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Tadashi knows he’s doomed the second he lines up his ingredients. He looks at Yachi’s precise handwriting again, then back at the bag of confectioner’s sugar. At the recipe again. He sighs softly, heart sinking.
There’s barely any in the bag at all. He gives it a gentle shake, hoping the motion will reveal that it’s just settled.
“There’s just no way that’s 200 grams,” he murmurs to himself.
Still hopeful, he carefully measures out the remnants of the bag, mentally crossing his fingers. The scale chirps at him, and shows that he doesn’t even half of what he would need for the recipe.
Tadashi braces his elbows against the kitchen counter and sighs, sinking until his weight rests on his arms.
“What am I going to do?” he laments to his empty kitchen. Music still plays, bass tinny, from his phone’s speakers. He glances at the clock—there’s at least two hours until his mother comes home, and by then it would be too late to try and cook.
Briefly, he thinks about darting outside to pop into the nearest convenience store, but it’s snowing and his body lags at the idea of walking the entire thirty minute trip after all the laps they did at practice that day.
He taps his forehead against the counter in frustration. He’s already committed to the recipe—the egg whites have been separated since that morning, before he left for school, and sat out when he came home.
He’d made the strawberry buttercream for the filling already, too. It’s carefully plastic wrapped and chilling in the fridge, awaiting cookies to be spread on. The egg yolks have been fed to the neighborhood stray cat, and Tadashi’s heart is absolutely dead set, one-hundred percent, on making macarons for Valentine’s Day.
Strawberry vanilla macarons for Valentine’s Day, for his best friend. The best friend he desperately wants to impress again so he can confess.
He thinks he’s a bit over his head.
He knows that macarons are finicky at best, judging by the horror stories and the amount of cracked ones that Yachi’s fed the team over the last week or so. Normally he wouldn’t take up a task so daunting, but seeing the way Kei’s eyes lit up when he bit into the finally perfect batch Yachi brought for the team’s snack the week before, he’s been a man possessed with the idea.
They’re small and light, and a lot less messy than the shortcake he’d been originally planning. They’re cute, too, and he knows now that Kei likes them.
He has to make them. The tiny little pastel cookies had been good enough that Kei had forgotten to even hide his sweet tooth, happily munching away at his portion after practice. If matcha macarons had been enough for Kei’s lips to twitch up into a tiny little smile in front of his teammates, then Tadashi was certain that strawberry ones would be enough to get his friend to accept his confession.
It’s stupid, but he feels like the success of his crush hinges on his ability to make his daydream happen. He just wants Kei to take it seriously, and after listening to Yachi’s ongoing macaron saga for the past few weeks, he thinks that proffering them (with the added addition of knowing that Kei likes them) will at least be enough to break the quiet politeness that Kei turns his suitors down with.
Tadashi thumps his head on the counter again.
Suddenly, like banging his head against the counter had punched a realization into him, he remembers an article on one of his social media feeds about household ingredients that could be made from scratch in emergencies.
He leans up and snatches his phone, opening the internet app and types in ‘homemade powdered sugar’, hoping for a result. Google displays a blank page as the results load, then, one, two… three… the entire first page has recipes for confectioner’s sugar.
“…granulated sugar and cornstarch, huh?” he muses. “Well, why not?”
He dutifully measures out granulated sugar into his food processor, per the instructions. Then adds the cornstarch.
“Here goes,” Tadashi murmurs, tentatively pressing the ‘pulse’ option.
Almost immediately Tadashi knows that the internet is full of dirty, filthy, not-powdered, sugary lies. White dust—maybe the cornstarch?—billows out of the top seam of the processor, followed by a grinding noise that Tadashi thinks is Not Good. Still, he keeps his finger on the button, until the rattling, grinding, and smell of burning rubber start to scare him. So, about thirty seconds in total.
He swallows hard and opens the lid, tentatively sticking a finger into the mess. Still grainy. He closes the lid and tries again.
And again.
Once more.
The resulting mixture is slightly less grainy than the jar of sugar he’d started with, and there’s a fine dusting of white, powdery… stuff, around the processor.
“Well, screw it, right?” he laughs to the ceiling. He feels slightly manic as he puts the lid back on and pulses the mess again, before sighing and dutifully measuring out his dry ingredients into the food processor to aerate them.
