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Ryuunosuke knew that he should have been more excited. After all, for a guy that had a hard time just talking to girls two letters in his shoe locker in the same week should have been like the first warm touch of spring.
Instead, he was dragging his feet a little after practice, both hands shoved into the pockets of his track jacket, and his hand clutched tightly around letter number two. At least this girl seemed to actually know who he was, which was more than he could say for the first girl. Although this one also hadn’t left her name so it would be totally awkward if Ryuunosuke couldn’t remember her when he saw her.
The first letter had been exciting, done on a pale pink stationary that smelled of something sweet and undefinably girly, it had been a full page long and sealed in a plain white envelope with an unobtrusive little heart sticker.
Ryuunosuke had been over the moon, and Noya had been almost as excited. He’d cut out of practice just a little early to meet her since she’d set a time before practice was usually over to meet, earning a wink from Suga and a disapproving look from Daichi.
The captain had warned him—had raised his eyebrow and said something like, have you even met this girl, and consider how you’re going to feel when you rushed into a relationship and end up hurting her feelings or getting your own feelings hurt—but he’d assumed that the captain didn’t approve of putting romance before volleyball but he already had a heartbright and had been together with Suga for two whole years so Ryuunosuke had just figured he’d forgotten what it was like to be in the springtime of his youth.
As usual though, Daichi had been right.
The girl, a pretty blushing first year from math club with big glasses and a button nose, had taken one look at him and blanched, and then there had been ten minutes of stuttering through an explanation about how the letter she’d written was not actually for him but for some guy on the student council whose last name was also Tanaka and whose first name had similar kanji.
He’d been pretty embarrassed, and it had been awful when Tsukishima had started teasing him, but the worst part was that for a moment when everything had been laid out in front of him he’d been so, so happy. And now it just felt like the rug had been ripped out from under him.
For the first time in a long time Ryuunosuke was glad that he was heartdark, at least he hadn’t embarrassed himself and made things difficult for Akiko-san with his fledgling feelings.
The second letter had come a few days after the first, shoved haphazardly into his locker between classes, and it wasn’t actually a letter as much as a note.
It was done on paper torn out of an exercise book and wasn’t much more than a time and a place to meet and a polite request. His name was printed on the front in careful kanji, and Ryuunosuke thought the handwriting seemed familiar somehow, although he couldn’t place it. The time was set for a little after volleyball usually ended, and the note mentioned the team, so at least Ryuunosuke could be sure that this person, whoever she was, wasn’t calling out the wrong Tanaka.
But after the last time, well, he was a little scared and it was making him reluctant to turn the corner, and see just who was standing under the basketball hoops waiting for him.
It was like Noya said though, if he let the first disappointment scare him, he’d never have the romance that he’d dreamed of.
Taking a leaf out of Michimiya-san’s book Ryuunosuke brought both his hands up and slapped them over both his cheeks, hard enough to leave stinging red marks, hard enough to clear his head somewhat. Ignite his fighting spirit!
Taking a breath and trying to summon a smile that wasn’t too scary, Ryuunosuke rounded the last corner of the school and blinked in surprise at who he found there.
“Took you long enough,” Ennoshita said from where he was leaning against the closest basketball hoop.
“Ennoshita?”
“Wasn’t what you were expecting, was I?”
Ryuunosuke frowned, his hand clenching tighter around the note in his pocket, “If this is some kind of joke, Ennoshita, I’ll kick your ass I swear.”
“Come on, Tanaka, I’m not an asshole like Tsukishima,” he said, “This isn’t a joke, it’s a confession.”
“You’re confessing—”
“Yes,” said Ennoshita, a blush blooming across his cheeks, “Now shut up and lemme talk for a sec.”
Ryuunosuke felt his brows unfurrow as he watched Ennoshita looking everywhere but at him. He was visibly sweating, and shaking and he just looked, super-nervous, like more nervous than the day he’d turned up at practice after months of being absent. More nervous than when they were stepping out to play against Dateko that first time.
