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“Come on, come on, come on, come on-”
Tendou is holding his hand tightly, and though Ushijima is usually the one leading any run or jog, he is yanking him along and a frankly unfathomable speed. Ushijima was fairly certain that if Tendou applied this kind of fervorish energy to his practices, the coach would yell at him less.
He almost trips, feeling his jacket blown open by the wind and resulting in ice cold rain splattering up his shirt, across his arms and neck. He doesn’t complain. There’s something about the way Tendou pushes onwards that’s intoxicating. Now, maybe Ushijima had simply always been attracted to those with passionate abandon, but he found himself drawn to him more and more in these moments. Cold, wet, sort of filthy circumstances be damned, it was very nice to see Tendou put so much energy into something.
“Keep up!”
Ushijima does not actually know what he could do to keep up less, as he was currently iron-gripped and being yanked along. Tendou is lucky his own stamina exceeded his, otherwise this would have been wildly uncomfortable.
The weather is abysmal. Ushijima keeps his feet under him, despite the occasional Tendou-induced stumble, and focuses on running behind him, eyes on the back of his head, now slicked down and messed up from the rain. Tendou has a polka dotted umbrella attached to his backpack. Ushijima can see it. It has not been used.
Cars pass by them, a few pedestrians sheltering in the overhang of bus stops give them an odd look. They pay them no mind.
Tendou glances, just briefly, over his shoulder, and Ushijima can tell he’s about to take a bolt across the street. He can also tell that he’s tired, now, and Tendou has always performed worse in the later half of their games.
He turns to tuck across the street, and Ushijima lurches forward, yanking him under the arm and back onto the sidewalk a few seconds before a car comes hissing down the road, spitting up wet dirt. This brings their rush to an end.
Tendou is breathing heavily, now that he’s stopped running he seems to be realizing that he was running.
Ushijima holds his arm for a second too long, and Tendou turns towards him before pulling his arm free. This is a mistake, because it leaves them standing so close to each other.
“Thanks,” Tendou says, after a second.
“Don’t run into traffic.”
“Yeah, got it.”
“Why are you in such a rush anyway?”
Tendou glances over his shoulder and down the road, chewing on his lip, before saying:
“It’s stupid.”
“You have dragged me through blustering rains for the better part of a mile. It better not be stupid..”
Tendou almost smiles for that, looking back at him after a moment. “I wanted to catch the six-thirty-five train leaving,” he says. “I know it seems arbitrary, but it’s the last train you can catch that will get you into the city before seven, and the train station it stops at has a guy that sells dango outside of it in a little cart and he usually leaves at seven and I know how much you like dango, so I thought if I could get you there before seven I could spontaneously decide to buy you some and then you’d think I was so kind, and thoughtful, and like the bestest friend ever and…”
Ushijima narrows his eyes.
“I have tried this before,” he says, waving a hand. “You cannot script social interactions, it does not work.”
Tendou almost laughs, looking down at his hands. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Clearly. I didn’t think we’d get held up so long at that restaurant, I mean… that waitress really did not want to deal with us, it felt like she had retconned us from her memory. You tried to beckon her over like three times before she listened!”
“She did seem very stressed.”
“And then that stupid train that had us stopped for like six minutes back, and then… god, and then it starts raining, and… ugh… I swear, if everyone had just behave like normal, I’d have had us there at six-forty-five sharp and my plan would have gone off flawlessly.”
Ushijima glances up, slightly, at the dark grey storm clouds that were still dumping rain on them like it was trying to drown them, blinking through the onslaught before looking back to Tendou.
“Your plan had many issues,” Ushijima says. “One, anyone selling food outside would not be doing so in this weather, unless I misunderstand your use of the word cart. Second, I do not care that much for dango and would have found your purchase of it more for your own benefit than mine, and third, the train from here to the city station is thirty-one minutes give or take about forty-five seconds, the six-thirty-five train would have been too late, we would have needed to catch the six-twenty-five.”
Tendou blinks at him, before opening his mouth to, undoubtedly, shout some kind of annoyance at this new information, frustration across his face, when-
Woosh-!
Some white truck coming down the road hits the growing pile of rainwater near the curb, and absolutely soaks them with the muddy grit from the asphalt, the wave feeling like an attack.
Ushijima tenses up, jaw tight as he lifts his shoulders, feeling the water soak through every layer - Tendou shrieks, hands lifting in a useless defense as it does the same to him.
“Fuck!” Tendou shouts, basically growling as he turned around to glare at the truck. “What is that guy’s problem?”