He dumps the mess into a sieve and shakes out the dry ingredients, dumping the lumps into the trash. The mixture is light and powdery, so he hopes his makeshift powdered sugar would at least… do.
Making the egg white meringue goes without incident—it’s hard to mess up, especially with Yachi’s very concise notations about how long he should leave the mixer on. By the end of it, he can still feel the vibrations of the hand mixer in his wrist.
He folds in the coloring gel and then the dry ingredients. He’s left with a vaguely pink glob of batter.
“Shiny ribbons …molten…lava?” he murmurs, batter dripping off of his spatula. “Yacchan, what does that even mean?!”
He looks at the batter and gives it a few more turns of the spatula, chewing on his lip. It’s thick. And it moves slowly. So maybe that’s what she meant?
He sighs and starts to load the batter into the Ziploc bag he’d designated as his icing bag of the night. The batter plops into the bag, and Tadashi winces—he’d not noticed until he’d started to move it that the pink dye hadn’t been folded in evenly, leaving some places a bit darker. He gives the bag a quick massage, hoping to spread it out a bit more.
“It will cook even,” he tells himself softly, giving a nod. He quickly licks a blob of batter off of his thumb.
It tastes good, at least. So there’s that. Maybe his makeshift sugar actually worked.
It did not. As he carefully pipes out his cookies, it becomes increasingly apparent that something went terribly and horribly wrong.
Yachi said that the cookies don’t spread, so he could put them about three centimeters apart, but as he reaches halfway through the first pan, his cookies were starting to look less like cookies and more like… tie-dyed amoebas.
“No big deal, no big deal, no big deal,” he mutters under his breath, piping each cookie farther and farther apart until he runs out of tray and moves onto the next one, “Oh god, big deal, big deal, big deal—”
He closes his eyes once he finishes the second tray, throws the bag away, turns on his heel, and walks out of the kitchen, refusing to look at his molten lava batter consuming the village of his hopes and dreams in a fiery display of culinary failure.
He can’t give up hope now. He can’t. He doesn’t think he has the guts to confess to Kei without something to give the other boy. And he can’t back out now—Yachi knows. He won’t be able to face her without something to report, and he doesn’t think that she would let him escape with ‘I didn’t make them’.
He falls face-first onto the sofa, burying his face into the pillows. He lies there for a few minutes, not thinking of much of anything at all. He rolls slowly so he can stare at the ceiling.
He so wanted for this to have gone well. He wanted to have something that even if Kei didn’t like him romantically, that his friend could take home and enjoy. Downgrade them from confession sweets to friendship sweets.
He just wanted to do something to make Kei happy. Being friends with Kei has been so good for him, all these years, and Tadashi only just feels like he’s starting to be able to pay back all the encouragement and support that Kei leant him when he was a small, scared, bullied little boy.
He thinks maybe it’s a bit selfish to ruin that by confessing, but that feeling is tied tightly to the way he cares about Kei. He wants to continue to be there, lend him support, encourage him, and watch Kei grow and flourish. He wants Kei to know just how much the fact that they were friends inspired him and made him work. He’s only just started to feel like they were equals, but he wants to continue, and walk by Kei’s side.
And, of course, kiss. Hold hands. Go on dates, so he can feed his friend the sweets Kei likes so much and listen to his stupid dorky science facts. Watch Kei’s face twitch into the most minute of smiles, laugh at the way Kei pouts over silly things and roll his eyes at just how immature the ever-cool ‘clever blocker’ was. Listen to him bitch about buying shoes and listen to the late night whispers of ‘I don’t know why all those girls think I’m so great’.
They’ve known each other for... well, basically forever, so it feels natural to Tadashi that he feels the way he does about Kei. He loves Kei platonically, loves him like they’re family, so it’s not a stretch of emotions for him to nurture this tiny, soft, warm feeling in his heart that wants more.
What is a stretch however, is the idea that somehow, the success of his confession hinges on whether or not his macarons are perfect.
“Oh fuck it,” Tadashi repeats to the ceiling. “He’s getting butt-ugly cookies.”
He rolls off of the couch and pads back to the kitchen, where the batter has continued to spread. He sighs through his nose, “Okay,” he corrects himself. “Tsukki’s getting a butt ugly mega cookie.”
He slides the cookies into the oven, sighing through his nose. At seven minutes, per Yachi’s small, neat handwriting, he turns the tray.
