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Yamamoto Taketora is used to weird, probably more than an average person has the right to be. After all, he works with two of the most confusing people on Earth, and actually somewhat enjoys it. He must be crazy.
In fact, he’s got to be at least partially kooky to be sitting in a bathtub at 2:30 in the morning, shirt off and hair dye running in thick droplets down the slope of his back.
He doesn’t even like the color green.
“Why do I have to do this again?” he whines, taking a sip of his beer. Probably not a good idea to drink around these particular people, but it’s not like they’re leaving the house, right?
Daishou glances over at him from where he is mixing more dye at the sink’s marble vanity, and the flash of mischief in his gleaming eyes makes Yamamoto set the can down next to him, not to be touched until this whole ordeal is over. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t even remember how they ended up here in the first place.
All he knows is that today they—the employees at the flower shop he works at—threw him a party, supposedly for working at (surviving, he corrects dutifully in his mind) their workplace for a whole two months. He admits that it’s a pretty incredible feat for himself, considering that he usually gets fired from a job about twice a month, but is he that pathetic that he needs a party to celebrate working?
He’s figured out now that no, it is not. It was just a distraction for his simple mind, and, well, now he’s here. At Daishou Suguru’s house. A place he hadn’t planned on visiting in his timeline.
“It’s your initiation ceremony,” Daishou, the conniving brat that Yamamoto has found he is, answers with a snicker.
“Iwaizumi doesn’t have green hair!” he protests, pressing his back to the wall in order to stretch away from Daishou’s reach. Alas, the man just leans over and dumps the container of dye onto Yamamoto’s head; he barely has any time to shield his eyes with his hands before the green liquid is sliding down his cheeks. Great, now his whole head is going to be tinted vomit-hued.
One of his other coworkers, Ushijima, replies this time from his place in the corner, momentarily flicking his eyes up from this month’s issue of ‘Shounen Jump.’ “Iwaizumi-san possesses green eyes.”
“That shouldn’t count!”
“If you don’t stop moving, I’m going to use your spine as a golf club,” Daishou snaps, lathering gloved fingers through Yamamoto’s scruff.
“I don’t believe it would be effective for the game,” Ushijima says.
Yamamoto laughs, before he registers just what he said. “Wait a damn minute—”
“What are you losers up to in here?”
The voice is Iwaizumi’s, Yamamoto recognizes, right outside the bathroom door. Daishou’s fingers stall momentarily on his scalp, and he thinks, finally, his savior has come to rescue him.
That is, until his boss opens the door, takes in the scene with a disinterested gaze, and says, “Alright, then,” before closing it.
Betrayal. Yamamoto expected better from the man.
“Come back here!” he yelps, before Daishou conks him right on the noggin.
“I told you to stop moving. Do you want to look like some type of troll?”
“Smurf?” Ushijima offers.
“Smurfs are blue!” Iwaizumi calls from somewhere else in the house, muffled. Probably raiding Daishou’s fridge. Wait, how did he even hear them? His boss is a superhuman, he concludes, then sees the bathroom door left ajar and swears that he’s going to quit alcohol. Kyoutani is always providing facts about how bad it is for you, so might as well listen to them.
“Hey, Jima, hand me that.” Daishou points to something right out of Yamamoto’s field of vision, and yeah, now he feels vaguely threatened.
As well he should be, because the next thing he knows, a plastic bag is being crammed over his head.
“What kind of foreplay is this?” he cries, flailing his arms around. “I don’t consent!”
“Oh my god, shut up.” Daishou peels back the thin plastic, sporting lips pressed in such a thin line, it’s like they almost don’t even exist. See now that, that’s impressive. “Ushijima didn’t even give me this much trouble.”
“You did this to Ushijima? How?” he asks, wiping the slimy liquid from his face. This is the last time he lets his anyone sweep him into something like this, he swears it.
(It’s a lie. A dirty lie. More chaos has yet to arrive with this new job, he predicts, and he will gladly get right in the middle of it.)
“He referred to it as slipping me a Mickey.”
Yamamoto’s eyes widen in horror and surprise, but mostly surprise.
“You slipped him a Mickey?”
