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Ushijima hadn’t said much when Tendou told him he’d be leaving volleyball after high school.
It wasn’t unusual, for Ushijima to not say much, but Tendou was fluent in his silences and those had been lingering for longer and longer in the recent days.
“Are you perhaps avoiding me, Wakatoshi-kun?” Tendou asks him, bent at the waist to hover over where Ushijima is seated on the grass outside the volleyball court.
That is unusual, for Wakatoshi to choose to step outside the court for any period of time when he could be in it, even if it is for a water break.
As soon as the whistle had blown, Ushijima had taken his water bottle and wordlessly left the rest of the team behind. And now here he is, sitting very still in Tendou’s spindly shadow, brows furrowed and eyes averted.
“Why would I be avoiding you?”
That’s all he offers, hands clenching and unclenching around the chilled water bottle, displacing some of the condensation that has gathered in its surface. And while it isn’t much, it’s enough for Tendou to be instinctively sure that he is right about this – as certain as he is surprised by Ushijima’s evasion.
“Why would you not directly answer the question?” He asks back, making Ushijima’s frown deepen, then promptly fade as he glances up, finally meeting Tendou’s inquisitive gaze.
Unable to stop himself, Tendou waves his tape-covered fingers around in a fidgety little greeting, and Ushijima’s mouth presses into a line Tendou knows to translate as amusement.
It goes as soon as it came, but it helps him unfurl, jaw relaxing, hands unclenching. Ushijima sighs, putting his water down next to him as he lays back on the grass, eyes fleeing from Tendou’s to glance up at the cloudless sky.
Tendou wordlessly blinks at the unusual displays that make way for displays even more unusual, but he is greedy – and the sun is warm, and the sight of a sweat covered Wakatoshi behaving unpredictably makes him feel even warmer – so he promptly drops to the grass beside him, lying on his back and spreading his limbs around.
He squints Ushijima’s way, then squints up into the sky to try and follow Ushijima’s line of sight, but there is nothing there for him to follow.
Ushijima, lost in thought, continues to silently sweat onto the grass beside him.
Tendou runs his fingers through the grass around himself, letting Ushijima take his time to weave thoughts into words, unhurried as long as it means they will be talking.
“I know you’re not as committed to volleyball as I am,” Ushijima starts, eventually, “and despite the passion for it that you have, I know you’re not as good a player as me.”
The typical candor makes Tendou’s lips twitch in a fondness that is as ill timed as it is uncontrollable.
“So I understand that your prospects in the sport would be limited,” Ushijima continues, reasonable, and sounding for all the world detached – if it weren’t for how he’s still staring at the sky above instead of at Tendou, if it weren’t for the tense line of his back where it isn’t quite resting against the grass. “But I thought…”
He trails off, hesitates, all of it unusual, unusual.
Tendou rolls over to give him his full attention. From his periphery, he catches the sight of birds flying up above, their shadows fleetingly darkening the shadowy doubts clouding Ushijima’s expression.
“When you fly,” Tendou starts, externalizing a thought of his own to try and pull Wakatoshi out of his own head. “When you jump, when you spike, you have perfect form.”
Ushijima – confident, sure, Ushijima – nods once in acknowledgement.
Tendou’s lips twitch again, and he allows himself to smile this time.
“It’s a beautiful thing to watch, Wakatoshi,” Tendou threads the line, weaves the thought by threading it carefully, vulnerability and honesty and just enough vagueness to ensure that it flies over Ushijima’s head. “And I don’t plan to stop watching it just because I won’t be watching it by your side.”
“When you’re in France, you mean,” Ushjima says, and he pronounces the word like the entire country has wronged him personally.
Tendou can’t deny that it delights him.
“Yes, I’ll still be watching you then,” he confirms, reaching out even if he doesn’t allow his hand to make contact. “Even when I’m not playing anymore, I’ll always be watching you.”
He runs his fingers over the freshly cut grass between them, both tracing Wakatoshi’s form from a distance, and savoring Shiratorizawa’s well kept lawn in early nostalgia.
It all seems fleeting nowadays. As graduation approaches, he starts to miss everything as he counts the days before saying goodbye to all of it. The training, the sweating, coach Washijou’s yelling, Goshiki’s enthusiasm, the stern facial expressions of the boy laying beside him.