After another seven minutes, he has one tray of a blob of a cookie. He pops the other tray into the oven and repeats the process, gingerly snapping off a corner of the finished cookie while he waits.
He nibbles it tentatively. It’s tasty, he won’t deny that. The flavor is the same as the macarons Yachi’d brought in: crispy, but chewy. A feeling of relief floods through him. They at least taste good, so it’s not an entire waste—he’d been half- afraid that because of how thin the batter had spread, it would be too crunchy, or even burnt.
Kei doesn’t care as much about presentation as taste, thank goodness. Tadashi remembers the time they’d tried to make their own shortcake because they didn’t want to spend their allowance on food. Neither of them had ever tried to make a cake before, much less decorate one; it had ended lopsided, crumbled, uneven and patchy, and the strawberries had been frozen ones instead of fresh, because that’s all they could find.
Kei had still eaten most of it—it isn’t as if his friend is picky. Tadashi sighs and leaves the trays to cool, grabbing his phone on the way out. He opens a text from Kei that simply reads “ugh” with an attached picture of an extravagant display of flowers.
From: Yamaguchi
Your parents?
From: Tsukki!
Worse
From: Yamaguchi
You?
From: Tsukki!
Niisan found a girlfriend
From: Yamaguchi
He did seem to click with Tanaka-senpai’s sister.From: Tsukki!
Let me die in peace
From: Yamaguchi
Tsukki!! O A O <
Tadashi’s phone buzzes in his hands, and he taps the screen without thinking.
“Kill me now,” Kei complains. “If that was a joke, Yamaguchi, please speak up now.”
Tadashi laughs and flops back onto the sofa. “No! Really, they were chatting a bit about some mutual friends in high school after the game, remember?”
“No. I try not to,” Kei sniffs.
“Hey, maybe if Aki-niisan marries Tanaka-senpai’s sister, he’ll stop punching you,” Tadashi teases, wiggling back into the sofa as Kei snorts into his ear.
“As if. No. I’ll join your family register so I won’t be related to him,” Kei grouses. “Roses, Tadashi. There are roses for a girl. In my house. That my brother bought.”
“You know where the spare is,” Tadashi comments, feeling his stomach flip with a quiver of excitement. Kei only very rarely uses his given name, despite how long they’ve been friends—he never uses it when he’s serious, either, only when he’s teasing. It’s so endearing that Tadashi wants to scoop his friend into his arms and rub his face all over Kei’s like an overgrown cat.
“Oh, trust me, if niisan ever brings another girl home, you will know. I’ll live in your closet, if I have to, just to escape him being disgustingly sweet to—oh god, maybe a Tanaka.”
Tadashi’s cheeks flush, a bit ashamed of the scenarios that bloom in his head: Kei… coming to visit… sneaking into his room at night, with Tadashi’s mother away….
Kei huffs again and Tadashi shakes himself out of his thoughts. “Did you actually check the name, Tsukki?” he asks.
Kei pauses then sighs. “No. I don’t want to.”
“So you’re sulking because your brother’s paying attention to someone else?”
“Shut up, Yamaguchi,” Kei splutters.
Tadashi laughs, “Sorry, sorry! It’s just—it’s cute, that’s all.”
Tadashi’s met with silence on the other end, his fingers cold as it stretches on for several seconds. He’s about to stammer an apology when Kei finally sighs.
“Yeah, well, opinions,” Kei murmurs. “Anyway, what are you doing?”
Tadashi exhales slowly, shaking off his anxiety. They chat for a while longer, about nothing in particular, until Tadashi hears his mother’s keys at the door. “Ah, Tsukki, my mom’s home and there’s still stuff I have to do,” he says sleepily, lifting his head off of the cushion he’d been dozing off on as Tsukki read out the newest section of an online novel they were both reading.
Kei hums, his voice pleasantly low. “I won’t let you copy my English homework.”
“Tsukki,” Tadashi whines, “Tsukki, please at least look at it?”
“Maybe,” Kei laughs. “Anyway, night, see you tomorrow. It’s suicide sprints in practice, and then again at breaks.”
“That’s mean,” Tadashi complains, lazily waving at his mother as she shrugs off her jacket. “Be nice tomorrow.”
“Who? Me?” Kei drawls. “I am always the pinnacle of good behavior.”
“You’re full of shit, Tsukki, and you sound like Kuroo-san,” Tadashi laughs, ignoring the way his mother casts her eyes to the ceiling.
