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Tsukishima had a hangnail.
He had just subbed out for Nishinoya when he noticed it. He stood in the warm-up area, frowning at his hand— the little scrap of skin, the reddened area next to his nail.
“You didn’t hurt yourself on that block, did you Tsukki?” Yamaguchi asked, hovering anxiously at his elbow. Ever since the collision in the Wakutani Minami match, Tsukishima’s pinky dislocation from Ushiwaka, and Hinata’s fever at Nationals, everyone had been a bit on edge about injuries.
“No," he answered, letting his hand drop to his side.
He tucked his fingers under his thumb, in a loose fist, as he watched the volley. Where the hangnail pressed against the pad of his thumb, it stung. A small, harmless pain.
Hinata had already sat in the spot next to Yamaguchi on the bus— their heads together over Hinata’s phone, laughing at something. So Tsukishima took the seat behind them, pulling his headphones up over his ears to block out their chatter, leaning against the window.
The last few team members clambered on. Kageyama stood for a moment in the aisle, saying something to Hinata, but then Narita came up behind him, and Kageyama slid around into the seat next to Tsukishima to get out of his way.
Takeda-sensei started up the engine. Out of the corner of his eye, Tsukishima could see Kageyama sit down next to him and lean his head back against the seat, as the bus pulled out of the parking lot.
The game had been a practice match against Kakugawa, and it had gone... fine. The third years had sat this one out, since Sawamura-san had said the team needed to start getting some practice in without them. He had been right. Kinoshita had been pretty bad, honestly— this was his first real court time besides pinch serving, and he seemed to have forgotten everything he'd ever learned about spikes and blocking when he'd rotated onto the front line.
Hinata and Hyakuzawa had been chummy after the match, as expected. They had even tried to rope Tsukishima into their little training camp reunion, Hinata waving him over from across the court. The two of them made quite a comical pair, he'd thought as he watched them— the shrimp and the giant. But that was Hyakuzawa with everyone, his claim to fame. He had 10cm even on Tsukishima— it wasn't often that Tsukishima had to look up at someone, but talking with Hyakuzawa, he felt practically petite.
He was pressing his hangnail with the pad of his thumb again. The little spear of skin poked at the flesh of his thumb, and the side of his fingernail throbbed slightly. They were passing a park on the bus ride now, and he could see the trees were starting to turn green again, a pale haze of new leaves among the branches.
He became dimly aware that Kageyama was saying something beside him, but his voice was only a distant muddle, under the music from Tsukishima's headphones. He kept his eyes trained on the scenery rolling by outside. Probably if he just ignored him, Kageyama would eventually stop talking.
Instead, he felt Kageyama’s hand on his own, seizing him with a sudden, firm grasp.
Tsukishima jumped at the contact, turning and pushing his headphones down off his head with his free hand, on the defensive.
“What?”
Kageyama’s grip straightened the fingers of Tsukishima’s hand, pushing it into a flattened position— separating his thumb and his hangnailed finger.
“I said, you should clip that before it tears,” Kageyama said.
Tsukishima scoffed, in reply, but didn’t pull back. Instead he just looked at his hand, in Kageyama’s hand.
Kageyama, like him, didn't usually initiate physical contact with others— or at least, outside of pulling Hinata’s hair, which seemed to be one of their main methods of communication. But he seemed to accept the others high-fiving and manhandling him with a confused acquiescence. Tsukishima, in contrast, usually stayed out of the area for group hugs completely, steering clear of jovial backslaps and roughhousing from the rest of the team as best he could. Not that Kageyama’s hand on his hand felt exactly like those times.
“Here,” Kageyama said, suddenly releasing him. He pulled his volleyball bag up onto his lap and opened it, retrieving a small pouch from inside, and a pair of small nail clippers from inside that.
“Hangnails usually happen when your skin is dry,” said Kageyama. He took Tsukishima’s hand again — Tsukishima had not thought to retrieve it in the meantime — and laid it across his bag, which was in his lap. In this position, Tsukishima’s arm was stretched out under Kageyama's elbow. Tsukishima’s skin was slightly paler than his, and their arms looked suddenly alien, crossed over each other like white fish bellies swarming in a stream.
“So you should moisturize more frequently,” Kageyama said, and he leaned over Tsukishima's hand, positioning the clippers carefully. “And take care of your fingernails, too.”
