Work Text:
+
several billion golden years ago
i lost a planet that i loved to the cold
civilization blooms and then it erodes
and that’s it
—ancient mars, the zolas
+
Karasuno hasn't changed much in the five years since Kei's last been here.
The roads are the same, the trees are the same, Kei's neighbors are the same. Everything's achingly familiar, and yet, a feeling Kei can't pinpoint washes over him as he walks the route from the train station to his old house, one which he had ingrained into his memory when he was in high school.
From what he sees on the outside, his childhood home is hardly changed, as well, and he almost regrets deciding to come on this trip to home. But he knows it was the right decision; he hasn't seen his parents since they last visited him in Kyoto, which was probably more than a year ago, if Kei recalls correctly. He can't blame them, because it's a strenuous nine hour ride by car, and the time that taking the train saves it pays for in cost. Kei doesn't have a car, nor did he ever have money to spare on the train ride back to Sendai while he was a student.
So, it's been five years since he's walked this paved path up to the front door, five years since he's slid the door open and proclaimed, "I'm home," and five years since his mother has greeted him with a soft smile and a "Welcome back."
He takes his shoes off just inside, and when he's about to comment to his mother about how it's almost jarring that everything's the same, a great big white dog plows through the hallway and jumps excitedly up at Kei's mother.
"Down, Hikaru, down," she commands at the dog, and it hesitantly obeys.
As soon as the dog is back down on all fours, its gaze locks onto Kei and the hair on its back begins to bristle with hostility. Kei shrinks slightly back into himself when the dog bares its teeth.
"Don't worry, Kei," his mother assures, setting a gentle hand on the dog's head. "Hikaru's all bark and no bite."
Kei stares dubiously down at the dog, and then back at his mother.
He'd known about the dog, of course, but the last time he'd received a picture of it was when it was only a puppy—probably about three years ago. Kei grimaces at the thought. But Hikaru was adopted as some sort of replacement for Kei and Akiteru, because the Tsukishima parents had had a terrible case of empty nest syndrome when Kei had moved out, just after his graduation. It'd taken them a year to actually find and decide on a dog that they both wanted, though, so Hikaru's four and large and the only change, it seems, in this entire town.
"Well," Kei's mother speaks up when she's apparently had enough of Hikaru and Kei just staring at each other, one hostile and one uneasy, "He'll warm up to you eventually."
Kei isn't certain which one of them she's talking to.
"Your father and Akiteru are waiting in the kitchen," she says, then, taking her hand off of Hikaru's head and gesturing down the hallway.
Hikaru dutifully scampers off to the kitchen, while Kei and his mother follow just behind.
Kei sees his father first, since Akiteru sits at the table with his back facing Kei.
"Hi, Dad," Kei says, and while his father replies with something like "have you grown taller?"—which Kei hasn't by the way, not since his first year of college—Akiteru turns around.
Kei blinks at him. Correction: Kei blinks at his moustache.
"Nii-san," Kei states plainly, "You need to shave that off."
Akiteru scoffs, obviously offended. "Not even a 'hello,' Kei?"
"Fine," Kei gives, "Hello. You need to shave that off."
Their parents chuckle, probably mentally transported back to some years ago when the brothers had bickered at the dinner table in the same way.
And besides Akiteru's moustache and the dog, this initial experience is nothing more and nothing less than Kei had expected it to be.
Where food is concerned, dinner is how dinner always was; Kei's mother has always been a great cook. Conversation is... a little different. That's to be expected, when Kei hasn't visited home in five years. He should be prepared, really.
Except he's not, and he realizes this as soon as—"Did you hear about Tadashi-kun's engagement? Just a month or so ago."
Kei chokes on his food. He covers his mouth, and he says, "Yeah. Yeah, I heard."
"Really?" Kei's mother raises a brow.
Akiteru cocks his head. "I thought you didn't keep in contact with Yamaguchi," he says.
