Archive of Our Own ^beta

i have gathered my losses
into a spray of pain;
my parents, my brother,
my husband, my innocence
all clustered together
durable as daisies.
now i add you,
little love, little
flower,
who walked unannounced
into my life
and almost blossomed there.

bouquet, lucille clifton

i. spring

Tadashi is thirteen years old, and stuck on his way downstairs to sneak a snack from Tsukki's kitchen, which he does every time he sleeps over. Like every time he sleeps over, he's barefoot and careful on the wood of the steps, and like every time, the third one will probably creak. It hasn't creaked yet, though, because he's sitting on the second one with his head pressed to the railing, and trying to listen.

This isn't like every time he sleeps over. Usually no one else is up at three in the morning, much less crying on the living room couch.

Eight steps below him and two metres to the right, he can see pale blue light, half-there and half-not in that weird way televisions have late at night, when the sound is low and nothing's real and he's supposed to be asleep. He is supposed to be asleep, but he's stuck on the stairs now, can't go down until the crying stops, can't go up until he knows why.

‘Acchan,’ he hears then, and that's Tsukishima-san. Her voice sounds strange and wobbly and strange again, because if Tadashi was nineteen he'd never let his mom call him a nickname, he thinks. ‘Hush, now.’

‘All I've ever done is—’

(Tadashi was eleven years old, back then—)

‘Don't you say it. I've never been prouder of you than in this past year. This is the proudest I've ever been, Akiteru, are you listening to me? Right now.’

Tadashi straightens up, and looks down at the darkness the stairs lead to. The light from the television is on the edges of it, creeping up, up.

┈

On Monday, Tsukki doesn't say a word to anyone, not even the teachers who call on him. Tadashi knows not to try to talk to him on the way home. Instead they walk slower than ever, Tsukki clutching the straps of his schoolbag, Tadashi dragging his feet, scrape scrape scrape, trying to find a stone to kick. There aren't any. The sky is pink and the clouds are purple, and that one little dog who always smells them and starts barking like a demon, doesn't bark today.

Right at the turn to Tadashi's street, Tsukki stops short, eyes fixed on the ground. He opens his mouth, then closes it, and keeps it closed. It's only one second, but the sky and the clouds and the angry little dog all seem ten times bigger suddenly, and Tadashi thinks, maybe he's going to get closer to Tsukki, somehow.

He wants to say you can tell me, but that'll only get him an eyeroll and Tsukki never telling him, ever. Instead, Tadashi does what he does best when it comes to Tsukki. He takes a deep breath, and waits for Tsukki's brain to finish whatever it's doing. And Tsukki rolls his eyes and sighs anyway, as if he knows what Tadashi's doing, but he looks— like Tadashi felt, sitting on the stairs on Saturday night, even though Tadashi knows he was sound asleep when it happened. He still looks like that, eyes all scared, mouth all tight.

‘Have you ever liked someone?’ he asks suddenly. Tadashi blinks.

‘No,’ he says. ‘What? Have you?’

‘No,’ Tsukki replies, then adds, proudly, ‘I don't plan to like anyone, ever.’

But he's still staring at the ground, and Tadashi's brain knows it has to catch up, but doesn't know what it has to catch up to. He can feel all the weight of his bag on his shoulders suddenly, the four hardbound textbooks and the bottle of Pocari he poked a hole into with his divider to squirt the water all over his face in the summer heat, his empty bento box.

Then Tsukki speaks again.

‘What if you—’ Come on, Tsukki. ‘What if you liked a boy?’

Tadashi blinks again. The dog would've been easier to deal with. There's a deep red blush crawling up Tsukki's neck, but he doesn't look bashful, just...he just looks like Tadashi felt, sitting on the stairs. On Saturday night.

‘Never mind,’ Tsukki says, then. ‘See you tomorrow.’

Tadashi's already calling out no, wait before his brain catches up with everything, all at once, and he has to grit his teeth not to make some kind of stupid sound. What if you liked a boy? This is the proudest I've ever been, Akiteru, are you listening to me?

All I've ever done is—

‘Tsukki,’ Tadashi says to his back. Tsukki pulls at the straps of his bag, hitches it higher up on his shoulders than it's supposed to go, then keeps it that way. ‘I don't care about stuff like that. Do you?’

┈

He doesn't. Nothing changes. It doesn't fix the valley that opened up between Tsukki and Akiteru-san that day on the volleyball court— not that it was supposed to— and Tsukki never talks about any of it again.

Then Tadashi is fourteen and bounding past Tsukki's front gate just as Akiteru-san steps out the door. There's a tall boy behind him, long hair in a bun and so many bracelets his arms are hidden. He's terrifying, but then he laughs at Akiteru-san tripping on the doorstep, and he's still laughing as Tadashi ducks away, out of sight. He doesn't know why he does it. The hair? The bracelets? How huge and old and— and— outsider he looks? Just like the big city people Tadashi can always tell apart from how crisp and grey and cold they look when they come here.

Some of it is starting to rub off on Akiteru-san. His clothes, his hair, the way he walks now. The way he still greets Tadashi, with a bigger smile now, even though Tsukki always rolls his eyes. Maybe that's why Tadashi ducked away, because he doesn't know if Akiteru-san would've had that same grin right now, or if he'd be afraid, if he'd say this is my friend or this is my boyfriend, which of them is true.

Having someone be afraid of him is the worst thing he can imagine in the world, so he waits for them to get into the car before coming back up to the gate, and closing it quietly behind him.

┈

Then Tadashi is fifteen, and the world is suddenly bigger than the sequence of footpaths between his house— with his funny, embarrassing, loud parents and shaggy old dog— and Tsukki's, with his sweet mother and Akiteru-san. Suddenly there's Hinata and Kageyama and the ridiculous second-years and the rock-solid third-years, like a preview of what the big wide planet outside the town of his head will be like, if he could just step out for a second. Suddenly there's Yachi, worse than him, ten times better than him, like everyone else around here. Like everyone who gets to stand on the court and cheer off it, while he hangs somewhere in the middle, flailing around for a place that isn't with Tsukki, that isn't away from Tsukki either.

Suddenly, Tsukki realises it too— that the world is bigger than the valley of his head. There's no manic little dog to growl at them with all of his ribcage, but instead there's the endless chatter of cicadas and the unmoving humidity of a Tokyo summer night, the cotton of Tsukki's t-shirt damp in his fists. Tadashi doesn't think he's going to get closer to Tsukki somehow— he makes it happen. His heart is still thundering a mile a minute when he gets back to the gym, and when he downs half his water in one go, he thinks he's going to choke it back up and cry. Not because he's scared of what he did after doing it, but because, sitting slumped against the wall with the bright lights pouring over him, sweaty and exhausted and full of rage, he realises, like the cresting of a wave, that growing up doesn't have to mean growing apart. That shutting his mouth to keep things as they are is cowardice, not caution. That in his own way, he's been playing the same game as Tsukki.

Nothing changes. Tadashi wakes up next week and moans at how bad his freckles got in just a week of Tokyo's merciless sun, and pulls a face at Tsukki for laughing at them, then blushes up to his nose when Yachi says, one day, that they make him look like a model she saw on Instagram the night before. There's something about her that makes him feel like a puppy going on its first walk, like he's one shared lunch away from falling in love, like he badly, badly wants to pick her up and plant a kiss somewhere on her. But there's something else about her, something he can't quite put his finger on, like a fact he's known forever but can't trust because he doesn't remember where he read it.

┈

Then Tadashi is sixteen, and Yachi says, I like girls, like she's trying out a jacket for the first time. Tadashi thinks of course you do, then he thinks, of course she does, then he thinks, of course I do. He doesn't say any of it out loud, and realises that he's thirty seconds late to reacting in a way that won't terrify Yachi, and makes up for it by scrambling forward and pulling her into his arms.

‘Okay,’ he says stupidly into her hair, and she cries, too. ‘Okay. Okay.’

┈

Then Tadashi is seventeen, and the world comes sneaking back in through his door like pollen in spring. It is spring, anything green now an explosion of ten other colours, the evening air cool on his back as he leans dangerously out of Tsukki's bedroom window, showing off his captain's jersey to the seven PM sky. Tsukki is tugging on his own in front of the mirror, turning this way and that, fussy and annoying and happier than he'll care to admit, even now. Tadashi's about to lean back in and give him a compliment that'll make steam come out his ears, but then the door opens, and Akiteru steps in with two glasses of lemonade that he leaves to sweat on Tsukki's table.

There's nothing new about that. Tadashi straightens up and gets back inside the room, but before he can say his thanks, Akiteru's exclaiming.

‘Oh, don't you two look handsome!’ he says, and while the shut up from Tsukki is immediate, there's something about that stupid, ceremonial, boring compliment that makes Tadashi's hands itch. On cue, Akiteru lets go of the headlock he's got Tsukki in, and turns. ‘Tadashi, captain, good God! Stand tall now. Let me see that jersey.’

Tadashi stands tall, and realises that Akiteru is still taller than him, only noticeable up this close. He's close, half-smile on his face slipping off as his eyes sharpen in concentration, moving down from Tadashi's face to his neck. Akiteru straightens his collar, thumbs moving over the coarse fabric, and his hands don't leave. They uncurl, unfurl, and come down on Tadashi's shoulders, heavy like— hands— adjusting the seams so they touch the sharpest points of his bones perfectly, and they don't leave. They run smooth down his chest, then pinch the hem of the jersey where it flutters away from his waist, and tug it down. Tadashi looks down at the way Akiteru's fingers fold over the night-sky swathes, then looks up at his face, focused and pleased and so handsome that Tadashi doesn't know what to do with his eyes anymore. He smells like apples and flowers, and he has Tsukki's nose but not his eyes, and Tadashi wants this moment to stretch all evening.

‘Perfect fit,’ Akiteru declares, then steps back. Tadashi's chest does something tight and hot, and then closes up entirely as he steps forward again, arm raised. His fingers are in Tadashi's hair suddenly, roughly brushing his bangs off his forehead, tugging at one strand.

Akiteru hums, turning over something in his head that Tadashi would rip this jersey to shreds to know.

‘Maybe trim it just a little bit,’ he says, then. ‘It's growing long, no?’

‘Maybe ask before adopting him,’ Tsukki says, and Tadashi— jumps. Ears flaming now, heart in his throat, and he'd completely, completely, completely forgotten that Tsukki's in the room too. If he finds anything strange about the exchange, he doesn't say it; he's too busy dodging another headlock from Akiteru, and Tadashi can only stare at the ridiculous brotherly flurry of it all, Tsukki cackling while Akiteru says something about one insolent brat being enough, and Tadashi thinks he'd be the opposite of an insolent anything, if given the chance. The thought makes him want to scream, just like the drops sliding down the tall glasses on the table, the spring breeze coming in from the open window, the strong straining lines of Akiteru's arms.

┈

He cuts his hair, not because he's easily swayed, but because he can't stop thinking about it: that one moment when he knew that his face, this face, this Tadashi, the image of him, unruly curls and uneven bangs, was the only thing on Akiteru's mind, on the mind of someone wiser, kinder, older . Akiteru. Even if it was only a moment.

┈

Then Tadashi is eighteen, and they're graduating. Hinata's careening off to another continent and Kageyama's already been scouted, and Yachi won't stop talking about how she's going to do it, she's going to get a girlfriend in college, it's going to be amazing, we're all going to be amazing.

They are. Even though Tsukki doesn't know yet what he wants to do, which shore to put his foot on, where to go. Even though Tadashi knows exactly what he wants to do, and that what isn't volleyball. It never was, not in that way, even though he stayed up nights to make sure he was being a good captain and still getting into the college of his dreams.

That night both their families go out for dinner together, and Tadashi has to press his legs as close to his seat as possible to avoid even accidentally touching Akiteru's under the table. It's been a year; he half-lives in this now, just like his bedroom, half his clothes packed in bags and the other half strewn around, waiting for laundry and ironing and a new, stable home. Tadashi half-lives in this, too, whatever it is— one foot in, one foot out, both feet pressed to the bottom of his seat. Across from him Akiteru's in his work clothes, sleeves rolled up, collar askew, eyes closed in mirth as he pokes gentle fun at his mother's choice of dessert. Tadashi looks away, down at the photo Hinata's sent in their group chat of the whirlwind that is his own room, laughs.

Later, on the way to the cars, Akiteru falls into step beside him, and smiles. ‘Does it feel strange, putting volleyball away?’

‘A little,’ Tadashi replies. ‘I'm going to miss the team more than anything else.’

‘You can always play with the Kaji crew,’ Akiteru says, which starts it all over again: Tadashi's chest seizes, breath catching as he imagines what it'd be like, then comes back to the present to bask in the warmth of the offer itself. ‘Man, it would've been fun to play with you!’

The warmth freezes mid-air and falls to the ground. ‘What do you mean?’

Akiteru glances up, then frowns. ‘Hasn't Kei told you? God, that boy never talks. I've been transferred to Osaka.’

And— what did Tadashi expect? That everything would always be the way it was? Hinata's going to Brazil. Kageyama's never going to wear the Karasuno jersey again, none of them are. Yachi's going to find a girlfriend in college and get married before any of them. Tsukki's going to figure it out, because that's what he does.

And Tadashi, who somehow expected to be able to come and go from the Tsukishima household as he pleased even now, is suddenly realising that none of it is going to be the same again. Maybe it's for the best, he scrambles to tell himself, to have everything change all at once so that— so that what? So that what?

‘Tadashi?’

‘I'll miss you,’ Tadashi breathes out. Akiteru's frown softens into something a little surprised, and then he's smiling, reaching up to ruffle Tadashi's hair. The leaps of distance in the meaning of it all are almost comical, so much so that he can't help himself. ‘Won't you miss— everyone?’

‘Of course I will,’ Akiteru says. ‘I'll miss you two brats the most. It's going to be so quiet in my apartment all year 'round.’

It's a stupid, fond exaggeration; Tadashi and Tsukki have never been the kind to make noise. But it gets to him anyway, a lump forming in his throat, eyes stinging in both melancholy and frustration. You two brats. He has no way to phrase what he feels without it sounding ungrateful, without saying don't miss me like that, miss me like this, please. So he doesn't say anything until they've reached Akiteru's car, having left everyone far behind by accident, and there's nothing left to do but say goodnight, and goodbye.

‘I'll miss you,’ Tadashi says again, harder this time, as if that'll make Akiteru understand. It doesn't; Akiteru only smiles again, and pulls Tadashi in with one hand around the back of his neck. He is solid and warm and still taller, and Tadashi tries not to clutch back, because he might never let go.

┈

Tadashi is going on twenty-one years old, and on his way downstairs to sneak a snack from Tsukki's kitchen, when he hears the sound of a car door slamming shut, then the front door opening. In the ten seconds it takes him to make his way to the bottom step— the third one still creaks— his heart has already somersaulted thirty times in his throat. Surely, after all these years of missing each other's summer stays by hours, sometimes—

‘Holy— Tadashi? Is that you? You scared the hell out of me!’

The blue rectangle of light blooming up and out from his phone makes him look a little like an angel. Bags at his feet, hair a mess from his window being rolled down, probably, and behind him an ajar-door sliver of the dark green of the garden, dark blue of the night sky, the bright summer stars.

Tadashi swallows his heart back down, and smiles at Akiteru.

‘Didn't I?’ he says, and reaches forward, around, beyond, to close the door.

ii. summer

There is something about summer up here that there isn't anywhere else in the world. Not that Tadashi would know; he's only ever known the sunlight and garden grass and typhoons of August here, even though every year he comes back, he's a little more different, and so are they all. Sendai isn't far enough to justify it, so Tadashi forces it to, by never coming back all year if he can help it. Only around Christmas and the new year, and even then, he spent it with his college friends last December. It was a year where he had no one to come back to but his parents anyway, with Yachi stuck on campus in Tokyo wrestling deadlines, and Kei in training, and Hinata and Kageyama both abroad. His parents had been understanding about it, waving him off with it's fine, this way we can have some peace and quiet with the Tsukishimas, though his mother did send him sweets in the mail because she's insistent that way.

He's up early today even though he isn't needed at home until the evening when his parents get back from their annual pilgrimage to wherever their college reunion is being held this time. He spares a thought about how that'll be him and his friends starting next year, then shrugs it off in favour of whipping his t-shirt down on Tsukki's head— Tsukki lets out a curse that'd burn through hardwood— before putting it on and heading downstairs. It's barely past six but the sun is up, gentle and apologetic as if it knows it should let everyone sleep a little longer. Tadashi doesn't care; he's barely slept since last night on the stairs, but he isn't tired. It's been the kind of sleepless night he has on Sundays when he has something new in his schedule planned for Monday, impatient to get the day started already, as if he can will the clock into ticking faster through sheer force of excitement.

