welcome to the strange world

you’re almost glad when she catches your gaze and smiles, acknowledging you with a wide smile, a wave, and a cheery ‘ciao!’— for if she didn’t, you’re sure you would end up gawking at her just as your boyfriend had been, with every passing second being another shot to your confidence.

you whip around in your seat humiliatingly fast, pouting when you revert your attention back to tobio and notice his gaze still on her. there’s a disgusting, green pool of envy that begins to boil in your tummy— it makes you sick, and you hate it. it awakens something seemingly immature inside of you when you lightly kick his leg and whine out for him, “baby.”

tobio responds, finally, an affirmative hum pushing past him— but even then, his eyes are slow to be back on your face.

your brows furrow and you bite the inside of your cheek nervously, poking a finger at his hand like a toddler meekly asking for attention.

“you’ve been staring at the girl behind me for, the past 10 minutes…” you’re too afraid to look at his face— too afraid to judge his reactions for yourself.

“huh? oh, yeah,” he pauses for a moment to finish the bite of his torte, during which time your heart sinks and your head goes dizzy as it begins to race with intrusive thoughts. tobio continues, the faintest blush coating his cheeks, “i was just thinking that the dress she’s wearing would look pretty on you.”

"that's it?!"

it's your turn to gawk at him now, the pool of envy and fear in you quickly flushed out and replaced with relief.

tobio tilts his head at you, confused, and takes another bite of his food, "what do you mean, 'that's it?'"

i was just thinking that the dress she’s wearing would look pretty on you.

your face heats up from embarrassment at severely misinterpreting the situation— but also from endearment— your lover's thoughtfulness flushing your chest with warmth.

"i thought you were checking her out, or something... i dunno, it's stupid— forget about it..." you don’t notice when you release the breath you’d been holding in, but tobio does. 

you'd wanted his full attention and now you have it. he observes how you retract your fingers from his hand to bring your glass closer to you, nibbling on the plastic straw and keeping your eyes on your food, restless as you bounce your leg against the bottom of the table.

he furrows his brows and his lips form a slight pout as he ponders yours words and sudden anxiety over in his head.

why would you think he's checking her out? it's not like he has eyes for anyone besides you, in the first place.

“hey,” his voice his gentle when he calls out to you; but there's a slight urgency to it, a need to make amends.

your eyes remain locked on your food and the rhythmic bump of your leg against the table doesn't falter.

"baby," tobio finds your thigh under the table to stop its movements, the tips of his fingers squeezing into the flesh reassuringly. it coaxes your eyes to his, and there’s a slight hitch to his breath when he sees how you look at him: with stars decorating your pupils and like he holds your entire universe in the palm of his hands.

his heart feels full— it always does when he’s with you— and a soft smile tugs at the corners of his lips.

“you shouldn’t be worried about me checking out other girls.”

tobio faces his hand palm-up on the wood of the table and wiggles his fingers, a gesture you’ve come to learn as his silent request to hold your hand. you do as he asks and slide your hand in his— it’s a snug, perfect fit— and your smile mimics his when you’re reminded of how he drunkenly mumbled one night that his hands were made to only hold three things, those three things being your own hands, and his volleyball.

he runs a reassuring thumb over your knuckles before leaning down to place a soothing kiss to the back of your hand, another one to your palm, before pushing back your bracelet to lay one more onto the inside of your wrist.

“you’re it for me. always,” he breathes and smiles— a rare, whole-hearted one saved for your eyes only— before pressing a final, longer kiss to your ring finger, “you know that, right?”

from coco ; my sweet littl luvr boy ! gah ! ! he’s so . . &$%<_€]£&!/&/@$ @_@ i don rly like how dis turned out but i felt like i needed 2 write it </3 based on a small interaction i had wif starbae yesterday ! regardless , thamks sooo much for reading i hope you luvd it (⸝⸝o̴̶̷᷄ o̴̶̷̥᷅⸝⸝) ❤︎ comments + reblobs + feedback of any kind are supa dupa appreciated!

someone who kept him in bed for a little while longer in the mornings with the warmth of her bare body against his, her lips hot against his neck in usually successful attempts to keep him to herself before he went about his day. someone who he’d grab an extra biscotti— or maybe two or three, if she asked— for after his run, someone who helped him gain the trust of that cat, someone who convinced him to put a collar with a nametag around her neck and bring her home.

someone who fed him fresh, warm meals after practice, someone who knew his likes and dislikes inside out, someone who he put to bed every night with tender touches of his fingers and lips over sacred parts of her body under the sheets, someone who put him to bed the same way.

