Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Three plates of steaming beef curry sat on the small dining table, and all Tsukishima needed now was to find the spoons. He bit his lip as he pulled open yet another drawer but all it held was a tray of wooden chopsticks.

Where are the fucking spoons?

Tsukishima ran a hand through his hair, a small part of him knowing he was overreacting over spoons of all things, but there was a much larger and much more persistent part of him that urged his anxieties on until panic sent his heart racing and breaths quickening.

Fuck.

“We’re home!”

Tsukishima jerked upwards and barely caught Yachi as she flung herself into his arms. He staggered backwards under her weight but welcomed the warmth, and his arms automatically tightened around her shoulders. He pressed his face to her hair and the smell of daffodils and daisies wrapped around him like a blanket to soothe his frazzled nerves.

“I swear she likes you more than me.” Yamaguchi shrugged off his leather jacket and tossed it over the sofa, ignoring the coat rack that stood right next to him. “Let me know if you want to date her too and we can split the bill every time we take her out for dinner.”

“I pay my own way.” Yachi stuck her tongue out at her boyfriend and untangled herself from Tsukishima. Before she let him go completely, she looked up at him with a question in her eyes as if to ask, are you okay, and Tsukishima put a smile on his face because he was definitely better now.

“I’m not looking to date,” Tsukishima said, watching as Yamaguchi wandered into the kitchen and pulled out the same drawer that he’d been looking into only moments before. He lifted the tray of wooden chopsticks and pulled out three spoons from underneath.

Tsukishima stared, and wondered how close he was coming to a mental breakdown.

The three of them sat down to eat and even though it was only a simple meal of beef and packet curry, Yamaguchi and Yachi ate with zest and assured Tsukishima it tasted amazing even though he didn’t ask. He thought they might have been trying to cheer him up.

He must have looked pathetic.

He picked at his dinner, a much smaller portion than he had given his friends. His appetite had always been small but it was even more diminished now. He did eat bits of beef every now and then, not wanting to worry his friends; they'd been worried enough when he told them he needed to find somewhere to live, and even more so when they realised he was moving out by himself.

“Is Kuroo allergic to nuts?”

Yachi’s question had Tsukishima stumped, and slowly his brain worked through the last few minutes of conversation he'd spaced out on.

He kind of wished he hadn’t mentioned dating, because the two of them had started talking about installing Tinder on his phone and going through the app to see what cute and single guys lived in the area. From there, the conversation had delved into what constituted cute, because their definitions were vastly different to each other's.

They had both agreed on one point though: not Kuroo Tetsurou.

Fair enough.

“He’s, uh-- no. Not allergic to nuts.”

“Shame.” Yachi took another bite of her curry. “I’m going to kick his nuts so hard they’ll fly up to his throat. He can choke on them instead.”

Tsukishima stared at her.

“Oh, she’s mad.” Yamaguchi cleaned off the rest of his plate, not even a little bit concerned that his normally placid girlfriend was clenching her spoon in her fist and threatening bodily harm. “Big mad.”

“Why aren’t you?” Yachi stabbed her spoon into her rice and droplets of curry splattered onto the table. “I can’t believe the nerve of him. Who asks for a break when they’re playing Call of Duty? The! Utter! Disrespect!”

Every word was punctuated with another stab, and the amount of force she produced with the spoon was so alarming that Tsukishima had half a mind to confiscate it before she broke the plate and really made a mess.

“It’s just another bump in the road.” Tsukishima shrugged off Yachi’s rage-filled words. “We’ll work through it, same as every other time.”

“That is a bald-faced lie.” Yachi pointed her spoon at him, and it flashed silver under the light like a knife under his chin to force him to see the truth. “You’ve had your disagreements and your arguments but you’ve never moved out before.”

No, he hadn’t. Tsukishima could see how this looked to his friends but they didn’t know the full context of the situation. Kuroo had been saying for a while that they needed to take time away from each other and try new things to broaden their experiences. Tsukishima had never been opposed to that because whatever Kuroo sought, he couldn’t find while they were together and he wanted him to be happy.

It didn’t come as much of a surprise when Kuroo said he wanted to take a break. It did however come as a surprise that he said it completely out of the blue while playing Call of Duty.

Honestly, Tsukishima should’ve told him to have a kit-kat. For one thing, they had lived together and finding an apartment smack-bang in the middle of Tokyo by himself was impossible. It was a good thing his friends had been so supportive, and welcomed him into their own home. For another thing, Tsukishima would have loved to see the shock on Kuroo’s face when he said that as revenge for making him uproot his entire life and move it into one bedroom.

“Does Akiteru know yet?” Yamaguchi asked.

“Not yet.” It wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation. For some unfathomable reason, Kuroo and Akiteru were like wood and flame which burned a little too brightly like a house on fire, and their every interaction spelt disaster for Tsukishima. It made no sense for two men of such opposing personalities to get along so well yet here they were. “I’ll call him tonight.”

Tsukishima wanted to avoid that conversation until his bones turned to dust and then some, but he couldn’t put it off any longer lest Akiteru text Kuroo and accidentally find out. If that happened, there would be hell to pay and Kuroo would be doing most of the bleeding.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Yamaguchi and Yachi began clearing the plates, and Yachi looked pointedly at Tsukishima’s leftovers but collected it anyway, and they thanked him again for cooking. It wasn’t something they needed to say thank you for; Tsukishima just wanted to repay their kindness how he could.

“Friday night is board game night.” Yachi piled the dishes into the sink and turned the tap on. “Do you want to take a bath while we wash the dishes and set up Monopoly?”

A smile, small but genuine, touched Tsukishima’s face. At the best of times when they played Monopoly, they got into heated arguments over shady deals. At the worst of times, they basically throttled each other over outright cheating and there might have been a table flipped once or twice.

“I’m going to get you back for last time,” Tsukishima said. “My offer was legitimate and you know it.”

Yachi’s brow twitched. “You tried to sell me Ginza on mortgage for 8000 yen.”

“Like I said, completely legitimate--”

“That’s double what it was worth!”

Yamaguchi placed his hands on Yachi’s shoulders and gently started rubbing circles into her skin before she went off on another Monopoly tirade. “You guys can settle this later. Tsukki, go take a bath.”

“Yes, yes.”

Tsukishima left them to the dishes and swung by his room to pick up pyjamas, a clean towel and his phone before heading to the bathroom. He ran a bath and held his fingers under the running water to test its temperature. When he deemed it hot enough to boil his skin off, he stripped down to nothing and sank into the tub, revelling in how the hot water swallowed him up and eased his aching muscles.

Moving was one hell of a bitch.

Tsukishima leaned back and rested his head on the ledge of the tub. His fingers toyed with his phone, and there really was no use putting this off any longer. He had no more excuses of being busy unpacking or being too tired, and also there was now the bonus of drowning himself if he felt the need for a prompt exit out of the conversation. With that one solace in mind, Tsukishima dialled Akiteru’s number.

As the phone rang, Tsukishima’s pulse quickened and he wondered how he was going to start the conversation with his brother.

I’m sort of single now. Surprise!

Kuroo-and-I aren’t really Kuroo-and-I anymore.

I may need an arranged marriage. Hooray!

Each one was as equally terrible as the last, and he kind of wished he’d given this a little more thought or even scripted out something vaguely useful.

“Hello?”

Tsukishima exhaled. “It’s me.”

“Hello, me.”

Tsukishima put his phone on loudspeaker and left it on the ledge. “Lame. Are you busy?”

“So-so. I’m trying my hand at origami.”

“Another hobby?”

Akiteru was rarely seen without some kind of crafting equipment in his hand. He had nurtured a special sort of patience since childhood that fed his talent for sewing, felting, knitting and crocheting.

Every year, he returned to their mother’s house and decorated it with new creations ranging from felted animals to patterned afghans. Tsukishima himself was the owner of a stuffed triceratops that lived next to his pillow and a quilt that sat at the end of his bed. He’d never said aloud that he loved them but he kept them close and those were words enough.

Origami, while a different medium, still demanded the same kind of dedication and it was only natural that Akiteru gravitated towards it.

“Yeah, kind of. I’m making a get-well gift for my colleague’s daughter. The poor thing’s ill and she might be in hospital for a while, so I thought I’d try to cheer her up.”

“What are you making?”

“A thousand cranes.”

“A thou--” Tsukishima closed his eyes. Exasperation welled in his chest, but it was also laced with fondness for his brother who would wile away the hours with his head bent over sheets of origami paper to make a little girl smile. “You’re dumb.”

“The dumbest,” Akiteru agreed. “What are you up to?”

“Bath. Tired.”

“Are you overworking yourself again?” Akiteru clucked his tongue in disapproval. He’d never liked the fact that Tsukishima often took work home on evenings and weekends to make impossible deadlines, but that was the life of a forensic scientist. “You need to figure out some kind of work-life balance. It’s not healthy to have your life revolve around work and sleep.”

Tsukishima opened his mouth to rebut that he did more than just work and sleep, thank you very much, but it wasn’t true. He didn’t see his friends with enough regularity to dispute this, and now game nights with Kozume and book talks with Akaashi were likely not occurring for the foreseeable future. His life really would consist of only work and sleep.

Pathetic.

Tsukishima reached up, hands dripping wet, to rub his temple where a small headache was building. The steam curling around his face and curling the ends of his hair made it hard to breathe and amplified the pounding sensation in his head.

“Kei?” The sound of paper rustling was loud on Akiteru’s end. “You’re very quiet today. Is everything okay?”

Yes.

No.

I don’t know.

“Kuroo and I..." Tsukishima paused. There was no good way to voice his next words and so he took a deep breath and forced himself to say, “We’re taking a break.”

“Oh,” Akiteru said, still focused on his paper cranes. “From what?”

“Us.”

The rustling of paper stopped.

“Akiteru?” Tsukishima cautiously asked.

“I’m here.” Akiteru’s voice was unnaturally calm. “What happened?”

Anxiety pooled at the bottom of Tsukishima’s stomach and he drew his knees to his chest, wishing he hadn’t done this in the bath after all. His state of undress made him too bare, too vulnerable, and left him without any sense of security.

“We were too... we decided we needed some time away from each other.”

“Right.” Akiteru didn’t sound convinced. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Of course he didn’t. Perhaps Tsukishima had made use of little white lies too often to avoid talking about sensitive topics, because Akiteru always noticed and pointed it out. Akiteru never blamed him for it, but there would always be a brief flash of sadness across his face and it was the worst feeling in the world to have hurt his older brother.

“Then I’m as fine as I can be under the current circumstances.”

Akiteru sighed, familiar with Tsukishima’s stubborn ways, but continuing on because he cared. “No-one is fine after that kind of change. Have you taken time to-- I don’t know, grieve?”

“Grie-- no-one died.”

“Don’t deflect.”

Tsukishima pressed his palms into his eyes until spots of light danced behind his lids. No matter how much he tried, there was just no lying to Akiteru. “I’m not mad or anything. We’d been having issues for a while, getting snippy towards each other about dumb stuff all the time. It’s natural we’d want some time to ourselves to figure things out after that.”

“I didn’t know that.” Akiteru sounded distressed. “You’ve never told me before.”

Tsukishima had never spoken to Akiteru about his relationship issues, not because he didn’t want to but rather because it was complicated on multiple levels. Kuroo and Akiteru had bonded over their love of embarrassing Tsukishima and fell so easily into friendship. Tsukishima never wanted to cause a rift between them, and he suspected Kuroo felt the same and that was why he’d never said anything either.

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“I’m your brother, I’ll always worry about you.”

“I know.”

Akiteru sighed. “Whose idea was it to take a break?”

Tsukishima didn’t want to answer. But Akiteru let his question hang in the air until the silence grew so long that it made Tsukishima squirm in discomfort.

Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore.

“It was Kuroo’s idea.” Tsukishima heard Akiteru’s intake of breath and beat him to it. “I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that. It means less and less each time you say it.”

Tsukishima wondered what Akiteru expected him to say if not that. It wasn’t as though he’d spent the last three days eating his weight in ice-cream or crying himself to sleep. Instead, he had packed up his life into a dozen boxes and moved it halfway across the city to scatter it all around him in this room. How did that not constitute fine?

“I’m sorry.” Akiteru sounded frustrated, like there were so many things he wanted to say but weren’t coming right. “That was out of line. It took a lot of courage to call and tell me what happened, so thank you for that. I understand you’re going through a lot right now and you might not want to talk about it, but if you do then I’m always here to listen.”

“I know.”

Akiteru always offered his time even though Tsukishima rarely took him up on it, and even if he did then the conversations tended towards the short and perfunctory side to relay information and nothing more. It wasn’t in Tsukishima’s nature to delve into his emotions and communicate them to other people; things like that were personal and they should stay that way.

“Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“No, that was it.” Tsukishima sank deep into the tub until the ends of his hair dipped into the water. “I’ll let you go now. It’s going to take you a long time to fold all those cranes, and you’ll need all the time you can get.”

“All right then.” Akiteru knew a dismissal when he heard one. “Remember, Kei, anytime.”

“I know,” Tsukishima said once more, and ended the call just as his voice started shaking. He stared at his home screen with growing trepidation, half-anticipating that his brother would call back and ask with worry lacing his voice whether or not he was truly okay.

The phone stayed silent.

Tsukishima exhaled and his shoulders loosened from their hunched up position. If Akiteru had called again, he didn’t know if he could carry on conversation without his nerves fraying and causing him to lash out in agitation.

He hated the anxiety that rippled under his veins and made him prone to irritation and anger. Akiteru had pointed out once a long time ago, that he tended to work his fingers together when he was uncomfortable and spit out nasty words when he was pushed. Akiteru had suggested seeing a therapist but once that idea was shot down, he’d taken it upon himself instead to research techniques to manage anxiety.

Tsukishima initially thought it was stupid, but he didn’t want Akiteru’s efforts to go to waste so he played along and practised breathing exercises and kept a record of every time he felt irritation prickle his skin and why it had happened. Funnily enough, reading through his journal allowed him to identify patterns in his anxiety and he learned to avoid them for the most part.

But sometimes there were no avoiding triggers and that was where he struggled. When things spiralled out of control, so did he.

.

Yamaguchi and Yachi had already set up Monopoly on the kotatsu, placing their preferred figures ready on GO and divvying up the money. They sat under the plush blanket with piping hot cups of tea in their hands and a third one set out and waiting.

It stopped Tsukishima short in the doorway and it struck him how easily Yamaguchi and Yachi made space for him in their lives and in their home as though he’d always been there. It brought a lump to his throat realising how much they cared and how miserable it was that he had to crash into their space like this and disrupt it. As much support as they provided and continued to give him, it was only a disturbance to their own life and own time together.

Pathetic.

Tsukishima’s fingers twitched and he resisted the urge to link them together and dig his nails into his skin. He knew what this meant, that he wasn’t in the right state of mind to be socialising and needed to be by himself for the next few hours or he’d grow irritable and lash out at his friends who would never deserve his ire.

“I’m not feeling well.” Each word was forced through his teeth, and came thick like molasses that stuck to his tongue. “Sorry.”

Yamaguchi and Yachi were surprised at the change in plans but one look at him and understanding dawned on their faces. The three of them made quite the trio-- all drowning in their own anxieties yet finding the strength to prop each other up.

Yamaguchi often insisted it was Tsukishima who helped him first by looming over the bullies in middle school. Tsukishima didn’t remember that incident but Yamaguchi often recounted the story with fondness and said it was the first time anyone had helped him. He used to be so self-conscious of his skin, then his athletic abilities and finally his leadership capabilities. Tsukishima had watched him build himself up through all of that and not once had he considered his own role in that development but apparently his curt, straightforward manner had been what Yamaguchi needed after all.

Yamaguchi’s features eased into sympathy and he said, “No worries. Go get some sleep.”

Yachi’s anxieties were more prominent and featured in her everyday life whenever she came across a situation she was unprepared for. There wasn’t much anyone could about that, but Tsukishima shared the breathing techniques and journaling activities that helped her manage better. He even bought her a mindfulness colouring book which she brightened page by page whenever she was overwhelmed-- she’d need a new one soon.

Yachi’s eyes were saturated with concern and she looked like she wanted to talk to him. Tsukishima managed a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes but it was enough to convince her not to say anything and wish him a good night instead.

When Tsukishima closed the bedroom door behind him, he let out a breath and cast his gaze around the room. It’d been two days since he officially finished moving in and it still jarred him to see his belongings scattered about, from his clothes to his albums to his dinosaur figurines. Everything he’d taken with him had been explicitly his and he didn’t have enough to fill the entire room.

The spaces on his shelf and on his desk were all too apparent, certain items missing because they had been theirs: a photo frame with a picture of Kuroo leaning across the table and kissing his cheek, while his eyes and his mouth were open in surprise; a little cactus Kuroo brought home one day because it was just as cute and prickly as Tsukishima was; and a vintage polaroid camera they’d found in a secondhand shop on a weekend trip to Okinawa.

Tsukishima had left all those things behind because he didn’t need the reminder of what he was missing every time he stepped foot in his room. But now, the lack of evidence of his relationship made the room vast and empty, and highlighted just how bare and depressing his life had become.

Tsukishima rummaged in one of the cardboard boxes still lying around from the move and produced a bottle of kahlúa he’d taken with him. He held it up to the moonlight casting through the window and swished it around. It was still half-full, more than enough to settle his nerves and send him to sleep. He unscrewed the cap and took a rough swig, cringing at the bitter taste of alcohol and coffee. He didn’t enjoy kahlúa by itself, preferring to mix it with milk, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to the kitchen and risk his friends asking questions, so he sat on his bed in the dark and finished off his bottle.

Chapter Text

Tsukishima narrowed his eyes at Yamaguchi, who crossed his arms in a clear signal that he was not going to pick up the sake bottle and refill Tsukishima’s cup. They’d been staring each other down for a good minute and a half, and Yachi was losing patience with their stubbornness.

“Just pour him another one, Yamaguchi, it’s a flat cup. He can’t get drunk from that.”

“You didn’t see him downing them like shots.” Yamaguchi returned the glare in full force with his dark-lined eyes. “He had about four when you were in the bathroom.”

“Four?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Tsukishima argued.

Yamaguchi and Yachi swapped perturbed looks with each other, having a telepathic conversation the way couples do. They were obviously concerned about him, but it wasn’t like Tsukishima made a habit of downing sake like water. This was a once-off occurrence because of what was to come.

“Tsukishima!” Sugawara, who had organised this dinner to celebrate Sawamura’s birthday, leaned over from the right and showed him his phone where a bunch of messages were visible. “Kuroo’s on his way!”

“Oh good.” Tsukishima grabbed the bottle of sake, fuck etiquette, and poured himself his own cup because he was not going to sit through this sober. After he gulped down the contents of the cup, he lied through his teeth and said, “I can’t wait to see him again.”

Apart from Yamaguchi, Yachi and Akiteru, Tsukishima hadn’t told anyone about the break because it never seemed relevant. No-one asked about his relationship status in the Karasuno group chat and he never told because what was there to say to people he saw maybe three or four times a year?

I’m not dating Nekoma’s captain right now. Surprise!

I’m pretty much single now. Shut up, Hinata!

Who made a bet for six years? Congratulations, collect your winnings!

It was far too awkward to bring it up but now Tsukishima wished he had because everyone was under the impression that he and Kuroo were still together, and if anyone made some offhand comment about them... well, it would end up being a lot more than just awkward.

There were a lot of people gathered for Sawamura’s birthday. It looked like Sugawara had booked out the whole okonomiyaki restaurant and invited everyone Sawamura had ever known, from middle school classmates to current colleagues in the neighbourhood koban.

Tsukishima and his friends sat on a table with people who had attended Karasuno: people on the volleyball team while they’d been there and alumni from before their time, but had been on the team when Sawamura was in his first and second years.

There were a lot of familiar faces, but some missing as well. Kageyama and Hinata were in Italy and Brazil with their respective teams and were sorry to miss out. They’d sent their well wishes instead and in Hinata’s case, an excess of run-on sentences and exclamation marks.

Asahi and Nishinoya were in Romania to see the home of Dracula and a bunch of old castles that were hopefully haunted. They had a plan to backpack around Europe, and sent a plethora of selfies in various tourist destinations to say they couldn’t make it.

“It’s nice to see everyone again.” Yamaguchi snagged the sake bottle and pushed it closer to Yachi where it would be difficult for Tsukishima to reach. “I’m glad we came.”

Yachi nodded and echoed his sentiments like she hadn’t been suggesting mere hours ago that the three of them should fake gastroenteritis and skip the celebration. It had taken a lot of convincing on Tsukishima and Yamaguchi’s parts to persuade her that it was a terrible idea and that it was impossible to lie to Sugawara because he was an elementary school teacher with a bullshit meter that was through the roof. In the end she’d acquiesced but it was with great reluctance.

“Hey, hey, hey!”

Tsukishima closed his eyes at the familiar cry and his fingers gripped his sake cup with too much force. He turned to the front door where Bokuto and Akaashi were greeting Tanaka and Shimizu. He couldn’t see Kozume or Kuroo yet, but they were sure to be close.

“I can’t do this,” Tsukishima muttered.

“Do you want to hide under my skirt?” Yachi whispered.

“I appreciate the offer, but Yamaguchi might have something to say about that.”

“Yeah, your last chance to hide under Yachi's skirt was ten seconds ago because Kozume and Kuroo are headed this way.” Yamaguchi fixed his customer service smile on his face, which looked unnaturally pleasant. “Chin up, Tsukki.”

Kozume slid down the bench first and stopped opposite Yamaguchi. There was an uncertain look on his face like he didn’t know how they were going to react, and that did make Tsukishima wonder if Kozume was as nervous about this as they were.

“Hi.” Kozume’s voice was soft and low, and if Tsukishima hadn’t seen his lips move then he wouldn’t have known he’d spoken.

Yachi melted first. A warm smile graced her face because for all her bravado, she was sunshine and daisies at heart and she could never be cold towards someone who didn’t deserve it.

“Kozume!” she exclaimed. “It’s been so long!”

It had been too long, almost two months since they had seen the other half of their group. It was strange that their weekends now consisted of quiet nights at the apartment instead of boisterous games at Kozume’s house or dinner parties at Bokuto and Akaashi’s apartment. Maybe, just maybe, if tonight went well, they might be able to salvage their friendship and return to some sense of normalcy.

“Hey, Tsukki.”

