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Tsukishima Kei has never been good with words, most things are hard to say and his ego - the size of a dinosaur - certainly never helped him get the words past the heavy stone of pride and dismay sitting on his chest.
But here, now, you're sat next to him, sides pressed together and you're laughing at an old picture of the karasuno volleyball team and you're telling him, so freely, with no shame, that he was always your favorite player, and how funny is it now that years later you're dating your favorite high school athlete?
“God,” you say through small giggles that feel like the gentle pattering of rain. “If I had known years later we’d be here, I would’ve asked you out sooner,” you tease him, eyes squinted playfully and he meets your gaze with an expression he hopes comes across to you as deadpan when he feels anything but. He’s thankful that you’re not so close that you’d hear or feel the way his heart started thudding just a little harder, grateful for the way you refuse to turn on the big lights in the living room in favor of the ambient lighting because even he can admit he won’t be able to hide the redness creeping up on his ears.
It's not funny to him, not really, just a little baffling how life works out and he wants to tell you - he really does - that you were always his first love. Kei doesn’t like to think himself subject to anything as vague and dull as fate - believing himself to be the master of his own uninteresting, but fulfilling life. Fate is for the forlorn and the romantics, something out of your power to cling to when the world seemingly fucks you over again and again.
So… does it really count as fate when he’s never been happier with the way things have turned out?
Kei clicks his tongue and turns away from the picture you’re still smiling at, the youthful faces of his grinning, old teammates a blur in his peripheral vision. Your voice is almost lost to the way his heart thuds in his ears, the static of hesitation as he tries to put the words together and say what he wants to tell you.
“I’m surprised you didn’t, what with all your enthusiastic cheering at our games,” Definitely not that, but the sarcasm rolls naturally from his tongue and he finds he’d rather continue instead of stuttering to a mortifying silence. “I was convinced you would’ve slipped a love letter in my shoe locker at some point,”
The indignant little huff and the slight pout to your lips makes the corner of his twitch upwards, his ego and pride sitting on his chest like a purring, content cat while the rest of him groans in exasperation because really, Kei?
“I was a fan, not a school girl in love,” You shoot back with the same gleam of teasing and play in your eyes - his heart skips a beat and in that brief moment he wonders if you can see how pretty you are reflected in his glasses. Just a brief moment, no more than a little second before his ears practically burn at your words. They don’t mean much to you, just a silly retort to your boyfriend’s teasing - but to him, they peel a layer of truth to expose something vulnerable kept so closely to his heart.
Because between the two of you, he was the “school girl in love” putting love notes in your shoe locker. Figuratively. Love notes aren’t exactly his style - they’re too sentimental, too wordy and again, he’s never been good with words. He considered it once, 16 years old in his old bedroom, face a little too warm and his pen to paper but just the thought of having his thoughts and feelings immortalized in a little piece of the physical world made him recoil and abandon his station.
There were about 15 scraps of paper with scribbles and blocked out ink in his trash can that night 10 years ago. Every paragraph is a little different, but your name remains constant.
“Right, of course. No love confessions and chocolates, just stalking me at every game?”
He has to have the last word.
“Not every game,” Now, what's that near-evil gleam in your eyes? “I seem to recall Tadashi telling me that you seemed a little… bothered when you couldn’t find me in the stands,”
Oh, okay.
“Is that true or is your best friend just a liar, Kei?”
“He’s a filthy liar.”
“Right. Of course.”
You’re grinning, he thinks, maybe, from the way your words seem a little too happy for his liking but he can’t really tell because the flowers he bought you are sitting in a vase and he can’t (refuses) to tear his eyes from it lest you catch the way his pride falters.
“Well, we shouldn’t keep the filthy liar waiting too long, we should go.”
He sees you rise from the couch from his peripheral vision, the absence of your warmth making him shiver - so he follows your stride into the bedroom, some invisible string annoyingly tugging at him to get closer, the rock on his chest telling him to be normal. Now he’s awkwardly occupying the space between the closet and the door while you rummage to find your scarf. He watches the way your hair falls forwards as you bend into the space, his finger twitching by his side to reach and tuck a strand behind your ear but you beat him to it, the movement a smooth, subconscious instinct.
But his hand is already hovering by your head and he’s lucky enough that his scarf is where it always is, on the shelf above your head. He takes it from the shelf, the wool is dark green and thick.
“Wear mine,” Kei urges, offers, pushing the bundle towards you as you pull back from the closet to gaze at the scarf in his hand. Your gratitude comes in a smile, and as you straighten your posture Kei steps forward and wraps the wool around your neck in a secure bundle of warmth. You shiver when the cool of his fingertips brush against your skin, and he bites back a smile in favor of pressing his full, cold palms upon your cheeks.