someone he sees so much life in, someone through which he fell in love with the world.

someone who showed him what love is; how to love. someone who was able to see the very outline of his soul. touch it, even.

and now, when tobio kageyama looks at you, he thinks he can see the whole universe in your eyes.

at least, that’s what he thinks, as he watches you— completely enamoured— from the other side of the bathtub. 

the air that fills his bathroom is noisy; it always is on friday nights, where essential oil baths with you have worked its way into his schedule.

the gentle splashing of the water as your fingers tread at its surface and the sounds of rome on a hot summer’s night slip through the open window: incomprehensible chatter from patrons at the bar just across the narrow cobblestone street, the faint clinking of emptied dishes and glasses, the muted whispers of an accordion busker some blocks down. there’s the hum of your voice too— it’s quieter than the ambience surrounding his senses, yet it’s the only thing his ears seem to want to pick up on.

your voice is soft— the timbre of it a little shaky in certain parts where the pitch is either too low or too high for your range— but it carries through his blood so smoothly, enveloping him in a comforting embrace when it spreads along the broad expanse of back, just as your palms do when you knead the muscles under his taut skin there before bed every night.

tobio finds himself drowning in the dreamy lilt of your voice, the melody of your humming all too familiar as he wracks his brain to try and place where he’s heard it before.

did you have it playing from the speakers when you were cleaning the apartment one day? or was it from that one concert you took him to a couple months ago? maybe it was a song from the old italian film you both watched at the drive-in theatre last weekend. he can’t seem to remember.

he’s so caught up in his own thoughts that he barely notices when you shift around, playing with the water suddenly to boresome for you as you instead opt to lean against the edge of the tub, forearms digging into the cool marble while you look out at the city below you.

tobio feels his mouth go dry at the increased exposure of your bare skin— of course, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before; he knows your body like he knows the lines on the court, having mapped out every inch of your soft flesh with his lips— but he can’t help the way he begins to feel the steady beating of his heart in his ears. 

beauty incarnate is what he thinks you are: under the warm yellow glow of the streetlamps lining either side of the street, the flickers of the tealights set on the windowsill reflecting off the sheen of the perfumed bathwater coating every dip and curve of your frame, the languid smile on your lips and the stars in your eyes that seem to shine brighter than the city lights.

tobio’s body moves on its own when he reaches out to run his fingertips down the groove of your back, all the way to the bottom of your spine where the surface of the water meets your skin, his pinkie grazing over the bath ducky that floats near you. his attention is averted from you to the yellow piece of rubber momentarily, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he’s reminded of how it ended up joining the two of you on your weekly friday night baths; it was a gift to you that he’d purchased from a street vendor on the way back home one day— something about it screaming your name. tobio could never tell what that ‘it’ was.

and as he continues to admire you, he finally recognizes the tune you’d been humming, “that’s that song.”

“hm?” you tilt your head as you turn to look at him, a knowing smile on your lips that goes past tobio’s head.

his eyes meet yours, and there’s a slight hitch in his breath before he speaks hushedly, “the pianist played it at that restaurant, where we—"

“— had our first date… you remember,” your smile grows wider— it’s bright, almost blinding. his eyes briefly flit to the rubber ducky that’s now made its way in front of him. 

the smile on it looks just like the one you’re wearing now.

tobio scoffs, a wordless reply of, “of course i remember— how could i forget?” before his fingers resume their path along your hips, tracing over the faint lightning bolts that line the supple skin there, gently squeezing the fat of it in between his thumb and index finger.

"c'mere," he beckons you towards him with the slight outstretch of his arms, and you do as he says— shuffling through the water until you’re facing him, your frame bracketed by his legs as you kneel in between them and press your chest flush against his, running your palms down the walls of the tub until they fall flat on his thighs underneath the surface.

you feel him tense up under your touch; it coaxes a tiny giggle out of you and has you nuzzling into the crook of his neck, the residual scent of sea salt and wood sage from his cologne clouding your senses as your lips move on their own along the expanse of the soft skin there. 

