“i like it when you keep coming back to me.”
timeskip!tsukishima kei x f!reader
w/c: 1.5k, ex!tsukishima, slightly ooc ?? ,, wait! series
it’s the middle of november when you see him again, and sendai is exactly as cold as it was the day you walked out of his apartment.
the breakup hadn’t been explosive. there were no plates thrown, no screaming matches that left your throat raw. it was just the quiet realization that tsukishima did not have room for you in his life anymore. between his demanding career at the sendai city museum, college final exams, and volleyball practices for the sendai frogs, he had managed his time with the precise coldness of an accountant trying to balance a failing budget. and you had been the line item he crossed out to save the rest.
you still loved him. the worst part was knowing he still loved you, too—expressed only in the tight line of his jaw and the way his fingers had twitched against his thighs when you packed your final box.
but that was three weeks ago. three weeks of silence. three weeks for a man who usually took months to process a single emotional shift to completely unravel.
“are you sure you don’t want to grab the melon pan instead?”
you blink, pulling your gaze away from the grey slush on the sidewalk to look at the towering figure beside you. akira, your cousin, is squinting at the bakery display window, his college varsity jacket slung loosely over his shoulders. he’s only in town for the weekend, a frantic escape from his own midterm stress, and he’d practically dragged you out of the house for a distraction.
“the red bean is fine, akira,” you say, a small, genuine smile finally tugging at your lips. “but if you’re buying, i’ll take both.”
“so spoiled,” he mutters, but there’s a familiar, easy warmth in the way he hooks an arm over your shoulder, pulling you against his side to shield you from a sudden gust of wind.
across the street, a tall figure freezes.
tsukishima had been walking back from the museum, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his long black coat, his white scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. he was tired. his head ached from a long lecture on late-edo period ceramics, and his chest felt like a hollowed-out shell. he had been counting the days. twenty-one. twenty-one days of staring at his meticulously organized digital calendar, realizing that every single neatly blocked hour meant absolutely nothing if the blank spaces didn’t belong to you. he had been changing. he’d started leaving work exactly at five. he’d told his coach he needed a flexible schedule. he was fixing it.
more importantly, he saw the man with his arm draped heavy over your shoulders. he saw the way the stranger leaned down, laughing into your hair, and the way you smiled back—a look tsukishima hadn’t seen on your face in months.
something inside tsukishima’s chest shattered, the jagged edges cutting straight into his lungs. his mind, usually so fast and analytical, completely short-circuited. he didn’t think about the crowd of pedestrians. he didn’t think about his reputation, or his pride, or the fact that he was standing in the middle of a busy shopping district.
before he even registered his feet moving, he was crossing the street.
‘‘y/n,’’ he speaks your name before he even reaches the curb, his voice cutting through the ambient noise of traffic and chatter.
you stiffen, the familiar cadence of his voice sending a sharp jolt straight down your spine. you pull away from akira’s side, turning around slowly.
tsukishima is standing a few paces away. his golden eyes are wide, stripped entirely of their usual bored detachment. his chest is heaving slightly, as if he’d just sprinted a marathon instead of walking across a crosswalk. he looks pale, a faint flush of frantic color high on his cheekbones.
‘‘kei?” you breathe, the name slipping out before you can stop it.
he doesn’t even look at akira. to tsukishima, the rest of the world has completely dissolved. he steps closer, stepping right into your personal space, ignoring the way a few passersby glance over at his towering height.
“please,” tsukishima says. the word is raw. it doesn’t sound like him at all. “please, just listen to me for a second. don’t walk away.”
akira blinks, shifting his weight, his protective instincts kicking in as he eyes the massive volleyball player. “hey, man, who are—”
“you don’t need to know,” tsukishima interrupts, his voice cracking slightly, a sound that makes your heart painfully squeeze. he takes another step forward, his hands coming out of his pockets, trembling slightly in the crisp air. he reaches out, his fingers hovering just an inch away from the sleeve of your coat, desperately wanting to touch you but entirely terrified that you’ll flinch away. “i don’t care. i’ll clear everything. i changed the schedule, y/n. i talk to the museum directors, i told the team—i have time. i have all the time you want. i’ll give you every single hour of my day if you just let me.”
your mouth drops open slightly. the prideful, arrogant, fiercely guarded tsukishima kei is currently unraveling in front of a pastry shop, his voice loud enough that a small group nearby has paused to watch.
right next to the shop’s awning, three people named maddy, astra, and ocean—completely oblivious to the high-stakes romantic drama unfolding two feet away—are fully locked into doing the synchronized six seven emote, their movements perfectly timed and ridiculously bouncy against the grey backdrop of the street.
tsukishima doesn’t notice them. he doesn’t notice anything but the heavy, suffocating weight of his own desperation.
“kei, stop, people are looking,” you whisper, your cheeks burning as you catch sight of a few older women lingering near the crosswalk, whispering to each other.
“let them look,” he says, and there is a terrifying sincerity in his eyes. his self-respect, the armor he had spent his entire life building to keep the world at bay, is completely gone, discarded like trash on the sidewalk. “i don't care. i’ll get down on my knees right here if that’s what it takes. i’ll beg you. just tell me what to do. tell me how to fix it.”
a tear slips down his cheek, catching the faint afternoon light before disappearing into his scarf.
akira’s jaw drops. he looks at the crying giant, then looks at you, his eyes wide with a mix of secondhand embarrassment and sheer confusion. “uh... y/n? is this the ex?”
the word ‘ex’ seems to hit tsukishima like a punch. his shoulders drop, his gaze fixed entirely on your face, looking so utterly small despite his six-foot-two frame. he looks like a boy waiting for a sentence to be passed, completely at your mercy.
you look at him. you see the dark circles under his eyes, the frantic rise and fall of his chest, and the devotion swimming in his tears. he had actually done it. he had broken his own rigid rules, dismantled his own defense mechanisms, all because the thought of a life without you was worse than the thought of losing his dignity.
you let out a soft, trembling breath, the icy wall around your heart melting instantly.
“akira,” you say softly, never breaking eye contact with tsukishima. “go buy the melon pan. and the red bean. give me five minutes.”
akira looks between the two of you, raises his hands in defeat, and promptly ducks into the bakery, eager to escape the suffocating tension.
the moment your cousin is out of sight, you step closer to tsukishima. you reach up, your gloved hands gently catching his face, your thumbs wiping away the cold moisture on his cheeks. he shudders at the touch, his eyes closing as he leans heavily into your palms, a broken, breathless sound escaping his lips.
“he’s my cousin, kei,” you whisper gently. “he’s just visiting from his university.”
tsukishima’s eyes fly open. he processes the information, the sudden rush of relief flooding his system so violently that his knees actually buckle a little, forcing him to lean down until his forehead rests against your shoulder.
“i don’t care,” he mumbles into the fabric of your coat, his arms finally wrapping around your waist, pulling you against him with a desperation that leaves no space between you. “cousin or not. i’m not letting you go again. i’ll keep coming back. i’ll keep begging until you’re sick of me or until you tell me to stop.”
you wrap your arms around his neck, burying your face in his white scarf, smelling the familiar scent of his laundry detergent and the crisp winter air.
“i’m already sick of you, dummy.” you murmur into his neck, a small laugh bubbling up against your tears. “but i can come home now.”
n: GIMME BUTLER GOJO GAAHUQWGSUWH DAMN IT
© showhay — don’t copy, repost, or translate without my permission. do not use/feed my works to AI.
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