Chapter Text
“I wish,” Kei says, “that I knew what to wish for.”
Hinata pulls a face. “You can’t say it out loud, idiot! It won’t come true!”
“Guess we’ll be here for a while, then,” Kei replies.
“C’mon, asshole, just wish for something,” Kageyama barks. “Wish for a win at Nationals.”
“Wish for ten wins at Nationals!”
“We don’t even play ten games if we win, idiot!”
“I wish for ten wins at Nationals,” Kei tells the wellspring. Kageyama and Hinata continue bickering—Well ten wins is better than one, asshole!—and he pointedly tacks on, “I wish Yamaguchi had left these morons at home.”
He fidgets with the hems of his gloves (they’re so small, the bottoms of his palms are exposed) and watches a scattering of frost melt off the rim of the well. Otherwise, it doesn’t respond. Yamaguchi’s the one who believes in all this—not only the wishing, but in tradition. In getting up at the proverbial ass-crack of dawn and dragging himself up a kilometre of stairs before the sun’s up and spending the last day of “summer” vacation—“summer,” because of course it’s just above freezing—talking to a bucket of water. Except this year, Yamaguchi’s tacked a cherry on top: Dumb and Dumber, the former of which seems to be trying to dunk the latter in the supposed wish-granting well.
“I wish I was at home in bed,” Kei tries.
“Kageyama! Stop!” Hinata’s bright hair is matted to his forehead; his teeth are chattering. “Asshole!”
“Is that the best insult you can come up with? Idiot!”
Kei thinks he can feel his brain cells committing suicide.
“Question,” he says, “if I’m not allowed to say my wish out loud, then how do you know I haven’t already made one?”
“Because you’ve been on your phone this whole time,” Yamaguchi says from behind him. “Why is Kageyama trying to kill Shouyou?”
Shouyou. There’s another change in the tradition. To Yamaguchi, they’re Kageyama, Tsukki, and Shouyou.
“They’re determined to make this as miserable an experience as possible for me,” Kei deadpans. His headphones are cold around his neck; he resists the urge to pull them back up over his head.
Yamaguchi just laughs, moving to step into Kei’s field of view, which makes his heart go all weird in his chest. He didn’t think the expression “my heart skipped a beat” held any truth, until it started happening last year, and he’s still working on convincing himself it’s just a result of anxiety or a side effect of his pills. It doesn’t help that Yamaguchi’s fished an elastic out from somewhere to tie his hair back with, so most of it is in a small ponytail curling into the base of his skull, but a few short strands still slip out, framing his face, and his cowlick still staunchly refuses to cooperate—it’s endearing. And annoying. And most definitely, probably, just a side effect of his pills.
“Here,” Yamaguchi says, pressing something into his palm, “got you Certain Victory.” His smirk says he knows how ridiculous this sounds to Kei, but also that he knows Kei won’t say anything about it. Because that’s tradition too—no matter how ridiculous Kei thinks this well and wishing ritual is, he doesn’t say anything against it for a full twenty-four hours. (Or at least until they get home.)
So, “Shut up,” he says instead.
“Yeah!” Hinata bellows, entirely too loudly for both the hour and the setting. “We don’t need Certain Victory this year, we’re gonna kick ass in the Spring Tournament all by ourselves!”
“Don’t turn down Certain Victory, dumbass!” Kageyama yells back. “We don’t know that!”
Of the two of them, Kei thinks it’d come to both his and Yamaguchi’s surprise last week to find that Kageyama was the superstitious, spiritual one. Kei had relished in the ammunition this knowledge created, whereas Yamaguchi had jumped on the chance to invite the King along on their traditional start to the school year. Which of course included Hinata—Shouyou—as well, because not only is Kageyama entirely under his wing, but so, it seems, is Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi picked him for Vice Captain, after all.
“Why did you have to bring them?” Kei asks, defeated.
“Because we like hanging out with them,” Yamaguchi says.
“Speak for yourself.”