The bathroom door is flung open. It would have crashed through the wall if there had been no doorstopper going boi-oi-oing. All three of them flinch away from the sound, Yamamoto nearly bounding so high in the air that he hits his head on the ceiling. Iwaizumi lurks in the doorway, turkey club half-stuffed in his mouth, eyebrows slanted in a V-shape as he glares right at Daishou and Daishou only. Wow, Yamamoto never wants to be on the receiving end of that stare. It’s like a pit-viper making eye-contact with its prey right before it devours them.
“You told me he fell asleep on your couch!” Iwaizumi bellows.
“Technically, that wasn’t a lie. He did pass out there.”
Daishou hops to his feet, but it’s too late. Iwaizumi is already closing the door, World War Hair Dye is about to break out, and Yamamoto is just trying to contain his laughter in the cage of his chest. From across the room, Ushijima meets his wild grin with his own eyes twinkling in amusement.
“You’re fired.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I’m literally the owner and your boss.”
“You’re literally in my apartment, eating my food.”
“Seems sus,” Ushijima adds, and that’s the last straw. Yamamoto bursts out into raucous laughter, wheezing the air out of his lungs like a slide whistle. What makes it infinitely better though, is Ushijima’s genuinely confused expression and how Iwaizumi and Daishou’s faces are pinching in on themselves.
“Jima. Jima, buddy,” Yamamoto gasps out when he’s finally regained some semblance of composure, “that’s not how you use that phrase.”
“Oh, I apologize.”
God, he can’t stop laughing. Three months ago, if someone had told Yamamoto that he would be stuck in a cramped bathtub getting a bad hair-dye job while his super-scary boss argues about morals with his Slytherin prefect of a coworker, he would have high-tailed it out of the vicinity because, wow, that’s insane, that will literally never happen to him, but now?
Well, now, he’s tossing Iwaizumi the detachable shower head and its cord, and watching as Daishou gets hosed down while trying to escape the closet-sized room.
Yamamoto is a relatively average, standard dude, but somehow he’s like a magnet for these strange situations, these strange people. It’s the equivalent of being surrounded by a ring of fire with no way out, but it’s fun.
Working with these people while he paddles through college?
It’s so—so funky, but it’s his new normal.
He finds himself getting severely creeped out at least four times a day, having to check his lunch twice before finally digging in, and dodging pots of plants thrown by infuriated customers every week, but—it has its perks.
***
Screw the perks, Yamamoto Taketora would very much like to punch Daishou in the face.
He stares in the glass of the flower shop’s window, close to whimpering as he tames the fuzz on top of his head. Iwaizumi is in the reflection too, covering his lips with his hand as he opens the register to help a customer. Yamamoto can still spot the amused tilt of his lips peeking out through his fingertips.
Before Yamamoto can make the mistake of pulling a Karen and throwing a potted plant at his boss, Daishou walks in, whistling with a tiny smile as if all is right in the world. His hair is perfect and not icky and Yamamoto adjusts his aim.
Daishou, apparently, had expected this, because he dives behind the counter like a war veteran before the flowers can be launched into the air.
“Coward,” Yamamoto growls, setting the pot back on the windowsill.
“Go leer out the window, flower boy,” the snake taunts, though it’s not very intimidating when he’s hiding behind Iwaizumi’s legs. The man in question clears his throat when the bell jingles on the door to the shop, the customer having fled while they could. A wise decision on their part. Yamamoto makes to pick up something—anything—to throw again; Daishou is getting it this time. He’s let him off too much in the past.
“Yamamoto,” Iwaizumi warns, “you break it, you buy it.”
“Broke ass,” Daishou sneers, peeking up slightly from behind his shelter. He ducks down again when Yamamoto manages to throw a pen like a shuriken, nailing him square in the forehead. “Fuck! That hurt!”
“Good, look at my hair man.”
“It’s pretty terrible,” Iwaizumi agrees. “Green isn’t your color.”
And that’s just great, because Iwaizumi is a florist and he definitely knows his way around the color wheel, especially in design! He’s probably being nice to Yamamoto right now, holding back instead of telling him he looks like a moldy matcha roll. This has got to be the worst week ever. Why does he like working here again?