With rain dripping from his face, and his hair and his clothes and freezing his skin, Ushijima decides he is, officially, uncomfortable.
Being wet was one thing. Wet and muddy, entirely different.
“Can we go home?”
Tendou whips his head around to look at him, alarm crossing his features.
“What? Why? No! This is going great!”
Ushijima opens his arms slowly, water dripping from his jacket, as if to show off how not fine this was. Tendou’s eyes flick over him quickly, panic evident now.
Have I done something wrong?
Ushijima cannot help but think it, it’s his baseline for most confusing situations. Maybe he had offended him somehow, maybe he had misread the situation. Tendou did not look usually this… fraught without good reason, had Ushijima upset him?
“I… am sorry,” Ushijima says, metaphorically grasping at thin air to produce a comprehension he simply was not capable of having. “If you want to stand in the rain longer, we can do that.”
“What? Tendou says, and like snow melting in a furnace, the borderline hysterical upset on his face shifts into confusion, and he looks like he always does, staring back at Ushijima with a slightly baffled look. “What are you offering me right now?”
“To… stand in the rain?”
“Why?”
“You looked… sad when I insinuated we should not do so,” Ushijima says.
It is worth noting, that it is still raining. And not just pleasant little raindrops, or even the spring showers that made the earth feel fresh. No, this was watery hell dumping it’s bowels on them. This was rain you could drown in.
Tendou’s hair is plastered across his forehead, eyes stretched slightly wide enough to be considered unnerving, as was his standard look. Ushijima found it charming, really, even in the chaos of this moment, with water running in rivets down the high arch and hook of his nose. Tendou lifts a hand to brush his hair back, and it makes it stick up wildly, and then he looks guilty, or ashamed, or sad, or annoyed, or a complex emotion of all four Ushijima was not capable of recognizing.
He feels rain dripping into his eyes, on his lips. He wants to go home and dry off.
“Sorry,” Tendou says. “I just… wanted today to be special.”
Unfortunately for Ushijima, now, wanting to go home and dry off seemed impossible, because he had been trapped in his absolutely least favourite social circumstance, “friend is sad about an important day you have no context for.”
Ushijima had one friend, and the amount of times this had happened to him was rather absurd.
“I am… sorry…?”
“It’s not your fault,” Tendou says, a whine in his voice. “You don’t have to apologize. I wanted to make this day special for you, that’s all. And… yeah, sure, my methods were contrived, and idiotic, but I… I just wanted to… you know, really prove myself as a good friend, really treat you right, and-”
Ushijima tilts his head to the side. Make this special for him?
Did Ushijima forget something?
Did Ushijima ask for this and not realize it?
“-I know that I… I know that… I’m not… always super nice, even to you, and I know that the guys make jokes about how they could… tell my changeling apart from me by whether or not it held doors or gave compliments, but… I wanted a day to show you that I can be more than that. At least for you, maybe not for everyone else, holding that many doors sounds exhausting, but..”
What is going on?
Ushijima has found a new least favourite social circumstance: a friend is providing a heartful monologue that you have missed the memo on the context for.
“Everything you have done has been fine,” Ushijima says, broadly and non-specific. “You are… a fine friend. Granted I do not have much experience with friends but I… would like to say that I am rather partial to your particular personality. I find people who play nice and placate others to be insufferable and I think your strengths come from your uncompromising sense of self. I will say that holding doors for people is easy and something you should consider doing because I cannot figure out why you’re so against it, but… I feel no desire to see you change.”
Tendou stares up at him for a moment, silent.
Did he do it? Did Ushijima do good? Did he navigate this terrible social circumstance correctly? That seemed like the right subject and a decently good speech, so hopefully Tendou would be not freaking out now and he would let Ushijima leave the rain and dry off.
Instead, Tendou says:
“I just wanted your birthday to be special.”
Ushijima blinks rain from his eyes.
“What?”
“You… I… wanted your birthday to be special. I know you don’t… really care, but… you know… A good best friend should make their birthday special.”
Ushijima narrows his eyes. “It is July eleventh.”
Tendou blinks back at him.
“It is not my birthday.”
Tendou now looks properly shocked, staring for a second before groaning and lifting his hands up to his hair, pulling on the wet hands.
“What is wrong with me!” he shouts. “Something is wrong with me, it’s like I’m on a losing streak-”
“Is that why you invited me out to dinner?” Ushijima says. “I thought it was odd of you to insist just the two of us-”
“I hate this,” Tendou groans, running his hands down his face, smearing the water around. “I hate this, I’... fuck, what do you mean it’s not your birthday? Aren’t you a Cancer?”