“y’know my thighs are sensitive…” he grunts into your hair, biting back a pleasured hum when he feels the warmth of your breath over his pulse.

his palms leave their place on your hips to find your neck, cradling each side as his thumbs rub gently at the remnants of rosy glitter you had dusted onto your cheekbones earlier on in the evening— before you took his hand in yours and dragged him to the beach to enjoy the cotton candy sunset and some freshly baked cannoli— another thing that had worked its way into his weekly schedule, another thing that he wouldn’t have found much joy in if it weren’t for you.

you watch as his eyes dart across the expanse of your face— from the stray hairs framing it, to the puzzled pout of your lips, to the bob of your neck when you swallow, to the slight raise of your brows— before they finally settle on your own. 

and as his gaze meets yours, tobio realizes that he's right.

he can see the whole universe in your eyes.

his whole universe. 

through the ridges that line your irises, he can see the stuff his dreams are made of and the whirling ways of the cosmos that pass— all of the stars, and planets, and moons, and galaxies— his entire past, present, and future. 

his heart thrashes around the confinements of his ribs, the thrum of its beating picking up tempo as it travels through his blood and to his eardrums— he would rip it out of his chest and hand it to you on a silver platter, he would hang up all of the moons and stars in each of the 100 billion galaxies in the universe for you if he could.

“what’s on your mind?” the airy whisper of your voice falls onto his ears as a surprise, as if he weren’t expecting you to speak up in the three, now nearly four consecutive minutes he’d been staring at you without an explanation or a sound.

i love you. god, i love you so much. 

that’s what he wants to say.

there’s one other sentence— or a question, rather, that tags along with it— yet he can’t seem to get the words out of his chest. it feels like there’s a black hole where they lie, rooted so deep in the core of his soul that it sucks him in with the strongest force of gravity he’s ever felt— makes him feel like he weighs a million tons and simultaneously nothing at all. he’s nervous, but he’s also calm; clouded by his thoughts, but his mind couldn’t be any clearer.

the words dance on the tip of his tongue and he opens his mouth to speak, but instead swallows back his proclamation with the tiniest bit of hesitancy— like a shot of hard liquor— strong enough to cause a stinging pain to the membrane lining his throat, but warm enough to send an afterglow of chilling comfort through his limbs.

tobio slips his hands down beneath the water to find your own, a knowing smile working its way onto his lips. 

it mirrors the one you’re wearing.

he opens his mouth to speak— one more time— barely noticing how his thumb starts to rub along your bare ring finger, his love for you silently pouring out of his fingertip and wrapping around yours as an invisible band.

“i think you already know.”

taggiez :: @shoyouu @sinfuldxlight @atsumeii @gojotron @eeuphorique @getosbunny @neon-crucifix @t0m-yuu

someone who kept him in bed for a little while longer in the mornings with the warmth of her bare body against his, her lips hot against his neck in usually successful attempts to keep him to herself before he went about his day. someone who he’d grab an extra biscotti— or maybe two or three, if she asked— for after his run, someone who helped him gain the trust of that cat, someone who convinced him to put a collar with a nametag around her neck and bring her home.

someone who fed him fresh, warm meals after practice, someone who knew his likes and dislikes inside out, someone who he put to bed every night with tender touches of his fingers and lips over sacred parts of her body under the sheets, someone who put him to bed the same way.

someone he sees so much life in, someone through which he fell in love with the world.

someone who showed him what love is; how to love. someone who was able to see the very outline of his soul. touch it, even.

and now, when tobio kageyama looks at you, he thinks he can see the whole universe in your eyes.

at least, that’s what he thinks, as he watches you— completely enamoured— from the other side of the bathtub. 

the air that fills his bathroom is noisy; it always is on friday nights, where essential oil baths with you have worked its way into his schedule.

the gentle splashing of the water as your fingers tread at its surface and the sounds of rome on a hot summer’s night slip through the open window: incomprehensible chatter from patrons at the bar just across the narrow cobblestone street, the faint clinking of emptied dishes and glasses, the muted whispers of an accordion busker some blocks down. there’s the hum of your voice too— it’s quieter than the ambience surrounding his senses, yet it’s the only thing his ears seem to want to pick up on.

your voice is soft— the timbre of it a little shaky in certain parts where the pitch is either too low or too high for your range— but it carries through his blood so smoothly, enveloping him in a comforting embrace when it spreads along the broad expanse of back, just as your palms do when you knead the muscles under his taut skin there before bed every night.

tobio finds himself drowning in the dreamy lilt of your voice, the melody of your humming all too familiar as he wracks his brain to try and place where he’s heard it before.

did you have it playing from the speakers when you were cleaning the apartment one day? or was it from that one concert you took him to a couple months ago? maybe it was a song from the old italian film you both watched at the drive-in theatre last weekend. he can’t seem to remember.

he’s so caught up in his own thoughts that he barely notices when you shift around, playing with the water suddenly to boresome for you as you instead opt to lean against the edge of the tub, forearms digging into the cool marble while you look out at the city below you.

