berries n cream

tonight, he said he wanted to take you out stargazing. he didn't say to bring anything, but to prepare for the weather being a bit chilly, hence your current predicament. you settled on your sweater, it was warm enough to protect you from the cold night air while still being comfortable enough to not make you feel stuffy.

just as you finished putting on your outfit, you get a text from sylus telling you that he arrived at your apartment. you quickly grab your keys and your motorcycle helmet before rushing downstairs to see him in his signature fit whenever he drives his motorcycle, the black leather pants with his black leather jacket that has the red and white accents on the sleeves.

the light from his phone illuminated his face as he looked up and greeted you with the smirk he always wore.

"don't you look cozy," he says.

"i interpreted your dress code as being comfortable. so here i am, comfortable." you explain to him, already putting on your helmet. you tap on the seat of his bike, signaling for him to get on.

he chuckles. "so impatient," but he gets on anyway, revving up the engine before letting you sit behind him. you wrap your arms around his torso tight and he sets off.

you drive for a good 30 minutes or so, just outside of the city. when you arrive, you don't recognize the area. he stops on the foot of a hill and kills the engine, before getting off the bike. he takes of his helmet before taking off yours and setting them both on the hand clutches. he then offers you a hand to hop off, which you take. strangely, he doesn't pull his hand from yours, so you don't retract it either. he leads you up the hill, where on top is a small picnic set up, red and white checkered blanket laid on the ground with a variety of your favorite foods on it. it's surprising how no insects or ants have gotten to it yet.

"it's so.."

"what sweetie? cute?" sylus asks with a raised eyebrow.

"..unexpected. who knew the infamous onychinus leader knew how to set up such a domestic view?" you tease, swinging your interlocked arms back and forth while looking up at him with a cheeky smile.

he smiles back, pulling you towards the picnic before settling down on the blanket and letting you sit beside him. "well, it would be rude of me to not know the preferences of the one i asked out, would it not?"

you hum. "i guess that's true. i guess i was just under the impression we were only gonna look up at the sky and point out constellations. didn't expect a whole night picnic with it." you lie down, bringing your legs up to bend your knees with your feet on the grass and your hands behind your head. you stare up at the sky, all the stars are visible from here since you were so far out from the city where the city lights couldn't block the view. it really was a perfect stargazing spot.

you feel the body next to you also lie down. you can vaguely see from your peripheral that he's basically in the same position as you, only one of his legs is propped up on the other and he only has one arm behind his head while the other rests on his stomach.

"i would only prepare the best for my date of course, no more no less." he says casually.

wait.

was this a date?

it's not like you haven't pondered on it before. regular nightly outings with a man who pays for you 99% of the time? that's basically a date.

but then again, it's not like he's explicitly asked you out on a formal date before. or hinted (you think) at anything but platonic feelings towards you. even if it did hurt a little because, what normal man does this platonically?

you brushed those thoughts and feelings aside however. sylus was a man who took what he wanted whenever he wanted. he was always direct in his approaches, business and non-business wise. so if he never asked you out, it was safer to assume your hang outs were platonic at best.

you turn to look at him to see him already looking at you, his red eyes piercing your own.

"sylus, is this a date?"

you see his eyes widen a fraction for just a split second.

he bursts out laughing, rich and loud and full of joy. he's practically glowing and clutching his stomach from laughing so hard.

"hey! im seriously asking!" you sit up to look down at him, frowning at the man. his eyes are filled with tears of laughter and you can't help but smile. once he ceases his laughing fit, he looks at you with a soft look.

"sweetie, have you just realized?"

"realized what?"

he sits up now too, his head a fraction above yours making you now look up. he's smiling at you fondly, brushing stray hairs from your face before caressing your cheek with the palm of his hand, the warmth of it bringing you a sense of comfort.

"i've been courting you for weeks now."

"..you have??"

he snickers at you. "count how many people i casually take out for dinners and pay for all of them. how many people have i taken into my home just to taste expensive wine with me? how many people do you think i just take a drive for out on my motorcycle just for fun?"

you open your mouth. then close it.

"okay to be fair, you never explicitly asked me on a date. or said any of those were dates for that matter." you argue before he suddenly kisses you. you squeak in surprise, but return the kiss nonetheless. when he pulls back, he huffs another laugh.

"i guess that's my mistake then, sweetie." he wraps his arms around you, then pulls you down to lie on top of him.

"will you let me make it up to you?"

"oh? how would you do that?"

"hmm.." he looks up at the sky and pretends to think. "maybe by properly asking if i can court you now."

"…"

"may i be your boyfriend?"

its your turn to huff a laugh, and you playfully smack his chest before giving him another kiss, a softer one.

"was that so hard to ask me?"

"to be fair sweetie, you also agreed to the dates, so i assumed you knew what they were."

"well i guess we're both just stupid then."

he smiles, and allows you to pull back just enough to look up at the sky.

you spend the rest of the night cuddling and chatting, finding comfort within each other. sure the both of you were kind of oblivious, but atleast you got together!

at some point you fall asleep in his arms, he watches you sleep with a smile, allowing himself to be selfish for a little bit with you. he kisses your forehead, whispering sweet nothings before gazing at the stars, he wishes upon every one of them that you continue to choose him in every life, in every universe. even if you both might not realize you have already been destined for each other in the first place.

You laughed before you could stop yourself, and relief moved through him all at once, softening his shoulders, loosening the frightened line of his mouth. He'd been nervous all morning. Badly nervous. Valko, who could grin with blood on his teeth and make danger look like a door he'd simply forgotten to knock on, had spent the whole walk here giving you warnings no sane person could have prepared for.

Do not let Mika read your palm. He makes things up and then believes them.

Do not compliment Baba's curtains unless you want curtains.

Do not say you're full.

And, most importantly, if anyone mentions the soup incident, Valko had said, grave as a condemned man, they're lying.

You had asked what the soup incident was.

He had started to walk faster.

Now he stood before the old wooden door with your fingers caught in his, trying to look calm and producing, somehow, the exact expression of a wolf about to be bathed.

“Valko,” you said softly.

“Yes?”

“You're shaking.”

“I'm not shaking.”

“You are.”

“I’m containing myself.”

“From what?”

“Hereditary embarrassment.”

The door flew open.

A girl about his age stood on the other side, dark-eyed and grinning, with flour on her cheek and murder in her posture. She took one look at Valko’s hand around yours, then lifted her gaze to his face with the slow delight of someone finding a knife exactly where she had hoped one would be.

A slow smile cut across her face.

“Oh,” she smirked. “So this is why you changed your shirt twice.”

Valko made a sound. Small, wounded, entirely unlike a wolf.

“I changed once.”

“You changed twice. The first shirt was the blue one. The second was the one that made you look like you were going to court. This...This is the third.”

His ears went red.

The woman held out her hand to you. “Milena. His sister.”

“Unfortunately,” Valko added.

“Fortunately. Without me, you'd still think soap is optional in winter.”

“It isn't optional.”

“Because of me.”

You took Milena's hand. Her grip was warm, firm, and full of judgement she hadn't yet decided to use.

Behind her, the house breathed out heat. Bread, onions, some in old wood, something sweet cooling on a counter. There were voices everywhere, layered and crossing. One person laughing while another complained, a child humming under a table, chairs scraping, a kettle whistling like a bird losing patience.

