Chapter Text
For his 5th birthday, Kei’s grandparents had gifted him a puzzle. It was a landscape illustration of a Jurassic forest with lush foliage, sprawling mountains, a volcano, and about every dinosaur he could name (and even some he couldn’t). For the next month and a half, it adorned the corner of the Tsukishima’s living room floor, snuggled between his dad’s favorite chair and their cabinet of fancy dishes. Kei refused to let anyone touch it. He’d thrown a fit the one time his mom had to move it to the coffee table to vacuum – she promised to vacuum around it after that. He declined Akiteru’s help in searching for pieces. To Kei, before he got his first mp3 player or got good enough at reading to tackle his father’s encyclopedia collection, this was his space. Challenging enough to keep his brain occupied but easy enough to not frustrate him or wear him out. Finding two pieces that fit together perfectly was the best feeling for 5-year-old Kei. Quietly snapping a bit of a brontosaurus neck to the torso of its body, click by click, to create a full picture was the most gratifying thing he’d experienced. He’d shown everyone when he finished, his brother, his parents, he’d even had his mom send a photo of it to his grandparents. They had patted him on the head, told him what a good job he had done, and had left it at that. It felt patronizing. They just didn’t get it like Kei did. They didn’t get the satisfaction of building it piece by piece. It wasn’t until he was putting the pieces back in its box, to wait on the top shelf in his closet until the next time he wanted to build it again, he realized that maybe, it would have been just a little more fun if he had had a friend to share it with.
It’s hard to pinpoint when a friendship begins. A short encounter combined with small, fleeting moments, and suddenly lives are intertwined with one another, so much that you can hardly remember a time before.
Kei never went searching for friendship. As a child he had his brother, and his brother was the best and coolest person he could ever have, anyone else would probably take away from that. And Kei never liked to share. But somehow friendship found him, in the form of disheveled olive-brown hair, scrawny limbs, and freckles.
“Why do you let him follow you around like that?” Some of his classmates corner him after the lunch bell rings, Tadashi has just run off to fetch his favorite soda from the vending machine. “Isn’t he annoying?”
“He’s like a lost puppy trailing after his owner!” They laugh, but Kei isn’t listening. He’s stuck trying to come up with an answer.
Isn’t he annoying?
The answer, undoubtably, is yes. Tadashi is very annoying. He’s scared of the neighbor’s dog that barks at him through the fence on their way to school and flinches too much whenever Kei decides to speak up. He’s too timid, but also too loud, constantly talking Kei’s ear off about the most mundane of things, things that don’t matter in the slightest. Like the oddly shaped strawberry he found with his breakfast that morning, or the stray cat he pet behind the convenience store.
He always figured Tadashi stuck to his side because fewer kids made fun of him when he was seen standing next to the tallest kid in their grade. But-
Why do you let him follow you around like that?
Does he let Tadashi do it? It’s not like he hasn’t tried to brush him off before. He leaves school without waiting for the smaller boy, minding his own business and passing the school gates before the other has even finished packing his backpack. But somehow Tadashi always manages to catch up to him, huffing and puffing on his short, spindly legs, calling after Kei to wait up for him.
It was bothersome at first, having Tadashi as a shadow. Kei is content in being alone most of the time, and the constant company and jabbering irks him to no end. But other days, seeing Tadashi’s eyes alight with awe whenever Kei perfects a receive, or regales him with his brother’s latest stories about being the ace at Karasuno, Kei is filled with a sense of sickeningly sweet pride.
“Tsukki!” Tadashi calls, rushing into the classroom and almost tripping over his own feet in his needless rush, his left shoelace is untied, “they have strawberry milk today! You want some?”
“Stop yelling Yamaguchi. And tie your shoe, you’re going to fall.” Kei admonishes, grabbing his own bento from his bag without a second glance at the group of kids who were talking to him before, they seem to have moved on anyways. Too scared to say anything to Yamaguchi’s face when Kei’s in the room with him.
“Sorry Tsukki!” he doesn’t sound sorry when he says it, but it doesn’t really matter. He thinks he hears some of the kids snicker behind him as he leaves the room, Tadashi trailing along behind him as always.
He doesn’t think about it again until much later. Not until after Akiteru is no longer the coolest brother in the world, after Kei’s conviction has been ripped to shreds and discarded on the floor of the Sendai courts and he is left wondering what all his enthusiasm was even for in the end.
Yamaguchi has been trailing after him more persistently than usual, jogging to keep pace with him on the way to school, hovering by his desk during their lunch break, constantly checking over his shoulder on the way to volleyball practice to make sure Kei is still there. They are together more than they are apart these days, and it has been grating on his nerves incessantly. His chattering to fill the silence, his refusal to address what happened at his brother’s game, even though they both know, they both were there. Kei knows that Yamaguchi can tell it’s been bothering him ever since. He’s been more hesitant lately than he used to be, like he’s afraid Kei will tell him to shut up whenever he opens his mouth. It’s in the way he’s constantly looking for him, making sure Kei is still nearby, still attending practice with him. He asks to come over more often than not now, and Kei finds himself saying yes just so he doesn’t have to deal with his brother trying to talk to him when he’s alone.
