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There was absolutely nothing to be concerned about, until their assistant coach was clapping his hands together and calling them all to begin the practice. Despite having just called for their attention, the entire Shiratorizawa boy’s volleyball team is now swinging their heads around, leaning back, muttering to each other. There was something very, very odd about this specific start to the practice.
- Tendou wasn’t there. This actually wasn’t so odd, if they thought about it, because he was more likely than some to skip practice or play sick.
- Ushiwaka wasn’t there. This was significantly more odd. Their captain and ace had never shown up late without an excused absence, and certainly not without warning. The other third years seem personally offended by this turn of events, as they’d parted ways this morning and seen him in class without anything to imply the routine might change. And Ushijima Wakatoshi would most certainly comment on a routine change.
- Coach Washijo wasn’t there! Their assistant coach had only ever run practice the two days last year Washijo had been sick. What the hell was going on?
“Alright, so for this afternoon-”
Immediately, when their assistant coach tries to begin practice as normal, sixteen hands shoot straight into the air - all ten remaining regular members, plus a handful of the first year ball boys and club extras.
The coach sighs, looking at them all for a minute before rather arbitrarily pointing at Taichi and saying: “Yes?” in a tone that indicated he knew exactly what this was going to be.
“Uhm… sorry, not to interrupt, sir, but… it just looks like we’re down a few members. Uh… Coach Washijo, and… Ushiwaka - is everything alright?”
The coach shifts his weight slightly, seeming to consider this for a moment before nodding his head and more broadly, to the whole group, saying:
“There was… a… little incident, last weekend, at the interhigh competition. Ushijima and Tendou were required to have a meeting about it this afternoon, and Washijo went to attend as well. I assure you, it is… nothing except a… minor delay, they should be back… probably before we even finish the warm-up drills. Okay?”
Everyone sort of nods for a bit, but the answer barely satisfies them.
Leaning over to Shirabu, Goshiki whispers: “Do you know what incident they’re talking about?”
“No idea, and shut the hell up when our coach is talking.”
“Geez-”
“Goshiki,” the coach says, a sharper note in his voice. “Something more important than practice to discuss?”
“Uh… no, sir, sorry… I was just… wondering what that incident was, I didn’t see anything…”
“Which is probably why you’re not in the principal’s office,” the coach replies, to a chorus of snickers. “Unfortunately I am not at liberty to tell you, it’s a private matter between your peers, if they wish to disclose what happened, they can do that on their own time.”
“Ah… yes sir. Thank you. Sorry,” Goshiki stammers, before looking away.
“Good, now let’s begin,” the coach says, hoping to get this back on track. “We’re gonna start with our warm-up stretches as usual, then-”
Only one sentence into practice, the gym doors have opened again, and everyone looks up in excitement to see Tendou come scampering in, head ducked and looking rather rattled, if nothing else. It was not unusual for him to look a little weird - distant, distracted, or otherwise making faces - but this was comically normal. He looked embarrassed, which he never had been before while making a dramatic, late entrance.
“Sorry,” he says, softly, as the coach turns to look at him.
“No worries,” the coach says, before somewhat snidely, to the rest of the group: “See? Your friend’s have returned before we even finished… wait, where’s Ushijima?”
Tendou laughs, nervously, shifting his school bag from one shoulder to the other, having not yet gone to tuck his stuff away.
“Ah, yeah, he’s… he’s not coming today…”
“He’s… not coming?” the coach echoes back, sounding rather perplexed by this.
“Yeah, on account of him… ah…” Tendou scratches at the back of his neck, not quite able to make eye contact. “On account of him getting suspended. From club activities.”
Silence.
“What?” Shirabu says, first, and loudest. “On what fucking planet-?”
“Shirabu, language,” the coach barks, but it seems like he’s just as baffled. Ushijima - their Ushijima - suspended? The man was so adherent to rules that he was more likely to get in trouble for following some old, outdated regulation than he was to ever get suspended, how could this possibly have happened?
“What happened?”
“Tendou, what are you talking about?”
“What did he do?”
“Look, look, look,” Tendou says, lifting his hands up and waving them around. He still looks incredibly embarrassed, face red, not really looking at anyone. It’s an odd look on him, especially for someone usually so callous in his secret keeping - Tendou loved sharing secrets. Especially other people’s. But this seemed different. “I don’t want to go airing out anyone’s laundry in front of the whole school. So… trust me, Washijo is already… tearing his face off as it is, so…”
“How long was this suspension?” their coach asks.
“Just the day,” Tendou says, letting his breath out. “They have another meeting booked for tomorrow, all he has to do is show up, apologize, and he’ll be able to move on and come back to practice. No big deal.”
---
The following day’s practice is saturated with gossip. Due to the fact that Ushijima was currently roommates with Tendou, and had not stopped by to see any of the team post serving his suspension (more of a jail sentence in a school with live-in accommodations), nobody had actually seen him since hearing the news. So everyone is bursting with curiosity, waiting for an opportunity to interrogate him.
Tendou had been evasive and weird about it, not wanting to say. Ushiwaka, however, did not lie. Ever. It was a distinct personality trait of his that caused headaches for family and friends alike whenever they forgot they could not go fishing for compliments from him unless they wanted their feelings hurt.
But it would work in their favour this time. Whatever had happened, big or small or serious or not, Tendou could only avoid them finding out for so long. As soon as they got a moment alone with him, Ushijima would tell the truth.
And then Tendou comes into practice alone.
“Hey, Tendou,” Semi calls, opening his arms. “Where’s Ushiwaka?”
Tendou jerks his head up, once again wearing that very unusual, very flustered sort of look. He tries to crack a smile, make it all a big joke, but it’s clear that he’s quite twitchy.
“Oh, suspended,” Tendou reports.
“What? Still?” Leon says.
“Yeah, I thought you said he’d be back today,” Shirabu chirps.
“Oh, he was supposed to be,” Tendou says, the nervous, twitchy tone to his voice suddenly becoming quite obviously annoyance, as if this whole affair was turning his hair grey and stressing him out. “And then he refused to apologize, so the principal suspended him from club activities for a week.”
“What?”
The exclamation is echoed a few times by multiple people.
“A whole week?”
“Shit! What the hell did he do?”
“Why didn’t he just apologize oh my god-”
“A whole entire week?”
“Why from club activities? We need him! Why can’t they, like, just make him clean up the school or something…”
Everyone is shouting and complaining and confused, and Tendou takes that opportunity to slink away and put his stuff down, trying to stay out of their interrogation.
