Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the spring of their third year of high school, Yamaguchi cuts his hair.

Kei is there when it happens, by Yamaguchi’s design. An invitation to the bakery by their train station when he finally finds a second away from the rowdy first years that he knows Kei won’t say no to, especially now that he spends so much of practice focused away from Kei.

And then, while Kei is eating mousse Yamaguchi insisted on paying for: “I think I’ll get a haircut today, Tsukki. You should come with me!”

It’s such a strange and mundane thing that Kei doesn’t need to be there for, and Yamaguchi reads the thought off his face the way he always does. It’s almost funny how he immediately tries to play it off as normal: insisting Kei should cut his hair, too, since it’s a little long (it isn’t), pointing out how it’s only around the corner and it’d be easier for Kei to come than not, explaining a superstition he almost definitely made up about how watching your team captain get a haircut makes you play better for the rest of the season.

It isn’t quite desperation that Kei hears in his tone, not with the teasing lilt in his voice as he says please and tugs at Kei’s sleeve, and Kei knows Yamaguchi well enough to know the entire thing is calculated. That he’s asking him while he’s eating cake he paid for, that no one is the kind of person to spontaneously stop by the barbershop after coffee, especially not Yamaguchi.

But it’s cute, somehow, even if Kei has no idea why this is important to him, and he feels something inside of him melt as Yamaguchi keeps talking, the same thing that’s been melting more and more since their third year started and Yamaguchi became captain and got a different shine in his eyes.

Kei agrees, Yamaguchi smiles, and when they leave the bakery, they walk to the barbershop.

Kei tunes out Yamaguchi’s conversation with his hairdresser, just returns the gesture when Yamaguchi periodically makes eye contact with him and waves. When the cape is finally pulled over Yamaguchi and his arms are restrained, he sends one final grin Kei’s way and after nodding in acknowledgement, he lets his attention drift completely.

For maybe ten minutes, he reads the backlog on the volleyball group chat – Hinata and a few of the second years encouraging the most oblivious of their first years into inadvertently annoying their vice-captain – and he’s about to type something about leaving it alone (the kind of thing Yamaguchi would be proud of) when he looks up and the hair around the base of Yamaguchi’s skull is buzzed.

Yamaguchi notices exactly when he sees and grins at Kei again from the mirror, rushing over when the barber removes his cape. “Surprise, Tsukki!” he says, running his fingers over the back of his head. “I wanted you to see it first. I haven’t changed it this much since…” Yamaguchi bites his lip and scrunches his nose, deep in thought. “Since before we met, right? I was pretty nervous about it!”

Kei doesn’t know what to say. It’s only a haircut, but the way Yamaguchi is beaming at him, waiting for his approval. How he still isn’t sure how he feels about it.

Since before they met.

Yamaguchi rubs the back of his neck. “It’s like… You know, I was nervous about being captain, too. Even if I never talked to you about it. But Hinata told me you were the one who suggested it first, and argued for it the most, and— even though I wish you’d just tell me things like that, it helped a lot when I heard it! And I know it’s just a haircut, but I wanted you to be here for this, too, and…”

Yamaguchi trails off in wake of Kei’s silence, and it’s difficult for Kei to parse the words (over a haircut), and then he looks at Kei again and his eyes get bigger, just a little.

“Do you like it, Tsukki?”

If you asked Kei about it a minute ago, it would be a resounding probably not, probably indifferent at best (though indifferent isn’t really the word), but Yamaguchi is looking up at him now, his eyes so wide, a gentle smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and it… looks different in this light, frames his face in a way that is mostly familiar but a little new, too, in a way that’s not entirely unwelcome, and…

And Yamaguchi is beaming up at him, now, the light from the barbershop window catching his bangs in something like a halo, and before Kei realizes it, he says, “I do.”

Yamaguchi’s grin splits his face, then, and if it is a lie, it’s worth it.

❀

Sometimes, when practice is winding down and Kei is about to approach Yamaguchi, to talk to him about practice or tell a joke about one of their team members, there’s a second where he can’t find him.

It’s always only a second, because it doesn’t take that long for Kei to remember the afternoon his best friend dragged him to the barbershop for no reason, but it’s a jarring second. Not being able to recognize Yamaguchi. Before, if you asked Kei to pick Yamaguchi out of a crowd of a thousand, he would have been able to do it in a moment. Not being able to do it now is…

Well. Melodramatic. It’s only a haircut. If Kei had a hundred yen for every time that thought flitted through his mind in passing, he wouldn’t have to work for the rest of his life. Or— well, that’s an exaggeration, too.

He should have gotten used to it by now. Kei’s never not been adaptable, erased his older brother from his life for years with next to no issue (morbid example), started calling Yamaguchi captain the first day they named him (better example), but this is something else, for a reason Kei can’t put his finger on.

A distinct discomfort. The freckles scattered across the back of Yamaguchi’s neck that Kei never knew about until now.

(He thought he knew everything.)

Still. If Kei had the choice, he’d— he’d probably wish Yamaguchi never changed it, but there’s a conflicting feeling, too. A shifting in Kei’s chest at sight of the constellations on Yamaguchi’s nape. Like the way he feels when he watches Yamaguchi with the first-years. As mature as Kei always knew he could be, gentle and guiding, but in a way that he’s never been before, around him. A side of Yamaguchi he never gets to see.

Something beautiful, maybe, but Kei decides he doesn’t like it. How it makes his chest ache.

❀

They’re sitting next to each other in the library when Yamaguchi suddenly becomes obsessed with touching the back of his head.

It’s a nervous habit, probably – Kei is explaining a verb conjugation Yamaguchi got wrong in the practice essay he wrote for English class, and he can read the stress on his face in between the furrow of his brow and how his bottom lip has turned white from how hard he’s biting it.

Still, it annoys Kei a little. Yamaguchi asked him if they could study together – he learns better with him around, and he felt bad about asking before, but between being captain and having to work hard in their last year, he needs all the help he can get – and he doesn’t mind it, but if Kei is going to bother, he’d prefer Yamaguchi listened to him.

“Are you paying attention?” he asks, tapping the eraser of his mechanical pencil on the table, and Yamaguchi flashes him a sheepish smile, still rubbing the back of his head.

“Sorry, Tsukki. I’ve just never had my hair this short before, so I didn’t know, but… it feels really nice when you touch the back of it!” He’s still grinning at Kei, the way he knows he can get away with. “You should try it!”

Absently, Kei brings his hand to the back of his own head – stupid, not what Yamaguchi was talking about, your hair’s too long – and then coughs. “I’m not going to do that, Yamaguchi.”

Yamaguchi laughs, rubs the back of his neck, and says, “Sorry, I’ll correct my paragraph now. Thanks for helping me study.”

“You don’t need to thank me every time,” Kei says, and Yamaguchi laughs again as he leans over his notebook.

And— Kei has nothing to do, while Yamaguchi is working like that, so quiet and focused, and he thinks about it. Because Kei has never had hair that short either, and Akiteru’s always kept it longer than he does, and Tanaka and Narita had never been the kind of people to ask people to touch their heads. So Kei doesn’t know, and Yamaguchi seemed to really enjoy it when he was doing it, and there’s something scientific about it, maybe, this curiosity, and—

Before Kei realizes it, he’s leaning over to run his fingertips over the back of his head, and immediately, Yamaguchi drops his pencil and yelps.

He turns to face Kei, cheeks lit up red, and Kei feels his face heat up in tandem. “Ah, I— I know I offered, Tsukki, but, uh— tell me first next time, okay?”

“Sorry.”

And Kei is embarrassed as he watches Yamaguchi go back to his work while he tries to hide the remnants of pink behind his freckles, but another thought plagues him, more persistent than just embarrassment.

Yamaguchi was right. It does feel nice.

❀

“Tsukishima Kei. Your grades are pretty good.”