From the court, the squeaking of shoes and the bouncing of balls commences, and Tendou mourns the conversation that will be left unfinished.
Ushijima makes no move to stand though, and instead turns to fully face him.
“I like it when you fly, too.”
Overhead, more birds fly by, flapping their wings gracefully as they cross the sky, and Tendou decides to embrace the analogy.
“Birds migrate, did you know that, Wakatoshi-kun?”
Ushijima stares at him, in what Tendou knows to be his way of politely avoiding pointing out what he deems as an obvious and unnecessary statement.
Tendou ignores it and grins at him.
“They leave, and then they come back again,” he insists, gesturing in circular motions at the wide blue above. “Do you understand what I’m getting at?”
“That you will come back someday.”
“That we’ll see each other again,” Tendou corrects, because he might come back, but he also knows that maybe he won’t, not permanently, not in the way Ushijima is getting at, and he wants to reassure, but he would never lie.
This, however, is a promise he can make.
“We’ll see each other again, and we will talk in the meanwhile,” he reiterates, still grinning wide to Ushijima’s uncertainty. “Of course we will.”
From inside the gym, he can hear Washijou’s chastising and Shirabu’s apologies, but no one has come to fetch them. It makes sense, the team should focus on the younger players rather than the ones graduating, they should train the ones who will stay.
Out here, Ushijima looks away, and Tendou waits.
“But I wanted…” Ushijima tries, then frowns, redirecting the thoughts that don’t seem to be coming out quite right. “I thought…”
Tendou waits, lingers, basks in the sun and the once in a lifetime chance to have Ushijima pass up on a single second of volleyball to be with him instead.
“I assumed, I suppose,” Ushijima corrects himself, finally. “That we’d continue flying, as you put it, together.”
“Ah, birds of a feather,” Tendou hums, giving it the mildest of tunes, and delighting in how Ushijima nods at the train of thought.
Tendou leans closer, and this time allows himself to make contact as he reaches out, touch trailing feather-soft up Ushijima’s left arm.
“You’ll soar, Wakatoshi,” he whispers, not as much a confession as it is a prophecy, something they are both more than certain of. “You’ll reach heights in which I could never follow, I’d be left behind.”
He doesn’t want to be left behind, but he’s leaving on his own too. He wants to reach heights in something that is measured differently, and there are different scales to the success he’s after.
Ushijima’s shirt is soaked, – not yet dried in the gentle breeze that’s blowing across Shiratorizawa’s garden, wafting through their hair and the grass and the clusters of flowers spotted around – but his skin is warm under Tendou’s fingertips.
Tendou’s thoughts promptly scatter and he fumbles for a train to keep him back on track, finding something to follow in the mystifying ripples of the flap of a butterfly’s wings.
Tendou’s eyelids flutter, hands retreating from the edge of Ushjima’s sleeve.
“Butterflies fly too, you know?” Tendou asks, and Ushijima blinks at him, gears visibly turning to tag along to the shift in the conversation. Tendou chuckles, gestures to the brightly colored little thing fluttering around the flowers. “They fly, and they have wings just like birds.”
Ushijima nods, satisfied by being able to at least place the ramble, then turns his full focus back to Tendou.
“They’re able to fly, and they fly around the birds sometimes too, but they’re not meant to reach the same heights, they’re meant to float and to kiss the flowers, they have wings, but they’re–”
“Beautiful,” Ushijima interrupts, eyes intent.
Tendou’s thoughts scatter.
“They’re… beautiful, sure.”
Ushijima seems pleased at the agreement, though Tendou now feels distinctly lost.
“They are meant for different things, their wings,” Ushijima explains, as if he’s explaining Tendou’s point back to Tendou, though Tendou himself isn’t sure if that’s how he would have worded it. “And they may fly together, but birds’ wings are meant for soaring, while butterfly wings are meant for beauty.”
“That’s not… I’m not sure if they’re meant for beauty exactly, but…” Tendou trails off, because Ushijima is still staring back at him with very intent eyes, and the feeling of being lost lingers, albeit more dizzying by the second.
Tendou blinks, then blinks more forcefully as Ushijima continues to stare. And then a thought occurs to him, so he jumps aboard the train of that thought and rides it in the same breath he suspected had been caught with the look in Ushijima’s eyes.
