Chapter Text
The first time that Tsukishima Kei’s heart had broken it had fractured his entire world along with it. He had been nearing the end of elementary school and his brother had been everything to him. A hero, a guardian, a friend. Akiteru was all Kei had ever wanted to be. Until he wasn’t. He’d betrayed Kei’s trust, the one who trusted him inexplicably, and lost Kei because of it. In just one look. Across one room. At a single person. Kei lost everything that day. Kei changed on that day.
He became more closed off, more cautious, more cynical. Kei’s sarcastic nature and quick wit became his shield that protected him, as well as the only thing that people saw if they couldn’t be bothered to stick around long enough to look past it. He took a step back from his interests, wary of becoming too attached and being let down by putting too much expectation into uncertainties. He distanced himself from everyone, except the one boy who refused to take a step back.
The second time that Tsukishima Kei’s heart had broken it had hurt with a pain so incomparably worse than the first. This time was slower, giving Kei time to notice how far gone he was and how hopeless any attempt to stop it would be. It had also given him time to hope that the outcome could be different from what it inevitably would be. He was also given a choice. Not the choice to escape before it was too late - it was already far too late - but the choice of whether he alone would be heart-broken or he would drag two others along with him.
Kei had been in love with Yamaguchi Tadashi since before he even really knew what love was. (Not to say that he understood it now.) He’d known Yamaguchi since elementary school: since before he changed. Yamaguchi had been the boy who refused to take a step away despite how Kei changed, because he was still the same in the ways that mattered and Yamaguchi saw how scared and how alone Kei was without Aki. Kei realised that he liked him as more than a friend in their second year of middle school. Around the same time that he realised that he wasn’t attracted to girls at all and Yamaguchi wasn’t attracted to boys.
Yamaguchi fell in love easily. The girl who lived across the road, the girl he sat next to in assembly that one time, the captain of the softball team, the girl who lent him a rubber in maths, the girl, the girl, the girl. He would have a new ‘love’ every couple of months and he was bad at hiding them but was too awkward and had too little self-confidence to do anything about them. He would pine annoyingly from afar, sneaking glances, doodling names in margins and occasionally sighing dramatically. Quiet, tired sighs, but dramatic sighs nonetheless.
In his pining, oblivious, almost self-absorbed way, Yamaguchi would rant to Kei about his ‘loves’, not noticing how his every word put another crack on Kei’s already fragile heart. He would lament how cute they were, how nice, how friendly: everything that Kei wasn’t. He would sigh in resignation because ‘why would she ever want to be with someone like me?’.
Kei would get annoyed by this because he couldn’t understand why his best friend was so nervous – there wasn’t a single reason that he could think of for any of these girls to turn Yamaguchi down (except for one that had had a boyfriend already). But he also hoped that Yamaguchi’s lonely heart would look at him for once; that he could be the subject of those sneaked glances, his name doodled in the margins of notebooks, his presence the cause of a quiet, dramatic sigh. This changed when they met Yachi Hitoka.
Yamaguchi was completely over his current crush- the girl who sat next to him in homeroom- the second he saw Yachi trembling nervously as she stood next to Kiyoko, who was introducing her to the team. Kei was sure that this would just be another of Yamaguchi’s ‘loves’ until he noticed that the obviousness, awkwardness and quiet, dramatic sighs were mutual. Their obliviousness seemed to be too. (He had the suspicion, however, judging by some of the conversations he’d had with her, that Yachi was not as oblivious as she seemed and was probably just creating new and elaborate ways that hers and Yamaguchi’s lives could end should she ever choose tried to even acknowledge that her feelings were mutual. God forbid that she should ever think to act on them.)
Thus, Kei was given a choice: help these two idiots get together or let them suffer as their chances at requited love seemed to grow more and more distant. Either way, Kei’s heart was already broken. The former would mean that Kei would see Yamaguchi happy. He loved seeing Yamaguchi smile. He was always so self-conscious of his smile, but there were times when he was so happy that he forgot his insecurities and he glowed. Those smiles happened a lot around Yachi.