Kei shifts in his seat. There’s something strange in the air here, something uncomfortable underneath his homeroom teacher’s warm gaze. Your grades are pretty good. It isn’t even an insult. “Thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me. You’re the one who worked for them. So, what have you been working so hard for?”

Nationals, is Kei’s first thought. But it isn’t what she’s asking. “I’ve been studying enough to do well. I don’t think about it that often.”

“Really? There aren’t any universities you’ve been thinking about? Do you know what you want to do when you get older?”

Kei bites his lip. Thinks. He’s always had a faint idea, somewhere in the back of his mind. “Biology. Or chemistry. Something along those lines. Like I said before, I haven’t thought about it that much.”

“That’s a shame. If your grades are like this and you aren’t even trying, imagine if you worked at it. You know… you would have to focus – quit volleyball, probably, and I know how important it must be to you – but maybe you’d even have a shot at Todai. Somewhere like it, at least. What do you think?”

It’s too much for Kei to wrap his head around, something like Tokyo University. Cram school. The rest of his life from now on. Acutely, somewhere in the back of his mind, Kei knows he should have thought about this sooner, that he should be thinking hard about this now, with his homeroom teacher is sitting across from him, scrutinizing him, waiting for an answer.

But for some reason, when Kei turns her words over in his head, the only thing Kei can think of is the way Yamaguchi always sticks his tongue out while he’s tying his hair up before a game.

“I don’t know,” Kei says.

❀

“Have you decided what you’re doing after high school yet, Tadashi-kun?” Kei’s mother asks over dinner, and the atmosphere in the room becomes palpable.

It’s weeks later, maybe the fifth Friday in a row that Yamaguchi’s come over to Kei’s house to study and stay over. There’s some new and strange determination that he’s tackling academics with – practice books and waiting until 9 to ask Kei if they can stop for the day and watch television – one that Kei’s never seen before, one he would ask about if he wanted to know the answer.

Kei’s mother has been enjoying having Yamaguchi over so often (before this they’d been seeing less of him, busier and more exhausted underneath the weight of his duties as captain) the way she always has. Making a point to greet him when she sees his shoes in the entryway, cutting up apples for them like she did in grade school, beaming at him from across the dinner table.

She’s smiling as she asks the question – to Tadashi before she even asks Kei, which would be strange if it wasn’t because she knows him so well she can tell it’s not something he wants to talk about – and Kei knows she thinks it’s harmless. Only maternal worry at work: making sure her son’s best friend isn’t going too far away, making sure she’ll get to see the boy she feels like she adopted again, too.

Kei knows that, and he’s sure Yamaguchi does as well. There’s no way for her to know how loudly Yamaguchi avoided talking about their university meetings the day they happened, that Kei was more grateful for the silence than curious.

He thinks about changing the subject, but Yamaguchi smiles then, a little sheepishly but more overtly distressed, and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m, uh— I’m not really sure yet.”

It’s a lie or it isn’t, but Kei decides to take it at face value.

I’m not really sure yet.

It would be nice, at least, to have that in common.

❀

They don’t make it past qualifiers in the Interhigh, and for the first time, Kei cries.

All rationality says he shouldn’t. If it was their first year, if Kei was the person he was then, or if maybe even if he was the same person he is now, but it was still their first year, he wouldn’t have cried. It’s only a club, or it isn’t their last chance anymore.

(Or it doesn’t feel like a sign after his homeroom teacher asked him to quit.)

Last year, they made it to nationals in the Interhigh and the Spring Tournament, lost to Fukurodani and Nekoma, respectively, but it’d been easier, then, to hold the losses on the inside of his chest.

He remembers what it was like, watching Tanaka and Nishinoya break down in a way they never had before, the same way Daichi did the time they lost the Spring Tournament. Easier to hold it back when someone else has more right to lose it.

But Kei is in his third year now, isn’t he.

Melodramatic. Kei wipes a cheek with his sleeve. He’s sitting outside on a bench behind the building, wandered here when he left the gymnasium immediately after they lined up at the end of the match thinking anywhere other than here. It’s not somewhere he’s really spent time in, but it’s refreshingly empty, doesn’t stink like the men’s room does. Not to mention that Yamaguchi could find him there in seconds, if he wanted to.

He’s distracted, now, Kei thinks. Comforting the first-years and their wide eyes, their high expectations for their first tournament. It’s for the better; Kei’s never been so morbid as to think about them losing here, but he thought about their next loss after he nominated Yamaguchi for captain. That it might hurt him in a different way that it usually does.

Kei thought he’d comfort him then, which is funny to look back on while waterfalls roll down his cheeks as he sits alone on a park bench. However Yamaguchi’s doing, he must be doing better than him. Than this. And it’s— out of everyone, it’s Yamaguchi he doesn’t want to see him like this. When he’s seen him so many ways already, more ways than he ever should have had to.

It’s – something like a weight in his chest. One Kei is afraid he might topple under. University, and Yamaguchi, and I’m not sure yet, and that he knows that even if he doesn’t quit volleyball after this he will in March. That he might be prolonging the inevitable only to keep hurting himself.

To keep hurting himself, but the way the Yamaguchi’s little topknot sways when he does a pinch serve. The stern voice he uses when the first years are fighting.

And – that Yamaguchi taught him two summers ago to do his best, to work his hardest, to take pride in every perfect block because even if it didn’t go well if he weren’t a coward he could get through it. And that he took it to heart, and he’s won and he’s lost since then, and he never regretted it, doesn’t even regret playing in the Interhigh this year, only— why.

Why, if he’s going to hurt himself. If it’s for nothing, and he’s being stupid.

“Tsukki?” Kei hears from behind him, and he feels himself stiffen. A part of him wants to get up and walk away, but the only thing worse than getting caught like this would be running away after

He swallows. “Yamaguchi.” He tilts his head up just to glance at Yamaguchi for a second through the veneer of his bangs, and the sight of it is enough make the heaviness in his chest a little harder to bear.

When Kei saw Yamaguchi in the gym, for that one moment before he left, he thought to himself that he looked hastily put together, a glistening in his eyes that he’d never allow to escape, the careful and controlled way he headed over to Hinata and Kageyama and smacked them in the back with both of his hands. Enough to look at, but if a gust of wind came by, he might topple over.

A façade, but if Yamaguchi could keep it up, he was doing better than the rest of them. A façade, but of course it was a façade; they just lost the Interhigh.

But Yamaguchi is looking at him now, something behind his eyes that Kei’s never seen (like how Yamaguchi’s never seen him cry), and Kei saw it. A single tear rolling down a dry cheek.

“Don’t cry because you’re seeing me like this, Yamaguchi,” Kei finds it in him to force out. “That’s why I left.”

He feels the weight of Yamaguchi settle next him, and hears him laugh – hollow and light, in the empty air around them. His voice is creaky as sickly redness blooms behind his cheeks; whatever face he’d been putting up is completely destroyed now. “That’s right, you… you went somewhere else, didn’t you, Tsukki?” he asks, elbowing Kei in the shoulder too lightly. “That’s… pretty sneaky of you.”

He didn’t want him to see him like this. But that isn’t something he thinks Yamaguchi wants to hear.

“It’s funny, right? We should be used to losing after all these years, but…” Yamaguchi pauses. Careful, how he’d been with the team in the gymnasium. “It feels like this every time. That’s… I don’t know.”

Kei wipes his cheek. Slowly, in a way he hopes Yamaguchi doesn’t catch. He shifts in his seat. “Well, there’s only one more left.”

Yamaguchi doesn’t answer for a second, and Kei glances at him. His eyes are tinged pink now, tears flowing freely down his face, but there’s something else, there, too. “Tournaments? Is that why you’re so upset?” He laughs again, just gently. “It’s… I know you’re sad, but it’s kind of nice, too. To know that even you get like this about things. Ah, um… Sorry.”

If Yamaguchi’s found a reason to be happy despite everything that’s happened today, Kei won’t begrudge him it, even it’s at his expense. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi says, and a silence settles over them as Kei tries to stop thinking about what happened inside the gymnasium.