There's just one difference— that is there, in Sendai, and this is here, now. It's barely past six and Tadashi's sleeping over at his best friend's house like they're still ten, and now he's performed the essential sleepover act of waking up hours before said best friend and not knowing what to do with his time. Even though he knows Tsukki's house like the back of his hand, knows where the eggs are and where the juice is and where Akiteru must be sleeping in his own room a wall away from Tsukki's; even so, Tadashi rolls his eyes at himself for waking up so uselessly early during the only month he doesn't have to.

Eggs, already boiled and peeled by Tsukishima-san, who's already left for work. A tall glass of water to kick the last bits of consciousness in, and he'll come back for rice and salad when Tsukki's awake. Tadashi eats at the counter, one foot rubbing against the other ankle, scrolling through the news without taking any of it in, no other notifications to look at this early in the morning.

By the time he's done his legs are restless and he's registered how cool it actually is in the kitchen, so the sun is warm and welcome on his skin as he steps out into the backyard. The dirt is perfect under his bare feet, soft and ticklish where it sifts between his toes, and the basketball net looks as solid as ever, even though Tadashi, building more muscle as the years go by, wonders every time if it'll be able to handle him. It's an old habit he's had ever since he first shot up at fourteen, long lanky limbs and not a single idea what to do with them except see how far they'd stretch.

Tadashi stretches his arms above him, revelling for a second in how good it feels. Fingers curling in the warm air, wrists turning and clicking, elbows straining, shoulderblades shifting. He feels tall and perfect, and good, yes, for no particular reason. He knows what he'll be doing this time next year, he knows what the fall semester is going to bring, he knows what to expect of this summer. For once there is no growing to be done, not for the moment, and he doesn't have to be worried about stagnating. It's taken him all this time in college to detach himself from the mechanics and metaphors of volleyball, to understand that while the principle of practice remains constant across life, there's no real need to hone an attack, select a skill and sharpen it until his brain goes numb, not all the time. That pauses aren't always landings between two sets of stairs; they can be plateaus of contentment.

Tadashi stretches, then hooks his hands around the rim of the hoop, fists curling tight around the metal, and raises himself up in the air, groaning deep in his throat at the strain, then holding his breath as the net thrums dangerously. Like every summer, he's convinced that this time it's going to come swinging down on him like a cosmic fly-swatter, and he'll have to explain a concussion, a broken collarbone, and a destroyed backyard to Tsukki all while trying to stop him from taking pictures.

But it doesn't. There's something impossibly strong about this stupid basketball net, because he swears it muscles up with him every year, and shakes, but never crumbles. So he puffs his way through chin-ups that he doesn't bother to count, until his arms can't take it anymore and scream at him to stop. He lands on his naked soles, grateful for the ground, and wipes his face on his shoulder—

Akiteru is sitting on the doorstep, still in his own pyjamas, a plate beside him, a bottle beside the plate, and a look on his face that's half-amused, half-confused, and all sleepy. For a second Tadashi tries to imagine himself as seen from that doorstep— limber and golden and completely fucking senseless, doing chin-ups on a basketball hoop in shorts and a t-shirt that he's only just realised that he put on inside-out, as the seam rubs rough on the frail skin under his eyes. At seven in the morning. Imagines himself from the eyes of someone who last saw him when his hair was obediently short, not gathered up into an unruly bunch behind his head, curls escaping and going as low as his shoulders. When he was half-child, half-not, and had never broken a bone. When he wasn't— as full as he is right now, in this exact moment, sweating, sore, and satisfied under the gaze he has imagined into place for Akiteru.

On the plate are two pears and a knife. He's leaning his head against one of the doors, smiling openly at Tadashi now, and clearly he sees everything in its completely fucking senseless glory, because he's only looking at Tadashi's blushing face and not the rest of him, when someone else would've sacrificed at least a minute to his legs. And— Tadashi's different, now, that's it. His hair is long again and his freckles are weapons to disarm the coldest of hearts and get them into bed and on couches and in the backseats of cars, and no, he wasn't killing his arms at seven in the morning because he hoped Akiteru would see, but now that he's here, Tadashi feels— belligerent, at how calm he is, as if after all these years of not meeting, he still sees Tadashi as the idiot fifteen-year-old who'd scream at horror films and keep one eye open while washing his face for a week after.

‘You're up early,’ Akiteru says. His voice is rough and deep, the slumber not worked out of it yet, and it goes straight to Tadashi's spine. The loose fit of his sweatpants, the tight fit of his t-shirt. The pears on the plate, is one for Tadashi? How long has Akiteru been here? Wasn't Tadashi supposed to be over this, the moment he found other people to like who weren't his best friend's older brother?

‘Yeah,’ Tadashi replies, breathless and impolite. ‘Guess I am.’

Akiteru is unfazed. He slides the plate closer to himself and pats the space it freed up, and turns to lean his back against the doorframe as Tadashi settles down. Without a word he picks up the knife and one of the pears, so soft and green and easy to bruise in his grip, and slices through it as if through water. Tadashi stares as a golden drop of juice runs down the length of the cut, staining the wood of the handle dark and wet, then stares as Akiteru does it all over again.

‘Here,’ he says, holding the slice out. Tadashi takes it and puts it in his mouth, and hurries to suck the heel of his hand clean before the juice can slide any further. Akiteru sees him do it, and for a second, Tadashi sees it— the way his eyes fix on the movement, then look away too quick. But it's only clinical; he's only polite. Only huffs a laugh, shakes his head, and goes back to the pear.

But then— he looks up again, knife still carving up the dotted skin, the off-white flesh, and this time, his eyes linger. It's still clinical, Tadashi thinks. Still— objective.

‘I see you grew it out,’ Akiteru says, nodding exactly, exactly towards where the pointed tip of one bang is tickling the bridge of Tadashi's nose. And then again, for all of Tadashi's not-annoyed not-disappointment, who knows how long Akiteru's been sitting right here, watching him? The thought makes him want to scream.

‘I did,’ he says. Then, possessed by that thing that possesses him sometimes: ‘You don't like it?’ 

Akiteru blinks, then laughs, raises both hands, one holding the pear, one holding the knife. ‘All right, I get it, I get it, you're all grown up now. No more unsolicited hair comments.’ 

But Tadashi's different now, and he is all grown up, and he does laugh along, but he doesn't try to hide that he's teasing. It's no longer disrespectful, after all, not really, when he's as tall and large as Akiteru now, and as in control of his hands and life and conversations as he's ever been. So he laughs and ducks his head, then takes great care to be slow in tucking his hair behind his ear. 

‘No, really,’ he says. ‘You don't like it?’ 

When he looks up, Akiteru's looking right at him, smile still on his face but eyes narrowed now. The sun has shifted angles just a little bit, and it is gloriously orange on him, on his narrowed eyes, warmer than anything Tadashi's ever found elsewhere, outside. Akiteru doesn't answer, only slides the knife back into the half-cut he'd made what seems like forever ago, and finishes the downward stroke.

‘Here,’ he says again, holding another slice out. Tadashi takes it and puts it in his mouth.

┈

The next day, they all get coffee together, or almost all of them. Hinata doesn't care about things like time zones; he's beaming through the phone propped up against Yachi's handbag, and has Kageyama, half-asleep in America and irritable, on the same call. Tadashi still isn't used to how Hinata's changed, the way he notices things in conversations that he didn't before, the way he can give Tsukki a run for his money at times. He's doing just that as Tadashi brings their orders over to the table, and Tadashi joins in the laughter at Tsukki's affronted face even though he doesn't know what it's about. Settles down beside Yachi and slides her latte to her while Tsukki sulkily sips on his own. 

‘I can't hear a thing any of you are saying,’ Kageyama tries for the third time, and Tsukki leans forward to mute him. Tadashi almost cries at the visual of Kageyama scowling and waving two middle fingers around on the screen silently, and he's still laughing as he takes the first sip of his frappe, until he spots Tsukki sporting the exact same scowl across the table. 

‘What?’ 

‘Koganegawa,’ Tsukki mutters darkly, which, to be fair, there was a seventy percent chance he'd answer with that. ‘I told him there's no way I'm going back to Sendai for his stupid party next month, so he moved it up here instead.’ 

‘Oh, a party!’ Hinata chirps, which might as well be a stamp on Tsukki's death sentence, because there's no getting out of it now. ‘Oh my God, will Mad Dog be there?’ 

‘He has a name. And yes.’

‘Oh my God, you have to go and call me when you're there. Tsukishima! Please! Take me to your stupid party!’ 

‘No one is going to any parties,’ Tsukki says, but he's letting go of his cup to type something, and Tadashi sends an exaggerated wink Hinata's way, he'll take you to his stupid party. On cue Tsukki groans, then sighs, puts his phone away. ‘Fine.’ He glares at Tadashi and Yachi. ‘You're invited, but don't bring tequila. Apparently Koganegawa's cat loves it.’ 

‘Oh, there's a cat,’ Yachi sighs, relieved. ‘All right, I'm in. Do you know what he likes to eat, Tsukishima-kun?’ 

‘The cat? I don't know, tuna?’ 

‘Koganegawa.’ 

The afternoon flies by. Kageyama eventually falls asleep again, and Yachi teases Hinata's ears off for the look he gets, almost idiotically fond. Tadashi switches to the booth to give his back some rest, and makes the mistake of looking down at Tsukki's phone again. 

There's a text notification from Akiteru, and Tadashi doesn't look longer than that, because the back of his neck is heating up already, the sudden reminder of yesterday morning too much to handle in the middle of this café. It's not like whatever happened— which, nothing did, apart from them eating those pears in silence, followed by Akiteru saying well, I'm going to go shower, as if he needed to excuse himself— is worse than that year Tadashi lived between seventeen and eighteen, when he felt like all he was doing around Tsukki was holding his tongue. Saying I have a crush on your older brother seemed difficult enough with just about anyone in the world, but with the way Tsukki still was back then, it would've been an outright disaster. 

It still would be, probably. Which is why Tadashi had been glad that he never did see Akiteru again after that night in the parking lot, not even fleetingly, no matter how much it stung— the humbling extent to which they were unimportant in each other's lives. It was all for the better, Tadashi with his long hair that he keeps in a ponytail now and roughens up with the sea salt spray Yachi told him to buy back in first year, Tadashi with his volleyball-discipline spilling over into morning runs and workouts, Tadashi, top of his class in university to his own surprise, Tadashi, neither next to Tsukki nor far from him, neither next to home nor far from it. And Akiteru, away. Just away. Far enough, and for long enough, for everything to almost be forgotten, an everything he was never even aware of. 

An everything Tsukki was never aware of, either, and still isn't. Tadashi swallows, his drink sickeningly cold and sweet suddenly, as anxiety twists his stomach. He takes a breath, and looks for a way to quell it, to set an end date to this ordeal in his mind.

‘How long is Akiteru here, by the way?’ 

Tsukki hums, shrugs. ‘They're transferring him back to Sendai so he's working from home until they get the new office building ready, or something.’ 

Tadashi— it doesn't quell the anxiety. It transforms it, into something strangely close to anticipation instead, just as scared, but thrilled, too, suddenly. ‘So…all summer?’ And all autumn, all winter, all spring, in Sendai? Right there?

‘Unfortunately. He's already planning to drag me out on some kind of hike next week. I just want to die.’ 

‘Yeah,’ Tadashi says weakly. ‘I bet you do.’ 

┈

He really did think Yachi was too busy with Hinata on the phone to notice, but as always, he underestimated her. She catches up to him after paying at the counter, and clears her throat pointedly, huffing and tugging at his elbow when he refuses to look down at her. 

‘What was that about?’ she asks, and honestly, there wasn't a single suspicious thing about the question Tadashi asked, so it's ridiculous that she caught on anyway. 

‘Nothing?’ he tries. 

Yachi rolls her eyes, then draws herself up to full height. Holds her hair back in an approximation of a ponytail with one hand, and widens her eyes. 

‘So… all summer?’ It's so uncanny, all nervous and hopeful, that Tadashi has to bite down a hysterical laugh.

He whips his head around to make sure Tsukki's still at the counter, then levels his best glare at Yachi. ‘That is not what I sounded like.’ 

‘You sounded worse. You're lucky Tsukishima-kun wasn't paying attention.’ 

‘Whatever.’ Tadashi looks away. ‘Nothing, I just haven't seen him in years, that's all.’ 

‘And? You haven't seen Ennoshita-san in two years either. He told me he's going to kill you for that, actually.’ 

‘I—’

‘Who's going to kill whom?’ Tsukki looms up like a pillar suddenly, and Tadashi clears his throat, puts on his best neutral face.

‘No one,’ Yachi sings.

‘No murders before Friday.’ Tsukki turns to him and raises his eyebrow. ‘You promised to come help with the books. I'll kill you if you back out.’ 

The café door swings shut heavily behind him, and Tadashi exhales. Only two months to go.

┈

Friday rolls around, but before that, he does go see Ennoshita-san at the clinic, and then Shimada-san, and then Ukai-san. It’s been both too long and not long enough; the sight of the school building does funny things to his throat, and the gym is almost worse. It would’ve helped, maybe, if he was still playing— if this was just a question of missing this particular court, but knowing that he was playing on other ones. But he doesn’t play anymore, not even for leisure, determined to keep that microcosm of time locked up, sweaty and sterile all at once. 

He doesn’t regret it, but there are prices to pay, like this one, of Ukai-san patting the bench next to him and pointing out the current captain, the new libero, the middle blocker who doesn’t listen to anyone but the setter, apparently. Tadashi hums and nods and laughs when he’s supposed to, but Ukai-san sees through it anyway, claps him harshly on the back and sends him on his way. 

‘Come by at the mart later,’ he says. ‘You’re old enough to share a beer with us now. Bring Tsukishima too, I want to pick his brain.’ 

Tadashi can’t shake the nostalgia off on the way home; it’s the same path he used to take every day, after all, only his dog isn’t around to greet him at the gate anymore, and he isn’t in uniform, no bottles with pierced lids sticking out the side of his backpack. It’s at times like these that Tadashi wonders if it would be better or worse to come home more frequently. Would coming every month water down the past-pining, or would it make it worse, so that he’d start living one foot in, one foot out again? He’s sick of doing things halfway; he’s only just managed to stop. 

In the kitchen he shuffles up behind his mother and hides his face in her shoulder, rocking her left and right to the eighties’ crooner she has playing on the speaker he got her last year, while she hums and puts her spatula aside, brings a hand up to pat the crown of his head. 

‘Everything okay?’ she asks. Tadashi shrugs, takes her wrists, makes her arms do a little wiggle. ‘We could order in for dinner if you want. That Korean place you like does deliveries now.’ 

‘What were you cooking?’ 

‘Just soup. Your father can have it.’ 

‘A whole pot of soup just for him?’ 

‘Don’t underestimate that man.’ She laughs as he turns her around and starts dancing properly. Her dark hair is curling from the steam, cheeks red, eyes merry as always. He really should come home more often. ‘Are you sure everything’s fine? Did going to Karasuno make you feel funny?’ 

Tadashi shrugs again, and tries to actually think about it. ‘You’ve lived here for twenty years, right?’ 

‘We moved just before you were born, yes. Remember those photos of your father that he always brings out? The ones on the bike in the hills up north? That’s where we were before.’ 

The song changes; he knows this one, tries to sing along a little, then stops when he gets the lyrics wrong. He spins his mother around, then brings her back in. Her apron is dark blue, and it’s been the same ever since he can remember. It’s a wonder it’s still in one piece, unless she changes it every year without telling him. 

‘And...nothing changed, really, in those twenty years, right?’ 

‘Well,’ she grins, ‘the Korean place does deliveries now.’

‘Mom!’ 

‘Fine, fine. No, nothing’s really changed, except you’re a beanpole now and want to dress like a punk, and my feet get all swollen in the evenings.’ 

Tadashi laughs, his question still unanswered. Or rather, he thinks, it wasn’t the right question to ask, not really. He thinks back to it all— Monday at the café with Tsukki and Yachi, Hinata and Kageyama an ocean away from them but still the same, but still different. Would they ever want to come back to live here? Could they, even if they wanted to? Will Tsukki ever come back to his house, or will he keep moving little bits of his life out— the books this evening, now that his place in Sendai is big enough for them, and then everything else— until his room is bare? Easing his mother into it the way Tadashi didn’t bother to? 

‘Do you think,’ Tadashi begins, then swallows. ‘What if— there was something big that changed about home, after all these years of everything being the same— would that mean it’s not home anymore?’

She frowns. ‘Does a building stop being itself because you renovated it?’ 

‘But if you switched up all the rooms and pillars and—‘ 

‘And? You’ll relearn it.’ She smiles. ‘What’s the point of keeping something just the way it is, if it doesn't feel like home anymore?’ 