---
The mystery of Ushijima's sudden apparent disrespect for authority was a constant point of discussion at this point. What the hell he had done to garner this kind of punishment… something serious must have gone down.
Something at the interhigh…?
They all try and pick their brains and figure out what in the hell was going on, pitching ideas back and forth. They all agreed, after a day or two of this, that it must be a misunderstanding.
It made the most sense. Someone had accused Ushijima of something very serious, and the staff had believed them, and now he was ‘refusing to apologize’ because in Ushijima’s mind he had nothing to apologize for, and did not see how this could be a problem. He would not admit guilty to something he didn’t do.
Yes, they all decide. That must be at least close to it.
In fact, they’re all so confident in this concept that they even stop trying to catch Ushijima alone to interrogate him. He doesn’t talk or pass notes in class, and he’s taking his suspension seriously even though they know it must be killing him, which means after his jail sentence is served with a teacher after classes, he has to return to his dorm and stay there.
Few opportunities to actually talk to him, if any. (That was the point of the suspension, after all.)
So, armed with their theory that this was a stupid conflict of black and white thinking, they all sort of get over it for about three days.
Until Semi is caught sneaking in after curfew and suspended for a day himself.
Which, next afternoon, lands him in the very same post-class suspension as Ushijima.
He’s actually surprised to see him. Semi hadn’t really been able to conceptualize the idea of Ushijima serving a punishment, so to see him sitting there, for the first time in almost a week, pencil scratching over school work (the only thing allowed during these two hours) was a little bit weird.
“Oh, hey man,” Semi laughs, moving to take his seat (one space between them, as per the rules) and drop his back by his feet “Long time no-”
Ushijima, suddenly glaring at him, beckons furiously up to the front of the class, where the rules of “no talking” are clearly laid out on the board.
Semi puts his hands up, rolling his eyes and pulling his own homework out of his bag. Truthfully, Ushijima’s strict adherence to policy (and presence in Semi’s own punishment) might be the only damn thing this school has ever done to convince him to actually behave.
It’s still no fun focusing on the novel he’d supposed to have finished several days ago, so about twenty minutes into the punishment he looks up, makes sure that the teacher wasn’t actively paying attention, and then waves a hand to try and get Ushijima’s attention.
It takes a few tries, but eventually he does lift his head, laced with annoyance, to look at him.
Semi tries to make a “wow, this sucks huh? So boring” sort of face, but Ushijima just stares back at him blankly. He tries again, and Ushijima just looks away to return to his work.
Lame.
And then, Semi notices that his left hand, the hand he was using to scribble math equations in a notebook, was coloured quite obviously with the purple, dark markings of a bruise. It was faded a little, but in the harsh class lighting no less obvious.
That hand, Semi realizes all at once, had recently been used to hit something. Hard.
He thinks he’s going to scream with excited confusion, frantically waving to get his attention again, and trying to beckon to his own knuckles to say hey dude what the fuck! but before he can, the teacher calls a sharp:
“Eita. Focus on your own work, please.”
He is forced to sit back in his seat, and Ushijima ignores him.
---
“Ushijima punched something,” Semi declares, when he’s back in practice the next day, punctuating the sentence by setting his bag on the bench of the locker room. “Hard. I saw it, his knuckles were all bruised.”
“What?” Leon said, turning around to look at him. “For real? How do you know?”
“I saw it-”
“You saw it-?”
“I saw his hand!” Semi says. “When I was serving my detention yesterday, I saw his hand, and his knuckles were all bruised. He punched something. That’s probably why he got suspended.”
“He’s refusing to apologize for punching something?” Goshiki says, echoing the facts they knew back to them as he tried to think it through. “And how’s Tendou involved?”
“Maybe he punched Tendou?” Yamagata says.
“At least try and take this seriously,” Semi scoffs.
“I’m serious! Think about it, Tendou’s been, like… really weird about this whole thing, and has been involved in all the principal meetings, he’s clearly super pissed off, maybe-”
“Dude,” Leon says. “If Ushijima had punched Tendou hard enough to bruise his hand while we were at interhighs, I’m pretty sure we’d have seen the damage on Tendou on that bus ride home. He didn’t hit Tendou. Tendou was probably just a witness to it.”
“Right,” Semi agrees. “Which just leaves the mystery of why. What did Ushijima… see or-”
As if to answer their questions, Tendou has made his way into the locker room without the faintest idea of the shitshow he’s walking into.
“Tendou!”
“Tendou, hey-”
“Dude did Ushiwaka hit something?”
“Please tell us what happened, oh my god-”
“I saw his hand, you can’t lie-”
“Woah,” Tendou says, putting his hands up. “Geez, you people are animals, I’ve been here ten seconds. And they call me annoying-”
“Don’t dodge the question,” Semi says, pointing at him. “Come on, dude, tell us. What the hell happened at interhighs? What did Ushijima do?”
Tendou stares at them all, before shifting his posture and staring at them with a kind of resignation that they knew meant he’d won.
“Fine, okay, here-”
-It really wasn’t like either of them to get involved. Tendou is digging through his bag trying to make sure he hasn’t left anything behind, Ushijima is refilling his water bottle for the trip home. They’re talking in mumbled, incoherent tones, tired after the game, and not really paying attention, until-
There’s a sudden cry, a pitched noise of discomfort and fear, and both of them are up, swiveling their heads around. In confusion.
The spot it, the altercation, rather quickly. There’s a young woman, probably one of the team’s managers, though they don’t recognize her uniform, being backed up against the wall of the hallway, the guy cornering her leering down in the most inappropriate way. It happens so fast.
Tendou is content to just shout at them and try and scare them off. And it might have worked.
When one of the guys touches her, though, grabbing her arm, that’s unforgivable to Ushijima-
“So he stepped in and broke the guy's nose,” Tendou finishes, waving his hand dismissively. “She was terrified of him, afterwards, so it wasn’t super effective, but, eh, the guy had it coming.”
There’s a silence.
“So… wait-”
“Like I said, he… has it in his head right now that he doesn’t want to apologize, because he stands by what he did, but… I’m gonna talk to him, I… think I’ve almost convinced him to just apologize to the guy, and he’ll be back next week. Honestly, I think he’s pretty embarrassed about it too, so maybe don’t go around… talking about this, yeah? It’ll blow over eventually.”
