Chapter Text
i.
It was a warm, wet summer evening two weeks before finals and the boys were sitting in Tanaka’s basement surrounded by empty or mostly empty beer bottles. Hinata, Kageyama, Yamaguchi and Tsukishima would be going into third year in the fall, and Tanaka and Nishinoya would be graduating. They hadn’t invited the new first years because, as nice and capable as they were, fifteen was too young to start drinking. Somehow, sixteen and seventeen seemed much better.
Nishinoya was lying upside-down on the couch with his socked feet in the air and Tanaka lied on the floor in front of him. Hinata and Kageyama were sprawled on their sleeping bags arguing about who was going to have to go upstairs to get another beer for the other one and thus having to awkwardly face Tanaka’s parents—who didn’t mind that they were down here because at least they weren’t out prowling the streets, but they asked awkward questions—and Yamaguchi was throwing up in the bathroom, and Tsukishima was lying on the floor next to the wall, balancing a beer bottle on his chest, setting a volleyball up in the air over and over again. He was surrounded by a neat semi-circle of empty bottles and he’d had more to drink than anyone but, besides the colour showing high on his cheekbones, he seemed the least drunk. He always hung out with the team but he never talked much, unless it was to say something mean, and none of them knew if he actually liked them or not. It was a topic of frequent discussion.
“Tsukki, tell us who you like!” Tanaka looked at him upside-down and watched him set the ball to himself once, twice, tmp, tmp. Everyone had taken to calling him Tsukki more to annoy him (and make fun of Yamaguchi) than anything, but then it became habit.
“No,” he said lightly, without malice. Tmp, he set the ball and it came back down.
“Come on! Yu told us who he likes!”
“Everyone in this prefecture knows he likes Azumane-san.”
“Not true!” Noya yelped. “I didn’t say I like him, I said—I just—I mean, we hang out on weekends—”
Hinata leaned into Kageyama’s back and said, “Tsukkiii,” tapping his beer bottle glassily against his teeth, “Tsukki doesn’t like anybody, he’s dead inside. Tsukki likes—himself. He likes himself like how Kageyama likes volleyball.”
“Hey.”
Tmp, tmp, Tsukishima set the ball to himself in perfect little tosses. He tried to ignore the distant sound of Yamaguchi puking in the basement bathroom. He shifted his feet. He wasn’t sure what it was he liked about this person and frankly, he hadn’t let himself think about it, but maybe if he said something everyone would stop bothering him or, better, think he was joking.
“Ukai,” he said, when he didn’t think anyone was listening.
“What?” Tanaka screeched; his parents thumped on the floor.
“Coach Ukai,” Tsukishima repeated, looking at no one. He set the ball again and it went into the air.
Noya flipped over wearing a grin as wide as his whole face.
“The old one or the really old one?”
“Fuck you!” Tsukishima snatched up his beer and shot upright, and the volleyball came down and hit him in the head to a chorus of loud, manic laughter.
“What do we even know about Coach Ukai? He’s so old!”
“He’s in his twenties. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Tsukki, you’re what, sixteen?”
“So?”
“God, you’re weird.”
“Good luck with that, Tsukki. He’s never gonna go for it.”
“Hinata.” Kageyama grabbed both Hinata’s hands and looked him dead in the eyes, jaw set. “If I ever date a sixteen-year-old when I’m thirty, I want you to kill me.”
Hinata clutched his hands in return. “I promise I will.”
Tanaka laughed so hard he almost knocked himself out on the coffee table and Tsukishima whipped the volleyball at him so fast that the slap echoed through the house and Tanaka’s parents yelled down the stairs.
ii.
News so hilarious travelled around the team fast, and soon everyone sniggered at Tsukishima whenever he walked into the gym. Since Ukai obviously didn’t go to school with them, the others didn’t have much opportunity to embarrass Tsukishima around him, much to their displeasure. But their trips to Sakanoshita made up for that.
On the walk down the hill, Tanaka and Noya jammed their shoulders against his from either side as they walked.
“What do you like about him?”
“Yeah, Tsukki, what do you like about him so much?”
“Why do you two even care? You’re like children.”
“Because it’s funny and we like funny things.”
“You don’t like anybody, but you like the lazy old man who works at the convenience shop? It’s hilarious. I don’t get it.”
“I don’t need you to get it.”
“We want to get it! Tell us why you like him.”
He rolled his eyes as they approached Sakanoshita, despite the nervous knot in his gut. Ukai never made him nervous, but these idiots did.