Tsukishima froze.

Kuroo sat down in front of him with a twinkle in his eye and an easy smile on his face like nothing had changed. For a moment, Tsukishima believed it and almost reached out to brush Kuroo's hair from his face. He gripped his cup tighter and forced a smile. 

"Hi." Tetsurou, he wanted to say, but wasn't that too familiar for them now?

“How have you been?”

“Good.” Tsukishima cleared his throat. He wished Yamaguchi hadn’t taken the bottle away. “You?”

“Yeah, not bad.” Kuroo reached up and messed up his hair even more, and Tsukishima fought the urge to reach over and run his fingers through the strands. He knew them better than his own hair, long and soft, and he’d spent hours with Kuroo’s head in his lap and carding his fingers through them. “It’s been rough at the hospital since I started night shifts. But it’s a part of the job, so no complaints.”

Tsukishima wanted to know more, to ask questions but he was afraid that he’d ask the wrong ones. Have you been pulling extra shifts? Have you been getting enough sleep? Are you eating properly?

The pressure to say something built, but he had nothing to say that Kuroo truly wanted to hear and so he stayed silent.

Kuroo’s smile slipped a little, but he forced it back and turned his attention to the two others. “Yamaguchi! Yachi! Hey!”

“Hey!” Yamaguchi returned the greeting with good cheer, and it was striking to remember that Yamaguchi and Kuroo had gotten along really well, initially because they both shared Tsukishima as a mutual friend and then realising they both had tonnes of embarrassing Tsukishima stories to swap.

“Hi.” Yachi was surprisingly neutral, but it looked like she was trying to be on her best behaviour. She kept her hands around her cup of tea like she was stopping herself from strangling him.

“Okay, so I need you to do me a favour,” Yamaguchi was saying to Kuroo. “I know it’s been a while and we may have lost our sense of intimacy but you know I’d never ask this if I didn’t think it was serious.”

Kuroo’s face turned serious. “You can ask me anything, bro.”

Tsukishima groaned. “Not the bro thing.”

“I’d forgotten about the bro thing,” Yachi muttered.

“Bro!” Yamaguchi cried, putting a hand to his heart. “I knew I could count on you.”

“I heard my bros!” Bokuto dove past Akaashi and landed in a heap in Kuroo’s lap. “Bro!”

“Bro!”

“Bro!”

“Make it stop,” Yachi begged, and Akaashi, who sat down completely unperturbed, chuckled.

Tsukishima had a small smile on his face too. With all seven of them here like this, it was like old times again: usually at Kozume’s house to play games, or at Bokuto and Akaashi’s when they decided to cook for everyone. They were the only ones with space big enough to comfortably fit all of them.

“I need you to take a look at a freckle on my back.” Yamaguchi shifted, trying to find a comfortable way to turn around on the bench. “I know I’ve got like a thousand of them but I need you to look at one.”

“Just one?”

“It might be a mole. Or turning into a mole.” Yamaguchi lifted his shirt and revealed his back, smatterings of dots and tattoos across an expanse of skin. “I’ve got an appointment with my doctor but I need a second opinion just in case because if it turns out to be skin cancer or something I’m going to freak--”

Yachi had her face buried in her hands, and for a moment Tsukishima thought she was embarrassed. Then he saw her shoulders shaking and realised she was laughing. He leaned behind Yamaguchi and whispered, “What’s going on?”

“It’s not a mole,” Yachi whispered back. Her eyes had tears of laughter in them. “It’s chocolate. From our couples painting class.”

“Couples paintin-- you were painting chocolate on your bodies in front of other people?

“We weren’t naked!”

Yeah, that was the concerning part of this whole situation.

Tsukishima would never understand the number of classes his friends took and how strange some of them were. Some were fairly normal, like yoga and floristry. And then there was this monstrosity that had Yamaguchi believing he was developing skin cancer.

He was grateful for this though, having his friends together again. Kuroo and Bokuto were doing a thorough examination of Yamaguchi’s back while Kozume shied into the corner and pretended not to be involved. Akaashi had a fond smile on his face and it was hard to believe how easy it was to fall back into friendship.

His eyes travelled to Kuroo and he was glad that Kuroo was distracted. Kuroo had a magnetic pull about him that drew everyone’s attention and Tsukishima was no exception no matter how hard he tried. It didn’t matter that they were in the middle of a break, he wanted to press his hands against Kuroo’s chest and feel the warmth beneath his palms. He wanted to curl his fingers in Kuroo’s collar and tilt his head up and kiss him stupid until they were both red and panting. He wanted to lay next to Kuroo in bed and feel Kuroo’s calloused hand smoothing across his thigh and hear his rumbling voice when he was muttering nonsense at one in the morning.

I miss you so much.

Tsukishima reached over and grabbed Yamaguchi’s sake cup, tossing it back. Maybe that was counterproductive. He’d been doing an excellent job of pushing down these stupid emotions but there was something about the sake that brought them rushing back in full force.

“Your cheeks are turning flush.” Akaashi turned his fond smile at him, quiet, and knowing that Tsukishima was a lightweight to begin with. “Take it easy until we get some food.”

Tsukishima held a hand to his cheek, where it felt warmer than unusual. Surely he couldn’t have had that much to drink already, but he couldn’t remember how many cups he’d had.

“It’s been a while.” Akaashi looked him up and down like he was an insect under a microscope, like there was nothing he could hide from those knowing eyes. “How have you been?”

“Fine,” Tsukishima automatically said. “I miss our chats.”

Akaashi’s face softened. “I miss our chats too.”

Tsukishima found a kindred spirit in Akaashi. The two of them were alike in so many ways, and their friends joked they could’ve been clones in personality if not for their looks. For two people who were introverts, they spend a lot of time together talking about volleyball and new book releases of the month. It helped that Akaashi owned a bookstore and they could get their hands on whatever books they liked.

“You look tired.”

“Work’s been kicking my ass.”

Work had been kicking his ass no more than usual. It wasn’t like there was ever a change in circumstance-- there were always going to be cases prioritised because of one emergency or another, and it was always on rush. Tsukishima had become desensitised to it now, going with the rapid pace even though it demanded more than what a normal person should handle. That was how careers were in Japan. He stayed late in the lab and when everyone else had gone home, he collected paperwork and a little more and took it home with him because his evenings were empty. He didn’t want to join Yamaguchi and Yachi in their classes so he busied himself with papers and a bottle of wine in his hand. Kahlúa was expensive and he was drinking too much to spend that much.

More often than not, a thought niggled in the back of his mind that this wasn’t healthy but he popped an aspirin and kept going so he wouldn’t have to dwell on it. Akaashi could probably see it in his face. He’d always read Tsukishima like an open book no matter how hard he tried to close himself off.

“If it’s difficult to meet up in person, we can video call,” Akaashi suggested, but it sounded more like a direction. “I miss talking to someone who actually cares about literary analysis.”

Tsukishima huffed a small laugh. He couldn’t imagine Bokuto even pretending to be interested in that kind of thing-- it was something between him and Akaashi, and Bokuto tended to err on the side of cookbooks and healthy eating. He wanted it though, to keep a hold onto the friends that had started falling away and maintain some sense of normalcy.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’d like that.”

He could probably use a voice of reason during his quiet evenings, an anchor that held him steady in the waves of a rocky ocean.

“What do you mean it was chocolate sauce!” Yamaguchi yelled, his skin bright red underneath his freckles. “I thought I needed to call a lawyer and write up my will! I was going to leave everything to you!”

Kuroo and Bokuto were holding onto each other and wheezing with laughter. Yachi had her face in her hands, this time definitely in embarrassment, and Kozume had a smirk on his face.

“What kind of class was this?” he asked.

“It was a couples class where we painted each other’s bodies with chocolate,” Yachi miserably said. “It sounded like fun and I wanted chocolate.”

Kuroo doubled over in a fresh wave of laughter. “Oh, that is way too much information about your love life,” he cackled.

“Hypocrite,” Kozume said.

Kuroo jostled Kozume with his elbow and snickered. “You like hearing about my dating disasters. You think they’re hilarious.”

The words hung in the air before they crashed down over Tsukishima’s head.

“You’re seeing other people?” he blurted, without thought of where he was or who he was sitting with.

The entire table fell silent, and too late Tsukishima realised he should have asked Kuroo to step aside for a private conversation but the damage was done. Yamaguchi was frozen in the middle of pulling his shirt down. Yachi held a chopstick in her fist like she was going to stab Kuroo through the eye. Sawamura and Sugawara had frowns lining their faces, Shimizu a hand to her mouth and Tanaka looked flat out murderous.

“Ah... ha..." Kuroo looked around the people and there wasn’t much help coming from his corner. Bokuto was studying the ceiling, Kozume found something interesting in his tea cup and Akaashi’s brows were drawn together. “Just for the record, Tsukki and I are on a break.”

Tsukishima clenched his hands. Like that made it any better. So much for no-one else knowing. The heat of humiliation creeped down the back of his neck and he kept his furious gaze locked onto Kuroo, unable to look at anyone else because their gazes were full of pity. The rage gave him focus, tunnel vision, something to direct his anger at.

“You’re seeing other people.”

Every word was drawn out and spat out with poison. A statement this time, because he was sure that he hadn’t heard incorrectly.

Kuroo winced and he, aware of all the eyes on them, said, “Can we talk outside?”

Tsukishima grabbed Sugawara’s cup of sake and downed it, not giving two shits about anything anymore. If this was going down, then he might as well spiral.

Sugawara only gave him an understanding pat on the arm before shuffling to give him room to storm out. He felt mildly vindicated that his upperclassmen glared daggers at Kuroo when he exited too, and even jumped when Tanaka growled at him like a rabid dog.

For a moment, the two of them stood outside the restaurant alone in the cold with their breaths frosting in the air and if it weren’t for the rage and pain twisting in his chest, Tsukishima could almost believe they were still together.

Kuroo spoke first, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “I think we might have had a bit of a misunderstanding.”

“A bit of a misunderstanding?” Tsukishima repeated in disbelief. “You asked for a break, not a break-up, so why the hell are you sleeping with other people?”

Kuroos head jerked up like he’d been stung and a look of hurt crossed his face like he couldn’t believe Tsukishima thought so little of him. “I’m not sleeping with anyone,” he muttered. “That’s crossing a line.”

How was that supposed to make him feel better? Some arbitrary line that Kuroo had drawn in the sand which crossed Tsukishima but not what he believed was wrong?

“Oh, is that where the line is?” The words spilled out hot and angry like a dam built up and held back for too long. Maybe it had been, since Tsukishima never voiced his concerns because he wanted to make Kuroo happy but not like this. “Why would you ask me to hang around on the sidelines if you’ve already decided you want to see other people? What am I, Tetsurou, a safety net to fall back on if you don’t find someone pretty enough to fuck?”

He doesn't love you anymore.

Something stung in his eyes, and he blinked furiously because he wasn't going to break down in front of Kuroo, in front of all their friends, in front of a fucking okonomiyaki restaurant. Kuroo may have ground his pride to dust but he grasped onto the last bits of it and held it tight. 

“No.” Kuroo ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up. He was harried, like he wasn’t prepared to have this conversation and was floundering to get through it. “It’s not like that. When I suggested we take a break, I wanted both of us to do this to see if it was something we both wanted.”

How did Kuroo ever come to the conclusion that Tsukishima wanted this too? Tsukishima had never wanted to see other people; what was it about him that made Kuroo think he wanted something different? He wracked his brains trying to think of what he did wrong. Had he been so content in his relationship that he'd been blind to Kuroo's needs? But for the life of him, he couldn’t think what they were. 

"What did I do wrong?" he whispered. "I don't know what I did wrong."

"It wasn't wrong. Nothing was wrong. But you know something wasn't right. Isn't that why you said okay? You wanted this too."

Tsukishima held a hand to his face, hysteria rising in this throat and threatening to burst out because that’s what the break was about? Kuroo wanting new experiences that he couldn’t share with him, and believing that he wanted it too. Kuroo was looking at him, unsure of what was going through his head, but pressing on anyway.

“You wanted this too. You said okay.”

Had Tsukishima given that impression? What, so if he had said something other than okay at that moment then something would have changed? No, that was ridiculous. Tsukishima recalled that moment vividly, lived it every night before he fell asleep and woke up to the cold realisation that he couldn't have prevented any of this from happening. 

What was the point of asking someone to stay if they wanted to go?

Maybe deep within himself, Tsukishima knew this was the outcome but he'd been so pressed to deny it that he buried it deep within himself and tried to drown it in alcohol.

"I’m not living like this." Tsukishima's voice shook and he hated himself for it. "I’m not standing behind this line you've drawn waiting for you to make up your mind about whether or not you think I'm good enough."

And Tsukishima had, hadn’t he? Not even looking up from his book as Kuroo uttered those words, just stilled his hand in the middle of turning a page and thinking: Oh.

“I said okay because I thought you wanted space. I never would have said that if I knew you wanted to involve other people.”

“Okay. All right.” Kuroo rubbed his face. The tip of his nose and his cheeks were red with cold and Tsukishima curled his fingers together because despite everything, he still wanted to cradle Kuroo’s face and tell him to go inside before he caught cold. “So if this changes things--”

“It does.” Tsukishima cut in. It did change things, brought new information to light. That his feelings weren’t reciprocated anymore, or not as strongly, and that while he was in it for the long haul, Kuroo was undecided.

As he stood there in the freezing cold, he saw for the first time the chasm between them and wondered how he had never seen it till now. “I’m here. I’m committed. But if you’re not then you need to make up your mind because I’m not going to be your Plan B.”

Kuroo opened his mouth, closed it. He looked like he had so much to say but no way to say it and in the end all he could say was, “I don’t know.”

“Fucking hell.” Tsukishima gave a scornful laugh. “Figure it out. Just fucking figure it out, okay? I’m not going to stand by the sidelines waiting for you to make up your mind on whether or not you think I’m good enough because you know what? You’ve always been good enough for me.”

They were the truest words he had spoken in a long time. Kuroo stared at him, transfixed, as though his words had cast a spell over him, and he reached out to brush his hand against Tsukishima’s sleeve but he jerked away. He didn’t want a snap decision after one emotional moment. He wanted Kuroo to think through everything and choose him.

“I love you.” Kuroo’s voice shook. “Of course I love you, how could I not? We’ve been good for each other for so long and that’s been good enough. But Tsukki, is-- is good enough the best we could have?”

Tsukishima breathed in, and the frigid air stabbed needles into his lungs.  Even now, Kuroo could hurt him without meaning to, just by using his words and telling him how much he was loved. It used to scare him when they first started dating, when the feelings were new and wonderful and intense. Now it was a lingering flame and the same words didn't mean the same thing anymore. Now, it had a whisper of regret behind it. 

In the most even tone he could manage, he said once more, “How much time do you need?”

“What?”

“A week? Two? Three?”

“Tsukki--”

“Three’s plenty,” Tsukishima said. “Figure it out.”

Figure it out, as his heart continued to break. 

He wrapped his arms around himself and hid his clenched hands. He turned, needing to get away. To be anywhere other than here.

“Wai-- where are you going?”

Hands reached out to grab his shoulder but he held himself tighter and shrugged them off. “Akiteru’s.”

“But Daichi’s dinner..."

“I’ll text him.” Tsukishima was becoming brittle, his nerves almost fraying. He needed to go before he snapped. “Now leave me alone.”

Poison bled into his words and anymore would have them running through Kuro’s veins. Kuroo drew back, and Tsukishima left.

He didn’t turn back, just trudged against the wind and pressed his nose into the scarf that Yamaguchi had wound around his neck before they left.

It smelled like nashi pears.

.

When Akiteru bought his own house, he made it clear that Tsukishima was welcome over at any time. Whenever Tsukishima visited Miyagi, he stayed there to save his mother from going into a cooking frenzy and to catch up with his brother.

Tsukishima’s frozen hands fumbled with the key in the lock, and it took a few tries for the bolt to turn. When he stepped inside and closed the door, he breathed in relief as warm air enveloped him. His skin now stung from the difference in temperature, but a few minutes and it’d be nothing. He didn’t have to look at the mirror in the hallway to know his eyes, nose and cheeks were red but the temperature would hide his secrets. Not that Akiteru would let them stay secrets for long.

Akiteru’s face popped around the corner and a smile bloomed across his face. “Kei! I wasn't expecting you. Or did I forget we have plans to meet up?”

“No, I was at dinner with my upperclassmen.” Tsukishima shrugged off his coat and his scarf and hung them over the coat rack before moving to the kitchen and opening the fridge. Akiteru wasn’t much of a drinker, same as him, but he kept some in his fridge for his friends when they came over. He snagged a six pack of beer and hauled it to the kotatsu where Akiteru sat with two large glass jars and scattered sheets of origami paper, some of which had been cut into quarters.

Akiteru did a double take and craned his neck to look at the clock on the wall. “Dinner? It’s barely eight o’clock.”

“I decided to hang out with my brother because that’s the kind of Saturday night I live for.”

“Funny.” Akiteru watched him crack open a beer and gulp down half its contents in one go. His brows drew together, and drinking beer in front of him, in hindsight, was probably not a good idea because Tsukishima had been quite vocal about beer tasting like piss and only drinking good stuff like kahlúa. For him to willingly drink beer from a can must be some sort of distress signal. “How much have you had to drink already?”

Tsukishima pretended to read the ingredients on the can. “What do you mean?”

“Your cheeks are red.”

“It’s the wind.”

“I can smell the sake on your breath.”

There went that lie. Tsukishima wondered how many more Akiteru would unravel tonight.

He finished off the first can and set it to one side. He didn’t need to answer the question; as if it wasn’t obvious that he was flushed with alcohol and had no idea how much he’d consumed. He cracked open a second can.

Akiteru’s hand twitched, as though he wanted to take the alcohol away. Tsukishima giggled. It’d be the second time alcohol was taken from him tonight, and wasn’t that truly pathetic?

“Kei, please tell me what’s wrong. Did you get into a fight with one of your friends?”

Tsukishima’s giggle blew up into a laugh. At this moment, Kuroo could even barely be described as that. A friend was someone who shared common interests, and conversations, and cared. His laugh trailed off and he stared at the table with its assorted colours. He didn’t want to think about what had happened, but Kuroo’s words roiled in his head and anxiety smothered his chest. It was too recent, too raw, and his skin crawled with the thought of baring himself again and being torn to shreds.

Akiteru wasn’t speaking either though, and the silence stretched out. Only the sound of a game show on the tv filled the house and the awful laughs from the audience made the silence so much worse.

“Have you ever gone on a break with someone before?”

Tsukishima couldn’t face his reality yet, but maybe he could work up to it.

A look of understanding, and perhaps a hint of resignation, passed over Akiteru’s face. “The closest I ever came was with Saeko.”

Ah, Tanaka’s sister-- wild and daring in the early years he’d known her, and then she had polished herself into something sleek and dangerous like a hunting leopard. She instilled a sense of wariness in him, not because she was scary but rather because she was capable of so much.

“She went to Hokkaido for six months and we agreed to put our relationship on pause.”

“Did you see other people in the meantime?”

Akiteru rubbed the back of his neck. “We said we could, but in the end, neither of us did. I didn’t like the idea of seeing someone even with consent. I just knew she was coming back, and I wanted to wait. I guess she felt the same way too, because she didn’t see anyone either.”

Tsukishima’s fingers trailed up the can, collecting condensation. He picked at the tab, and asked, “What was the point of the break then?”

“At first it was for us to have a way of having the freedom to see others since we couldn’t see each other. It gave us the physical and emotional distance to consider what we really wanted, and whether or not we could get that from anyone else. I couldn’t, not at that time. Saeko was it for me.”

Akiteru returned to his folding, hands moving carefully he folded and flipped and paper.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima said. “I get it.”

Things hadn’t worked out for Akiteru either way. When Saeko returned to Miyagi, she met another woman at the airport and that was the end of that chapter.

“Kuroo’s seeing other people.”

Akiteru crushed the crane’s head. The two of them stared at the poor bird, then Akiteru smoothed it out and proceeded like he hadn’t almost committed bird murder. “Did you two talk about this?”

Tsukishima shook his head. His voice held a wobble in it. “Dating other people hadn’t even crossed my mind. I thought Kuroo was it for me too. Until I learned about half an hour ago that he asked for a break because he wanted to see other people, and he wanted the same for me too.”

It still stung. Tsukishima quashed it with more shitty beer.

“What’s Kuroo’s favourite flower?”

Tsukishima knew he was drunk, but he didn’t think hallucinations were a part of inebriation. “Huh?”

“His favourite flower,” Akiteru repeated with more patience than necessary. He finished the crane and held it up for inspection, then gave himself a nod and dropped it into one of the jars.

“Sunflowers. Why?”

“I’m going to make a flower arrangement and send it to his father when I rip his rooster head from his rooster shoulders.”

Tsukishima snorted. “Miscommunication my ass,” he muttered, and reached for a third can of beer.

Akiteru shoved a full-sized sheet of origami paper in his face. “Keep your hands busy.”

Tsukishima may have been a touch violent when he snatched the paper, and a touch careless when he reached into the recesses of his hazy mind to remember the instructions of how to fold a crane. Every child in elementary school had learned, and it was like remembering how to ride a bike. The memory came naturally, the paper familiar under his hands and when he finished and he tossed it towards Akiteru.

“It’s not straight.”

“I’m not straight.”

“Kei.”

“Okay, okay.” Tsukishima took the crane back and started unfolding it. He took more care this time, aligning the paper corner to corner before pressing down. The crane looked better, if not a little rough from all the wrinkles. It still ended up in Akiteru’s ‘rubbish’ pile though.

“Keep going.”

Tsukishima sighed like he was doing Akiteru a huge favour, and reached for another sheet of paper.

“So,” Akiteru said. “What came of your talk with Kuroo?”

It wasn’t like anything had happened at all. There had been no resolution, nothing since Tsukishima stormed off. He hadn’t let Kuroo say much. He hadn’t been sure he wanted to hear it.

“I told Kuroo to make up his mind. If he wants more than what I can give him, then he needs to say it so we can end it.”

“What about you?”

Tsukishima squinted at his brother. “What about me?”

Akiteru waved a crane in the air. “You’re upset that Kuroo’s seeing other people. I’m not saying you should break up with him, but it doesn’t sound like you’re even considering it.”

Tsukishima opened and closed his mouth several times.

“Why don’t you want to end it?”