The latter meant he could comfort him and they could share a broken heart. It would be just him and Yamaguchi again, against the world, against the bullies who hated Yamaguchi’s freckles, against anything and anyone who hurt them. The moon and stars alone together in the night sky.
But the former meant that Yachi would be happy too.
It wasn’t as though Kei hated Yachi or even had anything against her. If he was forced to say his opinion on her he’d say that he liked her. She was kind, quiet, creative and smart. She seemed perfect for Yamaguchi and he seemed perfect for her. Kei couldn’t think of anyone who could make Yamaguchi happier because, despite how awkward they both were, they were never awkward around each other (beyond the constant romantic tension). Kei had no choice. He’d never had one. He started planning.
~(^-^)~*
It was so much more difficult than Kei had ever imagined it would be. He had underestimated Yamaguchi’s ability to ignore the obvious and Yachi’s ability to self-depreciate.
But he managed it. It took nearly a year. Nearly a year of leaving them alone together to run imaginary errands, of subtly volunteering them to clear up the gym together after practice, of almost resorting to just locking them in a cupboard. He would have done it too if he hadn’t of realised that when Yachi was involved (a girl who managed to turn the most ordinary of situations into life and death ones) it was best to involve to avoid locking them anywhere.
One Sugawara Koushi had caught on to what Kei was up to towards the end of the school year and, despite the fact he was now in his first year at Waseda University in Tokyo, was willing to help out in any way he could. This usually meant letting Kei rant over the phone about how dense his best friend was and how he should just leave him to suffer alone forever. He didn’t though. He couldn’t. Much to Suga’s amusement.
Suga was the one that Kei had told first after Yamaguchi had told him, like he hadn’t already known. Suga had demanded to be notified as soon as there was a development of any kind so Kei called him. Suga picked up on the first ring.
“You did it, didn’t you!” It wasn’t a question. “This is so great Kei. You don’t have to keep meddling anymore, it’s their problem now! You’re free!”
“…Hello to you too Koushi.”
“Shut up and yes, hello. I’m just so excited. How long have you been trying to get those two together for? This is a monumental moment! The two most oblivious kids in Karasuno, excusing the freak quick duo, of course-”
“And the recently graduated ex-captain and vice of the boys’ volleyball club” Kei muttered.
“-finally together! This deserves a celebration. I need to call Oikawa: he’s good at this sort of thing. He lives near me, you know, same block of flats, and the parties that he hosts, oh my god. You can hear them from my flat. And he lives two floors above me! Shows how shitty and thin the walls are here, right? Or maybe his parties are just that loud? I’ve been invited to the next one; maybe I should go along and find out. You can come to one if you want when you finally get around to visiting me. We won’t be drinking, obviously, we’re both underage, but there might be alcohol so I’ll just have to protect you, as your responsible senpai-”
“Koushi, you’re rambling again.”
“I’m excited! Let me live, Kei.”
“Who’s older out of the two of us again?”
“Shut up, you’re so disrespectful to your senpai. Why do I still talk to you?”
“Because I’m a delight and provide a source of intellectual conversation as an alternative to Oikawa rambling about his ‘Iwa-chan’?”
“No, that’s not it… Oh yeah! You keep me up to date on all the Miyagi gossip so that I can rub it Oikawa’s face that I know more of what’s going on than he does! And on that topic, how long have you been trying to get our adorable manager and pinch server together for?”
“Around ten months, give or take. So yeah… I guess you’re right: I’m free now. But to be honest I doubt that I won’t get dragged into a mutual misunderstanding at some point or other and have to fix that for them.”
“Yeah probably but hey, would they be them if that wasn’t the case.”
“… No they wouldn’t be. But… I guess I can’t believe it’s over. They’re together now.”
“Yeah… Crazy to think about, isn’t it?”
Kei shrugged and then remembered that Koushi couldn’t see.
“How’re you holding up?”
“What do you mean? Why would I not be? My best friend has finally got the perfect girlfriend after pining for nearly a year.”
“Don’t bullshit me Kei. You don’t have to lie to me… I’m here for you and just because you knew this was going to happen doesn’t mean you have to be okay. You’re allowed to be upset.”