Milena stepped aside. “Come in before Baba starts saying we were raised by wolves.”

Valko muttered, “We were.”

She looked at him. “And still, some of us learned manners.”

You crossed the threshold. The house was smaller than the noise made it seem, or maybe the noise had simply learned to fill every corner. Framed photographs climbed the walls in crooked rows. Herbs hung drying above the kitchen window. Nothing matched, and yet everything looked touched, mended, argued over... kept.

Valko leaned close as he helped you out of your coat.

“Last chance,” he whispered. “We can run.”

You looked past him to where an old woman stood near the stove, hands folded over her apron, watching you with bright, wolfish eyes.

“Too late,” you whispered back. “I think she heard you.”

“I hear everything,” the old woman said.

Valko went still.

Milena smiled into her shoulder.

The old woman crossed the kitchen with the slow authority of someone who had ruled this house before any of them had teeth. She was small, broad in the shoulders, silver-haired, with flour on her wrist and no softness wasted in her face. The softness, you realised, was elsewhere. In the bread covered by a towel, in the chair pulled out before you reached it, in the way Valko lowered his head without being asked when she came close.

“Baba,” he said, and for the first time that day, his voice lost its jokes.

She, of course, ignored him.

Instead, she took your face between both hands.

Her palms smelled of rosemary, yeast, and soap. Her thumbs rested beneath your cheekbones, and for one strange second the whole house seemed to lean closer. The cousins, the kettle, the old boards, even Valko, holding his breath beside you.

“So,” Baba Vesna said. “You are the reason he forgets to eat.”

“I eat,” Valko protested.

Teta Marika appeared by the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “You came here last week, opened the pantry, stared at a sack of potatoes for six minutes, then said, ‘I wonder what she’s doing.’”

“That was taken out of context.”

“What was the context?” you asked, because love had made you brave and terrible.

Valko looked betrayed. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

A boy leaning backwards on his chair nearly lost balance from laughing, another cousin caught the chair by its back without looking up from peeling an apple.

Baba Vesna patted your cheek once and released you. “Sit, dušo. Eat something before my family embarrass me properly.”

Valko gave a strangled laugh. “Before?”

No one listened to him.

You were placed at the long wooden table as if the decision had been made before you arrived. A bowl appeared, then bread, then butter, then a small plate of pickled vegetables. Teta Marika, Valko's aunt, kissed the air beside your cheeks and took the small gift you had brought. Mika announced that he already knew your favourite colour from Valko’s face. Luka told him that was the stupidest sentence ever spoken in the kitchen, which Mika accepted as praise. The little one beneath the table emerged, solemn and bread-dusted, and introduced himself as Niko.

“Are you going to marry him?” Niko asked.

Valko walked directly into the side of a chair.

The whole kitchen paused. You pressed your lips together.

Milena leaned against the doorway, radiant with cruelty. “Careful, Niko. Val only has two knees.”

“Niko,” Teta Marika turned from the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “We ask guests if they want juice first.”

Niko nodded, absorbing this etiquette with grave importance. “Do you want juice before you marry him?”

Valko covered his face with both hands. You bit down on your smile so hard it almost hurt. This wasn't what you had expected.

Some foolish, frightened part of you had imagined a den in the old sense. Teeth, watchful eyes, a family arranged around blood and law, waiting to decide whether your bones could be allowed near theirs. Valko had never spoken of them casually. Whenever he said home, something tender and embarrassed moved through him, as though the word itself had fingers and knew exactly where to touch.

Now you sat beneath a crooked lamp while his grandmother tore bread with her hands and put the first piece on your plate.

“Eat,” Baba Vesna said.

You obeyed.

The bread was warm enough to steam between your fingers. The crust cracked softly, butter melted into it in golden lines. Across the table, Valko watched you take the first bite as if your mouth held judgment from heaven.

You chewed. Swallowed.

“It’s delicious.”

Baba Vesna clicked her tongue. “Of course it is wonderful. I made it.”

Mika leaned towards you. “He talked about you after the market yesterday.”

Valko’s hand hit the table. “No.”

“Yes, you did” Luka said sticking his tongue out.

“No.”

“You said, and I quote, 'she chooses fruit with such care'.”

The table went quiet for half a breath, your hand stilled around the bread. Valko looked at Luka as if betrayal had entered the room wearing his cousin’s face.

“That was private.”

“You said it in the kitchen.”

“That makes it private.”

Milena sat across from you and rested her chin in her hand. “He also said you have kind hands.”

Valko’s mouth opened, nothing came out. Your heart did something foolish inside your chest.

The teasing had worked him bright and flustered, but beneath it, something softer trembled. He was embarrassed, yes. Horribly, so. Beautifully, so. Yet the thing underneath was more dangerous than shame. This was exposure. A curtain pulled open in a room he had spent so long keeping dim.

He had spoken of you here.

At this table. In this warm, loud house. To these people who teased him because they knew what he looked like with no armour on. He had brought you home long before he ever brought your body through the door.

Baba Vesna filled your bowl with soup.

“He was always like this,” she said.

“Baba, please.”

“He was a strange child,” she said.

Valko groaned. “Please.”

“A sweet child,” Teta Marika corrected.

“A dramatic child,” Luka said.

“A biting child,” Milena added.

Valko pointed at her. “You bit first.”

“You looked biteable.”

“You see what I mean?” Valko turned to you with helpless outrage. “This is what I survived.”

There was love in it, the kind that had been cooked too long and reduced into something strong enough to stain. They spoke to him as if they had known every version of him and chosen, again and again, to keep putting food in front of whichever one came home.

You looked at him while he argued with Mika about whether a stolen spoon counted as a childhood trauma.

He caught you looking. For a moment, the noise thinned.

There he was.

Valko with his hair refusing every law of decency. Valko trying so hard to survive his own family and failing beautifully. His eyes met yours with a nervous brightness that made you want to reach across the table and be cruel to every fear that had ever found him.

Then Niko pointed his spoon at you.

“Are you keeping him?”

The kitchen stopped.

Valko made a tiny sound into his bowl.

Milena closed her eyes as if praying for patience and finding none. “Niko.”

“What? Mika said maybe she is keeping him.”

His gaze dropped to the table, to the bread by his hand, to the small old cuts in the wood. The blush still clung to him, but it had changed into something quieter now. Hope, perhaps. Or terror wearing hope’s coat.

You could have laughed. Everyone would have let you. It would have been easy to throw the question back into the room like a toy and watch them tear it apart.

Instead, beneath the table, you found Valko’s hand.

His fingers closed around yours at once.

“I’d like to,” you said.

The house held itself still for half a breath.

Then Baba Vesna nodded, once, as if some old contract had been signed in soup and honey.

“Good,” she said. “He is difficult, but warm.”

Valko bowed his head.

His shoulders shook.

At first you thought he was upset. Then you realised he was laughing, quietly, helplessly, with one hand over his mouth and the other holding yours under the table like he meant to keep it there until winter.

Mika groaned. “Ah, look at him. Finished. Completely finished.”

Milena reached for the pickles. “Good. He needed finishing.”

Teta Marika smiled into her tea. “Eat more, zlato. You will need strength.”

“For Valko?” you asked.