After a slight grimace, Kei speaks down to the table: "I don't." He can tell that everyone is staring expectantly at him, so he elaborates, "Yachi-san told me about his engagement."
"Oh," Kei's mother says, "Shame that you boys don't talk anymore. You were always so close..."
Kei clears his throat. "I know," he says.
"Maybe you should visit him? For old time's sake."
"I don't know about that," Kei answers immediately, setting his chopsticks down across the top of his bowl.
Kei just barely catches the sharp look that his father gives his mother, cuing her to drop the subject. It's too late, though—Kei's appetite is gone and queasiness has made a temporary home of his stomach.
He excuses himself from the table with the excuse that he wants to go look through the old things in his bedroom, which isn't exactly a lie, per se, but his family still sees right through it. They let him go, anyway, but not without sparing sympathetic gazes at him as he goes.
Regardless, he walks the hallways to his room. After sliding open the door, he stands just in the threshold, eyeing the things that haven't moved or even been touched for five years. (There's also a dog bed in the middle of the floor, but he chooses to ignore that for now.)
He pads reluctantly into the room, swiping his fingers across a shelf and collecting some of the dust that had settled there. There's one box that sits half packed and shoved haphazardly into the corner of the room from when Kei had first left for college, and Kei dreads but also is somehow drawn to looking inside. The box holds... memories, mostly—memories that Kei thought would be better left untouched back in Sendai, but memories that he, at one point, thought of bringing with him to Kyoto.
He decides to leave the box be, and instead his picks up an encyclopedia from his desk and flips through the pages. Sticky notes litter the pages, and Kei feels a pang in his chest when he realizes that some of the notes aren't in his handwriting. He snaps the book shut when he sees "Tsukki" scrawled across the top of one of the notes.
Coming back to Karasuno was probably a bad idea.
Still, Kei's inexplicably attracted to the box. He stares at it for a moment, as if working up the courage to take a step towards it. He mostly knows what he'll see when he peers inside—five years may be a long time but it's certainly not long enough to forget things like these.
He takes the time to scold his past self for not shoving the box into a closet, for not putting it somewhere that he wouldn't come across it so soon as he is now. But by the time he's finishing that thought, he's already crouched over the box, his hand pressing to the material of his old volleyball jersey, which lies at the very top. He traces his finger against the thick number that's emblazoned on the jersey, and he resists the urge to close the flaps of the box and never look further than this.
Carefully, though, Kei lifts the jersey out of the box and sets it just off to the side. Underneath, there are only three other things—three things deemed unacceptable to bring along to Kyoto, three things that hold memories that Kei didn't want to remember, but didn't want to forget.
One is Kei's old pair of silver headphones. Another is a birthday card Kei had received in his third year of highschool, signed by all his teammates at the time, current and graduated. The last thing that sits in the box, arguably the worst of the remaining three, is a button.
The button glints in the light as Kei holds it between his thumb and forefinger, and he rolls it slightly. It's Yamaguchi's button, the second button down from his old school jacket. He'd given it to Kei on graduation day to confess.
Kei stares at the button, letting it sit on his palm. He thinks about the ring that Yamaguchi likely dons on his ring finger this very moment, and he lets his own fingers curl up and around the button, squeezing it hard enough to leave imprints.
He probably should have replied to Yamaguchi's gesture, back then. Anything would have sufficed, be it a lie to make things easier for the both of them, or not. Instead, Kei had packed his things up into his parents' car and moved the nine hours to Kyoto without so much as a text in Yamaguchi's direction.
Kei loosens his grip on the button, and lets it fall back into the box. It lands with a soft clatter.
He's not sure that he regrets what he did back then, but he does think that an apology is overdue. Yamaguchi deserves that, at least.
—
"Uh, Mom," Kei speaks up, leaning his weight against the kitchen counter. Hikaru still stays a safe distance away from Kei, bristling slightly from underneath the kitchen table. The dog had declined sleeping in its usual bed in Kei's room, and had instead opted for the living room floor.
