#6. drabble

age four: in the dramatic world, quirks present themselves with magic / with physical changes / with loud announcements. at age four, there is nothing obvious from mitsuki. no dramatic changes, nothing. babyfat rounds her cheeks, & her skin shines with youth. her quirk is only confirmed through scattered doctors’ appointments —- mitsuki is not quirkless. but there is nothing about her that screamed power.

except her lungs. she’s got enough fight in her to last a century, &

it didn’t really matter to her parents. her having a quirk felt like the bare minimum. her father ( souta ) likes the idea of acclaim & glory; he fell short of his own standards. in his youth, he had a potential career in baseball. a knee injury lowered his chances & then things happened & things happened & things happened —- he winds up working an office job. granted, he likes his work in journalism. critiquing & fact-checking politicians & writing all sorts of op-eds . . . but he likes even more to think of himself as accomplishing something. who doesn’t? his kids are supposed to be a part of his accomplishments. & in the process . . . he believes ( a little obliviously ) that mitsuki is fated to be someone gentler. & with such a subtle quirk . . . he has no reason to change his expectations.

her mother ( aki ) is a quiet woman who believes deeply in the art of self-restraint. she is a nurse, the daughter of a military man —- she never particularly wanted to be a nurse, but . . . she likes to have a purpose. she believes strictly that it is within her capacity to tolerate anything. she is rarely impressed, & she is easily unimpressed by her homelife. although she does not imagine herself to be the head of the household, she has her specific expectations.

age six: no one at school knows what the fuck glycerine is. neither does mitsuki. all she knows is that if it’s super hot outside & she runs around a lot ? she can lick her wrist & it tastes a little sweet. it’s like a party trick.

age seven: mitsuki’s youngest brother is born. something isn’t right. something isn’t right. her mother won’t quite look at the baby; aki stares a lot at the wall & can’t sleep. aki snaps at souta who bites back & still won’t win. it frustrates him, & he makes mitsuki try & hold her brother. she’s young, so she delights in the privilege of holding a baby but . . . it doesn’t occur to her that he only tells her to do it because she’s the only other girl in the house.

something isn’t right, & mitsuki’s mother seems restless & listless. it lasts months. mitsuki doesn’t forget it. souta does.

age eleven: mitsuki thought she was in love. she wasn’t. it was fucking puberty.

the same year, her brother ( 2 years older ) breaks out for the first time. mitsuki laughs. her brother whacks her in the head with a pillow.

when shirabu feels crummy like this, when he’s reading policies / seeing them enacted in away that makes the pit of his stomach feel heavy . . . then he shuts himself away. closes the door of the room he still refers to as his bedroom

& says he’s focusing.

it’s the truth.

shirabu is focusing & yawning & thinking that the pile of papers beside him feels impossible . . . he’s going to have to figure it out. things need to get done, & he turns his phone off.

he sleeps in his room & when he finally turns his phone back on . . . shirabu leaves it on mute.

to be fair, he texts goshiki that things piled up so he’ll be slow with texts. it’s fine —- goshiki isn’t home right now anyway.

shirabu names himself impossible when he’s frustrated, & then he finds himself unsurprised when he forgets something, messes something up.

he’s a perfectionist.

perfectionists fall short.

so. . . shirabu’s still a little sour three days later when things are starting to feel a bit more manageable. sour enough to know he’s done something wrong when he comes home & goshiki looks at him with a raised eyebrow. goshiki turns away.

shirabu wants to spin back towards the front door & bang his head against the wood. he doesn’t, even as he drops his bag at the stoop & kicks off his shoes. ‘ what’s did i do ? ‘ he grumbles &

because his tone is all wrong, the words aren’t quite right so . . . asking doesn’t help much. before they can fight ( because it feels like they might fight ), shirabu stops when he walks by goshiki; he presses his lips to the other’s in lieu of a greeting & though goshiki allows it, kisses him back . . . shirabu can feel the lilt of a frown twisting at his lips. shirabu shifts to press his forehead to goshiki’s as a counter &

goshiki seems to wilt a little. the gesture is small enough that shirabu follows up with a question — a kiss to the corner of the mouth where begins the frown, a kiss to the cheek, a kiss to the jaw where he knows goshiki holds tension.

these touches are permitted —- & they come like an investigation, as though each gesture will bring shirabu closer to an answer. eventually the frown disappears, replaced instead by the way goshiki seems to tense / tighten in indignation. it makes shirabu remember that his tone had been wrong, that his words hadn’t been quite right. so shirabu backs off, waves the fight away before it begins, & goes back to his room.

collapsed on his bed, shirabu finally unmutes his phone & goes through his texts. the phone calendar dings a notification — he realizes belatedly four things:

1 ) he incorrectly put a time / date into his calendar for goshiki’s away game. he thought the game was today, but goshiki is home so . . . that’s not quite right. by shirabu’s understanding of the schedule, goshiki shouldn’t even be home until tomorrow.

