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Hinata groans as Kei continues going through his baggage, not making any move to be as quick as Hinata wants him to be.
“Now you’re just messing with us,” Hinata accuses, pointing a finger at him as he looks through his baggage again.
“What do you mean, I’m just deciding if I brought enough,” Kei says breezily, not even attempting to look convincing as he thumbs the clothes in the bag.
“Tsukki, you’re going home . You have clothes there! Let’s go,” Hinata complains, pulling at Kei’s arm and 10 months ago he would’ve stared him down with enough force to kill a man, but instead he simply lets himself become dead weight.
“We’re not even late though,” he retorts.
“Still! If we get stuck in traffic it’s your fault.” Hinata lets go and Kei flops back on his bed, one of the two they have in the dorm room they shared for the duration of the year.
“You can just leave me here,” he says, with no ounce of shame. “I’d rather rot here anyway.”
Kageyama, who has been on Hinata’s bed scrolling through his phone the whole time he was trying to get Kei up and going, finally speaks up.
“Is it that bad?” he asks, and Kei rolls his eyes on pure instinct at the allusion to his hometown. He looks across to where Kageyama is.
The man in question is leaning against the headboard, his head tilted towards where him and Hinata have been talking, eyebrows raised at Kei. He sits up, and sends a deadpan look at Kageyama that screams “you don’t say.”
Hinata sits down on the edge next to kageyama.
“Wanna talk about it?” Kei directs his deadpan stare to Hinata and this time, it’s much more weighty.
“I’m trying to help!” Hinata says defensively, and Kei tones the attitude down.
“Yeah, okay. Whatever,” he says instead, and Yamaguchi enters the dorm room.
“Hey, are you guys done?” Yamaguchi says, his travel bags dropping to the floor next to the foot of the bed before looking over all of them.
“We would be, but Tsukki is being difficult!” Hinata whines, and Kei lets out a small ‘tch’.
“Tsukki,” Yamaguchi warns and he sighs.
“Fine,” he says, making a show of zipping his baggage shut, the zip obnoxiously loud as the aircon whirs in the background and the students chatter excitedly outside the room, the sound of wheels on the floor evident as well.
“Finally,” Kageyama comments, and Kei glares.
“Seriously though, Tsukki, would you be okay?” Hinata asks as Yamaguchi runs by Kageyama how he left their own dorm room.
“No,” Kei says without hesitation.
“Stop being dramatic. You’ll be fine,” Yamaguchi says in the same tone.
“Speak for yourself,” he mutters, getting up.
They all head down to the train station, and ride the bullet train all the way back to their respective hometowns, with Hinata talking their ears off about how Kageyama is meeting his mother and sister for the second time now since they started their relationship 5 or so months ago. Kei, who normally would’ve been at least listening and at most making jabs at Kageyama for being obviously flustered, sits to the farthest side of their small group, and plugs his headset in to listen to music so he can steel his nerves.
It’s not that he’s nervous though, it’s the fact that he absolutely hates the culture in his hometown. Everyone was probably conservative, homophobic, sexist, or all of the above, and Kei absolutely loathes having to breathe the same air as those people. He always felt suffocated living in that town, always felt alienated just for having more common sense, because God forbid that a man becomes a stay-at-home husband as his brother did, and a man stares at another man a little bit longer just as Kei once had for Yamaguchi.
A good 30 minutes into their travel, he feels a familiar weight on his shoulder. He slowly turns his head, takes in Hinata snoring on Kageyama’s shoulder, Kageyama’s closed eyes as he leans his head on Hinata’s, and finally Yamaguchi’s loosening grasp on his bag strap, whose head inevitably fell on Kei’s shoulders as he drifted off.
He turns back, watches the window across as the scenery slowly changes and the green starts multiplying in numbers, and the rest of the trip is silent.
Once they get off the train, Hinata and Kageyama part from Yamaguchi and Kei with one enthusiastic goodbye from Hinata, and when Yamaguchi and Kei see their hometown one bus ride later, Kei is immediately reminded of how plainly bleak everything is.