“...right,” Leon said, and that probably could have been the end of it, if Shirabu hadn’t chimed in with:
“Quick question, then, Tendou… why were you being so weird? You could have just told us from the beginning.”
“Yeah, punching out a creep and saving some damsel in distress really only makes Ushiwaka look cooler than he is,” Yamagata says, crossing his arms. “No reason to hide it.”
This, oddly enough, makes Tendou’s face flush pink, betrayed by his own pale skin.
“Ah, I… just… was trying to be respectful, and not… gossip-”
“You didn't want to gossip-?”
“I can have some respect for some things some times,” Tendou defends, putting his hands in the air. “Now back off about it, it doesn’t matter-”
“But-”
“It doesn’t matter!”
---
The sound of the clock ticking on the wall is almost annoying, as the principal finishes up with his previous task and shifts over to this new annoyance. Tendou has to sit on his hands, to stop himself from being a fidgety mess. He had tried, and tried, and tried, to coach and teach and explain to Ushijima that all he had to do was apologize, and then everything would go back to normal, and he could play volleyball again.
Even just the fact that Ushijima was willing giving up not just a day, but an entire week of his precious volleyball was shocking enough. Tendou was over it, though. They could go back to the normal routine now.
The kid, who still had a nasty, dark bruise over his face, was once again dragged into the office for this meeting. What was his name? Tendou couldn’t even remember, it didn’t even matter. His mother is sitting with him, hand on his shoulder, staring at Ushijima as if he were a dog they wanted put down.
“Alright,” the principal says. “Once again, thank you everyone for joining us, I apologize for taking up your time for the third week in a row-”
“No problem,” the mother says, stiffly. “I’m glad to be here to finally resolve this issue.”
“...right,” the principal says, before looking over to Ushijima. “Now, I take it after having a week to… calm down think over what had happened, you will be more receptive to resolving this issue civilly?”
Ushijima stares back at him.
“Wakatoshi?” the principal prompts. “We’ve done this song and dance twice before, if you’d please just… you know what to do.”
Ushijima stares at them a moment, gaze hard and unreadable, before he turns his attention over to Tendou, and suddenly that look is softening into something miserable. He’s shaking his head slightly.
It’s okay, he wants to say. Just apologize. It doesn’t mean anything, I don’t care that much, please-
“I cannot,” Ushijima replies, looking back to the principal.
The principal sighs, looking absolutely miserable. He was clearly sick of this too. Punishing the school’s golden boy was probably getting him an earful from Washijo every time they passed in the hallway, if nothing else.
“You-”
“Ma’am,” the principal says, interrupting the mother before she could start shouting. “Please- Wakatoshi, why are you doing this? You’ve already admitted to punching him, you broke his nose, all that’s left is to apologize so we can all move on in our lives.”
“I am not sorry,” Ushijima replies with a shrug. “So I will not apologize.”
The mother gasps, sounding absolutely scandalized by his callousness. Tendou has to agree, he sounds like an asshole.
“You understand that if you continue to refuse to cooperate, we’ll have to continue to punish you,” the principal says. “It’s in the school bylaws, if a student behaves aggressively - violently - towards the other school students, we cannot have them representing us at events. We’re giving you the option to apologize and show your remorse for your actions, otherwise we cannot have you as captain of our volleyball team.”
Ushijima stares back at him. Tendou wants to scream and cry and thrash around and make a scene and most importantly grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he came to his senses.
This isn’t worth it! What the hell are you doing? This isn’t worth it!
“I am aware,” Ushijima replies, levelly, even though Tendou can see the tension in his jaw. A beat of silence passes, and Ushijima adds: “I cannot apologize for something I am not sorry for-” and then he looks over to the poor bastard with a broken nose. “I stand by what I did.”
The principal practically melts into his seat, closing his eyes for a second as the kid sits up straighter, looking genuinely worried Ushijima was about to punch him in the face again.
“Okay,” the principal says, after a moment, sounding just as baffled as was his right. “Uh… your suspension from club activities will be extended for the duration of the month, and we will… reconvene at a later date to discuss the future of your volleyball career here.”
“Understood,” Ushijima says, and then with a wave of his hand, the principal has dismissed him, turning over to the furious mother to begin muttering apologies.
Tendou is dismissed as well with this, scrambling up and mumbling his own apology to the principal, before chasing after Ushijima and catching up to him halfway down the hall.
“What the hell was that!” Tendou hisses, smacking him in the arm. “Are you crazy? I thought you were going to apologize!”
“I considered it,” he replies.
“Consider it more!”
“I will not lie,” Ushijima says, stopping where he was walking and turning to look at Tendou. “I refuse to lie and tell them that I’m sorry for breaking that kid’s nose. I’m not sorry. I’d do it again.”
Tendou opens his mouth, struggling for a second to find something to say and instead just screeching and grabbing at the lapel of Ushijima’s school uniform. He tightens his fists, shaking him slightly.
“You’re so dumb!” Tendou says. “This isn’t worth the damage it’ll do - do you not understand what they’re threatening?”
“I understand-” Ushijima starts, but Tendou cuts him off.
“No, you don’t, you have no clue what you’re doing, do you think you get brownie points for being a stubborn asshole? Just… apologize to the stupid kid and let’s move on with our lives.”
He thinks for a second that Ushijima will actually give in, he has a second to look ashamed of himself, casting his eyes down, but then he simply lifts a hand up, gently covering one of Tendou’s with his own and removing it from his jacket.
“I can’t do that,” he repeats, more firmly.
“And why not?”
“Because if I concede an apology, it means that I agree that he should have been allowed to get away with treating you that way.”
Tendou feels his heart skip in his chest, whole body beginning to flush hot.
(Of course, Tendou had lied to his teammates - the last thing he needed was everyone thinking he couldn’t fight his own battles, though he was sure the truth would come out eventually.)
It was uncharted territory for Tendou as well. He’d been in that principal’s office more times than anyone else, but never had he been there as victim and witness. Tendou, by the way, had already received his apology for what the brat kid had been saying, but that hadn’t been enough for Ushijima to concede his own.
But this, this here, Ushijima Wakatoshi with all his conviction, looking him in the eye and saying it was unforgivable the way they had treated him.
Never in his life had anyone told him that.
It was always turn the other cheek, or try and ignore them, or just move on.
And that’s what he wanted now, but-
God, it feels so fucking good to be somebody’s first priority.