In the brief silence between two songs, Tadashi hears the soup bubbling away, and decides that he’s thinking too much about something that doesn’t deserve his time. And now he’s gone and bothered his mother with it, and while she tries almost too hard to be his cool, understanding best friend on most days, he can see the controlled curiosity in her eyes, just like he did in Yachi’s, and he doesn’t even have anything interesting enough to satisfy that curiosity. So what is he even talking about?

‘Tadashi.’ She reaches up to tug at his cheek. ‘Don’t make home into a place, or even a person, no matter what all those movies tell you. You'll have time for that later. Right now, home is you. When you’re fine with who you are, you can feel at home anywhere in the world. That’s the point. And you are always yourself, no matter how many times you renovate the building. It’s always you. You couldn't stop being yourself even if you wanted to.

‘Now let go of me,’ she says. ‘The soup is burning.’ 

┈

The thing about Tsukki is that he’s impossible to help. When Tadashi volunteered to “help” with the books, he knew full well that he’d be sitting cross-legged on the bed and texting Nakamura from his mandatory English eight AM, and occasionally handing Tsukki random things like dish towels and scissors. To say Tsukki’s organised is an understatement; he’s idiosyncratic, and won’t let anyone else touch his system. The only reason he wants Tadashi around, he knows, is so that the process of packing up feels less lonely, and so that he can remember that leaving his town doesn’t have to mean leaving his people. Yes, he can talk all he wants about how glad he is that his professional pay is letting him move out of his shitty student dorms, but Tadashi can hear the underlying panic.

So he sits cross-legged on the bed and sends Nakamura a picture of what looks like some sort of Grey’s Anatomy of mythical creatures, before placing it carefully back on its pile. Tsukki’s hunched over a box on the floor, knees holding all the cardboard flaps in place as he tapes it shut. Tadashi pulls a face at the sticky sound of the tape stretching, then flattens himself on the bed, arms and head hanging over the edge. Spots a stray hair tie on the floor and picks it up with two fingers, then stretches it back, releases it.

‘Ow, you piece of shit,’ Tsukki hisses. There’s already a red welt rising on his cheek. Tadashi cackles and turns over; the room slips upside-down. ‘You aren’t even pretending to help.’

‘Don’t pretend you want my help.’

‘You could label the boxes. They’re by genre.’

‘You really want me to label your boxes aliens, dinosaurs, and aliens but they’re dinosaurs?’

That gets him a laugh, even though Tsukki’s quick to swallow it, rolling his eyes instead. Tadashi takes it as his cue to return to what he was doing, and only looks up from his screen next when Tsukishima-san calls from downstairs, and Tsukki leaves with a pained groan. Outside the sun is setting; she must’ve called for help with dinner. Tadashi should help too—

A phone goes off, and Tadashi jumps before realising it’s not his own; it’s not even in the room. The ring is gentle and muffled— a wall away. Next door.

Tadashi rolls over, faces, sideways, Tsukki’s half-empty bookshelf. Slim rectangles upon rectangles of all sizes and colours, the occasional bookmark sticking out of one of them. To Tadashi’s left, a wall away, loud laughter. He wonders who Akiteru’s talking to, to laugh that loud. Despite himself he feels that— streak of heat creep up on him again. Should he be annoyed that Akiteru didn’t bother to greet him, or proud that they’re close enough to skip all that? Should he have gone to greet Akiteru instead? Suddenly he doesn’t remember how he’s been acting all these years. Which one has changed, the house or him?

He turns again, stares at the ceiling, where the difference in the paint from when they’d stuck on glow-in-the-dark stars ten years ago, hasn’t faded. It’s ridiculous, actually, because he remembers being in this room when he was ten, when Akiteru was right next door just like this, like a gem in the neighbouring dark all along, and it meant nothing to Tadashi. It isn’t like he hasn’t heard the hidden motion of Akiteru before, his life beyond the wall. Nothing about this is new, just—

If he completes the thought, the last of it is lost to the sound of Akiteru’s door opening, and right after, Tsukki’s.

‘Kei, Saeko wants to know—’ Akiteru starts, then stops. Tsukki isn’t here, only Tadashi, falling over himself to straighten up on the bed. ‘Oh, Tadashi. I didn’t know you were here.’

Well— he hadn’t considered that. Sheepishly forgives Akiteru in his head, and smiles.

‘What does Saeko nee-san want?’

┈

She wants to know if they'd like to grab dinner and drinks next week, and of course, Tadashi's invited too. But Akiteru doesn't leave after relaying that information. Instead he looks at the boxes on the floor and the books that are still on the shelf, and shakes his head.

‘I just know he stuffed those boxes with newspapers so that he wouldn't have to mix up his genres,’ he says, and Tadashi snorts. ‘He did, didn't he? All of this would've easily fit into two boxes, and how many are here? Four? Five?’

‘Hey,’ Tadashi says, shifting as Akiteru comes to perch on the bed, ‘it's important to distinguish between aliens and alien dinosaurs, you know?’

At that, Akiteru looks at him seriously, pursing his lips, and Tadashi feels a tiny alarm bell go off in his head. That was a stupid joke; he knows exactly where Tsukki gets his love of reading and cryptids from, and while it's one thing to tease him about it, it's another to mock Akiteru. Really, has Tadashi accidentally swapped out his brain for someone else's?

Then Akiteru says, lowly: ‘It's not alien dinosaurs. It's dinosaur aliens. For shame, Tadashi.’

Tadashi stares at him, bewildered beyond words, and then lets out a laugh so loud he has to clap his hand over his mouth, before letting it drop again, and leaning back. It's not graceful at all, but he's so taken aback, and Akiteru's trying so hard to keep a straight face but the corners of his lips are trembling, and then he's laughing too, all the way up to his eyes. He holds a hand in the air and Tadashi takes a second to realise he's asking for a high-five, and gives it to him just as Tsukki shoulders his way back into the room, armed with what looks like four hundred magazines.

‘What's so funny?’ he asks. ‘Actually, never mind. I'm sure it's not funny enough.’

‘Absolutely is,’ Akiteru chimes, ‘as are all jokes at your expense, dear brother.’

Tsukki narrows his eyes at him, letting the magazines drop to the floor with a loud, flat thwack. ‘What's with you? I'll tell mom who really broke the shower, don't think I won't.’

‘Hey, now, no need to bring out the big guns, I was just leaving.’

But he doesn't. Leave, that is. Instead he extends the dinner invite to Tsukki, then pulls both legs up on the bed too, and spends no less than the next hour thoroughly, and sincerely, explaining the difference between dinosaur aliens and alien dinosaurs to Tadashi, before moving on to why Call of Cthulhu is the superior action survival game because it positions the players against the world instead of letting them spend too much time examining inner moral conflicts, before moving onto what it means for Western society that vampires have suddenly been in vogue in the past fifteen years. Tsukki chips in every once in a while to disagree— there was nothing like the eighties and nineties for vampires out West, weren't you talking about VTM just thirty seconds ago— but mostly works on his books, until, before Tadashi knows it, he's taping up the last box.

‘Finally,’ he says. ‘I'm going to take a fucking shower. Dinner's in half an hour so try not to kill yourselves laughing at my expense until then.’

They don't, but something shifts when he leaves, clicks the door shut behind him. The room is almost entirely bare now, only the bed and Tsukki's desk, and it does feel weird and sad to imagine sleeping in here with these boxes pressed to the wall. Ominous, somehow, stressful. He could've waited until the last week of September to pack them, but Tadashi suspects he didn't want to run the risk of getting cold feet before then. Tsukki has strange priorities when it comes to discomfort.

‘It feels strange, doesn't it?’ Akiteru asks, and Tadashi nods. ‘It'll be all right. He'll love his new place just as much in no time. The more you move the easier it gets.’

‘Are you going to miss Osaka? It's been so many years.’

Akiteru hums, leans back against the pillows. ‘I will, but it'll fade away soon enough. When I leave a place behind, it's like— everything in it goes sepia. Like an old photograph. I can love it all I want, but it's static to me now. No matter how much it changes, it'll always be the Osaka it was when I lived there.’

That— makes such a stunning amount of sense that Tadashi feels something urgent and silly bubble up in his throat. That's it, he thinks frantically. This town is going sepia, everyone in it moving in stop-motion, everyone except Tadashi and Tsukki and Yachi, everyone except Akiteru, who's— a detail in an old photograph that Tadashi never noticed, suddenly come to life.

He leans forward, earnest, then bites his tongue. What is he supposed to say?

‘I—’ He clears his throat. ‘I think having— people that move forward with you helps. It's like— Tsukki knows he's going to see me in Sendai. You, too.’

‘Oh, he's going to be seeing so much more of me than he wants,’ Akiteru laughs. ‘But you're right. It does help, whether it's a friend or even a colleague. Or a partner, of course.’

‘Do you?’ It slips out before his brain has even thought it, and Tadashi curses himself. ‘Have one— I mean— if I—’

Akiteru laughs again, softer this time, nicer. ‘It's fine. But no, I don't. No one has time for a boring old man like me.’

And— Akiteru is the farthest thing from boring. He isn't outrageous the way Hinata and Kageyama are, and no, he isn't inaccessible the way Tsukki used to be, but boring? With his heated opinions on the mythos of vampires and werewolves and how literature can or cannot defang both— with the way he talks warmly about every person he knows, as if he's never met a cruel soul in his life? With his cold-blooded capacity of lying in everyone's faces for three years straight, out of adolescent pride and love and fear? Boring, Tadashi thinks, is not a word he'd choose to describe Akiteru.

‘You're not a boring old man,’ he chooses to say. ‘And it's their loss.’

Akiteru looks up, lips parted, pink-washed breath of motion in a sepia picture. It feels like the eight seconds after the referee's whistle; it feels like the rustle of the last question paper being distributed in the amphitheatre, before the supervisor motions for them to turn their copies over and start. That is to say, Tadashi's entire world holds its breath, waiting to see what he'll do next.

He gins. ‘From one lean manager to another, I'm sure they'd overlook the dinosaur aliens if they saw your paycheque.’

It's Akiteru's turn to be shocked, then hysterical. Tadashi dodges the pillow that comes flying at him, but doesn't anticipate Akiteru crawling across the bed to— well, to do whatever he was planning to before he lost his balance, because now he's falling on the mattress with a hand on Tadashi's knee, and groaning dramatically as Tadashi laughs harder, ignoring how the touch sends pins and needles streaming over his skin— until suddenly it's impossible to ignore, because there's more of it. Because Akiteru is straightening up and going straight for— Tadashi doesn't know what, because his own hands come up, crossed in defence like he's in an action film, laugh higher now, more flammable.

Because now Akiteru's grabbing his wrists and trying to undo the cross they're in, mock-growling something about disrespectful— brats— and he is strong. And Tadashi isn't weak, but he wants to be, for one single second, small.

He resists. The urge, the unreasonable heaviness of Akiteru's grip, the never-ending whistle-rustle-breath in his head.

‘I mean it,’ he says.

Akiteru says nothing, only looks at him, the false fight fading from his face, replaced with something that looks like what am I doing? His hands loosen, but don't drop.

The eight seconds are back, and Tadashi's not doing it halfway this time.

‘I mean it,’ he says again, through the criss-cross of their bare arms, heart pounding in his ears. He isn't saying it to make trouble. ‘They don't know what they're missing out on.’ He's saying it because he does mean it. ‘Not— that I do, either.’ Or something.

Akiteru doesn't let go of his wrists like in the movies, as if he's been burnt, or he's suddenly realised how close they are. Instead he lowers Tadashi's arms and only uncurls his fingers once they're touching the bed, before easing out of the pink spell that had surrounded them for eight seconds. And then, because he is Akiteru, warm and bright and awkward, he clears his throat, and claps his hands.

‘Dinner!’ he announces, as if he's just discovered gravity. He looks so out of sorts that it puts Tadashi right back to ease, even something a little sweeter, more knowing, almost. He knows this Akiteru, the one Tsukki and Tsukishima-san pick on incessantly, the one whose ears go red when Tadashi's father makes some terrible joke about bachelorhood.

Yes, that's the one, so Tadashi only watches, chewing on the inside of his cheek, as Akiteru rambles, something about setting the table and mushroom soup, as he steps out of the door with a well, see you downstairs, clicks it shut.

Only then does he slump. Blows out a loud breath, then tunes into the part of his brain that has been screaming what the fuck are you doing for the past five minutes. Hears the door open again and looks up, tries to put on a face that won't make Tsukki suspicious—

‘All right.’ Akiteru's voice is quiet as he steps back in. Click. ‘I won't be able to eat unless you explain.’

Tadashi takes another deep breath. Lets it out. ‘I won't be able to eat either way.’

At that, Akiteru sighs, smiles, shakes his head. The tension doesn't bleed out of him entirely; just enough.

‘Come on downstairs,’ he says. Then: ‘And don't walk home after dinner. I'll drive you.’

┈

The sequence of footpaths that makes up the world between the Tsukishima and Yamaguchi households takes fourteen minutes to cross on foot. In a car, it could be four or forty, depending on how long the most implausible conversation of Tadashi’s little life will take.

It takes seven. As it turns out, Akiteru can either have implausible conversations or drive, not both, so Tadashi’s summer doesn’t change to the sound of the wheels and the soft, glitchy voice of some late night radio jockey. Instead, he runs his thumb over the smooth strap of the seatbelt until he can’t feel it anymore, and tries not to stare too hard at the way the streetlights bring out these— parings of unlikely colour in Akiteru’s eyes, turning the edges of his irises thin like blown glass. 

It’s only once they’re outside Tadashi’s house— a light still on in the kitchen; at least one of his parents is awake— that he turns the key, then turns off the radio, then turns to Tadashi. In the sudden night-orange quiet, he looks older and younger all at once, skin pale and clear, the bridge of his nose so perfect. Tadashi wonders how he had managed to forget this face these past three years, but mostly he wonders how he’s supposed to forget it again. 

There’s nothing as immune to time as a parked car. Tadashi’s always felt it; when he was a child, refusing to accompany his parents to rest stops on highways, wanting to lie in the backseat and play on his Nintendo instead; at Karasuno, settling in the team bus at four in the morning, sleepy-nauseous and unbearably attached to the sight of his teammates shuffling around and settling in; at college, of course, at the tail end of a party, drunk, half-asleep. 

Tadashi isn’t drunk or half-asleep. He has never been more sober or awake, so much so that he’s almost ready to start talking unprompted. If there’s one thing that years of keeping his thoughts to himself and agonising over which words to use has taught him, it’s that he just has to open his mouth. The rest will figure itself out, probably— and if it doesn’t, no one is going to eat him alive. (There are only so many Tsukkis in the world.)

‘I’m sorry,’ he starts, though he isn’t. ‘I must not be very subtle, if you caught me from just one thing I said.’ 

Akiteru clears his throat. ‘So you really do think I’m that oblivious.’ 

‘I—‘ 

‘Tadashi.’ He turns fully, unbuckles his seatbelt. Tadashi watches it pull back into place for a beat too long, then focuses. ‘I’ve known since you were seventeen.’ 

Tadashi blinks, then opens his mouth, then closes it again. Then he blinks some more just to make sure that this isn’t a nightmare his overthinking brain has cooked up since that morning last week. It isn’t. He’s sitting in Akiteru’s timeless parked car, and Akiteru has been aware of his feelings for four entire years. 

‘I just figured you’d forget all about it at college,’ he says, on cue, smiles. ‘This isn’t going to sound nice, but I didn’t give it too much thought, back then. You were so young—’

‘That is nice,’ Tadashi cuts in, finally recovered. ‘Just say you’ve seen me in braces and can never forget it, it’s fine.’ 

Akiteru laughs. It’s so low and sweet, and Tadashi could never, ever grudge him anything. 

‘You were young,’ he says again, eyebrows raised. ‘Young enough that you couldn’t even make it to the what if part of my mind yet. You were just out of the question.’ 

Tadashi doesn’t know whether to feel sorry for himself, or think about how Akiteru keeps saying were, so he does a bit of both and puts a hand to his chest, mimes being wounded. ‘I get it, you know? You don’t have to rub in how much you don’t want me. It’s not like I was going to ask you out.’ 

‘Oh?’ Akiteru leans back, crosses his arms. He’s clearly enjoying this now, which is so unexpectedly mean of him that it makes Tadashi’s toes curl. ‘What were you going to do, then? Because the only reason I asked you to explain is that I thought you were about to.’ 

The night is a blessing; his blush isn’t visible. And before he can embarrass himself verbally, his brain catches onto something else.

‘So you wanted to see me do it?’ he says, a little too loud in the excitement of having a retort. ‘Is that why you came back? How cruel.’ 

Checkmate. He sees the way the smile freezes on Akiteru’s lips while he tries to come up with something to say to that, sees it turn a little sharper when he realises he can’t. He’s still enjoying this, and now, so is Tadashi. 

‘I wasn’t sure you still— felt that way,’ Akiteru concedes, finally. ‘And now I’m even less sure, so if you want, you can go home and we’ll pretend this never happened.’ 