“I do not have cancer,” Ushijima replies, followed by: “My birthday is in August.”
“You’re a Leo?” Tendou says, followed immediately by saying: “Well actually that makes more sense.”
“I’m not Leon either,” Ushijima says, more forcefully. “Can we get out of the rain now? I am cold and wet.”
“What day is your birthday? Is it August eleventh?”
“Thirteenth. Can we leave the rain, please?”
“Thirteenth! I thought Semi was fucking with me when he said it was lefthanders day,” Tendou says, before whining again and saying: “I’m sorry, for all this. For… guessing… pretty much exclusively wrong and turning this into the worst date ever.”
Ushijima stops, his mounting frustrations briefly abating as he processes this. He pauses to wipe rain and hair off his forehead, before saying:
“This was a date?”
Tendou swallows, seeming a little nervous, before saying: “Ah… no, I… uhm… I guess, not in so many words, but… you… I… I wanted it to be… date -like. To… test the waters. Buy you dinner, go for a walk through the city, do some shopping, buy you dango, which, apparently you don’t like so I’m not sure who this dango-loving July eleventh born boy is but I planned one hell of a day for someone.”
This almost makes Ushijima laugh, though more in confusion than anything else. He just shakes his head.
“Why would you want this to be date-like?”
Whatever Tendou had wanted to hear, it wasn’t that. Even Ushijima can tell, from the way his face falls slightly.
“I just…”
An explanation dies on Tendou’s tongue, and he looks away. Maybe it’s just the cold rain, but his face looks red. Ushijima feels bad. He does not really know what’s going on - he hasn’t really known what’s going on since Tendou started panicking about the time thirty minutes ago in the restaurant. But he doesn’t like Tendou looking sad. At all. Tendou could look a lot of different ways - most of them some variation of freaky, which Ushijima loved. Sad, though, made his chest ache.
“I’m sorry,” Ushijima replies.
“Just forget it,” Tendou says, turning to brush past him and start walking back towards the academy. “Sorry for making you… stand in the rain and get splooshed and for making you run and for not knowing any of your interests or when your birthday is.”
“That is quite alright,” Ushijima replies, turning to follow him, wishing beyond believe that he was able to figure out why Tendou’s mood had soured so quickly. Was he really that upset about this day not going to plan? This wasn’t even a special day! Not really, he’d gotten the date wrong. They could simply try again, on his real birthday, no?
Date-like.
Ushijima tries to roll this particular phrase over in his head. He’s fairly certain the -like modifier means adjacent to and not actually of. For example, if Tendou had wanted it to be a date, he might have described his desires for it to be romantic, or intimate. So what was date-like?
He thinks about this as they walk, wondering if maybe this was why Tendou had gotten so sad - after all, he’d complained about his own bad research, so maybe he had really wanted it to be date-like, and had failed by his own metrics? The dango might have represented chocolates, or flowers. The dinner was obviously the dinner, his birthday - or supposed birthday - being a romantic anniversary, the trip into the city to be their getaway.
Yes, that was probably it, Ushijima decides. And a relatively well designed one, too. Should Ushijima have been whoever the hell Tendou had accidentally planned this for.
It’s a pretty long walk back to the academy. Tendou’s mood doesn’t lift, but Ushijima is so sick of being wet and cold that he isn’t able to find it in himself to try and force it. He wanted to - very badly. He hated seeing Tendou look sad, and the image was only compounded by the soaked clothes and dripping hair.
Tendou swipes his student ID to be let into the school, and stops to hold the door open for Ushijima to follow.
He thinks about commenting on it, and decides against it.
The door swings shut behind them, and now that they weren’t being drowned by God, Tendou seems to, at least for a second, begin to lighten up.
“Man, that sucked,” he says, tilting his head back as they dragged themself to the stairs, climbing up to the third floor dorms. “The weatherman absolutely fucked me over with that one, he said it might drizzle. Drizzle! That was not a drizzle.”
“Not a drizzle,” Ushijima agrees, pushing open the door at the top of the stairs to let Tendou through. He gives him a curtsy as a thanks, which… alright, sure.
Ushijima follows him down the hallway. Shirabu is sitting in the common room, and narrows his eyes as they drag their soaking selves down the hall dripping water everywhere, but says nothing. Tendou waves. Ushijima does not.
Tendou’s dorm is closer - Ushijima’s own, which he shared with Leon, was right at the far end of the hallway, so they both stop here, outside of Tendou’s dorm.