His eyes catch the clock on the wall, hands tick-tick-ticking away around the device, and his eyes widen to the size of saucers. He scrambles to drop to the ground, somersaulting over to the shop’s giant window that peers out into the busy streets of the strip mall.
The two people behind him howl in laughter, but he ignores them in favor of searching the sidewalks.
Okay, so, there’s a lot of reasons Yamamoto likes working at Stemmed from Care, and all of them are perfectly valid in their own rights. The hours are perfect for his school schedule and hey, the pay isn’t bad either. He might have to put up with Daishou’s bullshit and Ushijima’s painful indifference and Iwaizumi’s nonchalance-turned-rage at his employees’ antics, but they’re all really sweet, and he hasn’t gotten fired yet—that’s always a plus.
Still, there’s just this one tiny factor that brightens up every shift he works for no particular reason. Every day—whether he’s at the shop or not, Iwaizumi has informed him—around 10:30, a person walks by.
First of all, Yamamoto is not a stalker, he is not, even though his person-watching may come off as a little bit, uh, stalker-ish. He just likes watching people, okay, it’s not that big of a deal! There’s no reason to feel weird about it, and there’s no reason for those two pricks to be laughing at him.
Secondly, Daishou’s the exact same way! Why is he not taking any heat?
Yamamoto huffs and settles into position, squatting right in front of the window. There’s a large fern next to him that matches the color of his hair, so at least he blends in. At least he has that going for him.
People mill about outside, buzzing down the streets like ants skittering off to their respective responsibilities. It’s beautiful outside today; little kids tug on their mothers’ hands, giggling about promises of ice cream and oh, hey, doggy! Yamamoto smiles at the antics of the little rascals.
As 10:30 finally rolls around, he scans the sidewalks once again.
No, no, that’s a child, no, no, aaaaaaand there.
The Person strolls down the asphalt, right on time.
Now, to anyone else this would look like just a random person, but not to Yamamoto, no. Not to someone who attracts weird like a wall that lures in balloons statically charged. No, this person isn’t standard.
Why not, and how can he possibly tell all this just from looking at them?
Well, besides the fact that he’s been observing them thoroughly—borderline stalking, but that’s completely beside the point—for about a month now, it’s a feeling that he gets deep down in his gut. And by god, his gut is almost never wrong.
Every time he has seen them, they’ve worn a shirt or hoodie with a cat pun on it. He didn’t even know there could be that many lame jokes about cats! They cuff the ends of their pants, too, no matter if they’re jeans, khakis, whatever, and polka-dotted socks have always peeked out from underneath. Sometimes they’re mismatched, on different ends of the color spectrum completely. Strangely, it suits them.
Black hair, black eyes, pale skin—bah, sure, it may seem plain, but there’s something else to them. They have perpetual hat hair all the time, despite Yamamoto never having seen them wear anything even slightly obstructive to the crown of their head.
(Well, there was that time with those precious cat-paw earmuffs, but those don’t really count.)
Their pupils are two tiny dots of ink among a canvas of white, and he’s never seen someone with such a wide resting face. They don’t look particularly welcoming, but they’re not really like Yamamoto either—appearing as though they’ll shake you down for a couple bucks at midnight if you so much as bump into them on the street. And don’t even get him started on their skin.
No, seriously. Don’t. He’s running out of poeticism here.
Oh, and by the way, they’re absolutely adorable, if that’s not painfully obvious by now.
Yamamoto flushes a deep red, feeling the heat flare down his neck. He can’t help it, not when The Person’s long bony fingers that shouldn’t be attractive—but they totally are—reach to curl around the locks of hair resting around their ears as they bop their head along to some tune. They don’t even have any earphones in! They’re just nodding along to something going on in their head, and it’s so endearing and cute that Yamamoto whimpers, just a little bit.
God, he’s not in high school anymore, and he’s definitely not a coward, so why can’t he just, like, talk to them?
The Person glances into the shop window—it’s a blink and you’ll miss it type of action—but Yamamoto hasn’t blinked in about two minutes, so he squeaks and lunges for a plant’s stand, hiding under it. He knows customers are no doubt squinting at him judgmentally, but he doesn’t really care.
