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Tsukishima is going to break up with him. Tadashi knows this.
He’s known it since the minute they kissed in Tsukishima’s apartment last summer, the very instant Tsukishima’s sweaty palm slid up his thigh and Tadashi sighed into his mouth like he’d never take in another breath after it.
We had a good run, a great run, the best run of my life, Tsukki, Tadashi will say when Tsukishima lowers his hand and drops the blade through the guillotine, and I’ll never love someone the way I love you!
Tadashi patches together four different goodbye speeches. He readies himself for the news headlines the morning after the inevitable happens: Cool, Gorgeous College Student Finally Cuts Freckled Loser Loose. He even writes a couple mushy, long-winded love letters with no names so if Hinata finds them stashed in his nightstand, Tadashi can say they're for a class project or something.
Tadashi is fucking prepared.
* * * * *
“There are more ants on my plum than actual plum,” says Tsukishima. “Remind me why we have to eat on the ground when there’s a perfectly good—albeit small—bench right there?”
“It only counts as a picnic if you’re sitting on the ground, Tsukki.”
Tsukishima flicks a fruit fly from the orange slice Tadashi holds. “Is that so?”
“That is definitely so,” Tadashi insists, beaming.
Tsukishima hums. Tadashi glows at the soft, familiar sound. He shifts onto his knees and the dry autumn grass crunches beneath him. In the distance, the neon pink sign above Wags and Whiskers glares against the pale grey sky.
“We should start bringing Zelda with us when we do this, you know?”
“Why’s that?”
“She’ll be our de-buggifier. She can march circles around us and blip,” Tadashi sticks his tongue out at Tsukishima, “show them all who’s boss. And it’s a win-win situation because she gets something out of it too. She’ll be our little guard dog. Except green.”
“And as big as my hand,” adds Tsukishima.
“And a lizard,” Tadashi finishes cheerfully.
Tsukishima coughs a laugh around the only bite of plum he’d managed to get before the ants overtook it. Tadashi grins and leans back on his hands. Tsukishima turns and stares, wide eyes more umber than gold in the absence of sunshine. Tadashi falls anyway, only half a second away from clutching his hand over his wild heart to prevent its attempted escape from his ribcage.
“Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima begins as Tadashi wonders if his insurance covers something like that. “How long has Kageyama been living with you and Hinata now?”
“Fifteen days,” Tadashi answers automatically.
Tsukishima blinks. “That was fast.”
“Yeah, well. I only know because that’s how many socks I’m missing.”
“Fifteen pairs of socks?”
“Individual socks. Individual socks, Tsukki.”
“What the fuck?”
“No idea,” Tadashi sighs.
Tsukishima plucks their invaded fruits from the grass and tucks them into a brown paper bag, neat and concise. Tadashi admires the way his pale skin stretches over his knuckles. He drags his eyes up Tsukishima’s arms and watches a mark he’d left on his neck two nights ago, already an ugly purple that’s quickly becoming Tadashi’s favorite color on the spectrum. The bruise hides behind his collar as Tsukishima shifts to face him.
“Hey,” he says and Tadashi meets his eyes. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Here it comes, realizes Tadashi, sinking into the dead grass beneath him, and I totally lied—I am so not prepared. No more picnics, no more plums, no more escaping from Hinata and Kageyama’s antics at Tsukishima’s apartment. No more umber eyes and pretty purple hickeys. Nope, no more, no more, not anymore—
“Um!” he shouts, so sudden that Tsukishima flinches. “I think my break’s over!”
Tsukishima checks his watch—white face on a black band (So hip! So cool!)—and tuts.
“You’ve got ten minutes, Yamaguchi.”
“Still! Bokuto’s consolidating the finches into one cage today, you know, and there are probably at least three flying around the shop right now.”
Tsukishima all but pouts. “I think Akaashi can handle it.”
“Please. Akaashi’s so weak for Bokuto he probably let him free them.”
“I doubt that.”
“Because you’ve got a good heart, Tsukki. That’s why they call you good-hearted Tsukki,” Tadashi babbles, jumping to his feet. “Tall, hot, good-hearted Tsukki.”
“You call me that.”
“And don’t you forget it! Now if you’ll excuse me—”
Tadashi leans over and plants a loving smooch on the very top of Tsukishima’s head before hurrying across the parking lot, rampant heart stuck somewhere between his chest and twirling stomach.
* * * * *
“Tsukishima’s breaking up with me,” Tadashi frets, gnawing on his thumbnail.