See, countryside has its perks: fresh air, refreshing green scenery, clear skies, basically an absolute picture of peace. Everything good about it ends there, because then you meet the people and for a newcomer they’d seem nice, and on some level it’s true.
Their beliefs, however? Absolute shit.
Women cater to their husbands and children. A man and a woman are made for each other. Everyone’s destiny is to one day, have kids, and basically slave away to their spouses for the rest of their life. Anything else is scandalous to them.
To their credit, it’s not always like that. God knows how bleak everything still was even after Akiteru came out as bisexual and Kei came out as pansexual to their parents. but God also knows how people stared, how people sneaked homophobia in between sentences and behind closed doors. Just the thought of it made Kei want to throw up.
“Stop thinking, I can hear you from here,” Yamaguchi suddenly says, and Kei narrows his eyes at him.
“I hate this place,” Kei says simply.
“You love your family more than you hate this place,” Yamaguchi reminds him. “Besides, look at the bright side! I’m still here, you know? So is my family! And it’s only a couple of months until we go back to college, so if I were you I’d make the most out of it before we go back to that ,” Yamaguchi continues, face twisting at the thought of multiple essays that are waiting for them back home. Kei is silent for a moment, regarding Yamaguchi who continues to walk with his eyes ahead, before slowly turning back to the road while an involuntary smirk comes out.
He still feels pissed, sure, but Yamaguchi’s right. It’s only a little bit of time. He’ll be fine.
“How is the first part a bright side? You give yourself too much credit,” he says instead, and Yamaguchi turns to him with a squawk, as Kei purposely strides faster.
“Can you slow down?! You’re so annoying,” Yamaguchi huffs as he quickened his pace.
“Just grow taller.”
Tsukki laughs out loud for the first time as Yamaguchi squawks in mock offense yet again.
He finally loses some of his annoyance of being back here, however, once he’s greeted by his mother.
His brother is nowhere to be found due to fetching Saeko, is what his mom tells him before shooing him to his room and telling Yamaguchi to go on ahead and go home to his parents as well.
They say their goodbyes, and as Yamaguchi walks out of the door, Kei turns the other way and goes deeper into their family home to get to his room.
Kei’s childhood room is, just like everything since he had his growth spurt back in high school, small and a little cramped.
A shelf to the side full of both textbooks, comics, and novels he’s read and reread a couple times throughout his life, and on top of those the dinosaur figurines he used to collect as a kid that he never really threw out. A few posters stay stuck on the dirty white of his walls. A TV sits in the corner on top of a desk, and under it a stack of DVDs and a few more dinosaur figurines that lost their place on the shelf. There’s also crayon scribbles on the far corner of the room, and a few on the doorway back when they were keeping track of their height. It was nostalgic, to say the least, and Kei finds himself unwinding just a tiny bit more as he finally places his baggage just between the door and the TV.
He stands in the midst of it all, breathes in, and looks up at the faded glow in the dark stars precariously holding on.
Welcome home, I guess , Kei thinks to himself, before scoffing and flopping down on his bed, wincing when it creaks loudly under his sudden weight.
Kei then wonders how long it would be until he gets used to these painfully boring summers.
He doesn’t really want to know.
A few days pass by quickly, his hands full with Akiteru and Yamaguchi being constant annoyances as they gang up on him, and before he knows it, Sunday comes and apparently they have to go to the chapel.
“Do I have to go?” Kei says petulantly.
His mother stares him down.
He goes anyway.
The service is mind-numbing, and without even Akiteru trying to rile him up, Kei just stares off into the distance, says his prayers along with everyone else, complies until it’s time to go. People welcome him back, and he smiles politely and nothing else. Everything basically goes right over his head, and when Akiteru finally takes pity on him, he calls their mother’s attention from where she’s talking to some middle aged man and convinces her to let them eat at a diner. She agrees, letting them off the hook for once, and they make their way to the nearest one.
Kei is, for once, pleasantly surprised.