Tsukishima plucked at the paper in front of him. Kuroo was his first boyfriend-- he found comfort in their relationship and he didn’t want to lose it because he had come to rely on it and he didn’t know where he’d be without Kuroo by his side.

“You’re not happy.” Akiteru dropped another crane in the jar. “I can hear it in your voice every time we talk on the phone. You keep telling me you’re fine but I think we both know that’s a lie.”

“Stop,” Tsukishima muttered.

Akiteru didn’t. “By leaving the decision-making to Kuroo, you put all the power in his hands and create an imbalance. I know Kuroo well enough to say that he’d never take advantage of it-- he did say you should see others too. But you need agency in this relationship too, especially if you ever want to end things on your own terms.”

Tsukishima didn’t want to think about that. He changed the subject instead. “How many cranes are you making again?”

“One thousand, for my colleague’s daughter.”

Tsukishima started folding another crane. “She’s sick, right?”

“Yeah. The doctors aren’t too sure what’s going on. The poor thing’s frightened, but she’s holding up so well.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She’s the cutest thing in the world,” Akiteru said. “Her mum brings her to work sometimes and she always has the brightest smile on her face. She’s brought in these lopsided cupcakes she made at home a few times.”

“No wonder you like her. She bribed you with sweets.”

“Don’t worry Kei, you’ll always be my number one.”

“Ew.”

“I still remember those dinosaur pancakes you made me when you were six. They were so cute and you were so cute--”

“Oh, shut up.” Tsukishima threw one of the cut up pieces of paper at him. “Why are you cutting them so small?”

“I’m making a thousand of them. I figured if I quartered the sheets then I could fit five hundred in each jar. Probably. I might have to squeeze them in, but it’s doable.”

Tsukishima took a packet of origami paper and drew one of the jars towards him. “Bet I can fill this before you do.”

“You’re on.”

The rest of the night was an origami folding race, and Tsukishima managed to sneak in two more beers before Akiteru cut him off. There was no way either of them were going to fill their jars in one night, but they made a go of it and got some decent cranes out of it. Akiteru filled the air with chatter about his colleague’s daughter and how she wanted to be a pilot one day, and how Saeko had messaged him last week for a catch-up over brunch.

Tsukishima’s anxiety slowly dissipated as Akiteru continued talking about random things like the fungi documentary he watched last week and the new embroidery hoop he bought two days ago. When he retired to bed in the guest room, Tsukishima had almost forgotten why he’d been in such a sorry state but the notifications on his phone were a sore reminder.

There were a string of texts and missed calls from Yamaguchi and Yachi asking frantically if he was okay and to call them to let them know. A picture of Tanaka’s fist with the caption just say the word and Kuroo can eat this. A text from Akaashi asking him to call.

Tsukishima’s eyes burned and he scrubbed them with his palms until the sensation went away. It was already past one in the morning and it would take too much of him to respond to everything. He did have to talk to Yamaguchi and Yachi though, to apologise for ditching them and making sure they arrived safely back home.

He hit Yamaguchi’s number and waited as it rang.

“Tsukki?” A sleep-imbued voice mumbled. “You’re safe?”

“Yachi? Where’s Yamaguchi?”

There was the sound of rustling, and then a door being opened and closed. “Yamaguchi’s asleep.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Waking you up. Running off. Leaving you to take the train by yourselves. Take your pick.”

“We’re at my mum’s.”

Tsukishima fell into the guest bed and tossed his glasses onto the nightstand. “You guys didn’t have to stay.”

“Don’t be stupid. We’ll meet up tomorrow morning and take the train back home together.” Yachi sighed, and her voice became gentle. “Do you want to talk about what happened tonight? It was a lot to take in.”

Tsukishima’s initial reaction was no, but he’d had enough time to process the evening and talk about it now. “He’s stuck. He doesn’t know what he wants.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That he needed to make a choice.”

“That’s good.”

“Yachi, I-- I need it to be me.” The words came out of Tsukishima’s mouth unbidden. He normally wouldn’t have admitted that to anyone, let alone himself but all that alcohol made him truthful even if it was only for one night. “I’ve been with him for so long that I don’t know what I’d be without him.”

“Oh, Tsukki.” Yachi sounded distressed. “You can’t control what Kuroo’s choice is going to be. I know it’s going to be hard and I hate to say it, but you need to prepare yourself for the worst case scenario.”

“Yeah,” Tsukishima whispered. “Right.”

“It might..." Yachi paused, like she was gathering her thoughts together. “It might not be a bad thing that you’re on a break right now. I know I’ve given Kuroo grief about it, but I think it’s a good opportunity for you to re-evaluate your relationship. You’ve put so much of yourself into this, and that’s not a bad thing, but what are you outside of it?”

If only Tsukishima had an answer.

Yachi sighed, and just for a moment, Tsukishima wished they were in the same room so he could wrap his arms around her and listen to her count his breaths until his nerves stopped pulling on every inch of his skin.

“Tsukki, no matter which way this falls, we’ll be there to catch you. You know we love you, right?”

“Yeah.” Tsukishima’s voice caught in his throat. “I know.”

Chapter Text

Kuroo pushed the fried chicken around and around on his plate, nodding at his date whenever there was a lull in the conversation and making noises that encouraged him to keep talking. Kuroo’s inattentiveness made him a shit date but he hadn’t been sure he wanted to come anyway.

After the misunderstanding with Tsukki last night, the sight of Tinder on his phone made his stomach roll with nausea. He didn’t swipe to see who was in his area, but he checked his messages and remembered he had organised a date which was too late to cancel, so here he was.

Kuroo would never have started seeing other people if he’d known Tsukki was against it. Their argument crept into his mind at the most inopportune times: brushing his teeth in the morning, putting his scrubs on at the hospital, ordering coffee during his lunch break. It replayed itself over and over again and he tried to find where they misunderstood each other. Every memory offered only a scrap because it had been so long since they actually talked to one another.

When Kuroo asked for a break, Tsukki had said okay. There had been no resistance, no argument, not even a comment or a question why. It made him believe this was mutual, that they were both tired of the reticence between them when things were peaceful and the exasperation when things were not.

Both of them could have done better. Kuroo could have clarified what this break meant to him and what he intended to do with it. Tsukishima could have said he didn’t want a break because he was committed and they could work together to try and patch things up again.

When Tsukki confessed he was happy with what they had, it’d sent Kuroo reeling. He couldn’t remember the last time Tsukki had said anything like that and let him see past the cool façade and into the pool of vulnerability below. Letting him walk away after that had been the hardest thing Kuroo ever had to do and the bitter taste of regret tinged his tongue.

“Kuroo? Have you zoned out again?”

Kuroo cleared his throat and looked up to give Oikawa a guilty smile. He needed to be more present; Oikawa didn't deserve a shitty evening because of him. “Sorry, I’m a little out of it. I came off night shift a few days ago and my sleep schedule is wrecked.”

“Ah, okay.” Oikawa didn’t look like he believed it, but he let it slide. “What’s it like working at the hospital?”

Kuroo chuckled, a mix of positive and negative emotions clashing inside. “There are a lot of pros and cons. It’s my dream job and I love being there every day and helping people. At the same time, I’m a first year resident and there’s still so much to learn. It’s never-ending.”

“I guess I can relate. Volleyball is similar in that there’s always more to learn. It is never-ending, and I love that about it.”

The two of them had bonded over volleyball when they first started chatting and Kuroo had been so excited to learn that Oikawa was a pro-volleyball player. Bokuto had encouraged him to go for it, and Kuroo had been unsure because this was a pro-volleyball player and he hadn’t played since he graduated university. He was woefully unfit to be talking to Oikawa about volleyball, yet here they were.

“Which league do you play for again?” Kuroo asked. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned.”

“Club Athletico San Juan.”

Kuroo frowned, having not heard of that team before. Hell, it didn’t even sound familiar and he had a pretty good idea of all the Japanese teams, given Bokuto was in one of them and played against the others regularly.

Oikawa saw his confusion and threw his head back and laughed. The low hanging lights around them lit up his face and he looked beautiful. “It’s Argentinian. I’m Argentinian.”

“What!” Kuroo blurted, completely floored. He looked closer at Oikawa, from his brown hair to his brown eyes to his mischievous smile. “You’re foreign?”

Oikawa laughed again, and his eyes sparkled with mirth. “My schoolmates used to think I was half-foreign because of a dumb nickname. But no, I was born and raised in Japan. I gave up my Japanese citizenship so I could be naturalised as an Argentinian citizen and play on the national team.”

“Holy shit.” A thought struck Kuroo. “Oikawa. Oikawa Tooru. From Aoba Johsai.”

Oikawa’s brows shot up in surprise, but then he grinned. “You know who I am?”

How could Kuroo not?

“You were one of the best setters in our year level.” It was difficult to forget his name whispered half in reverence and half in wariness, his reputation as a setter reaching even the furthest ears in the country. It put people on edge and from what Kuroo had heard of his talent, rightfully so. “Your face was plastered all over magazines and newspapers. I used to shove your picture into my setter’s face but he said being like you was too much work."

Kenma had made it clear that skills of Oikawa’s calibre didn’t come by talent, but dedication and perseverance and the hunger to devour everyone else along the way. Kenma had a much smaller appetite and looked elsewhere to his strengths.

“I would have loved to meet this setter of yours,” Oikawa mused. “He sounds like he had quite the brain.”

“Still does,” Kuroo said with a touch of fondness. “You know, I heard through the grapevine that you went overseas after high school. But why? It’s so far from home and uprooting yourself must have been tough.”

“Mmm, yeah.” Oikawa picked up his beer and swilled the glass, watching the amber liquid swirl in the dim lighting. “There was a coach I’ve wanted to train under since I was a kid, and I was prepared to move halfway across the world for him. That didn’t mean it was easy. I had to leave my mum, sister and nephew behind. The cultural shock and initial isolation almost sent me spiralling into depression. But I knew I wanted it, so I stuck with it and in the end I’m better for it. I met a new country, a new language, a whole new world that I never would have come across if I didn’t take that first step.”

Oikawa’s personality was enthralling; he had a way of speaking that drew Kuroo in and kept him captivated. It was the way his eyes lit up with passion, the way he gestured with his entire body and the way he beamed when he talked about Argentina and how he didn’t have to say it aloud for Kuroo to know that he loved his new home and had built a whole life there.

“That’s amazing.” A part of Kuroo wished there was something in his life that he was so passionate about as well. He felt so bland, so inferior, sitting in front of someone who shone as brightly as Oikawa Tooru. “Everything you’ve done for yourself is so impressive. I can’t even imagine doing anything on that scale. I mean, moving to a whole new country where you can’t speak the language? That must have taken a lot of b... alls..."

Too late, the pun slipped out and Kuroo inwardly cringed, waiting for the eye-rolling and huff of annoyance but it never came. Instead, Oikawa let out a loud, unattractive snort.

“That was terrible.”

“Ahaha, yeah.” Kuroo was relieved Oikawa didn’t take offence to the pun. He’d been worried for a second that if Oikawa didn’t find it stupid then he would find it forward but strangely enough, neither had been the case and he was unsure how to react. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Oikawa said.

Even though Oikawa didn’t seem to mind, Kuroo still shoved a piece of fried chicken into his mouth to muffle any more stupidity that might come out of it.

“I wouldn’t say that it took a lot of balls,” Oikawa blithely continued. “It’s more that my balls are so big that I can barely hold them in one hand.”

Kuroo sprayed chunks of chicken across the table and Oikawa shrieked as a piece landed on his sleeve, but he was laughing as he brushed it off and grabbed a napkin to wipe up the mess.

“You are so gross,” he cackled.

Kuroo, who was in the middle of a coughing fit, wheezed. “That was your fault,” he managed.

“Yeah, I’ll take that one.”

“Holy shit,” Kuroo muttered and wiped his mouth with a clean napkin.

“What?” Oikawa snickered. “You thought I couldn’t dish it?”

Kuroo slowly returned the same wicked smile, and there was something small unfurling in his chest that made him want to try. “I’m sure you can dish it, but the question is whether or not I can take your big balls when I dive down to receive them.”

Oikawa’s hand slipped and his glass toppled over, spilling beer all over their table and down to the floor.

“Kuroo!” Oikawa shrieked.

Kuroo pissed himself laughing and mentally congratulated himself for that one as he piled more napkins onto the table. It truly was a mess now of chicken and spilled beer, and anymore hijinks would probably see a polite but well-meaning waiter approaching to ask them to leave.

Oikawa picked up his glass with a sniff, clearly disgruntled that his pun had been one-upped. “Well, you’re lucky I believe in reciprocity.”

“You’ll return the favour?”

“Oh no.” Oikawa leaned in dangerously close and lowered his lashes. “When it comes to balls, I hit them until they break.”

Fucking hell.

Kuroo burst out laughing and other customers in the izakaya turned to look at him. The manager glared at them from the back and Oikawa tried to hush him to no avail.

“Let’s just-- go.” Kuroo giggled, grabbing his phone and keys. Oikawa agreed, grabbing his coat and accessories.

Outside the front of the izakaya, they took a moment to settle themselves. Kuroo dropped his phone and keys into his pocket and Oikawa bundled himself up into an overcoat, scarf and beanie. He looked so warm and cosy even though the tip of his nose was turning pink and Kuroo knew he was staring but he also knew Oikawa was staring too.

“You’re amazing,” Kuroo heard himself saying. “Everything that you do. I wish I could be half as adventurous as you.”

Oikawa gave him a lopsided grin. “There’s so much waiting for you out there. What’s stopping you?”

Kuroo’s eyes fell to Oikawa’s lips. He wanted, so much, to take that first step forward.

Oikawa’s gaze softened. “Kuroo,” he said. “Do you want to kiss me?”

The word stuck in his throat.

He nodded instead.

Oikawa put his hands behind Kuroo’s neck and he tilted his head up. “Come here,” he whispered.

Kuroo leaned down and their lips met in a soft press. Slow and gentle, like Oikawa knew this was what he needed. A moment, then Kuroo pulled back with his heart racing.

Oikawa smiled up at him. “Are you--”

Kuroo lurched forwards and kissed him again. His hands moved under Oikawa’s coat and against the warm skin of his waist. Oikawa gasped at the contact and Kuroo took the opportunity to swipe his tongue into his mouth. Their tongues brushed against each other, warm and wet, and Oikawa’s knees buckled. Kuroo pushed him up against the wall and pressed closer, edging one leg between his shaking thighs.

“Oh, fuck.” Oikawa panted, throwing his head back and exposing the column of his throat. “Fuck.”

Kuroo hummed in agreement. He kissed his way across Oikawa’s jaw and down to his neck, sucking on the sensitive skin there until he knew it would bloom red and leave a bruise come tomorrow. Oikawa’s hands tightened around his shoulders and he let out a high-pitched and needy whine.

“Oh, yes.Yes. That feels so good.”

Kuroo couldn’t help the grin on his face, and fuck he wanted to hear more of those delicious noises fall from Oikawa’s lips. He raked his teeth across Oikawa’s throat and pushed his leg higher until Oikawa was practically riding his thigh.

“Shit. Fuck.” Oikawa’s hips thrust forward, and Kuroo groaned at the bulge against his hip. “Oh god, stop. We have to stop or I’m going to embarrass us both.”

“Mmm, that'd be a sight to see.” Still, Kuroo slowed his hands and pulled back. The sight of Oikawa against that wall hit him like a train; Oikawa’s pupils blown wide with lust, his cheeks flushed pink in both exertion and excitement and his beanie askew on his mussed-up hair.

“That was something else.” Oikawa reached up and readjusted his beanie. He could try and straighten himself out again, but there was no hiding the light dancing in his eyes or the impish smile on his face that alluded to more.

The feeling in Kuroo’s chest fizzed like bubbles in a bottle of newly popped champagne. He looked at Oikawa, so daring and beautiful, and thought that maybe this was what he had been looking for all along.

.

After telling Bokuto about the date, Kuroo lay in his bed with his phone by his ear and the sound of video game music playing through the speaker. The two of them had been on the phone for about an hour and had lapsed into a companionable silence. Bokuto could focus on killing the final boss, and Kuroo could smile stupidly because he still wore the phantom press of Oikawa’s kiss on his lips.

“I’m happy for you, bro.”

Bokuto’s voice was pitched lower than usual and softer like he was trying to whisper but didn’t know how to do it properly. Kuroo instinctively dropped his own voice too like there was a secret to be kept.

“Why are we whispering, bro?”

“Akaashi’s in the next room. He’s kinda not happy about this and I don’t wanna make him mad.”

Kuroo’s smile fell from his face.

This break between him and Tsukki was supposed to be simple, a little bit of time to figure out whether or not they wanted to keep building what they had or let it go and try again with other people. It wasn’t supposed to be bitter and divisive like this.

Kuroo had texted Yachi this morning to make sure Tsukki was all right after he’d left. Yachi had responded with a kaomoji, which was standard, but it had been an angry face with two middle fingers up, which was not standard. He then texted Yamaguchi who kindly told him that Tsukki is fine and to please sort your shit out.

Kuroo didn’t even know where to start with that.

“It’s not you.” Bokuto sounded distracted, and the video game music intensified like he was nearing the end. “We know it’s your relationship and you can make whatever choices you want within it. It’s more that this issue is dragging itself out and everyone’s taking it badly.”

That was no surprise. Bokuto and Akaashi had grown close to Tsukki during high school after that first training camp when they pulled him into the third gym for extra practice. Kenma had admired his abilities and studied him closely throughout nationals. During that time, it made sense to pay close attention to Tsukki’s closest friends and what they contributed to the team as well. It was only natural when the trio moved down to Tokyo that the four of them took them under their wing, and it was history from there.

“Why did you ask for a break?”

Kuroo sighed, and rubbed his eyes. He felt tired suddenly, like all the stress from yesterday had crashed down onto him at once. “We’re... stuck. Tsukki calls it a rut because we keep getting comfortable and letting things go. I think it’s more than that. I don’t feel like I’m stuck in a rut so much as a bog. No matter what I do, I end up falling back down and feeling like I’m never going to get out and no matter what Tsukki does, it can’t help us because the problem is us.”

Bokuto made a noise. It could have been sympathy. It could have been pain.

Kuroo stared at the ceiling where he had stuck up scores of glow-in-the-dark stars that Akiteru had gifted them as a silly housewarming gift. Tsukki had rolled his eyes but Kuroo had seized them with glee and stuck them up that night so they could look at the stars and draw constellations on their ceiling and make up their own tragic stories about the characters in the sky.

They didn’t have sex that night, too tired from moving, but they slept naked and Kuroo had danced his fingers along the notches of Tsukki’s spine like he could memorise every dip and curve of what he thought would be the rest of his life.

“Maybe we started too young.” Kuroo shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. You and Akaashi have been together since high school.”

The sounds of swords clashing came through the speaker. “It’s different though.”

It was.

The first time Kuroo had watched them play together, he saw that they complemented each other in every way that mattered. When Bokuto declared that Fukurodani was going to nationals, Akaashi didn’t say things like we have interhighs first or don’t be overconfident. He said okay like it was a given that he’d take Bokuto there, and he had.

Kuroo and Tsukki didn’t have the same pull that drew them together. They tried their best to stay in each other’s orbit and Tsukki had said it was good enough but to Kuroo it felt more like they were the same poles of two magnets being forced close when they were just not meant to be together.

“Maybe we tried too hard for too long,” Kuroo muttered.

A monster’s roar ripped through the speaker, and the game fell silent. “Are you going to break up with Tsukki?”

“Bro..."

“Seriously, are you?” Bokuto’s voice was small, and wounded.

Even though his friends didn’t want to interfere in his relationship, there was no denying that they wanted a certain outcome because they all loved Tsukki in their own ways. Kenma finally met his match when it came to video games and the two of them had all-nighter marathons fuelled by energy drinks and spite. Akaashi and Tsukki could talk for hours about the books in his store and discuss their favourite characters and tropes and plots until the pot of tea between them turned cold. And Bokuto? Bokuto had seen Tsukki at the lowest rung of the ladder and gave him the first push to see him to the top. He didn’t want to see him come crashing down and breaking.

Kuroo didn’t either, he truly didn’t. There were moments in his days when the doubts came creeping back about whether or not he made the right decision. Or rather, whether or not he was going to make the right decision in three weeks’ time and if it was going to be the right one, whatever that meant. It would be so easy to slip back into what was normal, but it would never be the same-- Tsukki knew he had doubts, knew he wanted more and that whatever he was looking for existed outside of their relationship.

That didn’t mean Kuroo didn’t love him anymore-- there was no universe in which he didn’t.

“I don’t know.”

Kuroo had initially thought Tsukki was too beautiful and too cold to ever want to be with someone like himself. Of course Tsukki proved him wrong once and every time since. Maybe he could pull a miracle out of thin air and do it one more time, prove that they could still be happy together because they had built so much together and it all still meant something. But maybe something like that was beyond the work of one person, and Kuroo wasn’t sure what it would take to repair all the chips and cracks in their relationship.

He just wanted to see a flash of warmth in Tsukki’s eyes and an affectionate smile on his face again-- like what he’d seen in Oikawa tonight: bright eyes, reddened cheeks and impish smile that told him there could always be more.

Kuroo didn’t know what Bokuto said in reply, or when he’d hung up. All he knew was that he was lying in bed with a dark screen by his head and the only light in his room was from the stars on the ceiling that glowed a little too dim.

He was startled out of his reverie when his phone buzzed.

[Oikawa Tooru]
I had fun tonight ☆*:.｡.o(≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆ Are you free later this week?

Kuroo’s heart thumped in both excitement and trepidation. His thumbs hovered over the screen, unsure of what to type. Only minutes ago, he would have jumped at the chance to go on a second date but that conversation with Bokuto had dampened his spirits. There was still a lingering sense of guilt in his chest because Tsukki had clearly expressed his distaste for this, but Kuroo didn’t want to let this go, not yet. He wanted to bathe in Oikawa’s radiance for a little while longer, to believe that there was more out there for him and that he deserved to have it too.

[Kuroo Tetsurou]
Yes.

Chapter Text

There was a ridiculous amount of damage control to do after Sawamura’s dinner. It'd taken Tsukishima nearly three hours to get through everyone’s messages and explain what was going on. Sawamura, Sugawara and Shimizu were sympathetic and offered a listening ear whenever he needed it. Tanaka offered to beat Kuroo up for the very low price of 1000 yen, but he accidentally messaged the Karasuno group chat instead of privately.