Bokuto stops sweeping to gawk at him, eyebrows hiked up to his multicolored hairline. He shakes his head back and forth, back and forth, in time with the broom he drags across the tiled floor.
“Yamaguchi, Yamaguchi, Yamaguchi,” he lilts, “I keep telling you not to drink apple juice before bed.”
“It wasn’t a dream! This is real life!”
“Yeah, right. The day Tsukishima breaks up with you is the day I break up with Akaashi! Right, Akaashi?”
Tadashi finds the tiniest granule of relief in the fact that Bokuto refuses to believe him.
“I don’t like that you’re mentioning that at all,” Akaashi drones from the cat supply aisle, clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other. There’s a feather wand tucked behind his ear that Tadashi’s pretty sure is supposed to be the latter. He mentions this and Akaashi swiftly switches the two.
“Seriously, Yamaguchi, I think you’re freaking out for no reason,” Bokuto tells him.
Akaashi agrees, “I wouldn’t worry.”
Tadashi looks between the two of them and takes a deep breath. It does fuck all to cushion his spiked nerves. He leans against the front counter and breathes some more, leaping out of his skin when there’s a loud splat from the back of the shop.
“I got it!” Hinata calls. “I got it, I got it! I can handle it! Don’t come back here!”
Tadashi moves but Akaashi holds a hand up.
“I’ll handle it,” he insists coolly.
Tadashi gives him a grateful wave and Bokuto zips over to his side. The broom’s bristles bend harshly where Bokuto leans all his weight onto the handle. They look like they’re in pain. Tadashi wants to push Bokuto over and be their savior. Fear not, little bristles! I am not about to buy a fourth broom within a single year! Be strong—be strong for Tadashi!
Bokuto nudges him with an elbow and watches Akaashi saunter to the back of the shop.
“See? I’m never breaking up with him. So there’s nothing to worry about with Tsukishima, okay?”
Tadashi nods and nods and nods some more, all the while thinking that Bokuto severely underestimates just how good he is at worrying about nothing.
* * * * *
“Looking for something?” Tsukishima asks of the hands Tadashi slides into his back pockets.
“Nope. Found it.”
Plastic clacks loudly as Tsukishima stacks CD upon CD atop the kitchen counter, separating them into piles with no discernible method as far as Tadashi can tell. Clack. Tadashi digs his fingers into the black denim stretched over Tsukishima’s butt.
“You’re kind of distracting,” Tsukishima tells him. Clack.
“Only kind of?”
Tsukishima hums. Tadashi slips his hands from Tsukishima’s pockets, spins and—clack—hops up onto the counter next to the random piles. The drone of the television floats through the doorway to the living room. Tadashi listens to the monotonous yet overdrawn voices of actors who died decades ago, wondering just how Tsukishima would look in a flannel suit and bowler hat. I’m not sure who killed the ill-tempered landlord, Detective Tsukki, Tadashi hears himself crow while draped becomingly over the doorframe, but won’t you come in for a drink?
“I suppose there are worse distractions,” Tsukishima answers.
“Like dead landlords,” Tadashi supplies.
“Sure. Okay.”
“Did I say that out loud?”
Clack. “Yes.”
Tadashi lets his socked heels bounce against the cabinet face below. He waits until Tsukishima’s divided up the CDs in his hands and then reaches over, loops his finger under the collar of his t-shirt and pulls him to stand between his legs.
“You’re gradually becoming more distracting,” he says, palms warm on Tadashi’s knees.
“Do you own a bowler hat?” Tadashi wonders.
Tsukishima shrugs a shoulder. “I look terrible in most hats.”
Tadashi’s kind of grateful. The only exception is his one white baseball cap, Tadashi concedes, and solely because of the cute tuft of hair that peeks through when Tsukishima wears it backwards. He would surely come to resent hats if Tsukishima started wearing them because they’d hide his hair; Tadashi’s most cherished, intoxicating, familiar and exceptional white blond hair that he sweeps his fingers through now.
“Mm,” buzzes Tsukishima and a wildfire kindles in Tadashi’s belly.
Tadashi could play with it for hours. Tsukishima’s hair is his favorite toy.
“So, listen,” Tsukishima says, head bobbing lazily under Tadashi’s fingertips, “I know you like your picnics and stuff, but there’s this place I want to go for dinner sometime soon. With you.”
Tadashi’s fingers still. “A restaurant?”