2 ) the away game determine the rest of the team’s season.

3 ) he received texts from goshiki that he only now sees — texts about goshiki’s team’s loss, about a friend who had announced retirement, about how season is over. &

4) of course, shirabu with his muted phone had never answered. & he had forgotten to watch the stream of the game. which . . . he tries not to do, but because he had written the date wrong ?

impossible: sourness & frustration. shirabu throws a pillow on the ground & figures goshiki is still thinking about following him to tell him off —-

shirabu tries to beat him to the punch by leaving his room. shirabu leans against the doorframe to his room, & his gaze admittedly slides to the ceiling. into the space of the apartment, shirabu confesses ‘ . . . so that was pretty shitty of me. ‘

he’ll admit blame where it’s due, so he nods once &

drifts into the room he often shares with goshiki ( their room ) & climbs into their shared bed. ‘ yell at me later, just let me sit with you. ‘

please.

they raise a finger to his brow. he raises a finger to his brow. trace trace trace  cursed stitches! fingers that shutter shock energy into 

the soul acts. sometimes even the creature that wears the hat does not distinguish the actions of the soul / from their own volition. in the mirror, their eyes narrow. his eyes narrow; now nameless suguru feels asleep, feels a stupor.

here they stand: kenjaku & a deadman ( a deadman stands ). two individuals who have digested the bodily souls of 

men curses who knows what? 

kenjaku ties their hair into the telltale sign of what was suguru geto, what was the ideology of suguru geto. 

kenjaku doesn’t care to smile into the mirror’s reflection — teeth feel too sharp against the tissue of his cheek. they cut. they cut cut cut. 

the body heals. 

which isn’t a bad thing —- stress means something’s happening. but repeated stress is a different conversation.

pending. this is a pending conversation.

tendou starts to realize that he finds hellos to be synonymous with goodbyes. he likes for ushijima to go / to travel because it means ushijma will come back. he likes for ushijma to go / to travel because it means he’s going to do something —-

however, it’s an odd feeling to imagine that he’s technically

waiting around for someone.

tendou doesn’t wait. he doesn’t feel like he’s waiting. ushijima isn’t waiting. tendou thrives & builds himself as a businessman / personality & rejoices when ushijima happens to be home & imagines that neither of them are lonely.

ushijima travels with a team that doesn’t quite speak his language.

tendou comes home to an empty apartment / forgets to sleep in proper chunks.

they both realize at the end of the day that their schedules don’t quite match up, that they can’t call one another at easy times of day. which is fine, after all, because neither of them are much good with real conversations when it comes to conversing through the phone.

. . .

tendou has said a lot of things in the past few years, committed to their conversation, & still he doesn’t doubt a decision made. but restlessness in his gut hasn’t quieted all the way. he’s committed, settled in a home made for two —- &

the way they’ve progressed is hard to identify. sometimes it feels as though they’ve made it easier for themselves to stay in place —-

sometimes it feels as though they’ve made an unspoken agreement that they are secondary until ——

until something.

there is no blame; they are both complicit. it just accumulates with the casual understanding that their time will come, that because they do not doubt the decisions they made . . . they’re fine being on hold.

tendou is increasingly uncertain what that means.

pending. this is a pending conversation.

tendou worked early that day — he woke up at 4:00 in the morning, programmed the coffee pot to stay warm for ushijima, & worked a long enough shift that post-work afternoon nap lasts a little longer than he’s intends. he sprawls diagonally across the bed & tucks his head between two pillows & doesn’t hear

when ushijima comes home & double checks his bags for toiletries & the appropriate gear.

tendou’s not fully asleep just . . .

a little exhausted. still, he snaps to attention when ushijima murmurs that he’s about to head to the airport. tendou sits up in their bed & thinks that his alarm should have woken him a much earlier. the way it usually does. it’s confusing to wake up with evening light trickling in through the window, painting the room with something blue / something purple / something promising night.