‘And if I don’t?’ 

‘If you don’t—?’ 

‘If I don’t want to go home and pretend this never happened,’ Tadashi says. He still hasn’t unbuckled his own seatbelt, and he’s close enough to the dashboard to be able to fold his legs against it. Focuses on the scar he got when he opened his left knee on the metal corner of a bench, the day they discovered that the first-year wing spiker was one of those people who faint at the sight of blood. 

He doesn’t look up; doesn’t need to, to know that Akiteru’s looking at him with those open, light eyes. They are immune to time, but still, Tadashi is trying to buy more of it. 

‘Well, you go home anyway,’ Akiteru says, straightening up. ‘And you sleep a full eight hours, and tomorrow is a new day.’ 

None of that means a single thing. Tadashi turns to stare at Akiteru, who’s already snapping his seatbelt back in. When it’s in place, he looks up, and pointedly raises his eyebrows, as if to say go on, get out. 

‘We’ll talk tomorrow morning, Tadashi,’ he says. Smiles. ‘When we’re both a little more sure. We’ve got all summer.’ 

And all summer’s not enough, Tadashi wants to say, but he has an annoying, embarrassing awareness that Akiteru is right about this, and he’s bullishly determined to demonstrate just how much he’s grown up. So he doesn’t say anything, gets out, compliant and civil, and makes his way to the gate.

He hears the sound of a window rolling down, then Akiteru calling out to him. Turns around, heart thudding despite himself, and goes back to the car. In his black t-shirt with one arm stretched, hand on the wheel, Akiteru looks like a summer dream, and when he smiles up at Tadashi, he feels like one, too. 

‘Tea or coffee?’ he asks. Tomorrow morning. Tadashi realises, suddenly, that he said when we’re both a little more sure, as if it was an inevitability. 

‘Chocolate milk,’ he replies, and Akiteru bursts out laughing. ‘Cold.’

When he gets inside, he leans back against the front door for a second, staring down at his shoes, before pressing a hand to his mouth to feel his smile against his fingers. When he looks up he squeaks; his father is leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen in those ugly panda pyjamas of his, calmly and shamelessly eating chicken from a takeout box even though it's past midnight. He is also looking right at Tadashi.

‘It's nothing,’ Tadashi says. 

He shrugs. ‘I didn't ask, kid.’

┈

There is a parking place just low enough in the backhills for it to be safe, just high enough for it to be private. Tadashi’s been hearing about it since he was in school; first from his fellow thirteen-year olds who were green with jealousy over their older siblings who’d steal cars and bikes to picnic up there, then from Ukai-san and Shimada-san, of all people, who said it had been a favourite spot of theirs when they were younger too, as if going there in the middle of the night was some sort of rite of passage for all the teenagers of this town. 

It’s Tadashi’s first time here, and it’s not the middle of the night, but the summer morning is a startlingly constant shade of rich, rich blue, the only thing breaking the sky’s azure monotony the clouds, so white, so opaque, so still, that Tadashi could almost reach out and grab them. Under them lies the homely sprawl of the town, both bigger and smaller than he thought it to be, its lack of traffic and high-rises so obvious when it’s lain out like this.

This early in the morning it’s almost cold, but he follows Akiteru out of the car anyway, holding onto the pack of chocolate milk he’d been handed (and accepted, both surprised and not) when he first got in. The hood is still warm when he leans against it. 

‘I’ve never been here,’ he says. ‘We spoke about coming once, but no one had learned to drive yet.’

Akiteru snorts, shakes his head. ‘Why am I not surprised?’ He takes a sip from the bamboo cup in his hands, and Tadashi wonders which it is, tea or coffee. ‘I’ve never been here in the morning, either.’ 

‘I wouldn’t have thought you’re the type,’ Tadashi braves. ‘Sneaking out to parties and dates.’ 

‘Oh, believe me, there weren’t any dates.’ 

‘Not even one?’ 

Akiteru turns to raise his eyebrow in reprimand, but he’s smiling, too, and while there’s a part of Tadashi that wants to go back inside the car and hide, there’s another part feeling the morning breeze on itself and saying this is as far as you’ve ever gotten, loverboy. He listens to that part, and raises an eyebrow back.

‘Not even one,’ Akiteru replies. ‘You, by the way, are very loud.’ 

‘I’ve been told that, yes.’ 

A shake of the head again, and Akiteru turns away, carefully sets his cup on the hood. He doesn’t say anything for a long while, and Tadashi, to give his body something to do, pierces the foil of his pack with the straw, and tries to drink as slowly as possible. He isn’t going to talk unprompted again, because he has nothing new to say, really, only a clumsy pile of confessions and questions and hopes that he’ll rearrange according to whatever Akiteru wants to hear. He isn’t silly; he knows there isn’t a chance Akiteru actually feels the same way— he isn’t even sure what he feels himself; only knows that whatever it is, it’s more than what Akiteru would. 

So when Akiteru takes a deep breath, Tadashi’s prepared to hear everything from I’m going back to Osaka, staying here isn’t a good idea to kiddo, you really thought to maybe later, when you’ve graduated, though that last one is wishful thinking. 

‘Hypothetically,’ Akiteru says, which is the perfect word to begin with. ‘If I hadn’t interrupted you last night, in the room. Where did you think that discussion was going to go?’

Tadashi lowers the pack, thinks of saying something sly like first of all, I was going to win the fight, but he recognises a serious moment when he sees one, and refrains. 

‘Nowhere,’ he says, honestly. ‘I just— wanted you to know, I guess.’

‘And now that I know?’ 

And now that he knows? Well, he could do anything he wants, anything at all. He holds all of Tadashi’s summer in his fists, the perverse potential of kindness or cruelty. He could understand and be quiet, or he could understand and crush Tadashi. Could, could, could. 

‘Hypothetically,’ Tadashi says right back, ‘I would ask what you’re thinking. Knowing that the out-of-the-question kid is still a little stupid for you.’ 

‘Just a little?’ There it is, that little crooked smile from last night, the checkmated one, turned right on its head at Tadashi. ‘Not too much, then?’ 

Only then does he realise, cold like the slide of the stupid chocolate milk down his throat, that— the smile, the drive, the bamboo cup— it’s its own sort of teasing. That potential doesn’t exist in two extremes; it’s actually this, the could, could, could rush of hypotheticals, a moment where nothing has happened, and so, everything can. It covers him with a refreshing chill so sharp he can feel it climb up his skin in a single flat line, like lowering himself into a pool or a lake, bit by freezing bit. 

‘Enough to last all summer, if you’re asking,’ he says. ‘I’ve been stocking up on it.’ 

Checkmate. The smile turns into an incredulous, whispered laugh, and Akiteru lowers his head for a second, closes his eyes. When he opens them back up, they’re as clear and gorgeous as Tadashi has always remembered them being. 

‘Hypothetically,’ he says, ‘if we were to set up— parameters, would summer be the first one?’ 

Hypothetically, he is asking, does it end with the summer? Hypothetically, is Tadashi going to be a pain in his neck through fall and winter and spring, again? Hypothetically, then, would this be physical and provisional? 

It could. It sounds like a dream that can’t be one, by definition, because of how perfect it is. How— powerful it feels to imagine things and speak them out loud. Tadashi’s never understood the phrase drunk on possibility as much as he does now. 

‘Summer’s only so long,’ he says. ‘If we forget how short it is, we’ll never get around to the other parameters. Deadlines are good, right? Hypothetically.’ 

‘Hypothetically,’ Akiteru agrees. The word is beginning to lose meaning. ‘Summer, then.’ 

‘Summer.’ That word is beginning to lose meaning, too, so Tadashi takes it as a cue to let the conversation be. Summer’s only so long, but it is long. If he wakes up at eight every day, they’ll have all the time in the world. Draw up maps, rules, a fucking waiver. Here is fine, there is better. Be quiet. It makes him shudder even though the sun is warming him up now, and he finishes his drink to forget about it. 

But then, when they’re already on the way back down, the only ones on the winding road, he realises something. 

‘You never answered me,’ he says, turning to Akiteru, the seatbelt pressing into his throat. 

‘Hmm?’

‘About what you’re thinking— about— if—‘ He trails off, realises that the question’s already been answered. That they would’ve have set up this first parameter if he hadn’t made it to what if in Akiteru’s mind. He feels silly and giddy both at once, and mortified of what Akiteru must be thinking of him right now, acting so oblivious, the tables turned. 

And Akiteru does laugh at him, but it’s soft and silent, and he doesn’t turn his eyes away from the road. But after a second, he takes one hand off the wheel, stretches the arm sideways. 

Before Tadashi knows it, Akiteru’s knuckles are brushing his cheekbone as two fingers tug at a lock of his hair. 

‘I do like it,’ he answers, ten days late. Then his hand is gone, and Tadashi’s ears are ringing, and their sleepy sepia town is pulling back into view.

┈

A week later, Ukai-san doesn’t let them pay for those beers they have with him, though they insist. Especially Yachi, who wants to apologise for traumatising him with her drinking prowess. Tadashi makes a mental note to invite her to the famous dinner with Saeko nee-san that keeps getting postponed for inane reasons, and forgets about it as soon as he makes the note.

That night they end up on Tsukki’s couch with more shrimp crackers than is recommended or legal, some critically acclaimed horror film scaring the living daylights out of them. Yachi’s long since started crying tears of terror, nibbling away at the cracker in her hand while Tsukki, having found nothing mock-worthy in the movie, has been scrolling on his phone for an hour to spare his ego, trying not to look at the screen directly. Tadashi’s hugging a cushion to his chest, leaning forward and squinting as if spotting some horrific detail ahead of time will spare him when the scare hits, and swallows nervously as the music mounts.

Suddenly there’s a touch on the back of his head, and a voice from right behind them, at one in the morning.

‘What are you all—’

There’s no way around it. All three of them shriek, Tadashi the hardest, trying to swat away whatever the hell landed on his hair just now, before realising it’s a hand, and screaming harder. But the hand goes lower, splays against his collarbone.

‘It’s me, you idiots! You'll wake mom!’

Only then does Tadashi turn around, and realise that it really is Akiteru, wide-eyed and as startled as them, and in an old, threadbare Okinawa aquarium t-shirt. For a second Tadashi’s completely smitten, then he realises that it was Akiteru who touched his hair and Akiteru whose hand was on his chest, gone now that Tsukki’s turned on the lights, and Akiteru who just saw him scream his throat out at the age of twenty-one.

He wants the ground to swallow him whole, but Tsukki beats him to it.

‘Nii-san, fuck,’ he says. ‘You just murdered Yachi! Look at her!’

But Yachi’s laughing, hysterically relieved, tears still on her face. Akiteru glares right back at Tsukki, and then Tadashi’s laughing too, relaxing into the couch. He feels so incredibly young, and not in the overarching, hopeful, epiphanic way— he just feels young, literally, realising how lucky he is that has nothing better to do with his time than watch horror films crowded up on the couch.

It’s armed with that luck that he sneaks upstairs later, knocks on Akiteru’s door, knowing that there’s no way he’d have gone to sleep, knowing Tadashi is here. It’s another one of the parameters that are rapidly falling into place on their own, like how they’ve already been to that secret morning spot thrice, each time to do nothing but drink sweet things and talk about their lives. Like how Tadashi never tells Akiteru when he’s going to be over, because the surprise of spotting him is worth the disappointment of him not always being home, and maybe because he doesn't want to know, yet, if Akiteru would ever cancel plans for him. 

Akiteru isn’t asleep. He’s working on a spreadsheet with way too many colours, and he has reading glasses on, a weakness Tadashi could’ve gone without discovering. He looks in his element, even more than he used to over a decade ago when he was captain of his team, but Tadashi dismisses that comparison as quick as it comes. It’s been too many years to still be thinking about volleyball as an absolute, so many years since he even saw Akiteru play with the Wild Dogs. It was never about volleyball between them, after all, though he doesn't know what it was— is— about.

‘Yes?’ 

‘You scared me back there,’ Tadashi says. ‘Now I can’t walk home alone.’

‘You,’Akiteru tells him, ‘are very difficult.’

But he folds his laptop shut and puts it aside as if saying no isn’t an option, and it’s armed with that thrill that Tadashi makes his way back downstairs, flouncing, almost, insolent grin in place. He has eight things he wants to talk about. The drive is going to take thirty-five minutes.

┈

August, which always seems to crawl at an unbearably slow pace, trying to wade through the humid heat of impending rain and stopping short every once in a while to marvel, disgusted, at the sweat rolling down its back— August leaps. Somersaults. Charges.

The time Tadashi used to spend lazing around in his room— passively “bettering” himself by listening to podcasts in English and watching videos of recipes he’d never have the patience to try in his shitty little student kitchen— he spends doing everything but lying down, now. One morning he ties his hair high and out of the way, and marches downstairs to inform his mother that they should sort out the ancient DVD cabinet under the flatscreen that they haven’t touched in five years. A week later he attempts to help his father replant something in the garden, and is promptly dismissed all the way to the gate, where he squats and scrolls through his Instagram feed until he can’t feel his legs anymore.

‘Why are you being a pain in my neck?’ his father asks him later, when they’re gulping down bitter grapefruit juice in the kitchen, sweaty, happy-tired, and a little gobsmacked by how hot and motionless the afternoon is. ‘Please do more irresponsible things with your youth.’

Tadashi chokes a little on his swallow, and for a wild second, considers confessing just how irresponsible he’s being with his youth. Except— he isn’t; this is the best, most active summer he’s had in years, as if he’s a tourist in his own town and determined to enjoy every last minute of it while he’s here. As if a part of him knows that if he leaves for even a day, it won’t be the same when he comes back, as if the only thing keeping it from losing all of its colour is the tireless love he breathes into it every morning. Yes, Tadashi thinks, there’s something almost urgent about it. As if he wants to squeeze ten years of growing up into two months, do everything now, before the holidays end and the real world opens up for business again. But— as he’s discovering— no amount of enthusiasm can make up for years of practice, of habit. Maybe he could’ve actually helped replant the garden if he’d been doing it every year; maybe, if he had paid more attention before, he could’ve been closer to Akiteru already.

Because August, running, rolling, rising, is also unbearable. Because as much as he’d like to be, Tadashi isn’t being irresponsible. Akiteru won’t let him, even though he’s the one who asked for this, between them, to be contained in the shimmery yellow gauze that is summer. August is flying past them, a small part of Tadashi’s brain counting down the days to the end of September already, but it feels like he’s the only one aware of the days going by. Akiteru— the way he leans in when they cross in the hallway; the way he crowds in close, arm on the back of the passenger seat, when he’s backing up the car in a particularly tight spot; the way he bends over the back of the couch to ask what they’re watching, and never leaves before pulling Tadashi’s hair a little loose— is almost treating summer as some sort of burning blue infinity.

And— Tadashi isn’t completely unaware. He senses, almost, that he’s being kept at arm’s length, with both the words and the touches, but he doesn’t know if he should take offence at it, or be proud of how difficult it seems to be for Akiteru, too. Almost as if there is some sort of secret joy to watching Tadashi from just far enough, that would be crushed the moment they touch. It isn’t as if Tadashi doesn’t feel it himself, the secret, glowing thing of it all, how it must be to have a tattoo no one knows about under your clothes, gorgeous and deliberate and impossible to wash off.

Akiteru is impossible to wash off. He lingers on the edges of everything, everything. When Tadashi and Tsukki take a Saturday morning to go train the kids at Karasuno, Tsukki in the thick of it while Tadashi mostly speaks to the captain about holding his chaotic team together— it’s hereditary, then— he thinks of Akiteru on the sidelines of this same gymnasium, making up stories to tell his little brother later. Under the spray of the shower he closes his eyes and wills it into a thunderstorm, heavy and seeping into every inch of his skin, what he imagines— it to be like. (When he sorts out the DVD’s with his mother, he stops before each film and wonders which ones Akiteru would hate, hates, maybe, without Tadashi knowing.)

Tadashi, then, is burning from the inside out— he wants to know Akiteru, now. He wants to know Akiteru, learn him, yesterday. Make up for lack of practice with enthusiasm, twenty-four hours shut inside that timeless car, talking in shorthand, waving their hands in the air. My favourite colour is green, whichever green. My favourite drink is a rum sunset, heavy on the rum, light on the sunset. My least favourite thing about volleyball was the itch of the kneepads. My favourite thing about volleyball was leaving it, satisfied. The pride of having Akiteru’s attention is incomplete without knowledge. Without learning things about him that no one else gets to see but his lovers, without knowing who it is, really, that looks at him that way while the sun sets through the hills. But if he won’t give Tadashi that— and why would he, to a summer-love six years younger than him, to his younger brother’s best friend, to Tadashi— then he could at least give him full attention.