After that, Tsukishima’s phone exploded with notifications, mainly from Hinata and Nishinoya flooding the chat with exclamations. Hinata sent a voice message that was ten seconds of his shocked crow noise, while Nishinoya bettered Tanaka’s offer by saying he’d throw Kuroo’s dead body into an abandoned well for free.

By this time, Tsukishima was tired of the conversation and simply thanked everyone for their concern and no he would not require their extermination services. He may have been a little short with his message, but he’d explained the situation so many times that it had become unbearable. He wanted to scrub that dinner from his memory and move on.

“I don’t feel like Circe was portrayed as a main character even though it’s her story and her book.” Akaashi wrapped his hands around his mug of tea. “I think the author could have made her more active in more ways than one.”

It turned out Akaashi had been serious about those video calls, and they had spoken five times since the dinner. Tsukishima didn’t realise how much he’d missed Akaashi’s quiet presence until he hung up after their first call and the silence in his room jarred him. He was grateful that Akaashi continued to be so stringent about calling and gave him something to do in the evenings.

They were currently talking about an international book that Akaashi had come across online. Both of them read it in English since it was more readily available and discussed it like they were two members of their own little book club.

“I think that was intentional.” Tsukishima took a drink from his glass and the acrid taste of red wine flowed into his mouth. Akaashi had commented on it; first that it was wine, and second that it was red. Tsukishima played it off with a shrug and said it was cheap. Sometimes, a person needed to get drunk fast and slop was the easiest way to go. “Circe has always been an outsider, unable to form proper connections to anybody. How much of a stretch would it be to say she’s not supposed to connect to the read either?”

“You think the author did that on purpose?”

“It’d be quite the show of talented writing.”

“True.” Akaashi tapped his fingers on his mug. It featured a picture of an owl and a speech bubble that read: GUESS HOO LOVES YOU? OWL ALWAYS DO! “I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose it’d be a natural progression of the author’s talent.”

“I still haven’t read her first book.”

“I highly recommend it.” Akaashi looked at his watch. “Ah, I didn’t realise it was past seven. Bokuto will be home soon, so I should get started on dinner.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Tsukishima looked past Akaashi into his kitchen, where the cupboards were filled with cutesy crockery the couple had bought over the years, and the fridge was covered in polaroids that weighed each other down and made the magnets fall off. It sent a pang through Tsukishima’s chest because he missed his own home where medical and forensic textbooks cluttered the bookshelves and huge, leafy plants spilled from their pots and all over the floor.

“Are Yamaguchi and Yachi back yet?”

“No. Yamaguchi’s working late and Yachi has some company party to attend. They won’t be back till late.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Why?”

“Nothing, I just worry.”

Tsukishima quirked a smile. “Worry about what?”

“You’re alone.”

Akaashi’s word held one meaning, and the second meaning hung in the air above them.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--”

“It’s fine,” Tsukishima said, but there was a rock weighing down his stomach that said differently. He had given Kuroo three weeks to make a choice and time was almost up. He expected a phone call any day now and with each passing day, the rock in his stomach grew heavier until he had to turn to drink to drown out his worries.

Why would it take Kuroo three whole weeks to choose?

Akaashi must have seen something on his face. “Has Kuroo talked to you yet?”

“Not yet.”

Akaashi gave a slow nod. “When he does, call me. Please?”

“Okay.” Tsukishima was puzzled. "Why--?"

“Akaashi!” A crash sounded loudly on Akaashi’s end and they both winced. “Akaasghi, I’m home!”

“Welcome home, Bokuto,” Akaashi said. “I’m on a call--”

“I played five sets today!” Bokuto bounded into the frame, flung his arms around his boyfriend and squeezed him tight. “Five! Guess who the other team was?”

“Um--”

“They’re from overseas! Argentina! I don’t even know where that is!”

“Bokuto, please--”

“And guess who was there? C’mon, Akaashi, guess!”

“Hold on--”

“Kuroo’s new boyfriend!”

“BOKUTO!” Akaashi yelled.

Bokuto fell silent, his eyes large and wounded. Akaashi never yelled at him, and he didn’t know how to react.

Akaashi pointed to the screen, and Bokuto noticed for the first time that Tsukishima was on the other end of the call.

“Oh.” Bokuto’s was barely audible. “Tsukki.”

Tsukishima smiled, but it was brittle and close to cracking. “Hello.”

“Tsukki, um--”

Tsukishima held up a hand to silence him. “How long?”

Bokuto looked like he wanted to cry.

“Bokuto,” Tsukishima pressed. “How long?”

“Since... since after Sawamura’s dinner.”

Tsukishima picked up his glass of wine and tossed it all back. He’d been waiting for that phone call for three weeks and Kuroo had been seeing someone else the entire time.

You’re a fool.

“Tsukishima--” Akaashi began.

“It’s fine.” Tsukishima leaned down and pulled open the drawer where he stashed his alcohol. He plucked up the half-full bottle of red and unscrewed the top. “Reality is a bitch and I needed to be bitch-slapped tonight.”

“Tsukishima, please don’t--”

As if he wanted to hear it. Tsukishima swiped his hand across the keyboard and Akaashi and Bokuto’s faces disappeared. They might get pissed at him for doing that, but at least he'd saved them the trouble of watching him getting pissed. He gulped straight from the bottle, tilted it so high that the bitter wine ran down his throat and choked him. He spluttered a good half of it back out, and red trickled down his chin and dropped to his desk like blood.

Tsukishima wiped his chin with the back of his hand and snorted. Coughing up blood was probably less painful than the knife Kuroo had twisted into his chest. He drank again, slower this time, until the bottle ran empty.

A tune sounded from his laptop. Akaashi’s name flashed above a picture of a video camera, and Tsukishima stared at it before extending his hand and pushing the screen down. The tune died off and silence rang in his ears like clanging bells only he could hear.

He pulled out a bottle of vodka from the drawer. It wasn’t something he usually drank, but he wasn’t picky about his alcohol nowadays as long as it was strong. He paused to wonder if he should grab a shot glass from the kitchen before laughing. Who was around to stop him from drinking straight from the neck?

The vodka burned a trail down his throat and into his chest where it ignited a fire that flared all the way out to his ribs and suffocated the anxiety that made its home there. He could pretend for one more night that he hadn’t lost everything long before he realised it was already gone.

His phone buzzed. He fumbled when he picked it up and nearly blinded himself looking at Yamaguchi’s bright grin flashing on his screen. His mind picked at the threads of a conversation from yesterday. Wasn’t Yamaguchi supposed to be working late? He’d said something about a delayed shipment and an unhappy client, and needing to stay back to work things out and get them back on track.

“H’llo?” Tsukishima frowned. His tongue refused to cooperate with his brain, and he focused hard to enunciate properly. “Yamaguchi?”

“Hey, Akaashi called me--”

“Can’t hear,” Tsukishima said. “Battery going flat. Bye.”

He cut the call and pressed the power button with his thumb until the screen turned black. Now his friends couldn’t try and stop him from drinking himself into a stupor. He needed to not think tonight, to not remember that Kuroo had been seeing someone else for three whole weeks all the while knowing Tsukishima was waiting for him. Kuroo had moved on and forgotten about him, and wasn’t that a joke when Tsukishima still wanted to go home and sleep in their bed under a starry sky?

He took sip after sip, gulp after gulp, until he lost track of how much he’d been drinking. The bottle of vodka gleamed every time he tilted it up and caught the moonlight streaming in from the window. He’d been drinking for a while.

The bottle was two-thirds empty when his door burst open.

“Tsukki!” Yamaguchi stopped in the middle of the frame and blinked. He reached out and flicked on the light switch, then looked around the room in dismay. “Oh, Tsukki.”

The sudden light burned Tsukishima’s eyes, and it took him a moment to adjust. He squinted at his friend but everything was blurry and then he remembered that he’d set his glasses down somewhere during his binge. “Y’maguchi?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” Yamaguchi came closer and when he saw how much was left in the bottle, he sucked in a breath and the look on his face sent a wave of guilt churning through Tsukishima’s gut. Yamaguchi prised the bottle from his fingers with a shake of his head. “What have you done to yourself?”

“Wha-- noo.” Tsukishima tried to take the bottle back but he lurched and stumbled into Yamaguchi, who caught him awkwardly around his waist and propped him up. “Y’ma... gimme the bottle.”

“I think you’ve had enough for tonight.” Yamaguchi kept the bottle out of reach from his prying fingers and set it on the shelf behind him, pushing it just a little farther back as though it’d make a difference. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Yamaguchi hefted Tsukishima backwards, and Tsukishima whined but let himself be taken away. He tried to turn but in his inebriated state, he turned too fast and so did his stomach. He pushed Yamaguchi back and fell to his knees, then retched up everything he had drank. The sour taste of vomit lined his mouth and his throat, and he miserably wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Pathetic.

Yamaguchi had a firm hand on his arm, and he pushed him forward to the bed. Tsukishima stumbled onto the mattress and he rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. It wasn’t in the best shape because the landlord didn’t think it was a priority, which was a pity. It would look quite nice if that crack was fixed and there was a new coat of paint on it.

Yamaguchi appeared in his vision, holding out a bottle of water and a small bowl. “Rinse and spit.”

Tsukishima propped himself up onto his elbows and did as he was asked. He was a naughty child facing the consequences of a disappointed parent and he couldn’t disobey because he didn’t want to let Yamaguchi down even further.

“Drink the rest of it while I clean up.”

Tsukishima nodded. The bottle crinkled under his fingers as he sipped at the icy water. It was a far cry from the burn of vodka and though it made him shiver, he kept on drinking because he knew in his foggy mind that it would ease the regrets of the next morning.

A few minutes later, a hand smoothed over his forehead and swept his hair from his eyes. Yamaguchi smiled down at him, and there was a hint of sadness in his voice. “Akaashi told me you weren’t picking up.”

Tsukishima set the empty bottle on his nightstand and flopped backwards onto the bed. His limbs were leaden and he didn’t want to move, much less have a discussion about his current state but he knew from experience that his friend wasn’t going to let this go. Reluctantly, he said, “He shouldn’t’ve.”

The mattress sank under Yamaguchi’s weight. Tsukishima rolled onto his side, grabbed Yamaguchi in a fierce hug and buried his face into his work shirt. Yamaguchi exhaled, rested a hand on Tsukishima’s head and began stroking his hair.

“Tell me what happened.”

“’Kaashi told you what happened.”

“I want to hear it from you.”

Tsukishima pressed his lips together and clutched his fingers tighter into the back of Yamaguchi’s shirt. He didn’t want his friend to see him like this, but at the same time there was no-one else in the world that he would have let see him like this. “I drank lots.”

“Yeah.” Yamaguchi looked at the empty wine bottle lying on the floor, the rest of the vodka he had put up on the shelf and the half-open drawer that held another three bottles of various alcohols. “Yachi and I have been waiting for you to come around and talk to us. Why didn’t you tell us you were hurting this much, Tsukki?”

Tsukishima sniffed. The repetitive motion of fingers carding through his hair eased his misery and he slowly loosened his grip on the back of Yamaguchi’s shirt, but kept himself plastered to his front. “It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid if it affects you this much.”

Yamaguchi had a way of speaking that cut away the bullshit and left the glaring truth behind. It was something of a gift he’d developed after so much time together. Sometimes, it scared Tsukishima that Yamaguchi knew half of what he said was crap and wasn’t afraid to call him out on it. The scariest part was that Yamaguchi would still stand next to him so he would never stand alone. Yachi was the same in that regard, and he didn’t know why they would do that for him because he'd certainly never done anything to deserve it.

"Why are you here?" he miserably asked. "I don't deserve you."

Even as those words fell from his mouth in a drunken slur, Tsukishima knew what Yamaguchi's answer was going to be. That he had been there first, that day with the bullies, and had been there every day since.

“Wait." It dawned on him slowly. "You guys love me unconditionally, don't you?"

“We do,” Yamaguchi agreed, not even bothered about the odd change in topic.

Tsukishima hummed. “I thought Kuroo loved me unconditionally too.”

Yamaguchi sighed, and his fingers brushed over Tsukishima’s forehead again.

Tsukishima closed his eyes and breathed in Yamaguchi’s scent-- fresh and crisp, like the nashi pears he used to hold in two hands when he was a child and be amazed that they could grow so big.

“Did you know Kuroo has a boyfriend?”

“Akaashi told me.”

Tsukishima wouldn’t have expected Yamaguchi to know earlier. If he had, he never would’ve been able to keep it a secret. Yamaguchi was too loyal, and the guilt would have destroyed him. Not to mention, he was a terrible liar and had the worst stammer whenever he tried.

“I’ve been drinking since I moved out.” There was no point lying anymore. “Every night. Maybe a few glasses, but not enough to be obvious. Tonight was different though. I wanted to drink my weight in alcohol. Kuroo has a new boyfriend and it’s been three weeks and I only found out because Bokuto let it slip.”

“It’s a valid reason to hit the bottle,” Yamaguchi allowed.

Tsukishima sniffed again, and when his eyes burned with tears this time he didn’t try to pretend they weren’t there. They fell across his cheeks in hot trails and his shoulders trembled with silent sobs.

Yamaguchi wrapped his arms around his shoulders, pressed his cheek against the crown of his head and hushed him. “You’re okay. This is good. Let it out.”

“I can’t-- can’t fucking believe Kuroo’s moved on while I’m still here wishing I was home. I’m pissed off and I’m humiliated but mostly I’m pissed off and I want to keep drinking because these feelings are fucking me over and I’m sick of being fucked over.”

“You’re allowed to feel things.” Yamaguchi ran his hand up and down Tsukishima’s back to sooth his shaking figure. “It doesn’t help to pretend they don’t exist. Look at yourself now, Tsukki. You can’t tell me this is what you wanted.”

Tsukishima shook his head. He pressed tighter into Yamaguchi’s chest, and the fabric of his shirt soaked his tears up.

“Alcohol isn’t a healthy coping mechanism.”

“It helps me stop thinking. I want to stop thinking.”

“You’re too smart for that,” Yamaguchi scolded. “Tell me what you want to stop thinking about.”

Tsukishima muffled a moan into the tear-stained shirt. “Why’re you making me do this?”

“Because,” Yamaguchi said, “I’m here. I’m listening.”

Tsukishima drew a shuddering breath, and his entire body shook when he let it out.

“I want to stop thinking about Kuroo and how much of a hold he has over me. How I let him slip pieces of his heart into mine and showed me what it was like to be loved, then ripping out those slivers of himself to give to someone else and I let him do it because I’m a fucking fool and I’m lying here with holes in my heart that are bleeding red wine and vodka.”

Yamaguchi shifted closer and wrapped both arms around him.

“It’s not the same for him.” Tsukishima’s shoulders quaked. Sobs, or laughter, or both. “He started picking out the pieces of me in him somewhere along the way and the sad thing is, I don’t even know when he started doing that.”

“You don’t have holes in your heart.” Yamaguchi splayed an open hand across Tsukishima’s back. It felt like Yamaguchi was the only thing holding him together. “It's beating right now, stronger than ever. You’ve always been strong, Tsukki, but it’s okay to fall down sometimes. Just remember that Yachi and I will be there to pick you up again, as many times as you need us to.”

Tsukishima’s voice was quiet, but it didn’t lessen the impact of his words. “I love you guys.”

“We love you too.” Yamaguchi squeezed him, all arms and legs, until Tsukishima coughed and laughed through his mess of tears. “We love you so much, you dumb giraffe.”

“More than Kuroo?”

“Definitely more than Kuroo.” Yamaguchi waggled his eyebrows. “Who’s got you in bed right now?”

“Gross.” Tsukishima laughed and hugged his friend closer, feeling lighter in his chest than he had in weeks. “Yamaguchi?”

“Mm?”

“I fell down.”

“Yeah. You did.”

“I need you guys to pick me up again.”

“Yeah.” Yamaguchi’s hand stroked his back again, up and down, up and down, up and down. “We will.”

“I’m going to get better.” Tsukishima’s voice cracked. “You’ll see.”

.

When Tsukishima roused from sleep, the first thought that went through his mind was that he was uncomfortable. His eyes were tight and puffy from crying, his shirt stuck warm to his skin and he was being smothered by a mess of limbs.

Yamaguchi had an arm and a leg over him, dead to the world and snoring with his mouth ajar. The two of them must have fallen asleep like that last night, and that wasn’t a surprise. It wasn't like either of them would have let go for the world. What was new however, was Yachi behind him, spooning him with her face planted in-between his shoulder blades.

Tsukishima swallowed the lump in his throat. He didn’t want to start bawling his eyes out again and wake his friends up. It was one thing to cry at night over his boyfriend, but it was another thing to cry in the morning because his friends held him together while they slept.

He may not have been awake last night when Yachi came home, but she would have been devastated at the sight of everything just as Yamaguchi had been. He couldn’t do that to them again. He meant what he said last night-- he was going to get better.

The first thing he needed to do was wriggle out of their embrace. It was slow work and he froze multiple times when his friends shifted and mumbled. He was wedged so tightly between them that he barely had any breathing space; Yamaguchi was a cuddler and Yachi gravitated towards warmth.

Once Tsukishima slipped out, he glanced over his room. The floor was spotless, the shelf was clean and the drawer was empty. He grabbed his phone and tip-toed out, giving his friends a glance and a small smile. They had already moved closer to each other in sleep, and snuggled together like a pair of cats.

In the kitchen, a row of bottles stood next to the sink. It was jarring to see them all lined up like that, a stark reminder of how much poison Tsukishima had been putting into his body. Yamaguchi probably told Yachi the entire story last night over his sleeping form, and Yachi would’ve taken his vow to get better seriously and tried to help in her own way. He wasn’t mad that she poured everything down the drain. No, he was thankful that his friends knew exactly what he needed.

The clock on the wall ticked over to seven-thirty. It was early, but not ridiculously so, and the person Tsukishima needed to talk to was sure to be long awake and in the middle of some exercise routine. He pulled up Bokuto’s number on his phone and hit the call button.

“Tsukki? Tsukki!” Bokuto panted through the receiver.

“Morning,” Tsukishima said. “Are you on a jog?”

“Uh, yeah. Listen, Tsukki, I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have said that last night because it wasn’t true, not really, and but I shouldn’t have kept it from you because that’s not what friends do but I didn’t want to tell on Kuroo either ’cause he’s my best bro--”

Tsukishima was out of breath just listening to him. He popped a slice of bread into the toaster while Bokuto rambled on about how much Kuroo and Tsukki meant to him and how he wanted to be both their friends but it was hard now to figure out what the right thing to do was.

“Bokuto,” Tsukishima cut in when he finally paused to draw breath. “It’s fine.”

Bokuto fell silent on the other end, and it was too easy to picture the gears ticking in his head as he processed the information. “What do you mean?”

“There’s nothing you need to be sorry for. You’re Kuroo’s friend and my friend too, and it’s hard enough on you without asking you to take sides. I don’t want you to do that.”

“But you still-- you were upset. You did something, didn’t you? After you hung up?”

“Yeah.” Tsukishimia winced. He wasn’t proud of it. “I drank. A lot. I’ve been drinking for a while now so it’s not a surprise I went off the deep end last night.”

“So it was my fault.”

“It was not your fault.” Tsukishima was firm on that. Bokuto did the best he could juggling two friendships and he couldn’t be blamed for anyone’s actions. “Kuroo would have told me anyway and I would’ve had the same reaction. You didn’t do anything wrong. You told me the truth and I needed to hear it.”

The toaster popped. Tsukishima grabbed the toast and spread plain butter on it. He couldn’t handle jam-- he didn’t have a hangover thanks to his stomach emptying itself and the water Yamaguchi made him drink, but he was still feeling delicate and if he pushed himself he’d throw up again.

“So you’re not mad at me?”

Tsukishima laughed. What a ridiculous notion. “How could anyone be mad at you, ever?”

“I dunno, Akaashi was kinda mad last night.”

“He was worried. It probably came out looking like anger.”

“I guess. That’s an anxiety thing, right?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“’Kay. I’ll talk to Akaashi later. Have you talked to Kuroo yet?”

Tsukishima crunched on his toast. He knew that he tended to stay back and let things happen around him, but that kind of passiveness had costed him too much the first time and he wasn’t going to let it happen a second time. He was going to take the first step and reach out. “I’ll call him after this.”

“Are you mad at him?” It was almost funny hearing nervous Bokuto sounded, but it was a credit to his character because he cared so much about his friends and didn’t want either of them to be hurt.

“No.” Tsukishima’s emotions had been a raging ocean underneath a storm of anger last night, but the morning after brought a sense of much anticipated calm. There wasn’t even a ripple on the surface of the water. Maybe this was catharsis. “I’m not mad.”

“So everything will be okay? ’Cause Kuroo’s not dating-dating the guy.”

“No?”

“Nah. They’re keeping things casual ’cause the guy’s flying back to his country in a few weeks anyway.”

“Oh,” Tsukishima said. “Cool.”

But that wasn’t the answer Bokuto was looking for. “Tsukki.”

Tsukishima smirked. Dealing with Bokuto was like dealing with a petulant child. Sometimes with frustration, always with affection. “Yes, Bokuto, everything will be okay.”

That answer was satisfactory. They talked for a few minutes more, and it turned out that Bokuto had a practice match later today that Tsukishima wished him luck for. Then Bokuto had to continue his run before his muscles cooled down too much so they said goodbye, but not before Bokuto elicited a promise from him that they would all hang out together again soon. Tsukishima said they would, and he meant it.

He gave a jaw-cracking yawn as he went through another two slices of toast and washed it down with a cup of coffee. It was a plain breakfast, far simpler than he usually ate, but the flavours danced across his tastebuds and he enjoyed eating again. Despite being dead tired, he was happy and he even had a soft smile on his face when he dialled Kuroo’s number.

Kuroo picked up on the fourth ring. His voice was low and sleep-rumpled, and Tsukishima could imagine him with his usual gravity-defying bedhead and bleary blinking because he wasn’t much of a morning person.

“Tsukki?”

“Is this a bad time?”

“No, not--” Kuroo yawned, long and loud. “Not a bad time. I’m just-- tough case at work last night. Got home at three.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Are you sure you don’t want me to call back later?”