Tsukishima watched the top of Kageyama's head as he bent forward, the strands of his hair sliding softly over each other. The metal of the clippers were cold against Tsukishima’s finger for a moment— then Kageyama had smoothly snipped off the piece of skin, and released him.
This time Tsukishima pulled his hand back quickly, into his own lap. His fingers flexed like he'd touched a hot pan.
“Whatever,” he said.
Kageyama was busying himself with packing his clippers away again, and Tsukishima pulled his headphones back on over his head, and turned away, to the window.
Tsukishima wasn’t stupid. He knew he was not normal. Or— gay. Whatever.
He would watch boys, sometimes, and feel… something. Sometimes it was a good feeling, and sometimes it was a bad feeling. Either way, he tried not to dwell on it.
Perhaps, he’d thought at one point, the feeling was envy. Their strong, capable arms, their broad shoulders. Weren’t those things that he was supposed to want for himself? It would all make sense if it was envy.
At the summer training camp, he had ended up alone in an equipment room with Bokuto, who had pushed him up against a pile of mats and pressed their mouths together. Bokuto kissed the same way he seemed to do everything— enthusiastically. Tsukki had kissed back, sliding a little down the sides of the mats, so Bokuto had to tilt his head down to keep their lips connected, which he had done. He braced one elbow over Tsukishima’s shoulder, his muscular arm beside his head. Tsukishima had let out a little noise, soft and high-pitched and embarrassing.
So, there was that.
He would watch girls, too, sometimes. Which would make perfect sense, if it was… wanting to date them. To hold their hand. To kiss them. His mind stuttered uncomfortably from one idea to another. Yes, he thought firmly, maybe that was it.
The idea of being some girl’s boyfriend, though— he had to admit it was uncomfortable, like an ill-fitting suit. And Tsukishima knew the feel of ill-fitting clothing well. Ever since he outgrew Akiteru, even hand-me-downs were too short for him. “My big little brother!” Akiteru would say, reaching up to jostle his shoulder.
Tsukishima went to press at his hangnail again before he remembered that Kageyama had clipped it off. Instead, he pinched the side of his wrist, hard, between two fingers, under his folded jacket where no one could see.
“Your hair is messy this morning, Kei,” his mother said, reaching over to tousle it as he ate the last few bites of his breakfast. “Go brush it before you head out.”
His mother's hair was darker than his, mousy brown, and hung down straight and smooth to her shoulders. When he was little, he had told her that he wanted hair like hers. "Like Akiteru's?" she’d said. Akiteru's hair was the same color as hers, or close. Little Tsukishima had shrugged.
Now, Tsukishima quietly turned around and went back into the bathroom. He wasn't in the habit of grumbling at his mother's directions, like he knew boys his age were.
He stood with his back to the bathroom mirror, like usual, as he tried to settle his messy hair with the brush by touch. He was due for a haircut, he knew. It was already starting to tickle his ears. If it got much longer, it would get into his eyes, which would be irritating.
Though maybe if he grew it out even longer, he could tie it back, like Shimizu-san did sometimes. Or like Azumane-san, rather.
His fingers tightened around the brush, spasmodically.
Maybe he should just buzz it all off, like Tanaka.
He tossed the brush back into the drawer, banging it closed. He felt suddenly sick to his stomach.
After practice that afternoon, he was just retrieving his school bag from his locker when Yamaguchi, who had been rattling off a story of something that happened at Shimada Mart, suddenly stopped mid-sentence.
Tsukishima turned to see what he was looking at.
Kageyama stood there, with a little bag in his hand, the same one he’d gotten the clippers out of on the bus.
“I thought I could help with your nails,” he said.
Tsukishima looked at him. The refusal hovered in his mouth, between his tongue and his hard palate, but for some reason it didn’t emerge.
“I’ll see you later then, Tsukki!” Yamaguchi said brightly, and slung his bag over his shoulder, heading out the door.
“Here,” Kageyama said, crossing the room to pull a chair over, and sitting down on the floor beside it. For a wild moment, Tsukishima thought that Kageyama was asking him to sit on the chair above him, with Kageyama down below looking up. But then Kageyama put his little bag down on the chair’s seat, and patted the tatami mat of the floor for Tsukishima to sit across from him.
Which he did.
