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Kei is 100% done with this day. Well, to be perfectly honest, he was 98% done before he even started his shift at the rental shop on the beach. At this point—five minutes away from when he should be locking up, with two surfboards still unreturned because those stupid guys won’t stop trying to one up each other out there, just like they’ve been doing all week—really, at this point, a percentage system has become worthless.
He just wants to go. He wants to be away from the smell of sunblock and the shouts of hyperactive children. He wants to be able to take his glasses off, because someone whacked him with a bodyboard earlier and now they’re sitting just slightly crooked and it’s giving him a headache. He wants those two thoughtless dumbasses to get their dumb asses over here and turn their boards in, so he can scathingly tell them off for being late, and then get the hell out of here.
(As long as he’s documenting his desires, he’d also like it if those particular dumbasses were a little less annoyingly attractive, because every damn time they turn up at the shop with their bare, sun-kissed shoulders and low hanging swim shorts, Kei’s heart stutters just a little bit. Which is bullshit. He does not get summer crushes, especially not on guys as dumb as these two are.)
The beach is starting to clear as the sun settles closer to the horizon, the ice cream stand next to him has closed, and still, there they are. Refusing to get out of the water.
Kei gets up and walks closer to the shore, waving his arms as he goes. “Oi! You two!”
They can’t even hear him over the roar of the water, so he has to wave his arms a little more wildly, which pisses him off even more. “Oi!”
One of the boys finally looks up—the dark haired one who’s usually scowling the entire time he’s at the shop, in an obnoxiously handsome and brooding kind of way. He doesn’t seem to be scowling now, though. He’s actually mid smile, white teeth flashing in the darkening night, until his eyes focus on Kei and his relaxed expression shifts to one of mild confusion. He reaches out to where his friend is sitting astride his own board and slaps his shoulder, nodding towards Kei.
“What is it?” the smaller guy yells, the redheaded one who smiles beautifully all the way through the rental process (which is maybe even worse than the handsome scowling), even as he’s busy talking a mile a minute about how perfect the weather is, and how hard he’s going to kick his friend’s ass. (He has yet to kick it even gently, as far as Kei has seen. They're both clearly beginners, but Red is almost aggressively bad at it, while the other one shows some small amount of promise.)
“Time’s up!” Kei says, holding up his wrist and tapping his watch.
“Aw, man...five more minutes?” Red asks, spreading his fingers wide, as if there was any chance of Kei not hearing his exceptionally loud voice. (Another reason his dumb, lean muscles and bright smile are especially annoying. They drew Kei’s attention, which he already hates, before he knew what lay beneath—interminable loudness.)
Kei shakes his head, not in answer, but in disbelief that this little shit is actually asking this. He’s not their father, making them clean up and come inside for dinner. They paid to have the boards until closing, and that time has now come and gone.
“No,” he shouts. “Now. Right now.”
The boys grumble loudly enough for it to be audible across the distance, then start to talk more quietly, playfully shoving each other’s shoulders as they halfheartedly paddle closer to the shore.
“I’m charging you for every minute you go over!” Kei calls to them, and suddenly the paddling becomes much more intentional, the shoving rougher as they each try to pull ahead of the other and race to the sand.
“Nooo!” the redhead wails, when his friend gets there just ahead of him. “Come back in! Two out of three!”
“Absolutely not,” Kei says, stepping forward to get a hand on both boards before anyone can even think about going back in the water. “He barely beat you anyway. Both of you have atrocious form, even just paddling.”
The tall, dark one makes an extremely satisfying strangled noise, his blue eyes bulging slightly, and Red’s mouth drops open.
“Says who?” he demands, which honestly is too stupid a question for Kei to even consider answering. He yanks the board out from under Red and hefts it over his shoulder to carry back to the shop.
“What, you think your form is better?” Blue Eyes asks.
Kei tosses a disdainful look over his shoulder at him before turning back around, laughing dryly. “I know it is.”