“He’s ...” The words bubbled up. “I don’t know. Older, and good-looking, and—”
The shop doors parted to reveal Ukai behind the counter with his feet propped precariously on the top of the cash register, chair tipped on two legs, as he tried to hang a spoon off his nose.
“—mature,” Tsukishima finished, to peals of laughter. Noya slapped him on the back so hard the sound made Ukai jump, and the spoon fell to the floor. He threw his feet down and tipped the chair forward, glaring at the approaching team.
“Of course it’s you guys.”
“You’re our coach!” Hinata glared. “Aren’t you supposed to like us, at least?”
“I like you sometimes.” He plucked a box of matches off the counter and took a cigarette out from behind his ear. “Sometimes like on the court, and not when you want me to give you free food.”
“That’s when we like you best.”
The team scattered through the store and Tsukishima watched Ukai strike a match on the side of the box and light his cigarette. His nails were dirty and he had a cut on the inside of his bottom lip that Tsukishima hadn’t noticed during practice yesterday. His hair looked clean.
He caught Tsukishima’s eye and said, “Can I help you?” dripping with sarcasm. Tsukishima scowled at him and slouched after Yamaguchi.
When the boys were done horsing around and had bought their snacks and were slowly leaving, Tsukishima hung back.
“Tsukki? You coming?”
“I’ll catch up.”
Yamaguchi looked between him and Ukai, now the only ones in the shop, but Tsukishima was too busy furiously examining the nutritional information on the back of a carton of iced tea to notice. Yamaguchi sighed.
“I’ll walk slow.”
Tsukishima grunted at him and he left. The electric door closed behind him and the silence seemed to ring; he heard Ukai’s sneakers on the floor, smelt his smoke. He flipped the iced tea idly between his hands and went up to the counter, then slid it towards Ukai with a 500 yen coin.
“Just this.”
“Don’t do that weird clerk-talk to me, we know each other,” Ukai scoffed. He let his cigarette stick to his lip as he talked and Tsukishima watched it move. This was as good a time as any.
“Do you want to go out sometime?” he asked, stone-faced.
Ukai almost choked. He shoved Tsukishima’s change into his waiting hand.
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you want to go OUT sometime.”
“What do you mean out? Are you asking me on a fucking date?”
Tsukishima shrugged.
“That’s a yes or no answer, you brat!”
“Yes, then.”
Ukai couldn’t help but laugh. He tapped his cigarette in an ashtray and stood so there wasn’t quite as much height between them, but still, Tsukishima had about ten centimetres on him. Not that Ukai was jealous.
“You’re sixteen. You don’t know even know what ‘going out’ means.”
“I know plenty. Don’t be a jerk.”
“Nice way to talk to your coach!”
“Well, you are a jerk.”
“And you’re asking me out.”
“Sure.”
“Do you have any idea how old I am?”
Tsukishima didn’t, not really. He also didn’t know his blood type or star sign, which mattered about as much. “Under thirty.”
“Ugh.” Ukai slouched. “I’m twenty-six. I thought you’d guess low.”
“You smoke. You look old.”
“And, again, you’re asking me out.” He squinted at him. “You’re a pretty fucked up kid. If you don’t mind me saying so.”
“That’s okay.”
“You know, it’s really not.” He stubbed his spent cigarette out and wandered to a messy stack of leaflets at the corner of the counter, busying his hands. “What makes you think I’m not straight?”
He missed Tsukishima looking him up and down. “You seem like the kind of guy to be to lazy to care.”
“Not—exactly, but, point taken.” He huffed. “Something like that, anyways.”
They stood in silence for a few long, tense moments. Tsukishima pocketed his change.
“So?” he asked.
“So? Oh God, you think there’s actually something to be answered here? You’re a fucking kid! No!”
“I don’t look like a kid.”
“I hate to break it to you but yeah, you do.” He jabbed a finger at him before he could speak. “And if you’re about to say some shit like you look like you like that, you’re off the fucking team. You’re lucky I don’t boot you for this.”
“Thanks,” Tsukishima said, dryly.
“You should be thankful! You should be thankful I don’t tell your goddamn parents.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“That’s not the point. I’m ten years older than—we’re not having this conversation.” He jammed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “If you let me stop talking about this right now, I’ll do you the favour of never bringing it up again.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Tsukishima stabbed the straw into his carton of tea. “It’s not like you would, anyways. Kind of inappropriate for an adult to tease a kid about something like this, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t te—Christ, just get out of here!”
Tsukishima grinned at him, predatory and a little mean. “Are you nervous?”
