuck this up?”
“You’re not an asshole. But I don’t think he could see what you saw in him, either, and you put a lot of time and energy into… realizing his potential, or whatever.”
“I would have done anything for him,” Noya blurted. “It didn’t matter what it took if I got to see him shine like I knew he could. I just… I needed his help right now. I was ready to spend my whole fucking life pushing him and supporting him and pulling him out of his shell but I just… I needed his help this time, this one time , and he wasn’t there.”
After a moment, Tanaka asked, “What do you want to do?”
“Kick him in the balls,” he muttered, and Tanaka didn’t quite manage to stifle his laugh. “Get drunk enough that I won’t remember getting snot all over your bar when I wake up in the morning.”
“You’re gonna have a bitch of a hangover.”
“I’ll apologize to myself tomorrow.”
“Gonna apologize to me, too, when I have to take care of your miserable ass?” Tanaka asked, but he was already pouring another round of shots.
“Need to apologize to you about a lot of things,” he murmured into the shot glass as he lifted it to his lips.
“You don’t have to apologize to me about anything,” Tanaka said, then added more lightly, “Unless you puke on my bar. Then I’m sending my sister after you.”
Noya breathed out a halfhearted laugh through his nose. “’m glad you’re here, Ryuu.”
Tanaka was silent a moment, then asked quietly, “You really came straight here, after all that?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, you said you went to his place right after practice, but… what happened after?”
“Oh,” Noya said, blinking. “I… Yeah, I just… I texted you as soon as I left his house, then got on the first train headed toward Tokyo. I wasn’t really thinking straight, I guess, and I didn’t... God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“No, dude, I’m glad you came. Seriously. I’m just a little worried about your provisions,” he said, nodding at the bag on the barstool next to Noya. “I take it that isn’t an overnight bag.”
Noya looked over at it more slowly, hardly even remembering it was there, “Shit, no. I have, like, gym shorts and socks and a dirty t-shirt.”
“Welcome to Tokyo,” Tanaka said dryly.
Noya let out a weak laugh. “Yeah, I’m really going to be reelin’ in the chicks this trip.”
Tanaka raised an eyebrow. “This bar isn’t the best for meeting people, but if you’re actually looking for a rebound-”
Noya groaned and held up a hand. “Jesus, you’re kidding, right?”
Tanaka grinned. “I’m just sayin’, I make a pretty killer wingman.”
Noya let out a sigh that didn’t quite manage to be a laugh. “No, man, I’m not...” He shook his head. “Really not looking to get laid. Or even joke about it.”
He knew he’d put too much weight on it when Tanaka tilted his head, measuring his response and trying to put a meaning to it.
Noya looked down at the bar and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, his foot bouncing against the barstool as his fingers closed around the familiar shape in his left pocket. “To celebrate us moving in together, I was gonna, uhm…” He shrugged his shoulder and wiped his nose on it, then sniffed. “Fuck. Don’t laugh at me, okay?” He didn’t wait for Tanaka to respond, because he knew that he wouldn’t laugh, not about this. He pulled the small velvety box out of his pocket and tossed it onto the bar.
“Jesus,” Tanaka breathed. He didn’t need to open it, but he did, and Noya hid his face in his hands, burning with embarrassment and regret, not wanting to see it again. It was just a simple gold band, inexpensive and plain, but the nicest one he’d been able to afford. “Did you-” ask him ? But the question was left unasked because, obviously, he hadn’t.
“I was going to take him to dinner this weekend. Maybe after we signed a lease.”
“You should call him,” Tanaka said. “Or. I’m sure he’s going to call you . Do you have your phone on?”
But Noya just shook his head, tired. “It wasn’t that kind of fight, Ryuu.” He ran a hand down his face, sighing, “We were both really unhappy. More than either of us realized or wanted to admit. I felt alone, but I was waiting it out, because I thought moving in together would make it better. But he felt trapped.” He picked up the ring box and snapped it shut, then turned it over slowly in his hands. “And the more I tried to keep him close, the more panicked and miserable it made him.” He shook his head again, shoving the ring box back in his pocket. “And I had no idea he felt that way, at all. I dunno how you can come back from that. Makes me wonder what the fuck else I’ve been missing.”
“You’ve always had tunnel vision when it comes to him,” Tanaka said, refilling Noya’s glass again.
“What do you mean?”
Tanaka just shook his head. “You almost quit volleyball to prove to him we needed him. And you’re probably the top libero in the country right now.” He glanced over his shoulder and made an irritated noise, then said, “I’ll be right back.”