Yamaguchi’s snickering, listening to them argue, and holds up two more charms. “Well, I got one for both of you, too, but I guess if you don’t want it, Shouyou …”
Hinata slips out of the chokehold Kageyama has him in to grab the charm out of Yamaguchi’s hand. “Nope! Changed my mind! Any help we can get is good!”
Kageyama accepts his as well, looking down at his feet as he thanks him.
“Nationals this year,” Yamaguchi says, in the wistful voice Kei only ever hears here. “That’s what I wished for.”
Kei doesn’t think that’s true.
“Me too,” Kageyama says, as Hinata pulls another face and squawks, “You can’t say it out loud! Guys!”
“Just make a wish, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, elbowing him in the side. “There’s a ramen place at the bottom of the mountain, I’ll buy you apology noodles.”
“I want apology noodles!”
Kei bites back an exasperated sigh. “I really don’t know what to wish for,” he tells Yamaguchi.
“For us to win Nationals,” Kageyama says.
“To grow to six-six!” Hinata offers.
Yamaguchi smirks. “For me to never bring these morons along ever again.”
“Hey!”
But there’s another reason Kei really, really dislikes Yamaguchi bringing Hinata and Kageyama along, and it’s not just that they’re annoying. As much as Kei will tease and ridicule Yamaguchi for believing in wishing wells, and complain about getting up early and climbing so many flights of stairs, and pretend to throw out the charms and blessings Yamaguchi forces on him, this place—this tradition—has, unwillingly, become something to him. And with it, so have the wishes.
There’s not a single part of him that believes the ragged little hole in the ground in front of him has the power to grant anyone’s wishes, much less his, but the first time they came here, Yamaguchi had just landed in foster care two streets over, Kei had just told off his bullies, and after finding this place together after school one day Kei told the well, I wish he’ll stay here forever. The year after that, when they decided it’d be a tradition, it was I wish dad would come back, and then the next it was, I wish I could be more like Akiteru, and make mom proud. And then it was, I wish I didn’t get hungry, and then, I wish I was normal, and then I wish I was better at volleyball, and then I wish Aki would come back, and then, I wish mom was proud of me, and then—
And now he’s standing next to his and Yamaguchi’s well listening to Dumb and Dumber bicker, his toes and fingers numb, watching the breeze tease the little flyaway strands of Yamaguchi’s hair and thinking about how pretty he looks in the sunrise.
“Just be honest, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi sighs.
Unwillingly, he thinks, I wish I could be.
They do go get ramen, and Yamaguchi does pay for Kei’s (and, to his protests, Hinata’s as well), and when Hinata and Yamaguchi get up to go to the washroom, Kei rifles through the pockets of Hinata’s bag until he locates his wallet and takes the price of Hinata’s meal out to stuff in Yamaguchi’s backpack, alongside bills of Kei’s own. To his surprise, Kageyama doesn’t comment, only to mutter a quick “Asshole” under his breath when Kei goes for Hinata’s bag, which leaves Kei wondering if he isn’t the only one Yamaguchi’s been venting to about money troubles and his shitty foster parents, either.
They take the train home, Kei’s leftovers sitting in a plastic bag in his lap. Hinata leaves them at the station, heading for the bike racks, and Kageyama goes shortly after when his dad picks him up. Kei is left swinging the plastic bag of noodles he won’t eat at his side, fidgeting with the frayed edges of the gloves he’s discarded in the warmth of what has turned into a sunny morning, as Yamaguchi leans against a closed storefront to type furiously on his phone.
“Want to come over?” Kei asks, because he suspects Yamaguchi may have forgotten he’s there.
“What?” Yamaguchi says, distracted. “Oh—” He looks up. “I’m sorry, Dad wants me home. He’s being a dick about it, though.”
“Oh.” Kei never really knows what else to say when Yamaguchi brings up his foster parents.
“I should probably get ready for tomorrow, too,” Yamaguchi says, going back to tapping away at his phone. There’s a little crease between his brows that part of Kei wants to smooth out.
“Okay,” Kei says. “Well …”
“See you tomorrow, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, frowning at the screen.
“Yeah. Um … have a good night.”