“No, this is fine.” Kuroo sounded more awake now, like he’d realised it was Tsukishima calling. “What, uh, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”

"Yeah." Tsukishima supposed it was. "I just wanted to chat."

"Really." Doubt laced Kuroo's voice. "That's, uh, a little vague, if I'm being honest."

“In that case, I know you’ve been seeing someone.” Tsukishima cut to the chase. He refilled his mug with more coffee and stirred a healthy dose of milk into it. “It's been going on for a while, since Sawamura’s dinner.”

“I-- I--” Kuroo stammered, and there was high panic in his voice. “Yes, kind of, but I swear it’s not--”

“I know, it’s casual.” Tsukishima sipped his coffee and hummed at the mixture of bitterness and sweetness in his mouth. It’d been so long since he let himself enjoy something this simple, and he was going to make damned sure he got the chance now every day. "Bokuto told me.”

“Wait, Bokuto told you?”

“He let it slip. Don’t be mad at him. It’s fine, really.”

“Fine?” Kuroo echoed. A note of disbelief edged his voice, like he thought he was hallucinating. “But you were-- you didn’t--”

“I didn’t,” Tsukishima agreed. “I’ve come to terms with it, I guess.”

“So... what? You’re not mad?” Kuroo gave an incredulous laugh. “I thought you’d lose your shit.”

Tsukishima shrugged, even though Kuroo couldn’t see it. He had lost his shit but it didn’t feel like it was something he needed to bring up.

"Um, well." Kuroo sounded like his feet had been swept out from under him. "That's, uh, great. I guess we should talk, while we're here. About us."

"Yeah. That's a good idea."

"I'll start?"

"Go ahead."

Kuroo exhaled. "So I know the three weeks you gave me are up. I should've called earlier and told you, but I didn't even know what to say because I didn't know how I felt. How I still feel. It's stupid that it's taking me this long to figure out what I want but I just-- I don't know. Everything keeps going around and around in my head like a fly that won't stop buzzing and it drives me insane. I just... I need it to stop for a while. And this guy, he makes it a little easier. I know it's shitty of me but I don't know what I want and I'm-- I'm afraid to choose and that's the truth."

"Okay," Tsukishima said. "Okay. That's fine."

"Right." Kuroo still sounded like he was in disbelief, like it was a dream that Tsukishima could be so calm and collected about the cracks in their relationship. "Okay. That's me. What about you?"

"Right. I--" Tsukishima took a deep breath and steeled himself. “I don't need you to choose. I want to break up.”

Chapter Text

“Mario Kart tonight. Yes or no?”

Tsukishima had a terrible habit of not checking caller ID before answering his phone. He pulled it away from his ear to look at the name and clucked his tongue because he should’ve known who would start a conversation by asking about Mario Kart.

“Hello to you too.”

“Hi,” Kozume drawled.

“To answer your question, I don’t know. I’d have to check my calendar because I’m so popular and so in demand.”

“Fucking lies.”

Tsukishima barked out a laugh. He’d become accustomed to the language over the years during their gaming nights and it was fascinating to watch Kozume’s personality flip from polite human to foul-mouthed gremlin in the space of a second. If he delighted in joining in every so often, that stayed between him, Kozume and a handful of Russians.

“You’re right. I can’t, I have pottery. I can ask Yamaguchi and Yachi for you though?”

Kozume groaned long and loud.

“Don’t sulk.”

“Yachi’s going to banana-peel me again,” Kozume darkly said. “I swear she does it on purpose.”

Yachi might have the façade of an angel, but she also had a devilish streak that meant there was a very good chance that she did target Kozume on purpose. Not that Tsukishimia was going to confirm Kozume’s suspicions; throwing Yachi under the bus would be tantamount to suicide.

“I’m going to cat-fight her one day,” Kozume continued. “Just you wait. It’ll be a mess of hair-pulling and teeth and nails. Make sure you record it so I can upload it to my channel.”

“Oh, that’s cute. Five-foot you whaling on four-foot her.”

“If you round up, she’s five-foot.”

“And if you round up, you're six-foot. Don’t be so dramatic. I’ll come over some other time.”

“I can’t believe you’re choosing pottery over me.”

A few months earlier, Tsukishima would have said the same thing. Pottery was just another class that Yamaguchi and Yachi took at the time, and they dragged him along because he had nothing better to do.

In the early days following his breakdown, Tsukishima spent every waking moment with them because they insisted on keeping him company all the time. It was impossible to shake them off, not that he’d tried because he knew he needed his friends to keep him straight. And so he joined them in wreath-making, plushie design and pottery, and kept his hands busy so he wouldn’t be tempted to reach for another bottle.

At first, Tsukishima hated pottery. The studio smelled mouldy, the people were the weird type of crafty and the clay they worked with felt like cold shit in his hands and every touch sent shudders down his spine. The worst part was that it left brown stains on his hands and Yachi, knowing how much it grossed him out, high-fived his head and left a brown handprint on his forehead.

Tsukishima got his revenge by scratching a dick on her vase and she didn’t even notice until after it’d been fired. When she saw it, she took it to work and put it on her desk to replace a photo of him because apparently they both served the same purpose of reminding her of him. It was a bonus that the vase was more functional.

Tsukishima was offended, and Yamaguchi pissed himself laughing.

It took a long time for Tsukishima to stop looking at clay like it was shit at the bottom of his shoe, and Yachi played a huge role in that. She saw that he struggled to work with clay and that he was ready to punch in his pot which was full of lumps and bumps and misery. She’d taken his hand and asked, “Have you done pottery before?”

Tsukishima glared at the sad mound on his bench. “Clearly not.”

“That means,” Yachi reasoned, “these skills are completely new to you. Isn’t it a wonderful opportunity to learn?”

Fuck, sometimes Tsukishima hated that he shared therapeutic techniques with her. She was supposed to use them to calm herself down, not turn them back on him and make him see sense. But it wasn’t like he could say that to her pouting face, so he sucked it up and learned how to shape clay.

Tsukishima went above and beyond; he looked up blogs and videos and watched dozens of tutorials on the internet, and practised the different methods every time he entered the studio. Gradually, his skills improved and at the end of the course he walked out with a wonky little pot that now sat on the second-highest shelf in his room.

Tsukishima didn’t necessarily like pottery, but it meant something to him that he could take a lump of clay and shape it however he wanted. When Yamaguchi and Yachi ooh-ed and ahh-ed over a weekend portraiture class, Tsukishima enrolled in a second pottery course because it was something familiar, and also because he wasn’t going to stare at his own face in a mirror for hours on end and make a wreck of it on paper.

“I don’t mind pottery,” Tsukishima said, though if he were pressed he might say he enjoyed the motions of it. He did have a small collection of pots and vases and sculptures on his shelf now. Surely it meant something that he kept going back.

“Can you put plants in those pots?”

“Yeah. Do you want one?”

“You think I could keep a plant alive?”

“Maybe a cactus or a succulent.”

Tsukishima rather doubted Kozume’s ability to keep anything alive, let alone himself. If it weren’t for Kuroo going over to his house with actual groceries every week, Kozume would subsist on a diet of corn chips and energy drinks-- Tsukishima had seen his pantry.

“You’ve got some of those, don’t you?”

“A succulent, yeah. It grew pups too, so I repotted them. They’re all lined up on my windowsill like a row of babushka dolls.”

“Cute.”

Tsukishima thought so. The succulent was one of his favourite things in his room. Yachi bought it from the nursery near her agency and said it was a one-month sober gift. Yamaguchi had asked why a plant and Tsukishima kicked him in the shins and said a sweet thank you.

The succulent had very unique leaves, thin and narrow at the bottom and thick and fleshy at the top. Yachi told him to hold it up in front of the sun and when he did, the sunlight shone through the tips and it looked like droplets of water cradled in his hands. He said it was beautiful, and Yachi said it was just like him.

Tsukishima kissed the crown of her head for that, and ignored Yamaguchi when he demanded a kiss too.

“Do you want one of the pups? They’re pretty hardy.”

“Will this make us co-parents?” Kozume wondered.

“Yes. We’re committed now.”

“I want full custody.”

“With your schedule?”

“I’m going to be the world’s number one dad,” Kozume whispered.

“Sure,” Tsukishima dryly said. “I can give it to you at Sugawara’s next week. You’re going, right?”

“Yep.” Kozume popped the p. “Who isn’t going?”

That was a good point. Sugawara had a habit of inviting everyone to everything and it was never a surprise to see high-school acquaintances at gatherings he’d organised.

“Wait,” Tsukishima suddenly said. “Is Kuroo going?”

“Ye-ep.” Kozume’s voice slowed once he remembered who he was talking to. “Um. Yeah. He’s, uh. Going. To the housewarming.”

Tsukishima winced. He expected that, but there was a tiny part of him that had hoped otherwise. The memory of their last get-together as a group was not a happy one, and he wished he had a little more time to work through it.

He’d spent a lot of time reflecting, trying to determine where and when things went wrong. There were no concrete answers; bleak finality had seeped into every part of their relationship and it was hard to remember when they had once been truly happy.

Neither of them had been in contact since the break-up. Tsukishima needed distance, and Kuroo respected that.

It made things difficult with their friends. They no longer hung out as a group of seven, and it was too strange to hang out as a group and exclude one. As noisy and boisterous as six of them could be, they could never conceal the silence from the one person whose absence was a gaping void.

Tsukishima spent time with small groups of his friends instead. Yamaguchi and Yachi got the majority of his attention since they all lived together, and Tsukishima regularly joined in on their couple-y activities like baking cakes and routine skincare. Just yesterday, he’d put on an oatmeal and honey face mask and laid in their bed with them to watch cheesy romance movies. Sometimes it felt like they’d made him a part of their relationship too.

Tsukishima went around to Bokuto and Akaashi’s apartment every week for dinner, and they caught up on all sorts of things like new training regimes and upcoming book titles over onigiri and green tea. Things were almost back to normal with them-- they still looked him over every time they saw him like they needed to reassure themselves he was still okay. And he was, he just needed to give them time to believe it.

Every now and then when he had the energy for it, Tsukishima packed an overnight bag and hauled ass to Kozume’s for a gaming marathon. He’d spend the morning after hating himself because he didn’t have the body of a sprightly eighteen year old anymore, yet he kept putting himself through this torture. He liked it though, that this never changed, that Kozume never treated him differently like he was made of glass.

Tsukishima didn’t see hide nor hair of Kuroo during this time, and that was a feat considering how large Kuroo’s hair was. His friends rarely mentioned him out of respect, but there was no doubt Bokuto, Akaashi and Kozume saw him on a regular basis. Yachi eventually opened her arms to Kuroo again. As displeased as she was, she still cared about him. It had taken a lot to persuade her, and in the end she agreed when Yamaguchi reasoned that Tsukki was doing better and that he was happy again.

Happy was a strong word, and it was a feeling that came and went depending on the day. It was more appropriate to say that Tsukishima was content with what he had built for himself.

He glanced at the wall above his desk where he’d stuck photo booth pictures from a night out with Yamaguchi and Yachi. There were candid smiles, stuck-out tongues and peace signs. His favourite was the most inappropriate one, where the back of Yamaguchi’s head was visible in front of his crotch. Yachi had a hand covering her mouth in mock horror, and his own face was bright red with a very real open-mouthed expression of shock. The moment had been immortalised forever and he laughed every time he looked at it.

There were bits and pieces scattered about Tsukishima’s room that Kuroo never touched and it was so much easier to breathe in this space that he created for himself. It had taken a long time, and it finally felt like home.

“Hey,” Kozume said. “You okay?”

Tsukishima took a deep breath and steadied himself. He was sure in his answer. “I’m fine.”

“Sure?”

“I’ve had, what, eight months now to be sure.”

“Recovery doesn’t have a deadline, Tsukki.”

“I’m done.” Tsukishima glanced around his room again, at the pots filling up his shelf, the photos on his walls, the plants on his windowsill and the mess of origami and cranes in front of him. “It’s about time I stopped avoiding him.”

Kozume hummed.

“Do I need to anticipate Kuroo’s boyfriend being there?”

The word rolled strangely off his tongue, foreign, because it was the first time he’d ever said it aloud. He supposed he was more used to saying me as a synonym but those two words no longer meant the same thing and hadn’t for a while.

“They’re not boyfriends.”

“You’re kidding.” Tsukishima scoffed. “It’s been eight months.”

“Kuro says they’re casual. I haven’t seen either of them dating anyone else though.”

“That’s weird.” Tsukishima wrinkled his nose. “Slow isn’t Kuroo’s style.”

Kozume snickered.

It was no secret that Kuroo fell hard and fast. He had a terrible habit of committing himself too early because his heart told him to do it and his brain was always too slow to catch up. Perhaps it was a good thing that Kuroo was taking things slow. Maybe this next chapter of Kuroo’s life would play out better than the last.

“Kuro wants to do better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He got drunk one night and said everything spiralled faster than he could grab it. I think he regrets... well, not breaking up but everything that led up to it.”

“Yeah.” Tsukishima pulled his feet up onto the chair and curled an arm around his legs. “I think I do too.”

Silence hung in the air between them. Tsukishima rested his chin on his knees. He could imagine Kozume at home right now, huddled under the kotatsu and pressing socked feet into the hardwood floor, phone on the table and a gaming device in his hands.

“I argued with Kuro,” Kozume said. “He holed himself up in his apartment after you broke up with him, trying to come to terms with everything. I went over there to make sure he was eating properly. I got so pissed off when I let myself into his apartment and the not-boyfriend was already there talking to him.”

“You can’t fault him for that.”

“I thought-- it’s dumb, but at the time I thought Kuro was replacing you with him.”

“Well, I mean.” Tsukishima gestured vaguely even though Kozume couldn’t see it. Replacing him was kind of the whole point of everything they had gone through. “Duh?”

“I mean because you two are so similar you could pass for the same person.”

“What.” Tsukishima scrunched up his nose. “Ew. No. What.”

“I said at the time,” Kozume stressed. “When I walked in, I saw a tall, pretty boy with glasses and a shitty attitude.”

“Thanks.”

“So you can see why I was ready to shove my DS down Kuro’s throat.”

“I’m touched.” If Kozume had been ready to sacrifice one of his devices, then he must have been furious. “But please tell me how this guy and I are different because the idea of Kuroo dating a discount version of me is pretty off-putting.”

“You annoy me less.”

“Wow, you’re going to make me blush.”

Kozume ignored his dumb comments. “You look similar on the surface, but look a little deeper and it’s like looking at two completely different bodies of water. You remind me of a lake.”

“Full of microorganisms.”

“Still and deep, you numbskull. You exist apart from other bodies of water and there’s nothing that disturbs you.”

A lake, landlocked and stranded in one place forever, huh? It certainly felt that way sometimes, but Tsukishima was a lot better at appreciating the waves lapping on the shore, the winds rippling the surface and the trees that held birds’ nests in the crook of their branches. Rich, and full of life when he opened his eyes to look.

“What’s the not-boyfriend like then?”

“He reminds me of a river,” Kozume mused, “always moving forward and carving its mark across the land to find its way to the ocean.”

Free, Tsukishima’s mind supplied. Driven. Wanting.

“He sounds amazing,” Tsukishima said, and meant it. Someone stubborn enough to wear down dirt and rock through years of hard work would go far. Kuroo would do well with someone like that.

“He’s a dick.”

Tsukishima choked on his spit.

“They’re good for each other though,” Kozume continued. “I’m happy for them. I’m happy for you too.”

“Thanks.”

“Kuro wasn’t planning on taking him to Sugawara’s.” Kozume steered the conversation back to the original topic. “Would you be okay if he did?”

There was something in his voice that sounded like are you sure and don’t lie to me. Tsukishima wondered if Bokuto or Akaashi ever told him about the drinking or the breakdown. None of them ever mentioned it, but that didn’t mean they weren’t privately concerned.

“Can’t Kuroo ask me himself?”

Surely, this was why Kozume was asking.

“He doesn’t think he can.”

Oh, right. Tsukishima had told him he wanted a clean cut and Kuroo was just respecting those boundaries.

Was it working out? Yes and no. Tsukishima might be in a much better place, but his friends weren’t. None of them would ever pressure him into it because they didn’t want to see him broken again, but he could change that.

“He can.” Tsukishima’s throat started aching. “I’d like him to. I’ve-- missed him. Is that weird to say?”

Kozume was quiet.

Tsukishima placed his phone on his desk, pulled his glasses from his face and ran a palm across his eyes. It was stupid, for lack of a better word, to get emotional because he wanted to see Kuroo again.

He didn’t feel the same way anymore, but there were those nights when the sheets were colder against his skin and he wished he could reach out and feel a cotton shirt stretched over a broad back under his fingertips. Those nights were few and far between until they felt like a memory; the thing was, memories had a way of resurfacing at the most inopportune times.

“Should it be weird to miss him?”

Tsukishima sniffed and put his glasses back on. He picked up the phone and said, “He’s my friend, even after everything. And I miss my friend.”

“There you go.” Kozume’s voice was soft. “Not weird then.”

“I’m gonna-- I’ll call him. Soon. When I’m not like this.”

“Yeah.” Kozume sounded happy. “Hey Tsukki?”

“Yeah?”

“Welcome back.”

Tsukishima smiled. “It’s good to be back.”

.

“You are a smart, strong, beautiful, independent woman, and you don’t need a man to complete you.”

Tsukishima wrenched his gaze from his phone and glared up at Yamaguchi’s grinning face.

“What.”

“C’mon, Tsukki, you’re not exactly subtle. You’ve been staring at your phone for days and I can only assume there’s a male suitor on the other end. If so, let’s be honest, he can’t compete. Yachi and I treat you far better than anyone else could dream.”

Tsukishima’s brow twitched. “How much force do you reckon it’d take to slap the freckles off your face?”

Yamaguchi’s smile widened. “We can find out for science.”

Yachi circled around the dining table and collected the small dessert dishes that had been scraped clean of the beautiful matcha cheesecake she’d made. Tsukishima had come home from the lab to see it in the fridge, and apparently it was the seven-month anniversary of him telling them in his drunken haze that he loved them.

Yachi had been pretty steamed that she hadn’t been there for it, but Tsukishima made a point to say it every time he remembered now and that tempered her out. Yamaguchi liked to lord it over her though, and boast that Tsukishima had totally confessed his love to him and therefore he was number one. Yachi demolished him in Monopoly that day.

“Violent science is prohibited in the apartment,” Yachi said. “But Tsukki, you have been staring an awful lot at your phone. What’s going on?”

Tsukishima hadn’t told them that he wanted to call Kuroo and try to patch things up. He didn’t know how they would react so he put off telling them while sweating over the eventuality that he would and the argument that might follow. Yachi was something of a spitfire demon when she got mad.

Logically, there was nothing to worry about. Yamaguchi and Yachi hung out with Kuroo every week or so and they had forgiven him for being an ass. But things would be different if he inserted himself back in the picture and he didn’t want them worrying about whether or not he might have another breakdown.

This affected them too though and they needed to know, so Tsukishima cleared his throat and told them about the conversation he had with Kozume-- “Oh my god, it’s Kozume.” “Shut up, Yamaguchi.”-- and how he’d had enough time to move on from the relationship. He wanted everyone to be normal again, for all seven of them to pile into one small apartment and spend the day eating and drinking and gaming.

“I think it’s time to reach out to Kuroo. Things have been strange, and I don’t want them to be anymore.”

Yamaguchi gave him a pat on the arm, and Yachi flung herself into his arms and Tsukishima almost had a heart attack when his chair tipped to the side but slammed back down with a heavy screech.

“Yachi!”

“I’m sorry!” she cried. “But you’ve worked so hard to make so much progress and I don’t want to see you hurt again. It hurt us too.”

“I know.” Tsukishima rearranged her limbs so that she sat better in his lap. “I don’t feel that way about him anymore though. Nothing he can do will reduce me to that state again because,” he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed until she gasped and giggled, “you two will never let me touch rock bottom again.”

“Damned right we won’t.” Yamaguchi reached over and ruffled Yachi’s hair. “It’ll be fine. Kuroo and Tsukki will be friends again, and we can all hang out and roast Kuroo for his terrible bedhead again. Trust that Tsukki’s making a good choice not just for us, but also for himself.”

“I do.” Yachi wrapped her arms around Tsukishima’s neck and mumbled into his shoulder. “Tell us what he says?”

“Every word,” Tsukishima promised.

Yachi reluctantly hopped off his lap and pressed his phone into his hand. “If he makes you cry again, we’ll make him sorry he has teeth.”

Tsukishima looked at Yamaguchi in question.

“We’ll shatter them,” Yamaguchi confirmed.

Tsukishima rolled his eyes and headed towards his room. “No you won’t.”

“We can try!” Yachi hollered after him.

Tsukishima closed his bedroom door and smirked. Those two, breaking teeth? They were more likely to break their own fingers in the process. He appreciated the sentiment behind the threat though.

He took a seat at his desk and wiped his palms on his jeans. This shouldn’t be a big deal but it felt like one. Why was it harder to be friends with Kuroo again than it was to break up with him?

Then again, Tsukishima learned to put more value in friendship and this meant taking time to sift through the rubble at their feet and build something anew. It meant patience, dedication and care. It meant more than he had been willing to give, but he was willing to try now.

He hit the call button and put it on loudspeaker. It rang eight times.

“Tsukki?”

“Kuroo.” Without thinking, Tsukishima clenched his fist and pressed the crescent of his nails into his palm. He took a breath and forced himself to let go and reach for a sheet of origami paper that had been cut into quarters. His fingers knew the motions, and he began folding. “Is now a good time?”

“I-- yeah. Gimme a sec.” Kuroo’s voice became muffled like he had put a hand over the microphone. He said something in a low tone and Bokuto’s frantic screech rocketed through the speaker. “Sorry, I’m at Bokuto’s. Keeping him company while Akaashi’s doing inventory at the shop.”

“Is Kozume there?”

“Nah, some new game came out so I won’t be seeing him for the next few days.” Kuroo’s voice became clearer and there was no household background noise. He must have stepped out onto the balcony where Akaashi grew herbs in little pots and hung laundry out to dry. “Kenma said you might be calling.”

“Yeah. I..." Tsukishima bit his lip. He should’ve taken a few minutes to script out the call or at least jot down a few major dot points. There was so much he had to say, but in this moment he couldn’t think of anything at all. What was he supposed to say to someone he’d been estranged from in eight months?