It’s funny, Kei thinks to himself. He pictured himself comforting Yamaguchi, all the way back then, and now they’re both here and he doesn’t know what to do. Another thing to feel powerless about, though Kei can’t pretend there isn’t something nice about Yamaguchi’s presence.

A hand brushes Kei’s wrist, and he almost jumps. Yamaguchi is looking up at him now, straight on, eyes so wide Kei thinks he can see his reflection behind his pupils. “It’s still… it’s like you said. There’s one more left. It’s not over. Unless, when you said one more, you meant…” He leans over a little, enough for Kei to feel the heat emanating off of his arm. “Tsukki— The both of us, we can cry now, but… if you give up because of today, I’ll— I’ll never forgive you! It’s not over.”

Yamaguchi is leaning close to him now, the stars Kei’s so used to seeing back in his eyes, his brows furrowed deep in determination, his mouth curved so sincerely. Some inane part of Kei wants to fix his arms around Yamaguchi’s shoulders, to pull his face into his chest, to bury his nose in his hair, but Kei can’t bring himself to be annoyed with the feeling even if he doesn’t humor it.

It’s— It’s that it’s Yamaguchi, next to him now, the person who was always the strongest one out of all of them, even if he forgot for a while. That the only things in his mind now are ridiculous thoughts of his lips against his forehead, echoes of It’s not over, the way it feels when you hold his head in your hands. Yamaguchi is next to him and Kei can barely remember how he felt a second ago, Tokyo University and I’m not sure and the year after this one – he only knows now, this second, this moment, the look in Yamaguchi’s eyes.

For the first time since last game’s volleyball crashed on their side of the court, Kei’s heart is feather-light on the inside of his chest.

“You’re a good captain, Yamaguchi,” Kei hears himself say. I knew you would be.

❀

“Are you growing your hair out?”

Akiteru is grinning at him from across the kitchen table, and Kei thinks to himself that he’ll never understand what his brother is always so amused about when he’s around him. Annoying, even if sometimes Kei catches himself counting down the days until he visits.

Unconsciously, Kei feels his hands move to his scalp, to the bangs he’s gotten used fixing periodically without paying much attention. In the back of his mind, he knows it’s been getting longer than he usually keeps it, noted it with every glance at his reflection in the mirror, but between volleyball practice and studying with Yamaguchi every free moment, getting it cut again has been the last thing on his mind.

Though... it’s true, too. It’s never been an issue before.

“Did you want to look more like your cool older brother?” Akiteru asks, bringing an exaggerated hand to his chin and then laughing as Kei feels his face crease into a frown. As he stands up and picks up Kei’s plate along with his own, he knocks Kei in the shoulder. “I’m only joking. It’s because of Tadashi-kun, isn’t it? It’s cute. The two of you are like peas in a pod.”

Because of Yamaguchi. Kei turns the thought over in his mind, but doesn’t think he has the capacity to make sense of it, this time of the day. He glances at Akiteru, already by the sink, and stands up. “You don’t have to clean up after me.”

“Sit down. Mom told me how hard you’ve been working. Let nii-chan take care of you,” Akiteru says, his voice nearly drowned out by running water. “Anyway, we have an hour until the time you told Yamaguchi to meet us here, and you know that kid is always early. You should get ready.”

“I’ll dry, at least,” Kei says, and Akiteru doesn’t argue as he moves to stand next to him, just keeps grinning. As he places a bowl in the dish rack, he squints at Kei.

“Tadashi-kun’s been looking cooler lately. You should take care of yourself, too. Maybe I’ll buy you a nicer shampoo.”

Kei feels his hand drift to his bangs again before he realizes. “You don’t need to,” he says, bringing it back down and hoping his brother hasn’t noticed. Casually as possible, he busies himself with the plates on the rack.

“I’m joking. Not like I was wrong, anyway. About Tadashi-kun, I mean.” Akiteru laughs to himself. “But your hair looks nice, Kei. I’m sure Tadashi-kun thinks so, too. It’s cute the two of you decided to do something different. Like the time you got matching backpacks.”

Akiteru seems to have an impression of the past few months that isn’t quite right, but Kei can’t put his finger on why and doesn’t think he could articulate what actually happened, anyway. Isn’t sure he even knows. “Thanks,” Kei eventually says, genuine despite his flat tone. The kind of thing he learned a long time ago he should say out loud, especially to Akiteru.

“Don’t worry about it,” Akiteru replies as he turns off the water, and Kei catches the hint of gratefulness behind his words. And embarrassment, maybe. “Now, go get ready, won’t you? It’s bad manners to keep people waiting.”

After putting the last dish away, Kei does what he says, and in the quiet of the shower, he finds the space to think about what Akiteru told him. Because of Yamaguchi.

Kei remembers what Akiteru had been talking about, over the sink. Matching backpacks. The spring before their first year of high school, Yamaguchi and his wide eyes in front of the storefront. Going along with it because he didn’t have a reason not to.

(Wouldn’t it be cool, Tsukki?)

It’s a thought. One Akiteru was sure of.

Because of Yamaguchi. How often he goes along with him because it’s all he can do to keep up.

As he towels his scalp, Kei wonders.

❀

In their second week of summer vacation, the Karasuno volleyball club goes to a joint training camp.

It’s the longest and shortest week of Kei’s life, the most tired and most alive he’s ever felt. He knows he should be used to it by now, and in most ways, he is, but no matter how many times he’s been through it, it never fails him: the catharsis in arms so sore he can barely lift them over his shoulders, the pride he finds in his thousandth block as every cell in his body begs him to stop.

It’s a way he hasn’t been able to feel in a long time, and the realization settles harsh over his shoulders. He thought he’d found it every volleyball practice, and maybe it’d been something similar, but he’s sure it was corrupted; the weight of classes after and before, the gaze of his homeroom teacher that never failed to sting even if he knew she didn’t think twice about it, the focused study sessions with Yamaguchi that Kei didn’t know the reason for.

He missed it, he knows, but it’s more than missing it. He needed it, this feeling, because it’s in this feeling that he remembers something he forgot about before.

Two years ago, Yamaguchi grabbed Kei by the collar and yelled at him about pride. Kei’s never forgotten about it, has always known acutely that if that day went differently, he’d be a different person, someone worse than he is now, but it’s a memory he’s been remembering wrong.

If Yamaguchi hadn’t been there, he would never have changed, and the thought terrifies Kei to the core of his soul, but the point of that moment never was that Yamaguchi was there and one day he might not be there anymore.

Yamaguchi was there, and Kei stopped being afraid to be put his all into something. And Kei remembered how to enjoy the only thing he’s ever been passionate about, the only thing he’s ever felt this way about.

Volleyball.

For the entire training camp, and even after they get off the bus, the impression of Yamaguchi’s cheek still warm on his shoulder, the words his best friend told him the time they cried together behind a gymnasium echo through his mind.

It’s not over.

❀

Yamaguchi is acting strange.

He’s stretched out on Kei’s bed, pleasant-smelling in a new white t-shirt and shorts, staring holes into the back of Kei’s head when he thinks he’s too preoccupied with his 3BS to notice.

It’s not much of a surprise; when Yamaguchi suggested they play video games together after they came back from the end-of-summer festival instead of passing out on his bedroom floor like he usually does, Kei suspected something was off. But he assumed it’d only been a desire to stave off the post-festival listlessness more than anything else, not whatever more complicated feeling Yamaguchi is giving away by the constant tapping of his fingers against Kei’s night-table.

It’s an uncomfortable transition, the change in atmosphere. While he’d been taking a bath, that picture had still been clear in Kei’s mind – the little gasp that the first firework never fails to pull from Yamaguchi’s lips, how deep his pupils look with moving colors reflected, the way he always pulls on Kei’s arm to make sure he’s also looking. How it’d been the most fun Kei can remember having in ages, even if Yamaguchi insisted on inviting Hinata and Kageyama this year, and even if it does end up being the last night Kei has like this, even if it is the last time Kei gets to see Yamaguchi’s face this way – it isn’t a sadder moment than it is happy. It isn’t something Kei will ever regret.