Then, you jolt.
“Kei!” He fails to bite back the snort when you swat at his arms in retaliation.
—
The cafe is a space of light chatter and sweet scents wafting into Kei’s nose, vanilla cream and latte sweetening the deal of him having to spend the day out when he was really quite looking forward to checking his emails to see what drab corporate politeness his coworkers can come up with to say “Hey, can you do this for me because I don’t want to?”
But a plate of strawberry shortcake sits before him on the table and he really can’t complain. After all, the soft pop music streaming from the speakers sounds rather nice mingled with the sound of your laughter.
“Hitoka did what?” You muse, glee and disbelief entangled into one pretty sound as you laugh at Tadashi’s story, sitting across the both of you and nursing his own drink with a sheepish grin.
“You’re perfect for each other, nobody else could match your level of awkward affection,” You tease him, grinning once again as Tadashi softly rolls his eyes but doesn’t deny your claim. Kei snorts gently, quiet laughter in the way his shoulders raise for a split second. He always liked you best when you teased and prod and snarked - especially when you do it to everyone that’s not him. He can take it. He swears, comes back with a snarkier comment that baits you into banter for the next 5 minutes.
But it is much easier when he’s not your target. Kei prefers his heart keeping a steady rhythm and his ears to remain comfortably cool.
“C’mon,” Tadashi’s sigh is less exasperated, more fond. “She just wanted to be sweet, I forgot my jacket so she decided to do the next best thing -”
“The next best thing being… taking off her cardigan and giving it to you… despite you being like, what? Twice her size?” You muse again, the image of the tiny blonde woman giving her tall partner her jacket is absolutely hilarious to you. You imagine Tadashi would take the cardigan, being that he’s physically incapable of saying no to her, and then suffer the next last hours of their date wearing a too tight, too short pink cardigan.
“You could’ve just said it wouldn’t fit!” “Oh, and watch her get embarrassed and then try looking for a jacket that would fit me?” Tadashi chuckles, freckled cheeks pink with mirth.
“Listen - I didn’t do all that waiting just to tease her when she’s trying to be sweet!”
“And all it took was, what - eight years of pining for you to be happy?” Kei feels a smug little twinge at the sound of your giggles when he joins in on your teasing - but the feeling lasts only a few seconds when he remembers who he’s talking to. And really, the absolute nerve of his snarky mouth to set himself up like that.
Tadashi catches on unfortunately quick - recovering from his sheepish chuckles to raise a brow at his blond friend like Really? You wanna do this?
No.
No he does not.
From your peripheral vision, you see Kei’s eyes widen just slightly, tiny enough that you can’t quite discern if it’s meant as a warning glare, or a panicked realization. In that short moment, Kei could only think about what the easiest way would be to get you up from your chair and leave with him and never again have to see Yamaguchi Tadashi in the flesh.
“Funny you’d say that, Tsukki,” Kei almost jolted. He hasn’t been called that since his senior year of high school and now he’s mourning the fact that they’ve been friends for so long - maybe too long - and now Tadashi is practically immune to his nasty glares.
“Remind me again, how long did it take you to finally make a move?” That catches your attention, your head tilting to the side in confusion as your blond boyfriend sits beside you, back painfully straight and form awfully still.
“What’re you talking about?” You inquire, and Tadashi almost breaks into a grin. He holds himself back, his lips curled into a little smile but the shimmer in his eyes and the flush of his cheeks convey the utter giddiness running through him at the confirmation that you truly didn’t know.
“Oh, y’know - Tsukki used to go all red and stiff when you cheered him on during our games -”
“I was embarrassed,” Tsukishima tries to save face, but Tadashi’s small laugh gently refutes it.
“With a little smirk on your face when you turned away? Yeah, sure. You always looked for her in the stands before we walked onto the court, and every time you saw her - I swear it’s like you just fully lock in.” A small breath leaves you at the crumbs of the past Tadashi hands out, things you never knew about your beau, stories you never thought you’d ever hear.
It’s not that Kei was particularly closed off about his high school years, and you were there cheering him on and hanging around the volleyball club when you didn’t have archery practice. You spent time with them, with him, and reminiscing about the past always got you a little eye roll and a soft, amused scoff from the blond before he joined in with a short anecdote of his own. So, no, you didn’t think Tsukishima was hiding anything big or significant. You were a friend, a supporter, and somewhere along the lines after university - you became his love.
“... He would?” You barely hear your own question, a mere breath of inquiry as you turn your attention to the tall man sitting next to you. His ears are devastatingly pink.