“Thanks, yeah.”
Kei bites his lip and starts walking, the bag of untouched noodles hanging from numb fingers, and pulls his headphones back up over his ears.
Later that afternoon, he gets a text from Yamaguchi:
yams: I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye properly earlier, Dad was being a real dick and I was distracted.
yams: apparently leaving dishes in the sink because you’re late to hang out with your friends is a criminal offence
yams: anyway, you seemed sad :(
yams: Tsukki?
Kei doesn’t see them until the evening, though, when he’s woken up from what hadn’t been intended as a nap (he was listening to music on his bed, which, yeah, in hindsight, was dangerous, especially after the early morning he’d had) by the sound of the front door opening and smashing a fresh dent into the plaster of the wall. A panicked glance at his phone confirms—good, alright, he hasn’t slept until one a.m., his mother’s just home shockingly early.
tsukki: I’m okay, was just napping. You don’t have to apologize, I wasn’t sad.
yams: hmm … :/
tsukki: I’m fine, Yamaguchi. Do your dishes.
yams: blargh
tsukki: I’ve got to go, my mom’s home.
yams: really? isn’t it really early?
yams: is everything alright?
tsukki: Stop worrying, it’s annoying.
yams: blargh :(
Kei isn’t sure how he’s supposed to respond to that, but he types a quick I’m sure everything’s fine before swinging his legs off the bed and waiting for the black spots in his vision to subside before he stands up.
He’s only a step away from his bedroom door when he hears his mom’s voice.
“Are you fucking serious, Andrew!?”
He stops dead, hand outstretched towards the doorknob.
“The cheque was due months ago! What the fuck have you been doing?” There’s a tremendous bang from the direction of the kitchen, and Kei hears something smash against the tile. “I can’t fucking deal with— Shit!”
There’s muffled curses from downstairs, and the crunch of glass breaking.
I should go make sure she’s okay, Kei thinks, but it doesn’t sound like his voice. He stays where he is, eyes fixed on his hand, still outstretched.
“You leave me with two fucking boys,” his mom starts again, “no job, and now no child support? What am I supposed to do, Andrew? Do you even care about Akiteru? About Kei?”
Kei decides he doesn’t want to hear her reaction to his father’s answer.
Carefully—so carefully, without making a sound—Kei makes it back over to his bed, slipping his headphones back on, and dialing his music back up to fifty, sixty, eighty—until he can feel the beat in his jaw and can’t hear a thing from downstairs. His phone lights up with another text from Yamaguchi, and he grasps onto it eagerly—a distraction, a distraction’s good. He can feel the way the old house moves under his mother’s heavy steps downstairs.
yams: changing the subject … have you done the reading for Hikoushi? also blargh :( would accept some of your thoughts
Kei didn’t know there was a reading due for Hikoushi tomorrow.
The song playing ends, and in the quiet between tracks Kei catches a sob of his mother’s from downstairs, coupled with another bang.
He doesn’t remember his parents’ fights before they split up. He knows he was old enough to remember, and he knows he witnessed some of them, but there’s this blankness of any details left in his mind besides the physical reaction to raised voices he can’t shake. Back when he saw a therapist, the man told him he had repressed memories. Then he mentioned trauma, and Kei’s mom yelled at him, and Kei hasn’t seen a therapist since. So only the physical reaction remains: the one that makes his hands shake and feel disconnected from his body, the one that makes his heart skip not only one but two, three, four beats, over and over again—the one that has him crawling into bed to cover his head with the blankets and press his headphones so hard into his ears they feel bruised.
He feels, more than hears, his mother pacing around the kitchen for hours, and falls asleep hungry.
The next morning, Kei spends an extra five minutes digging a shard of glass out of his foot—the remains of the picture frame his mother must’ve knocked off the wall last night—and shows up to his and Yamaguchi’s meeting place out of breath, foot throbbing, to Yamaguchi’s tired smile.
“Rough night?” Yamaguchi says.
“Yes,” Kei replies.
“How are you feeling?”
