#ushikage

when, then, are we ever at home?

They’re assigned roommates for the 2016 Rio Olympics Training Camp.

Ushijima has been living out of a suitcase far longer than he’s known stability, and so doesn’t so much as blink at the official email he gets from the Japan Volleyball Association. They had it all planned out for everyone—detailed not just daily schedules and meal plans for both players and staff, but also designated lodgings. He finds out Iwaizumi is joining them for this season as an intern trainer, and is staying in the same compound as them.

Ushijima Wakatoshi and Kageyama Tobio, Room 3A, Building B.

It makes sense when you consider logistics, surmises Ushijima; being the only two on the national team who were out of towners, that even with a chartered bus at their service, commute time that could be lent to training was more optimal for the team moving forward. Ushijima is used to wheeling things in and out of dorms or hotels, and even welcomes from time to time, the often solitary nature it brings. 

But evidently not everyone did.

Kageyama hasn’t even so much as stepped a foot in the room since he punched the code. He stood lingering awkwardly by the door, eyes tracing the four corners of the room and peering curiously at the bunk beds and built in drawers and such. Cataloguing the space of what would be home for the next six months. His fingers were clutching his duffel bag and carry-on firmly, maybe even groundingly.

Ushijima has the faintest thought that will he not say anything, anything at all, then Kageyama would have been perfectly content to stay there for the rest of the night.

“Tobio,” Ushijima breaks the silence first, bringing his luggage to the side to make room. It was spacious enough as it is, he thinks, but maybe Tobio was someone who needed more space to acclimate more so than most. “Do you want the top or bottom bunk?”

Kageyama blinks, his still slightly lanky but growing 19-year-old frame stepping hesitantly further into the room. Ushijima doesn’t know if he’s just this generally awkward as a person or just with people in general. Or just Ushijima.

“I don’t have a preference,” Ushijima says in what he hopes comes across casually, instead noting how the normally levelled pitch of his voice is enough to send Kageyama into a straight-backed pose that seems born out of obedience to authority. He tries again, a little gentler, “You are free to choose.”

Kageyama looks anywhere but at him. His hand gripping the handle of his luggage was knuckled white, eyes darting to and from the bed and his face. 

“I—” he starts unsurely. “I also don’t — mind. Anything.”

Somehow in that surprisingly shy timbre of Kageyama’s stammering, Ushijima vaguely remembers Iwaizumi telling him he opted out of university in favor of going straight to the leagues. By the time Kageyama graduated, a well documented and patented offer from the Adlers was already on its way to him for a final signature. He was wined and dined and cooed. Ushijima would know the politics and optics of it all that well, he thinks: it’s exactly the kind of trajectory they laid out for him a few years prior. 

Except Ushijima rallied for university. 

His dad didn’t need much convincing, neither did the Adlers representative who even encouraged the idea of him being a student athlete. He’s thankful he pushed through with it, because it really has done wonders for his social graces; blunting some of his awkward pauses and making the flow of conversation pass by smoother. He’s far better at reading people and responding to their social cues than he ever was, and has university to thank for some of it.

Ushijima had a year or so in the league before Kageyama officially signed on with them. A month later, they were both drafted for the JNT. It wasn’t nearly enough time to learn each other outside the court, Ushijima still on the beginning legs of casual conversation that didn’t revolve around volleyball, and Kageyama still so clearly reserved—and maybe even hesitant—as the team’s youngest. 

Sometimes Kageyama looks at him a certain way, and Ushijima doesn’t know what he sees exactly: if it’s a version of him that’s a fellow Olympian on a completely level playing field with him, or still that asocial 3rd-year private school senior who didn’t so much as blink their way when they first met. Ushijima isn’t someone raised to have a lot of regrets, but time has allowed him the hindsight to look back on that encounter and humble himself enough to know he could have acted better.

And maybe that’s why when he looks at Kageyama’s growing frame, notices the awkward hunch in his shoulders and the way his limbs sprawl out from under him and still do, makes a decision for him: He has long legs. Still growing legs. Movement will be kinder on him below.

“You take the bottom bunk, then.”

-

“And this,” Ushijima demonstrates. “Is where the detergent goes in.”