Ushijima’s thumb is brushing over his hand, gently and affectionately, and Tendou gets the hint to let go of him, brushing down the front of the jacket and taking a step back. Ushijima holds onto his hand as long as he can justify before dropping it.
“That’s not what that would mean,” Tendou says.
“Yes, it is. That’s exactly what it means, you heard him. I need to show remorse for my actions, I do not feel remorse over actions justly taken, only ones made in error, which this was not.”
“You - fuck.” Tendou says, lifting his hands up to his hair to stare back at him. “You’re really something else, you know that? What am I going to do with you…”
Ushijima just gives him a bit of a shrug, before saying:
“I have a suspension to serve, so… I should get going.”
“And I have… a volleyball team to… tell about this… suspension, Christ, Wakatoshi, a month? I’ve never even received a month’s suspension before, that’s like, some hardcore shit.”
“I’m aware.”
“Has your mother been advised?”
The silence is enough.
Tendou’s heart aches. He’d spent his whole childhood - his whole life - begging for a friend like this, someone who just liked him, someone who wanted him to be happy, who cared about his feelings. He wouldn’t have been able to tell you how many times he’d fantasize about someone coming out of the crowd when he was being pushed around and standing up for him.
He had no idea it was this bittersweet. How ugly it felt to be the reason someone was being punished.
If I wasn’t a factor, this wouldn’t have happened.
I’m not worth it, this isn’t worth it, it was a stupid fight.
He’s ruining his reputation over nothing.
I love him for it, but…
He’s getting screamed at by Washijo, by his mother, by the principal, serving weeks upon weeks of suspension, he’s giving up playing volleyball for that time, volleyball is the only thing he’s supposed to care about, he’d never-
“I have to go,” Ushijima says, turning to head down the hallway. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“Yeah,” Tendou calls, voice cracking slightly. “See you tonight.”
---
Tendou had to drag himself back to the gym for practice, already dreading what was going to come. He was pretty sure they were already suspicious of his story, and they had reason to be. Yamagata was right, why the hell wouldn’t he have said so earlier? And if it had been the truth, Tendou absolutely would have been proudly detailing his best friend’s heroism.
But, Yamagata had also been right.
Damsel in distress.
Tendou didn’t need someone protecting him.
Or, maybe, he reasoned, he was just so overwhelmed with guilt he didn’t want them all realizing he was the reason their precious southpaw ace was going to be banished from volleyball indefinitely. He didn’t want them all seeing him as some… insecure weakling. Whatever.
He just had to-
“Oh, God,” Shirabu says, the moment Tendou steps into the locker room.
“Eh?”
“Ushiwaka’s not with you,” Shirabu clarified, beckoning to him. “What happened now?”
He swallows, glancing around to see the rest of the team, pretty much ready to head out to the gym.
“Ah… well… Wakatoshi decided to stand his ground, instead of apologizing. Again. So… he’s been… suspended from club activities for another month. So-”
There is just screaming.
Like, honest screaming - panic from the rest of the team. A day was weird, a week was bad, a month? Unthinkable.
Now, Tendou didn’t think it was possible that Ushijima could fall behind per se, but he was pretty sure it was more of a mentality thing. This was quite literally fracturing the team. And… this month they were clear, but… if he continued to be uncooperative, he could… miss more and more… Spring Qualifiers were just around the corner then…
“Holy shit,” Semi manages to say eventually, because much like Tendou, he too had never even managed to get himself suspended for a month. “Are they just going to keep escalating it? What happens if he doesn’t apologize? Just… removed from the club forever?”
“Ah…” Tendou starts, though even just thinking about it makes him feel dizzy with guilt. “That… yeah, that looks like the plan. The principal said he can’t… allow an uncooperative and… violent student to represent us, they’d at least take his captaincy away… but… I imagine that would be… you know-”
“Oh, fuck-” Leon says, putting his hands over his mouth. This catches everyone’s attention, mostly because Leon was not known for cursing just for shits and giggles, so-
“What is it?” Yamagata prompts, after staring at his shell-shocked expression for a moment.
“Ushiwaka is here on a scholarship,” Leon says. “If he can’t play volleyball they’re not going to let him stay, he’ll be removed from school.”
Tendou thinks he’s going to pass out.
“What?” Shirabu says, voice pitching up. “Holy shit, how could he let this happen? What’s wrong with him?”
“I… clearly this… girl-” Yamagata says, though he doesn’t really sound convinced of the story. “Must have been in a bad way, for him to care this much-”
“Or maybe he just doesn’t realize it,” Semi says. “Maybe he’s just a stupid fucking idiot and isn’t thinking long term-”
“We have to do something,” Goshiki chimes in, from his slightly obscured place behind the taller kids. “We have to do something! We can’t let him get kicked out - surely he’ll just apologize and stop this all if we tell him that, right? Right? Right-”
Shirabu shoves him away. “The dork is right,” he says. “We need to talk to Ushiwaka.”
“Yeah, for sure-”
“Just… it’s not going to work,” Tendou says, trying not to sound as close to panic as he was. “I have been… begging him to just apologize, and he… he just won’t. He won’t do it. I’ll try again, tonight and every night and every night but the… you’ve all met him, the bastard is blind when it comes to this sort of thing, he’s already made up his mind.”
There’s silence, everyone staring back at him.
“I just… what are we going to do without him?” Shirabu says.
“I… don’t know, but… we’ll… just…” and Tendou can’t take the way his chest feels like it’s about to explode, so he shoves away from them all and heads off to get changed. As if he’d be able to focus on practice.
---
Ushijima was being irrational. That was the only thing that mattered. If Tendou could convince Ushijima that he was being irrational, he’d immediately make the changes needed to be rational again. That was the kind of person he was.
So all he had to do-
He shuts the dorm door behind himself, looking down at Ushijima, who had laid himself out on the floor, to give himself the most possible space to set his volleyball up to the ceiling, over and over and over again.
Tendou bobs his head, watching him do this for a moment, before sighing and saying:
“If you apologize, they’ll let you play again.”
“I’m aware.”
“So… why don’t we head down to the principal’s office right now, and-”
“No.”
“... dude, you can’t-”
“I’ve said no-” Ushijima says, catching the volleyball and sitting up. “I will not.”
Tendou shifts his weight a bit, before tossing his bag down by the desk and stepping over Ushijima’s legs to sit on his lower bunk.
“Well what the hell do you think is going to happen, then? What do you see as the end goal of all this?”
“What goal?”
What goal-
“The reason for… for making this the hill you die on! What’s the point!”