The tilt to Yamaguchi’s mouth says he knows he isn’t going to get a real answer from Kei—he knows him too well—and it disappears when Kei replies, without hesitation, “Awful.”
It was not the response Kei was prepared to give, but his throat closes around “Fine.” And it’s true, isn’t it? Last night was awful. He’s barely slept. His ears are sore from sleeping on both his headphones and glasses. His uniform pants are too short, his head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton—it always does, after last night’s sort of “episodes”—he hasn’t done the reading for Hikoushi, he hasn’t eaten anything since the few bites he’d taken of his noodles yesterday morning, his phone’s dead, so no music, and he’s tired, so tired, so tired he might cry. Fuck, is he going to cry?
Luckily, those thoughts don’t come spilling out of his mouth, too, but the admission is bad enough; paired with the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, Yamaguchi’s sure to ask for details.
He does. “Want to talk about it?”
Kei’s reply feels like it’s being pulled out of him. “No.”
Yamaguchi’s obviously concerned, but he doesn’t push it. “Do you want me to talk, or do you want to listen to music?”
And before Kei can even consciously decide between the two options, out comes, “Music. But,” he adds, “my phone’s dead.”
“Good thing I have access to your Spotify, then,” Yamaguchi says, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “C’mon, we’re going to be late.”
They walk to school in silence, Kei watching Yamaguchi’s ponytail bob and listening to the playlist he made for Kei for his birthday last year, and by the time they reach the school gates all Kei is thinking about is how fucking in love he is.
Of course, the incomplete reading comes back to bite him. Because his day couldn’t get any better.
Not right away—he makes it through his morning classes without incident, though, in stark contrast to the weather yesterday, the classrooms are stiflingly hot, making it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the words swimming in front of his eyes and rendering his grip on his pencil slippery, which is just gross. It’s the type of heat that’s not only stifling—it’s oppressive. He can feel the weight of it on his shoulders no matter how many times he shrugs and tugs at the fabric of the shirt; it pools in his shoes and weighs down his bag.
No one else seems affected, besides Yamaguchi’s ponytail, which Kei watches grow steadily more frizzy in between classes as a result of the humidity. No one else seems to feel the heat so much as he does.
The heat, he thinks, must have something to do with how quickly words are sliding out of his mouth today. Usually, Kei likes to think of himself as … not a thoughtful person, but someone of that variety. Someone who thinks before they speak, even if it’s only to determine the most scathing remark. Especially in response to questions. Kei is most certainly, and has never been, the type of person to answer without thinking—and suddenly he finds himself doing so in response to everyone: teachers posing problems on the board, peers asking about his break, Yamaguchi’s rhetorical comments Kei usually processes as background noise—all gets an answer. An answer that Kei, too, feels like he’s hearing for the first time when it comes out of his mouth.
It’s starting to get to him. The oppressive heat, the easy answers. Lunch with Kageyama and Hinata on the lawn, answering Yes when Hinata jumped at Kei exclaiming, “Are you excited for practice?”
No, he thinks now, definitely not.
Now, he’s sitting in Hikoushi’s classroom, with the passage he was supposed to read last night open before him. Hikoushi herself is standing in front of his desk—hands on hips, 5’4” of pure intimidation, hair gelled back into a severe bun. Kei has fucked up, probably. It’s almost too hot for him to care.
Hikoushi has just asked him, “Tsukishima, what did you think of the reading’s opinion on class theory?”
And Kei’s traitorous, traitorous mouth replied, “Nothing, ma’am. I didn’t do the reading.”
If it wasn’t Kei himself in his position, he thinks he’d be laughing. After all, what kind of idiot would say that to a teacher? At least try and bullshit your way through an answer, or at least drop the ma’am; if you’re going to be rude, then commit to it. (Yamaguchi certainly finds it funny—traitor. From the corner of the classroom behind Hikoushi, Kei can hear him snickering into his hand.)
If it weren’t Kei sitting here, under the full force of the heat and Hikoushi’s disappointment, he’d be snickering at the poor idiot who managed to land himself in such a position on the first day back, who was too stupid to come up with an excuse—
Hikoushi looks Kei up and down. He’s thankful, all of a sudden, of the fact she’s not a teacher ever known to yell.