. . . there’s no use puzzling over spilled milk.

tendou yawns & straightens a bit to lift an arm to invite ushijima to shuffle beneath his arm so that he might indulge in the embrace that permits a kiss &

tendou’s groggy enough that he can’t quite tell if this is hello or goodbye. he’s lost track. but still he presses his lips to ushijima’s temple first, then his cheek, & then his lips because:

‘ you’ll like me even if my breath is awful —- ‘

tendou drops back beneath the sheets & waves a hand. ‘ come back soon, ‘ the gesture translates.

hello, maybe goodbye: i’ll miss you in the meantime.

they see each other. kuroo sets him up with a business opportunity tsukishima never asked for. they have a drink together at the bar. they get fresh air, & tsukishima bangs his head up against the wall in an expression of frustrations that

they somehow know are mutual, though neither of them ever explained the specifics.

they aren’t very good at talking to one another. they don’t care to be. with nothing said that actually matters, they spend forty minutes recapping the event & bickering & exposing a poor social performance executed by the other. sometimes a few strangers pop outside to have a smoke, &

tsukishima walks with kuroo for a night cap. sometimes at a local bar, occasionally at one of their apartments.

tonight they clink beer bottles in kuroo’s apartment. the lights are stupidly low because kuroo needs to change a lightbulb, & the beer is only a little better than lukewarm. they can’t quite decide between watching a history documentary that tsukishima watched the previous weekend or tsukishima’s criticizing kuroo’s music &

if you went on google & typed in a description of what they were doing, you could find a damn wikihow article explaining how to set some kind of mood, how to charge the air with a certain kind of electricity. tsukishima resents the fact. there’s nothing in him that respects wikihow guidances for this; there’s nothing in him that finds a pattern for himself in this behavior.

except . . . it’s sorta happened before, but it was years ago

it’s sorta happened before, but they ignore what’s going on here.

granted, it wasn’t really premeditated for either of them.

tsukshima drums his fingers on the top of kuroo’s kitchen counter & sips at his beer. he looks beyond kuroo & comments that kuroo’s apartment looks exactly like he’d expect it to. this is enough to startle kuroo out of his composure for a nanosecond as he blinks; he tries to make his recover by overthinking the statement aloud just to make tsukishima roll his eyes & finally match kuroo’s gaze with a raised brow.

kuroo finishes his beer before tsukishima does. tsukishima’s only halfway through his, & he tries to slow the process so that he can antagonize kuroo somehow. it doesn’t really work, but

kuroo fills the space anyway. first by playing his own percussive taptaptap beat on the beer bottle — the rhythm does not match the drum of tsukishima’s fingers on the countertop.

tsukishima stops tapping. kuroo stops tapping.

still, kuroo keeps with his game by laying the bottle flat against the countertop. tsukishima’s brow is still arched, & he refrains from voicing confusion that . . . admittedly doesn’t last long.

the bottle spins. it points towards the refrigerator. the bottle spins. it points to the window. the bottle spins; it points to tsukishima &

tsukishima nods accidentally, to permit what he thinks is coming. he abandons his beer bottle on the counter & even though kuroo’s lips are at his own / the edge of the counter starts to press against his hip / his fingers fist a little at the fabric of the other’s shirt —

he has to be a smartass, even when the distance between them is null . . . he has to be a smart ass. ‘ woulda been funny to watch you try to kiss the window first though. very smooth. ‘

tsukishima & yamaguchi as they stand now are a continuation of what they have been. they are a little of what others might expect ( men their age . . . living together, always together when they can; it doesn’t exactly come as a surprise ).

they know this — they don’t assume what company knows or doesn’t know, but they preserve their privacy like it’s something sacred. they claim it in the sanctity of the shared space of their home, their new city, their lives & coexistence —-

this is their new life, &

with some confusion, their schedules had lined up. with some confusion, it was feasible for them to return to their childhood homes at family request to visit / say hi! / to maybe prove something their families already suspect?

they live together. their lives are together.

maybe it’s only okay because it’s something that has gone unspoken.

maybe it’s only okay because they’ve always been family in a sense.

maybe it’s only okay because they split paths for a few days —- yamaguchi at his home, tsukishima at his until they join forces to unload a guest futon in a bedroom that smells like childhood. it’s mostly performative. it’s mostly muscle memory & an open ended option for more sleeping space if the bed gets too crowded.

it doesn’t get too crowded. the bedroom door closes, & they settle next to one another in the way that characterizes yamaguchi as space heater.

it’s also muscle memory when they go downstairs in the morning & tsukishima ritualistically starts helping his mother with breakfast while yamaguchi pours tsukishima’s coffee ——— it occurs to tsukishima that they wouldn’t really behave much differently if they told everyone what they were.