He scrambles up again, lest he miss his favorite part of the whole sort-of interaction.
Because without fail, every single freakin’ time, The Person takes out a food container from their backpack that has a plethora of keychains jingling away on it, pops it open, and munches away at—at a deviled egg.
It’s disgusting—who likes deviled eggs, out of literally all the foods in the world? Yamamoto vaguely remembers Tanaka’s boyfriend trying to borderline shove one down his throat in order to “try something new” and promptly spitting it out into a napkin when no one was looking. He can probably write a whole essay on why deviled eggs should be banished from the face of the Earth.
Must be The Person’s favorite food, though, because they take one out now and Yamamoto crinkles his nose as they just, just—bite into it like an apple.
Damn, that’s just nasty.
Then they’re gone, and that (hopefully) concludes Yamamoto’s creepiness o-meter exceeding its limit for the rest of the day.
“Tomato-kun,” Daishou calls from the register, and he doesn’t even have to turn around to hear the teasing smirk in his voice. “Why don’t you catch up to them with a bouquet of roses?”
This time, Yamamoto does manage to hit him with one of the plants. Iwaizumi yells at them both, a lot, but he doesn’t get fired, and he spends the rest of his shift with red dusted on his cheeks.
His face is still on fire as he leaves the shop, looking longingly in the direction that The Person wanders off in each morning.
Yamamoto sighs, setting off to Tanaka’s apartment.
He’s still got projects due next week, after all, and the Tanaka residence always promises beer despite Kyoutani’s grumblings.
***
Four beers later and he’s shit-faced. Kind of pathetic, not going to lie, but Yamamoto has always been somewhat of a lightweight, and now is not an exception.
Tanaka and his boyfriend, Ennoshita, sit intertwined on the couch as he sprawls out on the floor. He faintly registers that the TV is playing, but it’s nothing more than background noise to his sluggish mind. All the empty beer cans are stacked in one tower on his chest.
He groans. “Not fair.”
“What isn’t?” It’s not Tanaka that asks, that’s for damn sure. Yamamoto’s gaze shifts to the side to find Ennoshita raising an eyebrow down at him. It’s probably not wise to confide in someone he just barely knows, but, well, he’s drunk. So.
“Pretty people.”
“Augh, yeah, have to hate them,” Ennoshita says amusedly, peering down at the man resting in his lap. Tanaka snores away loudly, drooling on his boyfriend’s knee. Ew. If that’s what being in a relationship is, Yamamoto’s not so sure he wants one anymore.
Flashes of thin lips and barely-existent eyebrows and he’s groaning again, knocking over the cans on his chest. This is too much to think about right now. Too much to think about ever.
“So, pretty people? Problems how?” Ennoshita prods.
No, nononono. No more thinking. His head is spinning. Yamamoto wants to make a bouquet of roses.
“The Person,” he murmurs distractedly, counting the ceiling panels. Cat puns and polka-dots and imaginary earphones.
Roses are cliché and boring. What’s a substitute?
“Person?”
Yamamoto couldn’t stop the words tumbling from his lips even if he tried. He tells Ennoshita everything, in random bursts of energy every time he remembers something specific that The Person has done, considered out of the ordinary. He gestures with his hands, waving them wildly in the air as he describes the time The Person had seen a cat on the sidewalk and just stopped, squatted down, and looked at it. The staring match had gone on for more than a minute, neither party so much as twitching, and Yamamoto had been not-so-silently cheering The Person on.
(The cat won. Iwaizumi had clonked him on the head when he had audibly booed the feline. Apparently, silliness had a line, and he had crossed it.)
Ennoshita snorts at the part about the deviled eggs, which is totally unfair. He’s biased. His opinion doesn’t count. Wake Tanaka up; he’ll vouch for Yamamoto, albeit half-drunkenly.
Violets. Violets are a substitute, he realizes belatedly. Violets and alstroemerias. Pink alstroemerias. Huh, looks like working at a flower shop has a few more perks than he originally thought.
“You haven’t even talked to them?” Ennoshita asks incredulously. “Not even one word?”
“They never come into the shop,” Yamamoto says, gruffly. “Never get the chance.”