“For all of us.”

Dinner became less a meal than a storm with chairs.

Bowls moved, hands reached, stories climbed over one another and died unfinished because someone remembered a better accusation. Luka asked you practical questions in a calm voice: where you liked to walk, whether Valko had shown you the old river path, whether he still pretended not to like sweet things. Mika tried to read your palm and declared that you were fated to own a troublesome dog.

“That's just Valko,” Milena said.

“I am not a dog.”

“True,” Luka said. “Dogs listen.”

Valko began quietly placing the best pieces of food on your plate.

A soft carrot, the inside of the bread, a dumpling he pretended to move away from himself and somehow abandoned beside your spoon. He was not subtle. He had never been subtle. He was a wolf trying to hide a whole deer behind a napkin.

You noticed on the fourth offering.

His family noticed on the first.

Baba Vesna said nothing until Valko tried to give you the last honey cake. Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at him over her tea.

“Ah,” she said.

Valko froze.

It was one syllable. It landed like a bell.

“What?” he said.

“No, no.” She waved him off. “Continue. Starve for romance. Very noble.”

Mika threw his head back.

You picked up the honey cake before Valko could die at the table and broke it in two, placing half on his plate. “There,” you said. “No starving.”

He looked at the cake.

Then he looked at you.

His expression opened in a way that made the room, somehow, feel too small for your heart. It opened with that unguarded, bewildered softness he sometimes gave you when kindness arrived before he had prepared himself to receive it.

Milena saw it.

Her teasing quieted.

For a moment, she only watched him with something old and protective in her face.

Then she stood. “Come help me with plates.”

Valko blinked. “Me?”

“Her.” Milena pointed at you.

Valko frowned. “Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“That's not a reason.”

“It has worked on you for years.”

You rose before he could protest again. Milena took two plates from the table and handed you none of them, which told you at once that this had nothing to do with helping.

She led you down a narrow hallway lined with photographs.

Behind you, Valko’s voice rose. “Do not interrogate her.”

The hallway smelled faintly of beeswax and dried herbs. The noise of the kitchen softened behind you, still there, still golden, but now wrapped in walls. Milena stopped by a window overlooking the yard and leaned her hip against the sill.

For the first time all evening, she let the smile leave her face.

“He likes you,” she said.

You smiled gently. “I got that impression.”

“No.” Her eyes flicked towards the kitchen. “He likes people easily. He likes old men who tell bad stories, stray cats that scratch him, children who throw rocks at windows because they want attention. Valko is built stupid that way.”

A laugh escaped you.

Milena folded her arms.

“He brings things home,” she continued. “Broken things, angry things. Things he thinks no one else will be gentle with.” Her gaze moved towards the kitchen, where Valko’s voice lifted in protest. “He does not bring people home.”

Your throat tightened.

From the kitchen, Valko shouted, “It wasn't soup. It was stew.”

Mika shouted back, “Stew cannot make a grown man cry.”

“I was overwhelmed by flavour.”

Milena closed her eyes for one second. “Bože, give me strength.”

You laughed softly.

She looked at you again, sharper now.

“He was nervous all week,” she said. “Changed his shirt three times. Asked me if the house smelled too much like onions. Asked Luka if his laugh was strange. Asked Baba if she could please not tell the story about the goat.”

“The goat?”

“Later.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Maybe never.”

You glanced back towards the kitchen.

He had asked if his laugh was strange.

Something in you ached with such tenderness that it almost felt like anger.

You looked down.

“He didn’t need to worry,”

“He is clumsy with precious things,” she said. “Because he thinks his hands are only good for breaking them, even when he is careful. Especially then.”

“So be kind,” she said. “Or be cruel quickly. He will survive either, but I prefer to know which one I’m dealing with.”

There it was.

The knife under the table. The love with its teeth intact. You didn't resent her for it, you thought, strangely, that you liked her more for it.

“I’m not here to hurt him,”

“Most people aren’t, at first.”

“Milena.”

Milena’s gaze narrowed.

“I don’t know what I’m doing with him,” you admitted.

“With any of this,” you continued. “He makes everything feel…” You searched for the word and hated every pretty one that came. Fated. Wild. Tender. All too polished for the mess he made of your heart. “He makes everything feel like I’ve been walking past a door my whole life, and he is the idiot who opened it with his shoulder.”

Milena stared at you.

Then she laughed once, sharp and startled.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re gone too.”

You looked down, caught.

She seemed satisfied. “Good.”

“Is that approval?”

“That is me deciding not to be difficult.”

“You were being difficult?”

“Dušo,” she said, and now her smile had teeth in it, “I was being polite.”

When you returned to the kitchen, Valko was waiting near the doorway as if he had tried to remain seated and failed.

His eyes moved from you to Milena. “What did you say to her?”

Milena walked past him. “That you were adopted.”

“I’m not.”

“Emotionally, you're a wet dog we found in the rain.”

He watched her go, wounded on principle, then turned to you with genuine concern. “What did she actually say?”

You reached up and brushed flour from his sleeve. “That you’re warm.”

“That was Baba.”

“Family consensus.”

His mouth twitched. “You are enjoying this.”

“I am.”

“You were supposed to be intimidated.”

“By Mika?”

“By the bloodline. The history. The general atmosphere of teeth.”

“Mika told me my palm says I’ll own a dog.”

Valko sighed.

You reached up and plucked the dish towel from his shoulder. “You have flour on your sleeve.”

He looked down, surprised, as if his own body had been making decisions without him. Then he looked back at you, and the kitchen noise faded once more, though this time it was only the two of you making the world small.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

The question was casual enough for anyone else to miss the tremor underneath. You heard it. The naked, waiting part. You thought of his hand shaking outside the door. Baba Vesna taking your face between her palms, of bread steaming in your fingers, of honey cake divided in two, of Milena saying he doesn't bring people home.

“I’m all right,” you said. “Are you?”

Valko smiled too quickly. “I’m alive.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

His smile softened.

For once, he did not joke immediately. It cost him something. You could see it in the way his fingers flexed at his side, reaching for mischief and finding courage instead.

“I wanted them to like you,” he said. “I wanted you to like them.”

“I do”

“I wanted…” He stopped, then laughed under his breath. “I don’t know. Something stupid.”

He looked towards the kitchen, where his family had resumed their noise without mercy. Mika was accusing Luka of stealing the larger piece of cake. Baba Vesna had taken down a tin from the highest shelf, probably containing either biscuits or secrets.

“Valko, stop hiding her. I have photographs.”

Horror returned to his face with magnificent speed.

“No.”

“Yes,”

“No photographs.”

“Naked baby photos,” Mika added.

Valko went pale. “You do not have those.”

Teta Marika’s voice drifted after him, serene and deadly. “We have everything.”

He grabbed your hand. “We’re leaving.”

You let him pull you three steps before Baba Vesna appeared in the doorway holding a small album to her chest.

“Sit,” she said.

Valko sat.

It was remarkable how quickly a wolf could become a grandson.

For the next hour, they showed you the evidence of his life.

Valko missing two front teeth and glaring at the camera as though betrayed by dentistry. Valko asleep under the table with one hand buried in a dog’s fur. Valko at thirteen, all elbows and outrage, holding a fish half his size while crying because he had to put it back.

