“Keiji!” shouted Bokuto as soon as he answered.

“Good afternoon,” Keiji said, not even bothering to hide the smile creeping across his face.

“It’s only, like, four! Why are you calling me?” Bokuto’s voice had quieted from his booming greeting, and Keiji could hear a door opening and closing and the background noise cutting off, presumably as Bokuto left the common room and stepped into his dorm.

“Were you busy?” Keiji asked.

“No, but that’s not an answer to my question.” Keiji could hear the smile in Bokuto’s voice, too. He was glad Bokuto had retreated to his room; he didn’t want to listen to Miya’s complaints about how obnoxiously in love Bokuto was. Not then, anyway: they would have distracted him from the task at hand.

“Koutarou,” Keiji said, then bit his lip. “Why did I get a commencement announcement with your name on it?”

“Oh! It got there! Good, I was worried when you didn’t mention it last week,” Bokuto said.

“Koutarou—“

“So I know it’s a busy time for you, so don’t even worry if you can’t make it,” Bokuto babbled over him. “Like, I mean it, Keiji. I don’t want you stressing yourself out for this. Especially since I know Udai-sensei is still giving you a hard time!”

“Koutarou, you’re avoiding,” Keiji said, and he could all but hear Bokuto deflating, just slightly.

“You’re mad,” Bokuto sighed.

“Of course I’m not mad!” Keiji cried. “I’m just confused! Koutarou, have you been working on a degree?”

“Yeah,” Bokuto said. His voice was nervous, small, like he was waiting to be scolded. Keiji worried his lip between his fingers for a moment, then shook his head.

“I’m starting a video call,” he announced, and pulled his phone away from his ear. He could hear Bokuto protesting, the words too far away to be intelligible, but the tone familiar. He hit the button to turn on the video and waited until Bokuto accepted. There was no helping the smile as Bokuto’s pouting face appeared on his screen. His hair was down, dry, but clearly left unstyled after his post-practice shower. “Hi,” Keiji breathed, and a bit of wonder spread across Bokuto’s face.

“Hi,” he replied. Keiji watched him for a moment, shaking his head.

“You’re a marvel,” he breathed.

“Huh?”

“What is your degree in?” he asked, rather than answer directly.

“Ah, it’s kind of dumb…” Bokuto muttered.

“Koutarou,” Keiji scolded, watching the flush spread across Bokuto’s cheeks.

“It’s just a general applied mathematics degree,” he mumbled at last. “It was supposed to be a four-year track, but with the league and the national team, it took me six years…”

“Koutarou,” Keiji said. “You’re so incredible, do you know that?”

“I—“

“You are an inspiration to me, every day,” Keiji insisted. He looked at the commencement announcement, frowning, and dug his agenda out of his bag. “March twenty-fourth, right?” he asked, not really needing the answer. He flipped to the page he needed and glared at the things written there.

“Keiji, no, I know you’re—“

“Shut up.” He glanced at the screen, smiling softly to let Bokuto know he wasn’t upset. “I need to concentrate for a minute, and you trying to downplay yourself is distracting.”

Bokuto looked just the right amount of chastised, so Keiji turned back to his agenda. He didn’t pay much attention to his phone, only half-listening as Bokuto bumbled around his room. When he had managed to rearrange everything and type out an email to Udai and to his boss, he turned back to his video chat and smiled.

“I’ll be there on the evening of the twenty-third, and I’ll be coming back up here the evening of the twenty-sixth,” he said. “I’m sure your team will want to do something to celebrate with you, so I’m taking an extra night out there, to have you to myself.”

“Like, hotel room to yourself, or…” Bokuto asked, waggling his eyebrows. Keiji laughed.

“Well, I know Sakusa-san didn’t particularly appreciate our last reunion, so that’s probably for the best,” he said. Bokuto snorted, muttering something about nosey teammates and how if Sakusa didn’t want to hear it he should put his bed against the other wall, feng shui be damned. Keiji hummed, watching Bokuto and not even trying to keep down the overwhelm of fondness in his chest. He moved to his couch, settling in. A thought which had been tugging at him like a stuck thorn slipped from his lips before he could stop it.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were attending classes?” he asked.

Bokuto was quiet for a long time, refusing to make eye contact with his camera. Finally, he sat on his bed and blew out a sigh. “I didn’t know if I could do it,” he said at last. “I didn’t want to disappoint you if I couldn’t. You always believe in me, and I didn’t wanna ruin that.”

“Koutarou, can you look at me?” Keiji asked. Bokuto shook his head. “Okay. Then just listen, okay? I had no idea you were doing this. You’re so busy as it is with the V league alone, not to mention the national team or your sponsorship deals. The fact that you’re doing all that, traveling to away games, going on training trips and tournaments overseas, keeping up with your outside contracts and your social life and team bonding, all of it? That alone makes me so proud, Koutarou. So proud. To hear that you’ve gotten a degree while doing all of that blows me away. And.” Bokuto glanced up, his eyes skittering away as soon as he peeked, though Keiji hoped he at least caught a bit of Keiji’s smile. “And, if you hadn’t managed it, I would still be proud. If everything went wrong in your life, if you had to stop playing, stop modeling or doing commercial spots, stop everything, I would still be proud to call you mine. Obnoxiously so. You could fall apart completely in every conventional sense, and I would still brag about you to everyone who will stop and listen.”

“Keiji, you shouldn’t—“

“What have I told you about telling me what to do?” Keiji asked. A smile flickered at Bokuto’s face, a small victory that Keiji was determined to expand on. “Did you know the old woman who lives below me knows your name, and I don’t think she would know a volleyball from a baseball if her life depended on it?”

“Keiji,” Bokuto groaned, falling back against his pillows.

“It’s true. She asked me on Tuesday when she was going to meet that handsome boyfriend of mine. She knows you’re handsome, too, because I’m constantly showing people pictures of you. She promised when she does meet you to stuff you so full of yakiniku that you’ll have to waddle to your next game.”

“I think the team nutritionists will have something to say about that,” Bokuto grumbled.

“You think I’m scared of the nutritionists?” Keiji scoffed. “What’s the worst they can throw at me? Iwaizumi-san? Please.” He thumbed open a browser on his phone, trying to keep his movements subtle so Bokuto didn’t think he was being ignored.

“You’re like the only person I’ve ever met who isn’t at least a little intimidated by him,” Bokuto commented.

“He’s not that intimidating,” Keiji said with a shrug.

“Sure,” Bokuto snorted.

“He’s not. He and I have lunch every now and then and all he does is gush about his cats and his husband. And frankly, of the two of them, Koushi-kun is much more frightening.”

“Fair enough,” Bokuto said. There came the muffled sounds of a commotion, and Keiji smiled.

“Do you need to go see what that is?” Keiji asked.

“Probably.”

“Are you going to?”

“Nah.”

Keiji snorted. “You know I love you, right?” he murmured.

“I do,” Koutarou replied. “You know I love you, right?”

Keiji’s smile was starting to hurt his cheeks. Instead of answering immediately, he sent off a screenshot of his ticket confirmation to Bokuto. He waited until Bokuto’s brow furrowed and he opened the text, waited until his eyes went wide with understanding, waited until Bokuto opened his mouth to protest, before he murmured, soft and sincere, “I do know that, my love.”

Bokuto bit his lip, glaring at Keiji through the screen while Keiji grinned unrepentantly back. Finally, Bokuto rolled his eyes.

“I’m paying for the hotel room this time, at least,” he grumbled.

“Fine,” Keiji relented. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”