Just as always, Kuroo sensed his unease and directed the conversation to give him a chance to breathe. “How have you been?”

“Good.” Tsukishima latched onto the question like a lifeline. “Good. Keeping busy. Nothing new.”

“Yamaguchi and Yachi got you hooked into their string of classes, didn’t they? Are you doing the, what, calligraphy, with them now?”

“They’ve moved onto watercolour,” Tsukishima said. “And no, I stuck with pottery. I’m learning how to use a wheel now, actually.”

“Ooh, like Patrick Swayze. Sounds fun.”

“Our definitions of fun are very different.” If a ghost ever reached around him from behind, Tsukishima would make the sign of the cross and throw himself out the window. “What have you been up to?”

“The usual shenanigans, nothing exciting. Oh wait, I did go to Nara two weeks ago and did the whole thing with the deer. Did you know they bow? It’s so cute, holy shit, but they’re also aggressive as fuck. Like, I turned around from the cracker stand and there was an entire herd of oversized rats with horns staring at me. I don’t know what the fear of deer is called, but I’m pretty sure I have it.”

Tsukishima chuckled. He’d seen videos online of deer snatching crackers, yanking on sleeves and headbutting people in the stomach for more treats. That was the price of being over-familiar with wild animals. He straightened the crane in his hands, folded its beak and dropped it into the jar on his desk.

“Did you go with Kozume? Or Bokuto and Akaashi?”

“Uh.”

Tsukishima stopped in the middle of reaching for another sheet of paper.

Oh.

“You went with the not-boyfriend.”

Really, Tsukishima should have figured that out sooner. It was strange to think that there was now a significant part of Kuroo’s life that he was no longer aware of and probably never would be.

“Um. Yeah. Look.” Kuroo’s words came out slow and stuttered like he knew what he wanted to say but was afraid to say it. “I never-- I never got the chance to apologise.”

It never occurred to Tsukishima that he needed an apology at all. It wouldn’t have changed anything; eventually, he too would have seen that they no longer made a good fit and made the heart-wrenching decision to cut things off before they festered further. Kuroo asking for a break and seeing someone else only catalysed the inevitable.

“I don’t need an apology.”

“I need to say it. Please?”

Tsukishima had never been able to say no.

“I’m sorry for being insensitive when I asked to take a break. I shouldn’t have been playing Call of Duty.”

Tsukishima guffawed, then slapped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry, that was rude. You were being sincere.”

“I was,” Kuroo dryly said, “but even I can hear how stupid that sounded.”

“Do you really need to apologise for that? To be fair, I don’t think there was a sensitive way you could have gone about asking for a break.”

Truth be told, Tsukishima had forgotten about the Call of Duty thing till now. It brought back memories of his friends’ murderous expressions and threats of bodily harm. Maybe it was a good thing he was apologising, that way no one could hold it over his head anymore.

“I mean, I could have at least looked you in the eye.”

“True.”

“I’m also sorry that I kept seeing someone even after you made it clear that’s not what you wanted. We weren’t over at the time and I disrespected you. I disrespected us and I should’ve done better. Either cancelled the date or broke things off with you. I was too much of a coward either way and then things got out of hand and I didn’t know how to talk to you without hurting you. I never wanted to do that and I’m sorry I did.”

Tsukishima’s fingers pressed into the crane and wrinkled the paper. He set it down on the desk and smoothed out its crumpled wing.

“You promised me that when you were unhappy.” Tsukishima sighed, and dropped the crane into the jar. “I can’t blame you for finding someone who makes you happy and wanting to stay with them. And breaking up with someone... I guess that takes a lot of courage. Six years is a lot to throw away. It wasn't easy for either of us.”

“You’re being really understanding about this. I thought you’d be mad.”

“What’s the point in being angry? It’s not constructive for either of us.”

The two of them lapsed into silence, pensive and contemplative. Tsukishima kept his hands busy folding cranes. The jar was close to two-thirds full and he’d put his own spin on it. He’d borrowed Yachi’s craft supplies to paint silver glitter on the inside of the glass to make it sparkly and he layered the cranes so that they formed a rainbow. He’d already filled the bottom with purple, then blue, green, yellow and now he was on orange. Soon enough, the jar would be full and his half of the gift would be done. Akiteru, when seeing a work-in-progress photo, said it was stunning and that his colleague’s daughter would love it. Then he complained that his was too lacklustre in comparison and had to start again.

Tsukishima only laughed.

“Hey, are you..." Kuroo stopped and started. “Are you-- okay?”

“Yes?”

If Kuroo was asking about his general wellbeing, then he was doing better than ever. It sounded like there was more to the question though.

“No, I mean-- before, I guess. I called Bokuto to talk about things the day you broke up with me and I kind of got the idea that something happened after he let slip that I was seeing someone. He didn’t go into detail,” Kuroo hastily added. “I just knew that he and Akaashi were worried, and they were worried for a long time. I couldn’t really ask, but I still cared.”

“I know.” It was the same for Tsukishima. There were some things they were no longer privy to know about each other, but it didn’t stop them from being concerned. “I wasn’t in a good place for a while. I’ve gotten better. You don’t have anything to worry about. I’m fine. Really.”

“I’m glad. So hey?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you think we’re ready to be friends again?”

How did Kuroo know him so well?

“I think it’s time we stopped sending our friends back and forth between us like we’re a divorced couple. I’m ready to be friends again if you are.”

“I am. God, yeah, I am. Everything’s been so--”

“Weird?”

“Weird without your snarky ass around. Hanging out with our friends isn’t the same anymore. It’s like--” Kuroo huffed. “Like a plate that’s cracked down the middle and you try to put it back together again but it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a giant crack running down the middle. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” No matter what they did from now on, there was no hiding the fracture. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t smooth it over with a little bit of lacquer and a little bit of gold. “Everything’s going to be different while we figure things out. But at the end of the day, it’s going to be fine.”

It was them. They would always be fine.

“Yeah. I’ve missed you, Tsukki.”

“I’ve missed you too.” The urge to say Tetsurou lingered, but it didn’t compel him like it used to.

“You think we’ll be any good at this?”

“We were friends first. We just have to learn how to be friends again.”

“That’s true, but our friendship was very flirtatious and filled with innuendo.”

“On your end, yes.”

“I don’t know about my end being filled.” Kuroo leered.

“Oh my god.” Tsukishima leaned back and closed his eyes. “I change my mind. Fuck off. We’re not friends.”

Kuroo cracked up laughing, sounding like a rip-off of a braying donkey and Tsukishima couldn’t help but laugh along.

“Is your not-boyfriend going to approve of you making these kinds of jokes?”

“He’ll think I’m gross, and then he’ll high-five me because it was actually pretty funny.” Kuroo snickered. “Speaking of my not-boyfriend, he’s back in the country for a few weeks. I was thinking of bringing him to Sugawara’s to meet the rest of my friends, but only if you’re okay with that. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Tsukishima had forgotten about Kozume asking this very question; they had gotten so sidetracked that he never had the chance to think it through.

The idea didn’t repulse him, or anger him, or any of the other half a dozen emotions he could have felt if he were still hanging on to the tattered threads of their relationship. He felt calm, and a little bit curious-- who was this mysterious person who caught Kuroo’s attention and kept it?

Yamaguchi and Yachi wouldn’t know; they wouldn’t have wanted to but now the three of them could play the dutiful friends and vet this new person in their midst. It might be a little bit evil and it would definitely be a lot of fun.

“Bring him,” Tsukishima said. “Introduce him to us so we can judge him.”

Kuroo snorted, but there was a note of relief in his voice. “Don’t be too hard on him.”

“Whatever we put him through can’t be compared to what you put him through. He’s dating you so he already knows the meaning of hell.”

“I’d offer a rebuttal but I can’t help thinking that he said the exact same thing last week when I accidentally threw away a jar of clay.”

“You mean for a face mask?”

“Yeah?”

“Kuroo,” Tsukishima said, appalled. “Do you know how expensive those things are?”

Kuroo went quiet and when he came to a realisation, he whispered in horror. “Oh my god, Kenma was right. You are the same.”

“Excuse you,” Tsukishima said in mock affront. If Kuroo was seeing someone new, then he could do a lot better than thinking he was going out with a discount version of an old boyfriend. “I am a lake.”

“What?”

Kuroo sounded so lost that Tsukishima lost it himself. Clearly, Kozume had never bothered explaining the water metaphor and left him stewing about his taste in men.

Tsukishima might be charitable enough to explain it himself after he finished laughing.

Those bubbles of happiness in his chest felt natural.

It felt like friendship.

Chapter Text

There were a lot of things in life that Tsukishima wasn’t certain about: why bugs had six legs instead of a reasonable eight, why violins couldn’t be classified as miniature cellos, why double-sided tape didn’t come with peel off stickers on both sides, and the list went on for some length.

The one thing that he was absolutely certain of was that he could never save up enough to buy a house. It’d be nice to have the space that he couldn’t in an apartment, but it was impossible in a city like Tokyo. He might have a better chance in Miyagi, but that meant moving and he didn’t think he could face another cardboard box in his life again.

Sugawara had done it though, working hard as an elementary school teacher to save up and buy a house in the outer part of the city. On the outside, it was a small and ramshackle looking thing but it was nothing a touch-up wouldn’t fix. When Tsukishima, Yamaguchi and Yachi arrived from the station, Sawamura was walking around the perimeter, noting down all the things that needed work and jotting it down in a notepad. It was sweet, and Tsukishima predicted a lot of dates to the hardware store in their future.

“I love it so much.” Yachi stumbled out of her chair and pressed her nose to the window where wildflowers bloomed amongst the grass and swayed with the wind. Her eyes softened looking at them and she gave a heartfelt sigh. “I miss living in the country sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Tsukishima said.

“Same,” Yamaguchi added.

Yachi perked up, her eyes bright with a shiny new idea. “Hey, what if we--”

“No,” Tsukishima and Yamaguchi said at the same time.

Yachi’s bottom lip stuck out and she plopped back into her chair with a pout. “You guys didn’t even give me a chance to say anything.”

“I know exactly what you were going to say.” Yamaguchi gave her a stern look. “We are not buying a house together in Miyagi. For one thing, we’d have to move all of our belongings five hours away and we own a lot more than we did when we were teenagers. And for another thing, we’d have to find new jobs. How hard is it going to be going from everything we’ve built to starting from scratch?”

Yachi slumped into her chair and rested her head against the back. She picked up her bottle of soju and mumbled, “When I die, cremate me and scatter my ashes over the tallest mountain in Miyagi.”

“How about the tallest hill?” Tsukishima offered. “I don’t want to overexert myself.”

“None of this talk tonight!” Sugawara stood in front of them with his hands on his waist, looking every bit the miffed schoolteacher. “It’s my housewarming party and you guys are not allowed to talk about death. Those are terrible vibes!”

“Sorry, sorry.” Yachi waved her bottle around. It was only her second bottle but there were already two round splotches of pink on her cheeks. She was such a lightweight. “Negativity begone!”

Sugawara laughed, his eyes warm and his smile bright. There was a soft and content air about him, like being surrounded by so many people uplifted his spirit and made him happy. Knowing how Sugawara delighted in company, and how rarely he saw most of them, that was probably the case. “How are you guys finding the party so far?”

“It’s hilarious that Shimizu beat Tanaka at beer pong,” Yamaguchi informed him.

Oh, that had been a riot. Everyone assumed Tanaka would be the better player because he still dabbled in volleyball which required good hand-eye coordination. Yet his throws went awry and Shimizu had bounced ball after ball into his cups. Tanaka had chugged every single cup, then all of Shimizu’s and fell asleep on the dining table with his cheek smushed into a placemat.

“Shimizu is the queen of beer pong.” Sugawara gave a sage nod. “God have mercy on the poor soul who dares challenge her.”

“Terushima intends to,” Tsukishima said. “I’m pretty sure he’s planning on passing out over your toilet within the next few hours.”

“Oh, I can’t wait,” Sugawara gleefully said. “I’m going to make a bet with him. If he wins, I’ll let him paint a dick on my front door.”

Yamaguchi raised an eyebrow. “What happens if he loses?”

“I’m going to draw a dick on his forehead in permanent marker.”

“Nice,” Tsukishima said.

“I’m going to find him. If you guys need anything, make yourselves at home and just reach into the fridge. I’ll bring out dinner in an hour or so, fried chicken, so look forward to it!”

Sugawara gave them one last smile and hurried off to find Terushima.

Yamaguchi sighed and stared after Sugawara with hearts in his eyes. He’d always had a bit of a crush on their vice captain, and it never fully went away. Yachi supported him one hundred percent, stating that everybody was a little bit in love with Sugawara and they were kidding themselves if they said they weren’t.

“I miss Sugawara,” Yamaguchi mourned. “I miss his smiles and how they used to light up my entire day.”

“You know.” Yachi kicked his foot. “If we moved back to Miyagi--”

“No,” Tsukishima said.

Yamaguchi gave a heartfelt sigh and nodded in agreement. “Not even for Sugawara.”

“You two are such party poopers.”

“Hey hey hey!”

“Cheer up,” Tsukishima said. “The life of the party just arrived.”

Yamaguchi whooped and jumped out of his chair just as Bokuto crashed into the living room. They saw each other at the same time and shouted.

“Bro!”

“Bro!”

“Ugh,” Yachi said.

Bokuto and Yamaguchi flung themselves towards each other and the sound of their chests smacking together resounded throughout the room. Tsukishima watched in horror as Yamaguchi flew backwards into the wall and his windmilling arms knocked down a painting. Bokuto shrieked and dove to catch it, his fingers curling around the bottom of the frame mere centimeters from the floor.

“Oh, good catch,” Yamaguchi gasped. His breaths came out short and stuttering, having all the wind knocked out of him by a literal wall of bricks. He never learned. “Oh, thank god. My entire life just flashed before my eyes. Can you imagine what Suga would do to us if we ruined the painting Daichi commissioned for him?”

Bokuto sucked in a breath and clambered to his feet. He hooked the painting back up onto the wall and stood back to look at it. He glanced around to check that Sugawara wasn’t in the vicinity, then asked in a loud whisper, “I put it on straight, right?”

Yamaguchi reached out with one finger and gingerly nudged the frame until it actually sat straight. “Yep. Fantastic job, Bokuto.”

“Honestly.” Akaashi slipped around them with Kozume close behind. He narrowed his eyes like daggers and two of them sheepishly looked at each other and then at the ground. “You two can’t be left unsupervised. Such troublemakers.”

“But Akaashi--” Bokuto began.

“Losers,” Kozume muttered, collapsing on the sofa next to Yachi and pulling out his DS. “Go get us drinks.”

Bokuto pulled down his lower eyelid and stuck his tongue out, making a terrible noise that sounded like a cross between a cow bellowing and a whale song. Yamaguchi cackled and shoved his shoulder into Bokuto’s back to push him out of the room and towards the kitchen.

“They are so dumb,” Yachi declared.

“Yep,” Kozume said, thumbs dancing across the buttons. From the sound effects, he must have been playing some kind of battling game. “Total dumbasses.”

“And yet you love them.” Akaashi took a seat next to Tsukishima. His weight made the sofa dip down and Tsukishima caught himself before he fell into his friend. Akaashi smiled. “Isn’t that right?”

Tsukishima adjusted himself on the seat and said, “It depends on the day, but sure. What’s not to love?”

“You totally love us!”

Bokuto ran back into the room and shoved bottles in everyone’s faces. Yamaguchi and Akaashi each got beer, Yachi and Kozume got soju and Tsukishima accepted a glass of ice-cold orange juice.

“Thanks.”

He set it on the coffee table next to the half-filled glass of orange juice he already had and resolved to drink faster. He didn’t like it when cold drinks sat out long enough to turn warm, even if they could be drunk that way. There was something about the length of time that bothered him in some way.

“I saw apple juice, coke and lemonade in the fridge too if you wanted,” Bokuto offered.

“Maybe later. Thanks for remembering.”

Bokuto beamed, his entire face lighting up with pride. He’d tried so hard to help Tsukishima stay sober, keeping bottles of juice and soda and cordial in his fridge for the days when Tsukishima visited for dinner. Tsukishima told him many times that it was unnecessary to make these extra purchases for him-- he was fine with water and tea and whatnot, but Bokuto insisted because he didn’t want him missing out on fun drinks.

Tsukishima couldn’t say no to that reasoning.

Bokuto clambered into Akaashi’s lap, and Tsukishima almost toppled over from the extra weight on the sofa throwing him around. He scooted closer towards Yachi and snickered at Bokuto who was far too large to sit properly in Akaashi’s lap. He ended up sprawled sideways in between Akaashi’s legs, and Akaashi’s glasses sat askew on his face.

“Whoops.” Bokuto gently set them right again and kissed the tip of Akaashi’s nose. “There we go!”

“Aww,” Yachi cooed.

Kozume made a retching noise. Tsukishima was inclined to agree.

“You guys are just jealous you could never have what me and Akaashi do!”

It would be difficult for anyone to have what Bokuto and Akaashi did. The two of them were highschool sweethearts and they moved like their worlds revolved around each other. They fell deeper in love with each other every passing year and they were the sun, the moon and the stars in each others’ eyes. People could only dream of having a love like theirs.

“Bokuto!” Yamaguchi screeched from the kitchen. “I found scallion pancakes!”

“Oh my god!” Bokuto, having the attention span of a puppy, leapt up and dashed to the kitchen. “I’m gonna make scallion pancakes!”

Akaashi shook his head with a wry smile and righted himself. Without the extra weight throwing everyone around, Tsukishima sidled back into his original spot.

“How was your trip up?” he asked. “Everything was okay?”

Akaashi shot a murderous glare at Kozume, who didn’t deign to look in his direction. “We almost lost Kenma. He was so absorbed in his DS that he straggled behind and got himself lost in the crowd. He wasn’t answering his phone either, and we wandered around Sendai station for twenty minutes trying to find him.”

“I was on the platform.”

“We know that now.” Akaashi shook his head, but he wasn’t mad. He seemed resigned more than anything, to have the people around him running off and getting lost all the time. Tsukishima felt rather sorry for him, having to be the responsible one, but he did sign up for it when he started dating Bokuto and hanging out with his friends. “Miyagi hasn’t changed much, huh? We’re planning to do a little sightseeing tomorrow before heading back. Would you guys like to be our tour guides?”

“Oh, we’re visiting family tomorrow,” Yachi said. “My mother’s been dying to introduce me to her new boyfriend and Yamaguchi hasn’t seen his grandmother in months. She’s getting rather cross with him.”

“What about you?” Akaashi turned to Tsukishima. “Are you visiting family too?”

“Yeah, Akiteru and I are going to visit our mother. We don’t see her often enough for her liking, so we’ll spend tomorrow taking her out for lunch and doing a bit of shopping.”

“That’s very sweet of you,” Akaashi said. “How’s Akiteru doing? I haven’t heard from him for a while.”

None of them would have. Out of the original Tokyo group, Akiteru had talked to Kuroo the most because they both liked to share embarrassing stories about Tsukishima. He knew Bokuto, Akaashi and Kozume by default and always said hello if they were around but it was always small talk. There couldn’t have been much of that happening since the break up.

“Bothersome as always.” Tsukishima didn’t go a day without being bombarded by messages from Akiteru. Sometimes his brother had interesting things to say, like a dinner date with his colleague or making chocolate cake for her daughter. Most of the time, it was pretty mundane stuff like a cat he saw on the street or a cloud in the shape of a rabbit. “He always complains I don’t visit enough, so this should shut him up for a while.”

“Big brothers are supposed to be worried.”

“Is that what your brothers told you?”

Tsukishima hid a smile. He’d heard the stories often enough, of Akaashi’s older brothers terrorising Bokuto in the early days and threatening to tie his entrails in a bow if he ever misstepped in their relationship. Bokuto, though terrified, had staunchly proclaimed that he could never hurt Akaashi and kept that promise to this day.

“My brothers are irrelevant here.” Akaashi waved a flippant hand. “Akiteru wants to make sure you’re okay. It’s not easy communicating only via texts and calls, you know. Sometimes a little face-to-face goes a long way.”

“I know, I know.” Tsukishima groaned and rubbed his face. He’d heard that often enough from his mother and his brother and adding this into the mix was really making it hit home that he needed to visit more often. “God, did Akiteru put you up to this?”

“Hey, I worry about you too.” Akaashi leaned in closer and lowered his voice so that the people milling around and chatting couldn’t hear his next words. “Will you be okay? With Kuroo coming tonight?”

Even Akaashi, usually so blunt with his words, skirted around Kuroo and the issue of the not-boyfriend. It was almost as though his friends thought saying it would manifest the man himself and send Tsukishima into a crazed fit of jealousy, so the next best thing was to hint at it with a meaningful bob of the head and a tone edged with the words you know?

Tsukishima certainly did know, and he appreciated their concern, but there was nothing they needed to be worried about. He took a breath, and it came easily without the constriction of anxiety or fear. If anything, he had anticipated this from the beginning.

Tsukishima was ready.

“I told him to do it. You know that, right?”

“Yes, but you’ve always pushed yourself with Kuroo.”

“What do you mean?”

Akaashi’s thumb scraped the edge of the label on his bottle until the corner peeled back. He smoothed it back onto the glass and sighed. “It was always like you were swept along into his rhythm. You didn’t know enough to say no, and I don’t think you would have known how to.”

Kuroo had a charisma about him that made it hard to refuse anything he asked. When Tsukishima was young and stupid, Kuroo could have asked him to destroy the world and all Tsukishima would have asked was whether he wanted it done by fire or ice. Their love burned bright and then it burned out.

Tsukishima only wished he had seen it coming faster.

“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Akaashi murmured.

Tsukishima gave a faint smile. “I could say the same thing for you.”

“Hmm?”

“I know you haven’t met the not-boyfriend yet, despite all the opportunities you’ve had. I mean, you hang out with Kuroo often enough and Bokuto plays volleyball with the guy every time he’s in the country. It seems to me that you’re the one who doesn’t want to meet him.”

Akaashi frowned at his beer bottle, and his thumb kept working over the corner of the label. “It’s not that I dislike him or anything,” he finally said. “Like you said, I don’t even know him. But I can dislike the situation and how it was handled. I think you were too kind to let it go like you did.”

There were a hundred ways Tsukishima could have handled things, but he had been so worn down that acceptance was the fastest way for him to end everything and move on. While there were times where he wondered if he could have said something else or something more, he stood by his actions and the belief that it was the best thing he could have done for himself.