There was Valko covered in mud, Valko wearing a paper crown, Valko with Milena’s arm hooked around his neck while he pretended to hate her and leaned into her anyway. Valko standing beside Baba Vesna in the garden, holding a basket of tomatoes like he had been entrusted with the fate of nations.

Each photograph was another small door.

You had known him in pieces: the grin, the hunger, the awkward tenderness, the jokes he threw like branches over deep water. Here was the rest of him. Here was the child who had survived becoming himself because these hands had fed him, scolded him, dragged him upright, and remembered his softness when he tried to outgrow it.

At some point, while everyone argued over whether the goat incident happened before or after the soup incident, Valko bent close to you.

“You don’t have to keep looking,” he murmured.

You turned a page.

A tiny Valko stared up from the album, holding a wooden spoon like a sword.

“Yes,” you said. “I do.”

He stared at you.

Then, very briefly, he rested his forehead against your shoulder.

It lasted only a second. A shy, exhausted surrender. No one commented on it, though you knew every person in the room saw. That seemed to be another house rule. They would mock the wound, yes, but they protected the pulse.

Later, when the cups were cleared and the album returned to its shelf of holy embarrassments, you stepped outside for air.

The yard was cold, dark and soft around the edges. Herbs grew beneath the window, yhe old trees leaned towards the house as if listening. Behind you, the kitchen glowed gold, laughter pressing against the glass.

Valko followed after a moment, closing the door carefully behind him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

You looked at him. “For what?”'

“The interrogation. The photographs. Mika. The marriage question. The soup litigation.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Milena.”

“I like Milena.”

“That means she behaved.”

“She said she was being polite.”

He winced. “Then she liked you.”

You leaned back against the porch railing, and he stood in front of you with his hands in his pockets, rocking once on his heels like he wanted to come closer and had forgotten the law of his own body.

Through the window, you could see Baba Vesna pretending to wipe the table while watching you both with shameless interest. You lifted a hand and waved.

She waved back.

Valko turned, saw her, and groaned. “For the love of...Baba.”

“She loves you.”

“That's her usual excuse for crimes.”

“It’s a good one.”

He looked back at you, and the teasing left him slowly, piece by piece. Out here, with the house at his back, he seemed caught between the wild thing and the loved thing. The wolf and the boy in the paper crown. The man who had brought you to the threshold with shaking hands and still tried to joke like fear could be made harmless if he gave it a funny name.

“Did you mean it?” he asked.

“Which part?”

“When Niko asked if you were keeping me.”

The question came lightly, too lightly. A feather laid over a blade.

You reached for him.

This time, Valko did not hesitate. He came into your space at once, as if pulled by a string tied somewhere behind his ribs. His hands settled at your waist, careful at first, then warmer when you didn't move away.

“I meant it,”

His eyes searched yours.

“For tonight?”

“For longer than that.”

He didn't kiss you immediately. Somehow, that made it worse. He stood there and let the answer enter him, slowly, like someone opening the door to a room he had been told was empty and finding it lit.

Inside, Mika yelled, “Are they kissing?”

Valko dropped his forehead to your shoulder.

“Leave them. He is finally being normal.”

You laughed.

He looked at you then, and the last of his embarrassment broke open into something bright, something almost boyish

“Welcome home,” he said, very softly.

You touched his cheek.

Behind him, the old house breathed and creaked and held its golden noise. Inside, his family waited with tea, teeth, stories, and a place at the table already made yours.

“Welcome home, Valko.”

For two minutes afterwards, you stifled sniggers as Valko apologised profusely. He wouldn’t do it again! It was, uh… it was supposed to be a grand gesture! He was trying to be romantic, and no, he would not, under any circumstances, try to be romantic again.

By the time the waiter walked away, only mildly appeased, Valko’s face was the same reddish hue of his hair.

“Still thinking about the steak, big spender?” you cooed, doing absolutely nothing to save his complexion.

“Fuck,” he muttered, mortified, “you must think I’m such a snob.”

“Well, you littered in my apartment the other night. And you just said ‘fuck’ in a fancy restaurant, so… jury’s still out.” Your menu was flopped down so you could look at him. Your eyes sparkled. “You’re very complex, you know.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“You’re… multifaceted.”

Valko sank his face into his hands, slipping down in his chair until most of him was hidden under the table (and he isn’t small; it was quite the feat). The waiter spotted him from across the room. He sat up straight, jolting the table in his haste, and you bit back another smile as your cutlery clattered, and your drink sloshed.

In the end, he ordered a salad.

…

It’s eleven o’clock, the same night, and you’ve traded tealights for your stove.

A steak sizzles in a frying pan as you ladle melted butter on with a teaspoon. Your kitchen is warm, thick with the rich scent of roasting meat, and Valko is trying not to look overeager, but his nose is twitching. The soft of his tail flicks behind him. He wets his lips with a dart of his tongue.

“You don’t have to—” he starts to protest, just like he protested in the aisles of the supermarket, and at the till, and throughout the walk home.

“I want to,” you interrupt, even though he hasn’t found that argument particularly compelling so far. Twentieth time’s the charm, you hope. You reach to pinch at his cheek. “You’re looking a little anaemic, y’know. I’m worried.”

He rolls his eyes, but the blush he picked up at the restaurant never did entirely fade away. His ears are folded back, flat against his hair, and when you beckon for the salt, he hands it over in silence. He must regret that silence when, a moment later, his stomach grumbles. The pink of his face deepens.

“Sorry,” he voices quietly, since he’s given up on dignity. It’s in a grave, and not a shallow one, so he’s forced to move on without it. “I’m so embarrassed. Shouldn’t have tried to show off.”

You chuckle fondly, thinking back to the restaurant. The scene is on loop in the theatre of your minds, except he’s cringing in horror whilst you munch down on popcorn; it’s your new favourite movie. “Don’t be sorry. I loved it, Valko. It was sweet. Really sweet.”

The steak has caramelised in the pool of butter and herbs, so you turn the stove down, leaving it to cook through. Valko’s still trying to keep his nose from twitching too much. You cup his face with your hands.

“Kinda a sheep in wolf’s clothing, huh?”

He mumbles: “Don’t know if I like that.”

But his cheeks are so, so warm under your fingers, and he’s dodging your gaze again, making you giggle. “You committed vandalism for me.”

“It was a menu.”

“We’ll… make it something cooler when we tell people the story.”

(You won’t. You still have the torn menu, and one day, you’ll bring it out for guests at every given opportunity.)

Valko’s tail sways pensively. He’s frowning. Considering.

“I had a really nice time tonight, Val.” You ease him towards you, gently, so you can press a kiss to his cheek. “Promise.”

That tail has picked up its pace. His ears are lifting. “Mm,” he grumbles, “you sure?”

“Mmhmm.” You kiss the tip of his nose. Then his cheek again. Then the line of his jaw.

He relaxes, and your awkward evening tips into the night where, for the first time, he nuzzles into the crook of your neck. Kisses you there, slow and grateful, and pulls you close enough that he can hear your breath catch.

With a click, the stove is turned off behind you. Huh? “What’re you—?”

“Forget the food.” When Valko pulls back, the gold of his eyes is hot. He smirks, emboldened at last by your reaction, and a merciful lack of nearby waiters. “Got something else I wanna eat...”