It’s a Tuesday evening. Tadashi is changing, changing. Doing irresponsible things with his youth, as if he’ll be able to fling it away entirely, if he’s careless enough. As if in return, he will be even quieter, even surer, have accidentally lived enough to understand the way Akiteru is looking at him right now, the setting sun strange and purple and rueful in his eyes, the teasing forgotten, for a second. Far below them the town glitters with each inhale as always, but this time the road back seems so long.

‘What are you thinking so hard about?’ Akiteru asks.

Tadashi wants him. Tadashi wants to be someone who can get to him, compel him to speak, force him into honesty, fold in the arm-length at the elbow. Tadashi wants one goddamn clue.

‘What are you thinking about?’

It’s inane, and successful. Akiteru blinks, then looks away immediately, the working of his throat visible when he swallows. 

‘Do you really want to know?’ And Tadashi would give anything to know. To learn what he looks like in Akiteru’s head. He would give anything for five seconds in there, to see himself, then bow back out and be ten times that image. Endear with his youth, impress with his wit. He would give anything to get to Akiteru.

‘I want to know,’ he says.

Akiteru takes a deep breath and leans further against the hood of the car, rosy elbows on black metal, his body all tapering strokes of morning-midnight purple. Under the gathering clouds of a summer-storm, he is handsome and unfairly so. And— there’s always been a part of Tadashi that wants to climb over him, climb, and just hold him close and tight and here, the way he wanted to four, five years ago, when Akiteru used to touch him without a second thought— but that part of him fills up his chest and crashes, now. Like the cresting of a wave. Like the stale taste of cowardice. He breathes and swallows and breathes. What is your favourite colour and why is it blue? What is your favourite drink? What was your favourite thing about volleyball? What are you thinking about when you look at me? What are you thinking about? What are you thinking about?

‘I’m thinking,’ Akiteru says, soft, ‘about last week, when you said you wanted to go swimming.’

Tadashi exhales.

‘You weren’t even talking to me. You were telling Kei. You said, we should go next month when the kids are all back in school.’ Akiteru breathes in sudden and deep, as if he’d forgotten, and smiles. He’s staring out at the glimmering world, the last rays of the sun barely making it through the thunderclouds to shine in strange triangles over the buildings, the trees. ‘I was thinking, I’ll take you to a pool right now. I’ll do anything you want.’ He laughs, harsh.

‘Tadashi,’ he says then, voice tight. ‘You’re standing too far.’

It’s a Tuesday evening. It’s a summer dream. A supercut slicing through his windows, walls, world. Something in Tadashi stills at the sight of it, larger than him and right there, and something else shivers and makes a sound. In a second he’s falling forward, no, climbing onto the hood, the bare skin of his legs sliding clumsily on the cool metal, but he doesn’t care, because Akiteru’s turning around right then, caging him in against it with hands on either side of his hips, and then they’re kissing. They’re kissing, and kissing, one of Akiteru’s arms taking all the weight as the other one comes up around Tadashi’s back, holding him safe and small. They’re kissing. Tadashi whimpers into it, hands on Akiteru’s face, in his hair, on his neck. Back on his face, frantic and timid all at once, oh, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He can’t remember the last time he had everything he wanted in so precise a moment, the relief, satisfaction, tears— everything that is usually spread out over months and years, suddenly concentrated into the exact space between their lips as they pull apart to breathe.

‘You should think more things like that,’ Tadashi says, and he has no idea what he’s saying, but Akiteru’s laughing at him, breathless and confused and wrecked, and that’s all he needs. ‘Use that brain for something that isn’t Six Sigma. You’re on holiday.’

His own heart lurches at the reminder of it, of how they are outside the car, and hence defenceless to the looming end of summer. Tadashi’s run and run, and he’s still running late. But he shakes it off and surges forward again, this time harder, warmer. Opens up Akiteru’s lips sweet and slow— this he has practiced, with all the wrong people, every single person in the world who isn’t Akiteru: wrong— and wraps both legs around his waist. This time Akiteru wraps both arms around him too, pulls him in so tight it’s a little hard to breathe, and that’s all he needs. This is all he needs, he wants to promise someone. This is all I need. He is frugal and smart and growing by the day, he can pretend all his nonsensical feelings can be condensed into one season, and in return, he will make do with this one season for the rest of his life.

Tadashi is running late. Akiteru, he knows, has no concept of time. Their differing speeds make for something perfect, something endless. So they kiss and kiss and kiss, until the first crack of thunder sounds, and Akiteru pulls away with a laugh and a last press of his lips, and orders him into the car.

┈

‘Honey, can I ask him where he’s going dressed like that?’ his father calls lazily over his shoulder, settled on the couch, feet propped up on the coffee table.

‘You absolutely can’t,’ comes the singing answer from the kitchen. Tadashi doesn’t try to hide his laugh, even when his father narrows his eyes. ‘It might be a date. Is it a date, Tadashi? Oh, is it that handsome young—’

‘A friend’s place,’ Tadashi cuts in quickly. ‘Koganegawa. I told you last week, but you were too busy yelling at the tomatoes.’

‘I do not yell at my children,’ his father replies. ‘That’s precisely why you grew up to be such a brat.’

‘I am not a brat.’

‘Are so. Lose the bomber, it’s too much.’

‘You don’t want to see what I have under it. It's for my date only.’

At that his father pauses the documentary he’s watching— something about agriculture, Tadashi’s sure, or worse, industrial equipment— and leans forward, stroking his chin in an exaggerated show of curiosity. 

‘I’m joking,’ Tadashi says. ‘It’s just a t-shirt. Promise.’

‘It better be. Roll the sleeves up.’

‘Goodnight, dad.’

He does roll the sleeves up. The nights have finally shaken off some of their stickiness. When Tadashi steps out of the gate, the breeze is almost more refreshing than the recycled air of his house, though it’s warmer. He can still hear the cicadas that are omnipresent at this time of the year, and the streets are damp from the evening rain, the smell of it still in the air.

It puts him in a good mood, one that only gets better as Yachi joins him at the bus stop. By the time they step off, he’s absolutely beaming, takes four different selfies with her to send to the group chat, laughs at the barrage of heart-eyed emojis that comes in from Hinata right away. He sends one to his mother too, then puts his phone away when the unmistakable sounds of summertime outdoor revelry start to filter through the street. It’s almost a little too loud; his neighbours must be deaf or absent—

‘Wait,’ Yachi says, but Tadashi’s already noticed.

‘Holy shit.’

His neighbours are...participating. Tadashi notes colourful lantern-garlands spanning not one, not two, but three gardens, doors and windows open, three different kinds of bass thrumming through to them as they step through the gate meant for them. Tadashi only has a second to take the sheer chaos before someone comes barrelling into his line of vision, arms waving wildly. It’s Koganegawa himself, in a tank top and bermudas and flip-flops, because of course he is.

‘YAMAGUCHI!’ Tadashi jumps, then laughs, waves back. ‘You really came! I’m so happy! Tsukki’s in the kitchen making something? Russian? You didn’t bring tequila, right? Momo-chan will be all over you otherwise. Oh my God, it’s Karasuno’s tiny manager. It’s been so long! I love your hair! What toner do you use? Tsukki told me—’

Behind him Tadashi spots Futakuchi and Yahaba within two metres of each other, which tells him a lot about where the party has progressed and where it will progress. He leaves Yachi to deal with Koganegawa and makes his way into the house, greeting people he hasn’t in seen in years, noting new haircuts and piercings, then ducking quickly into the kitchen to avoid that first-year libero from Seijoh who had confessed to him at the very last Interhigh and didn't look remotely defeated when Tadashi turned him down. It's been years, but some things are better left alone.

Unfortunately, he then remembers who exactly is supposed to be in the kitchen, and is disappointed but not surprised to see a row of shots already waiting on the counter. On one end of it stands Tsukki, sipping away at his White Russian, and on the other end stands Aone, solemnly nodding at the phone he’s holding.

‘Oh, finally,’ Tsukki says, and immediately Hinata’s voice comes beeping through the phone.

‘Is that Yamaguchi?’ It is. Tadashi nods to Aone and settles on the counter beside him, trying to have a decent conversation despite the music booming from the living room, until Yachi and Koganegawa make their way into the kitchen, and Hinata orders everyone to clear the row of shots.

Tadashi readies his glass as Aone props the phone up against a carton of milk, and sniffs it suspiciously.

‘This is tequila,’ Yachi says, on cue.

‘Yes,’ Tsukki sighs. ‘Kyoutani brought it because he wanted to see the cat—’

‘Momo-chan,’ Koganegawa corrects.

‘—because he wanted to see Momo-chan freak out, so she’s locked in the bedroom until we polish off the bottle. Chop chop, now.’

Tadashi sighs at the ceiling, then down at his glass. It’s going to be a long, long night.

┈

‘Will you be quiet,’ Tsukki hisses, though he’s being the loudest. Tadashi and Yachi are only committing the crime of giggling, and now, well, they’re shushing him right back. ‘My mother is going to kill us all.’

‘Your mother isn’t home,’ Tadashi reminds him, then stops short when they get inside the gate. Her car is gone, yes, but the other one is still there, black and nondescript and laughing at him. It’s something after three in the morning, and Tadashi is struck with the most brilliant idea he’s ever had.

‘Give me your lipstick,’ he tells Yachi.

Somewhere between his fifth and sixth shot, he’d registered that he was standing on the couch, singing himself hoarse into a can of deodorant while some girl he’d never seen before sang back to him from beside a potted plant. The last time he’d let loose like that was all the way back in March, hijacking a karaoke room after downing too much shochu in Nishimura’s obscenely luxurious apartment. But tonight was different— tonight, here, he’d had Tsukki and Yachi like always, but he’d also had all these other people that he knew so long ago. Like…getting to see the past and the present in the same room. Like— the first birthday party he remembers having, seeing his school friends out of uniform, previously unfathomable.

Tadashi remembers thinking that, right on that couch, singing into a deodorant can. He remembers thinking, does everyone feel this way? Thinking, did everyone leave? Thinking, what brings them back? What brings me back? What will bring me back?

Yachi is holding out a tube of lipstick, face solemn under the light of the front porch, drunk and conspiratorial. Tadashi takes it from her, and as he uncaps it, remembers thinking, can he come get me?

The glass of the driver’s window isn’t a useful mirror. Tadashi aims blindly and gets more lipstick on the corners of his mouth than where it’s supposed to go, but it’ll have to do. It’s a brilliant idea because it means nothing. He wants to do it, so he’s doing it, so it’s brilliant.

He leans forward and presses his lips to the glass, square in the middle of it. It’s cool on his thin skin, and cleaner than he thought. When he pulls away the mark is less colour, more shape, but it’ll have to do. He stares at it for so long, needlessly critical, that he doesn’t realise Tsukki’s already inside the house.

‘Are you two coming?’

Tadashi turns away from the car, and finds Yachi looking right up at him. Her face is still serious, but different, somehow, as if she’s thinking harder than she should be at this time of the night.

Still, she doesn’t say anything until they’re inside and have dragged Tsukki upstairs and into bed. It takes what feels like an hour to get him out of his jeans because he’s a dead weight once he’s ingested three of his disgusting spiked milkshakes, but they finally tuck him in, then tiptoe back downstairs to crowd into the guest bathroom, changing into their own nightclothes, Yachi carefully taking her makeup off. He shoulders her out of the way to be annoying, cracks up at the sight of the bright pink lipstick smeared all over his mouth. Takes the wipe she hands him and gets to work with it, then brushes his teeth.

She’s staring at him through the mirror, hair still in space buns, eyes wet-bright, lashes still dark with mascara. The light of the mirror is uncomfortably bright, and suddenly the quietness of the entire house descends on Tadashi. 

‘Are you doing it all for him?’ Yachi asks, then. She doesn’t sound drunk anymore. Tadashi doesn’t feel drunk. 

He doesn’t have to ask what the all is. He knows. It’s not about the lipstick or the hair or the t-shirt under his bomber. It’s about the songs and the smiles and— and the way he’s watching himself, now, in a way he never has. Thinking, how can I be more myself, more of everything, more good? Thinking, how can I blossom ahead of schedule?

To do what?

‘I don’t know,’ he answers. ‘Is it bad if I am?’

‘I don’t think so.’ She finally, finally turns away, goes back to dripping serum all over her cheeks, rubbing it in with her fingertips. ‘But as a professional doer of things for other people, I should tell you that you’ll have to watch out.’

‘Watch out for what?’

‘For when he’s gone,’ she says. The quietness of the entire house— ‘When you’ll have to face yourself. Because then all of this is either going to fall apart and you’ll realise that it was shallow and unsustainable. Or, if you make the growth stay, it’s going to remind you of him every single day. Of the person you accidentally became, trying to impress him. Bigger and better. But without him there to see it, or praise you for it.’

Does a building stop being itself because you renovated it?

‘Tadashi, look at me,’ she says. Her hands are on his wrists now. ‘He’s not going to freeze in place while you catch up, and he’ll be gone when summer ends. So why are you wasting this time thinking about what could be, instead of what is?’

┈

It’s four in the morning. The water tastes like heaven, and he swallows down the last of his drunkenness with it. Sets the glass back on the counter, and takes as slow a breath as he can manage. Goes back to the bathroom to wash his face one last time, then catches sight of himself in the mirror.

Why are you wasting this time?

It would be perfect if every summer came with a countdown, he thinks. The colours fading in real time, so that he’d know where to run, which place to commit to memory first. If every summer the town could come to life just for him— it would be perfect. Ukai-san would always teach at Karasuno, and Tadashi would always talk to the captains, as if he was the first ever one. Tsukki would always be packing and unpacking his books. Momo-chan would always look for the tequila and never grow old—

There is an almighty crash, then a flinching gasp.

Tadashi’s rushing out of the bathroom before he can even register the sound fully, nearly slipping on the floor before he reaches the source of it, heart beating a thousand times too fast, ready to throw something, get Tsukki back into bed if it’s him. Stops short in the doorway of the kitchen.

It’s Akiteru, clutching the counter and smiling apologetically at him, standing in a mess of broken glass. Tadashi’s heart doesn’t slow down for a second; he’s too busy taking in the surreal image, not sure he’s completely sober after all. Akiteru is half moonlight, half feeble yellow glow from the lamp above the stove. Night clothes, reading glasses, his foot is bleeding. His— foot is bleeding.

The kitchen is a different place suddenly; eerie and alien.

‘Thought I heard you,’ Akiteru says. He sounds— ‘Sorry. I’ll just—’ He gestures vaguely at the shards around his feet, then sighs. ‘I’m just going to—’

‘Stay still,’ Tadashi cuts in. ‘I’m in slippers. I’ll get the broom.’

He gets the broom; he clears the mess, realises it was the glass he put on the counter not five minutes ago. And all that while, as Tadashi moves around with an absurd sense of purpose, Akiteru stands there. Watches him, silently, even as blood leaks onto the polished wooden floor, until the coast is clear and he starts to move.

‘No.’ Tadashi pulls a chair away from the breakfast table with a single hand, turns it. ‘Sit. I’ll get it.’

Akiteru stares at him for a long moment. When he sits it’s slow; hesitant, almost, as if any thought needs to go into the act.

‘Under the sink in the bathroom,’ he says.

Tadashi fetches it, stops in the doorway for a second, again. There is something— off, about the sight of Akiteru like this, and it’s not even the cut, the blood, or the hour. There’s something else that Tadashi can’t put his finger on, further under the surface, latent, pale. But there are more important matters that need his attention, so he turns to them first. Comes to kneel by the chair, feels the floor press up against his bare shins. Akiteru doesn’t protest.

The cut is on the arch of his left foot. Tadashi feels like he’s— underwater, submerged, an invisible weight slowing his movements as he wraps a hand around Akiteru’s ankle, lifts the foot off the floor, onto his thigh, angling it gently so he can see. It’s not too bad. One of those shallow cuts that bleed like rivers to make themselves known, and burn with twice the enthusiasm. But Tadashi’s breath still catches at it, dark against the fair skin.

Akiteru hisses when he wipes it clean, leg tensing in his grasp. For a second Tadashi stills; watches the way his muscles twitch, the webbed creases on the sole of his foot, the delicate sweep of the wounded arch, the single trail of blood that makes its way— off, and onto the soft cotton of Tadashi’s shorts. He grits his teeth, and cleans it up too. Wet gauze. Dry gauze. Wet again, disinfectant his time; a low curse as its sharp, clinical tang fills the air. Tadashi has never really forgotten the smell, but it still catches him by surprise. Like everything. Like Akiteru, bleeding, at four in the morning, so— so terrifyingly awake. He’s awake, Tadashi realises. More than he should be.

He swallows. The cut must be worse than he thought. It is.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Just a minute more.’