tobio feels his mouth go dry at the increased exposure of your bare skin— of course, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before; he knows your body like he knows the lines on the court, having mapped out every inch of your soft flesh with his lips— but he can’t help the way he begins to feel the steady beating of his heart in his ears. 

beauty incarnate is what he thinks you are: under the warm yellow glow of the streetlamps lining either side of the street, the flickers of the tealights set on the windowsill reflecting off the sheen of the perfumed bathwater coating every dip and curve of your frame, the languid smile on your lips and the stars in your eyes that seem to shine brighter than the city lights.

tobio’s body moves on its own when he reaches out to run his fingertips down the groove of your back, all the way to the bottom of your spine where the surface of the water meets your skin, his pinkie grazing over the bath ducky that floats near you. his attention is averted from you to the yellow piece of rubber momentarily, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he’s reminded of how it ended up joining the two of you on your weekly friday night baths; it was a gift to you that he’d purchased from a street vendor on the way back home one day— something about it screaming your name. tobio could never tell what that ‘it’ was.

and as he continues to admire you, he finally recognizes the tune you’d been humming, “that’s that song.”

“hm?” you tilt your head as you turn to look at him, a knowing smile on your lips that goes past tobio’s head.

his eyes meet yours, and there’s a slight hitch in his breath before he speaks hushedly, “the pianist played it at that restaurant, where we—"

“— had our first date… you remember,” your smile grows wider— it’s bright, almost blinding. his eyes briefly flit to the rubber ducky that’s now made its way in front of him. 

the smile on it looks just like the one you’re wearing now.

tobio scoffs, a wordless reply of, “of course i remember— how could i forget?” before his fingers resume their path along your hips, tracing over the faint lightning bolts that line the supple skin there, gently squeezing the fat of it in between his thumb and index finger.

"c'mere," he beckons you towards him with the slight outstretch of his arms, and you do as he says— shuffling through the water until you’re facing him, your frame bracketed by his legs as you kneel in between them and press your chest flush against his, running your palms down the walls of the tub until they fall flat on his thighs underneath the surface.

you feel him tense up under your touch; it coaxes a tiny giggle out of you and has you nuzzling into the crook of his neck, the residual scent of sea salt and wood sage from his cologne clouding your senses as your lips move on their own along the expanse of the soft skin there. 

“y’know my thighs are sensitive…” he grunts into your hair, biting back a pleasured hum when he feels the warmth of your breath over his pulse.

his palms leave their place on your hips to find your neck, cradling each side as his thumbs rub gently at the remnants of rosy glitter you had dusted onto your cheekbones earlier on in the evening— before you took his hand in yours and dragged him to the beach to enjoy the cotton candy sunset and some freshly baked cannoli— another thing that had worked its way into his weekly schedule, another thing that he wouldn’t have found much joy in if it weren’t for you.

you watch as his eyes dart across the expanse of your face— from the stray hairs framing it, to the puzzled pout of your lips, to the bob of your neck when you swallow, to the slight raise of your brows— before they finally settle on your own. 

and as his gaze meets yours, tobio realizes that he's right.

he can see the whole universe in your eyes.

his whole universe. 

through the ridges that line your irises, he can see the stuff his dreams are made of and the whirling ways of the cosmos that pass— all of the stars, and planets, and moons, and galaxies— his entire past, present, and future. 

his heart thrashes around the confinements of his ribs, the thrum of its beating picking up tempo as it travels through his blood and to his eardrums— he would rip it out of his chest and hand it to you on a silver platter, he would hang up all of the moons and stars in each of the 100 billion galaxies in the universe for you if he could.

“what’s on your mind?” the airy whisper of your voice falls onto his ears as a surprise, as if he weren’t expecting you to speak up in the three, now nearly four consecutive minutes he’d been staring at you without an explanation or a sound.

i love you. god, i love you so much. 

that’s what he wants to say.

there’s one other sentence— or a question, rather, that tags along with it— yet he can’t seem to get the words out of his chest. it feels like there’s a black hole where they lie, rooted so deep in the core of his soul that it sucks him in with the strongest force of gravity he’s ever felt— makes him feel like he weighs a million tons and simultaneously nothing at all. he’s nervous, but he’s also calm; clouded by his thoughts, but his mind couldn’t be any clearer.

the words dance on the tip of his tongue and he opens his mouth to speak, but instead swallows back his proclamation with the tiniest bit of hesitancy— like a shot of hard liquor— strong enough to cause a stinging pain to the membrane lining his throat, but warm enough to send an afterglow of chilling comfort through his limbs.

tobio slips his hands down beneath the water to find your own, a knowing smile working its way onto his lips. 

it mirrors the one you’re wearing.

he opens his mouth to speak— one more time— barely noticing how his thumb starts to rub along your bare ring finger, his love for you silently pouring out of his fingertip and wrapping around yours as an invisible band.