For one, the diner is a place he actually hasn’t seen before, and when he asks his brother, Akiteru tells him that it was actually the lot that was under construction before Kei left for college. Kei nods in acknowledgement, and looks around, taking it all in. He sees different people, people that aren’t as clean cut and soft spoken as those in the chapel service, and a band plays a song that puts the diner in a very chill mood.
Akiteru tells him to pick a table in the various free ones and invite Yamaguchi if he wants to. He does so.
Yamaguchi responds fairly quickly, telling him how Hinata and Kageyama actually surprised him at his house after seeing there’s no one at the Tsukishimas’ and Kei agrees to let them come along without bothering to tell Akiteru. His brother won’t mind anyway.
As he waits, a group of people his age laugh loudly, and he only frowns at them by instinct before glancing back down at his phone and entertaining Hinata’s texts of greetings. He doesn’t notice how a certain raven haired man gets interested with him as his friends mock him about it.
“Hey Tsukki! Oh hi!” Hinata, with all his loudness, suddenly had Kei looking up from his phone to look at them greet his brother, who was waiting for their order. Yamaguchi must have texted his brother as well, because he hears Akiteru ask if they want anything else to eat; and as Hinata, Kageyama (after waving at Kei to which he responded with a middle finger raised), and Yamaguchi crosses the distance from the glass doors to the counter where Akiteru stands, Kei’s eyes accidentally catch unto interested brown ones.
His breath stops for a second, and time slows down.
Kei will never admit to a lot of things; this isn’t an exception. However, Kei would be lying to himself if he didn’t acknowledge that this man is easily the most attractive man he’s seen in town, and if this man’s... everything, screamed trouble, then sue him; because Kei will never ever admit to a lot of things, and with that he is glad to say that he will never in a million years admit that he’s a total sucker for all that this man is. So sue him, if he likes the way this man stares, like he’s about to eat Kei alive.
Sue him, if he feels a good chill run down his spine, from the way this guy slowly smirks, slightly bites his lips.
Sue him if he thinks the messy hair adds to the whole image of the best kind of trouble, how the piercings on his brow and ears makes him feel a little feverish.
It’s a second of eye contact, but goddamn if it didn’t spark like a live wire that touched water, because Kei can taste the tension on his tongue when the guy acknowledges his stare with a raise of a pierced brow and a small wink, and the tips of his ears grow hot.
He watches the guy’s friends shove at him, point at him and basically just make fun of this man and the man looks away after a particularly hard thump on the back to shove a man with white-tipped hair back as they cackle shamelessly.
“Do you know them, Kei?” Yamaguchi suddenly asks.
He looks up at Yamaguchi from where’s sitting as both him and Akiteru put trays of food down, only a little bit startled that they were there. Kei hopes he isn’t as red as he fears he is.
“Nope,” Kei says simply, taking the strawberry milkshake from the tray.
“You sure? That one guy was staring at you,” Akiteru asks further, and he can’t help but look back at the man, who was still being made fun of-- save by one who has blonde tipped hair that reached his shoulders. His lips quirk up before he can control it.
“Huh, was he?” He says.
“Totally! Do you think he finds you hot?” Hinata says bluntly, voice loud enough to be heard if the people with the man they’re talking about stop laughing. He whips his head towards Hinata, cheeks suddenly flaming with embarrassment.
“Can you not be loud?” Kei hisses at him.
“Why? Scared you’ll be heard?” Kageyama teases, and Kei rolls his eyes at him.
“Are you braindead?” Kei jabs back, and Akiteru intervenes.
“Chill out, brother of mine!” Akiteru says as he pats Kei’s shoulder from where he sits beside him, and he clicks his tongue.
“Keep your voice down, that’s embarrassing,” Kei mutters before sipping at his milkshake.
They begin catching up and Kei is thankful for the familiarity of it all, even with Akiteru there with his friends. He fits in quite well, which made Kei’s skin crawl a little. The band, after some more time, runs out of songs and thanks everyone for listening to them, which is only a fair amount but Kei supposes it still counts, so he politely claps along with everybody.
Just in front of the stage, the man’s group of friends stand up.