In the dark, every sound is a knife on a whetstone. Akiteru’s silence, then, is the whetstone itself. Wet and dark and heavy, worse, because Tadashi can feel his gaze. Refuses to look up, concentrates instead on pressing the bandage in place. Akiteru’s skin is still cool from the freezing temperature he likes to keep his room at, and here, against the raininess of the kitchen, it’s too cold. The weather itself is conspiring; Tadashi’s naive, naive impulse to warm Akiteru up; his hands, trembling now as he unrolls the gauze, wraps it, secures it. His eyes, compelled, following the circular motion of the white weave, the way the squared gaps between warp and weft let slip the secret of Akiteru’s carelessness.

Akiteru is quiet as Tadashi puts the gauze away, quiet as he closes the box. Quiet as his foot is placed gently back on the floor. He makes no move to get up; Tadashi makes no move to get up, settled on his heels now, hands on his thighs, watching the floor intently, until he decides to finally, finally look.

The kitchen is eerie and alien; Akiteru is ghostly in the confused warm-cold of the lights, and like this, Tadashi can’t see the colour of his eyes, only that they are so light as to be transparent like freshwater. His alert gaze, his glasses— his glasses, at four in the morning. Realisation trickles over Tadashi, like freshwater, too.

‘Did you stay up for me?’ he whispers. His hands move of their own accord when Akiteru looks away; he wraps them around both ankles, then climbs higher, fingers stretching over the unyielding bone of the shins, over the work-whipped muscle of the calves. ‘Did you?’

Akiteru clears his throat. He is beautiful and endearing and awake. ‘I thought I might have to come pick you three up—’

‘Liar.’ Tadashi’s brain is humming, the last fumes of tequila rising up. He leans forward and presses his face to the inside of Akiteru’s knee; feels the sweat rolling down the backs of his own as he shifts. Feels the way Akiteru goes tense under the touch. ‘You stayed up for me.’

Why are you wasting this time?

Tadashi opens his lips, drags them back closed against the skin of Akiteru’s inner thigh, slow, stuttering, skin catching on skin. It works like a spell; Akiteru curls forward with such force that it almost knocks Tadashi back down.

‘Don’t, don’t, don’t,’ Akiteru breathes, but his hands are on Tadashi’s shoulders, clutching. Then he laughs, like it’s being drawn out of his chest on a thorned wire. ‘Trust you to find my biggest weakness on the first try.’

Tadashi wants him. Tadashi wants to be his biggest weakness, walking and breathing with a mind of its own, unpredictable. Tadashi wants to make him talk.

‘Should I stop?’ It’s mouthed out against that same stretch of blushing skin, and Akiteru shudders again, his fingers digging into the meat of Tadashi’s shoulders now. It hurts, a line down his back, curling around to pool in the pit of his stomach. ‘I can stop.’ He closes his eyes, rests his forehead against the sharp wooden edge of the seat, gulps.

An age passes, and then Akiteru’s grip loosens. One hand tilts his head back up, and the other— pushes it, gently, back to where it was. Tadashi wastes no time; opens his mouth against Akiteru’s thigh again, one arm wrapped around the wounded leg, the other one on the opposite thigh, creeping under the hem of Akiteru’s shorts and splaying until the tips of his fingers reach his hipbone. He bites and sucks and licks to soothe, and tightens his arm when Akiteru exhales, the air catching on an almost-moan, then loosens it to shift forward until the edge of the seat is digging into his collarbone, and he’s closer to where he can see the shape of Akiteru in his shorts, hard and hot and heavy. 

He presses his own legs tighter together, takes a deep breath to centre himself. Pushes Akiteru’s shorts as high as they’ll go, kissing all the way down, until he’s taking him into his mouth through two layers of fabric and a summer’s worth of wait. He’s rewarded well; Akiteru’s hand flies up to his own mouth, but it’s a beat too late to stifle the wrenching moan that slips through his fingers. Tadashi’s stomach swoops, sickly-supersonic, and this is all he needs. He’ll be good. He’ll be good—

He scrapes his teeth over the thick cotton, all along Akiteru’s length, and the next thing he knows, there’s a hand tugging harshly at his hair, and his brain short-circuits. It’s a perfect pull, perfect pain, on the roots at the back of his head where he isn’t too sensitive, just so. Tadashi drops his head and moans so loud he scares himself, and in a second he goes from wanting to please, to— wanting to be taken care of. To feel safe and small.

It’s as if Akiteru senses it too; he tugs again, this time upwards, and then Tadashi’s clawing a path onto his lap. He’s sweating, sweating, rivulets of it running down his chest and back, too fast and wet to be sticky, and either way, he doesn’t care— he’s too busy wrapping his arms around Akiteru and kissing him.

‘God,’ Akiteru mumbles against his lips. ‘Should’ve known you’d like that.’

Tadashi wants to tell him to shut up, but not being able to hold a single thing against him is a defect of character he’s long since accepted, and there are more important matters that need his attention. Like curling his own hands in Akiteru’s hair and rolling his hips down, thighs stretched so perfectly, lengths brushing. He wants to be taken care of; Akiteru knows, so even as he throws his head back and groans, teeth gritted, he pushes both hands under Tadashi’s shirt and slides them up. They glide fast and easy over the sweat, and Tadashi gives up on mouthing against Akiteru’s neck, the need that overcomes him so strong that it has him arching back, whimpering into the charged air.

He knows he’s being ruined for the outside world as it happens. Nothing could or will ever compare to this; Akiteru’s hands under his shirt, thumbs rough on his nipples, mouth hot over his chest, breath dampening the cotton. How does he— know how to touch Tadashi, like this? Nothing will ever compare to the experienced drag of his fingers. Tadashi could look all his life. This will do. I’ll be good. This is all I need. Please.

He doesn’t realise he’s said that last word out loud until suddenly he does, and says it again, having already forgotten what came before it. ‘Please.’ There’s a catch in his voice, selfish and foolish, and he curls into Akiteru, says it again into his temple. ‘Please, please—’

‘Shh,’ Akiteru whispers. How is he so calm, when Tadashi can feel the way his heart is hammering? ‘Whatever you need.’ He kisses the hollow of Tadashi’s throat, runs his tongue over the sweat pooled there. ‘All yours.’

All his. Tadashi whines and grinds down, fumbles with the drawstring of his shorts, wraps a hand around himself. He knows it’s a lost cause the moment his fist comes up the first time, and he doesn’t try to draw it out, doesn’t try to deprive himself. Instead he gasps as Akiteru’s hand strokes over his chest, down his sternum, his ribs; the other one back in his hair, pulling the ponytail loose until his curls are all caught up in those long fingers. Akiteru smells like disinfectant and clean sweat and uncomplaining arousal, and Tadashi is too far gone.

He sobs, once, twice, too shy to say the name so he thinks it instead, Aki, Akiteru, Akiteru, bucks up into his fist three more times, and spills between their stomachs with a rolling, crushing cry. Takes in huge, heaving gulps of air as he feels Akiteru breathe out a shuddering sigh, and pushes away the moment he can, even on fawn-legs, even with his messy hand, even with his burning lungs. Falls back to his knees so fast he can feel a joint crack, and doesn’t stop to ask before tugging Akiteru’s shorts down. All yours. Fits his lips around the head, sinks down, good, perfect, provisional.

It doesn’t take long with how Akiteru’s been holding back; before Tadashi’s close to getting his fill, there are hands in his hair again, Akiteru’s hips rising off the chair, his breathing so loud, the loudest thing in Tadashi’s world.

‘Can I—’ He can’t finish, voice strangling out into a desperate groan. ‘Tadashi—’ Oh, God.

Tadashi looks up— up, at his helpless form, glasses askew— weary, vulnerable— the back of his hand pressed to his mouth— feels a vice tighten around his body, an punch of residual heat sinking into his stomach, and all he can do is reach up to squeeze a sweaty arm, moan around the weight of him, and close his eyes as he inhales all the force of Akiteru’s silent, smothered orgasm.

┈

August tips over into September, and the awareness of having tipped along with it past a point of no return weighs Tadashi down every waking moment. It’s as if he’s suddenly more conscious of every move he makes, and he is so occupied with its presence that he can’t even determine if it’s good or bad. Compared to it, the flighty, fanciful way he was watching himself before seems so childish, so removed. He refuses to look at it as some sort of lesson on the difference between fantasy and reality; he’s too old for things like that now, no longer seventeen and daydreaming about then-impractical things like living on his own one day, or going to the movies alone with Akiteru.

This is different. This isn’t Tadashi freezing up in the face of his actions. If anything, there’s a frantic edge to them now, as if the both of them, having realised that it’s actually possible to do the things they refused to talk about before, take one in two chances to confirm it all over again. Maybe it’d have been different if they had started with this, started with Tadashi being more brazen than he dared in the car that first night, asking to draw up rules, pleasure points, a waiver right then. But they didn’t because Akiteru had a hand on the reigns too, so here they are now: unable to let go of the charm of talking about anything and everything but themselves, unable to let go, now, of the rush of touching each other.

No, this isn’t Tadashi freezing up, or Akiteru. As August tips into September, they clutch at one chance in two, so impossible to contain that there are times when Tadashi wants to laugh, suddenly reminded of the impossibility of their situation: the two of them, of all people, stealing kisses and breath in hallways and by the front door, hiding from everyone they know. Tadashi shoving his hands under Akiteru’s shirt even if it’s for three minutes under the pretext of asking a question for an assignment. Akiteru, never saying a word, letting Tadashi take what he needs but always holding himself back, until one evening when the lie falls apart and Akiteru has him sprawled and keening on the backseat, the inside of the car freezing, the air outside heavy with rain, windows fogged, Tadashi’s entire body one big bruise pulsing with every thrust that the narrow, feverish space between them allows.

Later, pressing on his aching joints, he turns in the passenger seat, leans his temple on the headrest, looks silently at Akiteru.

‘What?’

What? Is he going to say that he’s seen his fair share of backseats but nothing’s ever felt like this? Or should he say it drives me wild that your skin bruises and mine doesn’t, can you try a little harder? Just a little harder. I need something to keep.

‘What is your favourite colour?’ he asks. ‘And why is it blue?’

Akiteru blinks at him, then lifts a hand away from the steering wheel and passes it over his eyes, laughing. His hair is still a little damp, and the bite-mark on his neck is so vivid it needs ice. Tadashi has seen him in all his different glories, handsome and put-together, and boring and messy, and still he is an arm too far. Still Tadashi is running late.

‘It’s blue because—’

‘Never mind,’ he breathes, and then he’s picking his way over the divide between their seats, fitting himself onto Akiteru’s lap through sheer determination alone, and kissing him with a starving, wrenching sort of might. ‘No, sorry, tell me now.’

‘Make up your mind.’

‘Sorry.’ He means it. Kisses the corner of Akiteru’s open mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’ Kisses his damp hair. ‘Tell me. I’m listening.’ His darling face. ‘Promise.’

‘No, you aren't.’ But then Akiteru is kissing him back, hands on his jaw, and outside the rain starts to fall.

┈

That night it’s Tsukki who’s invited over for dinner, for once. Tadashi flips through a print of ages-old prescribed reading while his father interrogates Tsukki on the great tribulation that is deciding what he wants to do with his life and Tsukki deflects with a practiced expertise. In the kitchen his mother is cooking something Thai, from the smell of the peppers, and outside the thunderstorm hasn’t let up for a single minute since the sun set.

He eats, quieter than Tsukki— who has such a soft spot for Tadashi’s mother and her opinions on high fashion that it’s almost scary— drinks his beer in silence. Still tender from earlier, and trying to keep the rolling fog of it contained within his chest, afraid that it’ll leave him entirely if he sets it free. There is fog in his chest, yes, light and white and intangible. His food has no taste. The conversation is nothing but syllables. The water is not cold enough.

Summer is not long enough.

‘Tadashi?’

He looks up, clears his throat. All three of them are turned to him, and he has no idea what question he was just asked, but he does know that he wants to leave the table, right now, and go chase Akiteru down. Steal every single minute of this last fortnight with him, because he’s the only one Tadashi will never get to see again, not like this, not exactly like this. Just like this town is never going to be the same again after this summer, like how he felt weeks ago, fearing that if he left even for a day, he’d come back to everything shifted an inch to the right. It climbs over him, the dawning; he wants to go chase Akiteru down because if they stay apart even for an hour, he’ll— change, disappear, no longer be the person who won’t deny Tadashi a single thing.

And when this ends? When he’ll never be that person again? When they’ll meet next summer and have to pretend this was all a fever dream? Will Tadashi be good then? Just a week ago even October seemed so far away, let alone next summer, and now, suddenly, the year between where Tadashi is standing and where he will be then, is disintegrating. A nameless void between the two platforms, and Tadashi, who cannot jump. Who didn’t become bigger and better, after all. Who only fell— for the ruse; on his knees; in—

‘Sorry,’ he says, and smiles. ‘I zoned out. What did I miss?’

‘Only your mother’s monologue on the popularity of kimonos in Edwardian England,’ his father says, more affection than sarcasm. Still, even as Tadashi and Tsukki both laugh, he senses the weight of his mother’s gaze, that unblinking shorthand for I’ve caught you. Ignores it and swallows the last of his beer, and excuses himself from the table to wash his face.

She comes to sit with him on the front step when Tsukki’s left, clicking her tongue at how wet the rain’s left everything, and spreading out the towel she brought along before settling down with an aged, world-weary, oh-my-joints sigh. It’s more exaggerated than usual, which is how he knows she’s trying to make him laugh. It works. He snorts, then leans back, letting his arms take his weight. The wood of the porch is disgusting under his palms, but it grounds him.

‘You know,’ she begins then. ‘When I went off to college, my parents just set me free completely. They told me not to come back for the holidays, to travel as much as I could on the money I earned, and find myself. I thought they were the coolest parents in the world. I listened to them.’

She takes one of his hands in her own then, brushes off the wet dirt with the edge of her sleeve before tangling their fingers together. Her nails are stained with curcuma.

‘I had a whale of a time, you know?’ she says. ‘And I became this whole other person when they weren’t looking, and I’d send them postcards from all over Japan and tell them about all the gross bugs I killed in all the gross places I stayed. And I’d meet them once a year, and make friends with them all over again. Every time, they became cooler. I loved them more. They were my best friends.

‘But when I had you, I forgot all about that.’ Tadashi turns to look down at her, at her curly hair and smiling face. ‘You were so tiny and helpless and red, and I thought to myself, how can I ever set him free? He’s so small. He could never kill a bug.’ They both laugh. ‘And I spent all these years asking myself that, all the way until you graduated. I wanted to make friends with you every year and meet you all over again, but at the same time, I didn’t want to miss a single thing in your little life. All these lovely kids you were meeting from all over the country, and that sweet young Shimada who taught you how to serve, and Hitoka, lord. I didn’t want to miss any of it.’

She smiles, plays with their joined hands. ‘I think what I forgot along the way was that one day you’d get old enough to stop telling me things.’

‘Mom—’

‘No, this isn’t a guilt trip. It’s the opposite.’ She’s still smiling, but Tadashi has a lump in his throat. ‘I want you to know that you don’t need to tell me a single thing. I don’t need to know anything about you. I don’t mind not being your friend.’

‘You are my friend.’

‘Good!’ she laughs. ‘But I am also your mother. So don’t tell me who's been doing a number on you all summer, but don’t forget that your father and I exist. You’re not old enough for that yet, you'll never be. You can still ask us for favours.’

‘I won’t forget,’ Tadashi replies through the lump. ‘I might take you up on it one of these days.’

‘Good,’ she says again, then lets go of him and stands up with that same exaggerated sigh. ‘One of these days, then.’

┈

One of these days comes sooner than he thought it would, which was never. Because then the week slides to its end, and somewhere around midnight on Saturday, Akiteru tells Tsukki it’s fine, I have to meet up with a friend and his place is on the way, and under that guise gets Tadashi into the car. But he doesn’t start it up for long enough to fill it with tension like fuel, until suddenly he’s turning the key and backing up, and throwing it into drive with an unusual speed.

He slows down once they’re on the road, but Tadashi’s no fool. He’s been bracing himself for it since the very first day, that first summer, then. He’s ready for anything. For Akiteru to ask if he wants to go to their spot in the hills one last time, even though someone’s always there on weekend nights. He’s ready, even, for Akiteru to say let’s stop this so that they can ease out of it by the time they have to leave, work the clutch-cramps out of their fingers. He’s ready for a dozen different ends, and has a dozen graceful goodbyes prepared, so that his last impression is his best.

So when Akiteru drives right past his street, a detour that’ll take them in circles, Tadashi takes a deep breath, reminds himself of how good it was, and how good it’ll feel to look back on it five years from now, when he’s older and wiser and bigger. How it’ll be a sweet, romantic, healing thing he had once.

Still, there’s a blow, however dull, when Akiteru says, ‘I’m going to Sendai on Monday.’

‘That early?’