His mother peeks her head out from behind the refrigerator door that she holds open. "Hm?" she hums, prompting Kei to continue.
"Do you... Do you happen to have Yamaguchi's phone number?"
The refrigerator clicks shut. "I do," she answers, hesitant and eyeing Kei curiously. "Do you want it?"
Kei blinks at her, and clears his throat. "...Yeah."
His mother's face brightens up, and she reaches for her phone that sits on the edge of the counter. "Let me just..." she trails, his finger swiping at the screen. "Tadashi-kun actually works at the vet, did you know?"
Kei shakes his head.
"He takes care of Hikaru for us sometimes, when we go out of town and such. That's why I have his number, anyway...Oh, here it is." She tilts the phone so that Kei can see the screen, and he copies the number into his own phone.
"I have to go to the store today. Do you want to come?" Kei's mother asks a few moments later, when she's moved on and has just started to pour some food into Hikaru's dish.
Kei stares at the number he's entered into his phone, and it's more of a subconscious action than anything when he replies, "Yeah, sure."
He can't be sure that he'll actually use the number, because just having it saved makes his chest feel inexplicably heavy.
—
Kei has only planned to stay in Sendai for a few days, but over the course of these days that he's visiting, he manages to run into way more past acquaintances than he'd like. He sees Azumane at the corner market and Ennoshita at the bank, runs into Shimizu when his brother drags him out to go see a movie. He has an awkward encounter with a girl who'd confessed to him in his second year of high school, which he only remembers after she's turned and started to walk away.
He hasn't, however, caught of glimpse of Yamaguchi. For better or for worse, he's not sure.
But before he knows it, tomorrow's already Kei's last day in Sendai before he leaves again to head back to Kyoto.
Kei stares and he stares at Yamaguchi's number, contemplating if it would just be better to leave things the way they are—severed, though without a clean cut—or to attempt some sort of reconciliation. But to be here, and to not see Yamaguchi when he's so close... it makes Kei feel uneasy—incomplete, even.
He figures that on top of just that, he at least owes Yamaguchi some long overdue effort, and so he taps on Yamaguchi's number and presses the phone up to his ear, swallowing thickly while he listens to the dial tones.
It's three tones before the line is picked up, and the other side speaks a hesitant, "Hello? Who is this?"
"It's—uh, this is Tsukishima Kei. Is Yamaguchi speaking?"
"Tsukishima, huh..." the other side trails. "Yeah, it's Yamaguchi."
Kei clears his throat. "I—" he starts, and abruptly stops. "Do you want to get lunch? Eh—tomorrow."
There's an extended pause, and Kei knows that he can't, but for some reason he feels like Yamaguchi can somehow hear his pounding heartbeat over the line.
"Lunch tomorrow," Yamaguchi finally says, requesting an affirmation.
"Yeah. If you... If you want."
The line is quiet again, until, "If I want," Yamaguchi mumbles, but then he speaks up, "Sure, let's have lunch. Tomorrow."
Kei blinks once, and then again, as Yamaguchi establishes a time and place. Before Kei can even sputter out some sort of farewell, the line cuts out.
—
Yamaguchi is five years older.
He's older, now, and taller, and his hair is longer. He wears glasses, and has a ring on his ring finger. He's older. Kei doesn't know why this is so jarring.
Kei's throat goes dry as soon as he slides into the seat opposite of Yamaguchi, entwining his fingers together in his lap. He gnaws at his bottom lip, and the two hold eye-contact for a few fleeting moments before a server asks them what they'd like to drink.
She's back with the drinks before either of them have gotten a word out, both too... shocked, Kei thinks, or maybe too taken aback to speak.
Yamaguchi swirls his straw around in his soda, and Kei takes a sip of his water. His hands shake.