“i think you already know.”

taggiez :: @shoyouu @sinfuldxlight @atsumeii @gojotron @eeuphorique @getosbunny @neon-crucifix @t0m-yuu

"I couldn't leave him out there in the rain."

Atsumu's jacket is unzipped to his sternum, but peeking out from beneath the sanctuary of his MSBY windbreaker a little white kitten is nestled against him--sopping wet and trembling from the cold.

"Oh," you breathe, stumbling to your feet and crossing the room towards them both.

The kitten is so impossibly small, just a baby, and clearly in need of a home.

You feel tears well in your eyes as you take in the way it huddles into the warm cotton of Tsumu's t-shirt, the way your boyfriend's hands cradle it like it's something precious.

"Can we keep him?" Tsumu asks, his voice cracking on the request, desperate for your approval.

"Of course we can," you say, your tone equally watery, as you reach out to run your finger tip softly across the bridge of the kitten's tiny pink nose.

You and Atsumu spend the rest of the evening cleaning the kitten up, scheduling a visit to the nearby vet, and sending Atsumu out into the storm again to get the essentials to tie you over until you can make it to an actual pet store--some wet food, some kitty litter, a cat-toy shaped like taiyaki that's almost bigger than the kitten itself (a necessity, Tsumu reasons with you later as he unpacks his purchases).

When Tsumu comes home again, he finds you on the couch again, a little ball of freshly bathed fluff curled up atop the throw blanket over your lap.

He drops his grocery bags at the door and beelines right to you.

"How's the baby?" he asks, crouching down beside the couch to admire the kitten while he snoozes.

"He's good, he stopped shaking a little while ago," you hum, watching how tenderly Atsumu grazes the little cat resting on your legs.

"He's gonna need a name ya know," Atsumu whispers, like he's scared to speak any louder and risk disturbing the peace of the little prince.

"Got any ideas?" you ask, reaching out to run your fingers through Atsumu's rain dampened hair. "You found him, it's only right for you to do the honours."

He leans in to your touch and smiles.

You know a lot of things about Kageyama, that’s a normal part of dating someone. But you learn new things about him all the time, like how when he was a kid he had a reoccurring dream about being a magician’s assistant, or that he sometimes gets hives if he eats too many strawberries but eats them anyway in the summer time.

Or how he only owns two kids of socks.

It’s still relatively early in your relationship when you figure this out, less than a year in — you’re at Tobio’s apartment, having let yourself in with the key he’d given you after only a few weeks of dating, much to your own surprise, and you decide to put in a load of laundry when you get a text letting you know he’s running a bit later than expected and you spot the overflowing hamper in his room.

You’re sitting cross-legged on the floor sorting the clean laundry to fold when you notice that the socks are easily divided into two practically identical piles, save for the shade of the cotton.

You blink down at the two masses of fabric.

“I’m home,” Tobio’s voice cuts across the apartment, pulling you from your stupor. He calls your name, and his head pops through his bedroom door before you can reply, only to find you staring at the socks in your hand - white in left, black in right.

“Did you do my laundry?” he asks. It might have sounded cold to anyone else, but you’ve learned to decipher the nuance in his tone well enough to detect appreciation, if not a little bit of incredulity in his words. “You didn’t need to do-“

“Do you only own two kinds of socks?” you can’t hold the question back any longer.

He looks at you strangely for a moment.

“Technically it’s one kind. Just two colours,” he explains.

Like that’s any better.

But this is just another part of him that makes him who he is — and like the childhood dreams and occasional hives, you accept it and move on.

Until the next Christmas rolls around.

Call it divine intervention, but in the midst of some last minute gift shopping on your way home from work one day, you spot them: a pair of bright blue socks with little white volleyballs printed on them. You make your way home with them tucked safely in your bag — to your shared apartment, now that half of the things in Tobio’s apartment are yours.

When Tobio opens the little gift on Christmas morning it takes him a moment to even figure out what they are.

"What am I supposed to do with these?” he asks you with a furrow in his brow.

"Wear them?” you laugh, sipping your steaming cup of coffee.

And so Kageyama suddenly finds himself the owner three kinds of socks, but he only wears two — the third remaining tucked safely in his otherwise monochromatic sock drawer, unworn.

Something else you learn about Kageyama relatively early on in your relationship is that he’s pretty good at goodbyes. A necessity, you gather, from a professional athlete who is constantly travelling for away games and training and various other opportunities.