Kei probably should’ve seen it coming, especially now that he takes the time to look at their get-ups, but he turns away from them to give Hinata and Akiteru his full attention as they begin talking about cooking (since apparently Hinata had started learning how to cook). Then he gives the stage his full attention a whole minute after, because then a low raspy but somehow velvety voice speaks into the microphone.
“Mic test, mic test, 1, 2, 3,” the man he stared at speaks into the microphone before turning to the rest of the band to nod at them. The man turns to the crowd then, speaking into the microphone.
“Good morning everyone! How are you doing today?” he asks, and the audience holler and whistle in lieu of an answer. He laughs, and the chuckle is low, rough, and if Kei wasn’t attracted already a while ago, well.
He definitely is now.
“Not an answer, but we’re glad you’re having fun!” he says good-naturedly, and the members laugh along with the audience. Kei could tell that being charming is natural to him, and normally Kei maybe wouldn’t be as invested as he is now but for some reason, he is.
A part of him is very intrigued about where these men came from, why they’re here, and especially why that man looked so interested in him, and Kei is hellbent on finding out as much as he could from this one time occurrence.
Besides, this is the best thing that ever happened in this whole goddamn town, so Kei is going to milk this as much as he could before everything goes back to what it is.
“Jokes aside, let me introduce the band. Here’s our drummer, Bokuto Koutarou, and let’s give him a round of applause because he loves that,” the man says teasingly.
Everyone complies, laughing as the drummer- Bokuto- plays a small rhythm on the drums and, true to the black-haired man’s words, seems to enjoy the applause even if the other members laugh at him. It’s easy to see that their dynamic is definitely a crazy and entertaining one.
“Next up is our keyboardist, Sakusa Kiyoomi! Don’t whistle at him too much though, because he’s dating our bassist, Miya Atsumu and he will not hesitate to bark at you!” The man, who’s yet to introduce himself, gets shoved by Miya and Sakusa rolls his eyes at them. They both wave to the audience, while Bokuto keeps a low rhythm that gets everyone reeled in for the performance.
“Of course we cannot forget my fellow guitarist, Semi Eita on rhythm,” the crowd cheers as he shows off with a riff before waving to the crowd. “And me!” He grins.
“Kuroo Tetsurou, your lead guitarist and main vocalist, at your service,” he finishes with a wink, and everyone present cheers. Along with the audience, Hinata and Akiteru hype the band up, and as Yamaguchi comments on how lively their band is, Kei quietly agrees as he waits. The man- Kuroo- turns to his direction, and he simply smirks before sipping his drink.
Kuroo’s grin turns predatory, challenging, and Kei finds that he doesn’t mind the attention, feels the adrenaline rush kicking in and something akin to excitement fills his chest.
“So that’s what that was,” Yamaguchi teases him.
“You’re seeing things,” Kei tells him as he continues to drink, and just as Yamaguchi scoffs at him, the band begins to play an instrumental.
“We’re InDebt-94, and for our first song we have Toes by Lights. Sit back and relax, and enjoy the show!” The crowd cheers once more, now that more people from different sides of town are pouring in, and Kei finds himself going along and just losing himself in that small seat in a diner on the outskirts of town.
And for some unknown reason, Kuroo’s voice enchants Kei, reels him in more. It’s not just that, but in the way that he sings as if it’s for Kei. Call him narcissistic, but it’s undeniable in the way that even when Kuroo sings to the crowd, his gaze always comes back to him.
“Oh, you capture my attention–
–carefully listening, don’t wanna miss a thing,” Kuroo sings, before coming back to Kei. his brown eyes bear into his own, implication heavy on his tongue and in the way that his lips curl into a smile at Kei.
“Keeping my eyes on you.”
Kei doesn’t understand how this man does it, how he managed to pique Kei’s interest enough to get to this point, enough that once he’s here it’s almost inevitable; the way his heart skips a beat, the incapability to breathe, as if Kuroo’s hand is wrapped around his lungs.