You gasp.

His ears go flat. “No, I didn’t mean—!” He scrambles. “Well, I did, but not… not quite as literally as… not that I wouldn’t want to, uh… fuck. Not fuck! Not saying we should fuck, I just—”

Yeah, he’s only digging himself deeper. You should kiss him again.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who has a ridiculously attractive laugh. you thought it would probably be a little silly, but you were wrong. the first time you heard him really laugh out of true amusement, your entire face got red. not to mention the fact that his fangs and dimples show when he's laughing. also has those smile lines that everyone finds hot.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who never lets you carry anything, ever. whenever you two go out shopping for fun or for groceries, he will hold all the bags with both hands, bulging veins nearly popping out of his biceps as he holds onto 5 bags with each hand. but you still have the audacity to tease him.

"why don't you wanna hold my hand? are you angry at me?" you feign offense, pouting as you eye his obviously full hands.

he freezes, turning to the side to glance at you over his shoulder. "you serious?"

you nod, your frown only deepening as you stare up at him.

he shifts the bags in his left hand and barely manages to hold out his pinky finger to you. "c'mon," he points forward with a gesture of his head.

you chuckle, grabbing onto his pinky finger and walking alongside him.

"happy?" he asks with a scoff, but is unable to hide his grin. once you hum in agreement, his eyes return to the path ahead, his smile widening.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who, just like wolves who pick their partners for life and stick by their decision, saved himself for you. never dated, never kissed, never hooked up, never even flirted. he knew that the one meant for him was out there, and that he'd know it was them the moment he'd meet them. and when you ran into each other the first time? yeah, he knew you were the one. his nose and intuition never failed him afterall.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who acts very suave and confident, which he kinda is, but not all the time. it's kind of a cover-up that became half true somewhere along the way (fake it till you make it). sure he's much cooler now than in his teenage years, but he's still the virgin tech nerd who annotated biology textbooks for fun while having national geographic wildlife documentaries playing in the background.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who's a very outdoorsy man. always suggests going on walks, runs, or hikes with you. but he never takes the same path or trail twice. always insists on seeing new things. however, he knows that most people aren't big fans of hiking and stuff, so he never forces you, and is always encouraging when you do decide to. (also super grateful that you try out his hobbies for him)

"how much longer until we get back..." you whine, your arms dangling in front of you as they rest against valko's shoulders.

he readjusts you, tightening his grip on your legs as you melt further against him, threatening to fall off his back. "hey— you don't get to complain when you're being carried." he huffs.

"fine." you roll your eyes. "but you're the one who suggested carrying me around in the first place."

"what was I supposed to do? let you limp the whole way back? how gentlemanly." he chuckles.

feeling his chest vibrate underneath you, and the warmth emanating from him, you can't help but laugh as well. "alright, alright I get it." you press a quick peck to his cheek. "thanks."

ᯓ★ bf!valko who loves lying in bed with you, face smushed between your thighs. unconsciously gnaws and bites at the flesh of your inner thighs like it's a chew toy.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who sleeps with nothing but a pair of boxers on. with his naturally high body temperature, he's probably more comfortable sleeping nearly naked. never really thought much about it, but when you pointed it out the first time you slept together, he kinda got flustered. thankfully though, you reassured him you didn't mind as long as he was comfortable which he was grateful for (more eye candy for you).

ᯓ★ bf!valko who's a mouth breather sometimes, sorry. (canines expel heat and absorb fresh air through their mouths). he tries to stop it, and it's fine most of the time, but sometimes he can't help his instinctive nature and catches himself doing it unwillingly. gets a little embarrassed when you tease him for it. also snores.

ᯓ★ bf!valko whose fangs sometimes poke your lips or get stuck in the flesh while you two make out. it's gotten to the point where you're used to it and don't mind, but he still kinda freaks out everytime.

you're resting atop his lap, your lips moving against his like you needed him to breathe. and he returned that energy tenfold. his excitement caused him to be a little careless however.

you feel a sharp sting on the corner of your bottom lip and wince away from him. your tongue darts out to feel the spot he accidentally poked. there's no blood, but you can feel a little dent.

he eyes you with wide and worried eyes. "fuck, I'm sorry—" he lets out a quiet whine. "are you okay?"

you nod, chuckling at his pout.

his pout turns into a frown as he furrows his eyebrows at you. "I'm worried about you and you're laughing at me?"

that makes your chuckle turn into a full laugh. you lean into him, cupping his face tenderly before peppering kisses all over his face. "can you blame me? you look cute angry."

"... I'm not cute. I'm a grown man." he huffs, trying his best to stay annoyed, but once your lips press against a particularly sensitive spot near his jaw, he melts against you.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who loves seeing you try out new clothes, or pampering yourself. he just likes showing you off, and he loves it even more when you show off for him. probably loves praising you too. "you look so hot." "can't believe that's all mine." "that's the top you weren't sure about? it was made for you." and so on and so forth.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who steals food off your plate, especially stuff like dumplings or fries. will quickly grab the food and eat it in front of you while smirking. oh, and don't hold your sandwich up near him and look away for even a second, because he will lean in and take a bite of it. also the type to take huge bites whenever you offer him small bites of your food.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who puts his hand over your head when you're about to smack your head on something. doesn't even do it to be chivalrous or anything, it's automatic. also does it when it's raining.

── SUGGESTIVE

ᯓ★ bf!valko who would not care about you having body hair. he knows it's the natural state of your body, and likes it for that reason. would be devastated if you shaved your bush.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who's a munch. he likes it because it's one of the places where your scent is the strongest. likes giving more than receiving.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who wants you before you shower. when he texts you he's coming home, he always makes sure to add "don't wash". he loves your natural scent and musk, and doesn't want it to be erased by the artificial scent of body shampoo and soap. that's not to say he's unhygienic or anything, he likes both but has a very clear preference.

ᯓ★ bf!valko who you find yourself laughing with during intimacy. whether it's you mocking him for a strangled noise he let out, or him chuckling at your pleading face, the two of you always find a way to smile through it.

a/n: come back home dada please

He can smell your juices, see the darkening of your panties when his pretty eyes flicker to your cunt. Pushing your thighs further, you drop the phone.

"Ah-ah," he bites your other thigh. Your hands come to tug on his fluffy ears, making his tail twitch side to side. Cock leaking. "Tell him you're busy."

"Fuck, okay," your shaky hand picks up the phone, your eyes getting lidded when his nose brushes your pretty pussy over those panties, you suck in a breath at it, fingers faltering. "mngh..."

"Tell him," he says in a soft little hum, inhaling you again, palming his cock to adjust it, feeling it swelling with how badly he wants to devour you. "If you wanna cum, you will."

"Fuck you're a brat," you mumble as he tugs you closer, shoving your knee up over his shoulder, nose inhaling your cunt again. "Are you gonna just sniff me !?"

"Till you answer," he sighs. "I could do this and cum."

"Freaky wolf, ah!" He bites your inner thigh, your juices just slippin' down further, in rivulets against his face, his glasses fogged up with his breaths. "F-fine."

Sorry Caleb - I'm busy tonight.

You show him the screen, and he smirks, a curve of his lips.

"Good girl."

Fuck.