"The five years have treated you nicely," Kei finally comments, and Yamaguchi just blinks at him.
"Sure," he says, looking down at his drink and then looking back up. "What did you need to talk about?"
Something tells Kei that Yamaguchi doesn't hesitate to get to the point because he knows that if he didn't, Kei would put it off for forever. (For five years, if he could.)
Kei swallows thickly and reaches into his coat pocket. He purses his lips as he produces the button from his pocket, holding it in his outstretched palm. His gaze trails up from the button and to Yamaguchi, whose face is contorted into something Kei can't read.
"I wanted to give it back to you," Kei explains, reaching his hand a little further towards Yamaguchi. "To... apologize."
Yamaguchi stares at the button for a few more seconds until his eyes flicker up to Kei. "Tsukishima," he says, "don't you think this is inappropriate?" Kei's heart drops to his feet, and he makes no move to reply. His hand wavers as he keeps it outstretched. "Five years is a long time," Yamaguchi continues. "It's not like I feel the same way anymore."
Kei clenches his jaw, setting the button down in the middle of the table. "Right. Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry."
Yamaguchi lets out a sharp laugh, then. "Cold and stoic was kind of your thing, wasn't it? But not towards me. Or, that's what I thought. Until you—you moved hundreds of kilometers away and never tried to get a hold of me." Yamaguchi plucks the button off of where Kei had laid it on the table, and he rolls it between his index finger and thumb.
Kei stares, his jaw slack and heart pounding. He has nothing to say, so he says nothing.
They're quiet, and the ambient sounds of the restaurant seep into Kei's consciousness. Yamaguchi stares at the button, and Kei stares at Yamaguchi. They stare and stare and stare.
"Do you regret it?" Yamaguchi suddenly asks, and though his voice is low and soft, it almost sounds too loud.
Kei hesitates. He—he does regret it. He regrets never telling Yamaguchi that he felt the same way, but Kyoto was too far away and everything was going to change so, so quickly, and Kei wasn't sure he'd be able to keep up with all of it. He regrets never confiding in Yamaguchi about that. But what good are regrets now—what will admitting to this do to Yamaguchi except make him feel torn and make the ring on his finger sear into his skin?
"I don't think that I would go back and change anything," Kei lies, looking down at his glass of water. Some ice cubes break apart from each other, causing the water to lap up the side of the glass.
"Oh," Yamaguchi replies, and Kei can't bring himself to look up at him. "I see."
Yamaguchi reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, laying some cash on the tabletop. "I think this was probably something that needed to happen," he says, and all Kei can do is nod. He watches as Yamaguchi stands up and steps towards the door, not casting a glance back in Kei's direction.
And just before he reaches the door, Yamaguchi flicks the button into the trashcan. Kei blinks. The bell above the door jingles, and he swallows back the bile he feels crawling up his throat.
—
Hikaru barks when Kei gets back to the house.
"How was it?" Kei's mother asks as soon as Kei steps through the door, and he musters up a smile for her.
"It was great, Mom."
She smiles back, soft and warm. "I'm glad to hear that."
The way that Hikaru growls tells Kei that the dog doesn't buy it the way that his mom has. Or maybe Hikaru just dislikes Kei that much.
—
Kei watches the scenery blur together from the window of the train that he rides back to Kyoto, each second taking him further away from the Karasuno that looks so deceptively unchanged.
He should probably visit more often, he thinks. More often than every five years, anyway. The changed and the unchanged would be far less disconcerting that way.
And still he can't bring himself to want to visit.
He deserves what happened with Yamaguchi, he knows. He knows. He deserves to have watched Yamaguchi throw away that button like he was throwing away all his past affections. He knows, he knows, he knows. That doesn't make him feel any less empty—that doesn't make him dread coming back any less.
Because, somehow, Karasuno has become synonymous with Yamaguchi, and home has become synonymous with something Kei only knows from the past—something he can't quite reach.