“No. It’s a food truck in an empty parking lot in a really bad neighborhood.” Tadashi squints and drives his fingertips more firmly through fine blond strands, to which Tsukishima comments, “That does the opposite of deter me. But yes, you loon, it’s a restaurant. We should go.”
A blanket of dread snuffs out Tadashi’s belly-fire.
“If you want,” Tsukishima adds in the absence of a reply.
Tadashi’s head nods of its own accord, unable to deny Tsukishima anything these days—or any days, really, and he hears random snippets of soft jazz from a borrowed handheld stereo. He lets out a startled squawk as Tsukishima slides his hands around the backs of his knees and pulls him to the very edge of the counter. Snug between his legs, Tadashi hugs his thighs to Tsukishima’s hips.
Tsukishima kisses him, open-mouthed and slow, immediately rucking up Tadashi’s t-shirt with one hand so the other can lie flat and warm on his bare stomach and twinkle soft, pale fingers over Tadashi’s navel. Tsukishima swallows Tadashi’s whimper and caresses the soft spot beneath his tongue, lips slick and gentle while still conveying a sense of want, of calm and comfortable craving, of interminability and devotion, pretty and pink around the edges like the flush on both their cheeks.
Tadashi thinks it’s a pretty cruel way for Tsukishima to kiss someone he’s about to dump.
* * * * *
“Because that’s a thing. That’s a thing, right? That is totally a thing.”
The netted bag of plastic purple rocks crackles as it shifts in Kuroo’s palm.
“Wait,” he insists, leaning on his elbows in front of the register. “Start from the beginning.”
Tadashi takes a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, so. People do this all the time, right, they take the person they’re dating out and break up with them there—in public, you know—so they don’t make a huge scene? That’s a thing people do. Right? Oh my god, Kuroo. People do that. They so do that.”
Kuroo blinks. Muted beeps fill the shop as a gaggle of high school girls leave. Bokuto waves them goodbye, spins on his heel and joins Kuroo at the front counter. Secretly impressed, Tadashi observes the way both of their hairstyles reach for the ceiling.
“Yamaguchi, you look nineteen shades of freaked.”
“He’s going out to dinner with Tsukishima tonight,” Kuroo explains disjointedly.
“Not this break up thing again!” Bokuto howls.
Akaashi shushes him from over by the rabbit enclosure.
“Listen,” he says, just a smidgen quieter, “you’ve got to chillax, man.”
“I’d love to chillax, Bokuto, I really would.”
Tadashi accidentally bumps the register and the cash drawer flies open. He screeches and knocks a bowl of want-one-take-one dog treats to the floor, the biscuits scattering freely across the tile like they’ve been waiting for just this moment. You traitors, thinks Tadashi.
“See?” Bokuto squawks, pointing at Tadashi with one hand and the mess on the floor with the other, “like, that? That is not chillaxing.”
“Shut up and please get me the broom.”
Kuroo drops his bag of aquaria rocks on the counter and pushes it pointedly closer to Tadashi. Tadashi heaves out a sigh and scans the bar code.
“I don’t know why he thinks he has to do it in public," he whines. "It’s not like I would make a scene, anyway. Oh my god, is Tsukki thinking I’ll make a scene?”
“Tsukishima is thinking chicken or fish? Because it’s dinner, Tadashi. It’s just dinner.”
“Tsukki doesn’t even eat meat,” Tadashi grumbles.
Kuroo absolutely cackles. “Wait, seriously? Wow. That explains so much.”
“What does that even mean?”
Kuroo thanks him when Tadashi slides his purple purchase back across the counter. Bokuto returns and sweeps up the crumbled treats with great finesse.
“Yamaguchi,” he lectures plainly as he goes, “it’s dinner. Your boyfriend is taking you out to dinner. Why don’t you go home? Me and Akaashi can finish your itinerary for the day, no problem.”
Boyfriend, Tadashi thinks greedily, good, yes. Let me soak up the warmth of that while I still can.
“I don’t want to go home,” he grumbles.
“Why not?” asks Kuroo.
Tadashi rests his chin in his hand and traces a crack in the countertop with his finger.
“Hinata and Kageyama had a pasta fight last night. There are marinara sock prints all over the kitchen floor. When I left this morning, there was spaghetti hanging from the ceiling fan. I don’t think I can face that right now.”
“Then go next door, get Tsukishima’s key and go to his place,” Kuroo suggests with a shrug.