And when Kuroo sings it, directly staring at him again, he can’t help but take the bait. He should be mortified, to be honest, because at this rate Akiteru, Yamaguchi, and most of all Hinata and Kageyama probably already noticed the stares sent his way but he can’t seem to care.
“I’m anticipating, I’m watching, I’m waiting–
–for you to make a move.”
Kei hides his smile behind his last sip of his drink.
He makes his move.
“I’m buying another drink, do you guys want anything?” Kei suddenly pipes up in the midst of the applause, and after confirming their orders and getting their share, he makes his way to the counter with a goal in mind.
In the background, InDebt-94 starts a new song.
This time it’s much more heavier, with a beat that makes the diner thrum as the bass rings out in loud volume, and it would be so easy to fall into the rhythm.
Kei thinks about it, a small thought, dancing in the heat like the people who gathered around the stage, but that wasn’t really his style. Never was.
It wasn’t his style to flirt with band vocalists either, but it didn’t matter.
Something about Kuroo– whether it be his stares, his voice, or just his overall troublemaker appearance– makes him want to try the things that he knows he’s capable of but don’t for the sake of avoiding judgement from this town’s people, stokes the fire in him that seeks .
And he’s willing to find out where this could go, and where this could take him.
So he comes up to the counter, orders the food, and after that leans towards the one working there.
“Do they take requests?” Kei asks, nudging his head towards the stage, and the person smiles.
“They sure do! Here, just write it down and I’ll hand it over to them.” He’s given a scrap of paper and a pen which he uses to scribble quickly. He hesitates, before adding something else.
Your move.
After all is done, Kei looks up to see the vocalist looking at him.
Curious, huh? He thinks to himself, raising an eyebrow at him and offering only a barely there but mischievous smile.
He looks away before he could see Kuroo’s response, taking the food given to him and thanking the cashier before going back to his friends.
And for the second time that afternoon, he finds himself enchanted, because just like he wanted, Kuroo takes the move for what it is.
And that’s how he finds himself beholding the attention of one tall, hot, raven-haired vocalist as he sings his request.
Kei finds himself falling harder and harder, for those eyes that seem to see through him, that know just how to get him to look at him, and him only. It should be mortifying, especially how it’s all happening in front of his friends and his brother, but somehow he doesn’t mind, because he can’t find it in himself to care for other things besides the way Kuroo sings the next lyrics, eyes boring into his, full of meaning, as if he feels the same way Kei does.
Kei decides then and there that doesn’t want this to end here, wants to see everything else Kuroo has to offer.
“Anything you say can and will be held against you–
– so only say my name .”
And in a moment of weakness, he mouths it. Hides it behind his glass, under the steady thrum of the drums and the beat, keeps it close to him.
He finds that he very much likes the sound of it.
“Kuroo Tetsurou.”
Behind the glass of his strawberry milkshake, he smiles.
Because no amount of dessert can live up to how sweet that name is on his tongue.
The sunset looks beautiful outside by the time InDebt-94’s performance ends.
The crowd cheers before finally settling down as much as a crowd would in the face of another band’s performance, and Kei is unfortunately not left unscathed from the teasing and jabbing they did. He rolls his eyes per usual, and throws some little jabs back, but for the most part his mind is preoccupied by the vocalist who managed to make him fall maybe a tiny bit, or at most make Kei very attracted to him. There’s a lot of grey area, and he thinks ‘ what happens now? ’
He’s not really sure himself, either.
But here he is anyway, in the dingy bathroom of the diner, washing his hands as he tries to get a grip on himself.
He’s rinsing his hands just as the door opens, but Kei’s stuck in his own mental loop of getting a grip to even look up.
All he hears is how the footsteps hesitate, close in then stop, but he doesn’t really give it much thought until he’s turning to grab some paper towels and the person calls out to him.
“Tsukki, right?” The person says, almost hesitantly, giving him enough room to not feel trapped in the small space they’re in.
He stops in his tracks, and then slowly continues to wipe off and throw the used towels in the trash before turning around.
He stares, mouth slightly dropping open at the sight.
Kuroo Tetsurou stands maybe a couple feet away, smiling sheepishly, scratching at his nape.