“Yeah. He never said it but we all knew he wanted to impress you. We started calling him ‘Mr. Effort’ every time he did a block really well while you were watching, or when he gave you his jacket if it got cold, or when he ran to your practice range with an umbrella just so you wouldn’t walk home soaking wet alone -”
“We get it.” Kei finally cut back in, honey eyes unable to meet either yours or Tadashi’s. He clears his throat, shifting in his seat with discomfort from the unbearable wave of too warm mortification. Most of all -
He doesn’t deny any of it anymore.
Tadashi gives a small chuckle, giving an almost apologetic - but not really - glance to his friend.
Sitting there now with the reveal of it all, you realize you must be an idiot. Or at least your teenage self was. You remembered every encounter with Kei quite well. Every moment in the evening where you’d walk home together - you assumed it was a coincidence. He always said Tadashi was staying behind, getting meat buns with the team and that he just wasn’t feeling it. You believed it then, and every other moment after. You thought he was just being practical and polite when he handed you his jacket when you shivered despite knowing Tsukishima Kei of all people isn’t exactly known for being polite. You thought he was just passing by the range you went to when it was raining and you forgot your umbrella - and there he was with his red gym bag and dark green umbrella, coincidentally there like a hero to walk you home. You believed it because it was what he said.
“I was passing by - just… hurry up and get your bag.” “Use my jacket. What? No, it’s too warm and I don’t want to carry it.” “You forgot your lunchbox? …Eat this onigiri. I don’t like the filling. It’s a win-win.”
Years ago, you thought you knew him. Aloof, witty, detached, hyper-intelligent. You admired his sense of level-headedness and sharp mind in the fast pace of a volleyball court, it’s why he was your favorite - you always told him with a grin and he always rolled his eyes. You knew him to be the kind of guy that never glanced at a girl in class because his head was too deep in the books and in court strategies. It was only years later, as adults, that you began to uncover the sweet center under his cold shell.
But you never would have expected him, all throughout high school, to be doing little things to impress you, make you happy, and keep you safe because he always liked you. Never once did you think that maybe the reason why you never caught him looking at anybody else was because he was too busy admiring you.
“In any case,” Tadashi says, almost sheepishly with a little smile after watching the realization dawn on your face as Kei progressively gets more and more pink.
“I’m glad it worked out for you two in the end.”
—
It’s silent back in the apartment. Kei hadn’t dared break the streak though you could tell, by the far too many glances he took at you on the way back home, that he wanted to. You didn’t know where to start either. Do you tease him and lie that you totally knew all along? Do you cry and convey to him how much it has touched and overwhelmed you to know what you know now?
It’s a brewing little potion of affection and warmth - and the moment you unwrap his scarf from your neck, and he hangs his coat back on the hanger, you break it.
“So…”
In an instant, you see him stiffen and wilt all at once. As if bracing himself for the teasing and succumbing to it without a fight in one single gesture. He turns to you slowly, and merely raises a pale brow. You smile, stepping closer, your hands finding his on either side as you take it, and bring them up to your lips.
“Anything you wanna clarify, Mr. Effort?”
Kei groans, ears pink as you giggle, his knuckles caressed lovingly by your lips.
“I just… I never knew you were…” You murmur, your own cheeks heating up with the unspoken word of affection, adoration, devotion sitting on the tip of your tongue.
“Of course you didn’t, you were thicker than the freak duo,” Kei murmurs back in response, teasing to recover his own ego. You let him do so, but not without a gentle bite to his knuckles in soft retaliation.
“I tried,” Kei finally says, the words almost too thick in his throat. Thick with the staggering amount of tenderness currently blooming within him - battling with the mortification and need for self preservation, the voice telling him that he doesn’t need to say it, another voice telling him that he should do what he’s been wanting to do.
“You know I’m not the best at… saying things,” He almost cringes himself into stopping, but your soft him encourages him. “But it’s… it’s true. Everything he said.”
His honey eyes lock with yours in a tender gaze, you see the pink coloring bleed into his cheeks from his ears, a long brewing love and devotion that has only ever gotten stronger over the years making his eyes shine. For you. All for you.
“I’ve… I’ve lov - … I’ve loved you for a long time.. You were my first love. It’s always been you.”
Your breath hitches at his confession, a softness, a vulnerability there that for a moment you knew it wasn’t just him in the present speaking. It’s joined by the echo of a teenage boy who thought too much, who always loved you in the sidelines.
At that, you find yourself at a loss for words. There can be nothing, no words that could convey what you were feeling in this moment other than you feel as if you were made of love. It’s sappy, childish, raw and real. So you stand on the tips of your toes, your eyes closing shut as you let yourself lean into him and his warmth.
Knowing, with every inch of you, that Tsukishima Kei will catch you, and envelop you in his embrace for as long as you both shall live.