“I suppose even if you did, you wouldn’t know what to say.”
“What—no!” he sputters, sitting up. Oh, wait, head rush. Laying back down again. “You take that back, that’s bullshit!”
“Just accept it dude,” Tanaka pipes up, cracking one eye open. Ennoshita pats his head, and Yamamoto’s heart does a strange, straining-type thing. He swats at Ennoshita’s legs in lieu of thinking about it. Those thoughts are for a sober him.
A few daises. Daises would suit them well.
Tanaka and Ennoshita crack a few more one-liners about his conversational skills, which mostly just include wild laughter and shouting whatever comes to mind, and all he can do is sit there and take it. Oh, he’d love to punt the empty cans in their direction, but he’s absolutely positive that he will miss and probably take out that ugly lamp Tanaka has pack-bonded with, and Ennoshita is scary when he’s pissed. He hasn’t seen the anger firsthand, but he’s heard stories.
Still though, through all the jokes—all he can think about is The Person and the tiny quirk of their lips that kind of makes Yamamoto weak in the knees. Thankfully, he had kept that tiny detail out of his rambling.
Catnip, too.
Yamamoto grins.
***
It’s raining.
It’s cloudy and grey and cold and it’s raining.
Yamamoto dislikes the rain. He has to wear a jacket over his tank top, and it always manages to make him look like some type of gangster; there’s something odd in the air when it rains in Japan, too, something that frizzes up the texture of his hair so that he resembles one of those tiny cacti that you can find at the dollar store. You know, the ones with the long stem and orange or red tops, with all the spikes? Anyway, he looks like that and it’s raining and ugh, everything’s being flushed down the toilet.
He has—correction: had—a plan today. Around 10:30, go outside to sweep the front of the shop, and maybe not-so-accidentally bump into The Person, and then start a conversation. He can do that, right?
Wrong. It’s raining, so he can’t go outside to sweep, and therefore he can’t meet this human being that he’s been infatuated with for the better part of his time working at the flower shop.
God, Tanaka actually helped him brainstorm this, too. He’s going to have to go back to that apartment and report back with nothing. No progress. Zilch. Kyoutani will laugh, the bastard, even though Yahaba’s the one who took charge in that relationship, and he’ll spend the night as a fifth wheel with the whole group, and this all just really sucks, honestly.
Maybe this is a sign. Maybe he just needs to stop obsessing over this person. Maybe he’ll end up alone for his whole life while all his other friends get married and adopt four cats and wake up next to each other in the morning and surprise each other with food and—uh, wait, stop.
Maybe he just needs to get back to work.
Ushijima putters around to his right, talking with a regular—a lanky redhead who always requests to be helped by him. Usually, Yamamoto deals with the customer service since conversing isn’t really one of Ushijima’s fortes, but he seems to like this guy well enough to exchange a few words here and there. It’s sweet—the light smile Ushijima has on his face every time the customer walks in, instead of his usual resting moai stone expression. Everyone in the shop has collectively decided not to tease him about it.
Yamamoto has finished his tasks for today—that birthday bouquet, watering the greenhouse flowers, oh and that wedding prep too—so he weaves crowns from the flowers that are too wilted to be sold but too pretty to be composted just yet.
Violets and alstroemerias. Daises, too.
Funny how that works.
He plops a circle of daisies on Ushijima’s head just because. The man doesn’t even flinch, just continues on with an explanation to the redhead about the symbolization of bluebonnets.
A rumble of thunder outside startles him, and he instinctively whips his head around to survey out the window. He expects to find the streets empty. No one with their head screwed on right is going to walk out in that.
Sometimes, he forgets that really weird people exist, despite working with some of them.
Because there they are—right outside the shop at 10:30 in the morning, tipping their head back to let the raindrops drift down their cheeks, their neck, into their hoodie. Their soaked hoodie.
“What the hell are they doing?” he shrieks, and before he can think twice about it, is already rushing to the door. The tiny bell dings as he pulls it open and shouts over the howling wind, “HEY!”
The Person opens their eyes and rolls their head around to look at him. It’s a much more intimate gaze than what he’s seen from afar, like he’s being assessed from behind a one-way window without knowing it.