“Go home, you freak!”
Tsukishima turned and waved. “See you at practice.”
“Don’t remind me.”
iii.
He hadn’t expected (or even really wanted) Ukai to go out with him, not then, but the opportunity to ask was too funny to pass up, and how jumpy Ukai got around him made it totally worth it. He even told the team what had happened because it was even funnier that way, and then they made fun of Ukai instead of him, which worked too. Not that they made fun of Ukai to his face—both because it would be inappropriate, with him as their coach, and because if word got around and rumours got twisted, it could become another story entirely, which could get him fired. And put in jail. But he was fun to mess with: Tsukishima would come up behind him and clap a hand down on his shoulder and he’d jump a foot in the air, and once during a practice match, Tsukishima caught his eye and, without smiling, winked at him. Ukai almost charged onto the court.
iv.
They had practice on Valentine’s Day and Tsukishima caught Ukai before he left and shoved a pack of smokes into his hand.
Ukai stared at it. It was the same brand he always smoked.
“Did I drop these? Where’d you get ‘em?”
“They’re a gift.”
“What?”
“It’s Valentine’s Day.”
“You got me cigarettes for Valentine’s Day.”
“Well, chocolates seemed stupid and what else was I supposed to get you, a volleyball? I don’t know anything else about you.”
Ukai stared at him blankly. “But you’re trying to court me.”
Tsukishima raised his eyebrows. “Is it working?”
He looked at the cigarettes in his palm, in the foil and everything. He must have gotten them from a vending machine. After a moment’s deliberation, he shoved them into his pocket.
“No. You’re lucky I’m almost out.”
v.
At the end of third year, Karasuno made it to nationals and Tsukishima was still miraculously on the team and, even more miraculously, Ukai was still coaching them. For Tsukishima it had been a mix of apathy and having nothing better to do that kept him on the team, but no one knew why Ukai had stayed—the only plausible explanation was that he had grown to enjoy being a high school volleyball coach, which seemed absurd.
They were staying at a hotel in Tokyo; it was modest, but everything in Tokyo was exciting regardless. Hinata and Kageyama had taken the second years out for karaoke and God knew what else, and Tsukishima was grateful for the time alone. He didn’t really consider the two of them his friends (but if they weren’t, who was?) and he tolerated them, but the intense training they’d done leading up to nationals meant he’d seen them way too much lately.
Tokyo seemed unimaginably huge and bustling compared to anything in Miyagi, but it was clean in most places, although their hotel was a dump, and the locals kept to themselves. Even better, the liquor store clerks there didn’t ID him and he managed to buy a fifth of whiskey for less than he’d ever pay at home.
In the room he was sharing with Yamaguchi, he poured the whiskey into a slightly-less-conspicuous water bottle—they still had another day of warm-up matches before league play, which he could handle hung over if it came to that—then slipped downstairs. The hotel had a pool inside a heated glass room on the side of the building, with white tiled floors and fake palm trees, and there was nothing he’d rather do than put his headphones on, get a little drunk and forget about the crushing pressure of the days to come.
He hadn’t realized that Ukai didn’t go with the others, either. He found him on one of the plastic lounge chairs in sweatpants and a tank top, smoking and reading something.
Tsukishima came up behind him.
“Are you reading Yotsuba?” he sniggered. Ukai jerked forward.
“Christ, you’re quiet.” He folded the book across his leg. “And yes. Shut up. It’s charming.”
“I bet.”
Tsukishima sat in the chair next to his and stretched his legs out. He sat the bottle of whiskey between his knees and Ukai noticed.
“Tell me,” he said through his teeth, “that you are not blatantly drinking hard liquor, underage, in front of your coach, two nights before nationals.”
Tsukishima grinned and held the bottle out to him. “Not alone.”
First, Ukai looked appalled, and then thrilled, and then he doubled over and laughed so hard he spat his cigarette on the ground. His laughter echoed around the concrete and pool and glass enclosure over the lapping of the water. He rest his head against the rubber plastic slats of the pool chair and sighed angrily, then sat up. He had a red mark on his forehead and his headband had slipped back.
He snatched the bottle out of Tsukishima’s hand.
“Fine. If this is what it takes to shut you up, you got it. Let’s drink.” He unscrewed the cap and took a swig, then grimaced. “God, you fucking kids don’t know what to buy.”
“So come with me next time.”
“Oi.”
“Kidding.”
He handed it back to Tsukishima and fixed his headband as Tsukki drank.