‘They’re done with my wing, and the company apartment’s been ready since July,’ he replies. He’s staring resolutely ahead, and Tadashi can’t fault him for it. He’s always had trouble looking people in the eye, no matter how much he pretends not to; shares that with his little brother. ‘I might make some trips over the week, but I’ll be all moved in by Friday.’

‘Friday,’ Tadashi echoes. ‘That’s— yeah, okay. And—’

‘Tadashi,’ he cuts in, quick like a breath he’s been holding. There’s a strange smile on his face that doesn’t go with his voice, and despite himself, Tadashi feels a knot start to form in his stomach. ‘You’ll keep Kei informed of your trips back here, right?’

‘I— of course.’

‘Good.’ He exhales again, hands loosening on the wheel. ‘I’ll— that way I can stay out of your hair.’

What?

‘What?’ No, it’s not like he hadn’t imagined this to be one of the outcomes; let’s not see each other again, at least for a little while. He just hadn’t expected Akiteru to— phrase it that way. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘Please let me.’ The smile is back, and if for the life of him Tadashi could remember where he’s seen it before— ‘It’s selfish, I know, but I need to. The guilt will eat me otherwise.’

Guilt?

Tadashi’s voice is weak. ‘Guilt?’

And he’s glad that Akiteru doesn’t answer right away, because even if he had, nothing would make its way through the roaring mess in his ears. Because he can’t unhear the syllables of that word as they sounded from Akiteru’s mouth, and he can’t stop thinking back to every moment that had felt like he was drinking distilled sunlight from his cupped palms. Of how bright and magical it had been. Of how innocent even the secret of it had felt.

Guilt?

The smile on Akiteru’s face, he recognises, is one of a bittersweet resignation, of that strange acceptance that self-hatred sometimes reaches, and suddenly, just like that, he’s losing every foothold he had so far.

‘I know this summer meant a lot of things to you,’ Akiteru says, then. ‘And I shouldn’t be complicating it with my own feelings, but I guess I’m not as stoic as I thought I’d be.’ He laughs, still looking at the street ahead, lit only so far by the headlights. ‘I just don’t— I don’t think I could keep it up if we met again.’

Keep what up? There is a sort of horror creeping down Tadashi’s spine, and it seeps into his voice when he asks.

‘Akiteru, did you— do all of this against your—’

‘No!’ he says, loudly. ‘God, no. No. But— I— let it happen. And I don’t regret it. But I can’t let it happen again. I don’t want you to miss out on meeting someone else just because I was available. You had your summer, but now it’s time to find someone who actually deserves you. But— in the meantime, I—’

Tadashi’s entire summer is losing colour, recontextualising itself so that he can’t even look back on a single memory or interaction and tell himself, reliably, that it was good for both of them. Suddenly he doesn’t hone in so much on the sweet things Akiteru did or said; remembers, instead, the laugh that always came before or after. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

Suddenly nothing makes sense. Suddenly he realises he doesn’t know Akiteru at all, because Akiteru didn’t let him, but he doesn’t even know how he felt, all summer. All summer. The only clue he has is this one fucking word, the only ever one.

Guilt. So what next, shame?

‘So which one of us is supposed to stop coming home?’ Tadashi asks, not trying to filter the venom from his voice. ‘Now that I've had my summer, like you said? Should I stay away forever, or will you?’ 

‘Tadashi—’

‘No, actually, it’s your house. It’s about time I stopped leeching off your mother’s dumplings.’

‘Tadashi, please, please don’t get me wrong.’ How are his hands still on the wheel? So he can, after all, have implausible conversations while driving, when it suits him. ‘This isn’t about— this is me. This is all me, okay? I just can’t walk on eggshells around one more person. I can’t do it.’

All I’ve ever done is—

‘Have you checked for eggshells?’ It sounds so fucking stupid, barked out the way he does it, but he doesn’t know what to do with himself, doesn’t know what he’s actually feeling, only that all of it is dark.

And— suddenly everything makes sense. Suddenly he knows Akiteru just enough to tell himself, of course he’s like this. Of course he is; because he’s the boy who cried to his mother at nineteen, declaring himself guilty of love. All I’ve ever done is let people down.

‘Stop the car, please.’

Akiteru slows down immediately. There is something twisted and blank on his face, just for a moment, under the small light of the rearview, in the dark of the night. He still won’t look.

‘You know,’ Tadashi says. ‘I was going to be so good about it all. Until five minutes ago. I was going to be so good. Tell you good luck with your apartment in Sendai, I hope you like it.’ He squints at the distorted reflection of the dashboard on the windshield, the car papers that Akiteru always keeps there instead of the glovebox. ‘But now you’ve gone and decided my feelings all on your own, because you’re older and smarter, is that it? So now I’m not going to be good anymore.’ He turns just in time to see Akiteru run a hand through his hair, staring emptily ahead.

‘I am in love with you,’ he continues, then, and Akiteru closes his eyes. ‘And it started years ago. And you had no part in it, so stop giving yourself so much credit. You didn’t let anything happen. You weren’t even there for most of it. It was all me. It’s all me.’ This was supposed to be gentle and melancholy and grown-up; it was supposed to be a perfect end, finite, but perfect. Instead his throat is going tight. Instead Akiteru won’t look at him.

‘And I’ll stay gone, because I can see how much it scares you.’ His voice breaks, but he doesn’t care. He can’t possibly look worse than this anyway. ‘So please. Please stop killing yourself over it. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.’ It was supposed to be perfect. He was supposed to be good. ‘I don’t want you to walk on eggshells around me.’

And then, before Akiteru can reply, he’s unbuckling his seatbelt and letting it cut past him.

‘Tadashi, you can’t walk home like this, please.’

It can be perfect in other ways, worse ones. Tadashi turns to smile his best smile, and lets all his childish— childish, yes, of course, of fucking course— hurt stab into two words.

‘Watch me.’

┈

He takes his mother up on her offer five days after she makes it, but first, he loses his way. One minute he is seething and cold and the air is so horridly damp on his skin, and he hates everything, hates everything, and before he knows it, he’s standing on a street corner he’s never seen before, chest clamming up, salt in his mouth. Lost on the way from Tsukki’s house to his own, a path he could navigate in his sleep.

There is a specific helplessness and terror to being lost, even now, when he’s grown and has a phone and no logical reason to fear anything. One wrong turn, just one, he doesn’t even know where and when, and suddenly nothing makes sense anymore. He doesn’t remember seeing any of these buildings before, and there isn’t a single car around, on a Saturday night.

He wants to call his mother to come pick him up, but he refuses to scare her, refuses to give into it himself. So he sits on the edge of a footpath and fishes out his phone, enters his home address into it, shoves his earphones in and gets back up. He’s seven minutes away, and it’s so dark, and now it’s raining again— when will it stop? When will it stop— fucking— raining?

By the time he gets home he’s soaking wet, water literally dripping from his shorts, feet freezing. He opens the door as quietly as he can, then stops by the shoerack, frowning.

There’s light coming from the living room. He slips out of his shoes and makes his way over, something— something— building in his throat, only to see his mother still on the couch, feet propped up on the coffee table. She’s watching that obscure, oddly passionate romance film that’s been her favourite for as long as he’s known her, which is all his life. The shot is panning over a mountain range, too-bright sky and impossible, clean snow. He sees the way the light of it works over the walls, moving and moving.

Then he realises she’s seen him too. She’s blinking at him, too surprised to ask why he’s just standing there, useless and drenched and quiet, and suddenly he can’t stand the sight of her. Suddenly he can’t stand the sight of Tsukki, or Yachi, or Karasuno, or the hills, this entire place. Because she’s here watching a film she’s loved forever, but Tadashi only sees a younger version of himself sitting on the second step, craving food, too scared to come downstairs. Tadashi only sees a younger version of himself, failing a serve, back to volleyball like his mind doesn’t know how to be its new self in this old town. Tadashi sees nothing but the worst of the past, no place for forgiveness, and none of it even useful, all of it only tears and tears and more tears. No wonder everyone leaves. No wonder Tsukki packed up the books. No wonder Yachi dresses like she’s trying to prove a point, every time she comes back here. No wonder, then, Akiteru— who’s littered the entire place with eggshells like he needs one more reason not to come back.

‘I want to leave,’ Tadashi says. His voice isn’t his own.

‘Okay,’ she replies. ‘I’ll take you to the station in the morning.’

Tadashi nods, more to himself than her. ‘Okay.’

For a full minute, he stands there, staring at her, nothing on his mind. She pauses the film and straightens up, lifts her feet off the table. He is already starting to cry.

iii. fall

It’s almost too easy to go back to class. Tadashi throws himself into it with passion, glad to have something to do with his day after the past two weeks of lying in bed reading, reading, reading, guidelines and old internship reports and that book on colonisation via photography that he’d been meaning to work his way through since March. His university building has never felt so welcome and familiar before, though he’s always glad to be back in the city, always glad to remember that here is where he lives now, and not back there. He’s just never been this glad before, this relieved, this steely about just how urban and bilingual and different he is, more than the freckle-faced kid who first showed up here lost and trembling.

He lets the activity of it all take him over. Wakes up at six-thirty to his alarm— he’d even missed his alarm— and gets his morning run in before the first class of the day, always at ten because his schedule this semester is a delight. Ten to four almost every single day, lunch in the cafeteria, and he tries to make enough food on Sundays to last him the week. For the past three weeks, he’s been working slowly through his bookmarked recipes on Friday evenings, taking his time with them, doing the chopping on his bed while watching the documentaries he has to for English class, then taking all the mess over to the stove and doing his best with it. It works more often than not, and there’s one stir-fry that he absolutely has to make Nakamura try even though she hates bell peppers, so he invites her over the next week before he can talk himself out of the social obligation. Finds that it’s an effective strategy— lines up social obligations like domino chips, lunches spilling into study sessions spilling into let’s go to Rairaikyo next month when the colours all change.

When Tsukki comes back to Sendai, two weeks after Tadashi, he only stops by once to drop off an assortment of things Tadashi had forgotten in his haste to pack; a spare charger, t-shirts that were still in the laundry when he took the first train back, a pair of running shorts. He also holds out a box of pastries from that bakery by the station that Tadashi loves but never finds the time to go to, which is his way of saying I don’t know what’s with you, but I guess you’ll tell me eventually, so until then. Then he nods and leaves, all without having stepped past the threshold.

Tadashi loves him, and Yachi, and is trying to remind himself that the fact that they are in the same city as him has always felt like a blessing and never a burden. People who move forward with him, people he gets to keep. But he’s only human— albeit a perfect human who wakes up at six-thirty every morning to run a route harsher than the one he used to run before, who sits down every Friday to make well-intentioned if messy meals, who makes plans with his friends and sticks to them with religion— and he’s glad that they remember that about him, too. That they only text in the group chat where Hinata takes over most conversations anyway, that Yachi only calls once to remind him he needs to get a blood test done, that they leave him be with a sort of fierce solidarity, because they’ve been there too, he knows. They might have lived different lives, but there’s only so many places in a tiny town like theirs, and the things everyone hates end up overlapping.

So he goes to class and loses himself in the giddy pleasure of exchanging jokes with his classmates in the middle of the amphitheatre, of taking orders and student cards for the coffee machine outside the conference room they’ve reserved to talk about the open house day they’re supposed to organise soon. In the evenings, after finishing his work, he stretches out in bed and puts on a film, and doesn’t think about anything at all.

┈

Then, one day, he catches sight of himself in the mirror.

┈

‘Are you sure?’ Yachi asks. She doesn’t ask it in the heavy, significant, life-changing way, are you sure you want to do this, are you sure you mean it? She asks it in the critical way any hairdresser would ask when they’re holding more than half your hair up in a fist, wet and limp and about to come away from your head.

There is just enough place in his bathroom for her to squeeze in behind his chair, and his knees are pressed up so hard against the sink cabinet that he’s going to feel it for a full day. But Yachi insisted on doing it in here to make cleanup easier, though he knows it’s because she wants to give him the option of seeing it happen. He’s grateful for it, because it feels so much better this way, looking himself in the eye, ugly wet bangs and all, the two towels draped on his shoulders that he’ll have to throw in the wash right away.

‘Yes,’ he says.

She doesn’t ask again. Only looks to her right past the open door, and calls, ‘I thought I asked for a playlist?’

‘Apologies for the delay, my lady,’ Tsukki calls back with a hysterical sort of sarcasm. Tadashi starts laughing, then stops immediately to groan as the chords of the first song start up on the speaker.

‘Oh, not this one, God,’ he whines. ‘It’s all Takahashi plays in his car, I’m going to go insane.’

‘That sounds like a you problem,’ Yachi says, running the comb through his hair one more time, gathering as much of it into her tiny hand as she can. ‘This is a great song, fit for a monumental event such as this. Maybe we can bleach it after—’

‘We are not bleaching my hair—’

‘I think it’d look good,’ Tsukki says. Tadashi leans forward— Yachi makes an irritated noise— and cranes his neck, sees the shit-eating grin Tsukki has on his face as he lies on Tadashi’s bed, laptop balanced on his chest, too close to his face. ‘Seriously. Maybe even a— what do they call it, Yachi? You know, the fade.’

‘Oh, an ombre! Oh, but that’s for long—’

‘Yacchan, you’d better chop my hair before I do it myself.’

That snaps her back to business. She makes that determined little scowl she usually only saves for when she’s rendering something or whatever it is that she does all day on that giant computer of hers, and gathers his hair up for the third time. ‘Here— we— go!’

The snip of the scissors is lost as the chorus explodes, but Tadashi whoops loud enough to make up for it. He feels nothing but ease as he watches that bunch of long, dark locks come away in Yachi’s hand, not a single stroke of regret for all the years he spent growing it that long, and living with it, letting the world recognise him through it. He only grins so hard it hurts his cheeks, because the song isn’t that bad after all, there’s a reason it’s been on top of the charts all summer, and as Yachi lets the hair fall to the floor, even Tsukki cheers lazily from outside.

The afternoon buzzes past. It’s unfair— he isn’t allowed to move so that he won’t disturb Yachi’s scissors and clippers, but she keeps stopping every two minutes to raise her weapons in the air and do disco-wiggles to whatever inane bubblegum song is blasting over the speakers at the time, sometimes pointing at herself and Tadashi in the mirror as she sings, sometimes leaning to point to Tsukki, who’s imperiously waving an arm to the music like he’s a conductor, the other one scrolling through whatever he’s reading. Tadashi makes up for not being able to move by singing extra-loud, until he can actually feel his throat ache with it.

All the while his hair gets shorter and shorter, and a silly relief fills him. Yachi’s soft, cool hands on his temples and behind his ears and on the nape of his neck. Tsukki, who can apparently do the entire rap of some Korean song that came out two years ago. The soothing, hypnotic buzz of the clippers. He’s glad it’s October; glad he can associate this memory with fall. Something that only belongs to the three of them, young and electric and able to bounce back from anything. His grin turns just that bit vicious.

Glad. Vicious. He’s young and electric and soon he will recover. When Yachi yanks the towels off with ceremony and finishes drying his hair, when he finally straightens up to lean forward, check himself out, he looks better than he ever has. He feels lighter than he has in a while. His freckles finally fading out a little, the last of it leaving.

The last of it leaving, even though he’s done nothing but immortalise it now. If you make the growth stay, it’s going to remind you of him every single day.

┈

Later, when Yachi’s left to get them food from that weird place she likes that changes the menu every week, Tadashi settles down beside Tsukki on the bed, legs stretched out. He leans his head against the wall— it feels strange without the volume he’s used to having— and breathes out. 

For a long while, there’s only silence. Tsukki’s working on a paper, but he stops typing, keeps looking at the screen, hands still over the keyboard, and Tadashi stares at the mess of blankets at the foot of the bed, and tries to find the simplest, least painful way to explain himself. But before he can, Tsukki speaks up.

‘I can send him a picture of us, if you want. Rub it in.’

Tadashi freezes, then runs a hand down his face, laughing weakly. He isn’t really surprised; just wonders since when Tsukki’s known. Since the beginning of the summer, or since before— the first time he cut his hair, four years ago?

‘You’re a horrible person,’ he tells Tsukki instead, even though he knows it’s a joke. Even though the joke isn’t funny because nothing is, because there’s nothing to rub in, and maybe if there was, things would be easier. Because now the euphoria of transformation is wearing off, and all he feels is that same old tired misery he’s been running from for weeks now. ‘Plotting against your own brother, too.’

‘Eh.’ Tsukki shrugs. ‘He could use a little meanness. He’s way too good at getting people to love him no matter what he does.’

‘Right?!’ Tadashi exclaims despite himself. ‘Like— you can’t stay mad at him! You just can’t!’

‘Don’t get me started.’ He smiles, and it’s more sad than anything else. Closes the lid of his laptop and runs a finger down the silver surface. ‘So do you want to take a tasteless revenge selfie or not? Let him know we're just as tight as before.’

