Chapter Text
Tendou Satori hasn’t seen his best friend in almost six years. He understood why, of course. Ushijima Wakatoshi was a professional volleyball player all the way back in Japan—Tendou’s home country—and rarely had time off. Sure, he’d call during the few weeks of the year he did have off, but would always list a reason or two as to why he couldn’t fly to Paris, France, to see his best friend. Tendou did the same. He would also list a reason or two as to why he couldn’t fly back to Japan to visit him.
So, there they were for almost 6 years, keeping their friendship alive through calls a few times a year and happy birthday messages.
And Tendou thought that was enough.
He thought that it was enough to get over the crush he had on his best friend since high school. Thought that if he just kept enough space between them, his feelings would eventually die, and he wouldn’t suffer the terrible illness of heartbreak when they would never end up together. Thought that this was the right decision.
But the more Tendou thought about it, like, really thought about it, he would realize that his feelings never went away. That every call and every message only made him want Ushijima Wakatoshi even more. That despite all the time apart, their friendship was never awkward, and instead they would talk for hours until Tendou had to go to work or Ushijima would go to his evening workouts.
After all that time physically apart, Tendou felt more lovesick and needy than he had in his entire life.
That’s what led Tendou to decide that he was going to text his best friend as soon as he got home from his shift at the chocolate shop, and ask him when his next break was.
He felt somewhat selfish about texting his best friend with the intention of satisfying the hole in his heart that grew too wide for him to fill with his job as a chocolatier, but he hoped that deep down, Ushijima wanted to see him too. Maybe he wanted to see him in a strictly platonic sense, but Tandou would take what he could get. They were best friends first, after all.
As soon as his shift was over, Tendou bid farewell to his coworkers before untying his apron and putting it in a tote bag to wash when he got home. He went to the street where his 2001 Renault Clio was parked and started his journey home. The French house he bought in the countryside was about a 45-minute commute by car.
When Tendou first moved to France, he was a broke culinary student with multiple part-time jobs and attended classes at night. He knew almost no French, could barely afford rent, and was living paycheck to paycheck. None of that mattered, however, because he loved it. Sure, he didn’t love constant financial stress, but he loved the Parisian lights at night. He didn’t love the moldy, roach-infested apartment, but he loved learning about the art of dessert-making. He didn’t love the hours of labor for little pay, but he loved the smell of cigarettes and fancy sweet wine that filled the air on his Friday night walk back from class.
Eventually, he got enough money to get a better apartment. Then, when he graduated from culinary school, he was able to get a stable job and quit all of his other part-time jobs—including the one that made him travel far into the countryside and caused him to get lice. He had to shave his head after that, as he was not going to pick out the tiny bugs by himself (that was too much time), nor was he going to get them professionally removed (that was too much money), so he went for option three and shaved his head. He ended up liking the change and decided to keep shaving it when it got too long.
But after a year of working at the stable sweet-shop job, he realized that he had enough money to upgrade again.
Originally, he started looking for apartments in Paris again, but something else caught his eye. A small, old countryside house within his budget. The small house was an open-floor plan with a narrow staircase leading up to a single bedroom. The ceilings were high—Tendou was tall—and it had a small patch of fenced-in land with a few long gardening boxes.
Something inside Tendou acted on impulse, and he put in an offer before his brain could catch up. Was it because the rural area reminded Tendou of Ushijima’s family house in the Japanese countryside? Tendou will never know. All he knew was that he wanted this house.
By some stroke of luck, he got it, and he was moving his fairly minimal possessions to the tiny house before he knew it.
A year later, he got a car, which cut his commute time to work in half.
Tendou observed the landscape go from urban to suburb to rural while listening to the radio. He relished the slight hum of the old car’s engine and witnessed the sky get darker and the stars get brighter as the light pollution weakened.
It was thoroughly dark when Tendou arrived home. The only lights on his street were the occasional streetlamp, and even those started to become scarce close to his house.
The lighting was so minimal, in fact, that he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him when he saw his best friend sitting on the step to his front door. His porch light was pretty dim, after all. But as Tendou pulled into his driveway and the headlights illuminated the front of his house, there was no mistaking the olive-brown hair, the perfect posture, the overall burlyness that was Ushijima Wakatoshi.
Tendou parked the car as quickly as he could before turning the key and getting out, not bothering with his bag of belongings. He quickly walked to the step, Ushijima unmoving, his eyes trained on Tendou. “Wakatoshi?” Tendou’s voice was foreign to him as it was brimming with disbelief and a blend of other emotions he couldn’t quite place. He stood in front of Ushijima, but still gave him enough space to stand up if he wanted. “What are you doing here? I was going to text you when I got home today, but-”
“Satori,” Ushijima said, his voice nearly breaking on the word.
And that’s when Tendou realized there were undried tear tracks on Ushijima’s cheeks, running from the corners of his eyes to the bottom of his jaw.
All rationality escaped Tendou’s being, and he simply knelt to the ground and wrapped his arms around his best friend. Ushijima acted instantly and reciprocated the hug, his arms around Tendou’s back and his face hidden in his neck. Tendou probably smelled like sweat and chocolate in the black button-down and black pants that were required at the chocolate shop job he secured around a year ago, but Ushijima didn’t seem to mind.
After a moment, Ushijima began to shake, and quiet, heartbreaking sobs forced themselves out of his mouth. Tendou rubbed his back as Ushijima cried.
Tendou had only seen Ushijima like this once, and that was when his dad was diagnosed with cancer while he was overseas.
He survived after multiple rounds of chemotherapy, but when Ushijima first got the call, he camped out in Tendou’s high school dorm room with him for weeks. He rarely mentioned his home life, but Tendou knew he never truly felt at home with his mom’s side of the family, meaning he didn’t want to leave school to live with them. Ushijima cried in Tendou’s arms for days, and when Tendou had to go to school and Ushijima couldn’t, Ushijima just slept in his room until Tendou returned. He didn’t even go to volleyball practice; that was how Tendou knew how emotionally ruined he was.
Tendou felt a similar despair at that moment. He didn’t know what happened, but he knew it was serious for him to act the way he was now.
“Wakatoshi?” Tendou asked, and Ushijima’s sobs slowed down. “Would you like to come inside?”
It took him a moment, but Ushijima eventually nodded in response and let go of Tendou.
When Tendou stood up and waited for Ushijima to follow, he immediately knew why Ushijima was upset. He didn’t realize it at first, but Ushijima had a black suitcase parked about two feet from where Tendou was standing, and leaning against the suitcase was a pair of crutches.
Ushijima slowly grabbed them and stood with a pained grunt. Tendou luckily had his keys in his pocket and not his bag, so he unlocked the door and said, “I’ll bring your suitcase in. Make yourself at home.”
Ushijima only nodded in recognition before making his way inside.