“And why is that?”
And it has to be the heat, or the sleepless night, or the cotton in his head, or the pills, or the way there’s a tiny sliver in the back of Kei’s mind chanting, Don’t yell, don’t yell, don’t yell at me. But Kei somehow knows, with bone-deep horror, what he’s about to say before it rises in his throat unwillingly.
“My pills are making me sick,” the voice starts with.
It’s not his voice—what is he saying, he’s not choosing to say this—
“and my mom spent hours last night screaming at my father over the phone for not paying child support,”
—no, no, stop—please—
“and I had to clean up broken glass this morning,”
—trying to force his mouth closed doesn’t work, barely muffles the words—
“so I didn’t do the reading, I’m sorry.”
It tacks on the I’m sorry, too.
Kei supposes he is.
Just like the expression “heart skipped a beat,” Kei has never experienced “you could hear a pin drop” before this moment. The classroom sits frozen, heat settling over it like a shroud. Hikoushi’s disappointed glare has slipped off her face, revealing her shock, and over her shoulder, Kei can see Yamaguchi, eyes wide and horrified, but still caught mid-smirk behind his hand. He sees his own hands, as if from a distance, resting on the desk, trembling, but they don’t feel like his hands; his hands don’t tremble, and all Kei can hear is his heartbeat, so loud everyone else must be able to hear it too, in this silence, going faster, faster—badump, badump, badump badump badump badumpbadumpbadumpbadump—
I didn’t mean to say that.
Then, I didn’t say that.
And then, I’m going crazy. I am crazy.
Hikoushi says, recovering, “You can complete the reading for tomorrow, Tsukishima, and stay after—”
“I didn’t mean to say that,” he interrupts. “I—”
He can barely hear his own voice. Bathroom, he tries to say, and without waiting for permission gets up so quickly he slams his knee hard enough into the bottom of the desk that his shin goes numb. Someone, he thinks, snickers at that, but he’s out in the hall before he can even process this fact enough to get mad about it, and once he’s out all he can think is, I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t mean to say that.
The next thing Kei processes fully, he is crouched down against a stall door with his head between his knees, his right shin throbbing and ankle bleeding, with no clear memory of how he got there.
It is possible, he thinks, that this could be considered an overreaction.
Kei tends to overreact; he knows this. His mom tells him all the time. Akiteru lying about the volleyball team shouldn’t have been as debilitating as it was; he should have made up with his brother by now. Him and Hinata are completely different people, and obviously Hinata is better; he shouldn’t be surprised, or disappointed, when this becomes evident. Yamaguchi is allowed to be friends with other people, too; what right does Kei have to be as jealous as he gets? And teenagers get sad, or stressed, or confused all the time—why can’t he just get the fuck out of bed like the rest of them do?
His mother has never yelled at him, she reminds him—always obviously exasperated—so why does he always have to act like she’s the villain?
He shouldn’t have said that to Hikoushi, or in front of the rest of the class. It makes his mother out to be the villain, like she always berates him for. And the glass—why did he mention that? It isn’t like she breaks things on purpose—it just always happens, because she works double or sometimes triple shifts every night, and she’s tired, and she never cleans it up herself for the same reasons. The glass didn’t even affect him doing the reading; at that point, he’d missed his chance.
But curled up here, fingernails digging into his knees and struggling to get his breathing under control, Kei is having a hard time convincing himself he’s overreacting.
Because what is happening to him?
When Hikoushi asked what he thought about the reading, it was like every other answer he’d given today—the answer was there before he’d even processed the question. Just like at lunch, when Hinata asked if he was excited for practice after school. Never, in his right mind, would Kei ever say Yes to the shrimp, nevermind if it were true or not. (Hinata, as expected, acts insufferably pleased at the slightest hint of effort from Kei where volleyball is concerned.) In both instances, he never would’ve answered truthfully, but the answer was out before he could even think about lying.
