Chapter Text
Prologue
Tsukishima can’t stop thinking about the irony at hand. Currently, he is standing across from his girlfriend, who is in the middle of airing out her grievances before breaking up with him, in the courtyard where she had confessed to him only a few months earlier. Like back then, there is a crowd of people who can’t mind their business surrounding them, their attention focused on the bickering couple.
“You were sweet and you made me laugh,” Yume starts. “But it felt like I never got to know you. The real you. That’s what I wanted most of all, but you never let me in.”
Tsukishima thinks that she, or any of the other people he’s dated, wouldn’t like him much if he did. There’s something about him that would chase them away, he just knew it. Granted, he’s already doing that, but he knows it would hurt more if it started happening because they didn’t like who they uncovered.
“I’m sorry Yume-san.” He is. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone else soon.”
His apology, which had been said in earnest, was misconstrued as a cruel write-off of her feelings. Her sadness turns to anger as she darts forward to slap him across the face.
She’s more surprised than he is at her own actions, because she steps back in horror. She holds on tightly to the offending hand, like if she let it go now, it would rise up with a life of its own and slap him again. Even so, she doesn’t apologize. She’d been hurt by his insensitive words, thought to be comforting, and now he was paying the price for it.
“I wanted that person to be you,” she says quietly, before turning and walking away.
A slow murmur travels around the crowd after her departure. He’s suffocated by their curiosity, their thoughtlessness in wanting to dig into his and Yume’s shared life. It makes Tsukishima want to hide.
The moment he sees someone try to approach him, he’s off, in search of refuge from prying eyes. He’s still new to where everything is located on campus–he’s only a first year after all–but somehow he’s able to find the nurse’s office. He pokes his head into the room, quickly scanning the space for signs of life. After finding it absent of other people, he steps inside and closes the door behind him. He walks over to the table and sits in the empty chair beside it with a deep sigh.
His heart runs rampant with adrenaline, and the stinging in his cheek persists relentlessly. There’s a little mirror on the desk, and he lifts it up to examine the minor injury. The left side of his face had turned red and swollen, and he finds that there’s a cut he hadn’t noticed or felt before. Yume must’ve been wearing a ring when she slapped him. He sighs again, settling on trying to find supplies to clean the wound up with.
He figures that the office is open to anyone who might need to patch themselves up, but it still feels strange to be looking through cabinets to find what he needs. He searches to no avail, and gives up after thinking that it’d be okay to leave the gash as it is. He goes back to thinking about Yume, and what she had said to him in the courtyard.
I wanted that person to be you.
They had been dating for six months, and although that had been longer than what his relationships usually lasted, he still didn’t think it was long enough to justify Yume picturing Tsukishima as her forever.
He had really liked her–still really likes her–and that’s why he felt more guilt towards her that he couldn’t become the person she wanted him to be. There was something in all relationships that had held him back. According to them, he was handsome, smart, charming; all exterior traits that made him beloved in their eyes, and Tsukishima couldn’t risk having their opinions of him changing once he revealed who he was on the inside.
They wanted the “real” Tsukishima, but would they even like who that person ended up being? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to find out.
He’s startled out of his private moping session when the door to the office is opened. A stranger, presumably a student, stands blocking the entrance and peers curiously at Tsukishima.
“You’re bleeding,” he says matter-of-factly.
“I’m aware,” Tsuksihima says it with more bite behind it than it should have, and he feels guilty. He shouldn’t be taking his frustrations out on someone else. His voice is softer, almost sheepish, when he continues with, “I’m having trouble finding the supplies I need.”
The man walks further into the room, and Tsukishima is almost entranced as he watches the freckles splattered across his face stretch with the smile he has on. “I can help you with that! I come here often to visit a friend of mine.”
He quickly sets to work, perusing through the cabinets with purpose and placing the items in front of him on the desk. Tsukishima finds himself being endeared by the stranger’s antics.
After the man looks satisfied with his haul, he pulls up his own chair, close enough to Tsukishima that as they sit face-to-face, their knees touch. The blonde backs away in alarm, unsure of the man’s actions until he sees him dousing a cotton swab with rubbing alcohol.
“Oh no,” Tsukishima says quickly. “I can do it myself.”
The blonde reaches for the swab in his hand, but the man expects it and twists away so that it’s out of Tsukishima’s reach.
“I insist,” he says. The seriousness in his eyes leaves no room for argument, so in the end, Tsukishima lets himself be cared for. Taking the blonde’s surrender as his victory, the man cheers. He leans closer into Tsukishima’s space with a look of concentration.