What you learn about yourself is that you are not good at goodbyes at all.

Tobio is exceedingly patient as you gather with the rest of the Adlers players and their families outside the arena to say your final goodbyes before the group of men boards their team bus for the airport, to catch a flight to Europe where they’ll be playing for six weeks.

Six weeks.

It feels like a lifetime to you, but Tobio thinks otherwise. He tells you as much as you hold him tightly outside the arena, your puffy face buried into his chest, eyes red and watery from the tears you’ve been shedding from the moment the alarm on your bedside table went off at 5AM.

“That’s not even two menstrual cycles,” your boyfriend reminds you, in what you’re sure he thinks is a helpful way, patting your head gently.

“Tobio, don’t talk to me about menstrual cycles when we’re saying goodbye,” you whine, your words lightly muffled by his coat. While you appreciate that he’s been trying to learn more about you lately, you didn’t expect him to absorb the information he’d found on the female reproductive system quite so readily.

“Okay,” he says, and you can’t see his face but you think he might be smiling a little bit.

When he's unpacking his bags in his hotel room a million miles away he finds them, the bright blue socks with volleyballs on them that you’d secretly tucked into his suitcase when you were helping him back the night before he left.

And he wears them when he misses you while he’s gone (i.e. a lot.)

Five weeks and six days later, it’s like the middle of the night when you feel Tobio’s side of the bed dip, and a familiar warmth wrap itself around your half sleeping form.

“You’re home early,” you croak out wiping at your eyes so you can see him better in the dim light of your bedroom.

He hums, his eyes already closed as he rests his head on his pillow next to yours.

“You should change out of your travelling clothes,” you point out to him after a moment.

He simply kicks off his sweatpants and pulls off his sweatshirt, hardly rising from his horizontal position on the bed. You catch a peek of bright blue on his feet and you pause, looking over at him.

“Nice socks,” you say, smiling, as he slips under the covers with you.

He simply grunts, pulling you down to rest your head on his chest, right over his heart.

“I think they might be lucky,” Tobio says sleepily, already halfway to unconsciousness after his long day of travelling, and weeks apart from you.

“Is that so?” you ask with a quiet laugh.

“Yeah, when I was wearing them I always won,” he replies, and your heart flutters in your chest when you realize his choice of hosiery was not due to simply running out of other clean pairs. “Maybe it’s cause I missed you less because i had a piece of you with me.”

Your breath hitches in your throat as he presses a soft kiss to the crown of your hair, and you know he has no idea how sweet what he just said is.

So you start buying socks for him all the time, in every fun colour, pattern and texture you can find.

And he always wears them.

No one understands the sudden fashion change, because he's Kageyama — Shoyo even sends you a frantic text when the two of them are at lunch one afternoon asking why your boyfriend is wearing socks with blueberries printed on them.

But you’re the only one who knows it’s because they remind him of you.

Years later, one of the pairs of socks gets a hole in them, and Tobio is devastated. It’s the first pair you ever bought for him — the pair he wore to his first olympics, the pair he wore when he asked you to marry him, and the pair he was wearing when you met him at the altar.

“Can you fix them?” he asks you, his eyes wide and desperate as he cradles the precious pair of socks in his hands.

“Tobi, I only paid 100 yen for these — it’s a miracle they lasted as long as they did,” you wince, examining the way that the toe of one of the socks has ripped almost entirely off, and the other is only faring marginally better.

“Please,” he asks, earnest and resolved, “can you try?”

You smile softly and nod.

And a few days later, you bring them back to him — and he looks up at you with wide, glistening eyes as he cradles the bright blue fabric with little white volleyballs printed on it that you had carefully cut and stitched back together.

The busy streets of Tokyo didn’t seem like Tsukishima’s scene. It’s not like he looked out of place, but he felt out of place. During these times, he wonders if this is what Asahi felt when he left Miyagi to study in a fashion school here. Unlike Tsukishima, he was more shy and reluctant, scared of failure, and easily demotivated. Asahi didn’t seem like the person to move away from the comfort of his hometown to a scary, wild place like Tokyo. To his surprise, his senior easily fit into Tokyo with little to no problem. There was an initial dialect border, but he eventually found his footing in Tokyo. Some days, he’ll receive a notification from the Karasuno Alumni group chat from him, talking about Tokyo and how happy he is with his current life. Tsukishima thought about visiting him, but he was never really close with him, so he scrapped the idea.