Tadashi really, really wants to do this. It’s unbelievable that he’s never considered it before—literally, he does not believe it. He wants to sit in Tsukishima’s desk chair and watch Zelda crawl around the base of her thriving ficus tree. He wants to hang upside-down from the couch and watch Tsukishima’s preferred black-and-white television channel. He wants to dive onto Tsukishima’s twin bed that he loves so much because Tsukishima barely fits in it by himself, let alone when Tadashi’s in it with him.
“It’s okay,” Tadashi insists. “I can finish the day, I swear.”
His heart thrums at the pleasant thought anyway, so loud that he barely hears Bokuto and Kuroo’s residual debate over which would make better projectiles: meatballs or cherry tomatoes.
* * * * *
The restaurant is completely unremarkable. Tadashi is so nervous he forgets to blink and as it turns out, Tsukishima does get fish.
“It’s cool and all, Tsukki,” Tadashi says as he stares up at the ceiling beams that look like they could give out at any second, “but why this place?”
Tsukishima shrugs a shoulder. “I just like it.”
Tadashi hums and slides a napkin across the table from one of the empty place settings when Tsukishima makes grabby hands at it. Tadashi watches as he folds with delicate fingertips, shrugging once more as he does so.
“I used to go here with my brother a lot.”
“The famous Akiteru!” Tadashi fawns.
“More like infamous.”
“More like famous-famous.”
Tsukishima wonders, “How much more famous is that than regular famous?”
“A lot more, Tsukki. You’d be surprised.”
Tsukishima looks up from the tiny napkin boat he’s crafted. A grin breaks quietly over his lips.
“Hey, uh—Yamaguchi,” he begins. “I need to talk to you about something.”
This is it, Tadashi insists, checking the flimsy restaurant chair for an eject button.
“I think we—”
“Bathroom!” Tadashi yelps. “I mean, um—yeah, bathroom! Where’s the bathroom?”
Tsukishima blinks at him, dumbfounded and without a word, points somewhere behind Tadashi’s shoulder. Tadashi scrambles from the table and books it to the men’s room.
Unsurprisingly, its decor is just as eclectic and disconnected as the dining room. Tadashi gawks at his reflection-self for a few seconds in the mirror above a sink shaped like a whale’s mouth before he fishes his phone out of his pocket, presses it to his ear and locks himself in the handicap stall.
“Hey.”
“He’s doing it now!” Tadashi blurts in lieu of a greeting. “Wait, Kageyama?”
“Yeah. Hey.”
“What the hell are you doing answering Hinata’s phone?”
“He’s got my phone for the day, I’ve got his.”
Tadashi leans against the zany tiled wall. “What the everloving fuck, you guys.”
“So what’s up?” Kageyama drones, unbothered.
“Tsukki’s dumping me. Right now. Like, right now.”
“Jesus, Yamaguchi,” he groans, “take a pill.”
“It won’t help!”
“So, hey, have you thought more about my ferret idea?”
Tadashi clenches his teeth, sucks in a breath through them and forces it out.
“Fuck off, Kageyama! There’s a no pets rule! And clean the noodles off the ceiling fan, you fuck!”
He wishes he had a flip phone so he could angrily slam it shut. Instead, Tadashi gives the screen a violent tap and banishes it to his back pocket. There’s a quiet shuffle on the other side of the stall door.
“Did he ask about the ferret again?”
Tadashi peers down at a pair of pristine white converse.
“Yep,” he sighs, suddenly exhausted. “Were you eavesdropping?”
“That’s more your terrain. I only heard the last part before I assume you violently hung up.”
Tadashi inches closer to the door. “What’re you doing in here, Tsukki?”
“One of the good things about us both being guys is that you can’t hide from me in the bathroom. Er, one of the many good things, I guess,” Tsukishima corrects.
Tadashi blushes nonsensically. He unlocks the stall door with a faint click, pulls it back a few inches and peeks through the crack. Tsukishima’s hunched over the bathroom counter with his back to the stalls, tracing the rim of the sink/whale mouth with his forefinger. Tadashi loves him so much he could scream.
If I make you a list of one million reasons why you shouldn’t, Tadashi bargains, would you not break up with me?
“I wasn’t hiding,” he claims softly.
“Okay. Sure, Yamaguchi.”
“The sinks are cool, aren’t they, Tsukki?”
* * * * *
Tadashi is fucking wrecked.