“This might hurt,” he mumbles, before swiping the swab gently across the length of the cut. He at least looks apologetic when Tsukishima lets out a hiss and swipes again to clean up the excess blood that had seeped out of the cut. He turns the swab around, douses the clean side with alcohol, and repeats the process. He throws the used material in the trash before turning to inspect the rest of his supplies.
He mumbles to himself all the while, likely deciding on the next step. He selects a bottle and douses another cotton swab with its contents, a suspicious-looking brown liquid. The man laughs when he turns to see the skepticism on Tsukishima’s face.
“It’s to prevent scarring,” he provides. “This will definitely hurt.” And he swipes the swab on the cut. It takes half a second for Tsukishima to feel it. He can’t help the expletives that fall out of his mouth. He’s about to say one or two more, directed specifically towards his attendant, but he pauses as the man quickly shows the print of the band-aid he had picked out while Tsukishima had been cursing in pain—light pink with Sanrio characters on it—before sticking it on his cut.
“All done!” He says brightly and quickly waves Tsukishima’s quiet thanks away. “How’d you get that cut anyway?”
At this point, Tsukishima would have removed himself from a situation where someone was trying to nose their way into his affairs, even if he was grateful for his help in cleaning up the cut, but he finds that he wasn’t minding that the freckled man was curious. It was his eyes, probably. It was the way their gaze bore through his own and made him willing to confess everything.
“My ex’s ring grazed me.”
The man winces slightly and hums in understanding. After a few moments, he leans in. “Did you deserve it?”
“Probably.”
Tsukishima surprises himself by explaining to the man, this stranger, the contents of he and Yume’s last conversation. In fact, he fills him in on everything else that’s been said to him by other past lovers: that he’s too timid and unassertive, that he doesn’t care enough about them. They are all complaints that Tsukishima doesn’t understand. He texts them regularly, he plans the dates out, and listens to them and tries to change whenever he’s messed up. And still, they were dissatisfied with his performance as their lover.
The man hums as he thinks. “I can see where they’re coming from. It’s knowing that you’ll fight for your relationship that reassures them that you love them. You don’t open up to them, and then let them go so easily. They feel that they’re not special to you.”
Silence overtakes the room. At first, Tsukishima is at a loss for words and is trying desperately to find them, to defend himself. I didn’t mean to, he wants to say. I’m just scared.
It’s why he doesn’t turn to cower when vile words and hands are raised to strike when his relationships come to an end. He doesn’t mind being the villain, doesn’t mind his lovers serving justice unto him when they believe they’ve been wronged. Tsukishima will always be sorry and apologize first because he knows he can’t give them anything else.
“Are you talking from experience?” Tsukishima asks lightheartedly, making a weak attempt at rerouting the current trajectory of the conversation to safer topics.
The stranger studies him for a bit, like he’s aware of what he’s doing and is going to call him out on it, but doesn’t. If he had, then Tsukishima would have labeled himself a coward, because admitting it is the only brave thing he can do.
The freckled man hums and gives him a non-answer. “I’m confident in what I feel. It encourages me to go for what I want.”
Another bout of silence fills the room, and Tsukishima thinks that he might be in the presence of someone great. The blonde had known this to be the case just by looking into his eyes, which were clear of doubt or judgment. The words he spoke were his truth and laced with such sincerity that it compelled Tsukishima, who was weak, to do and act the same. He, who was unafraid. He, whose heart was strong. Ever the skeptic on love, though, Tsukishima wanted to test the man’s faith.
“Isn’t it scary?”
”Of course it’s scary!” The man refutes impassioned, like he thinks the answer is something that Tsukishima should have known already. The freckled man settles back down into his chair with a thoughtful expression, almost as if he’s reminiscing the equally wonderful and frightening feeling of being in love.
“But even more than that,” he adds quietly, a small smile adorning his lips as he looks up to meet Tsukishima’s eyes. “It’s fun.”
“What do you mean?”
“Try it out,” the stranger suggests instead. “Then you’ll see.”
A sound from the man’s phone interrupts their conversation, and the blonde watches him fish the device out of his pocket to read the notification. Tsukishima’s hands ache, and he feels a shiver run down his spine as the man’s expression changes to one of unbridled happiness as a result of the contents on the screen. A transformation commences: his freckles darken as the blood rushes into his curved cheeks, and Tsukishima follows the reddish color with his eyes as it runs down his neck.
This, Tsukishima realizes, is the stranger in love .
It’s an absolute wonder to see for the few moments the man forgets that he’s there, too busy thinking about the person on the other side who held his heart. He aims a devastating smile towards the blonde as he excuses himself from the room in haste. Tsukishima is left alone again, like he had originally wanted, but now he finds that it’s somewhat lonely, the space far too big.