Tugging his scarf over his nose, he spots a building out of the corner of his eyes. He has seen this building several times throughout his many trips to Tokyo, but he never had the chance to visit it. There wasn't much to see when he looked it up after seeing it while accompanying Kageyama and Hinata on their jog. Their website was practically abandoned; the only information he gathered was that it was a museum, open until eleven.

Tsukishima lets out a heavy sigh once he enters the museum, relishing the heater's warmth inside the building. It wasn’t much warmer than outside, but he could tolerate it enough to remove the hood of his coat from his head and his mask. After wiping the fog from his glasses after being in the cold, he looks around. The interior wasn’t underwhelming, but it wasn’t overwhelming either. The off-white cream paint of the walls and pillars peeling from the bottom looked pretty worn out and old. The lights were dim, flickering every once in a while. Looking forward, the front desk looked empty. The man behind the counter had his head down on the table, obnoxious snores coming out of his mouth. Tsukishima had nothing bad to say about him, however. It was already nearing eleven in the evening, and he was probably itching to go home.

He almost wanted to walk right back out, not wanting to bother the napping man, but he wanted to stay inside for a little longer. This worn-out building looked more like his scene than the neon-lit streets of Tokyo. Not long after looking around some more, the man groggily lifted his head and spotted the tall blond near the entrance. Immediately fixing himself and his wrinkled uniform, he calls over the middle blocker. “Hey, you! You wanna get a tour?”

Said blond nearly jumped in his spot at the man’s loud and raspy voice. He looked over to the man, who seemed less collected than his smile gives off, and approached the desk. “It's almost eleven. Aren’t you supposed to shoo me away or something?”

The man’s smile only widens, shifting his gaze to the old-model monitor in front of him. He taps a few buttons before the sound of a printer echoes through the halls. Tsukishima could only watch as the man signed an all-pass tour ticket and slid it over the desk. He finally gets a good look at the man and almost cringes at the tacky uniform he’s wearing. It looked tacky and out-of-date; the dark green color only worsened it. He looks down at the ticket and sees the same color, filled with silly, unmatching stickers and labels with his scrawny signature on the side.

Pulling out his wallet from his coat pocket, Tsukishima asks, “how much is this?”

“It’s on the house, kid!”

Tsukishima frowns a bit, “No, I insist. You’re about to close.”

This time, the man wears a sad smile, flicking the ticket closer to the blond as he stands up. The instant change of mood makes Tsukishima uncomfortable.

“I told you, it’s on the house. I’m sure the tour guide would love to see you.”

The man leads Tsukishima further into the building and points at a person he can’t quite see. He’s told to approach this person, his tour guide, and show them his pass. Once the man leaves, he starts to walk in your direction.

His vision starts to clear as he gets a better view of you. You were standing in front of two large open double doors, which he assumes are the entrance, staring off to the side. He follows your line of vision and spots various walls filled into diagonal lines with paintings hanging on them. Most of the walls were empty; then he sees the two workers approach one of the walls and detach the artwork from it, carrying it off to an unknown location.

Looking back at you, he recognizes the look of grief flash in your eyes as you observe the workers take each painting away. Your arms were crossed in front of your chest, posture slumping down slightly. He recognizes the tacky, muddy green uniform you’re wearing, the same uniform that the man at the front desk wore, but you pulled it off better. The collar was crisp, and your shirt still looked pressed after a long day at work, tucked inside your baggy pants. You ditched the heavy boots the other man was wearing for a pair of white running shoes, albeit a little dirty and worn out now. He switches his gaze back to the workers, watching as they carry the large paintings away.

From the corners of your eyes, you spot a tall man suddenly in front of you. Holding back a startling noise, you spot a ticket hanging from his fingers as he looks over to the side. With a small, sad smile, you follow his line of sight.

“I don’t know where they’re taking the paintings,” you start, making Tsukishima snap his head in your direction, “but they’re definitely not staying here anymore.”

“Did someone buy them?”

“I wish, but no.” You sigh, picking at the skin on your thumb as you watch the workers carry the last painting, “they’re moving it somewhere else, or probably giving them back to the artists.”

Tsukishima gives you a weird look, to which you reply with a quiet chuckle, “this museum is going out of business soon; that’s why they’re moving them out. Tomorrow, they’re gonna start to move the other, larger displays.”

He gives you a knowing nod, suddenly realizing why the man was so eager to provide him with a free ticket because it didn’t matter anymore. He puts two and two together and figures out why he never saw anything about this museum when he looked it up; it hasn’t been doing well. The place couldn’t afford the renovations to keep the site looking spick and span, and it couldn’t afford to hold all of the displays inside. It was probably long-awaited, the downfall of this museum, but you were here to wait it out.