It’s been an entire week of dodging Tsukishima’s we-need-to-talks. Tadashi’s brain is officially lacking in the Last Minute Excuses department like some sort of punishment for skirting around his terrible, inevitable and Tsukishima-less fate, pissed at Tadashi for not biting the bullet like a big, strong man.
But Tadashi is not a big, strong man—he is tall but he is slight, neurotic and chickenshit.
They lounge on Tsukishima’s couch, Tadashi’s head wedged against the arm of it and neck bent in ways one’s neck should never be bent, all so he can watch television with his feet in Tsukishima’s lap. Tadashi blinks when the black and red palette of the horror movie flicks over to a bright, cheery commercial—something soft and green for a retirement home, Tadashi thinks, but it’s all pretty vague. There’s a faint fwip as Tsukishima turns the page of his paperback book.
“Tsukki, Tsukki,” Tadashi lilts because he wants his attention.
“Hi, Yamaguchi.”
Eyes trained on his book, Tsukishima’s hand meanders under the loose fabric of Tadashi’s pajama pant leg. He drums his fingers on Tadashi’s shin.
“Have you ever thought about calling me Tadashi?” Tadashi wonders.
Tsukishima’s stare floats away from his book.
“Kuroo calls you that and it drives me nuts,” he says.
“What?” barks Tadashi. “Why? You don’t like my name?”
“I do. That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh,” he says, heart aflutter. And then again, “Oh. Well, you can call me it, too. And more than when you’re just, you know, inside me.”
Tsukishima draws his hand from Tadashi’s pant leg, ducks his head and splays his book over his face. So cute holy shit, Tadashi swoons just before his filter kicks in—ten seconds late as usual—and a hot blush nearly ignites him into a scorching pile of ash on Tsukishima’s couch. But the flush feels good on his skin, warm and encompassing like a blanket.
“I do that?” Tsukishima wonders, voice smothered by parchment.
Tadashi beams. He sits up to ogle the hot pink half-hoop that is Tsukishima’s cartilage piercing.
Still not over it, Tadashi acknowledges with a dreamy sigh, never, never over it. He gives it the gentlest tug. Tsukishima lowers his book and turns to him. His glasses are crooked. Tadashi straightens them for him.
Tsukishima catches his hand before it falls back to his lap and says, “Yamaguchi.”
“Yeah?”
The television screen flickers ostentatiously, displeased with the lack of attention it receives.
“There is something I’ve been working up the nerve to do,” Tsukishima tells him.
Tadashi feels suddenly heavy, like he’ll break through the wooden skeleton of the couch at any moment. But you look so handsome, he thinks, head cocked as he scans Tsukishima’s face, I think it’s illegal to look so handsome when dumping someone. Hang on, let me google it real quick. It won’t take a second. The couch will then crash through the floor of Tsukishima’s apartment and land in the unit below. Tadashi will wave at the downstairs neighbors sitting at their dinner table. He will apologize for the bits of drywall in their soup.
The television screen flashes again—a slow-motion shot of bran flakes tumbling into a bowl.
“Cereal,” Tadashi says, like a toddler in the habit of naming things he recognizes. “I want some cereal. Do you want some cereal, Tsukki? I do.”
He vaults from the couch. Tsukishima stares blankly up at him.
“You’re lactose intolerant,” he grumbles.
“I didn’t say there was gonna be milk in it.”
As soon as his socked feet hit the cool tile of the kitchen floor, Tadashi stops.
He stares at the fridge and wonders just how many times he can interrupt, how long he can hide in restaurant bathrooms, how often he can leave Tsukishima on the couch while he cowers in the kitchen and pours impromptu and unappealing bowls of dry cereal.
He turns on his heel and heads back to the living room. We’ll still be friends, right? We can still have lunch together across the mall parking lot. You can still invite me to your wedding. I’ll probably get drunk and barf in the rose bushes behind the caterer’s station, but you should still invite me.
“You didn’t get any cereal,” Tsukishima notes as Tadashi looms over him. “And you’ve got that spacey look on your face. Just what are you thinking about?”
“Those poor roses,” croaks Tadashi.
Tsukishima makes an amused sound and Tadashi sinks to the ground in front of the couch. He gathers himself on his knees and inhales, deep and slow.
“Okay, Tsukki,” he exhales. “Go ahead. Lay it on me.”
Tsukishima unfurls his legs from underneath him and leans forward.
“Are you sure you don’t need any cereal?”
“I’m sure, Tsukki.”
“Do you need to go to the bathroom?”
“No, Tsukki.”
“Will you need to make any sudden, urgent calls?”