They don’t move, so he takes a few steps, reaches out and rips them inside the dainty flower shop by their arm.
“What the hell were you doing out there? You’re going to get sick!” his voice barks out into the stark shocked silence of the shop. He’s sounding way too concerned for just some random stranger; is this odd? Ushijima and that customer are no doubt watching his near-eruption. “You can’t do that! What if you get a fever? Why don’t you have an umbrella or something?”
Why is he scolding them? He doesn’t scold anyone; people scold him. This is not how he had wanted this first meeting to go.
They just keep staring at him though, tiny irises like black holes sucking him in until he’s in a trance, not having the guts to say anything else until Ushijima finally intervenes. The larger man places one tentative hand on Yamamoto’s shoulder and drapes a fluffy white towel over The Person.
Then, because Yamamoto likes to think that Ushijima is the only one that works here that truly knows the meaning of solidarity, he says, “Tendou-san and I will be over there,” points to the opposite end of the room, and paces stiffly over to the redhead that happily obliges and follows away from them.
Which leaves the two alone.
Welp, Yamamoto is screwed. What is he supposed to say now?
“Uh,” he voices, face starting to resemble the red of The Person’s hoodie, “sorry, I guess, about the whole—you know.” He gestures vaguely to the space in between them, hoping—pleading—that’s enough to get his message across. If Daishou were here watching this, all the potted plants in the store would be destroyed.
The Person nods, and each time they blink a droplet of water clinging to their lashes flicks away. Yamamoto rubs his neck sheepishly.
“Just—dry off, and for god’s sake, wait for the storm to pass before going back out there, ‘kay?” Another nod, and they slowly lift their nimble fingers to massage the towel into their hair.
Yamamoto paces back to the counter rigidly. He fiddles with the previously crafted flower crowns, tugging on stray leaves and trying to will away the flush on his cheeks. The Person waddles over to the window to peer outside with large, curious eyes, and Yamamoto decides.
That’s it for him. He’s gone. Missed his chance.
What chance had he even had in the first place though?
He can see the looks his friends will give him later, as he relays the tale to them. Ennoshita will pity, Tanaka will sympathize, and Kyoutani will choke on his salad laughing while Yahaba just sighs in exasperation.
His eyes make their way over to the spontaneous customer, flitting over the way they crouch down to graze their fingertips across the petals of flowers almost ready for compost. They’re sweet, and gentle, and Yamamoto begins to knit together another flower crown without thinking twice about it.
(Iwaizumi will probably yell at him for using all the compost flowers, but maybe it’s worth it.)
Every two minutes or so Yamamoto will glance up to see them either cupping a plant in the palms of their hands or peep out the window, fingers tracing the raindrops that slide down the thick glass where the logo is plastered. Once, they had caught him looking, and that put an end to that. He wasn’t going to be labeled as a creeper before they even had a second conversation.
It takes around fifteen minutes or so for the storm to die down to a reasonable level, thunder no longer rumbling like someone’s stomach and quite literally scaring the shit out of him, which is a huge relief in and of itself. He’s not a wimp—well.
Okay, now or never.
Before The Person can set foot out of the door, Yamamoto scrambles around the counter to in front of them. His face is lit up in scarlet flames, no doubt, but he just needs to do it. Power through it. Wait, what’s he doing exactly? Oh right.
In an embarrassingly clumsy act of self-preservation, he practically shoves the circlet of violets and catnip onto The Person’s head. It’s a little off-kilter, but somehow makes them appear even more adorable, if that’s even possible.
Wow. Bravo.
Too aggressive, abort, ABORT MAN.
“Yamamoto Taketora!” he says, loudly. Too loudly. He basically just yelled in their face, what the—why? They stare at him with their big bug eyes, and Yamamoto clenches his fists at his sides, trying to stutter out some form of a sentence but ultimately failing. He spots the redhead—Tendou?—over their shoulder across the store, partially covering his wicked grin with one hand, giving a thumbs up with the other. Ushijima is tending to Iwaizumi’s pet venus fly trap next to him, seemingly not paying attention, but Yamamoto knows for sure that Daishou will be hearing of this at an impromptu 2 am gossip fest.