“Anger is valid, but it isn’t constructive.” Tsukishima quoted Akiteru, who used to say it to him all the time when he grew frustrated because he didn’t have the words to express his emotions and lashed out. It took time, but Tsukishima learned to work through the initial anger and process his feelings until he figured out the words to say. “It was a shitstorm of a situation, but nothing I could’ve done would have changed any of it.”

“Maybe not,” Akaashi concluded, “but I can still be annoyed.”

Whatever Tsukishima had to say was interrupted when Bokuto and Yamaguchi burst into the living room holding a plate with one very questionably cooked scallion pancake.

“We made a pancake!” Bokuto threw himself into the gap between Akaashi and Tsukishima and screeched. “Look, look at it. What do you think?”

“It looks like something I’d find at the bottom of a toilet,” Tsukishima said. “It’s so burnt it’s practically charcoal.”

Akaashi hid a smile behind another sip of beer. When he set the bottle down, his face was perfectly neutral again. “I suggest turning down the flame on the stove so you can distribute the heat and cook the pancake more evenly.”

“And read the instructions on the back of the box.” Yachi looked up from Kozume’s DS where she’d been watching him play. “Keep in mind that if you burn down Suga’s house, he’s going to hunt you down with a butcher’s knife.”

“I’m not scared of Suga!” Bokuto protested.

That was an obvious lie. It was a truth universally acknowledged that everyone was a little bit in love with Sugawara and everyone was also a little bit scared of him and the havoc he could wreak.

“Hey hey hey!”

“Oh god.” Akaashi tilted his head back and downed the rest of his beer. “Here we go.”

Kuroo blasted into the living room and a feral grin split his face when his eyes caught sight of Bokuto and Yamaguchi.

“Holy shit!” Yamaguchi screamed as two giant slabs of beef slammed into him. He let out a strangled noise as Kuroo and Bokuto tried to either bear hug each other or wrestle each other into the ground. “I’m going to die!”

“What a way to go.”

Tsukishima turned towards the unfamiliar voice, and his jaw dropped when he realised that face was everything but unfamiliar.

“The great king!” Yachi gasped.

Oikawa stood in the doorway with a sarcastic smile on his face and waggled his fingers in hello. “Hi, cute manager from Karasuno!”

Kuroo looked up in surprise and he untangled himself from the mess of limbs that made up Yamaguchi and Bokuto. “Wait, you know Yachi?”

“Of course!”

“Right.” Kuroo slapped a hand to his forehead. “Miyagi. Volleyball. Wow, I’m an idiot.”

“I’m the idiot,” Tsukishima muttered under his breath. “Oh my god, I’m the idiot.”

Akaashi patted his arm in sympathy.

Tsukishima sat frozen as Kuroo slung an arm around Oikawa’s neck and pulled him closer, pointing at his friends as he introduced them. Oikawa exclaimed over Yamaguchi, the pinch server turned captain, and praised his powerful arsenal of serves. Yamaguchi stuttered, clearly taken aback, and said he hadn’t played volleyball since high school.

“You’ve met Bokuto and Kenma,” Kuroo said. “Next we have Akaashi--”

“Akaashi!” Oikawa clapped his hands together. “Bokuto talks so much about you. I feel like I know you already!”

Akaashi’s eyebrows flew upwards. “He does?”

“Of course I do,” Bokuto said. “I love you!”

“Aww,” Yachi crooned.

Kozume made a retching noise again, but Tsukishima couldn’t even appreciate it because his mind was still stuck on the fact that out of the seven-something billion people in the world, Kuroo was dating Oikawa.

“Last of all, Tsukki!”

Kuroo’s finger pointed straight towards him and the two of them made eye contact for the first time in months. They held it for a second, then the corner of Kuroo’s lip twitched and Tsukishima’s brain started functioning again.

“Introduce me properly,” he said. “I don’t need another person in my life calling me Tsukki, thanks.”

Kuroo heaved a sigh like it physically pained him to say the full name. “Tsukki is also known as Tsukishima. You may remember him as the middle blocker turned ace from high school.”

“Oh, I remember him all right.” A nasty gleam fitted across Oikawa’s eyes and his smile curled into something sharper. “He’s the one who blocked Ushiwaka in the Shiratorizawa and Karasuno match. There was a lot of buzz even then among the universities about scouting you out for a position on their teams when you were in your third year.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Oikawa tilted his head and his eyes drilled into Tsukishima’s. “You could have gone far if you’d continued. How come you stopped playing volleyball? Did you not like it anymore or did you realise the standards were even higher at a tertiary level?”

What was with the third degree? There had been university scouts who offered Yamaguchi a place on their teams as well but Oikawa hadn’t fixated on that. Then, Tsukishima realised in the pit of his stomach that Oikawa knew exactly who he was and what he had been to Kuroo-- Kuroo had turned to him for comfort after the break-up, hadn't he?-- and that was why he was getting the pressing questions.

Casual relationship, his ass.

“Volleyball was fun, but in the end it was a hobby.” Tsukishima gave a polite smile that may have been just a touch frigid. “I needed to turn my attention to something more viable.”

“You don’t think volleyball is viable as a career?”

Tsukishima opened his mouth to retort that no a career as a volleyball player was not viable nor sustainable for most people, and not everyone had the means to fly themselves out to another country and gain citizenship there to fill out empty slots in the national team.

“Hey!” Bokuto blurted out. “You know what we need? Shots! We need so many shots!”

“Yeah!” Yamaguchi grabbed Bokuto by the arm and they hustled back out of the living room.

Kuroo, grateful for the interruption, dragged Oikawa to one of the remaining sofas and pushed him down onto it. “No more volleyball talk,” he admonished. “It makes you weirdly competitive.”

Oikawa slumped back into the cushions with a pout, and it was criminal how good he could look even when he was acting like a total brat. It must be the combination of the fluffy hair, navy coat and black-framed glasses.

Kuroo’s gaze softened and he reached out to run his fingers through Oikawa’s hair, sweeping it around to the side and swiping his thumb along the rise of his cheek. Tsukishima flicked his gaze away, feeling like he was protruding on an intimate moment. It was concerning that he only now realised how happy Kuroo looked, because he was so used to seeing so much less on his face.

“Shots!”

Bokuto stormed back in with a tray of shot glasses lined up on its surface. Yamaguchi followed him in with a plate of floppy scallion pancakes and set it on the coffee table with a snicker.

“We figured we’d spare ourselves from Suga’s wrath and microwave them.”

Sugawara popped up behind them, with Sawamura in tow. “I heard someone say shots!” he said. “I also heard someone say my name but that’s not as important.”

“Suga,” Sawamura said, chastened.

“Don’t be such a stick in the mud, Daichi.” Sugawara lifted two shot glasses from the tray and handed one to him. “Come on, everybody grab a glass!”

“There’s about five for everybody.” Bokuto started handing them out. “It’s going to be one hell of a party. Where’s Terushima?”

“Five for everybody?” Akaashi said in disbelief. “Now? We’re going to die of alcohol poisoning.”

“It’s fine, we have a doctor right here!” Bokuto gestured to Kuroo, who gave him a wink and double finger guns.

“What use is the doctor if he’s dead from alcohol poisoning too?” Oikawa looked unimpressed, but he accepted his shots anyway.

“Oh good, he has common sense,” Akaashi muttered.

“Be nice,” Tsukishima said.

“Hypocrite,” Akaashi hissed. “You wanted to scalp Oikawa as soon as he talked to you. You’re lucky Bokuto interrupted or we’d be scrubbing both your blood and his off the walls right now.”

Tsukishima shrugged. He thought he could get along with Kuroo’s not-boyfriend, but that was when the not-boyfriend was still an abstract concept. Once he realised it was Oikawa, one of the most irritable beings known to man both on and off the court, all thoughts of politeness and friendliness were dashed to ribbons.

“And Tsukki gets orange juice!”

“Wow.” Tsukishima held his hands out, took the glass of juice and placed it next to the two glasses he still had. He was triple-parked on drinks now. “It’s almost like I haven’t had enough orange juice already.”

Kuroo gave him a strange look. “You’re not drinking?”

Tsukishima wasn’t going to get into this. There were too many people around and it wasn’t the type of conversation for this kind of gathering. Instead, he said, “I’ve made some lifestyle changes.”

“But you love kahlúa and milk.” Kuroo looked at the glasses on the coffee table and he sounded wonderfully confused. “You have three glasses of orange juice and you haven’t even finished the first one.”

“Bokuto’s overzealous,” Akaashi said.

“Such a sweetheart,” Yachi added.

“Yep. My body is a temple and all.” Tsukishima picked up the half-full one and drained it, then picked up the second one. He raised it high and looked to Sugawara. “Congratulations on your new house!”

The people around him echoed his toast, and tossed their shot back. Tsukishima sipped at his juice and grinned as he watched everyone’s face twist into varying degrees of disgust.

“Ugh.” Yachi’s entire body shuddered. “I hate vodka.”

“Yeah, this is rancid.” Oikawa pulled a face and set the shot glass back down onto the tray. “You can have the rest of my shots, Tetsurou.”

Tsukishima choked on his juice.

Tetsurou?

What the actual fuck, Tsukishima wildly thought.

The two of them insisted they were in a casual relationship, yet Oikawa was throwing around Kuroo’s given name like they were in love.

It shouldn’t matter.

It shouldn’t matter what they called each other because it was none of Tsukishima’s business anymore. He had relinquished his right to say Kuroo’s given name like that again yet there was already someone else who let it slip from his lips like it was natural, and it was so full of affection that it made Tsukishima want to cry.

His next breath sounded like a gasp.

“Tsukki?” Yachi whispered.

He leaned over and grabbed two of her shots.

“Wai--” Akaashi started, but it was too late.

Tsukishima tossed them back one after another and relished in the burn that tore down his throat and into his chest. He coughed, eyes watering, and set the glasses down on the tray. Oikawa was right-- this cheap shit was rancid.

Tsukishima stood, not even caring that everyone’s eyes were on him. Kozume’s hands were frozen around his DS, Yamaguchi and Yachi had their hands over their mouths, Bokuto’s eyes were wide in horror and one of Akaashi’s hands were outstretched like he’d been about to snatch the glasses away.

“I’m not feeling well,” Tsukishima announced. “I’m going to head off to Akiteru’s to get some rest. I’ll text you when I get there.”

He had no idea who he was talking to, or who he was addressing with that last sentence but he didn’t have the capacity to give much of a shit right now. He wanted, no, he needed to get out of there and clear his head.

“Tsukishima!” Sugawara hurried after him and stood by the genkan, watching with anxious eyes as Tsukishima stuffed his feet into his shoes. “Tsukishima, what can I--”

“Nothing,” Tsukishima interrupted. “Really. I’ll be fine, I just need to rest.”

Of course Sugawara didn’t believe him; his bullshit meter was so finely tuned he could sense a lie like a shark nosing after a drop of blood. “If this is about Kuroo and Oikawa, I can--”

“No, no. You don’t need to do anything.” Tsukishima gave a wan smile. “Just go back inside and celebrate your new house. You’ve worked hard and you deserve to have a good night. If I stay, I’m only going to drag the mood down.”

“Nonsense,” Sugawara said. “It’s never a drag with you around. But if you don’t want to stay, I won’t force you to. You’ll head straight to your brother’s?”

“Yeah. No stops.”

“Promise you’ll text us. You know we worry.”

“I know.” The memory of everyone in the Karasuno group chat threatening to dismember Kuroo was a fond one. “I’ll text, I promise.”

Sugawara let him go, and Tsukishima made it down the front steps and to the gate when he heard his name being called again. He turned, and saw Kuroo jogging down the steps towards him. He had a line of worry across his forehead and a crease in his brow.

“Tsukki,” Kuroo said again when he reached him.

“I think--” Tsukishima paused and considered his next words. “I think you should stop calling me Tsukki.”

“What?”

“It’s too familiar. With you.”

A flash of hurt crossed Kuroo’s face and his jaw clicked when he swallowed. “If that’s what you want.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened back there?” Kuroo folded his arms across his chest. “One second you told me you weren’t drinking and the next second you down two shots like you’re dying. Akaashi looked like he was going to have a heart attack and Yachi looked like she was about to cry.”

“I know.” Tsukishima’s heart squeezed. “Can we not talk about it? Please, I can’t. Not with you.”

Kuroo threw his hands up in exasperation and it wasn’t even his fault. Tsukishima felt a bit sorry for him. He was the only one in their group of friends that had no idea what was going on and it was probably driving him crazy.

“I thought we were better. I thought we were talking.”

A laugh bubbled uncontrollably out of Tsukishima’s throat. “Yes, Kuroo, we’ve been talking. About the weather, the hospital, the lab, the fucking lamb you had for dinner last night. But this? This isn’t the kind of thing we talk about anymore.”

“It’s about Tooru, isn’t it?”

Wow.

“I know he was being a brat but I swear that only makes up half his personality. I made him promise to be nice so if you come back in, we’ll have another round of drinks and Tooru can embarrass himself because he’s a lightweight and can’t keep secrets to save his life.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand. I just need you to support me.”

“Of course I do!” Kuroo cried. “But it’d make it so much easier to know how to do that if I knew what was going on. Why won’t you tell me? Have you changed your mind about being friends? Is it because of Tooru?”

“Stop saying his name!”

Silence.

Tsukishima took a shaking breath and his entire body shuddered when he exhaled.

“Is that what this is?” Kuroo slowly asked. “I don’t... you broke up with me.”

“Please.” Tsukishima’s voice was bitter. “You broke up with me long before I made it official.”

“So you’re... what, jealous?”

Tsukishima’s fingers twitched. God no, he wasn’t jealous. Jealousy was for people who wanted, and he’d long stopped wanting. What was the point when Kuroo left his side and would never come back?

“It’s not jealousy, Kuroo,” Tsukishima bit out. “It’s hurt.”

“But this was mutual.”

“You fell out of the relationship long before I did.”

“But..." Kuroo ran his hands through his hair in agitation, spiking it up even more and making him look mad. “Why did you say okay to the break then? Why didn’t you tell me that you wanted us to keep trying?”

Tsukishima laughed, tired and weary. “Why ask you to stay when you already wanted to go? I made my peace with that, but I’m still working through it. You’ve had time to do that, far longer than me so I’m still catching up. I’m still learning to be myself without you and it’s hard because it was six years of my life, Kuroo.”

Kuroo’s gaze dropped to the ground. “It’s not like I’m over us either.”

Tsukishima’s throat ached. He couldn’t ask Kuroo to elaborate on that, not unless he wanted to rip his chest open again and show his beating heart. “I’m trying to be a good ex-boyfriend, but I’m not ready. Clearly. You saw me drink.”

“You’re not supposed to?”

Fuck.

Tsukishima’s sobriety wasn’t a secret but he had kept it from Kuroo because he didn’t need to know he was the cause of it.

“You have a drinking problem.” A light of understanding dawned in Kuroo’s eyes as he ran through everything that happened earlier. “Tsukki-- Tsukishima.”

It sounded too formal, too long, but Tsukishima couldn’t bear to hear his nickname. Kuroo only ever said his given name in rare, intimate moments and that was enough because with all the affection that he said Tsukki, he might as well have said Kei, darling, love.

“Tsukishima,” Kuroo repeated one more time. “What happened?”

Tsukishima sighed. There was a touch of despair in that breath. “I drank myself stupid one night and scared everyone half to death. Yamaguchi made me promise to go sober for six months, and I did so well without alcohol that I kept it going. And I just lost my fucking streak.”

Kuroo opened and closed his mouth, no doubt many things running through his mind that he wanted to say. Maybe the doctor in him was taking charge, and he was going to ask questions like: Why did you start drinking? How bad did it get? What support systems do you have in place?

Instead, what came out of his mouth was a small voice asking, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How,” Tsukishima’s exhale wracked his whole body, “could I do that? Call you up and tell you I started drinking because I couldn’t cope without you? I didn’t need your pity and I certainly don’t need it now.”

“We’re friends,” Kuroo insisted. “I could have helped.”

“You would’ve made things worse.”

Kuroo looked like he’d been slapped.

Of course things would have been worse with Kuroo around, what with him being the cause of it. But it was so noble of him to think that he could have helped, that he would have wanted to despite the misgivings in their relationship at the time.

“I know you, Kuroo,” Tsukishima softly said. “I know you would've seen the pathetic state I was in and gotten back together with me even if it meant you were stuck in a lacking relationship. And I never want to ask that of you.”

The tears in Kuroo’s eyes shone under the evening light. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “You've always been too good for me."

Tsukishima gave a weak laugh. He'd always thought it was the opposite.

"Hey." Kuroo sounded uncertain. "We’re still-- still friends, right?”

Even now when they were broken up both in their relationship and in their emotions, Kuroo still wanted them to be a part of each other's lives.

Tsukishima couldn’t imagine a universe where he wasn’t friends with Kuroo. He managed a wobbly smile. “Yeah. We’ll always be friends.”

.

Kuroo wiped at his eyes and turned to go back inside but stopped short upon seeing Oikawa leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest. He gave a rueful smile and walked up to the front door.

“So.”

“So.” Oikawa gave no indication as to what lay below the surface, but he certainly couldn’t have appreciated Kuroo running off after his ex-boyfriend. “Still chasing after Tsukki after all this time?”

“That was the last time,” Kuroo promised. “It’s over.”

Oikawa’s eyes lingered where Tsukishima had left. “Is it?”

What a good question.

Months ago, Kuroo had woken up one day and looked at the empty spot in bed next to him and realised this wasn't what he wanted anymore, but that realisation didn’t take anything away from everything they’d already shared-- laughter in their kitchen in the middle of the night, cramped baths together with messes of tangled limbs, entwined fingers in bed and brushed kisses over knuckles.

Kuroo had loved Tsukishima, had wanted to spend every day of the rest of his life with him, and though he didn’t feel the same way anymore there was nothing that could take away those six years short of amnesia or death.

Kuroo leaned his forehead into the crook of Oikawa’s neck and sighed. He nuzzled closer into the t-shirt when Oikawa unfolded his arms and slipped them around his waist, warm and affectionate as always.

“I thought I was okay,” he mumbled. “But history doesn’t disappear that easily.”

“That’s because you keep holding onto it.” Oikawa pulled him closer and rested his chin on his shoulder. “You live in the same apartment with the same photos and the same stars on the ceiling. How will you get over him when you’re surrounded by everything he was to you?”

Kuroo had tried multiple times to clean out the apartment after Tsukishima broke up with him. Every time he picked up a photo of them kissing or smiling at each other or half a dozen nerdy science pun t-shirts Tsukishima bought for him, he was seized by waves of guilt and despair crashing over him. Oikawa had been understanding, had sat with him and talked with him through the heartbreak because he knew what it was like to fall in love and then out of it again.

“I don’t know how to throw the remnants of our relationship away.” How was he supposed to take those last bits of Tsukishima from his home, from his heart, and discard them like they didn’t mean anything anymore? “How did you manage it?”

Oikawa didn’t talk much about the only serious relationship he’d ever had, but Kuroo gathered from the bits and pieces that it had started when they were in middle school and lasted until the end of high school. The break-up, though painful, had been mutual and amicable.

“I was stuck in a negative headspace for the longest time,” Oikawa said. “I needed to get some perspective, to take a step back and see the forest for the trees because at the time the only thing I could focus on was the bark.”

“The bark?”

“Where I’d scratched our names under an umbrella.” Oikawa’s shoulders shook as he laughed. “I was such a romantic as a kid. He thought I was being stupid though, and turned the brightest shade of red I’d ever seen while calling me an idiot.”

“How endearing,” Kuroo commented. “So how did you end up getting perspective?”

“I got to leave the country.” Oikawa sighed and nestled closer. “The timing worked out well, I guess. Throwing myself into a place where I had no connections to anyone or anything made it so much easier to look back and think of everything with fondness instead of heartbreak. Maybe you can do the same.”

“Eat, pray, love my way around Argentina?”

“Oh, ha ha. I’m just throwing an idea out there, okay?”

Kuroo hummed. He’d never stepped foot out of Japan before. The idea of jumping on a plane and flying halfway across the world sounded appealing, but the logistics of it would be a nightmare and the language barrier would be the greatest barrier of all.

But Oikawa would be there. He’d picked up enough Spanish to get by on a day-to-day basis and could teach him some key phrases. He could let him crash at his house, take him to the beach and they’d walk barefoot along the shore and get into a water fight. He could take him around to the small shops beloved by locals and they could gorge themselves stupid on local cuisine like choripan and fainâ. 

Oikawa could show him everything he loved about Argentina and why he chose to make it home.

“You could fly back with me sometime,” Oikawa suggested, like he hadn’t just opened Kuroo’s eyes up to a whole new world. “I think it’d be a good experience for you. You’d like Argentina, I think. The people, the food, the music... ”

Kuroo smiled, and if his eyes were stinging with tears again then that was between him and Oikawa’s shirt.

“Yeah, maybe.”

He liked the sound of that.

Maybe meant potential. Maybe meant possibility. And for Oikawa, maybe meant a promise.

.

The lock on Akiteru’s front door turned with a heavy thud, and Tsukishima pushed it open and announced himself. Akiteru called out as he was kicking off his shoes.

“Back here!”

Tsukishima made his way into the house and Akiteru smiled from his seat at the kotatsu. He had a maroon shawl draped over his shoulders, no doubt one of his crafty projects, papers scattered over the table surface and the television blaring.

“What’s on?”

Tsukishima rummaged through one of the cupboards lining the kitchen, pulled out a glass and filled it to the brim with water. He took a deep swallow to wash the last tastes of cheap vodka from the back of his throat and slid into the kotatsu next to his brother.

“Some game show,” Akiteru responded. “It’s pretty funny.”

Tsukishima rested his cheek against his hand and watched one of the contestants, strapped up in protective gear, dove through a circular hole in a wall that blew towards her. His eyebrows shot up when the wall crashed into her hip, and she flew backwards into a pool of water.

“Holy shit.”

The next contestant was a man also in the same protective gear. He jumped up and down, readying himself, and this time the hole in the moving wall was a strangely shaped squiggle that he’d have to have some serious flexibility to get around.

“Bet you a thousand yen he gets dunked,” Tsukishima said.

“You’re on.”

But instead of twisting his body into some kind of demonic contortion, the man laid on his side on the floor and the wall passed straight over him and only brushed against the tip of his nose.