It takes one beat for him to gain his bearings back and raise an eyebrow at him. It’s there again, that sense of excitement, but he reels it in, curious to see how Kuroo is behind the crowd. He schools his face into a stoic one.
“How’d you know that?” Kei asks.
“That’s what the short guy with orange hair called you when he came in, so,” Kuroo trails off, his hand lifting to point with his thumb back to the entrance of the bathroom. His other hand remains in his pocket.
“Eavesdropper,” Kei teases, and Kuroo stares for a bit.
Kei watches in amusement how Kuroo looked uncertain for a while on what to say until he saw the look on Keii’s face, whatever it is. It may have been Kei’s uncontrolled quirk of the lips that got him to loosen up, because Kuroo relaxes his stance, bites back.
“Not really eavesdropping when you shout it though.” Kei raises an eyebrow at him.
“Still is when it wasn’t meant for you, isn’t it?”
Kuroo looks at him in amusement before putting both his hands in his pockets and smirking.
“Is that so?” He takes a step forward. Kei doesn’t move a single step back.
“‘Course” He replies chastely.
The air between them is heavy, full of tension that they both obviously want to explore. Neither backs down nor breaks eye contact, and even when Kuroo does look down at the floor in between as he clears his throat, the tension doesn’t break.
“So, Tsukki-“
“Don’t call me that.”
Kuroo hums, questioning. “Why not?”
“My name’s Tsukishima Kei. It’s my last name and I have a brother, so no,” Kei reasons, and the amusement never leaves Kuroo’s face. He hums in consideration.
“Can I call you Kei then?” He asks cheekily. Kei clicks his tongue, rolls his eyes at him.
“We’re not close,” he tells Kuroo, and the man’s grin goes from cheeky to full of meaning.
“We can change that,” he says, voice low as he steps one more step closer, the tension in the air becomes heavier.
Kei never moves.
“Oh really now?” Kei says, not backing down from the challenge that is flirting with Kuroo Tetsurou, and the man clearly likes it, if his grin is anything to go by on.
“Yeah,” Kuroo replies, voice still low, and it’s raspy enough to make him shiver. “We can start by exchanging numbers,” he suggests, and grins when Kei chuckles, even though it’s teasing.
“Is this always how you ask for people’s numbers?” Kei asks, jabs at him, like he always does.
“Nah, just you,” Kuroo says, grinning like a cat that’s got its cream.
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Kei replies even as he fetches his phone from his pocket and offers it to Kuroo.
“Lies,” Kuroo disagrees, and pointedly reaches for the phone.
Fingertips touch, and goosebumps rise at how Kuroo’s eyes come back up to meet his after glancing down.
They exchange numbers, and this time Kuroo smiles genuinely. It makes Kei’s heart skip a beat, makes him want to know more about the softer side of Kuroo that is definitely there, waiting to be found by him, and he wants .
“Your brother’s finding for you,” Kuroo says.
Kei looks down at his phone, and there is a text from his brother asking him what’s taking him so long. He doesn’t bother replying, putting it back in his pocket and staring pointedly at Kuroo.
“Eavesdropping.” Kuroo laughs.
“Sorry,” he says without any ounce of shame.
“I’ll see you around then?” Kuroo asks, and he hears the hope in his voice.
Kei decides then that this man is worth keeping around, worth discovering, worth knowing, and– maybe even– worth every single thing.
“Sure,” Kei says noncommittal, but Kuroo grins all the same.
He takes a step back, then two, and as he pulls the door open he waves back at Kei, over his shoulder, and leaves.
That’s when Kei lets himself feel.
The pounding of his heart, the rising blood in his cheeks, the involuntary smile making itself known.
He thinks back on every single thing that’s happened since he entered this damn diner in the town he truly hated and decides that maybe, it’s not so bad after all.
Or, at least, Kuroo makes it not so bad after all.
Kei lets go and smiles, clutches the phone in his pocket tight.
This summer is bound to be an eventful one, and Kei can’t wait to find out what it has to offer.