“I don’t understand.”
“I…” Tendou cuts himself off, as Ushijima pushes himself up to take a seat on the bed, setting the volleyball aside. “I just mean… why bother? If it’s making your life terrible, why bother?”
Ushijima, to his credit, actually seems to think about his answer for a moment, before turning to look at Tendou.
“It matters to me.”
Tendou swallows back the immediate heat in his chest, the way his whole body is suddenly reacting, eyes getting wet, his hands are numb, his feet twitchy. He wants to wrap his arms around him and blabber on a million different thanks, all for the sake of the tiny Tendou that still exists in his mind that could only dream of having someone defend them like this.
But he can’t do that.
Because if Ushijima saw that for even a second, it would turn his iron conviction into diamond.
“It doesn’t, though,” Tendou says. “In the big, grand scheme of things… it doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
“If you hadn’t… done what you did, I’d have already forgotten about it. All you’re doing is… dragging this out and… frankly, it’s humiliating, I don’t… need you protecting me, or… or standing up for me, or-”
“I hear the way people talk about you,” Ushijima says, cutting him off. It was highly unusual for him to do so, to interrupt anyone, so Tendou shuts himself up, staring back at him with wet eyes, listening. “I know you are used to it, but being used to it doesn’t make it okay. I can barely tolerate it when it is just words, but that man put a hand on you-”
“He barely touched me-” Tendou whispered.
“That doesn’t make a difference.”
“I would have been fine without you, he’s not stupid enough to try any do anything right there where everyone could see,” Tendou tries, scoffing slightly. “You overreacted.”
“Whether or not you would have been fine is irrelevant, I will not allow anyone to lay their hands on you.”
Tendou is starting to feel light headed. His heart is racing, he’s sweating, he’s almost crying, it’s two incredibly powerful emotions coming to a head at the same time, clashing - guilt and pure adoration. He swallows and tries to regain his composure.
“You need to apologize, and put this behind you.”
“I am not sorry.”
“You’ll lose your captaincy.”
“I am aware.”
“If they don’t let you play volleyball, you’ll lose your scholarship.”
“I am aware.”
“If you lose your scholarship you lose us, they won’t let you stay. And… and we need you to go to nationals, you’d be throwing away not just your chance at the championships, but Leon’s, and Semi’s, and Yamagata’s, it’s their last years too, none of us can do it without you-”
“I am aware.”
Tendou swallowed.
“And you’re willing to throw your life away like this.”
“Yes.”
“For me.”
“Yes.”
Tendou laughs, and it’s when he sucks in a breath to keep laughing that he realizes he’s crying, lifting a hand up to his face to touch his cheek, surprised by the wetness.
“You are… too good to me,” he says, softly, and more than anything in the world he wants to live in this moment. Lean into him, be closer, he can imagine an alternate reality, in which he is someone he is not, and can indulge in this feeling of being loved, where they could lay on the bed tangled up together and he could let Ushijima tell him all the ways he deserved to be defended.
But, alas, this is the version of reality in which Tendou had met Ushijima, which means that selfish, anxious part of him is quiet, and he’s left with an annoyingly gold plated heart that cannot let his best friend burn out over something so stupid.
“I… want to be,” Ushijima is saying, voice soft and distant. Tendou can barely remember what he had said to incite it. “I want you to be-”
“Apologize to the stupid kid,” Tendou says, cutting him off.
“No.”
“Ushijima. Apologize,” he’s barking orders like he’s got some kind of status to throw around-
“No.”
“Apologize.”
“I refuse to-”
Tendou shoves himself up to his feet, exploding with energy as the angry and embarrassed parts of him won out.
“Then find a different reason to hate the kid,” he says, turning on him. Ushijima flinches back, all shocked and innocent looking, as if this were just any other conversation. “Find any other reason to refuse to apologize, but don’t you dare do this in my name. I will not stand by and let you ruin your life over me. Over something I don’t even care about. I get that in your head this… this apology means more than it does in anyone else’s head, but you’re being stupid. And… and you have no idea how bad it feels.”
“I… I just cannot tolerate the idea of telling them I was wrong for defending you,” he says.
“I get it,” Tendou replies, shoulders slumping. “Oh my god, Ushijima, I get it, but you’re wrong, you’re going about this the wrong way. You’re doing far more damage than this is worth-”
“It’s worth it to me,” Ushijima repeats, and now Tendou can hear the fire in his voice, his own yelling having begun to charge up the other. “I understand and accept the consequences-”
“But I don’t!” Tendou shouts, voice cracking harshly over the words. He feels his eyes overflowing, and if he thought being a damsel in distress was humiliating, crying was far worse. “I don’t accept the consequences, I’m not willing to accept the consequences, and I refuse to be the reason you suffer like this, so… so I… I won’t forgive you,” he says, managing to get a breath in, and pointing down at Ushijima, stopping him from standing up as he was about to do. “I will never forgive you for this, if you don’t suck it up and apologize to the stupid kid. I… I won’t forgive you… and… and I won’t be your friend anymore!”
He sees Ushijima’s expression harden into something completely stormy in a matter of milliseconds, head tilting just slightly in a way that indicated this might have, finally, actually struck a nerve.
Tendou doesn’t think he’s breathing anymore.
“I don’t understand,” Ushijima says, low and careful and very, very guarded. Tendou doesn’t blame him. It probably wasn't easy to compute, the idea that selflessly defending someone could end up ruining that relationship, but Tendou had always been unpredictable and different and it was his own damn fault if he hadn’t realized that before.
“I mean it,” he says. “I won’t be your friend anymore, not if you make me the reason you get thrown out of this school, so-” Tendou decides the best course of action is simply to flee. He thinks he can probably camp out with Semi, to make his point clear, so he turns around to open the door.
He only gets it about a foot open before Ushijima has reached over his shoulder from behind, slamming the door shut with a bang.
“That’s unacceptable,” Ushijima says, as Tendou, startled by the sudden slam, and the door being yanked out of his hand, turns to face him.
“You can’t make me stay here,” Tendou says, forcing as much venom into his voice as possible, even though his higher thinking has become a mess, as Ushijima pushes himself in far closer than he has to be, to keep a secure force against the door opening again. “Unlike you, I don’t have an early curfew for the next month. So…”
Ushijima seems to make a visible effort to calm himself down, before quietly saying: “Please don’t leave. Let’s keep talking about this, I’m sure-”
“No,” Tendou says. “No, because you’ve made your stance clear. So think about it, okay? If you really do accept the consequences of this stupid mess you’ve made then accept them all. I don’t have anything else to say to you.”