Noya followed him with his eyes as he moved off down the bar, realizing for the first time that they weren’t the only people there anymore. The crowd was still early-on-a-week-night sparse, but it had gone from being mostly dead to actually feeling like a bar while he was wallowing in his own misery. He downed the shot Tanaka had poured him, then folded his arms on the bartop and rested his chin on his hands, watching Tanaka serve the other customers. It wasn’t busy enough to keep him away for long, but it was busy enough to keep them from really talking, and Noya was definitely drunk now, heavy and hazy and just distant enough from himself that watching Tanaka work was like watching a fish swimming gracefully in its tank, his hands moving with practiced ease, a look of concentration on his face that Noya usually only saw on the other side of a net.
He was drifting in and out, probably. It was getting hard to tell the difference between a long blink and a short nap. Eventually Tanaka came back to him and whapped him gently on the forehead with a pen. Noya blinked up at him, not quite registering the sting as pain. “My shift’s up in five. Do I need to haul your ass upstairs?”
“No, I’m.” Maybe. Probably. He wasn’t sure how he’d do with the whole standing thing. “What do I owe you?” he asked, groping for the bag next to him and looking for his wallet.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’re practically Saeko’s other brother. I don’t think she’s going to begrudge you a little shitty tequila.”
And that was really. Really nice. So nice it made him blink and sniffle.
“Oh god. Come on, let’s get you upstairs.”
“I should have listened to you,” he blurted, loud enough to make Tanaka go a little wide-eyed. “About Asahi. I should’ve. You knew, and I didn’t listen, and I should’ve, and I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, man. I’m the last person in the world who’s going to be upset with you right now.”
“You should be, though. I fuckin’. I blew you off! I left you hangin’ and then I come crawling back here and drink your booze and you have to deal with my-” He gestured to himself- “my drunk ass.” Tanaka was barely suppressing a smile, and it was. He was. “God, you would have made a much better boyfriend, if you weren’t the straightest person I know.”
Tanaka’s face did a thing he didn’t recognize, which was weird because he was pretty sure he knew all the things that Tanaka’s face did, but this wasn’t one of them. His brain caught up a second later and he realized that. That he had just said something really stupid. He’d shattered the bi-best-friend equilibrium, crossed a line, broken The Rule. He started to apologize, to try to take it back, but before he could make a sound, Tanaka leaned forward against the bartop, putting them eye to eye, so close their noses almost touched. “Dude,” he said, reaching up and flicking Noya’s bangs out of his eyes, “I’m not as straight as you think I am.”
Noya’s lips parted in surprise, not quite managing to make a little oh . The gears in his brain were still turning, slow and rusty, when Tanaka closed the distance between them and pressed a soft, gentle kiss to his lips. And oh. Oh .
His mouth was soft and warm, lips smooth and supple and tasting faintly of tequila, and… and then he drew away, taking all the air in Noya’s lungs with him.
The kiss had been gentle and sweet, almost chaste, but it was over too soon, and Noya chased after Tanaka when he pulled back, because this felt Important, heavy and significant, and he didn’t want to let the moment pass while his brain was still realigning itself around this new information. He caught Tanaka by the back of the head, pulling him back and kissing him again. There was no hair for him to grab onto, nothing to curl his fingers in, and that was. Weird. Different. So different. But not bad. He smoothed his palm over Tanaka’s stubbly scalp, tracing the familiar shape of his skull. It wasn’t the first time he’d run his hand over Tanaka’s head, not even the thousandth time, but it was different, like this, when it made him sigh and part his lips, leaving Noya free to lick experimentally into his mouth.
Tanaka reached up and threaded his fingers into Noya’s hair, tipping his head to one side and kissing him back, a more tentative touch of tongue but more than enough tear down walls Noya hadn’t even realized were standing between them. Best friend. Straight friend. Childhood friend. Teammate. Neighbor. Tanaka. Until all that was left was Ryuu. Ryuu, the one unwavering constant in his life. Ryuu who grazed his teeth against Noya’s bottom lip and murmured his name into his mouth, quiet and breathless like a benediction, “Yuu.” Tanaka drew back, breathing hard, his lips plump and smooth and pink, “We-”
Noya fisted a hand in the front of Tanaka’s shirt, keeping him from retreating, and draped himself across the bar, crushing their lips together again, because it felt like everything had shifted, the machinery in his mind not just shaking off the rust but rebuilding itself completely into something new. He hefted himself up onto the counter, practically climbing over it trying to get closer, but when Tanaka backed up another step, Noya overshot the edge of the bar, leaning forward onto nothing, and then his world was turning on end in a much more literal sense.
Tanaka caught him before he could fall far, but not before he pitched forward, equilibrium shifting abruptly and turning his stomach. He gripped both hands into Tanaka’s shirt and said, “Oh fuck.”