Still. If it was bittersweet Yamaguchi was feeling, Kei would at least understand it. But it’s sheer nervousness emanating off of his best friend as he lets Kei one-shot half of his team, the kind of nervousness Kei doesn’t understand how he has the energy for when they spent the entire night next to their two loudest friends.

“What’s wrong, Yamaguchi?” Kei finally finds it in himself to ask, though he doesn’t look up from his 3BS. “It’s the third time in a row you’ve used that move. And… I can feel you staring, you know.”

Yamaguchi laughs, then, a little more than half-forced. Kei can hear his weight shift on the bed as he sits up. “Should’ve known you would notice, Tsukki!” he says. “Just… you have this piece of hair that’s been sticking up since you got out of the bath. I can’t stop looking at it.”

It’s an awful deflection, but Kei feels his hand go to his head anyway, trying to smooth out the part in his hair he can’t even see. He should’ve combed it with something other than his fingers if Yamaguchi was over, probably.

“You really grew it out, huh? It feels like for a long time I didn’t notice, and then one day I woke up and you looked completely different from the way I’m used to thinking of you. That’s kind of cool, isn’t it? Or maybe, um… interesting.” He hears Yamaguchi laugh. “It’s nice, though.”

Yamaguchi’s voice is thin. Kei hates the sound of it, when it’s like this. “It’s because of you,” he says without thinking, and then shakes his head. “Or, ah…” He bites the inside of his mouth. “What’s wrong, Yamaguchi? You’ve never been a good liar, you know.”

“Oh, uh… I guess after we came back I started thinking about a lot of things. I was hoping this would get my mind off it, but you’ve always been way better at Poraemon than me,” Yamaguchi laughs then, airy and light.

“Only when you aren’t paying attention,” Kei says, exhaling softly as he decides to drop the subject. If Yamaguchi doesn’t want to talk about it, he won’t push. He’s never really been that kind of person, only learned to be if he needed to be.

But he gets up then, sits on the bed next to Yamaguchi. If he doesn’t want to talk, they don’t have to talk, but he knows Yamaguchi well enough to know it makes him feel better at times like this. Having someone next to him.

It’s enough for Yamaguchi to stop pretending, at least a little. He puts the game down then, gives up on a match he already lost, and glances at Kei, then glances back down.

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi says, the beginnings of a pout on his lips. They’re silent for a while, Kei just quietly sitting next to him in a way he hopes is helping, and then Yamaguchi turns to him suddenly. “Actually, I—! I promised myself I’d ask, before vacation ends. After we graduate, I… Do you know what you’re going to do?”

Everything falls into place, then, the way Yamaguchi’s been acting. Kei should have realized sooner, that he’d be thinking the same way he was after they went to the festival. That it might be the last time.

It still is… After training camp and the time they sat next to each other after the Interhigh, the question Yamaguchi asked stopped plaguing him like it did before. What he was going to do without Yamaguchi, what he was going to do at all. If he solved half of it, it made the other half seem easier to deal with. But…

Just slightly, less than if Yamaguchi asked him before, Kei feels his chest constrict. It’s easier to not think about the possibility of Yamaguchi no longer being next to him while he’s next to him. He remembers that now.

“Do you?” he hears himself ask, tone too soft. He’s giving too much away, he thinks to himself as he rubs his shoulder. It’s hard to look at Yamaguchi.

“I do,” Yamaguchi says, the same solidity in his voice he had when he turned around and broke the silence.

His stare pierces the side of his head like it did before, and Kei sighs. He won’t let him get away with it. “I’m going to Sendai,” he says, and tells Yamaguchi the name of the university he decided on. “I’ll study biology there. Maybe chemistry. Something like that. It’s the best school in Miyagi, and… it’s known for its volleyball team, too.” Kei breathes in and out, turns to try to read the indecipherable look on Yamaguchi’s face. “I’m not like Hinata-kun or Kageyama-kun. I won’t give up on university. But… since you said that to me, that day. ‘It’s not over.’ I… I like volleyball.” I know that. Because of you. “If I don’t have to stop, I won’t.”

There’s a minute where Yamaguchi doesn’t say anything, and Kei wonders if he didn’t hear him, or if maybe he was in shock, but just ask he’s about to ask about it, a warmth wraps around Kei’s torso and he feels a wetness by his chest.

It’s worst-case scenario, Kei thinks. The way he’s crying into him the way he rarely does. Lightly, and a little bit awkwardly, he pats him on the back. “Yamaguchi…” he starts to say, but it’s difficult. Trying to comfort someone that’s broken up for the same reason you are. He’ll never know how Yamaguchi did it.

Yamaguchi pulls back from him then, hands fixed on Kei’s shoulders, and his eyes are glistening red, his cheeks flushed, but the curve of his mouth, somehow unbelievably, is upward. A smile is splitting his face, wider than the one he’d seen during the fireworks. Wider than Kei knew anyone could smile.

“Tsukki! Tsukki, I— I’m going to Sendai, too!” he says, and the euphoria in his voice is uncontainable, contagious. “I’ve always been good at math, so I wanted to do accounting, and there’s a university there that’s really good for business, and—” Yamaguchi sniffs, the grin on his face no smaller for it. “But I’m, uh, quitting volleyball. This year has been… Being the captain and training with all of you, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing. Everything we’ve done this year… They’re the best last memories anyone could have, I think.”

“You’re going to Sendai,” Kei hears himself say, and he can barely believe the words even as they come from his own mouth. Yamaguchi is going to Sendai.

They’re going to be together.

Yamaguchi laughs then, pulls himself back into Kei and squeezes him so tight it’s hard to breathe. It hurts enough for Kei to know the moment is real, and suddenly Kei can’t hold back the feeling anymore eithers, moves his arms to encircle Yamaguchi the way he’s encircling him.

After a minute like that, Yamaguchi slackens his grip, laughs again against Kei’s chest, full and heavy and real, and he says, “Sorry, I guess I— I just can’t believe it! That this is really real. I didn’t let myself ask what you were going to do before I knew what I was doing because… because I knew there’d be a part of me that would want to follow you, no matter what you did, but… I’m still— we’re still going to be together! I’m still going to be able watch you play volleyball, and see you after class, and—”

“I know, Yamaguchi. I… I was scared, too,” Kei admits, only because it’s so late at night and the cool relief in his chest is numbing his better judgment.

"It's just— I've gotten better at it, but everything new is so much easier when you're with me. Being captain and learning pinch serves all the way back in first year and—" Yamaguchi stops abruptly. He pulls back just slightly from Kei, the way he did before. "Wait. What were you afraid of?"

The same thing, Kei wants to say, but Yamaguchi’s eyes are still wet even if he’s stopped crying and his weight is heavy against his chest. Somehow, Kei doesn’t feel like lying. “I didn’t want to stop knowing you.”

“Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, and there’s something Kei doesn’t like in his tone, the softness of it and its strange somberness. That Yamaguchi knows this about him. “Did you— You know it’s— No matter what, Tsukki! Even if you went to university in… in Tokyo, or Hokkaido, or Brazil, or anywhere, I’d— you’d still be my best friend! I’d… We wouldn’t stop knowing each other. I wouldn’t just give up on you like that, you know!”

Kei can barely understand it, the vigor in Yamaguchi’s reaction. He expected something quieter – some awful, piercing pity behind his best friend’s eyes, weak pats on the back, some garden variety false reassurance. This is…

“You—” Yamaguchi starts to say, and Kei can’t make sense of it, why Yamaguchi is still this upset about what he thought would happen. “I can’t believe you thought I’d just... I wish you believed in me a little more. Of course I wouldn’t stop talking to you. Would you… if you ended up going somewhere else, would you have stopped talking to me?”