“Tadashi, what’s this mess in the—”
Tadashi bolts upright, shouting over his mother’s voice. “OK! GOTTA GO BYE TSUKKI!” He fumbles with his phone for a second before ending the call.
“Tadashi, what is this?” his mother asks again, one hand on her scrub-clad hip. She waves a piece of cookie in the air. “I mean, you didn’t burn anything, for that I’m grateful, but what on earth?”
“It’s for tomorrow, mom,” Tadashi says, face burning.
His mother raises an eyebrow, then grins at him. “Ohhh, I see. Well, I wish you and Kei the best of luck.”
“Mom!”
“Oh, Tashi, who else likes strawberries? Don't think I don't see the empty container,” his mother laughs at her son’s scandalized cry.
“Mom!” Tadashi feels heat creeping down his neck, mortified.
“Yes, yes, I’m embarrassing you. Now, do you want help icing these?”
“Ah, yes please,” Tadashi mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck.
His mother chuckles again, nibbling at the cookie. “Well, at least they’re good, Tashi.”
Tadashi covers his face with his hands and groans, willing himself to sink into the floor. “Oh my god mom, I’m not going to have any friends after this. Tsukki’s going to look at my ugly cookies and laugh.”
“Hey, now, Kei’s a good kid,” Tadashi’s mother says around a mouthful of cookie. “He might laugh at them, but not at you.”
Tadashi rakes a hand through his hair and sighs, “Yeah, but I’m afraid I’ll forget the difference.”
“You’ll be fine, sweetheart,” his mother assures him, patting him on the shoulder as he passes. “Now let’s get this mess cleaned up, buddy. Let's see if I can't help your love life out a bit.”
It’s easier for his mother to say he’ll be fine than it is for Tadashi to actually be fine.
He’s so nervous that he’s actually forgotten that he’s nervous—all that’s left is a pit in his stomach and a slight tremor in his hands that he tells Kei is because he forgot to eat breakfast (it isn’t a lie that he hasn’t eaten, so it makes it easier to say). The bag of cookies, uneven and mismatched and wrapped in red and white tissue paper, sits in his bag. It and another small bag, similarly wrapped, are tucked between his practice jersey and his lunchbox, thankfully silent.
At first, he’d told himself he’d give it to Kei and confess, first thing.
Then, upon seeing Kei adorably sleepy-eyed, his hair curling out haphazardly around his headphones, Tadashi had simply told himself he’d tell Kei after morning practice.
After getting walloped in the face by a ball after angling his wrists wrong in receive drills and watching Kei’s face pinch in concern, Tadashi concedes that maybe lunchtime would be the best time.
Except, now that lunchtime rolls around, Tadashi thinks that maybe it’s better to wait until after school. He sighs and slings his bag over his shoulder. “Tsukki, I’m going to go find Yacchan to get the training camp schedules, do you want me to get yours too?”
Kei looks up from his textbook, face pinched in a unsatisfied scowl.
Tadashi’s heart thuds, because it makes Kei’s glasses slide down and his nose is scrunched up and it’s the cutest thing. Then, Kei sighs and his face relaxes.
“Yeah, if you could,” Kei answers. “Do you think she’s done with them?”
“She said she might, I don’t think it hurts to check early,” Tadashi says with a shrug. “I’ll be back soon.”
The frown comes back and Kei huffs softly; Tadashi knows Kei’s angling for an invite along, and he chews his lip to prevent himself from blurting one out.
“Ok, well. Don’t be late,” Kei says eventually, returning to his textbook. “You still need your homework proofed, right?”
“Ah, thanks Tsukki! It’s in my desk if I’m not back in time!”
With that, Tadashi trots off to Yachi’s classroom, only to find out she’s not there.
“Do you know where she’s gone? She has some papers for the volleyball club,” Tadashi explains softly to one of Yachi’s friends.
The girl giggles softly. With a nasty lurch in his gut like missing a step on the way down a set of stairs,Tadashi recognizes the noise as a nervous gesture.
The girl tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles shyly, ducking her head a bit. “She said she went to the gym,” she offers, blinking up at Tadashi through her lashes. “I could go with you?”
“Ah, no thanks,” Tadashi says politely, his words stiff. “I know where it is. We practice there? Yanno? Ah. Thanks, though!”