Their interaction in the nurse’s office that day couldn’t have been longer than twenty minutes, but he found himself thinking back to that time often, wishing he’d had the brain capacity to at least ask for a name.
All the time he thought, how nice it would be if that person were in love with him.
Six months later
“Oikawa-san!” The brunette jolts as his name is called, so immersed with the files in his hand that he didn’t even notice when his junior had walked into his office.
“Shou-” his voice cracks in the middle of saying the ginger’s name, and he coughs to cover it up. “Shouyou, don’t you know to knock before you enter?” He scolds his favorite underclassman fondly as he goes back to shuffling through the files’ contents.
“But I did, Oikawa-san! Kenma finally got some ground on that blonde guy you were asking around about, so I thought you would want to hear about it ASAP!”
Oikawa perks up with interest, and he knew if Iwaizumi were here, he would tell him to wipe the crazy grin that was currently growing on his face. “Oh?”
“Yeah! He hangs out with Kuroo-san apparently, so Kenma sees him a lot.”
“Huh.” The pudding-kun character Shouyou was always hanging out with outside the agency didn’t talk much, so it was interesting to find out that he hung around Kuroo’s group. He didn’t seem the type, if Oikawa was honest, but you really just never knew about people.
“Apparently, he’s really popular. People confess to him all the time!”
The ginger walks over to the senior and hands him two files. The name on the top file reads: Tsukishima Kei. He flips it open, quickly skimming through the first page and studying the photo inside. It wasn’t hard to see why people were so enamored with him.
Good looks. Good grades. Everything about him looked good on paper, and yet he could never make them stay, and someone had even been heartbroken enough to look into Oikawa’s agency and pay for his services.
“Kenma says the second file is someone who might be a good pick for this assignment,” Hinata adds helpfully. Oikawa glances over the picture of Tsukishima again, taking in the blank look on his handsome features, before closing his file and looking into the next one.
He’s not familiar with the name on this file. He’s not one of Tsukishima’s jaded exes, and they’ve never had any point of interaction as far as Oikawa can see, but still, pudding-kun had elected this freckle-riddled, harmless-looking character to proceed with this assignment. It was rare when Oikawa fully understood the analysis that Kenma brought to him, but he hadn’t been wrong yet. All there was to do was to put trust in his judgement.
“Oikawa-san?” The fourth year hums and looks up to see that his underclassman had gotten closer to his desk in the time he had taken to inspect the files. “What are you thinking of doing now?”
Oikawa throws both files on the desk and leans back with a grin, “I might go pay a visit to our newest recruit.”
.
Yamaguchi Tadashi fights the urge to pace back and forth in the spacious courtyard. The crowd that curiously surrounds him only heightens his anxiety, and he has to settle for fiddling with the hem of his shirt as he waits to confess to a guy he is growing to dislike the more time that passes. Furthermore, it’s still chilly in Tokyo in April, and Yamaguchi had regretfully left his jacket at home due to his rush out the door this morning.
How did I get myself into this mess? He asks himself with a shiver, as if someone else was in control of him when he was making the several decisions that had led him to the circumstances he was in right now.
The semester of his second year would have started uneventfully if it weren’t for the fact that on his first day, he was almost late for his morning class. The alarm on his phone had failed him yet again, and when he had gone to blearily check the time on the mobile device’s too-bright screen, he had practically fallen out of his bed trying to get to the bathroom to shower and change. He forwent breakfast and nearly forgot his laptop trying to get out the door, and he had to run the whole way to make it on time.
Thankfully, the professor had given the class a grace period to walk in and only started taking attendance ten minutes after class had officially commenced. He hadn’t bothered to look around in hopes of finding a familiar face; he had shared his schedule with his friends after he had signed up for them and had already went through the disappointment of knowing that none of their classes aligned. He took a seat in one of the empty tables closest to him and took out his laptop to jot down some notes.
The professor took the rest of the class period to drone on about the due dates of the projects for the class, and then ended the first lecture by instructing them to read the first two chapters of their textbook by the following week.
He’d been one of the first students out the door, eager to head back to his apartment and get some more sleep before his next class in a few hours. Of course, that had been the plan, but someone had called out his name, and he had turned to greet them.
The person had introduced himself as Oikawa Tooru and had asked Yamaguchi if he was looking for a part-time job. Now, in hindsight, Yamaguchi shouldn’t have given any of his time to a person he didn’t know. Should’ve rejected the offer politely and been on his way. He didn’t do those things, though, and he later inferred that he’d simply left his common sense behind in his apartment in his rush out the door that morning. That was why Yamaguchi had taken serious and genuine consideration into the offer.