. . . he’s guessing the family knows. he’s pretty sure they have to know.

tsukishima isn’t quite as secretive as he once was with parts of his life, though he won’t say outright what / who he likes. akiteru’s almost gotten it out of him before. but at that time they had been drinking together & akiteru stumbled over his own feet & kei laughed.

but saying it aloud is mostly just another conversation that yamaguchi & he know they should have . . . but they keep skirting it regardless.

akiteru is home too. he’s overslept, so tsukishima’s mother shuffles off to retrieve him &

yamaguchi presses the coffee mug into tsukishima’s palm like a good morning, & it’s muscle memory that tells tsukishima to lean forward a kiss a new-day greeting against yamaguchi’s lips. it’s a small gesture, but it’s what they do in their apartment because it’s easier to give a kiss with brushed teeth & no stains of coffee breath.

it’s muscle memory, so it’s mostly just

luck that they’re alone.

follow up: tsukishima presses his lips against yamaguchi’s forehead. he takes his first sip of coffee, listening to his mother calling something to akiteru as she makes her way back to the kitchen.

yamaguchi starts preparing a refilled cup of coffee for tsukishima’s mother. tsukishima cocks an eyebrow as his mother waltzes back to the kitchen, spots yamaguchi’s work, & sighs. she tells yamaguchi that this is why he’s her favorite, & tsukishima snorts.

he mouths suck up to yamaguchi but privately

agrees with his mother.

this is why yamaguchi is his favorite.

please recall: one moment & mitsuki’s frustrations build on themselves & churn outwards & lose traction until later. she’s snapping the dishtowel on the counter because the sound is sharp enough that it cracks the air. one moment & mitsuki stares at her son through narrowed eyes. he meets her gaze, & his eyes are narrowed. their defiance together builds a wall in the middle of the kitchen. it reminds her of a lot, & it feels like katsuki is missing the damn point. he probably feels the same way about the things she isn’t hearing. her hands are wet from the towel so — one moment & she throws the towel into the sink. & says something she’ll probably regret about how that attitude isn’t going to help anyone, if that’s what you’re all hung up on.

one moment & his hands aren’t wet, but he flexes them. he always flexes them when he’s tense because there are too many aches in the joints. he says something she agrees with, something she didn’t really want to hear. it’s frustrating enough that she slams the oven door shut &

looks cold when she tells him that he needs to get out of her sight. at least until dinner is ready.

please recall: she’s never been proud of her temper. it leaves something that feels like sick at the back of her chest, but she needs a moment to breathe. the oven makes the air feel hot hot hot &

it’s better than nothing. she calls katsuki & masaru for dinner. katsuki comes because he needs to eat, but masaru is the one who tries to navigate the silence.

please recall: these things will happen. they will happen again. they’re personal matters, & it leaves the home sour for days. masaru gets mitsuki & katsuki in the same space by organizing a boardgame night that mitsuki & katsuki don’t quite protest but

please recall: these things happen, & they will end. reconciliation doesn’t necessarily come easily, but it does come reliably —- & it does come with consistency. they make patchy mends that rarely come with spoken apology. mitsuki tells katsuki that she loves him before she ever speaks to him — folds his laundry, cooks his breakfast when she wouldn’t normally be awake, but she doesn’t want or trust herself to speak.

it has little to do with his own participation in any argument. he’s her kid. & it’s good that he’s saying something at all.

when reconciliation comes, it steps towards them with ritualistic steps. back in the kitchen with oil spitting in a pan & rice thinking about steaming. katsuki finishes cutting onion & looks towards chopping carrot, & mitsuki presses her lips to the top of his head.

‘ you’re a good kid, don’t get me wrong, ‘ she offers . . . & makes it a little less demanding when she drops a stalk of broccoli in front of him as well.