Tadashi laughs, runs a hand through his hair. ‘I think I’ll pass. Besides, I’ll look like a hypocrite. Isn’t the point of it to show that— it didn’t change me? That I didn’t let it change who I am.’

‘Change isn’t hypocrisy,’ Tsukki replies, after a second. ‘Or I’d be the biggest hypocrite in the world. Change is just…truth. You’re just being true to yourself. That’s all that matters. So what if you cut your hair? You wanted to. What’s truer than that?’ 

What’s truer than renovating a building that doesn’t feel like home anymore?

‘Nothing,’ Tadashi says, exaggerated and dramatic and smiling. ‘Nothing, o wise one.’

iv. winter

On his birthday, Tadashi’s friends drag him to Nishimura’s obscenely luxurious apartment, where an entire festival has been arranged for him. At least that’s what it looks like from the array of food and drinks and the music that attacks him the moment he steps inside, glad to be safe from November’s bitter wind. He’s being handed a can before he’s finished taking his coat off, and needless to say, by the time midnight hits the entire world is a blur, and by the time it’s two and the party has mellowed out into slower music and softer lights, he has to brave the balcony in the cold to get away from it all.

Tsukki follows him outside, puts his phone away as he comes to lean beside Tadashi.

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to pick up smoking or something like that,’ he says. ‘I do not endorse that kind of change.’

‘Shut up,’ Tadashi laughs, but the lump in his throat breaks it on the way out. Hot tears prick at the corners of his eyes, and he swipes at them quickly, clears his throat. ‘Sorry. Sorry. I must be boring you. I’ll get over it, promise.’

‘You aren’t boring me,’ Tsukki replies quietly. Then, after a minute: ‘Was it really that bad?’

Tadashi laughs again. Stares down at his shoes, then further down at the traffic on the road. The city is a relief, noisy and full and busy, everything their town isn’t. He loves, actually, being surrounded by people who don’t care about his life; their apathy is comforting. No one talks break-ups and make-ups in college. Names change, numbers change, pictures on social media change. Tadashi, who never had any of that in the first place, doesn’t even have anyone to answer to. It’s a blessing.

Because it was bad. It’s bad.

‘He just—’ He takes a breath. ‘I just— I didn’t think he’d be this unhappy about the whole thing. He said he doesn’t regret it, but— he—’ He can’t bring himself to say it, say I think he’s ashamed of me.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Tsukki says. ‘Just so you know, you don’t have to stay away. I’d sooner kick him out of the country than stop you from coming over. He can deal with his problems on his own.’

He laughs again, feeling relieved despite himself. ‘I mean, it wasn’t all his fault. I— I guess he didn't tell you to spare my feelings or something, but I— confessed to him, and then it just—’

‘Hold on.’ Tsukki sounds— sharp. ‘Hold on, what? You— what?’

Tadashi clears his throat. ‘I know, okay? I should’ve kept it to myself. But I was so mad, you know? I’m embarrassed, believe—’

‘No,’ Tsukki cuts in. Now he sounds strangled. ‘No, wait. You’re— you love him? What were you mad about, then?!’

‘What do you mean?’ Tadashi leans away from the wall now to frown at Tsukki, who seems to be going through something very existential, given the look on his face. ‘Wouldn’t you be mad if the guy you’re in love with basically told you he feels guilty about you and he can’t see you again?’

‘ What? ’ The existential crisis reaches its peak. Tsukki runs a hand through his hair and scoffs, then narrows his eyes. ‘Are you sober? What did he say to you? Tell me what he said.’

‘Tsukki, now you’re just being mean. He told me he feels guilty, and he doesn’t want his feelings to ruin my summer, and we shouldn’t meet again. Happy?’

Tsukki gapes at him. ‘And— that’s all he said? And— you told him you love him? He knows? You—’ He scoffs again, and actually turns away from Tadashi to blink at the night sky, then lets out the kind of frustrated noise Tadashi only hears him make once a year on average. ‘Oh, I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking murder him.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Tadashi says. ‘It’s not his fault I’m in love with him.’

‘Oh, that part is not his fault, I know,’ he replies, and there’s one second where he looks like he’s about to laugh, of all things, before he turns and puts his hands on Tadashi’s shoulders, looks straight into his eyes. ‘You drink a litre of water before bed and get the shochu out of your hair, okay? Open your presents tomorrow. Mine and Yachi’s is the one in yellow. I’ll see you on Monday.’

With that, he leaves Tadashi standing dumbly on the balcony, crossing the chaotic living room in three strides and heading for the coats.

┈

A week later, Tadashi’s phone rings when he’s wrestling with a can of coconut milk for his fancy Friday dinner. He glances at it, returns to the can, then drops it altogether as his mind registers the strokes of the name on the screen.

He doesn’t say anything when he picks up, not even hello.

Akiteru didn’t expect him to, apparently, because he only waits a second before speaking.

‘I found something of yours in my car,’ he says. Tadashi’s arms go hot and cold at the sound of his voice. ‘Can I come return it?’

┈

He’s been waiting, perched on the edge of his bed, for half an hour now, and still he jumps when he hears the knock on his door, even though he’s the one who buzzed Akiteru in. He doesn’t have the courage to open it. Closes his eyes and breathes deep, counts to eight in his head. Makes his legs move for him, then his hand. Opens the door in one wide swing.

He’s standing right there in the hallway, gorgeous in his jacket, the jewel blue of his scarf trailing all the way down to his knees; he must’ve worried it on the way—

He looks up and freezes. Tadashi doesn’t understand the utter shock on his face until he remembers—

And then Akiteru is...laughing.

Tadashi stands there, one hand still on the doorknob, and can do nothing but watch as Akiteru laughs. It’s only a whisper at first, then something that resembles a giggle. Then all its sweet windchime notes are muffled into the gloved hands he brings up to cover his face. And Tadashi can do nothing but watch, and not understand. But then Akiteru is taking a deep, trembling breath that doesn’t sound like laughter anymore, and when he lowers his hands, his eyes are—

‘You cut your hair,’ he says helplessly. Tadashi feels something soft inside him clench with love.

‘I did,’ he replies. ‘Come in.’

┈

Akiteru takes the jacket off first, drapes it over the back of the chair he settles down in. Then the scarf, which he unravels as carefully as he’d unravel silk, letting it pool on his lap. He’s in his work clothes; the last time Tadashi saw him like this was on graduation day. He is every bit as handsome, and even more devastating now. The unfairness of it all makes Tadashi grit his teeth; he wishes Akiteru would make it quick and leave, even though there’s just as big a part of him that wants this to never end.

He stays perched on his bed, not daring to say a word, even offer water. He can’t even bother to hide how he’s staring; doesn’t know when he’ll get to do it next. If he even will.

On cue, Akiteru looks up, then exhales slow and deep, leans his elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

‘God, you really did cut your hair,’ he says, more to himself than to Tadashi. Looks up again. ‘Tadashi.’

‘Did Tsukki come to see you?’ Tadashi asks, then. He doesn’t remember anything from his birthday apart from the dark promise on Tsukki’s face, and really, trust him to decide that this, of all times, is when his meddling is required. ‘Because— I don’t know what he said, but—’

‘He called me a stupid, self-flagellating, myopic fucking clown,’ Akiteru replies. ‘And it was awful, because Kei is awful, and because he wasn’t wrong about any of it.’

He doesn’t wait for Tadashi to say anything, and just as well, because he has nothing to say to that. He doesn’t understand.

‘Tadashi,’ he hears, then, again. ‘Is there any way you can forgive me long enough for me to explain myself?’

‘I’m not angry,’ Tadashi says, then, through numb lips. He still doesn’t understand. ‘Never was, not really.’

Akiteru’s eyes narrow a little at that. When he speaks, his voice is hard.

‘Then you should be. I had no right to talk to you so irresponsibly, especially not as the older one— no, don’t give me that face— not when I knew how I sounded. I let you get hurt, instead of being clear with you.’ The scarf is slowly sliding to the floor, abetted by the nervous up-down of Akiteru’s knee. ‘And I’m not going to do that again. So: are you willing to hear me out, or should I return what I found to you and leave?’

Tadashi doesn’t think he can speak at all anymore. Instead he leans forward and catches the scarf just as it slides off completely, and gathers it into his own lap instead. Starts to stretch it out to fold it better, then gives up and wraps it around both hands. When he looks up, Akiteru is smiling at him, even though it’s small and scared. Akiteru is scared, he realises dully.

‘All right,’ he says, and his voice is scared too. ‘I didn’t realise what guilt sounded like to you until you were already leaving, and by that time I’d said at least three other worse things to you, and I couldn’t take them back. And—’ —he closes his eyes for a long second, then opens them again— ‘—and I was selfish then, too. I was counting on you to be good. I didn’t want to hear that I wasn’t alone in my feelings, because at least that way, I could pretend that the reason I wasn’t taking a chance was because I didn’t know how you felt.’

Alone— in what feelings?

‘But then you just,’ and here he gestures, with a fond little laugh; mimes an explosion with his hands. ‘And suddenly I had to face it, and know that the real reason was that I was scared.’ Tadashi frees his hands from the scarf, then wraps it around his left arm, all the while staring at Akiteru. ‘I was too scared to take that chance.’

‘Take what chance?’ It comes out barely above a whisper. Something entirely unreasonable is beginning to flutter in his chest. ‘Akiteru?’ If this is his attempt to be clearer , it’s not a very good one, but then again, that might be because a low sort of hum is starting to fill Tadashi’s ears. Like the sense, undependable but uncanny, when a serve goes up: that it’s going to be good.

And Akiteru looks up, terrified, when that’s the one thing he should never be, and says: ‘The chance to tell you that I love you, too.’

Tadashi puts away the scarf. The referee’s whistle blows.

‘And that— I wasn’t scared of you. I was scared of the possibility of having you.’ He breathes in. ‘Of how right it felt, even though my fucking nightmare of a brain was already telling me I’d end up disappointing you. It scared me— the fact that I was ready to run that risk, of hurting you.’

He laughs then— that old, bitter laugh that Tadashi’s come to hate with all his being. Looks away, at the floor. ‘But I ended up doing that anyway, so— I won’t protest for a second, if you want me gone.’

‘And if I don’t?’

It takes much longer than eight seconds. Maybe eight sequences of eight seconds each. Or eighty seconds. But then Akiteru turns to him, and the thing in Tadashi’s chest is growing wings.

‘Well,’ Akiteru says, then, reaching behind himself. ‘Then I have something of yours, but you have no use for it now.’

With that, he pulls out— Tadashi stares— a flimsy, plastic pack of hair ties.

‘I know how it looks,’ he says quickly, holding both hands up. ‘I just— Kei came storming into my apartment at three in the morning, and I couldn’t stop thinking about everything he’d said all week. All damn week. And maybe I still wouldn’t have acted on it and he’d have dragged me here by my collar, probably, but I just— I found these, and I—’ He breathes out, slows down, and then there are tears in his voice. ‘I had to see you. I just had to see you.’ 

Tadashi is still staring at the pack. Then, like the breaking of a spell, he bursts into laughter. It’s gone as quick as it came, his hand over his mouth, but then he feels another one bubbling up, impossible and golden and fresh.

‘You useless man,’ he says, straightening up from the bed and striding over to the chair, straddling Akiteru’s thighs, easy like slipping into bed. ‘You idiot. These aren’t mine. These are Yachi’s.’

‘What?’ Akiteru whimpers, but Tadashi is already kissing him. Hard and deep and burning sweet, fingers curled in his hair, lips open and warm. He hears the rustle of the pack falling to the floor, and then Akiteru’s arms are around him, tight. Tight. Tadashi wants to make friends with him every year. Tadashi wants to meet him all over again. Learn him and relearn him through every change in his hallways.

He laughs again when they pull away, and Akiteru laughs, too.

‘Couldn’t you have pretended, for romance’s sake?’

‘No, absolutely not,’ Tadashi replies. He is light-headed with joy. He is dizzy with love. ‘You should be ashamed. You really don’t know anything about me, do you?’

‘Maybe I don’t,’ Akiteru says, stealing kiss after kiss after kiss. ‘Will you let me find out?’

Will Tadashi let him find out? Only if he returns the favour. Only if he drinks three cups of coffee and two cans of whatever energy drink they can find from the nearest vending machine, and stays up all night talking and talking and talking. Only if he tells Tadashi why blue is his favourite colour, and which movies he grew up hating, and whether he showers first, or brushes his teeth. Only if he stays after the caffeine has worn off, and lets Tadashi draw the covers over them both. 

'You'd better be listening,' Tadashi says, finally. 'I have so— many— things— to tell you.'

v. spring

I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

poem xiv , pablo neruda

‘Can you please stop,’ Tsukki says. ‘Why are you being so cruel and prolonging the agony? Just shoot me already.’

‘Shut up,’ Akiteru sings, then steps back, holds up the camera again. ‘Tadashi, hold up his diploma, will you?’

Tadashi obeys, holding it up, posing with a peace sign and a face-splitting grin for good measure. Just as the shutter goes off, Tsukki jerks forward and gets him into a chokehold, graduation robes going all over the place. Even as Tadashi squawks and struggles, he hears the shutter just keep clicking, because Akiteru’s insufferable like that.

‘Perfect,’ he announces on cue, just as Tsukki finally lets Tadashi go. ‘These are going on the wall.’

‘Along with a framed restraining order against you,’ Tsukki shoots back, but Akiteru only gives him an absent thumbs-up as he goes through the photos. ‘Can I please go now?’

‘We haven’t gotten a decent picture yet!’ Tadashi says, just to be annoying.

‘We’ll do it at yours. Now let me go, or it’s double the shots on Saturday.’

┈

Saturday dances in, and with it, a storm of petals. The weather is so gorgeous that Tadashi’s father has said almost four times in a row that they should ditch their restaurant reservations and just have a last-minute barbecue instead. It takes both Tsukishima-san and Tadashi’s mother to convince him otherwise, and even then, the look on his face suggests that he’s still going to make everyone come over for cocktails well into the night, especially now that he’s discovered Akiteru’s own passion for it.

Tadashi squints at himself in the bathroom mirror, rolls up his sleeves just right, straightens his collar. His arms are covered in ink from earlier in the day, when his fellow graduates thought it would be a good idea to sign skin instead of photographs. It’ll wash away soon enough, but he wants to keep it on for tonight, even though he knows it’ll stain his shirt.

‘Tadashi?’ His mother pokes her head in, makes a pleased sound. ‘Oh, aren’t you handsome. We’re leaving first. The boys are here too, so don’t take long, okay?’

He won’t. One last look, fingers combing quickly through his hair, and he’s stepping out, then jumping back with a hand on his chest. Akiteru’s leaning against the wall just outside, straightening up as he sees Tadashi.

‘I didn’t hear mom let you in,’ Tadashi says, and he wants to move closer, but something on Akiteru’s face stops him. It’s quiet and lovely, and full of pride.

‘Come here,’ Akiteru murmurs, then, holding out a hand. Tadashi takes it, smiles as Akiteru pulls him in. His new glasses are a little too low on his nose, and Tadashi leans back in the circle of his arms to fix them. ‘You look gorgeous.’

‘So do you,’ he replies. ‘I’m still not used to them. I really think you should invest in contacts, this is too dangerous for me.’

‘Barely had your diploma for a day and you’re already ordering me around? I see how it is.’

‘Oh, you know,’ Tadashi starts, then gives up, presses their lips together instead. He can’t wait for dinner, where their mothers will fawn over him and Tsukki while his father and Akiteru discuss the extremely serious business of planning post-dinner cocktails. He can’t wait for post-dinner cocktails in their garden, with those stupid new colour-changing lights his father won’t stop talking about, and terrible music from the nineties. Can’t wait for tomorrow morning, when they’ll hop into the car and head right back to Sendai, pick Yachi up on the way, trash Tsukki’s latest apartment upgrade. Can’t wait for tomorrow night, when he’ll step out of Akiteru’s magnificent shower and climb all over where he’ll be lying on the bed, and take his glasses off just to put them on again. He can’t wait for all of it, but to make it happen faster, he has to pass this time. He does it the way he likes best, swallowing a sigh right from Akiteru’s lips, and smiling into it.

‘I am waiting, ’ Tsukki calls then, from the main door. They pull away and laugh, foreheads pressed together. ‘Don’t make me have to come get you two. I don’t have a blindfold.’

‘Coming,’ Akiteru says, but then Tadashi’s pulling him back with a whispered wait, wait. ‘What?’

‘I was thinking,’ he says. ‘After dinner, before the cocktails. Think we could grab a drink, just the two of us?’

Akiteru makes that face that he’s gotten so good at making, which can mean either what am I going to do with you or the things I do for you depending on the time of the day.

‘Let me see what I can do,’ he says. ‘I think I may know a spot.’