And there it is, he realizes with sickening clarity, I can’t lie.
He presses his face harder into his knees. He is not—absolutely refuses to be—crying over this.
But that can’t be it. It doesn’t make sense.
He remembers a documentary he watched once with Yamaguchi, a few summers ago. Before high school, when they only talked to each other. It was on the psychology of lying, and they put it on in the background as an excuse to make the disgustingly sweet popcorn they could never get away with having in movie theatres—melted chocolate, caramel drizzle, gummy bears, and about a cup of butter; sometimes strawberry syrup, too, if Kei could find some—so Kei doesn’t remember much of it, besides one part where the head scientist at some research institute in the UK was talking directly to the camera. The ability to lie, he explained, comes directly from our prefrontal cortex. They were conducting an experiment with mice, which Kei didn’t and still doesn’t understand, since mice can’t lie—but he remembers the hypothesis: If the prefrontal cortex is removed or otherwise damaged, the organism should lose the ability to lie or otherwise deceive. And then, Kei thinks this must’ve been the part where Yamaguchi had thought it’d be funny to start throwing gummy bears at him—which had started a food fight that ended with chocolate syrup on Kei’s glasses—because once he’d cleaned them off and returned, all the mice on the screen were dead. He doesn’t remember the outcome or anything else the documentary had said about lying, but something about remembering it is comforting. There’s always a scientific explanation, he thinks, which means there’s always a solution.
Except, he has no idea what the fuck is going on, still. Obviously, he has his prefrontal cortex. He’s trying to think back—did he damage it, somehow? Has he hit his head?
Is he hallucinating this entire thing?
A door creaks open, someone’s sneakers scuffing on the linoleum. Kei’s head shoots up to look, catching a glimpse of colourful beads on the someone’s laces outside of the stall he’s crouched in.
“Tsukki?” Yamaguchi says softly.
Kei wipes his eyes hurriedly with the end of his sleeve, hard enough that white sparks appear against the backs of his eyelids, and wipes his nose once too for good measure. His legs feel numb as he gets up to unlock the stall.
Yamaguchi’s standing there, hair in a frizzy halo around his head, with a soft, worried look in his eyes and two backpacks on. One is Kei’s.
“I brought your things,” Yamaguchi says slowly. “You don’t have to go back to class. I’m going to walk you home.”
“I don’t need to go home,” Kei says—and that, wow, in itself, is a relief. Because he most definitely does, probably, need to go home—he can’t really feel his hands or feet, and he’s dangerously close to tears even though he doesn’t cry, and god, he just said all that shit to the entire class, how’s he ever supposed to go back there?—but he doesn’t want to need to go home. He wants things to stop being such a big deal to him, he wants to stop overreacting, and he just wants to get through one school day, like everyone else can. And the fact that he can say he doesn’t need to go home when the opposite is probably true is more comforting than he’d like to admit, because look at that—that’s a lie, isn’t it?
Yamaguchi pauses, searching Kei’s eyes. “Tsukki,” he says carefully, “It’s okay if you need to. I think it’s a good idea.”
“I know,” Kei says—another lie. The easy lie spreads warmth in his chest; it’s getting easier to breathe.
Except, “Do you?” Yamaguchi sighs. It’s obviously rhetorical—Yamaguchi’s turning away, exasperated, used to Kei being stubborn—but—
“No,” Kei’s mouth says, and God fucking damn it.
Yamaguchi turns quickly to look at him again, quick enough to see the frustration in his face.
They look at each other, Yamaguchi obviously puzzled and thinking hard, Kei having an internal crisis—why is he like this? what is happening to him?—and watching Yamaguchi’s eyes narrow and thinking, He knows, even though Yamaguchi knowing what the fuck is going on is probably a plus at this point, since it isn’t like Kei himself is coming up with anything.
“Do you need to go home?” Yamaguchi asks.
He knows, Kei thinks again, as his voice says, “Yes.”
“Alright, then,” Yamaguchi says, eyes still narrowed on Kei’s, “Let’s go, before class change.”
And what can Kei ever do but follow?