“I get it.” He sighed. “I was kinda like you in third year. There’s all this pressure and everyone around you is just so into sports, and mind you, I wasn’t even good, so I’d come along for all this shit and just—” He motioned for the bottle, then drank. “—do stuff like this. You don’t even got an excuse, you can actually play.”
Tsukishima snorted. “Doesn’t mean I want to.”
“Brat. Don’t say stuff like that to your coach.”
“Like you don’t already know.”
“Still, show some enthusiasm.”
“This is me being enthusiastic.” He took a swig and coughed, and Ukai laughed at him.
“Gimme that, you amateur.”
They sat on their plastic pool chairs and passed the bottle back and forth, and Ukai told stories about when he was in high school and they talked about everything other than volleyball and ripped on each other and laughed and laughed and laughed. They pushed their chairs together so they could both read Yotsuba and Tsukishima secretly enjoyed it, and he played music through his headphones and Ukai didn’t even tell him it was stupid.
When the bottle was almost done, Ukai sat back and sprawled out on his chair, covering his eyes with his hands.
“I can’t believe I’m hanging out with you. I can’t believe you’re getting drunk before nationals. I’m not playing.”
“It’s not like it’s tomorrow.”
Ukai blew a raspberry and Tsukishima laughed. He slid his hands into his hair and pushed his headband off; it was the first time Tsukishima had seen him without it, and he stared. His hair flopped over to one side, thick and coarse and glossy, a little fried from being bleached, and longer than it looked when it was pushed back. He hadn’t dyed it in a while and a couple inches of dark roots showed. He hadn’t aged considerably in the time since they’d met, or if he did, Tsukishima didn’t notice. He had high cheekbones and a straight nose and a strong jaw.
It had been so long that he wasn’t sure how much of his “crush” on Ukai was real and how much was because it was funny, or something to do. It wasn’t something he’d actively thought about when he first told the team, and then it quickly devolved into a joke, but he was never really joking.
Ukai caught him staring as he swept his hair up and slid his headband back on.
“You’re not still faking that crush bullshit, are you?”
“Who’s faking?”
“So, yes, then.”
“I swear to God I’m not.”
Their eyes met for a few too-intense seconds and neither one remembered being this drunk a couple minutes ago.
“I wish you were.” Ukai shook his head, but he was smiling. “You are the weirdest fucking kid.”
“You thought I was joking this whole time?”
“The whole team was joking, I heard them snickering like school girls. You guys got a weird sense of humour.”
“That’s them, not me.” He swung his legs up and stretched and looked at his feet next to Ukai’s; his were a little bigger, less hairy. “Have you ever seen me put effort into anything, ever? Why would the one thing I do be about pissing you off?”
Ukai went quiet then, which was either a good sign or a really bad one. He fumbled for his smokes in his pocket and lit one, then stuck the spent match into the top of the heaping ashtray next to him like a flag on a mountaintop.
Tsukishima turned his head and looked at him. He had his eyes closed.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
Ukai almost inhaled his cigarette laughing. “You think to ask that now?”
“Boyfriend?”
“Neither.”
“Did you ever?”
“Nothing serious. Would that have mattered? I should have lied years ago.”
“No.”
“Damn.”
They were quiet for a while longer. Tsukishima tried to steal a smoke without Ukai noticing, but he slapped his hand away, and the room wasn’t spinning but he was thrumming with that warm, deep-boned pleasantness that made everything soft-edged and sweet and funny. It was a weird kind of vulnerability, but he liked it. And he liked the idea of being able to drink enough to keep up with Ukai.
Their chairs were still pushed together. The room was warm and he could feel the heat radiating off Ukai’s arm next to his, or he thought he could. He always assumed that was something people imagined.
“Uh, forgive me for being brash,” Ukai joked, turning his head to look at Tsukishima, “but you don’t exactly seem love struck.”
His eyes were focused but his pupils were blown in the low light and drunkenness. From this close he could see the dark smudges under his eyes, the fine lines; he wasn’t pretty, per se, but there was something so honest and dumb and visceral about him that had always seemed endearing. So Tsukishima accidentally told the truth.
“It doesn’t feel like being love struck. It feels like—if it’s just this, getting drunk and reading comics and listening to music, except we fuck and stuff, that’s all I’d want, anyways.”
Ukai raised his eyebrows so high they threatened to leap off his face and Tsukishima felt, only distantly, embarrassed. They kept looking at each other for one second, two, three, and then Ukai squeezed his eyes shut, breathed out, and sat up. He pushed the almost-empty bottle off Tsukishima’s lap.
“That’s more than enough for you.”