“Penguins have wings too, though they use them more as fins. They have wings, but are meant for swimming!”
Ushijima nods, giving the new information his full attention despite it too being an obvious, unnecessary statement – like he trusts that Tendou will reach a worthwhile point eventually. It never fails to fuel Tendou’s rambles further.
“Did ya know penguins mate for life? And a lot of them are gay! Did you know that, Wakatoshi?” Tendou spills it all still in that same breath that’s been caught and bewitched by Ushijima’s gaze. He’s not mindless with it though, and the distance between what should be the topic and the words he has now arrived at dawn on him eventually, so he course corrects with more rushed words in a single breath. “Though that might not necessarily apply. But they have wings, and they swim!”
“Wings for flying, wings for swimming,” Ushijima nods seriously, like he still believes Tendou’s scattered thoughts have a destination they are meant to arrive at.
“What?” Tendou tries, though he is glad Ushjima has circled them back to the point. “Oh, right, Wakatoshi! Yes!”
He sits up, brushing the clinging grass from his arms as he leans over Ushijima’s lying form, grin widening to the eerie shape that Ushjima never seems afraid of. Tendou grabs his shoulders, shaking him just the slightest bit in excitement. Ushijima doesn’t budge, because he’s far too solid, but his eyes blink and widen, which is enough to ensure Tendou that he shares the enthusiasm.
“And! And when I’m in France,” he makes sure to pronounce the word with forced stiffness, giving it the same wronged cadence Ushijima previously had. “Then we’ll hop on airplanes, which have wings of steel, and we’ll fly over to see each other whenever we can!”
Ushijima’s lips curl in the smallest of smiles at the thought, but he seems to contemplate it more thoroughly.
“Those wings are for flying, too.”
Tendou laughs.
“Wakatoshi, that’s not the point!” He shakes him again, teasing and celebratory both. “The point is that you’re not getting rid of me unless you want to, and if you don’t want to, then you won’t!”
Ushijima’s little smile lingers.
“The point is that, even then, we can still fly together, or at least to each other,” Ushijima concludes, and Tendou isn’t sure that was the point he was arriving at, but it’s not a point he’d ever be willing to argue against either.
“Yes!” He agrees instead.
“So we don’t have to be apart forever, just because you’re meant for different things,” Ushijima checks.
“Exactly,” Tendou nods, watching his shadow move with the movement, noticing the shade it casts over Ushijima. “Yes, that’s the point!”
Ushijima seems to contemplate it, measuring it from every angle to decide if this conclusion satisfies him. He tilts his head, apparently deciding that it is still lacking in some way.
“Tendou,” he calls, despite how Tendou’s attention has never strayed from him. Tendou still hums in acknowledgement, which is enough for Ushjima to start on what he feels needs to be amended. “My earlier point about butterflies–”
“That they’re beautiful?” Tendou squeaks.
“Yes. I wanted to reiterate that, in this analogy we are constructing, that point still applies.”
Tendou falters, hovering where he is over Ushijima, and then all at once he pushes away, flopping onto his back again to fight the urge to fidget and squirm, or try and hide a blush he may or may not be showing.
“Thanks,” he answers, because if he’s fluent in Ushijima’s silences, then he is more than used to reading the tentative meaning of his words.
Ushijima nods again, pleased at being understood, and the urge to fidget ripples through Tendou with a vengeance. He expurgates it by running his hands through the grass around him, palm flat against the ground and zooming in the space between the two of them.
“Tendou,” Ushijima calls, and Tendou’s fidgeting slows, maybe to make up for how his heart races. “Your earlier point about the penguins–”
Tendou’s hand freezes, fingers clenched around a few loose blades of grass.
“Could that apply, too?” Ushijima asks.
Tendou’s mouth opens and closes, wanting to check and to ask.
Is it the swimming, the gayness, the mating for life?
Ushijima reaches out, hand finding his in the grass between them and trailing over his knuckles in the beat of silence that lingers.
Tendou lets out a breath, letting their fingers curl around each other’s.
He figures that, well… He knows how to swim, and he’s willing to take a bet on the rest if Ushijima wants any of it.
“Yes.”
“Good,” Ushijima nods again, lips curled in the smallest of smiles, and squeezes their hands closer together, holding on.