Tadashi grabs his cell phone from where it’s crammed between the couch cushions and slides it across the living room floor. Agonizingly compliant, he stares up at Tsukishima and braces himself. Tsukishima fidgets—Tadashi glances at his toes that curl, uncurl, and curl again on the carpet.
He hears himself insist, “It’s okay, Tsukki. You can just say it.”
Tsukishima blinks. “Alright.”
Goodbye, overstuffed couch!
“It’s just that we spend a lot of time together—”
Goodbye, haunted electrical socket that spits out sparks for no apparent reason!
“—don’t know what you’ve done to me—”
Goodbye, paper-thin walls with absolutely no insulation!
“—because even when you’re being really weird, I want only you—”
Goodbye, charming clutter!
“—adorable and irresistible, somehow simultaneously. I know it’s premature—”
Goodbye, too-small twin bed on which I made Tsukki a man!
“—so I think you know what I’m getting at.”
Goodbye, best thing that’s ever happened to me.
“Yeah,” breathes Tadashi.
“Please move in with me.”
If a wrecking ball careened through the room and took Tadashi with it on the upswing, he wouldn’t notice.
“Wha—what?”
“You had to see that coming,” says Tsukishima, head tilted so his hair falls over his earring. “Surely.”
“Surely not,” squeaks Tadashi, “oh my god, Tsukki, I—I thought you were breaking up with me! With all the we need to talk stuff and, and I had no idea that—hey! What’s that! Stop laughing!”
Tadashi bangs a loose fist on Tsukishima’s knee as Tsukishima leans back into the couch and chortles, chuckles, giggles, even, which makes Tadashi clutch at his heart for real this time because it threatens to detonate within his chest. He clambers onto the couch and swats at Tsukishima’s shaking shoulders.
“It’s not funny, Tsukki, you asshole, I thought I was dumped—”
Tsukishima sputters, “Why would I dump you?”
“—properly dumped, like, I was even making plans to get blackout drunk at your wedding.”
“I’m twenty, Yamaguchi. I’m not getting married. Unless you mean sometime down the line, then fine, okay, maybe.” Tsukishima takes a breath and goes on, “But even then, it would be years from now and by that time I would have acknowledged that you are superior to whomever it is I’m supposed to be marrying in the first place and I hope you realize I’m rambling because you still haven’t answered my question.”
Tadashi perks up and attaches himself to Tsukishima like a leech, legs astride his middle with their chests squeezed together so hard he hears Tsukishima’s heart bump, bump, bump against his chest. Into his neck, Tadashi beams. Angst, jitters, a general sense of doom—they slip from him little by little, like raindrops off his fingertips.
“Yes, damn it, yes!” Tadashi confirms at last.
Tsukishima exhales with all his might and presses a hand between Tadashi’s shoulder-blades.
“Thank god,” he replies.
“Being with you’s like a dream I don’t want to wake up from, you know?” Tadashi pulls back, glances around and marvels, “Oh my god, I live here.”
Careful not to knee Tsukishima in the crotch, Tadashi scrambles off of his lap. He dashes to the wall that separates the bedroom from the living room and smacks his palm to it. As expected, it resounds. Like music to my ears!
“These walls—they’re mine now, too?”
Tsukishima nods. “Yes.”
Tadashi zips to the coffee table and waves at the miscellaneous items strewn across its surface: half-empty matchbooks, chapstick tubes, miniature bottles of hand sanitizer, cough drops and guitar picks despite neither of them knowing how to play.
“Can this be considered our clutter?”
“Sure.”
He leans over the haunted outlet and pokes at the plastic wall plate.
“This too?”
“Yes. But don’t get so close to it.”
Tadashi runs his fingers across the smooth suede of the couch.
“I can nap here whenever I want?”
“Nap, sleep, lie, sit, um, other stuff,” Tsukishima tells him, “yeah.”
Tadashi absolutely glows, the very personification of sunshine. He returns to his place on Tsukishima’s lap. He wants to swim in the warm gold of his eyes, to find wildflowers the same color as the blush in the tips of Tsukishima’s ears. Tadashi lifts a hand to fiddle with his piercing for a second before his hands slide to cup Tsukishima’s pale face.
“What about this?” Tadashi asks, playful. “This is mine, too?”
He feels Tsukishima’s grin on the sides of his palms.
“Has been for a while, but yes.”
In their apartment, Tadashi kisses him—sweet, slow, and with more spark than the broken socket could ever manage.