“You wouldn’t…” Ushijima says, even softer now, and it might be the first time Tendou’s ever heard him sound that uncertain of himself. Or, for that matter, look that genuinely distraught over anything.
“Try me,” Tendou scoffs. “And if you don’t let me out of this room, we can go ahead and end this friendship right now, if that’s how you wanna-”
Ushijima backs up so fast he almost trips himself, putting his hands in the air.
Tendou huffs. “Good,” he says, before turning to leave the room.
---
The general vibe of practice the following few days could truly only be described as “absolutely rancid” and “uncontrollably depressed.” Tendou had not, actually, relayed much information about anything to them, but based off the way he dragged himself around court, it was pretty easy to guess that he had not been successful.
It was almost inconceivable. Ushijima, their Ushijima, gone? Just… expelled? Banned from the club and therefore losing his scholarship and then just gone? The third years had been playing with him their whole high school careers, and more than that, they’d been playing for him. Washijo had introduced him as their to-be super ace and captain, their guiding light and biggest cannon, their whole team was built around him.
The mere suggestion of going off to the Spring Qualifiers without him was… laughable.
But Tendou won’t say anything.
“It’s his choice,” he says, miserably, anytime someone asks for an update. “We’ll see at the end of the month what he chooses.”
No good.
And normally, especially in Ushijima-matters, the team would actually defer to Tendou’s judgement. He was the best character reader they had, and usually was the only one who could even begin to comprehend the choices Ushijima made. They were friends, a title that very few other people on the team would dare claim from Ushijima.
But…
“We have to swap Tendou out,” Leon declares.
“Eh?” Yamagata says, looking up from where he’s stretching.
“He clearly can’t convince Ushijima to change his mind, so we have to swap him out,” Leon repeats. “Like in a game, when he starts overthinking and suddenly can’t guess right anymore, we bench him. I’m gonna bench him.”
“Stop using metaphors.”
“I’m gonna go talk to Ushijima myself. We probably should have long ago, but he’s so hard to get ahold of when he’s not in practice…”
“Ah, well… Godspeed,” Yamagata says.
Godspeed indeed.
Leon gets through the rest of practice, and packs up his things, and moves along quickly as everyone else departs with their goodbyes. Ushijima should be done with his detention, at this time, so he’d probably be back in his room. Thankfully, as per Semi, Tendou was spending an awful lot of time anywhere except for their room, so he’d be clear to go.
As one of the only other people who’d genuinely consider Ushijima his friend, he was hoping he’d have a good shot of clearing this all up.
He takes a moment to psyche himself up, then knocks on the dorm door.
It only takes a second for Ushijima to open the door for him, looking surprised to see him.
“Leon, hello.”
“Hey, buddy,” Leon says, stepping inside. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he replies. “Did you need something?”
“Just wanted to talk. This… whole… uh… suspension thing is getting a little out of hand, isn’t it?”
Ushijima stares at him, before saying: “I don’t understand.”
“I mean… just… the fact that it’s… going on so long, I would have thought they’d get bored and forget about it by now.”
“Oh. No, they were quite clear. If I don’t apologize they don’t drop the issue.”
“... right.”
“What did you want to talk about?”
“Uh, that, actually,” Leon says. “Those guys must have been… like… hurting that girl, for you to be this up in arms-”
“What?” Ushijima says.
“I said, those guys must have been hurting that girl-”
“What girl?”
“...the girl that was getting - Tendou said you broke some kid’s nose because he was harassing a girl.”
“Oh,” Ushijima said, as if suddenly this all made sense again. “Tendou lied to you.”
Leon nods along. “Ah, that… makes sense in hindsight. So ah… what happened? What matters so much to you that you’re going to risk being kicked out of school?”
Ushijima takes the question at face value, immediately answering-
-He had stepped away to fill up his water bottle, before the long bus ride back to school. He’d heard the rest of the team filing out, though he was pretty sure Tendou had run off to use the bathroom before they left. He should wait for him.
He’s capping his bottle and about to start looking around when he hears a bit of a disturbance, like laughter and jeering, louder than the usual chatter. He turns his head, surprised slightly to see Tendou in the mix with all the noise.
Having come out of the bathroom, he seems to have been distracted by a group of guys. Ushijima starts approaching, and as he does, it becomes more evident what exactly is going on.
“Well if it isn’t the monster freak-”
“I didn’t think they’d let you out of your cage outside of Halloween.”
“Do you guys know this guy?” the third asks.
“Yeah, we went to middle school together,” the first, the ringleader, says. “Dude’s fucked in the head-”
“Ohkay,” Tendou cuts in. “Ha-ha, I get it, whatever, but my actually good team is waiting for me, so I’m gonna get going-”
The ringleader steps in front of him, stopping him from moving. “No, come on, let’s catch up a bit. It’s been so long. I see you finally fixed your hair, though it’s not like exposing more of your face does you any good.”
“Yeah, I’d have grown the bangs longer,” the second boy sneers.
Ushijima has to mentally remind himself that this is a public place, and to not explode. But the instant rage he feels seep into his stomach almost hurts to feel. It’s like the antithesis to the rage he felt on the volleyball court. That, borne out of fun and effort and passion was a pleasant rage. This, though, was ugly. It felt like it could hurt him just by feeling it.
“You’re both so clever, making fun of my face, how original,” Tendou scoffs.
“Well, you just give us so much to work with, I mean… what, you never even considered braces?”
“Let me just say, you two are both very lucky that I’m on my third strike already and can’t risk another infraction, otherwise, I’d-”
“Tendou,” Ushijima calls, making all four of the crowd jump. They whip around to look at him, caught a little off guard by his sudden appearance. He sees Tendou crack a wry smile. “It’s time to go.”
“Oops, sorry guys, looks like I took too long-” Tendou sings, as he pushes himself away from the wall to shove through them and towards Ushijima.
It could have been just that.
The ringleader grabs his arm, as if annoyed at being ignored, annoyed at the fact that he hadn’t managed to get a rise out of him, hadn’t flustered or bothered his victim enough, so he grabs him to yank him back over, saying: “I wasn’t done talking to you!”
And it could have been just that, except Tendou winces, and says: “Ow, hey-” as he’s pulled over, and the moment he hears that noise of genuine pain escape him, Ushijima’s blood is boiling and he’s moving before he can stop himself.