It’s questions.
Kei realizes it as they’re walking home, at the junction where his and Yamaguchi’s streets meet. He was able to lie—by omission, or outright—in any situation other than when someone asked him a question. Hikoushi asking about the reading, Hinata asking about practice, or Yamaguchi asking him how he was feeling—all questions, questions the voice answered before he got the chance to. Questions the voice answered honestly, even if Kei didn’t even know the honest answer himself.
Of course, this doesn’t fix anything—he still doesn’t understand why or how this is happening—but it’s something. He just has to avoid questions until he’s got this figured out.
Which is easier said than done, Kei thinks, imagining Hinata at practice: Didja see my block, Tsukishima? What did you think of that receive, Tsukishima? What, afraid I’ll beat you, Tsukishima? And Hikoushi is sure to have more questions after today’s catastrophe of a class. …
But for now, Yamaguchi let him put on his headphones and gave Kei his phone again, so he’s listening to a playlist Yachi made him of “indie pop”—which genuinely isn’t bad—and trying not to think about what’s going on.
Why is Yamaguchi being so nice to me? he thinks instead, before he can start spiralling down the “questions” track again.
People usually think Yamaguchi is the “nice” one in his and Kei’s friendship. Kei’s the bully; Yamaguchi’s the bystander. Kei’s the one-liner; Yamaguchi’s the laugh track. And they’re not wrong. Yamaguchi is ten times nicer than Kei on a bad day—to your face. Then he’ll turn around, snickering, to Kei, unleashing remarks that make Kei laugh in surprise, or making faces, or simply mouthing, Kill me, all while nodding along to your stories, laughing at your jokes, complimenting your hair, and then miming shooting himself in the head when your back is turned. Yamaguchi is just as much of an asshole as Kei is, and Kei’s always taken a certain amount of pride in the fact that he’s one of the only people privy to this knowledge.
It’s a double-edged sword, though, because it means that whatever obligation Yamaguchi feels he has to be nice to other people (It’s the social anxiety, he has said), it does not apply to Kei. Which means that alongside the genuine smiles, compliments, and jokes, there’s also the scathing remarks, the teasing (I like Shouyou more than you), the days that Yamaguchi’s honesty feels like sandpaper against raw skin. Yamaguchi isn’t mean to Kei, not at all—they get along for a reason—but he’s not usually so accommodating, either.
But there was that glint in his eyes in the bathroom, the one that made Kei think, He knows, and besides, Kei’s always had the feeling that Yamaguchi knows him better than he knows himself.
This train of thought isn’t making him feel too much better than the last, but luckily, they’ve arrived at the Tsukishima residence.
“I’m okay,” Kei says, before Yamaguchi can ask anything, slipping his headphones down around his neck and unplugging them from Yamaguchi’s phone. “You should go back to school, you can’t miss practice.”
Yamaguchi gives him a look that Kei knows means, Really? But he doesn’t ask it aloud.
“Call me tonight,” he says instead, accepting his phone back. “Or text. I’ll tell you about practice and the new first years, and you tell me about what you ate for dinner.”
Fuck you, Kei thinks for a moment; Yamaguchi’s eyes say it right back.
“Alright,” Kei agrees. What else is he supposed to do?
Yamaguchi just nods, and after another beat of uncomfortable eye contact, he stuffs his hands in his pockets and takes off down the street without looking back, leaving Kei feeling like he should be sighing in relief.
Thankfully the house is empty, the remnants of the glass Kei missed this morning glittering on the tile, and Kei just takes a moment to sit there, breathing, and basking in the silence. He can figure this out; everything has an explanation, so he just needs to find this one.
But getting up suddenly feels like a Herculean task, like the weight of what’s just happened is settling on his shoulders, pinning him down, so he traces the wood grain in the table with a finger instead of getting to work, like he should be. His mom won’t be home until late, late enough that Kei will be in bed, and he doesn’t have to go to school tomorrow—he won’t, he decides, until this is figured out.
He has time. He’ll make time.
So for now, he sits there, and breathes.