“There's no way!” Red says, scampering to catch up. He seems to be about the same age as Kei, twenty or so, but he's roughly the height of an average twelve year old. (Kei has tried to think of a reason this is annoying, but Red is compact and well built, and his shortness is mostly just kind of cute, if anything. Which is totally inconsequential, because Kei does not get summer crushes.) “We’ve been practicing all week! And you've just been sitting there—”
“Oh! All week?” Kei asks, with the most condescending false surprise he can muster. “Well why didn't you say so? You've gotta be experts after practicing for one whole entire week.”
“We will be,” Blue Eyes grunts.
“Sure you will,” Kei says. They've reached the shop and he's finished with this conversation. He hates having to talk to them at all. “You each owe an extra five hundred yen.”
It’s easy enough to tune out the sputtering and arguing that this statement sets off. Kei goes about closing up the tiny stand, ignoring them entirely until they seem to have run out of things to say. Or the tall one has, anyway. Red is still going, but he’s only repeating himself now.
“You were late,” Kei says. “You knew there’d be a fee.”
“We didn’t!” Red cries. “And we just lost track of time! Just a little bit!”
“Five minutes. Five hundred yen.”
Another round of arguing begins over who was at fault for those extra minutes, and should therefore be responsible for the overage. In the end they both dig through their bags and cough up the extra thousand together. Blue Eyes covers more than half, but Kei doesn’t think this is an admission of responsibility. Red just couldn’t find enough.
“Dumbass Hinata,” Blue Eyes says, elbowing his friend.
“I’ll pay you back,” Red (or Hinata, apparently) mutters. He leans into the other boy as if he means to shove him, but then he just stays there against his side, and Blue Eyes slings an arm around his shoulder.
“Doesn't matter,” he says, and then looks up at Kei and adds, “Sorry we kept you.”
Kei mutters something unintelligible, because first of all, he doesn't forgive them, and second, he’s currently internally losing his shit over what is happening in front of him. The way the two boys are standing so, so close to each other.
“See you tomorrow?” Hinata asks.
“Hopefully not,” Kei says, but if they're here, he will see them.
Hinata rolls his eyes, and Blue Eyes guides him away from the shop with his arm still around his shoulder. Kei can hear them arguing again within four paces, but Hinata’s arm slips around his friend’s (boyfriend’s?) waist as they go, and Kei feels an ache in his chest all of a sudden that makes him even more pissed off than this entire terrible day has.
Fuck it, he will use stupid, exaggerated percentages after all. He’s 200% done, and that doesn't bode well for how he’ll be feeling when he starts his shift tomorrow.
He hopes that by some chance they won't come to the beach. He hopes that, if they do, he’ll be able to keep himself from watching them, because....this is the thing. It's not just that Kei doesn't get summer crushes, though this is a very valid part of the thing, because he's much too smart to do something so dumb.
But it’s also—though he would never admit that this bothers him at all, or that it's anything other than exactly what he wants—it’s also that no one gets summer crushes on him. And he’ll be damned if he's going to sit in the surf shop and watch through his crooked glasses while his two would-be crushes have a perfect summer fling.
Kei finishes closing the shop and resolves to bring a good book with him tomorrow. He’ll do something worthwhile for his mind, maybe they'll fall in love without him watching, and then the summer will end and it will be Kei who comes out ahead.
Probably. Maybe. It doesn't matter. He doesn't have a crush on them anyway.
* * *
The book is less effective than Kei would have hoped. It is a good book, but now that he knows there’s something to watch for, something more than just broad shoulders and obscenely defined calves, he can’t seem to stop watching. And he sees now, what was probably there all along, the easy way they have together that suggests a whole history of time spent in each other’s company. He sees the fond way Blue Eyes watches Hinata while the smaller boy roots around in his bag to pay for his board. The way Hinata’s giant smile gets even bigger somehow when Blue Eyes leans down to mumble something next to his ear.
And, because he has read a maximum of two pages today, and spent probably two hours, cumulatively, watching the boys, he sees them floating next to each other on their boards when the waves are too calm to ride, leaning toward each other and kissing slowly while the water gently rocks them.