Kageyama blinks. “Ushijima-san,” he starts carefully. “I — I know how to do my own laundry.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

He doubts either of them can see him, hunched in one of the many tables along the laundry room where the light was spotty enough as it was and multiple machines blocked anyone’s view of him. He was waiting for the final load of his sheets to dry when he heard familiar voices waft in. Ushijima had been trying to teach Kageyama how to operate a very standard, hotel-issue washing machine for the better part of ten minutes; and in that time, completely missing the look of incredulousness on Kageyama’s face as he watched Ushijima take charge of his pile and unceremoniously dump it in himself, all the while pointing out which buttons were for which. 

Iwaizumi didn't even have to ask.

He knows it took Kageyama that painfully long to speak up because he didn’t have the heart to tell Ushijima right away he was already well-versed in the art of domestic chores. Oikawa was going to have a field day with this.

“Oh,” Ushijima says. “Are you sure?”

Kageyama rubs the back of his neck hesitantly. “Um,” he flushes. “I–I’m pretty sure, yes. My sister taught me.”

“You have a sister?”

“Yes.”

“Older?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Ushijima says, and then: “I see.”

Kageyama doesn’t know what to do with his mouth or his hands, and so opts for the next best thing: shutting up and letting the clinical motions of doing your laundry at 10pm on a Friday night dull his social nerves. He’s just about to put some quarters in when he hears Ushijima say something beside him.

“I’m sorry?” he asks, stopping halfway.

“Fabric softener,” Ushijima points to his machine. “If you don’t have any, I can give you some.”

Kageyama blinks. “What for?”

Ushijima also blinks. “To soften your fabric.”

But ofcourse, Kageyama thinks, still wrapping his mind around it. Miwa never added anything else to their laundry days except the usual store-brand detergent. “Is it,” he stops. “Necessary?”

Ushijima considers for a moment. “Yes,” he decides. “I would think so. Fabric softeners make your clothes last longer, and I find they’re more comfortable to wear than without. Would you like some?”

“Oh,” Kageyama sputters. “I see. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. So I don’t have—”

“That’s no problem,” Ushijima walks towards him, unloads the cartridge again as he carefully pours a cup worth of something that smelled surprisingly crisp with just the faintest hints of floral. “I always bring extra just in case.”

“Thank you,” Kageyama says, genuine. “Ushijima-san.”

“You’re welcome,” Ushijima returns. “Tobio.”

The hum and drum of clothes sloshing against each other and the buzzing of the machine keep them company for the rest of the night. Iwaizumi hears gentle pen strokes from Kageyama’s careful fingers as they write on an old leather-bound notebook, the lines of his brows furrowed in concentration as Ushijima takes generous sips of break room coffee, looking past into the Tokyo skyline. Neither of them really needed to stay, but then no one was making an effort to go either. And when fine strips of moonlight make their way from the open window, casting the room in an almost luminous glow from the overhead lights, they hear the crickets make their nightly lullaby and decide they don’t need to say anything. Not a single thing at all.

Kageyama is still a little awkward and socially inept if you care which I know you do, Iwaizumi sends a text to Oikawa later that night. But he’ll be alright.

-

“Just ask.”

“Ask what.”

“You know what.”

“What.”

“I can practically feel your eyes bulging out from my screen,” Iwaizumi sighs, walking over closer to the net. Oikawa wasn’t being subtle with not even looking at him, but everywhere else. “Just ask what you want to ask and get it over with, Oikawa.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Oikawa rebutts, unconvincingly.

Iwaizumi inhales deeply, changing to the front camera of his phone to position it at an angle just so. “There. Happy now?” he points it directly at the court, deliberately tilted to show a specific side of the net. Where the setter usually lingers. “Your protege has and will always be killing it, I think. Kageyama scares the fuck out of me even now, to be honest.”

Iwaizumi hears sputtering behind the phone, overly dramatic intakes of air, and can practically hear a retort coming and so beats him to it by turning his phone another way again.

“And Ushiwaka, as usual,” he trails off, making sure Ushijima’s cross-shots showed on the screen. “Is still annoyingly good with that southpaw. There. Are you good now?”

“Tobio-chan, is that you?” Oikawa squeaks from the phone, the sound of seagulls flapping in the wind and waves crashing in the background on his end. “Couldn’t be you, because what I just saw was a shit serve!”

Kageyama’s eye twitches a fraction at the voice, but doesn’t look their way. 