“Tanaka Ryuunosuke,” he started, his voice determinedly steady, “I have really liked you for what seems like forever now. I admire your passion, I envy your determination, I really love your sense of humor and your fighting spirit, and I think your scary face is stupidly cute.”
“You never said—”
“Please, just—” he took a deep breath, “I was never going to say anything. I mean, we’re on the same team and you have your shirt off like all the time, if there was some mutual feelings between us I would know by now, right? Why confess when you know for sure you’ll be rejected? But then you got that stupid love-letter and I was just so angry—and it really…hurt. It hurt that you would be all excited about some girl you’d never even met when I’d been right in front of you loving you all this time…And then I realized I was being a coward. I mean, I had no right to cry over you if I didn’t even have the balls to confess. So, that being said—Tanaka Ryuunosuke, I like you. Please go out with me.”
He even bowed, bending at a perfectly correct angle and then straightening, his expression set.
Ryuunosuke didn’t know what to say first, his thoughts buzzed around his head like a swarm of bees, no settling long enough for him the make sense of them. Most prominent was the soft fuzzy feeling in his chest he sometimes got around Ennoshita when he did something cool like this even though he was scared, and the furious whizzing: ‘He likes me?’
“I can see you overthinking it. Please just say somethi—”
“Okay,” blurted Ryuunosuke.
“Okay?”
“Okay, I’ll go out with you. Sounds like fun,” he grinned, letting that fuzzy feeling fill him up and warm his chest.
Ennoshita rolled his eyes, “Don’t just say that like you’ve got nothing better to do. I know you don’t feel that way about me and I’m not expecting you to go along at my pace.”
“Like I would,” countered Ryuunosuke, snorting.
He took a few steps forward and bumped Ennoshita’s shoulder in what was meant to be a reassuring motion. But just made the other boy blush furiously.
It took a minute for Ryuunosuke to figure out why.
Ennoshita was just wearing the thin white gym t-shirt instead of his usual long-sleeved sweatshirt and his track jacket was unzipped for once. Through the thin cotton the pale blue-grey glow of Ennoshita’s heartshine was shockingly visible, pulsating in time with the rapid thudding of his teammate’s heart.
He ducked his head, the flush crawling up over the back of his neck and ears.
“Ah, sorry, I didn’t realize—”
“Stupid,” said Ryuunosuke, softly, feeling a bit embarrassed himself, “It makes me really happy.”
“It’s embarrassing, being the only one like this,” Ennoshita murmured, pulling a little away until the light faded.
“Ah, sorry,” Ryuunosuke said, rubbing at the back of his head, “I’m heartdark, like my Ma so it’s always gonna kind of be like this, but, uh, here.”
Thinking quickly, he grabbed Ennoshita by the wrist and tugged him closer, setting his hand against the pulse pounding furiously at his neck.
“You’re not the only one who feels something.”
Ennoshita was staring up at him a little incredulously, his dark eyes round and a faintly shocked look on his face.
Ryuunosuke felt himself blushing harder, his pulse kicking up another notch.
“I felt that,” murmured Ennoshita, “I’m seriously not imagining things, right?”
“Don’t think so,” shrugged Ryuunosuke.
Ennoshita was heartbright again, the glow of his feelings illuminating his face. It was really pretty.
“You’re heartdark,” repeated Ennoshita, laughing, and suddenly Ryuunosuke had a good armful of skinny volleyball player, as Ennoshita looped his arms around his neck and squeezed him tightly, “I am an idiot.”
He muttered into the curve of Ryuunosuke’s neck, and that was doing interesting things to his stomach. Tentatively Ryuunosuke wrapped his arms around Ennoshita’s wiry but slender frame.
“Does this mean we can go out, or are you gonna fuss some more first?” he asked curiously.
“Shut up,” laughed Ennoshita, pulling away to punch him on the shoulder, and then dragging his head down for a kiss.
And Ryuunosuke figured that if this was what they were going to be doing anyway then it probably didn’t matter whether they were technically going out or not.