Kei feels his chest fall just a little at the thought of what Yamaguchi is asking him to consider, even if it isn’t something he needs to be afraid of anymore. Even if he knows they’re going to Sendai together. “If you went somewhere else. Things have never been… The way our lives would have changed, I don’t—”

“Tsukki!” Yamaguchi yells, and his nails are digging into Kei’s shoulder even through his t-shirt. He doesn’t think he notices. “You’re not answering me. If I called you, all the way from Tokyo, would you ignore it?”

There’s a fire behind Yamaguchi’s eyes. Kei never even thought he would be angry. “Of course I wouldn’t,” he finally says.

“I know, Tsukki. And you— I guess it really is like you, to overthink things like this and not even tell me, but… I wish you knew, too! I wouldn’t be friends with you so long just to let it end over something stupid like you being in a different city. You’re my—” Yamaguchi swallows, let his hands drop from Kei’s shoulders. There’s a shadow of pink beneath his cheeks. “Of course we’d stay friends.”

Yamaguchi is pouting now, and it’s enough to make Kei want to bring him back into his chest, to press his nose into his hair. He hears himself laugh, his voice light in the atmosphere in the room.

“Tsukki, I’m being serious!” Yamaguchi says, but Kei can see the edges of his mouth threatening to curve upwards. Kei laughs, again.

“I know, Yamaguchi.” His voice is steadier now, even if it isn’t as loud and energetic as Yamaguchi’s. The way Yamaguchi is looking at him now makes his chest feel like it’s bursting. “I know now, about what you were saying. And I… you’re right. I should’ve known. It’s only— Every time I feel like this, somehow, you… I should’ve known that, too, I think.”

“You really should have,” Yamaguchi says, the grin on his face betraying his words, and after Kei laughs, they fall into quiet.

It’s the good kind of quiet, one he and Yamaguchi can’t stop smiling through, one Kei can barely bring himself to interrupt. But there was something Yamaguchi said, earlier, that both of them brushed off. “Yamaguchi,” he says.

“Huh?”

“What you said before. You’d still be captain even if I wasn’t here. If not me, someone else would have suggested it,” he points out, taking off his glasses and rubbing the lenses with the edge of his shirt. “You do everything on your own, you know. I can’t even remember the last time you asked me for help.”

Yamaguchi laughs then, just lightly behind his fingers. It comes into focus as Kei puts his glasses back on. “You’d be awful with captain stuff! I’d never ask you to help with that. It’s mostly Kageyama-kun I go to, anyway.”

Yamaguchi should rely on him more, Kei thinks, and he’d think he’d be better at handling interpersonal relationships than Kageyama, but that isn’t the point he has to make right now. He has enough time with Yamaguchi to put it off for later. “You should be asking him for help. He’s the vice-captain. It’s his job. Part of your job, too, as captain,” he says. “You’re strong, Yamaguchi. You’ve always been strong. You’re not the kind of person to need help getting through university. You can do it on your own.”

Yamaguchi is grinning, still, and it miffs Kei a little, that he isn’t taking him seriously, but it’s cute, the most annoying part of Kei thinks. It’s cute, and it’s Yamaguchi, and he has a way of making happiness contagious.

Before he realizes it, Kei hears himself laugh.

“You know, you’re— you’re acting really strange, tonight. But it, uh… it means a lot.” Yamaguchi says through laughter. A second passes, and he calms down. “I guess you’re right. I can get through anything alone! But… it’s easier with you. Or it’s… it’s more fun with you? I don’t know, I’m just… I’m really happy.”

“I am, too,” Kei says, and Yamaguchi looks directly at him then and grins.

Yamaguchi is looking at him then, in a way that would be abnormal if it weren’t so late at night, if they didn’t just find out everything they were afraid of was nothing to be afraid of at all, and Kei looks back at him. Smiles back.

There’s something in Kei’s chest. Something heavy and hard to carry but full and happy and satisfying.

They sit there in silence for what feels like hours, in the best possible way, and then Yamaguchi breaks the silence. "Do you think... It feels like our whole lives have been leading up to this, doesn't it, Tsukki?” Yamaguchi’s eyes are bright, even though it doesn’t really feel like he’s looking at Kei, and then he turns to look at the wall. “Or maybe... it isn't really anything, but.... just. Together like this, for the rest of our lives. Wouldn't that be really nice?"

Yamaguchi can’t hear the things he’s saying. Kei knows it, from the gentle fullness of his voice, how he’s speaking so clearly and surely in spite of his words. But it doesn’t matter, because Kei does.

He thinks about it. How long they've been together. The years they have ahead of them, now. He glances at Yamaguchi again and realizes the silence was enough for him to finally hear himself, that Yamaguchi is flushing bright red now from what he said, from that Kei hasn't replied. The way he looks like that, cheeks lit up and afraid to meet his eyes. Kei feels his chest shift, and for the first time, he knows the name of the feeling.

“It would be,” he says, reaching over to run his fingers over the nape of Yamaguchi’s neck to the top of his head, because he’s wanted to since the first time he did it and if Yamaguchi is allowed to say what he just did, he can do this now.

It’s everything Kei remembered, something soothing in the roughness of it, and Yamaguchi yelps. “Tsukki!” he says, and Kei doesn’t feel even a little apologetic, but Yamaguchi reaches over to ruffle the top of his head (the hair he spent time fixing after Yamaguchi asked him to) and laughs.

Out of something like exhaustion or maybe hysteria, Yamaguchi doubles over on his bed then, legs hanging off the edge.

“Your hair’s so soft now,” he says when he’s calmed down. “It’s different, but… it’s nice, too, you know? I like it.”

You’re nice, Kei wants to say. I like you. Instead, he moves to lie down next to Yamaguchi, and for the moment, it’s enough.

They’re silent for a bit, long enough that Kei wonders if Yamaguchi’s fallen asleep, but Yamaguchi turns around then, looks Kei in the face in a way that would be strange if anything about the situation they’re in right now were. “Tsukki?”

“Hm?”

“Later, when we go to Sendai, do you think… do you think we could share an apartment?”

❀

A couple of weeks later, Kei looks at himself in the mirror and wonders what he’s been doing the last four months.

Later, when they’re eating lunch and Hinata and Kageyama are wrapped up in an unintelligible argument that Kei didn’t pay enough attention to, he mentions it to Yamaguchi. “I’m going to get a haircut,” he says, just to remedy the lull in the conversation and distract Yamaguchi from stressing out over the scene Hinata and Kageyama are making.

But thinking about it, Kei shouldn’t have worried about that. Since becoming captain, Yamaguchi’s mellowed out, learned to just ignore things that would’ve sent him into a panic attack before. Kei remembers the time a fight between the first-years almost got physical, and instead of stressing out, he smiled at them in a way that made them afraid for their lives.

That’s Yamaguchi, Kei thinks. Nothing if not adaptable.

“Do you want me to come?” he asks, smiling pleasantly as he takes a chunk out of his melon bread. “I owe you for last time! Though… I think you could grow it a little longer before you get it trimmed.”

“You don’t need to come, Yamaguchi. Anyway, I’m not getting it trimmed. I’m getting the same cut I always do,” he says between bites of rice. “It’s too long, like this.”

“Eh? But—” Yamaguchi swallows, and then bites the inside of cheek. It’s almost comical, the amount of consideration he’s giving Kei’s hairstyle. “I guess there haven’t been as many girls asking about you since you started growing it out. Almost none, actually!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, uh— I mean, nothing. Um…” Yamaguchi directs his attention back to his bread, starts attacking it until he starts feeling guilty underneath Kei’s stare. “Sorry, Tsukki.” Yamaguchi rubs the back of his neck. “I should’ve told you about this a long time ago. It’s…”

Kei sighs. All the ways Yamaguchi’s changed in the last year, and not this. It would endearing if it weren’t annoying him now. “If it’s so upsetting, you don’t have to tell me. I don’t really care.”