Iwaizumi was monitoring them everyday, meaning that Oikawa was also calling everyday, meaning that Oikawa might as well have been part of the JVA all the good his daily verbal assaults to the team were getting. To Kageyama and Ushijima, especially.  

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, hissing into the phone, “I didn’t call you just to say shit about our setter.” 

“Listen, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa ignores him, gets so up and personal in his phone that his eyes nearly cross over. “Is that Ushiwaka being nice to you? If he isn’t, let Iwa-chan know. I’m the only one who gets to call your serves shit, okay! And don’t let his height fool you—Ushiwaka is nothing next to Iwa-chan’s arms! Right, Iwa-chan!”

Iwaizumi drags his phone back, shooting an apologetic glance at Kageyama who just lets everything roll off his back, already long made his bed with Oikawa’s usual brand of taunting. Ushijima, too, just quirked a brow hearing his name. 

Before Iwaizumi leaves, they think they can still hear Oikawa’s shrill voice going, “And absolutely no alcohol until he’s at least 20 years old! Do you hear that, Ushiwaka! Do not put that kid on steroids like I know you take because you’re a cheater and a wimp and a sore loser—”

-

Ushijima gets dinner with him sometimes.

It’s not something either of them particularly planned on doing, much less voicing; but when most of your team are native Tokyoites and would much rather prefer the comfort of a home-cooked meal, it leaves you very little options for a dining partner. Ushijima is used to—even expects—eating alone. It’s the nature of being a legacy kid, with almost no contemporary to match himself with until they started drafting him for Worlds in highschool. Sakusa was always a familiar face, but so was his cousin and their uptight clan. There were many more that flitted in and out of the camps, some of them he’s grown the slightest bit acquainted with and would even go so far as calling a distant friend.

But it’s a different thing altogether, Ushijima thinks, when he hears Kageyama sometimes end his sentences in that particular Sendai-ben drawl that is as familiar to him as breathing: the comfort of a shared city, language, even childhood.

Ushijima finds out Kageyama likes waking up early to run. Kageyama finds out Ushijima likes to incorporate mountain trails into his hikes. Ushijima finds out Kageyama takes his ocha unsweetened, and Kageyama finds out that he takes his the exact opposite. They find out other things about each other, some professional tidbits like Kageyama’s vertical jump height being only 3cm shorter than his; or that Ushijima is more than half a decent setter if the circumstances lined up properly for him. Kageyama learns how to spike better. Ushijima’s tosses have never been as sharp.

Then there are the small little details, like finding out Kageyama can’t go to sleep without writing in his journal or that Ushijima regularly FaceTimes Tendou late into the night because of the time difference. No one brings up the noise or the activity, and Kageyama even joined in once on a call with Shirabu and Semi, politely asking how they were doing.

It’s little moments like those that bridge the gap between what started out as professional acquaintances, to something a little warmer on the homesick soul, something that could maybe even resemble: 

“Tobio,” Ushijima says as they’re packing up after training. “Do you want to eat dinner together?”

If Kageyama is startled, he doesn’t show it. Or he’s slowly acclimating himself to the normality and regularity of what space Ushijima now takes up in his life. “Oh,” he says, just an inch shy still but thawing, somehow. “Yes, of course, Ushijima-san.”

“OK,” Ushijima nods in return. “Let’s meet in the lobby in 5?”

The ramen bar Ushijima takes them to is at a lively corner by Nakano Broadway, just a few stops away from the Ajinomoto Training Center. He knows the catering provided by the JVA is specially curated for pro athletes their calibre, but sometimes the blandness of the chicken or the lack of more beverage options loses its nutritional appeal. Even to someone as disciplined in their diet like both he and Kageyama are. A cheat day once in a while wasn’t going to ruin them forever. 19-year old Kageyama—and Ushijima takes great pain to always remind himself of this when sometimes, so rarely, Kageyama messes up in training—is still growing, and frankly he doesn’t care if he had the discipline of a Buddhist monk, no teenager should be eating the same dry meal everyday.

“Choose anything you want from the menu,” Ushijima says when they settle on one of the tables. “My treat. The shoyu ramen here is my favourite, but the tsukemen isn’t bad either.”