He rushes off before he can look at Yachi’s friend again, feeling strange. He’s not used to being flirted with, especially the same way he flirts with Kei. He hopes he’s not that obvious—but he probably is.
He groans and drags his fingers through his hair, feeling hot around the collar. Maybe he should scrap the whole confession thing, since he can’t seem to actually follow through with it. If he's as obvious as Yachi's friend was, he's sure Kei already knows. No need to embarrass himself further, right? Only... Tadashi feels a bitter taste rise in his throat at the idea of keeping silent about his feelings. Eventually, he knows, he'll have to tell Kei, or else his pride will never recover.
“Ah! Yamaguchi-kun!”
Tadashi stops outside the gym, waving as Yachi runs out to the walkway to meet him. She looks a bit frazzled, more so than usual.
“Is the paperwork not going well?” Tadashi asks.
“Ah, no. During free period I went to go see Sensei and found out that the times are all jumbled now; there was a miscommunication between us and the school we're practicing with,” she laments, tugging on her ponytail. “It’s a mess.”
“That sucks,” Tadashi says. He pauses and watches as Yachi fidgets with her hair; he wonders if it's a good time. But better now than later, when Kei is guaranteed to be around. “Um. Speaking of messes… Uh. So I made macarons last night.”
Yachi perks up, eyes wide. “And! How did it go?”
“Awful,” Tadashi laughs. Now that it's over, it seems comical: Why would he have ever thought that he could make powdered sugar in a standard blender?
“Oh, no,” she cries, grabbing his hands. “I thought for sure Tsukishima-kun would accept!”
“No, no, you have it wrong,” Tadashi blurts out, face hot. “The macarons! It was a disaster. I haven’t even given them to him yet!”
Yachi’s fingers tighten around Tadashi’s hands. “I am so sorry! It was my instructions wasn’t it, oh my gosh I’m so so sorry, I can come with you when you confess to apologize to Tsukishima-kun too—”
“Yacchan!” Tadashi laughs, squeezing the girl’s hands. “Breathe, it’s okay! It was my fault, actually. We didn’t have powdered sugar… so… I tried to make my own.”
“Oh.”
Tadashi releases Yachi’s hands, and tugs out the bag of cookies. “I mean, they’re tasty, but the online DYI recipes for confectioner’s sugar… are, well… They don’t produce the desired effect?”
“Oh dear,” Yachi murmurs, peering inside of the bag. “They spread quite a bit. I wish you had called me!”
“Yacchan, you couldn’t have done anything,” Tadashi chuckles.
“No, but I could have told you that you can’t make powdered sugar at home,” she laughs.
Tadashi shrugs and leans forward to whisper, “Actually, I made Tsukki someth--”
“Heyyyy!!! Look who’s being bold and giving Valentine’s to one of our precious managers!”
Tadashi jumps as Tanaka strides out of the gym, smirking. “Senpai! It’s not like that at all!”
“Oh?? You got chocolates from a girl!? No fair, surpassing your senpais like that!” Tanaka cries, peering over Yachi’s shoulder into the bag. “Looks like she tried pretty hard. Girls who can’t cook are pretty cute.”
“You’ve got it wrong,” Tadashi groans, blushing furiously. “I made those.”
Tanaka looks at the bag, then at Tadashi and snickers in amusement. “So you are being bold! If it’s not Yacchan, then who’re they for?”
“They’re for ah… well,” Tadashi says, looking down as he scuffs his shoe against the concrete. Yachi makes a strangled squeaking noise of distress, but he doesn’t pay her much mind. He feels embarrassed to continue on, but if he can't handle this, then he won't be able to handle confessing to Kei. “They’re for everyone, as a thank you. For being such good teammates and friends.”
“I said I didn’t want to share, Yamaguchi.”
Tadashi yelps and turns to face Kei, who’s standing behind him with the same frustrated scowl as earlier. He reaches out and takes the bag from Tadashi, lips tight. “If you wanted to share them with the team, you shouldn’t have said they were for me.”
Tanaka snorts, “He probably meant one or two, stingy.”
“Your loss,” Kei says loftily. “C’mon Yamaguchi, we have homework still.”
“It’s okay, Tanaka-senpai, I made macarons today, too,” Yachi says as the three of them watch as Kei turns and walks off, cookies in hand. “They’re for after practice, though I did bring extras if you wanted some now?”