In honesty, Yamaguchi was passing by fairly well with the money his parents sent him every month, but he had been thinking of earning extra cash to fund his serious hobby of watching the newest movie releases in theaters. Furthermore, there was going to be a rerelease of one of his favorite movies in theaters for its fifteenth year anniversary in a few weeks, and Yamaguchi wanted to celebrate it by going all out. He wanted to purchase only the best seats and have enough to splurge on snacks from the concession stand, too.
He had decided to indulge the offer if the pay was good, which Oikawa had said it was, but said little else about the exact amount or any more specific details as to what he was going to be hired to do. When asked, the fourth year said that if he wanted to know more, Yamaguchi would have to accept the job. A few delayed alarms finally registered in Yamaguchi’s mind, and he became skeptical and unsure of all this.
“Rest assured,” Oikawa said, clearly seeing the hesitance in Yamaguchi’s gaze. “You will be compensated generously should you involve yourself with the agency.” He was trying to ease Yamaguchi’s apprehension as much as possible.
He accepted the offer, and Oikawa had immediately whisked him away to give him a brief tour of ‘the agency’ and an introduction to the rest of his staff. The tour just consisted of standing around an unkept and partly abandoned office on campus that the fourth year used for talking to clients, and going over assignments with the others. There, Oikawa introduced him to Hinata, a second-year he’d seen in a few of his classes that ran errands for Oikawa; Kenma, a third-year who acted as Oikawa’s main informant; and Akaashi, who worked ‘in the field’ and completed most of the assignments that came through.
“So what exactly do you want me to do?” Yamaguchi had asked after he and the fourth year were alone again. Oikawa was seated in his desk chair with the freckled man standing across from him in anticipation, looking serious.
He could see how the brunette moved the words around in his mouth, trying to form the perfect, careful sentence. “It’s simple, really,” he said quietly with a lean back into the chair.
“I want you to go and confess to Tsukishima Kei.”
Yamaguchi distinctly remembers the confusion he felt trying to process the strange request, and even stranger was that Oikawa hadn’t allowed him to ask follow-up questions about the assignment. He didn’t know who had asked for such a service or for what purpose it had. He only knew that he should head over to the courtyard at noon to meet Tsukishima and declare his (non-existent) feelings for him, and like an idiot, he had done just that.
That’s how he found himself here, deeply regretting his decisions of the past. He thinks that if he’d been made to wait even a minute longer, he would’ve marched himself right back to OIkawa’s dingy little office and rescinded his employment right then and there.
Just as he’s about to turn on his heel, though, Yamaguchi hones in on a tall and blonde figure making his way towards him. Although his strides are long, and he’s kept someone waiting, the person makes no effort to quicken his pace. His face displays no specific emotion, except for the minute furrow in his brow and the slight frown on his lips.
There is no doubt about it; the one walking towards Yamaguchi is none other than Tsukishima Kei. The blonde waits until he’s a few feet away from him before lifting his gaze up, and looks taken aback for a moment, like he’s surprised that it’s Yamaguchi in front of him.
The emotion leaves Tsukishima’s face when the freckled man tries to take a second look, and it’s soon replaced by something slightly cruel and uncaring as he holds up the letter—that he thinks is Yamaguchi’s confession—in his hand.
“You wrote this?” The tone he says it with is one of incredulity. Yamaguchi narrows his eyes slightly at the rudeness, but nods anyway. “Really?” He doesn’t believe him.
And any other time, he thinks it’s fair that the blonde has his doubts. In his defense, though, he doesn’t know what criteria Oikawa is using to mark this assignment as complete. Would it be when Tsukishima is convinced of his feelings? Would just making his affections known be enough? He doesn’t know, so he doubles down, just to make sure.
“Do you always question the validity of the feelings people have for you?”
Yamaguchi is surprised to see that the quip meant to defend himself from the blonde’s cold accusations actually makes him laugh. In the aftermath of it, a smile lingers that softens the man’s previously tense features. This is the second time he’s thought it, but he’s handsome.
“No, no,” he says finally. “But I can be so dense, sometimes. I’m afraid you’ll have to spell it out for me.”
“Can’t you tell just by looking at me?” Yamaguchi does well to hide the panic in his voice with irritation, but he’s growing more desperate and embarrassed as the interaction drags on. He still hasn’t forgotten about the attention they were garnering through doing this in a public space.
“Just this once,” he pleads. Maybe it’s just a trick of the light when Yamaguchi notices that the blonde’s eyes shine bright and golden, and reflect a certain vulnerability within their depths.
Whatever was in his eyes in that moment had moved Yamaguchi so much that in the next one, he’s confessing to him so sincerely that even he is fooled by his ruse for a brief amount of time.
By the looks of it, Tsukishima is satisfied with the admission. So satisfied in fact, that he nods seriously and says, “Okay, I’ll date you.”