“Oh,” Kageyama blinks, obviously surprised. “You don’t have to—”

Ushijima stops him with a hand. “It’s no worry,” he insists. “I’m sure Iwaizumi was going to take you here sooner or later. He told me how much you like the ramen from Tsurotontan back home, and they offer a similar thing here.”

Kageyama looks like he’s still running it over his head. “Iwaizumi-san did?”

Ushijima nods. “Well,” he shrugs. “Oikawa told him. I think he said exactly, Make sure that Ushiwaka treats Tobio to at least one meal or so help me God, I have the power of the South American Volleyball League on my side, or something like that,” he ends, amusedly.

“Oh my god,” Kageyama flushes, maybe a touch embarrassed. His ears were tinged red. “He didn’t have to. I–I’m okay.”

“I think they’re both just concerned about your wellbeing on a high-profile team,” Ushijima looks him over carefully, clinically, noting how much he’s already filled out his physique over just a few weeks. “You are awfully young to be an Olympian, Tobio.”

“I know that,” Kageyama looks down at the menu, a small frown marrying his brows. If Ushijima squints, he thinks he can make out the gesture as so frighteningly Iwaizumi. The almost-pout, Oikawa. It’s the first he’s seen him resemble something close to a kid. Kageyama coughs, determination etched in his voice when he says, “But I don’t regret anything.”

Ushijima smiles a little at that. “No,” he nods along. “I bet you don’t.”

-

The training camp ends with an after party.

They’re at one of the nearby yakiniku grills from the stadium. Slabs of Kobe beef, Uchimono, Habaki, and the like all passed around their growing table of nearly 30. The coaches are already in their third beer of the evening, Hibarida and Hitaki sloshing their mugs towards each other like drunk uncles at a children’s party. Faces are beet red, chopsticks are slipping off fingers, and speeches are slurring. But no one’s had as much fun in days, and it shows, in the easy companionable vibe the evening brought. 

Ushijima was sitting on one of the corner tables, taking command of the grill as Kageyama munched gleefully on his bbq platter. The respectful thing to do at these things was to let his seniors roll the stress off their backs and mingle occasionally when needed. He’s been to enough of these to know he’s never going to enjoy them, but respects the kind of camaraderie it inspires in people as they let their hairs down and suits unbuttoned. He's told Kageyama as much, at least.

Someone coughs—Shugo Meian, was it? MSBY captain and the JNT MB—as he saunters his way to their side, grinning good-naturedly down at him and Kageyama. His cheeks were already slightly flushed, holding two cups of sake.

“Tobio-kun, right?” he says, offering him a cup. “Man, your sets really are the best!”

“Uh,” Kageyama sputters, also beet red, without the aid of alcohol. “I’m—”

“He’s still 19,” Ushijima finds himself answering for him. 

There wasn’t any pressure to the gesture, not really, Ushijima thinks; if anything all Bokuto told him of Meian was that he was probably the best guy around to wrangle Atsumu and Sakusa when they got into their usual petty fights. Generous with his time, even more with his experience.

And so when Meian flushes even more almost instantly, as he looks down in horror at Kageyama who looked just as uncomfortable, means it when he starts gushing, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. Shit. I knew you were young—” he goes on. “But I just didn’t—I mean. Bokuto-kun told me you played like a veteran so I just assumed.”

Kageyama still can’t quite meet his eye, but is able to summon enough social grace on his part to bow his head low. “N-no worries, Meian-san,” he says, politely. “It’s alright. I-I’m tall for my age.”

“Shit,” Meian is still swearing, looking conspicuously around the restaurant. “Iwaizumi is gonna kill me. Little piece of shit is scary for someone so young and short. He’s so gonna make me do a hundred suicide squats if he hears about this.”

Kageyama blinks up at him.

Meian notices. “He told me to look after you,” he explains, eyes tracing the floor. “Something about his Argentinian setter boyfriend killing him if he found out you got wasted under his watch. So I figured—might as well be the one to offer you a drink myself! Least we can control the amount you’re drinking, you know!”

Ushijima smiles into his tea, after sneakily adding more vegetables to Kageyama’s plate. 

“Funny,” he comments offhandedly. “Iwaizumi told me the same thing.”

They place 3rd in Rio just in time for Kageyama to turn 20. Ushijima buys him his first beer. Iwaizumi took copious amounts of pictures that he makes a point of sending to Oikawa, who replies, not even a second later with: Get the brat home safe, he wrote, then after a while, And congratulations. Or whatever.