“The tour guide would love to see you.”

Giving his attention back to you, he hands you his ticket. “Can I still get a tour, then?”

Your eyes visibly light up, reaching out to grab the ticket from his hand. You inspect the ticket for a second before ripping off one end and returning the rest to the blond. You smile a real one this time and hold out your hand.

“Thank you so much for taking an interest. I’m _____, and if it’s not obvious by now, I’ll be your tour guide.”

He awkwardly shakes your hand in return, “I’m Tsukishima. Thank you for having me. I’ll be in your care.”

“It’s no problem, Tsukishima!” his name rolls off your tongue so easily, he notes, “it’s been a while since we’ve had a walk-in. The most recent visitors we’ve had were usually just children.”

“Speaking of children, a second-grade class came here earlier,” you lean over to the wall and start switching on the other lights, “they weren’t all that interested, though.”

Tsukishima hums in response, squinting at the sudden light source. As his vision steadies, his eyes widen at the display inside. There were rows of different fossils, along with large boards beside each collection.

“These are what’s left inside the museum. They’re just fossils that are evidence of the continental drift theory, which I’m pretty sure you’re already aware of.”

He trails behind you as you start to discuss the continental drift theory like it was the back of your hand, actively pointing out each fossil, which region they came from, and how they play into the drift theory. The sorrow in your eyes is completely wiped away, replaced by a look of pure interest and dedication. He already knows all of the stuff you’re spewing as someone who works in a museum himself. You’re the perfect definition of a model worker. You knew what you were talking about and engaged the audience consistently throughout your mantra, not letting him look away for even a second. You quizzed him every once in a while to test if he was actually listening and watched as you tried to give him a silly star sticker, which he didn’t have the heart to refuse. It was apparent that you worked more with children than passing tourists, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

It surprised him how you could engage him in something he already knew everything about. The way you speak with absolute certainty and clarity made him want to hear more about how the Lystrosaurus was from the middle Permian period and early Triassic period or how each creature’s fossil was distributed across the continents, proving the drift theory. Every time you look back at him with your lopsided smile, asking, “do you understand?” he slightly feels his cheeks heat up as he nods.

As you reach the end of the tour, he feels his heart tighten a bit as you deliver your closing monologue. You sigh, turning to fully face him, a hazy smile plastered on your face, “do you have any questions?”

“Why do you stay at this museum?” he asks without missing a beat. “It’s obvious how the building is holding up. It’s been a while since this place was cleaned up. Why are you still here?”

The question catches you off-guard, and Tsukishima opens his mouth to apologize, but you beat him to it. “I love what I do.”

“This museum, the art, the fossils, the old displays, I love it. There’s something about showing these beautiful things to everyone that makes me want to continue working here even if the whole place is about to collapse,” you chuckle bitterly, “but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world.”

He stares at your expression, smiling. You notice this and send a slight smirk in return, “What? Did you want a more realistic answer? Something along the lines of “I just wanna get paid”? Which, mind you, I barely get paid anyway.”

He scoffs playfully, “I don’t need another answer. That’s all I need.”

Your smirk softens into a small smile, “Anything else you wanna ask, then?”

He pauses for a moment, fuck it.

“Are you free the day after tomorrow?”

You blink, “I mean, yeah, why?”

“The man at the front desk didn’t let me pay, so I’ll treat you to coffee. Sounds good?”

You go blank for a moment before nodding, feeling your cheeks tingle a bit. “Yeah, sure. Can I get your number then?”

He hands you a card mindlessly. After putting in the number on your phone, you giggle, “I knew you were an athlete of some sort with that height of yours, Tsukishima Kei of Sendai Frogs. Aren’t you playing tomorrow?”

He stares at you for a moment before feeling his cheeks bloom into a strawberry red color, reaching over to snatch the card from your hands, inspecting it. He confirms that it’s the silly business card that Kuroo made him put inside his wallet, “just in case!”. He curses said man under his breath before handing you his other card from Sendai City Museum.

Your eyes widen at the new card, tucking it in your shirt pocket after reading it over, “you work at a museum too? This is embarrassing; you probably already know everything I’ve been babbling about for the past thirty minutes. I am so sorry-”

“It’s okay, really,” he mumbles, “I appreciate it.”

You smile for the umpteenth time. “Would you mind if I come to your game tomorrow, then?”

His cheeks grow impossibly redder, “Please don’t, I swear-”

“Come on, I wanna watch! Consider it payback for the tour!”

He doesn’t have the heart to argue anymore.