He wasn’t quite sure why he was going along with this, except that Kageyama seemed so sure that he would, which made the idea of refusing seem somewhat awkward. Kageyama had a matter-of-fact way of dealing with things that occasionally made him impervious to opposition or teasing. Particularly when it came to volleyball.
Presumably this, for Kageyama, was a part of volleyball. At any rate, he approached it with the same careful, pragmatic manner that he did the game.
It turned out the whole process was more involved than Tsukishima had assumed. Kageyama clipped his nails straight across, but then used a file to round the edges. The file was made of glass, etched with a crosshatch pattern.
“Glass is better,” Kageyama said, “less likely to snag. You should always file in one direction, too.”
Tsukishima’s hands looked almost like a stranger’s to him, as Kageyama handled them, even while they still had all the old familiar markers. Long-fingered, with a bit of knobbliness to the knuckles which he had always disliked. The pinky of his right hand was slightly askew, from the injury in the Shiratorizawa match, and he had a callous on the middle finger of his right hand where his pen rested while he wrote. Still, despite all that, they seemed unfamiliar in Kageyama’s hands.
Maybe it was the way Kageyama was holding them, as he pushed down his cuticles, and applied moisturizer to the skin. Gently, but firmly. Methodically, but tenderly. Like they were precious things he had grown used to handling over many years.
The nail strengthener was next. It came in a little bottle.
Tsukishima thought of a group of three girls he had seen painting each other's nails during lunch period the other week. They had done it the same way. One girl unscrewed the bottle of polish, and wiped the brush along the inside of the rim, just like Kageyama was doing now. The girl had held her friend’s hand steady, and then applied the color with quick, smooth movements. And Kageyama used the same motions of his hand as she had. A little twist of the wrist with each one, familiar from long practice. Delicate and neat.
Then, the final step. He lifted Tsukishima’s hand up to his face, and blew across his nails, to help them dry.
Kageyama’s hands were warm against his, and his breath was warm, too. Or maybe it was that Tsukishima’s hands were cold, he couldn't tell.
At length, the process seemed to be done. Kageyama had used everything from his little bag. Still, he sat there for a moment longer, turning Tsukishima’s hands over between his own.
“What,” said Tsukishima eventually, keeping his voice flat. He realized when he spoke, that he hadn’t said anything in quite a while.
“Nothing,” Kageyama said. He shrugged. “You have nice hands. They’re pretty.”
Tsukishima stiffened. His brain was stopped completely, so all he could think about was what Kageyama had said, which echoed (pretty, pretty, pretty) in counterpart to the thundering noise in his ears of his own blood rushing.
“Oh, sorry.” Kageyama said. This meant, horrifyingly, that Tsukishima's face or body language must have done something noticeable.
“What?” asked Tsukishima again. His brain still wasn’t quite working correctly.
“I didn’t mean it to be rude," Kageyama said. His face twisted into an expression between obstinance and apology. "Captain said I shouldn’t compare teammates to girls.”
With that, Tsukishima's brain kicked back into gear, and was now immediately racing a hundred kilometers an hour.
Why did Kageyama say that? What did he think? What did he know?
Would he say it again?
Tsukishima fought to school his expression, and hopefully succeeded— he had a lot of practice, after all.
“It was when I said Hinata was shorter than most of the girls in our class the other week,” Kageyama said, “remember, when he kicked me and I fell off the bench in the club room? Captain said that was rude. But I wasn’t trying to insult him either, though.” He paused, considering. “Not that time,” he appended.
Yes, that made sense. That must be why Tsukishima had frozen, right? Had felt the rush of something, sweet and frightening, in his stomach? Because it was an insult, because it was weird and mean and rude.
But Kageyama said he didn’t mean it as an insult, and Kageyama rarely lied. And his face didn’t look rude. Any more than usual.
"It's okay," Tsukishima managed. And then, before he could stop himself, "Yours are... too."
And they were– both of theirs. Two pairs of pretty hands, resting on the dingy surface of the chair seat.
Unlike the girls at lunch, there was no color on their fingernails. But the clear substance of the nail strengthener was there, invisible but real. Like the path of the little brush had left some secret, mystical mark. Something only the two of them could see.
“Hey, it’s time to lock up,” Sugawara said, leaning in the door and smiling at them. Tsukishima startled, but Kageyama didn’t seem surprised.
“Ok,” he said, “we’re ready to go.”
He leaned down to help Tsukishima up, extending a hand.
She took it.