Valko tugs your panties aside, looking at the mess your cunt is and moaning at the sight, tongue hot as it laps you from your ass to your clit, then back down, not just tasting - he's fucking lavishing you, spit soaked tongue dragging through your folds. "V-Valko I..."

"Good, good, good... good girl you're s-so... good," he's gripping you bruisingly now, slurping your messy, needy hole, the juices just pouring - his adam's apple bobs as he gulps you down, his glasses just slightly askew from the way he's drinking you. "Taste s'good... fuck..."

He could almost cum from the taste alone, greedily dragging his tongue from your slutty, quivering hole to that twitchy clit, all while you're gripping his hair with one hand, the other rubbing his ears. It feels so good as he lets you coat his taste buds, watching your eyes roll back in your skull.

You shatter so fast, but he's not even trying to make you cum - he just needs your taste, he needs your scent, biting your clit before he can stop himself, the action having you squirt right down him, all over his sweater and his collar. He laughs softly as you whine out, arching your hips, thighs quivering.

"Please... in me, mngh..." You see his slick face and blush, the dark mess you made on his sweater apparent as he takes it off, standing, his cock leaking through his sweats.

You go to touch him but you don't get a moment, he's got you turned and bent over the living room table, that sweater of yours gripped in his huge hands, claws ruining the material without him meaning to. He spits right on your cunt just to make it even messier, it's so wet she doesn't even need it, laughing as you arch, thighs shaking.

The phone goes off.

Valko hums a bit, looking at the message.

"Aww... he misses his 'pips'. Cute," Valko laughs, lost now - he's not the goofy little jerk you're used to, not when he's lining his reddened tip with your hole - no, he's feral. "Should we show him how you're doin'? Hmm, sweetheart?"

"N-no, psycho," you're wetter at the idea, and he notices, rubbing his tip up and down your slit, torturing you as you arch, begging for more. "In me, in me... in - ah!"

Valko slides his veiny, thick cock deep, his tail wrapping around his body and tickling you as he groans, head falling forward, that heavy weight pressing you down. He's as big there as he is everywhere, his grin against your skin felt before he bites your neck, shoving in fully.

"S'deep... you're..."

You're a babbling mess when he pins you there, twitching inside you, cock dragging your sweet spot and kissing it over and over again. You're a drooling mess the more he moves, the more his cock rocks in and out, thickening and swelling impossibly.

"Should call him, huh baby? Let him hear your cunt he wants s'fuckin' bad," Valko can't stand it then, thinking of anyone with the girl that should be all his, every instinct on fire. "All mine, yeah baby? Breed your messy cunt till you're all mine, can't even talk, can you?"

"Mhm," you're shattering when he fucks you faster, meaner, a hand on the table bracing himself as he bites your neck till blood drips, lapping it up so his lips are crimson, moaning against your skin. "Valko... please..."

"I'll give it all to you," he's sinking his teeth again - marking you his, ones he hopes last and last, as his cock is soaked, and your tacky walls are milking him. "Fill you so full, won't be able to see anyone, will you?"

You shatter with one more drag of his fat tip, and that's when it pushes him over the edge, his knot swelling as his cum fills you to the brim, coating your walls in white. He's biting your shoulder, your neck, your arm, everywhere he can, as that fat knot stretches you, hurting so bad you're in tears - but fuck it feels good.

"So much... s'much, V-valko..." you whimper as he moves that knot, kissing all the places he's marked you, moaning softly. His tail twitches as it tickles your skin, his ears curving down.

"Perfect, f-fuck you're so... oh baby I don't think it'll go down I..." He's never had this happen, not being able to calm it down, locked and knotted so thick in your tiny cunt. He keeps kissing you, moving back a bit, hearing your little sharp breath. "Want me to keep this cum plugged inside you? Hmm, breed you, baby?"

"Yes, yes," you're drooling, looking at him with dilated eyes, all covered in his marks. "K-keep it all.. in ... your knot it's so..."

"Mhm, I know baby," he's soothing you even as he rocks it in just an inch - back and forth, until he's pressing all his cum right against your puffy lil cervix.

You're cummin' again and again, but what you don't realize is...

Valko left Caleb all of that on a voice message </3

****

it looks a lot like him, to be sure.

the same gentle slope of his nose, the same sharp brown eyes that light up when he spots you stepping through the door, the same little smile that you've seen curl up an identical set of lips countless times.

"what the hell did you do?"

the man who looks like (but is definitely not) ukai keishin's smile falters.

"hello to you too, sweetheart," he half-says, half-laughs. "what a terrible way to greet someone."

alright, this might be keishin.

"your hair," you finally take a step into the store, towards the counter, eyes still fixed on the head of hair that looks a lot like your boyfriend's but definitely isn't, because it isn't the same shade of peroxide yellow that Keishin had been dying it since the two of you were in high school.

the hand not fiddling with the cigarette reaches up to touch the brunette locks atop his head, though he's careful not to tousle them too much.

"you don't like it?" he asks, an uncharacteristic lilt of insecurity in his voice.

you pause.

"I... I just... give me a second," you say, pinching the bridge of your nose. you draw a few deep breaths in, eyes closed, before looking at him again.

"so?" he says, an eyebrow (that for the first time in over ten years matches the shade of hair on his head) cocked. "what's the verdict?"

you step up to the counter, reaching out across it to run your fingers through the strands. they're softer than they'd ever been, and a little shorter too -- having clearly been freshly trimmed.

"you look..." you grapple for the right words. "really hot."

and you know without a shadow of a doubt that the man on the other side of the counter couldn't be anyone other than ukai keishin when you see the smile -- wide and toothy -- that stretches across his handsome face.

"you think so?" he asks, dropping his unlit cigarette in the ashtray in front of him, circling the counter to wrap you in his arms. there's no one around, so you let him -- though you're not sure an audience would have stopped you, anyway.

you can only nod as he holds you tight against him, smiling down at you with that same grin.

"why the sudden change?" you ask him, hands pressed against the front of his apron as your eyes search his face.

"well..." keishin looks away, his cheeks puffing out a little as he mulls over his response. "we're getting older you know -- can't have you walking around looking like you're dating a delinquent forever."

"but you were a cute delinquent," you laugh, pressing a kiss to the corner of his pursed lips.

"and I had something important to do today, too. wanted to clean myself up a bit for it," Keishin adds, his eyes scanning your face. the playful look from a moment prior has melted away, and as you stare up at him, you're reminded just how very handsome of a man that boy from your high school volleyball team has grown up to be.

your brows knit together in confusion. "oh yeah?" you ask, pulling away slightly. "and what was that?"

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.

You look up and see the very answer to the question you'd been posed staring down at you curiously, a coffee cup clutched in each hand.

“Nothing,” you reply, accepting the warm cup he holds out to you.

This is your chance. This is your chance.

“Thanks…. Akaashi.”

And there it goes again.

He smiles, offering you his hand so that you can stand from the bench you’d been waiting for him on outside the busy coffee shop where he’d retrieved your drinks. You take it eagerly, allowing him to slot his fingers comfortably between your own, and rise to your feet.

Akaashi Keiji is the perfect boyfriend.

He makes time for you, even in spite of his busy work schedule. Always sure to call you on the days he can’t see you in person, and sending you little messages throughout the day like pictures of things he sees that remind him of you. He never lets an opportunity pass to make sure you know he cares and that you’re on his mind.