This, combined with Hinata’s head popping out from behind the door, seems to placate Tanaka enough that he doesn’t call after Kei. Tadashi waves a harried goodbye, jogging to catch up with his friend.
“Tsukki! What was that all about?” Tadashi demands, aghast at his friend's sudden display of childishness.
“…don’t go giving away things meant for me,” Kei mutters.
“I didn’t—wait, how did you know those macarons were originally for you?”
“Neither you nor Yachi-san are very good at hiding surprises,” Kei retorts. “…and I heard her ask if everything went okay and… sort of… guessed. From there.”
Tadashi stops, feeling his blood drain from his face. It almost feels like the floor is rocking. “Excuse me?”
“I guessed! That these were for me!” Kei snaps, cheeks pink. “They’re very good, even if they’re… well, Frankenstein-like.”
“That’s not nice,” Tadashi says faintly, leaning against the wall. “I mean, it’s not like it isn’t true but—”
“Anyway,” Kei says loudly over Tadashi. “I can’t cook either, so we can go to that café you like for White Day.”
“You don’t have to,” Tadashi protests. “Just because I made them doesn’t mean you have to take them or do anything in return.”
Kei pauses and fiddles with the bag. “I mean, if… you don’t… want to go you can take them back.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just—don’t feel like you’re obligated to,” Tadashi says helplessly.
“…I want to,” Kei says petulantly, crumbling the edges of the bag with his fingers. “I mean, do I normally go out of my way to do things I don’t want to? Or accept the candies that are given to me on Valentine's?”
“…Wait, I mean, it’s not—it’s not—it’s friendship chocolate—well, they’re cookies, but it’s the same general principal,” Tadashi babbles. There’s a point that he thinks that Kei is trying to make, but between the way Kei is beating around the bush and fidgeting, Tadashi’s brain isn’t connecting the pieces like it should.
“Oh,” Kei says softly. “Here, then,” he murmurs, giving the bag back to Tadashi. “I don’t want… I guess if it’s… sorry. You can share them.”
Tadashi takes the bag, throat tight. He tucks it back into his backpack, swallowing hard. It almost feels like a light-bulb has gone off in his brain with that simple exchange:
The disappointment and embarrassment in Kei’s voice is unmistakable. Kei is jealous and petulant and he wanted those cookies to be for him, and him only. Kei wanted confession candy from Tadashi, and that revelation gives Tadashi the push he needs.
“Actually,” Tadashi says, his voice sounding over-loud to his ears. Or maybe everything else just sounds strangely muffled. His shoes have suddenly become very, very interesting. “I have something else. That’s not… It’s for you, specifically.”
Kei shifts from foot to foot and threads his fingers together. “Ah?” he murmurs. He doesn't look at Tadashi.
“And something to tell you,” Tadashi adds. “Ask. Something like that.”
Tadashi looks up and finds Kei looking away from him, lip pulled into his mouth as he chews on it absently. There’s silence for a moment before Kei makes a non-committal noise, eyes darting briefly to Tadashi, then back to the wall.
“Tsukki, I, I really—“ Tadashi falters, watching Kei swallow hard. He starts again. “Um. Tsukki, I just—we’ve been…”
Tadashi stops again as Kei starts anxiously cracking his fingers, lips pursed to the side as he chews on the inside of his mouth. “Friends for a long…”
Kei nods absently, one hand drifting up to adjust his glasses. He pushes them up, then wiggles them side to side, then pulls them down again. It's very distracting.
“Uh... We've um... been friends for a long time, and I really…”
Kei’s trying to tuck a single curl behind his ear, hair too short for it to stay in place. Tadashi has had enough.
“Tsukki,” Tadashi whines, feeling anxiety creep up into his stomach and his face burn hot. He resists the urge to stomp his foot. “Stop that! You’re making me nervous!”
“Who, me?” Kei snaps. He stops playing with his hair and looks at Tadashi dead-on, face flushed.
Tadashi watches as Kei twists his fingers together and his ears turn a delicate shade of pink. “Yes!”
“You mean you weren’t nervous before?!”
“Not like this, I was just sort of numb to it,” Tadashi retorts. He gestures at Kei. “You’re all fidgety and it's making me all fidgety now—”
“Well excuse me then,” Kei mutters, ears now reaching a shade of red Tadashi had only seen once before when Kei had gotten sunburnt at the pool one summer.