-

Kageyama is unusually quiet on the bus ride going to Sendai Gymnasium.

He was never the most expressive, in some ways was more curt with his words than even Ushijima is. Hoshiumi is often enough of a chatterbox to fill in the gaps in their conversations. But the difference is that Ushijima had years of experience as a captain, has been put in situations where that demanded more than just a sheer display of strength for being Shiratorizawa’s volleyball poster boy; but spokesperson, sometimes even advisee. Kageyama had the privilege of scaling back whenever he so wished, and some years into their tenure as one of Adlers’s most consistent players, finds that this particular habit hasn’t really divorced himself from the 21-year-old Kageyama he saw now.

“Tobio,” Ushijima starts, the name more confidently rolling off his tongue now. His brusqueness, this frankness he was afraid people would misconstrue as rudeness, Kageyama always responded with respect. “Are you okay?”

Kageyama looks over him a moment. “Yes,” he says finally. “It’s just been awhile since I’ve been,” he stops. “Home.”

Ah, Ushijima nods, understanding his hesitance. Because what is home even?

The Adlers spend majority of their time moving around, the longest and farthest stretch of a home base they can call located in Tokyo. Sometimes some people visit their gym. Sometimes it’s a former Karasuno member like Suga who was taking his students on a tour of Metropolitan Tokyo, who asked if the Adlers were willing to have a bunch of overstimulated and hyperactive six year olds observe how a professional volleyball team trains. Kageyama was only more than willing and even looked forward to it, signing an exact number of miniature volleyballs to the exact count of students Suga was planning to bring in.

He softened with him somehow, the usually strict line of his shoulders hunching just so as he bowed his head low listening to Suga excitedly tell him all about his plans for the rest of their school trip. 

Ushijima thinks it’s not at all dissimilar from how Kageyama acts with Iwaizumi.

Kageyama attacks the court sometimes with such knife-level precision, so finely spun a web; that there’s almost exactly no room for error. He had the hands of a surgeon, and the rigid discipline of such weight so palpable in his shoulders. But talking to Suga and Iwaizumi, it seemed like he allowed himself to be, so rarely, just nineteen. And then twenty-one.

But home was a different concept altogether. And Ushijima who has lived far longer in a suitcase than he ever did somewhere so corporeal as Sendai, can understand, why coming home—in every literal and emotional sense of the word—can feel as real as it is frightening.

“Welcome home, Tobio.”

Tadaima.

Okaeri.

-

Ushijima thinks he’s seen so many versions of Kageyama now: the brash, angry 16-year-old who always came to carthage burning, not caring who he devoured in the process; the slightly less harsher 19-year-old, who still had some jagged edges he needed to iron out, but considered and paused and evolved, some ways still so wet behind the ears and impossibly so unprepared but so hungry to eat the world raw. 

And then there is Kageyama Tobio in his 20s: who Ushijima is proud to say he had such close audience with and the privilege of seeing grow into, see him thin out what rough edges he had left from teenage angst, tender his soul into something that just kept expanding itself beyond volleyball and the Olympics and training. This boy who is slowly becoming a man who moves with such grace in the court its both a homecoming and homeseeking, this longing to belong and revelling in the home he has made for himself in his soul, finally settle down.

There’s a little bit of everyone in Kageyama, thinks Ushijima: Karasuno and his capacity for love. His family and how grief molds and persists but never burdens. Even some of Oikawa: in the beginning legs of idol worship to the very idea of volleyball itself and what a transformative, life-altering, radical shape it can take in your life. In his stance, his form, the lines of his body so closely paralleling Oikawa that Ushijima has to blink a few times to make sure he wasn’t seeing an old rival but someone entirely in new shoes, a place he clawed his way for in the world brick by brick and toss by toss. 

And maybe even Ushijima himself, he’d like to think so.

In his patience with his soul, in the discipline required to be as great as you want to be but remembering never to burn yourself out in the process. In knowing what it takes to be the greatest, the sheer impossibility of the weight this expectation can have on a child, and guiding himself as gently and delicately as possible so he never loses himself to it. This unanchoring and rebuilding and reforming what it means to be a genius, and maybe more importantly, why it matters not.