& when he nods, it’s her cue

to talk again over dinner. to point at katsuki with her utensil & say it sucks to suck because a show that she likes just released a new episode that she’s planning on watching tonight. katsuki likes the show too, but he doesn’t admit it. she doesn’t make him.

over dinner, she nudges masaru to get him invested in the conversation too. ‘ maybe we can finally give your father a break from board games & put him in the limelight. y’know someone tried to ask him out for coffee today? it was hysterical. ‘

masaru rolls his eyes & doesn’t fluster. mitsuki laughs it off, winks at him / winks at katsuki.

please recall:

iii. lay in blue

the first time that it happened seriously, tsukishima wasn’t really sure it was happening at all. he was fourteen. it was winter; it was cold & stupidly wet & tsukishima had bronchitis. confirmed bronchitis — his mother worked at a clinic & had a god-tier immunity . . . but she managed to bring home bugs / viruses / whatever. so tsukishima had bronchitis & felt trashy with congestion & coughing that rattled the walls —- he wasn’t tired, but he was. he was bored, but he wasn’t. & there was homework he could try to do or a list of movies he should watch but —-

when tsukishima was fourteen, he felt his heart sitting at the back of his throat & in the pit of the stomach. fatigue from sickness surely. coughing was surely the cause of hopelessness blurring his vision.

at some point, he turned on the television. but then he couldn’t bring himself to press any other buttons on the remote. he thought hard about it & couldn’t move his fingers. he stared at the television long enough that the screen went black, & it felt the same as watching a movie. somehow.

hopelessness, disconnection, empty feelings — lasting days that felt like an eternity. all symptomatic of bronchitis, right?

except that it happened again. & again. & again. weeks full of low days, blue spells —- & tsukishima wasn’t always sick when they happened. he was fifteen / sixteen / seventeen / twenty-two & still had to go to school, to practice, to work. even if on those days, he couldn’t properly bring himself to hear what was being said to him —-

if he couldn’t bring himself to care / to move / to try / to smile / to engage / to be / to be / to be.

he’s twenty-two, living with hinata, & it’s happening again. when energy is continually sapped, he gets a little messy, a little more reclusive. tsukishima hates to work on his bed, but right now —-

it’s his best option. papers & books & laundry join him; he feels messy, but — so be it. the sun had set three hours ago, & tsukishima never turned on the light. so he sits in the dark. like he had done yesterday & the day before that. he’s not sure of the last time he changed his clothes or washed his hair, but . . .

technically, he’s got a paper to write. the cursor on a blank document on his computer screen blinks at him. tsukishima blinks back & knows that the lighting is hurting his eyes.

—— the front door opens / closes. the sound is muffled through the walls of tsukishima’s room, & he thinks nothing of it. hinata is home. tsukishima hears the shower start & stop & hinata’s whistling through the kitchen. hinata is a mediocre whistler, tsukishima thinks.

then there’s a pound at his bedroom door ( a knock ), & hinata doesn’t even wait for a response before pushing open the door to invite himself in. light pours into the room, & tsukishima squints at the suddenness of it. he squints at hinata, realizes he too looks tired, & —— remembers it’s his night to cook. he doesn’t think he had even seen hinata the night before ( or the night before that? )

hinata says something tsukishima doesn’t hear, & tsukishima just stares at his empty computer screen —- there’s no point saving the document; there’s nothing to save. too sharply he shuts the laptop & pushes it away from him to try to stand up / to get moving / to cook / hinata’s watching / there’s a mess on his bed / tsukishima feels like a mess like —-

one step at time. he should cook. he doesn’t know what ingredients they have. he keeps laying in bed . . . his legs are aching a little from inactivity.

he can’t do it. he can’t even bring himself to sit up when he starts to fumble on his wrinkled bed-sheets for his wallet ( he knows it’s there somewhere ) — ‘ just order in tonight. it’s on me. i don’t care what it is; i'm sick — ‘ he starts to say & to lie.

tsukishima neglects to realize that hinata might be able to see that something is wrong / off / that tsukishima is laying in blue. the mattress dips suddenly, & suddenly hinata is there with too intense eyes & too red hair & too uninvited presence. tsukishima stares at the ceiling to ignore all of this —-

then calloused skin presses atop his still searching hand &

it’s quiet.

tsukishima intertwines their fingers without thinking.

he hates to be seen like this. but it’s good sometimes not to be alone. strangers ? familiar ? somewhere in-between ?