A breath of choppy air leaves The Person’s nose and—is that a laugh? Is that their laugh? What kind of person laughs like that? Just how strange are they?
(It definitely, definitely suits them.)
Yamamoto almost does a double-take at the small upward tilt of their lips, but suddenly a card is being folded into his hands and he’s too distracted by their eyes gleaming in amusement to read it.
They nudge closer to the door, and right before they exit the shop, they turn to him and say, ever so quietly, “Thank you, Moto-Moto,” and then they leave.
Yamamoto squeals. Actually squeals, as soon as they’re out of sight, and he grins wide and sharp.
He thumbs over the paper in his hand and realizes that it’s a business card, with a name, phone number, and place of occupation jotted on it in a horrible comic sans font.
Fukunaga Shouhei
xxx-xxx-xxxx
Luminescent Tattoos
Cupid has to be doubled over in laughter in the clouds above; he has to be. Yamamoto holds the card up to the heavens with the loudest yell of, “HELL YES!” he can muster.
He turns around to the sound of snickering and can’t even bring himself to be angry about it.
“Jima!” he shouts. “Jima, Jima, Jima, Jima, look! They’re a tattoo artist, oh my god, that’s so damn cool, look, look, look, JIMA!” Yamamoto shoves the card in the taller man’s face.
He feels like he could do a cartwheel right now, no joke. No, wait, a million cartwheels. Is this what it’s like to do drugs? He feels high right now, on top of the world.
“Luminescent Tattoos,” Ushijima recites monotonously, raising an eyebrow at Yamamoto.
“Luminescent Tattoos?” Tendou echoes, squinting at the card. “Hey, isn’t that, like, right next door?”
Yamamoto’s brain short-circuits. There’s sparks visibly flying as he tries to cross the wires to crank it up again.
“What?”
“Yeah,” Tendou continues, “I walk past it every time I come in here. Did you—did you not know that?”
Yamamoto is horrified.
Tendou catches on relatively quickly, and a shit-eating grin smears onto his lips, a snort of hilarity breaking through. “You just pulled someone into the store, proceeded to yell at them, and it turns out they were just walking to work—which is right there, oh fuck, this is too good, I’m texting Eita.” He’s close to cackling now, and all the blood in Yamamoto’s body drops below freezing temperature.
It’s official. He’s an idiot.
They’ve worked right next door this whole time.
Even Ushijima is chuckling. Ushijima never chuckles.
“Where are you going?” Ushijima asks when he turns around, sulking.
“Outside. Maybe I can still get hit by lightning.”
“You are too hopeful.”
He can’t help but snort at that, swiveling back around. Tendou is chatting away on his phone a few feet away.
“You better not tattle to Daishou, you hear me, you freakin’ green bean giant?” he says, narrowing his eyes. Even though Ushijima could probably squish him like a bug beneath his shoe, he tries to size him up.
“I understand. I will not tell Daishou-san.”
“Good.”
Yamamoto tucks the card into his jeans’ pocket to brag to Tanaka and Ennoshita and Yahaba and that damn Kyoutani about later, and that’s that.
***
Ushijima doesn’t tell Daishou about the trying-to-secretly-take-a-picture-of-someone-but-having-your-flash-on level of embarrassment of a few days ago.
He tells Iwaizumi.
Iwaizumi tells Daishou.
They spend the next hour and a half making fun of Yamamoto until two more potted plants are destroyed in a cross-fire, and Iwaizumi yells at him for breaking merchandise on purpose for the second time this month, but he doesn’t get fired.
And that’s good, really good, because if he did then he wouldn’t have an excuse to see Fukunaga Shouhei at 10:30 in the morning most days during work, and he wouldn’t have the chance to finally wave and smile at them from the window and get a wave back in return. If he had gotten fired, then their first date of watching Cinderella while eating popcorn mixed with a heinous combination of Skittles and M&Ms would’ve been tossed out the window.
It’s good, great even, that he doesn’t get fired, because he’s found that he really likes being surrounded by absolute weirdos at all hours of the day—and hey, he’s become somewhat of a weirdo himself.