So. Maybe Kei won't have to watch them fall in love, after all. Maybe they're already there.
He feels even more stupid now, for the potential crushes that thank God he did not allow to develop. They would have been even more futile than any he’s fended off before, because these two already have each other, and Kei just has a book he’s never going to finish, and glasses that are now sitting even more unevenly after his frustrated attempt to adjust them on his own the night before.
“Hey!” someone calls. Kei pretends he actually needs to look up to know that it’s Hinata. The redhead is standing halfway between the shore and Kei’s shop. “How much longer?”
Kei blinks at him slowly, because it is not his job to keep track of people’s rentals and make sure they know when to bring them back. He knows exactly how much longer, though, because once again their time is up when his shift is over. At least this time it’s before closing, so they won’t be his problem if they can’t get their asses over here fast enough.
He pretends to study the clipboard in front of him where they record the day’s rentals, then looks back up to find that Hinata is now directly in front of the large, uncovered window of the shop.
“You could wear a watch,” Kei says, holding up his own wrist, with a black, waterproof watch strapped around it.
“Lost it,” Hinata says. Such a surprise. “How much longer?”
“Twenty minutes. You’re not going to get anything good though...waves are shit right now.”
Hinata sighs and looks over his shoulder, waving an arm at Blue Eyes. “Kageyama! Bring it in!”
Kei winces before scowling at Hinata. “Couldn’t you have walked back over there instead of assaulting my eardrums?”
“Do you feel assaulted.....Tsukishima?” Hinata asks cheekily, tilting his head to read Kei’s name badge.
“Every time you’re around,” Kei says, before he can work out what exactly Hinata meant by that, or how his reply may come across. Hinata’s smile widens immediately, which is definitely not what Kei was going for. Though, now that it’s happened…
“You live around here?” Hinata asks suddenly.
Kei shrugs. “In Iwaki.”
“Us too!” Hinata says, big brown eyes lighting up. Kei considers taking his glasses off, both to relieve his headache, and to save himself from seeing the sprinkling of faint golden freckles over Hinata’s little upturned nose. “I thought maybe I’d seen you before. You go to university there?”
Kei does, but he’s never noticed Hinata or Kageyama there, and he doesn’t understand why Hinata is standing here right now, asking him this.
“Yeah. Look, are you turning your board in or what? I’m off soon and—”
“Oh, yeah! We didn’t want to be late today,” Hinata says, just as Kageyama comes up behind him, shaking the seawater out of his jet black hair. Kei watches a few drops trail down the length of his neck before clenching his hands and forcing himself to get a grip.
He completes the paperwork to confirm the return of the boys’ rentals, trying not to listen or react while Hinata tells Kageyama that Tsukishima is a student, too, and Kageyama calls him a dumbass and says of course he is, every shop on the beach has a college student working in it.
“So you’re almost off, right?” Hinata asks.
Kei finds it completely unnecessary to confirm this, as they just established this fact two minutes prior. He just raises his eyebrows.
“Well,” Hinata says. “We were wondering, if you’re not busy, if you could maybe show us what non-atrocious form would look like?”
“No,” Kei says without even a pause.
“But—”
“No. You can go now.”
“But just—”
“Forget it, Hinata,” Kageyama says. “He’s all talk. He can’t show us anything.”
Kei bites his tongue, because he is not a child, and he won’t rise to this bait. Even if the arrogance in Kageyama’s voice sends something hot shooting through him that he can't be certain is only annoyance.
“I guess you’re right,” Hinata says, sounding genuinely disappointed, instead of like he’s trying to reverse psychologize Kei, which is definitely, absolutely what he’s doing.
“He’s not right, but your time is up anyway.”
“We’ll take them for another two hours,” Kageyama says.
“Go for it, I’m out,” Kei says, nodding to his co-worker who has just arrived. “You can leave those out,” he tells him, before Yamaguchi can grab either of the boys’ boards and put them back on the rack.