“No, uh— Since… middle school, maybe? Girls always ask me to ask you out for them! That’s really funny, consider I still can’t even—” Yamaguchi takes another chunk out of his melon bread and swallows. “I thought you would’ve noticed, actually. Since you notice everything! But I guess you didn’t.”

Thinking about it now, Kei remembers it. The girls who always interrupted their conversations to call Yamaguchi out. But… “I thought they were confessing to you.”

Yamaguchi laughs then, so loudly and hysterically that he starts choking on his bread. Kei smacks him in the back and Yamaguchi presses his palm to his shoulder, leaning on him now as he laughs. “You must have thought I was really popular, Tsukki! You’re a good friend, you know?”

Kei feels his mouth press into a line, or maybe a pout. The idea isn’t that strange, he thinks. But he likes the weight of Yamaguchi’s hand on his shoulder. “Well, what happened? I don’t remember you ever asking me out for a girl.”

“Oh! Well, I told them, ‘Tsukki is the kind of guy who would like a girl that’s brave enough to confess to him on her own!’ Sometimes they tried to argue with me, but it’s not like I’d be able to do what they wanted me to,” Yamaguchi says, the beginning of a frown starting to take over his mouth until he turns to glance at Kei and laughs again. “Anyway, I was right, wasn’t I?

Kei remembers the handful of girls that left notes in his locker, took him aside when he wasn’t with Yamaguchi. He feels his nose wrinkle. “I don’t think I’d like them either way.”

“That’s not a good way to look at things, you know. It took you so long to become friends with everyone in the volleyball club,” Yamaguchi says, and the pout is pronounced on his face now, all the laughter from before gone. “If you don’t start being more open with people, I’ll worry about you when we go to university.”

Kei sighs. “I don’t want to date strangers, Yamaguchi. It isn’t the same,” he points out. “You know the first years in volleyball club started liking me the first few weeks they knew me.”

“It’s because they thought you were funny, you know. But… I guess you’re right! It’s true you’ve been a little friendlier this year,” Yamaguchi says, grinning widely again. He balls up the plastic from the melon bread. “Well, anyway, like I said before, girls don’t really ask about you anymore, so I guess I understand why you want to get a haircut. But…”

“But?”

“But I really like it!” he says. “I… I don’t know if it counts for a lot. But I think it makes you look really cool! Like one of the people in that weird old American band you and Akiteru-kun always play when he comes over. I guess I’d be a little sad if you cut it.”

“They’re British. And…” Kei thinks about the way he felt when he looked in the mirror this morning, when he wondered what self-respecting person his age would go around looking the way he does. He looks at the face Yamaguchi is making now. “If you really think it’s so cool, then— then maybe I won’t change it.”

“Eh, really? I’ll go with you the next time you get it trimmed, Tsukki!”

It’s so strange. There are stars behind Yamaguchi’s eyes. In the light of day, it’s hard to look at him. “You don’t have to bribe me, you know. I already told you I won’t cut it back.”

“Huh? But I want to come!”

Kei glances up at Yamaguchi again. His inexplicable excitement.

“Fine, Yamaguchi.”

❀

They win Spring Qualifiers, and after they line up at the end of the game, Kei doesn’t see Yamaguchi in the locker room.

Everyone else is still too busy riding off the high of winning to notice, and Kei only realizes because he’d turned around to congratulate their captain again. For a minute, he thinks it’s something inconsequential, that he’s in the restroom washing his face or something similar, but when he goes to check, the bathroom is empty.

It’s only a hunch – and one that stresses him out, because it makes no sense for him to be there, because they won – but Kei finds that exit out behind the gym, and when he looks out from the door, he recognizes Yamaguchi by the piece of hair sticking out from the head on the bench.

“Yamaguchi, what are you doing here? We won,” Kei says when he’s within earshot, and his tone comes out too harsh for his liking.

Yamaguchi laughs as he looks up at Kei, then, his voice awful and shaky. But his face isn’t red, Kei notices, and his cheeks aren’t wet, and that makes sense because there’s no reason for him to be crying, but Kei can’t deny the relief that settles in his chest anyway. “I know! Uh, you— you played really well today, Tsukki! You were really cool!”

Yamaguchi means it, Kei knows, because he’s the kind of person to always mean it when he says things like that, but his voice is too high and shakes oddly as he says it. Kei laughs, flat and low. “You don’t need to say something like that to me. I came here looking for you,” he says, lowering himself into the seat next to Yamaguchi. Maybe too close, but Kei thinks he’d appreciate it. “And… the same goes for you. If we’re talking about who was cool, that might have been the coolest game I’ve seen you play. I don’t understand why you’re out here.”

“Oh, well…” Yamaguchi rubs the back of his neck, smiles a little sheepishly at Kei in the way that’s obviously masking a frown. “Uh— Thanks, Tsukki! I know it’s hard for you to say things like that, and I— I really appreciate it. It’s just… We won, you know?”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Kei asks. He’s happy, at least. It doesn’t make sense that Yamaguchi isn’t.

“It is! It… It is, just… I knew already, since last spring.” Yamaguchi exhales, heavy, and then looks at Kei. There’s something frenzied behind his eyes that Kei doesn’t like. “Everyone on the team is really amazing! I know that at Nationals, that maybe we could do even better than we did in first year, or— We definitely could! That’s how good you guys are, I know it, but—”

Kei reaches out to place a hand on Yamaguchi’s shoulder, to tell him to calm down, but he finishes his sentence and Kei freezes.

“But what if it ends up like it did at the Interhigh? What if— What if we lose because I’m not a good enough captain?”

It’s that quickly – a single sentence, a single ridiculous insecurity – that all the concern, the confusion, the good will in Kei’s chest is fully encompassed by a furious inky black. The kind he thought he’d gotten rid of long ago. He inhales, slowly, and then exhales, slowly, trying to remember the person Yamaguchi was when they first met. “Have you been blaming yourself for the Interhigh?” he asks, and absently feels the sting of his fingernails digging into his own palms.

Yamaguchi is still too anxious to speak, but Kei can see him absorb every measured word from his lips. Slowly, he nods.

“That’s— You know this already. That there are at least six people on one side of the court at any given time,” Kei says, trying to contain his white-hot irritation by biting the inside of his mouth. “If you keep things up like this, we’ll have to start calling you King.”

It seems to calm down Yamaguchi a little, the way he breathes out and his chest deflates. “I… I guess you’re right. I’m—”

“That’s not it, Yamaguchi,” Kei hears himself say, even though what’s burning in his chest is for him enough to know acutely that he should end the conversation. “I know— I know that it’s just like you, to get like this. That you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t. But— when you say things like that, that you’re a bad captain and you’ll be the reason we lose Nationals, you’re… you’re insulting me, too. Kageyama-kun and Hinata-kun, who told me they’d already been thinking of you after I suggested it.”

Yamaguchi’s eyes are wide, and there’s something else on his face. Kei can’t settle down enough to decipher it.

“We knew you’d be a good captain, and you are one,” Kei says, running a hand through his har. “After everything. The game we just played, training camp, the way the first-years look up to you. Even the Interhigh. That was a good game, Yamaguchi. It’s no one’s fault we lost.” He turns to look at Yamaguchi, but he can barely see him, how emotional he is. He moves his gaze back to the lot in front of them. “You… You should know the kind of captain you are.”

For a while, they’re silent, and Kei stews in it. That Yamaguchi was upset and he chided him for it. And he was too harsh. The kind of thing he thought he’d been doing better with, now that he’s in his third year.

But what Yamaguchi said to him. Kei knows there’s no other way that conversation could have went, that he was saying the exact thing that always irritates him. Still…

A hand settles on his shoulder, full and certain. Kei turns to look and Yamaguchi is smiling at him, still with a tinge of sadness, but there’s something else behind it now. Kei can’t put his finger on it.