“…Still no idea what you’re talking about Koushi. I’ve got nothing to be any less than jubilant about. He’s my best frie-”
“So am I Kei! I’m your best friend too! So, I know that you love him and that’s alright and just because he’s happily in a relationship doesn’t mean that you can’t be upset, even if you’re happy for him. It’s fine Kei. You can cry. You can scream at the universe. You bury yourself in blankets with a tub of ice cream and watching shitty rom coms. I recommend the last one. You’re allowed to be upset.”
“…Is it that obvious? Do you think that he knows?”
“Knows what? That you love him or that you’re upset?”
“Either, both, does it matter?”
“He probably doesn’t know either, if I’m honest.” Kei wasn’t sure whether he felt relieved or disappointed when he heard this. “I mean… he usually notices when you’re upset but he’s probably too preoccupied with his own happy bubble at the moment. You’ve said yourself that Yachi-”
“She’s the first one to have reciprocated his feelings, yeah.”
“So, he’s probably just never thought it possible for someone to have feeling for him that he doesn’t return. And he’s straight. Straight guys never consider the fact that they might be attractive to anyone other than girls. The idea of a guy, especially you, crushing on him, loving him, has probably never even occurred to him.”
“I got close to telling him last week.” Kei hadn’t been planning to tell Koushi about this, tell anyone really, but he blurted it out. That was all it took for him to realise how desperately he wanted- needed- to tell Koushi about it.
“Huh? This is you we’re talking about, right? The same guy who won’t admit his feelings to people who already know and he’s on a first name basis with? That guy?”
“…Yep.”
“Oh… okay. Well, now that we’ve cleared that up, please continue.”
Kei was silent for a few minutes, trying to recalibrate his thoughts. To be honest, he understood Koushi’s scepticism: he one was the one who was most surprised by his almost-confession.
“Kei? You still there? Are you running out of minutes again? I’ll call your landline if that’s the case.”
“No… I’m still here. Just trying to work out where to begin…”
“You can text it me if you want. Organise what you want to say by writing it down.”
Kei shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I think… I think that I need to say it out loud.”
“Okay. Take your time, I’ll be right here.”
“…He said that it might have been easier if he’d just fallen in love with me instead.” Kei’s voice was barely above a murmur.
“He said what?” Koushi’s voice was calm with an edge to it that was somewhere between anger and sympathy; Kei was sure that he’d spoken loud enough for Koushi to hear him.
“He said that it might have been easier if he’d fallen in love with me instead of Yachi. That, because he feels like he can tell me anything, it would have been so much easier if he had just loved me. That if he loved me it wouldn’t hurt as much. Then he laughed and said ‘But that’ll never happen, right Tsukki? Crazy to think about though, huh?’ I was so close to telling him Koushi. Then Yachi came over ask him his opinion on a new poster that she’d designed and he lit up at the sight of her and that was it… I didn’t say it.”
“…I’m coming back to Miyagi.”
“What? Why?”
"Well, someone needs to punch him and you won’t do it. I’m willing to break a nail for this Kei; don’t stop me.”
“I don’t understand why he needs to be punched. He only said the truth.” Koushi was silent, obviously wanting to interject but allowing Kei to finish. “He was right, it would have been so much easier if he fell in love with me because I would accept his feelings in a heartbeat. He can tell me anything and it wouldn’t have hurt as much, for either of us. I’d fight off anyone who hurt him for loving me, anyone who hurt him at all. They wouldn’t stand a chance against me. But he was also right when he said that it won’t ever happen and it’s crazy to even consider it.”
"Kei…”
Kei laughed bitterly, “And it doesn’t matter now anyway, they’re dating and if I ever had even a slight chance, I certainly don’t now. It’s over Koushi… I’m free”
"…Yeah, I suppose you are.” Kei could hear the sad smile in his voice. “But Kei…”
“Hm?”
“Be careful. There are so many ways this could end and I don’t want you getting hurt anymore.”
“Don’t worry about me Koushi; I’ll be fine.”
“I hope so too.”