Ushijima looks back to him, as Tendou fiddles with the key in his hand.
“Sorry again,” Tendou says, after a moment. He doesn’t look quite as sad, but Ushijima still feels terrible for ruining whatever he’d had planned. Sure, Tendou had sort of ruined it himself by being a staggering amount of incorrect, but somehow it felt slightly like Ushijima’s fault. Tendou should be happy, or at least smug. Sad was a bad look.
“It was fine,” Ushijima replies. “The dinner was lovely, before that waitress gave up on us. And I like running, so that was good. The water was bad, but…”
Tendou hummed a response, looking back down to his hands. “Yeah.”
Date-like.
Well, Tendou had brought the special occasion, the dinner, the metaphorical chocolates, the location, he’d done everything he could to concoct something date-like.
Ushijima reaches forward, focused only on trying to make him happy, and salvage even a little bit of this outing. Tendou is about the same height as him, which is really nice, because it makes it easy to pull him in at the waist and kiss him.
Tendou does all sorts of tiny jumps and shivers, seeming surprised if nothing else, before settling his hands on Ushijima’s shoulders, leaning into it.
Ah, good. So I got it right.
This is actually very nice.
He quite likes this.
He likes the warmth of Tendou’s lips, the way his hands feel curled slightly at his neck, the curve of his back under his hands, the feeling of being close.
Tendou was right. Date-like is a very good choice.
This is very good.
Very good.
He almost doesn’t want to pull away. He almost wants to just let this ride, see what kissing him for a full minute felt like, two minutes, ten. But he figures that kind of behaviour is something more than date-like, and he wants to get this right.
So he pulls away slowly, not quite willing to take his hands off Tendou’s sides.
Tendou’s face has become remarkably red now, Ushijima would call it adorable if he wasn’t sure Tendou would be deeply offended by that. He stares at him, shock in his expression.
“Wh-what was that for?” Tendou asks, after a second, voice cracking softly. He seems almost breathless, and Ushijima does not miss the way his eyes dart down, focusing on his lips again for a second before finding his face, and then getting distracted again.
“I believe it is customary at the end of a date to kiss goodbye at the door,” Ushijima replies, glancing to Tendou’s dorm door.
This makes Tendou laugh, slightly, looking away. “Oh, Wakatoshi-”
“You seemed so upset by the other date-like plans falling through-”
“Shut up,” Tendou says, laughing more and whacking at his chest. It reminds Ushijima how wet he is - how wet they both are. But the messy look looks excellent on Tendou, which Ushijima cannot help but notice. “Shut up you did not just kiss me because you thought I-”
And Tendou is laughing, and laughing some more, and then steps forward to plunk his head down on Ushijima’s shoulder, and Ushijima’s heart has begun to race. Tendou is cold against him, but still laughing, and Ushijima doesn’t know what else to do but hold him there against him.
When Tendou lifts his head again, he looks exhausted, and happy, and confused, and deeply entertained. He smiles. Ushijima likes that smile.
“Something’s wrong with you,” Tendou says, after a minute.
“I know,” Ushijima replies.
This makes Tendou laugh again. Good.
“Something’s wrong with both of us,” Tendou adds.
“Yes.”
Tendou puts his head down again, cold, wet hair pressing into Ushijima neck. He feels his whole body stiffen again, trying to resist the urge to wrap his arms around him entirely. He feels Tendou relax into him, and cannot help but move a hand up his back, to hold him.
“I love you,” Tendou says, after a moment, softly, against his neck. Almost as if Ushijima wasn’t meant to hear it.
He feels his heart skip, and isn’t sure what about it makes him feel so… on air.
After a second, Tendou lifts his head properly again and presses a warm kiss to Ushijima’s cheek, holding him there for a moment before pulling back and backing up to his door.
“Thank you for putting up with me tonight,” Tendou says.
“Thank you for planning everything.”
Tendou smiles slightly. “Thank you for the kiss. It was a very good end to this otherwise terrible date-like not-birthday.”
Ushijima chuckles slightly. “Next time tell me about the date-like plan, I’ll pull my weight better.”
Tendou raised an eye. “Are you asking me to ask you on a date?”
“Yes?”
Tendou gives him a grin, and then a salute, and says: “Yes sir, will do,” before pushing on his door handle to swing himself inside and disappearing. Ushijima watches until the door closes, and then watches just a little bit longer, before turning and slowly heading down the hall to his own dorm.
He’s pretty sure he got that right.