He treats you like an equal, even though he’s far more put together than you are. He’s established in his career while you’re still slogging through a graduate degree, not quite sure what lies ahead for you; he folds all of his socks neatly into his dresser drawer once he takes them out of the dryer, while half your clothes live in the laundry baskets you fold them into after they're dry; and he’s fantastic at taking diligent care of houseplants, while every single plant you bring into your apartment goes limp and lifeless within only a few weeks. But never once has he made you feel bad, or lesser than, for any of those things.

He cares about your interests, and asks you questions about them that he sincerely wants to know the answers to. He listens to you talk about whatever it is that’s managed to capture your attention at the moment, and brings the topic up days (sometimes weeks) later even after you’ve moved on from them, just checking in on whether or not you’re still interested in the subject.

And that’s to say nothing about the way he treats you physically.

Fingers interlocked at every possible opportunity.

A hand, steady and sure, on the small of your back to guide you through a crowd.

Kisses on your forehead while you’re half asleep and he’s leaving your apartment to head to work in the morning.

The way his glasses go slightly askew when he pulls you up to straddle his face and-

Your cheeks flush at the very thought of it, your hand tightening its hold on his unconsciously.

“Are you alright?” he asks, slowing his steps as the two of you walk along the city sidewalk and turning to look at you.

The only problem with your relationship with Akaashi is his name.

Or rather, that you just can’t seem to call him by it.

You’ve been together long enough that you should be calling him by his given name, and you’re not entirely sure why the hurdle has been so difficult to overcome. You’re both adults. He’s not even the first of your boyfriends whom you’ve been intimate enough to be on a first name basis with — hell, you’re closer to him than to some of the other boys whose given names had come so easily to you.

But his just… hasn’t.

And it’s starting to drive you a little bit insane.

“I…” you falter before you’ve even begun, unable to meet his concerned gaze as he peers down at you.

You feel his blue eyes on your face, waiting for you to meet them, but you hesitate.

You draw in a breath.

“Iwannacallyoubyyourname.”

It comes out on a shuddering exhale, the words garbled and a little unintelligible because your lips are reluctant to form them too clearly.

You finally look up to him, only to see his eyes wide in shock, a rosy hue crawling across his nose to meet the blush on each cheek.

“Uh,” he starts, clears his throat, and begins again, “you don’t have to do that.”

Your head tilts to the side.

“But I want to,” you say emphatically, “I want to call you Kei-”

Akaashi’s hand not currently holding his half-drained cup of coffee presses itself against your lips, cutting you off. His expression is vaguely desperate.

“It’s ok, I-I-” he’s stammering over his words “I like when you call me Akaashi.”

Your brows pull together in confusion, but you concede, deflating slightly as the adrenaline of taking the leap dies out. You’re a little disappointed, to be entirely honest.

He withdraws his hand sheepishly, like he hadn’t meant to cover your mouth in the first place; like the action had been more knee-jerk than rational.

It’s a bit awkward after that.

Akaashi and you continue your afternoon walk, sipping your coffees and making idle (if not slightly stilted) chit-chat. He walks you back to your apartment and leaves you at the front door – he has plans with his former high school volleyball friends that evening and is meeting them at a place downtown.

“I’ll text you once I make it home for the night, it might be late though,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck like he’s already fretting over whatever hijinks his old friends will be getting up to that evening. You hadn’t met them yet, though you’d been introduced to Bokuto over video call, but you’d heard enough stories of their glory days to know he was probably right to be concerned.

“Alright, have fun and be safe,” you say with a smile.

He nods, finally letting go of your hand, and leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead.

You watch as he takes a few steps away, and then he pauses.

He looks around, though there isn’t anyone around outside your building, and then spins on his heel, marching back to you.

Before you even have a moment to question what he’s doing, he cups your face in his hand and crashes his lips to yours. It’s so abrupt you stumble back slightly, but he follows, and your hands grip the lapels of his coat to steady yourself as his tongue licks its way into your welcoming mouth.

He kisses you breathless, in the way that only he can, your head swimming with the shock of the kiss and the warmth it brings with it.

He pulls away after a moment, resting his forehead against yours.

“Sorry, I just needed to do that.”

You nod dumbly.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he says, brushing a piece of hair back from your face.

You nod again, still too stunned to speak.

This time when he walks away he doesn't turn back again, though you almost wish he would.

You don’t stop to question the strangeness of your afternoon date until much later in the evening, when the shock of Akaashi’s kiss has finally worn off and you start to miss him – even though it’s only been a few hours since you saw him last.

You manage to distract yourself with readings, and laundry, and watering your sad looking houseplants as best you can. But every time your mind keeps coming back to him.

Why won’t he let you say his name?

Truthfully, you’re a little hurt.

Surely you weren’t wrong in thinking that the two of you were well-past the point where that should be common-place, were you?

You hadn’t misread the signs of his affection- of his devotion- for something that they weren’t?

You’re agonizing over this very fact when your cellphone lights up on the couch cushion beside you, Akaashi’s face filling the device’s screen. It's a photo you’d taken of him on one of your first dates – a warm spring day when he’d taken you to see the cherry blossoms. He’d apologized profusely all day, saying he knew it was cliché, but that it was something he liked to do every year when they bloomed – swollen with soft pink petals that covered the ground beneath your feet.

You’d loved every minute of it.

You’d seen the cherry blossoms bloom every year for as long as you could remember, but somehow seeing them with him was like seeing them for the first time all over again.

“Hello?”

There's some scrambling on the other end of the call once you answer, voices talking in the background and the distant sound of music.

“Bo! She answered!” a voice calls out, but it's muffled like there's a hand over the phone. “Hello?” it's clearer the second time the caller speaks, and you know this time the man is speaking to you.

“Hello?” you repeat yourself again, now thoroughly confused. It's certainly not Akaashi on the other end of the call, but you don't recognize the speaker.

“This Keiji-kun’s girl?” the voice asks, slurring slightly.

“Oh, uh,” you hesitate. Are you? “Yes?”

“He’s bombed. Totally knocked out. Think you could come take him home? He mentioned your place is nearby.”

You sit up a little straighter. It wasn’t like Akaashi to get so drunk he wasn’t able to take care of himself. You’re immediately concerned.

“Of course, where are you?”

A short taxi ride later you’re outside the restaurant that the man – who had identified himself only as ‘Komi-senpai’ which had vaguely rung a bell as the high school team’s former libero, a year older than Akaashi – had given you the address to.

You slip into the restaurant, uncertain as to where to begin your search for the group of men and your apparently unconscious boyfriend. But as luck would have it, you don’t have to look very hard.

Or at all, really, because the moment you step through the front doors you run face first into the (incredibly firm) chest of one Bokuto Koutarou.

“I’m so sorry!” you rush to apologize and pull away, but Bokuto slings both of his muscular arms around you and crushes you even tighter to his chest in (what you think is supposed to be) a hug.

“You’re so much more normal-sized not on a phone screen!” he exclaims excitedly, and you think you should probably parse through that sentiment more but now is not the time nor the place. “Konoha! Look who it is!”

You turn, finally freed from the excitable volleyball player’s grip, and turn to see a sandy haired young man watching the two of you curiously.