“You’re— You’re right! I… I guess I am pretty cool, huh?” he says, and the grin widens, forces itself to split open Yamaguchi’s face. It’s bluster, and Kei knows that, but he can’t help it. The way it calms everything on the inside of his chest.

You are, Kei wants to say, but he can’t bring himself to. Doesn’t think he needs to.

Yamaguchi’s face tinges pink, then, in a way that would make Kei worry if his eyes weren’t dry. “Sorry, Tsukki. Or, uh…” Yamaguchi’s gaze darts around, strange and uneven. “Thank you.”

And then, so quickly it barely registers, Kei feels the press of chapped lips against his mouth, and then Yamaguchi is standing up.

“Um, uh— I should go catch up with them now! They’re probably looking for us. I’ll see you on the bus, okay?” Yamaguchi says, and then disappears before Kei can realize he’s leaving.

Still staring at the door where Yamaguchi’s back used to be, Kei feels himself press his fingers to his mouth.

❀

On the bus ride back, Yamaguchi is his normal self, laughing at Hinata and the first-years’ antics, finally enjoying the euphoria he should have had the second he won.

He smiles at Kei the second he sees him, and it’s back to normal then, the way he calls out the return of their champion blocker (embarrassing) and everyone in the bus whoops. It’s enough that when Hinata asks where he’s been, he doesn’t give him a clear answer because he’s not sure if what he remembers even happened at all.

Even the next time they’re alone, after the celebratory lunch when Yamaguchi insists on staying over at Kei’s house because it seems wrong to go back to an empty apartment after the day they’ve had, Yamaguchi doesn’t mention it, and Kei decides to just forget about it. That it was so quickly he might have imagined it, and if it hasn’t changed their friendship, it probably doesn’t matter.

But if Kei finds himself thinking of it, the times that Yamaguchi’s hands linger too long on his shoulders, when he absently covers Kei’s hand with his just because they’re next to each other. When Yamaguchi pretends exhaustion and too-late study sessions are enough excuse to start hanging off of him in a way he didn’t before.

If Kei finds himself thinking about it because he doesn’t want to forget.

If he does, he doesn’t bring it up to Yamaguchi.

❀

It’s Christmas Eve, and Kei is standing at the door of Yamaguchi’s apartment building, holding a container of fried chicken courtesy of his mother.

He’ll come over tomorrow, he’d told her. She told him to bring it anyway.

He’s spent Christmas with Yamaguchi before. Since his mother’s always worked through the holiday, he’s been coming over and eating fried chicken and cake at Kei’s house since they were children. It’s a tradition they haven’t broken yet, and he knows it’s always meant more than a holiday like Christmas should to Yamaguchi. Like going to the fireworks festival every year.

But what they’re doing today, it… isn’t normal. It isn’t something they’ve done before. Kei’s heard Yamaguchi detail his Christmas Eve plans to a perpetually single classmate of theirs in their first year: how he likes Christmas because he goes to Kei’s house and eats chicken, and he likes Christmas Eve because he watches terrible movies and drinks hot cocoa.

He had a girlfriend in their second year. Kei remembers it, even if it only lasted two months and Yamaguchi had been strangely possessive of her, not telling Kei anything about her or letting her meet him for more than a minute. Thinking about it now, he must have spent Christmas Eve with her, then. But he’d shown up at Kei’s house the next day, gift for his mom in tow, and Kei had never been that interested in his girlfriend, so he didn’t spend time mulling over it.

The idea that he spent Christmas Eve last year with his girlfriend. Standing in front of Yamaguchi’s apartment building, he doesn’t know how he feels about it.

I wanted to try baking the cake this year, but, uh… I wanted you to try it before your mom! Since it’d be embarrassing serving her something bad.

His mother isn’t judgmental. His mother would eat anything if he made it for her. Yamaguchi knows that. It doesn’t matter.

Kei presses the buzzer, and Yamaguchi lets him in.

When he gets into the apartment, Yamaguchi is wearing something cheesy, a red pullover over jeans. Kei finds himself grateful for the time he spent fixing his hair over the bathroom sink.

“Eh, you brought food? I guess I should’ve expected that,” he says, face breaking into a grin. “Are you hungry? We can eat now or, uh, if you’re not, we can watch a movie! If you want. I know I asked you to come kind of last minute, so…”

“I’m not hungry,” Kei says. He thinks about adding something else, about how it’s only him and there’s no reason for Yamaguchi to be acting so strangely, that he knows he isn’t dating anyone and has nowhere else to be, but he doesn’t. Instead, he settles at the table in Yamaguchi’s kitchen, leaving the chicken on the countertop.

Yamaguchi’s face lights up then, gleaming everything Kei meant to say from three vague words. It’s just like him. “Okay! I was watching something before you came, but we can change it if you want. It’s just a kids’ movie. I watch it every year,” he says. “Oh, I made cocoa, too! Do you want some?”

“Okay,” Kei says, and Yamaguchi tells him to wait for him in the living room. When he gets there, there’s an animated movie already playing, about a deer in the Arctic. It’s just like him, too, Kei thinks. To enjoy a strange movie like this.

After a minute or so, Yamaguchi comes in, placing the mugs on the coffee table in front of them. “Do you like it, Tsukki? He’s the one from the song, you know! But he’s kind of strange in this movie. I always thought it was really interesting.”

Interesting is a way to describe it, Kei thinks. But he doesn’t mind it. “It isn’t bad,” he says out loud, and Yamaguchi grins, then, wide the way he does when he’s reading Kei like a book. But instead of saying anything, he only laughs.

After a minute, Kei picks up the mug in front of him. It isn’t the first time he’s had Yamaguchi’s cocoa – he’s been to his apartment in the winter months before – and even though he’s had fancier hot chocolate at bakeries and cafes Yamaguchi always likes to take him to, he’s never been especially fond of them the way he is of the one he drinks at Yamaguchi’s apartment. He’s never told Yamaguchi that, but he thinks he knows anyway.

But it’s bitter when he takes a sip, the kind of bitter that permeates to the back of his throat, and he recoils. Next to him, Yamaguchi laughs, loud and full the way it is when he can’t hold it back. “Ah, sorry, Tsukki! I must have given you the wrong one,” he says, picking up the other mug and trading it for Kei’s.

Kei swallows, only not making a face because he can suddenly feel Yamaguchi’s gaze on him. He didn’t even realize he was looking before. “It’s fine.”

That cocoa is warm and familiar the way it’s always been, and the atmosphere between them is normal for the rest of the movie, Yamaguchi laughing at Kei’s occasional jokes and Kei laughing at Yamaguchi’s. It’s like the hundreds of times they’ve done this before, and Kei isn’t sure how he feels about it.

They eat dinner after that, rice and the fried chicken his mother pressured him into bringing, and it really does feel like every Christmas before that with one less person. Yamaguchi, comfortable now after the way he’d been when Kei just arrived, makes the idle small talk he always does, captain stories and the last strange thing his mother told him and what he’s heard on the news.

As Yamaguchi laughs at an offhand comment Kei makes in response to one of his stories, even despite the pleasant feeling that always stir in his chest at the sound, Kei thinks to himself that he shouldn’t have been unsure about tonight. That he should have just forgotten about the things he told himself he’d forget about ages ago.

Yamaguchi brings out the cake, then, not the cleanest or neatest affair but thick with whipped cream and fruit, and when Kei tastes it, he thinks it could stand to be a little sweeter, but he knows, too, that it’s the exact kind of cake his mother would obsess over.

Yamaguchi smiles, then, wide in a way that sometimes leaves Kei feeling a little bit blinded, and then laughs to himself, lightly. “You know, you have frosting on your cheek. It’s really… It’s really cute.”

And it’s that word – cute, from Yamaguchi, who isn’t Akiteru or his mother and hasn’t ever called him cute until today, until Christmas Eve alone in his apartment – that strikes Kei in the chest to the point he can’t hide the things he hasn’t forgotten, anymore. Can’t stop the way he freezes, the way his cheeks heat up, the way his fork clatters against his plate as he drops it.