One iron grip on the man’s wrist, forcing him to let go of Tendou, the other slamming into his face before he could even decide if he wanted to or not.
The man shrieks, and pain flares up through Ushijima’s knuckles and wrist, but he shakes it out.
Tendou has covered his mouth with his hands, staring with wide, shocked eyes at him, and then to the man now curling on the ground, clutching a broken nose.
“What the fuck?” the man is wailing. “Holy fuck, what was that? Oh my God, I think you broke me nose- what-”
Ushijima thinks about this, the man’s wailing and crying and complaint and he tries to, for even a second, summon any ouce of empathy or regret for what he’d done, but then the man says:
“What the fuck was that for?”
“You are not allowed to touch him,” Ushijima replies, and that anger has suddenly returned in full force, because how dare this kid act like he had no idea what he’d done to deserve that.
“Ushi-”
Ushijima turns around, and beckons for Tendou to follow him.
“The bus is waiting. Let’s go.”
Leon puts his head in his hand, staring across at him and trying to process this for a second. He thinks, maybe, that this made significantly more sense than Tendou’s lame story, but still…
“I… you’re a good friend, defending him, I… understand why it would feel personal, but it’s not like the kid pulled a knife, he’s… a garden variety bully, Tendou’s over it, and-”
“You are trying to change my mind as well?” Ushijima says.
“Yeah, ‘cause I don’t wanna see you go just because of your pride-”
“It is not my pride,” Ushijima repeats. “I… have tried to explain this before. If I apologize, it invalidates the idea that he did something wrong. It suggests that I should have allowed Tendou to be treated like that, and hurt, and… and I refuse to do that. I will not-”
Leon crosses his arms, tilting his head to the side as he looks at him.
Ushijima notices the sudden change, and though, historically, he’s very bad at reading people, it’s a big enough motion that even he picks up on it.
“What?” Ushijima prompts. “What is it?”
“You’re funny,” Leon replies. “You’re not wrong, so I understand it must have been infuriating having people tell you you were. If you apologize, the kid will feel vindicated and it does indirectly imply that what he did was okay.”
Ushijima nods.
“But you are wrong about the stakes. Ushijima, I’ve known you… three solid years now, and you are very smart, and you are very good and understand facts, but you’ve always been bad with applying that. And this is one of those situations, you’re… dying on the wrong hill. It’s okay if some asshole kid in another school hates Tendou.”
“It’s not okay that they hurt him,” Ushijima replies.
“And you punished him, you broke his nose. I… okay, this is really, hard to do, because the literal facts say you’re right, but this… isn’t one of those two-plus-two situations. And… some fucking how, you’re making the wrong call by standing up for your friend.”
Ushijima opens his mouth to dispute this, and Leon hurries to laugh and say:
“I know! It’s bullshit! And there’s no… way to explain how the world simply isn’t black and white. It’s one of those things, dude, you’ve always struggled with, this is… the literature class of real life. Not everything gets to be math and chemistry. Some of it is poetry.”
Ushijima thinks about this for a moment, before saying: “It feels so wrong to apologize.”
“Then just lie, you don’t have to mean it,” Leon says. “Nobody’s asking you to like that kid, just suck it up and play pretend so you can come back to practice and not get kicked out of the school.”
“But-”
Leon puts a hand on Ushijima’s shoulder, leaning towards him.
“You’re a very good friend,” Leon says, as firmly as he could. “And… apologizing for breaking a kid’s nose won’t make you less of a good friend. Tendou… already knows how much you care about him, but getting kicked out of the club won’t make him happy. He needs you here. We all need you here. More than we need to make some point about respecting boundaries, or… whatever.”
“I don’t think he does,” Ushijima says, a far away look in his eyes.
“Excuse me?”
“Know how much I care, I don’t think he does. I’m… bad at expressing it. And we fought for a long time, but I never managed to convey how I felt about it, and-”
“Woah, dude,” Leon says. “Save it for Tendou. I don’t need to be here for this.”
This, almost, makes Ushijima smile. It doesn’t, actually, but Leon likes to imagine his slightly less completely desolate expression is something akin to a smile.
“And,” he says, after a moment. “If you really can’t bring yourself to do it, just cross your fingers behind your back.”
“...why would I do that?”
Leon blinked, before saying: “because if you cross your fingers when you lie, it means the lie doesn’t count?”
“...how does that work?”
“Like, you say: I’m sorry, but you have your fingers crossed behind your back, so it doesn’t actually count. Like, to God.”
“Hmm.”
---
Perhaps, Leon thinks, as he leaves the room that evening feeling pretty good about himself, he shouldn’t be so cheery about handing Ushijima Wakatoshi a way to lie. It was probably a good thing he’d been so clinically earnest.
Ah, whatever. He was graduating next year. That would be his university team’s problem.
---
Is about four days later, and everyone is getting ready to practice, stretching and running through their warm up routines, when something unusual happens.
Ushijima Wakatoshi shows up for practice.
He’s already changed, and comes out of the locker room as if he isn’t 15 minutes late and supposed to be suspended.
“Woah,” Semi calls. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
Ushijima starts looking around his feet for a cat.
“No,” Semi says. “No no, sorry-”
“Aren’t you suspended?” Shirabu adds, sitting up from his stretch.
“Not anymore,” Ushijima replies. “I had a meeting with the principal this afternoon, and apologized to the… gentleman and his very annoying mother.”
Tendou jerks his head up, shock coursing through him. Really? What? How-?
“Fingers crossed?” Leon calls, a grin across his face.
“That they were,” Ushijima replies.
“That’s my guy,” Leon laughs, heading over to him to clap him on the back “Glad to have you back properly. Jin’s been on a powertrip since you’ve been gone.”
Their poor vice captain, who’d truly done nothing wrong at all and had been more than stressed about this whole affair, gasps in offense.
“Fingers crossed?” Tendou echoes, from where he’s sitting, half stretched. “What’s he talking about.”
“Ah, Leon advised that lies don’t count if you cross your fingers,” he says, watching Tendou as he pushed himself up and headed over to him. “Made it much easier to stomach the task of apologizing.”
Tendou breaks into a grin. “Well I’ll be damned. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
“Well,” Ushijima says, stepping in just a little bit closer than necessary. “Between you and me, I was already on the fence after our conversation. I don’t think it alone would have been enough.”
Tendou smiles slightly. “Oh yeah?”