“I would’ve said it sober.”
“Are you an idiot? I’m trying to help you be cool about this.”
Tsukishima laughed and Ukai couldn’t remember if he’d ever gotten a non-derisive laugh out of him before tonight.
“Don’t. I’m... comfortable. Being not-love-struck.”
“Of course you are,” Ukai sneered. “Damn, when I was your age I had a new crush every week. How are you doing this?”
“Beats me.” He sat up and rubbed his hair where it had gone flat from lying down. At his feet, music poured softly out of his headphones. When he spoke, he spoke to his bare feet. “I’ll be eighteen soon.”
Without warning, Ukai smacked him in the back of the head.
“Have some fucking shame!”
Tsukishima laughed again. “What, is ‘legal’ not old enough?”
“It’s not about—guh.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Eighteen and twenty-nine are the same amount of years apart as seventeen and twenty-eight.”
“At least you won’t go to jail.”
“Shh! Christ, you’ve got a one-track mind.” He looked nervously at the glass door to the lobby. “You’re gonna get me fired.”
“You haven’t done anything.”
“I’m not gonna. Listen.” He pulled their chairs apart and put his feet on the tiled floor between them. “You’re lucky this is me. If you’d tried to pull this shit on Takeda-san, he’d probably report you so fucking fast for your ‘own good’—”
“I don’t like Takeda-sensei.” Tsukishima swung his feet over the side of the chair and planted them on the heated tile floor; the chairs were so low his knees were raised. “I like you.”
He was close enough to smell the cigarettes and whiskey on Ukai’s breath and drank in his surprise and his open mouth, just wide enough in shock to see the glint of his teeth.
And then Ukai punched him in the chest.
His chair squeaked backwards on the tile and he burst out laughing, clutching his shirt. Ukai stood up and kicked the chair away for further measure.
“You’re a fucking psychopath,” he spat, but he didn’t sound mad. His ears were red.
“Yeah, yeah.” Tsukishima gathered his headphones and phone up and stood, stretching. “I’m done.”
Ukai said nothing. Tsukishima cracked his knuckles and picked up his water bottle and peered around the pool chairs to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. When he looked back up, Ukai was looking at him.
“What?”
He cleared his throat. “Do you have a pen?”
“Why would I bring a pen to a pool.”
“C’mere.”
He tucked his book under his arm and headed for the lobby and Tsukishima followed, shuddering at the cold hotel air after the heat of the pool. He wobbled a little uncertainly, drunkenness making his head rush.
The front desk was empty. Ukai looked both ways, then hunched over it for a moment. There was a ripping sound. He spun around and glared up at Tsukishima.
“Here.”
He shoved a scrap of paper into Tsukishima’s hand. He unfolded it. Written in an almost illegible scrawl was KEISHIN 264-24-8312.
“Look me up in five years,” he grumbled, staring at a potted fern by Tsukishima’s hip like it was the most interesting thing in the world. When he looked up and saw Tsukishima’s shit-eating smirk, he barked, “And try not to look so fucking smug.”
“Can’t.”
“You’ll forget.”
“Are you counting on that?”
“Yes. Five years. If it’s before, I’m blocking your number.”
“Make it one year.”
“Four.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Two. I’ll be twenty. Ish.”
Ukai grimaced, more at himself than anything.
“Two plus. Two and change.”
“Deal.”
Tsukishima decided against shaking his hand over such a weird, uncomfortable thing. He couldn’t stop smirking.
“Would you quit that?” Ukai griped. “You look like a fucking asshole. Fuck, you’re just gonna tell your friends, and the school’s gonna hang me by my balls—you know what, give that back.”
“Nope.” Tsukishima held the scrap of paper above his head to add insult to injury, and Ukai didn’t even try to reach for it.
“Fucking brat.”
“You love it.”
“Go to your damn room. You’re running extra laps tomorrow. I hope you’re hung over.”
“I hope you are.”
As if on cue, the rest of the team burst noisily through the lobby doors, a bunch of fifteen and sixteen year olds hopped up on Pepsi and chips. Kageyama, Hinata and Yamaguchi followed up the rear with Takeda. Ukai glared at Tsukishima and drew a finger across his throat. Tsukishima chuckled.
In the elevator, he stood behind Ukai, who wasn’t quite short enough for him to put his chin on his head.
Hinata leaned into his side.
“Were you two the only ones here? Did anything happen?” he asked in a sing-song voice.
Tsukishima bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smirking and crinkled the scrap of hotel memo pad in his pocket.
“Nope.”