Yamaguchi’s eyes widen, then, and Kei realizes he didn’t hear himself before that. But his cheeks don’t flush red, then; instead, his gaze drifts to the table, his mouth contorting into a frown he can’t hide despite his greatest efforts. “Ah, I… I didn’t mean to…” He sighs, heavy and low. “This is… It’s strange, huh? That we’re spending Christmas Eve together. I don’t know what I… You noticed, right? I could tell over the phone.”

Kei should say something, he thinks. But he can barely process what Yamaguchi is even saying to him.

“Thanks for pretending you didn’t,” he says wearily, putting his fork down. “I know I… did a lot of things. That conversation we had after qualifiers. But… I really enjoyed the past two months, if it means anything.”

There’s something disturbingly final about the way Yamaguchi is speaking, something that activates a part of Kei that he thought he didn’t need anymore. “Yamaguchi…” he says, and then realizes he can’t solve a problem he doesn’t understand.

Yamaguchi smiles at him, the quiet sadness of it plain in the curve of his lips. “It’s just… When we started third year, all the way in the spring. I… I promised myself I’d ask for your second button at graduation, and give you mine. I was even looking forward to it. Even though I was scared, it—”

Yamaguchi bites the inside of his mouth.

“It’s kind of like when you study really hard for a test, and then it’s the week before and you’re still studying as hard as you can, but you also kind of wish the test was tomorrow. Because you already worked really hard, and you wanna get it over with because you can’t stand waiting anymore. Because... Because it has to happen anyway, and you’re tired of things being hard.”

Kei swallows as he absorbs the whole of what Yamaguchi is saying. Feels something unreal rise on the inside of his chest.

“But then… then we talked at the end of summer vacation, and you were going to stay with me, and live with me, and after qualifiers, you let me kiss you. I thought, maybe… maybe I wouldn’t need to tell you how I feel, if you let things continue like this. I wouldn’t need to risk you rejecting me and maybe never speaking to me again if it grossed you out or it got weird. But…” Yamaguchi rubs the back of his neck. “I really was asking too much of you, wasn’t I, Tsukki? I’m sorry.”

A moment passes, where Kei absently thinks to himself that he doesn’t like the frown on Yamaguchi’s face and he wants to kiss it off, and then it sinks in, what Yamaguchi was babbling about. Second buttons, and living together, and the kiss he gave him two months ago that he’s been spending every day trying and then refusing to forget.

It’s just like Yamaguchi, to go straight to the worst-case scenario. But it was stupid of Kei, to spend so long trying not to think too hard about the way Yamaguchi was treating him. Like if he questioned it, it might disappear.

It was Yamaguchi himself who told him. He’ll never disappear.

“Yamaguchi,” Kei says, and Yamaguchi finally looks at him again, eyes wide. Kei wonders if he can read his expression through the haze of pessimistic anxiety he always has to try to see through at moments like these. “Wasn’t it you who told me we’d always be friends? Even if I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t stop being your friend over that. I thought you believed in me.”

It’s enough to rile Yamaguchi out of the depression he deluded himself into, and Kei wants to laugh. “I— Of course I believe in you! Just, the way I treated you, it was really—” Yamaguchi starts to say, and then freezes completely, and Kei watches as his words sink in. “Wait, Tsukki, did you say—?”

“Cute, Yamaguchi. You’re cute. I’ve always thought so,” he says, watching as Yamaguchi’s cheeks light up red. Like the nose of that deer in Yamaguchi’s weird movie. “I like you.”

“Eh?” he asks, and there’s something mesmerizing about how big his eyes are. Kei can’t stop looking at Yamaguchi, can’t stop thinking about what happened at the end of their conversation after qualifiers. That it really happened.

“It’s not that unbelievable, you know,” Kei says. “Doesn’t it feel like our entire lives have been leading up to this?”

Yamaguchi is confused for a minute, and Kei watches again, as understanding sinks in. “Tsukki! I was— I was really happy that day! Stop making fun of me.”

Kei almost laughs, and only holds it back for that Yamaguchi might actually get mad at him if he keeps up this way. It’s him who should be embarrassed, anyway, that conversation they had at the end of summer vacation. That he didn’t realize.

Together, for the rest of our lives.

Yamaguchi is flustered now, on the edge of irritated in that facetious way he always is, and Kei can’t stop staring at it. The red of his freckled cheeks, how he won’t meet his eyes, the way his lower lip is jutting out. Kei can’t stop staring at it, can’t stop thinking about that time outside of the gymnasium.

“Sorry,” he says, and it isn’t what Yamaguchi expected him to say. Kei can tell by the way he bites the inside of his cheek, hesitates and starts to try to walk back what he said. Like it was harsh. Kei cuts him off. “I want to kiss you.”

“Huh?” Yamaguchi asks. “What are you talking about? I— It still feels like you’re making fun of me…”

“I’m not,” Kei says, standing up from his chair and making his way to Yamaguchi’s side. He touches the nape of his neck, the way he does that always annoys him, but doesn’t take his hand back this time. Cradles his cheek with his palm. “I want to kiss you, Yamaguchi. I like you.”

“You know, I… I thought about this a lot before, but I never thought you’d be like this,” Yamaguchi muses, still unable to look Kei in the face despite the fact that they’re so close there aren’t many other places to look. “I owe you, for that time after the qualifiers. And I— I want to kiss you, too.”

Kei leans down, then, presses his mouth to Yamaguchi’s and it’s funny. After Yamaguchi kissed him after the qualifiers, that single peck on the mouth that barely lasted longer than a second, Kei tried to so hard to forget it, and he couldn’t.

Kei is finally kissing Yamaguchi again, and it’s completely different from the way it felt before. He remembers how that kiss was that day: the shy and impertinent playfulness of it, the satisfaction in it so wispy and unbelievable that the second it ended it felt like an absent daydream. The way it kept him reaching forward for it again, like trying to catch a shadow.

It isn’t the same. Yamaguchi’s mouth is firm against his, full and real and there, so warm it the feeling finds its way to Kei’s core. There’s something about the clumsiness of it, the chapped feel of his lips that makes him certain it’s the boy he’s known since they were children, his incredible best friend and anxious captain, the person he thinks he’ll know for the rest of his life. The person he knows he’ll be in love with for the rest of his life.

It’s just like Yamaguchi, Kei thinks to himself after they part and he can form coherent thought again. Always everything he ever wanted, always the opposite of what he expected. Kei remembers how he stopped him from quitting volleyball after Akiteru, the first time he saw him do a float serve, the time he grabbed him by the collar. The way it made him feel when he shaved the nape of his neck earlier this year.

“What’s wrong, Tsukki?” Yamaguchi asks, and Kei realizes he’s been thinking so hard about the person in front of him that he forgot he was there. It’s the kind of thing that would make Yamaguchi laugh. Lightly, he does it himself and moves his hand to Yamaguchi’s shoulder.

“It’s only… That was nice, wasn’t it?”

“You’re embarrassing,” Yamaguchi says, but his grin is wide, splitting his face in half. The sight of it— it’s enough for Kei to know he can hear everything he means behind the few words he said out loud.

He wonders then, about what Yamaguchi told him that summer. How everything in the universe came together that he was able to meet him. Kei has always been too practical to believe in anything other than coincidence, has always just thought he was lucky to meet him, but meeting him then, Sendai now. Having his best friend like him almost as much as he likes him.

He was joking then, but maybe Yamaguchi’s incoherent babbling late at night was right. Their entire lives leading up to this moment, and then the rest of their lives. That’s—

That’s something, Kei starts to think, but suddenly Yamaguchi is standing on his toes, fixing his arms to circle Kei's neck, and Kei clears his mind, then.

This time, when Yamaguchi leans up and presses his mouth against his, Kei commits it to memory.