“I don’t… like the fact that I played a part in making you cry like that. For whatever reason, that is unforgivable, and I-”
Tendou squeaks, lifting his hands up and clamping them over Ushijima’s mouth, looking around hurriedly to their watchful teammates, most of which did not miss what he had said. He feels his face heating up, turning to look back at him and slowly take his hands off a very confused Ushijima’s mouth.
“Let’s… not go around telling anyone anything about that,” he says, chuckling nervously. “I have a reputation to uphold.”
“Oh. Sure,” Ushijima says, though the damage is probably already done.
---
They return to their shared dorm together for the first time in what felt like ages. Tendou is happy to shut the door and the world out behind him, having escaped without having Ushijima tell anyone any specific personal detail about their argument. Ushijima, of course, had fallen right back into the swing of things, and now that he’d had a proper chance to burn all his energy out (Tendou had stayed with him an extra hour and twenty after the end of practice as well), he looked, genuinely, back to his old self.
Tendou leans against their door, watching Ushijima go about the motions of unpacking from the day.
The only thing different, the only thing that remained, was all the good things that he had been feeling. Away is the guilt and shame and fear of the situation, and all he can think of, now, is how sincerely Ushijima was willing to functionally destroy himself for Tendou’s pride. A horrible stupid thing in practice, but one hell of a way to make a guy swoon in theory.
He watches him for a little while longer, before saying:
“I wanted to talk to you,” Tendou says. “About… what happened. About what you did.”
Ushijima seems surprised, straightening up and turning to look at him. “It is over,” he replies. “I apologized and everyone was satisfied. Though, I did not really apologize,” he says. “I would never. Crossed fingers are important.”
“You’re… adorable. Fuck,” Tendou says, which clearly confused Ushijima more than anything else. “Sorry, I just mean… that’s… you… you mean so much to me. And I wanted to thank you for… overcoming your pride on the matter and apologizing so that we could move on.”
“Again,” Ushijima says. “I did not really apologize, according to Leon, it did not count.”
Tendou cannot help but smile more at this. Shit.
“Okay, I get it,” he says. “So… now that I’m not freaking out about losing you from the club, why don’t you tell me more about how you’ll… never let anyone lay a hand on me, or… would never dare insinuate disrespecting me was okay, or whatever the hell else you were going on about a week ago.”
This, to Tendou’s marvel, elicits a real response from Ushijima - he can see the way his ears begin to burn red, as he looks away to busy himself with something that he did not need to be doing.
“I may have said something like that,” Ushijima replies, coughing to cover his embarrassment. “You were trying to convince me you weren’t worth protecting, after all.”
“And you are treating me like a princess!” Tendou laughs, a cackling, obnoxious noise that makes Ushijima blush much harder. “Would you have thrown such a fit if it was Semi that had been insulted?”
“No.”
This makes him raise his eyes, interest piqued even more. “Oh? What, I’m just special because I’m the poor bullied baby? Or is it just because I’m your best friend?”
“It’s because I’m in love with you.”
Tendou feels his voice lodge in his throat, eyes widening all the way, skin immediately going from its usual pallor to a damn near fluorescent shade of red.
“Ex…excuse me?” he manages to croak eventually, though it seems Ushijima has picked now to develop the sensibilities of a normal human being, scratching at the back of his neck as he keeps his eyes averted.
“Of course I would defend Semi should he need me, under any circumstances,” he continues. “But I would give up volleyball for you.”
Each breath he takes feels like far too little for his lungs, and goddamnit, he was at risk for crying twice this month now, but-
He stumbles forward, panicked, grabbing for Ushijima’s hands. “Show me - show me your hands, you’re not crossing your fingers, are you? That… That would be a dirty trick Waka-”
Ushijima lets him take both of his hands, turning them over to hold them in return.
“I am not crossing them,” he says. “I mean what I said. And I understand if you… do not feel the same, but you asked why I made such a big deal out of-”
Tendou already knows what he’s going to say.
You wanted to know, why I cared more about this than anything else in my life.
It’s because I care about you, more than anything else in my life.
It’s because I’m in love with you.
Him. Tendou. Ushijima Wakatoshi was in love with him. And had almost torn his life apart trying to prove it.
So Tendou doesn’t bother forcing him to finish that sentence, instead grabbing his face and pulling him in to kiss him, messy and rushed and completely unpracticed. Tendou doesn’t have any experience with this - with kissing, or with people liking him - but he’s a fast learner and good at guessing, so he figures he’ll be fine.
Ushijima proves his own words immediately by wrapping his arms around him to pull him in flush against his chest, hands spread on his back. Fingers, blissfully, uncrossed. Tendou was going to have to have a conversation with Leon about how they’d undo this newfound evil superpower of Ushijima’s. It was already giving him anxiety.
“This isn’t a trick, right?” Tendou says, pulling away from the kiss suddenly. Ushijima is not a particularly proficient kisser, but he is eager and firm and it’s probably the best thing Tendou has ever been able to do. “You’re not just being nice because I said mean things to you, or… or you’re not just faking it because you think I want it, or… this isn’t…”
“I mean it,” Ushijima said, lifting a hand up to brush his thumb over Tendou’s cheek. “Everything I say.”
Shit. Tendou is crying again.
“You’ve made me cry twice in one month, Wakatoshi,” Tendou says, laughing through the tears. “That is unforgivable, you’re right-”
His thumb brushes the tear off from under his eye, and Tendou cannot help but smile slightly at the touch.
“I should… apologize, then?” Ushijima says, in a playful, confused tone that says he’s trying really hard to keep up with the goofy character Tendou had put on. The effort is admirable, and it’s enough to make Tendou laugh again, leaning in to kiss him.
“And promise me,” he says, after another few seconds. “Promise me you’re not going to go around punching everyone who’s a little mean to me-”
“I cannot promise that.”
“Wakatoshi.”
“I cannot promise that! If you thought my behaviour was bad when it was my best friend that was being targeted, you are not going to like the way I act in defense of my boyfriend.”
Boyfriend. Boyfriend. Boyfriend-
Oh my god that sounds so good.
Suck it, bitchy middle school bullies.
I’ve got a boyfriend.
And he’s gonna break your goddamn noses.
“Promise me,” Tendou repeats, poking at his chest. “I don’t want you getting in this much trouble every time someone is mean to me. Promise me you won’t go around punching out any more bullies.”
Ushijima moves one hand off him, to fold behind his back and out of view.
“I promise.”