“This is Akaashi’s girlfriend?” the man asks Bokuto rather than you.

“Sure is!”

You fidget slightly, uncomfortable under their gazes due to the lack of formal introduction to either of them.

“Komi’s gonna freak out,” the man Bokuto had referred to as Konoha snickers after he says it.

Bokuto and Konoha lead you down a long hallway towards the private room where their group has gathered to eat, and the noise coming from the room is audible long before you’re ushered in through the sliding door. It all falls to a sort of uncomfortable quiet when the men gathered inside catch sight of you.

“No way,” a young man pops up from the table, staring at you excitedly.

Your eyes are busy scanning the room for any sign of Akaashi, but they flash to the man as he rises from his seat on the floor.

Though he’s smaller in stature than most of the men around you, Komi (you recognize his voice as the one who had called you) manages to cross the span of the room in what seems to be only two long, bounding strides. He stares you in the face, almost nose-to-nose, once he reaches you.

“You’re really Keiji-kun’s girl?” he asks, almost a little mistrustfully, as he peers at you.

You shift awkwardly.

“Um, yes?” Your intonation rises at the end of your response the same way it had over the phone not long prior. Your eyes scan the room again, but just like upon your initial inspection, Akaashi is nowhere to be seen. You swallow hard. “Where is Akaa-”

Komi’s eyebrow quirks.

“…Keiji?” you finish your question quietly, noting his change in expression.

“He just went to the bathroom; he’ll be back any second! Come sit!” Bokuto says, tugging you gently by the sleeve of your coat to join him at the table.

The questions are endless.

What do you do? You’re a grad student.

Where did you and Akaashi meet? The bookstore that you work at part time. He was buying the first book in a series you loved, and the two of you had chatted a bit about it when you’d spotted him reading the back cover. You’d jokingly told him that he ought to buy the second novel at the same time since you’d devoured the first so quickly, and he’d smoothly replied that it would give him an excuse to come and see you again soon, which had left you flustered and crushing hard.

What side of the bed does Akaashi sleep on? That one has you blushing when Komi asks it, and Konoha flicks him in the ear before telling you that you don’t have to answer it.

“Ok, well what’s Keiji-kun’s weakness?” Komi asks, rubbing his sore ear. He takes a swig of the beer in his hand. “He knows all of ours, but never tells us what his is.”

You pause, humming a little.

“I don’t think Keiji has-”

The door to the dining room slides open and the man himself appears.

Completely, stone-cold sober.

His eyes land immediately on you, a furrow of confusion evident on his brow.

“What are you doing here?” he asks you.

Your eyes are wide.

You immediately look at Komi, who is chugging his beer and avoiding both of your gazes.

“Akaashi!” Bokuto cheers at his arrival. He looks immediately guilty, though he's trying not to. “You’ve recovered!”

“Recovered?” the dark haired man replies, still thoroughly bewildered. “I haven’t drank anything.”

“They told me you were passed out,” you say quietly from your seat on the floor, an embarrassed flush crawling up your neck.

It quickly becomes apparent what happened, but Komi soon fesses up anyway.

“We just wanted to meet her Keiji! You talk about her all the time, it was only fair!” Komi says, pointing at your boyfriend indignantly. “We were all very nice to her, right? Tell Keiji how nice we were!” he turns his pleading eyes to you.

You swallow.

“They were nice to me... Keiji.”

Akaashi sighs, pushing his glasses up onto his head, pinning his bangs back out of his face as he rubs his eyes wearily.

“I take it that means that you have my phone that I’ve been searching for for the past half an hour?” he says flatly, looking to Komi.

The older man pulls Akaashi’s phone from the pocket of his jeans and holds it up to him with both hands like a sacred offering, head bowed penitently.

“Let’s get you home, yeah?” Akaashi asks you, holding out his hand to help you up after stuffing his phone back into his own coat pocket.

The boys around the table whine plaintively, which almost makes you laugh, but you accept your boyfriend’s outstretched hand nonetheless.

You say your goodbyes quickly, waving back to the boys calling out to you over your shoulder as Akaashi all but drags you out of the room. His grip on your hand is tight – tighter than usual, anyway. It doesn’t slacken as you make it outside, turning a corner towards the dimly lit parking lot around the side of the restaurant.

“Akaashi, I’m sorry,” you say quietly as you approach his car, and he drops your hand. “I didn’t know it was a prank, and I'd never mean to barge in on-”

A hand on your waist tugs you forward, pressing you between the cool surface of the passenger’s side door and his warm body. His eyes are dark as they trace the lines of your face.

“That’s not what you called me in there,” he murmurs, lips a hairsbreadth from your own.

Your breath hitches in your throat.

“I’m sorry, I just– Komi was the one who– I didn’t want to seem like-”

“Say it again.”

You freeze, blinking up at your boyfriend curiously.

A moment passes, noises from the city night around you almost inaudible thanks to the heartbeat in your ears.

“Keiji.”

It’s quiet and breathy, but it feels right when your lips form the word.

The man before you groans, dipping down and kissing you.

It’s just like the kiss outside of your apartment earlier that day, frantic and rapacious. It’s almost a little sloppy in its eagerness, but that only makes it better- like Akaashi can’t even restrain himself enough to keep the kiss chaste.

“Do you… want to know… why,” he breaks up the sentence into smaller sequences of words with kisses, like he can’t bear to go too long without his mouth moulded to yours. “Why I… told you not… to call me Keiji?”

You hum inquisitively against his mouth, because he doesn’t pull away for you to respond. Akaashi slips his hands underneath your coat, his touch a little cold against the thin material of your top as he grips your hips tightly.

“Because it’s what you call me when we’re in bed.”

You freeze, your fingers fisting into the material of his dress shirt.

He either doesn’t notice the way you’ve gone rigid, or he’s too far gone to care, trailing searing kisses along the line of your jaw until his nose brushes the shell of your ear.

“And when I hear you call me that, this is what happens.” He presses himself closer to you, and you can unmistakably feel the hard swell beneath the material of his pants pressing into your hip.

You gasp at the realization.

“Keiji I-“

He nearly growls at the way his name unconsciously spills from your lips, catching them with his own once more before you even get the chance to finish what you were going to say.

He doesn’t seem to care that the two of you are in public, that there are still cars passing by every so often that could easily spot you, or that at any moment his friends could stumble out of the restaurant on the other side of the parking lot and catch the two of you with your tongues in each other’s mouths while Keiji grinds his hips against yours.

Two hands reach down to cup the curve of your ass, hoisting you up and pinning you back against the car which rocks slightly behind you at the sudden movement. You can feel him even more like this, your thighs parted to accommodate him in-between them, and it only serves to drive you a little bit more insane.

“Wait, Keiji—wait wait,” you turn your face away and push back lightly against his chest, both of your breathing coming out in laboured pants. You hate to be the one to say it, because you’re just as needy and eager as him, but the voice of reason in the back of your mind is too loud to ignore. “Someone could see us.”

He presses his forehead against your shoulder while the two of you fight to catch your breaths.

“Sorry,” he says quietly. “You just drive me a little bit crazy, you know that?”

He lifts his head to look you in the eyes, and he looks a little less frenzied now. You smile, pressing a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Take me home then, Keiji.”