Tsukishima clucked his tongue. “Dammit.”

“I’ll forego my winnings of a measly one thousand yen if you help me fold these cranes.” Akiteru waved a piece of origami paper at him. “I’m so close to five hundred I can almost taste victory.”

Akiteru had ten sheets of paper in front of him, all on the same stage of the folding process, like a one-man factory line. He claimed it was faster to fold ten cranes one step at a time, and it probably was, but Tsukishima preferred to fold them one by one and drop them into the glass jar. It was nice to have those smaller victories along the way.

“How’s the girl?”

“She’s on new medication and seems to be doing better.”

“How’s her mother holding up?”

Last Tsukishima heard, she had been struggling to balance work, home and responsibilities because of the strain she was under. Akiteru offered his help by cooking extra meals to bring to her at work, driving her and her daughter to appointments and spending time with them on weekends to go for picnics at the park.

“She’s doing much better now that her daughter is,” Akiteru said, finishing off his ten cranes and dropping them into the jar. He’d refused to be outdone and decorated it with gold and silver stars, and he had a length of ribbon to tie around the lid when he was done.

Tsukishima thought he was trying a bit too hard to win the daughter over, especially since she already approved of him. But Akiteru had to go above and beyond, as always.

“How many have you made?”

“Four hundred and fifty-two,” Akiteru said. “You?”

“Three hundred and seventy-one.”

“I’m winning.”

“I’ll finish my cranes by tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, right.”

Tsukishima grinned, and picked up a sheet of origami paper. He may have been the one to issue the original challenge but he never deluded himself into thinking he could win. This project was personal for Akiteru, and he was putting everything into it. There was no way he wouldn’t win.

“How was Sugawara’s housewarming?”

It was only seven-fifty, far too early to be home if there was any kind of party going on. There had been only one other time Tsukishima had randomly appeared and that had been when Kuroo let slip that he was seeing other people during the break. Twice didn’t make a pattern, but Akiteru was smart enough to pick up on the fact that it wasn’t a coincidence.

“I spent like forty minutes there. How do you think Sugawara’s housewarming was?”

“Did someone serve natto?”

“Gross. No.”

“Worse than natto?”

It was a case of apples and oranges. Tsukishima faced two entirely different situations here and yet he would much rather force his way through a bowl of natto than go through Sugawara’s housewarming again.

“Worse than natto,” he confirmed.

“What could possibly be worse than natto?”

“You tell me.”

Akiteru sighed, and dropped the pretence. “Kuroo?”

“Kuroo’s new boyfriend,” Tsukishima corrected.

Akiteru winced. “That bad?”

“He calls him Tooru.”

“Oh, Kei.”

“No,” Tsukishima firmly said. “No. Don’t give me that. I don’t want any of that pity shit right now, thank you very much.”

“Oh, Kei.”

If this was how Akiteru reacted, Tsukishima didn’t want to face his friends knowing they’d be ten times worse because they also witnessed him drinking. Maybe it was a good thing he’d left without saying a proper goodbye.

“So much for being ready,” he muttered.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Akiteru pulled another ten sheets of origami paper in front of him and began folding them all diagonally in half. “Moving on is different for everybody, and there’s no expiry date on the process. Sometimes, you’ll think you’re over it and other times you’ll think you made a mistake. Just keep reminding yourself why you broke up in the first place.”

“Yeah.” Tsukishima flopped backwards onto the floor and stared up at the ceiling where a tiny moth was fluttering around the light. “How did you get over Saeko?”

“I kept myself occupied.” Akiteru started the second fold on the cranes. “I kept my mind and my hands busy so I didn’t have time to fall into depression, because I knew it would be harder to claw my way back out if I did. Why do you think I took up crocheting?”

“I thought it was the next step after knitting.”

Akiteru chuckled. “I spent a good part of a year crocheting beanies and blankets and donating them to homeless shelters. It gave me something to focus on, and it helped my state of mind to know that I helped people out at the same time. Then one day, I realised crocheting was fun and that I was doing it because I wanted to and not because I had to. It’s sort of like your pottery, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Tsukishima pushed himself back up into a sitting position and took a sip of water from his glass. The taste of vodka was long gone from the back of his throat but it still made him uncomfortable to know that it was seeped into his veins. “I drank two shots. You should’ve seen my friends’ faces.”

“They were upset?” Akiteru guessed, and continued when Tsukishima nodded. “That’s because they care about you and the progress you’ve made. You spent eight months without a drop of alcohol in your body-- that’s a damned good streak and of course you can be upset about losing it. But you stopped after two shots, and you’re holding a glass of water now instead of a can of beer. You’re in control.”

“It didn’t feel like it at the time.”

“You were under a great deal of stress and acted irrationally. Don’t beat yourself up over one moment when you’ve had far more moments to be proud of. It’s normal to have relapses; it just means you can try to aim for longer than eight months next time. Recovery isn’t a linear process, and it’s not like you’re drunk. Two shots? That’s the start of a party.”

Tsukishima snorted, but the stiff set of his shoulders loosened and he took another sip of water. Akiteru was right, this one setback wasn’t the end of the world and he could strive for a better result next time.

Akiteru was similar to himself in more ways than one, having lost someone he loved to another. Yet he fought to keep himself afloat and here he sat years later, content with what he had and what he was building for himself.

Every fold on those papers was a quiet promise that he would be there for the little girl and her mother. One fold was insignificant, but twenty-four of them made a crane and one thousand cranes made a wish.

Tsukishima started folding the sheet of paper in his hand, and he hoped that one day with all the cranes he'd folded he too could make a wish and live like this as well.

Chapter Text

Kuroo took a deep breath to tamp down the rising anger, and told himself that he was a strong man who could do the very simple task of closing the lid of his suitcase and lock it down because he was not going to be bested by a hunk of plastic.

He growled as he flattened his entire body over the suitcase and his fingers scrabbled to flick the clasps into place. But the lid didn’t reach far enough, and the clasps clattered listlessly and uselessly.

“That’s it.” Kuroo rolled off the suitcase and threw his hands up in exasperation. “I’m not going to Argentina. The universe has made a decision and I will honour it, as is my place.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Oikawa loafed about on his bed, absorbed in one of his medical journals about parasites. “You bought the tickets months ago.”

“It’s not too late to get a refund.” Kuroo shot a dark look at the suitcase. “Make your ass useful and sit it on this thing.”

Oikawa let out a long sigh, tossed the journal to the side and rolled his entire weight on top of the suitcase. Kuroo plopped up onto the suitcase again and this time with the weight of two fully grown men on top, the clasps reached over the close and clicked into place. Kuroo had never heard such a satisfying noise in his entire life.

“You know you can buy things in Argentina, right?” Oikawa stayed on top of the suitcase and crossed his legs. “We have shops over there. If you lose your toothbrush, you can walk down the street and pick up a pack of six for seven hundred pesos.”

“Why would I do that when I have an extra three in my suitcase?”

“Because you have an extra three of everything in your suitcase and I’m not convinced that you haven’t gone over the weight limit. Do you want the airline to charge you extra and rip you off? It’s so not worth it. The alternative is to toss them in the trash and that’s just a waste of money.”

“If it fits in my suitcase, then it’s not over the weight limit.” Kuroo was talking shit; he knew Oikawa was right but he wasn’t going to admit it especially after the harrowing ten minutes of wrestling his suitcase. He might unpack the fifth and sixth pair of jeans when Oikawa wasn’t looking.

“Did you pack underwear?”

“Yes.”

“Shampoo and soap?”

“Yes.”

“Towels?”

“...”

Oikawa sighed and fluttered his eyelashes with all the drama he could muster. “What would you do without me?”

“I can’t even imagine.”

On impulse, Kuroo leaned in and kissed Oikawa’s forehead and then the tip of his nose. Oikawa’s cheeks tinged pink and he laughed into his hand. The sound of Oikawa’s laugh was slowly becoming one of Kuroo’s favourite sounds in the world, right after the sound of him yelping angrily when Kuroo pulled the blankets off him in the mornings.

“Hang on, I gotta go find some towels.”

“You have to find them?” Oikawa asked in disbelief.

“I just did a load of laundry! I should have a couple in the spare room.”

It was more of a junk room, if Kuroo was being honest. There were items piled high in there that had no other place in the apartment and so they were shoved in there to be forgotten. Tsukishima had always intended to turn it into a guest bedroom so their friends could sleep comfortably when they stayed over, but Kuroo told him not to bother because their friends crashed either on the couch or on the floor, whichever was closest at the time. Once Tsukishima left, there was even less incentive to clear the room out.

Kuroo made his way into the junk room and huffed at the various boxes of crap sitting around. A box of old textbooks that hadn’t been unpacked since he moved in, a waffle iron his grandmother had gifted him when he first started university, a drill set that Bokuto had brought over once and never took back. It was all junk and he really should get rid of the clutter. Maybe after his trip when he was refreshed from three weeks off.

Kuroo stepped around the boxes and threw open the closet door. The shelves were in just as much disarray as the rest of the room, sparse with random knick knacks. A few empty photo frames, a box of blue pens, a roll of poplin fabric that Akiteru left and forgot about.

The towels sat on one of the higher shelves, and Kuroo reached up to grab two. Oikawa couldn’t tease him for that, right? Surely that was a reasonable number to cycle through for three weeks. If not, he could always borrow one-- after all, towels weren’t personal items like toothbrushes that went in mouths or clothes which had to fit well.

Something fell down by his feet with a clatter, and Kuroo startled when he saw it was a small, flat, navy box.

Holy shit.

Kuroo dropped the towels and slowly bent down to pick it up. The box was soft to the touch, leather, and thin and compact like it held business cards inside. It was supposed to throw Tsukishima off if he ever saw it by accident, and yet he never did.

Kuroo brushed his thumb against the close and sighed. He opened it up and the ring inside presented itself with a little twirl. He held it up and the band gleamed silver in the light, just as beautiful as the first day he’d seen it in the shop window and knew it was perfect.

Holy shit.

Kuroo couldn’t believe he’d forgotten about this. It might have been years ago, but something as significant as this couldn’t just drop out of his mind. Had he been so miserable that he’d forgotten about wanting to spend the rest of his life with Tsukishima and promising himself that he would?

“What’s that?”

“Holy shit!” Kuroo shrieked and jumped. The box flew upwards and he lunged to catch it, fumbling a few times, until his hands curled securely around it and his face was bright red with embarrassment. “Nothing. It’s nothing. I got nothing.”

Oikawa entered the room with a raised brow. His eyes fell to the box which was still clutched against his chest. There was no missing the shine of silver inside. “Is that a ring?”

“Yes,” Kuroo said. “But no.”

“It is far too early for that.”

“I completely agree.”

Oikawa raised his eyebrows in an expression that clearly asked so-what-the-hell-is-going-on. “Then this would be...?”

Kuroo bit his lip. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to say. Oikawa had been understanding of everything because he’d gone through something similar himself and knew how difficult it was, but surely there had to be a limit to his patience and this might be the point where he decided he had enough and went back to his fling in Rio.

“It’s... it’s the ring I was going to propose to Tsukishima with.”

Oikawa’s eyebrows arched even higher, and Kuroo had no idea how to follow that up with something that could explain how he felt. He opened and closed his mouth, staccato syllables coming out short and stammered as he tried to think of something to say.

Oikawa, seeing him panic, softened his gaze and put a hand on his arm. “I’m not mad, I’m surprised. You didn’t tell me it was that serious.”

“I didn’t-- I didn’t remember the ring.” It sounded stupid, to have forgotten that he once loved someone that much. Then again, he had shoved the ring in the back of a closet until it became a mere memory that resurfaced at the most inopportune time. “I was going to-- to marry him.”

“That’s commitment.”

Kuroo gave a weak laugh. “No. It wasn’t.”

It wasn’t, not when Kuroo had been the one to walk away when Tsukishima still believed in them. At the time, he’d been so certain he made the right choice and even more so after Tsukishima assured him that the break had been a catalyst for an inevitable end.

That didn’t mean this didn’t hurt.

Kuroo slid down onto the floor. The ring was a thin, delicate band that resembled a halo. He’d been drawn to it because of its simplistic design and it would have been to Tsukishima’s taste so perfectly. Clean and expensive, just like everything else in his life.

Oikawa slid down next to him, his body a comforting source of warmth. He rested his head against his shoulder and murmured, “Why did you never ask him?”

Kuroo remembered why in vivid detail. They had been at Bokuto and Akaashi’s apartment to welcome Bokuto back from a two-week training stint that had taken place outside of the prefecture. He’d been so excited, and waited until Tsukishima was preoccupied with Yamaguchi and Yachi in the kitchen before sneaking the ring out of his pocket and showing his friends.

Bokuto almost shrieked and gave everything away, but Kenma slapped a hand over his mouth and got licked for his trouble. Akaashi’s eyes were wide and he gaped trying to come up with the words to express the thoughts that his three functioning brain cells were trying to muster.

In the end, Akaashi and Kenma had collected themselves. They sent Bokuto to run interference in the kitchen and then they talked Kuroo down.

“My friends said we were still so young. If I truly believed we were meant to be together, then I could wait because a few years wouldn’t make a difference.” Kuroo’s lips twisted into a dour smile. “Surprise. Joke’s on me.”

Oikawa made a small noise. Maybe it was sympathy. “Do you think it might have made a difference? Being married?”

Kuroo gazed at the ring one last time before he closed the box and watched the silver disappear into the darkness. “I doubt it. I guess it’s a good thing I waited. Divorce would’ve been one hell of a mess.”

Oikawa entwined their fingers together, and he smoothed his thumb over the back of his hand in calming circles. “What will you do with the ring?”

“I don’t know.” Kuroo was still in a fugue upon finding it, and hadn’t even thought about what would come after. “I guess I could sell it. Or donate it. I’d feel weird about using the money I got from it.”

“Does Tsukishima know about the ring?”

“I don’t think so. He’s never given any indication.” Kuroo thought about it, and he grew certain that Tsukishima had never stumbled upon it. It had been stashed in the back of the closet in the junk room and neither of them made much use of the room at all. No, this secret had remained safe.

“Why don’t you give it to him?”

Kuroo’s neck almost snapped from whipping it around so fast.

“I don’t mean asking him to marry you.” There was a laugh in Oikawa’s eyes, and definitely a teasing smile on his face. “I mean, why don’t you have a conversation with him about your relationship and what it meant to you. When you wanted to ask him to marry you, you imagined a future with him. Whether or not you went through with it doesn’t change the fact that you did. I think you’re still trying to move on. Maybe this might help.”

“We haven’t exactly been talking about anything deeper than work and video games,” Kuroo said.

“But you’ve been talking,” Oikawa said. “It’s good progress.”

“I guess.” Kuroo was surprised that Oikawa’s understanding stretched to this extent. “Aren’t you, I don’t know, worried or something? Me, Tsukishima, a ring.”

Oikawa snorted. It was almost insulting.

“I’m secure in my relationship. Are you?”

There was only one answer to that, and it spilled easily from Kuroo’s lips.

“Yes.”

.

It was a bit of an understatement to say that Tsukishima had been confused when Kuroo texted him out of the blue saying he’d left something in the apartment and needed to pick it up. It’d been so long since Tsukishima moved out that he had no idea what it could be, and it couldn’t be that important if he didn’t even remember what it was.

Kuroo had insisted on returning it though, so Tsukishima agreed to meet up in an old cafe that they used to visit when they were in university. The place was small and cosy, and most importantly it served good coffee and good cake. Tsukishima only had a mug of half-empty chai right now; he couldn’t stay long because he had to go to an art show with Yamaguchi and Yachi and it started in less than an hour. He couldn’t be late, not when their pieces were being showcased too.

The bell above the door clanged, and Tsukishima raised his hand to catch Kuroo’s attention as he walked in.

Kuroo looked different-- he stood taller, livelier and happier and he bounded over with a grin that was impossible not to return. He slid into the opposite side of the booth and picked up a menu.

“Hey hey hey. What did you get?”

“Chai.” Tsukishima lifted his mug like a toast. “Fucking delicious.”

“I’ll bet.” Kuroo waved a waiter over and placed an order for the same drink. It came in no time at all and when it was placed down in front of him, Kuroo wrapped his hands around the mug and took a sip. “Ugh, it’s so sweet.”

“It’s chai, Kuroo.”

“Yeah, yeah. How did I ever date you? I could’ve gotten secondhand cavities from the amount of sweets you ate.”

“Please.” Tsukishima scoffed. “You’re telling me Oikawa doesn't have a sweet tooth? I swear he’s shoving ice-cream and marshmallows down his gullet every time I open Bokuto’s snapchats.”

“You may have a point.”

It felt easy and natural to talk to Kuroo like this, like they were just two friends catching up over warm drinks. Their conversation delved into the cooling weather and how much they hoped for snow, unlikely as it was, to Tsukishima’s promotion and his new team, and to Kuroo’s leave of absence because of his three week trip to Argentina.

“Your first international trip and it’s all the way on the other side of the world.” Tsukishima’s voice was dry. “You don’t do anything by halves, do you? Most people fly to China or Korea first. Much closer to home.”

“Yeah, but I’m looking forward to getting lost with no hope of communication,” Kuroo said. “Tooru sold it so well.”

“I hope you’re packed. If you’re rushing last minute as usual, you’re bound to forget something.”

“I’m totally packed. I could pick everything up right now and take a taxi to the airport, that’s how packed I am.” Kuroo’s joking demeanour shifted. He shuffled in his seat and cleared his throat like he had something important to announce. “So I found something while I was packing.”

“Right. You wouldn’t tell me what it was.” Tsukishima frowned. “If I’ve gone this long without it, couldn’t you have chucked it out?”

“I guess?” Kuroo slowly said. “But I want to give you the option of doing that yourself since it’s yours. I found it in the spare room when I was looking for towels.”

“The spare room?” Tsukishima couldn’t recall putting anything personal in there, just stuff that didn’t fit anywhere else in the apartment: the vacuum cleaner, a blender they never used, a stepladder (which was a joke because they were both tall as fuck but Hinata loved a prank gift) and other random pieces. In fact, he couldn’t even remember the last time he went in there for anything.

Kuroo let out a weak smile. He dug his hand into his pocket, lifted out a small case and pushed it across the table.

Tsukishima picked it up and examined it. It was a flat, navy leather case with two lines of silver running across either side of the close. It looked a little bit too fancy to be a business card holder, but it was the right size and shape. “It’s pretty, but it’s not mine.”

“Just... open it.”

Mystified, Tsukishima pressed his thumbs into the close and opened the box. A thin line of silver spun inside and he stared at the ring that glimmered up at him. It was beautiful, something simple and classic that drew attention in its own quiet way.

But as demure as it looked, it was still a ring.

“What the fuck,” Tsukishima said.

“Haha. Yeah. So.” Kuroo wiped his hands on his pants and cleared his throat again. “Funny story. Did you know I was going to propose on our second anniversary?”

“What.”

“Yeah. Surprise?”

“Kuroo--”

“Wait, wait, wait. Let me finish,” Kuroo begged. “Hear me out. Please?”

Tsukishima pressed his lips together, but gave a stiff nod.

“I was young and dumb and so stupidly in love with you that I thought our future would be as easy as a kiss and a ring. I wanted to marry you as soon as I asked, but Kenma and Akaashi told me to wait. They said we were too young, and we were at a stage in our lives where a proper wedding was too expensive. I wanted to do right by you so I waited. And waited. And waited. Until I waited so long that I forgot all about that little box sitting in the back of the closet amongst a pile of towels.”

Tsukishima snapped the box shut. The clap echoed in his ears like a finality and when he spoke, his voice was steady. “Why are you giving it to me?”

“It’s yours. It’s always been yours. Do with it what you will.”

Tsukishima set the box on the table, unable to look at it and unwilling to remember everything that had been good in their relationship. They were in a better place now, and they didn’t need to dredge up old feelings. “What do you expect me to do with it?”

“I dunno.” Kuroo lifted his shoulders in a half-shrug and offered, “Keep it, sell it, throw it at my head?”

Tsukishima couldn’t help a small chuckle. Kuroo was always so much braver than he could ever hope to be, baring himself to vulnerability and trusting that he wouldn’t be hurt. It was something he struggled to do, but maybe he could be brave for ten seconds and open up too.

“I didn’t know you wanted to ask. I was stupidly in love with you too, but marriage never crossed my mind. I was happy with what we had and I could’ve been happy with those little moments forever. I should’ve known you’d always be chasing for more.”

“And I should’ve known I was chasing someone out of my league,” Kuroo joked, but there was a catch in his voice. “Well, we made our choices. I think we’re both happier for it.”

“Yeah.” Tsukishima lifted his mug and disguised the aching lump in his throat with a swallow of chai. “Thank you. For everything.”

He didn’t explain what everything meant-- you, ring, love -- he just looked into his mug and willed the tears not to spill.

Kuroo sniffed, and there might have been a shine in his eyes too. He rubbed at his face and blew out a heavy breath. “You good?”

“I’m good. Are you good?”

“I’m good. So good.”

They both laughed, a little wet and a little broken. 

There wasn’t much else to say, nothing that could follow such a heavy conversation. It had taken a huge emotional toll, and Tsukishima wasn’t sure if he could even pretend to be okay after that.

Kuroo must have felt the same. He finished his drink and pulled a face at the onslaught of sweetness that assaulted his tastebuds. “I better get home. I told Tooru I’d bring dinner so he’s expecting ice-cream and marshmallows.”

Tsukishima snorted.

Kuroo stood and gave an uncertain smile. “I’ll see you around then?”

“Yeah.” Of course. “Have fun in Argentina.”

“I’ll bring you back a souvenir.”

“As long as it’s not a pink t-shirt.”

“I’ll make sure it’s neon orange.”

“Gross. Get out of here.”

Kuroo laughed, and waved as he left.

Tsukishima dallied a little longer and sipped at his chai which was turning lukewarm. He kept his attention focused on the comings and goings on the other side of the window: school children walking home from club activities, an elderly woman with shopping bags on her arm, a black cat dodging traffic.

He flicked his wrist and checked the time. There were less than forty minutes until the art show started, and it’d take him a good half hour to get there. He tipped back the last of the chai and stood, shrugging his coat on and patting his pockets to make sure he had his phone and his keys. Once he was sure he had everything, he walked out of the cafe without a backwards glance.

He left the ring on the table.