It's almost like he’s the one hiding behind Yamaguchi now.
Lame.
The bubble finally bursts on the way home from school, practice ended early, and Kei has been finding it harder and harder to care. He doesn’t want to quit, because that would mean what happened with Akiteru impacted him more than he wants to admit. Akiteru doesn’t matter, none of it matters. Everything is normal. He just needs some peace and quiet. He leaves the gym without looking back, hoping that Yamaguchi will take the hint today.
He doesn’t, of course he doesn’t. He comes barreling out of the gym after him, barely getting his shoes on right while yelling after Kei to wait up.
Why do you let him follow you around like that?
Why is he still here? Why, after everything they saw, does Yamaguchi still insist on being Kei’s friend? Half of the reason they became friends in the first place was based on a lie. Kei isn’t cool, his brother isn’t cool and Yamaguchi’s persistence in hanging around him most definitely isn’t cool.
Kei snaps.
“Why do you keep following me around all the time? Don’t you have better things to do? God, you’re so annoying!”
It hits Yamaguchi like a slap to the face. His sneakers scuff the ground as he screeches to a halt mid-jog. The look of pure, unmitigated shock and hurt on his face pangs at Kei’s chest. His big doe-y eyes start to water. Kei swallows his guilt down like a stone.
“Oh….” His hands wring at the strap of his backpack, wilting from head to toe. Even the hairs on top of his head seem to deflate. “Um ok.. yeah. I can– I’ll go.” Except instead he crouches down on the dirt path, taking his backpack off and rummaging through its contents. He pulls out a book and hands it to Kei. It’s the copy of Jurassic Park that Kei leant him a month ago.
Yamaguchi stands and toes at the dirt. His shoelace is untied again. “I finished it last night, so you can have it back. I really liked it so um, t-thanks Tsukki. Uh, sorry–”
He turns away to leave, to get as far away from Kei as possible, probably. Heading in the complete opposite direction of where Kei knows his house is, since they normally walk home together. Kei looks at the book in his hands; the corners of the pages slightly upturned from the many times he’s read it himself. The corner of the cover is creased and there’s a torn index card sticking out the top as a temporary bookmark, but it’s more or less in the same shape Kei lent it to him in. He wanted to be alone, he thought he wanted to be alone, but now, watching Yamaguchi turn the other way, he realizes he doesn’t know what he’s going to do once he gets home. He’ll have his DS and his documentaries and his book but-
“Wait, Yamaguchi – um…” He doesn’t really know what to say. He should apologize, really, he should apologize but the words are lodged in his throat and the thought of voicing them grips his chest with a fear he can’t explain. Yamaguchi looks back, eyes shining and watery, but nonetheless patient, still open and waiting. Kei grips the novel in his hands, crinkling the pages of his favorite book. “Do you want to come over and watch the movie? We have it on DVD.”
It's not the apology it should be, but it’s part way there. A compromise, of sorts. The words he really means hidden behind his question.
I didn’t mean it.
I’m sorry.
Please don’t leave.
He sees Yamaguchi process it. A second of disbelief morphs into a light smile. “Okay Tsukki!”
They fall into step again, Kei’s momentary outburst forgiven it seems. He realizes that those kids in his class were wrong. That maybe from the outside, it looked like Yamaguchi was the lost puppy clinging to the first person he could find, but Kei is just as lost without Yamaguchi by his side.
“Hurry up then,” Keu mutters, feeling the beginnings of a smile twitch at his mouth that he struggles not to let show. “We need to get home before Aki hogs the TV. And tie your shoe, you’ll trip and fall.”
“Sorry Tsukki!”
The walk back is quieter than usual, not an uncomfortable silence, but an uncommon one. They sit side by side on the couch when they get home, Yamaguchi sitting closer than necessary as always. The Tsukishima couch is large, and Yamaguchi is small enough that his freckled knee shouldn’t brush against Kei’s thigh. This time Kei doesn’t shift away like he usually would. They fall back together like nothing happened. Yet there are subtle changes, a boundary has been broken, lines have shifted ever so subtly. Yamaguchi hides behind his pillow at all the scary parts, holding his breath when the T-rex makes its first appearance. Kei fills the tense silence with facts he learned from the behind-the-scenes extras he’s watched almost as many times as the movie itself. He tells Yamaguchi about the life-sized puppets and CGI they used to make the dinosaurs look real, and that it’s actually all fake. They end up watching all the DVD extras after, until his mom calls them both for dinner. It’s late, Yamaguchi has to go home soon.
Kei tells him he can stay overnight. Yamaguchi calls his mom.
The first of many sleepovers.