“No, for real, Tsukki—why are you so nervous?!”
“Why are you?”
“Obviously because I’m trying to confess here,” Tadashi complains loudly. “But why are you nervous?! You’re not like this with the girls that confess to you!”
He’s seen Kei receive confessions—he takes them the same way he takes Ukai giving a lecture about blocking: politely and quietly, eyes alert and fingers threaded at his waist, back straight and feet set solidly on the ground. Right now, he looks like a strong gust of wind could knock him over, and he’s twisting his fingers together so tightly that Tadashi’s afraid Kei’s going to break them.
“No,” Kei snaps, brows furrowing deeply, “I’m not, because I don’t actually like them. And you already broke my heart once in the past five minutes, so I’m kind of freaked out here!”
“Wait,” Tadashi breathes. “Wait, wait wait—what?”
Kei looks at Tadashi with barely concealed horror, his flush spreading down his neck like patchy sunburn. “Uh,” he says.
“Is that a confession?” Tadashi demands, stepping forward and grabbing Kei’s wrists.
Kei takes a step back, looking pointedly away from Tadashi. “I mean, no, it’s just—I…”
Tadashi tightens his fingers around Kei’s wrists, stilling the way their hands are both shaking. “Tsukki, did you just confess to me before I got a chance to spit out my own confession?” he laughs. “After sulking about really ugly cookies?”
“I don't know, what did it sound like?” Kei mutters petulantly, lips turning down into a pout.
It’s the most adorable, relieving thing that Tadashi has ever seen. He gives another laugh, breath rushing out of him in an overjoyed noise before he drops his head to Kei’s shoulder. “And I was afraid you were nervous because didn’t want to be friends anymore because I took back my crappy cookies! And then tried to confess!”
“What? That’s stupid, Yamaguchi, you read too much manga,” Kei chides.
“I didn’t say it was a particularly reasonable fear,” Tadashi huffs. He slides his fingers down from Kei’s wrists to his palms, holding his friend’s hands loosely. “I just, panicked, because I like you so much.”
Kei clicks his tongue behind his teeth and gives a shaky sigh.
“Oh, shut up, Yamaguchi,” he mutters, pulling his hands back slightly, fingers trailing against Tadashi’s knuckles, then under serve-roughened fingertips, lacing their fingers together. “I wouldn’t have taken the stupid cookies if I didn’t like you in the slightest.”
“My cookies aren’t stupid,” Tadashi mutters. “Now as for the cook…”
“I wouldn’t call you stupid,” Kei says seriously. “Just… hapless?”
Tadashi laughs, “Tsukki, I think that might be worse?”
“Really?” Kei replies, chuckling.
Tadashi leans back and studies Kei’s face, smug smirk, blush, and all. He leans forward and grants the blond a very quick, tight lipped, peck on the cheek. “There. Now I don’t feel bad,” he says, snickering as he watches Kei’s eyes widen and his forehead turn pink with his cheeks. “Hey, you match my cookies.”
“… You’re so lucky you’re cute,” Kei mutters. “…Can I have the cookies back?”
“No,” Tadashi says, “Those really are for the team.”
He draws away from Kei, even though he wants to stay close, hand in hand with his dorky friend. He grabs the smaller container, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, and hands it over to the blond. “There’s more at home, since there wasn’t time to get another gift bag. My mom helped, so… it’s good.”
Kei opens the paper nestled around the Tupperware container carefully, revealing three perfectly round truffles. “It’s actually chocolate?”
“Yeah, we made it from the leftover filling from the macarons,” Tadashi says quietly. “So, strawberries. And the chocolate is bitter chocolate, since I knew that’s the kind you like… Um. So… I hope you like them.”
“I liked your monstrous cookies,” Kei points out, carefully sealing the Tupperware container back up. “I’ll like these just fine.”
There's a softness to his voice that Tadashi can read, something that, combined with the quiet smile tugging at the corners of Kei's lips, says a very clear, 'just like I like you'.
“So you accept?” Tadashi asks.
“Yeah. I’m coming over tonight to get the rest of them, you know that right?” Kei inquires, raising an eyebrow.
“Are you sure you're not just trying to escape Aki-niisan's date with Tanaka-senpai's siser?” Tadashi snickers, hooking elbows with Kei.
Kei nudges his hip against Tadashi’s, grumbling a soft ‘shut up’ as they walk back to class.