Yamaguchi nods and starts to chat with Hinata as he processes their second rental of the day, and Kei takes off down the beach.
“Yo,” someone calls. (Kageyama. Kei doesn’t have to look over his shoulder to know.)
“What?” Kei asks, turning around in spite of himself.
Kageyama is just standing there, looking uncomfortable and nothing like he does when Kei catches him laughing with Hinata out in the sand. Nothing like he did a moment ago when he dismissed the idea of Kei being legitimately more skilled than him.
“What?” Kei asks again.
“Nothing,” Kageyama retorts, which makes Kei wants to roll his eyes so hard they disappear into the recesses of his skull, because obviously he called him for something. “Just…are you good at surfing?”
“Better than you,” Kei says.
“I don't like sucking at stuff,” Kageyama says. “Would you...would you at least tell us what we're doing wrong?”
No is on the tip of Kei’s tongue, but the other boy is looking at him with a mix of embarrassment and hope, and Kei knows how much it takes to admit you need help with something. He knows after what an ass he's been to Kageyama and his friend, his boyfriend, all week, it's probably taking something extra right now.
And here's the thing. Another thing. To say that Kei doesn't get summer crushes isn't entirely accurate anymore. But, were he to admit that he has something of a crush (which, to be clear, he’s not actually doing), it's possible that instead of viewing this one as futile, he could instead consider that said crush is conveniently counteracted by the fact that there's no chance in hell Kageyama or Hinata will feel the same way about him, because they are both already in a relationship. And Kei can tell himself the futility is only because of that, and not because people don't get crushes on him.
So Kei does not immediately disagree. Because of the aforementioned reasoning, but also because Blue Eyes is asking him for something. And he has a name now, and some humility, and…
“You're far too stiff,” Kei says. “Your feet are too close together, and you need to....well, I’d have to show you.”
“Yeah,” Kageyama says.
Yeah.
Kei kicks at the sand and considers this for a moment.
“I can't help your friend. You’re not good, but he’s actually hopeless.”
Kageyama’s cheeks go pink, and Kei cannot for the life of him figure out what the bizarre, tight-lipped expression on his face means.
“Tell that to him, and let him prove you wrong,” Kageyama says.
Oh God. It was protective outrage on Hinata's behalf. So they're supportive, as well as beautiful, but it doesn't matter at all because they are a they and Kei is a he. And even if they weren’t taken, they're overly competitive and childish and loud and—
“Tsukishima!” Hinata calls out. Kei looks over Kageyama's shoulder to see him jogging towards them, stupidly bright orange hair flopping in his eyes. “You're staying?”
“I suppose,” Kei says. “Just for a bit.”
“He said I'm better than you,” Kageyama says quickly, before Hinata has a chance to get too excited about this.
“I did not say that,” Kei says. “I only said you suck a little less.”
Hinata laughs at this, bubbly and relaxed, like Kei is playing around with them when really he...well...he's not actually sure. But he's satisfactorily established that there's no danger of anything stupid happening here, since the summer romance is already taking place without him, so it doesn't really matter.
“Let’s just try to make some progress so you can stop ruining my ocean view with your flailing,” Kei says, heading back towards the shop so he can grab a board.
“I don’t flail,” Kageyama says.
This is true. It’s Hinata who does all the flailing, while Kageyama is an awkward statue, always on the cusp of teetering off his board.
Kei waves his hand dismissively before running it over the boards on the rack. “You do spend half your time talking and messing around, and missing the best waves.”
“Well,” Hinata says, stepping out of the way when Kei lifts his chosen board, “good thing you’ve paid such close attention to us, so you can correct all our mistakes.”
Kei almost agrees with a yes, it is a good thing, but his body responds to Hinata’s words slightly before his brain fully processes them, and his cheeks are suddenly burning. He looks away from Hinata, but Kageyama is right there on his other side. His eyes are on the sand at his feet, and there’s a little smile on his lips. Something soft and almost sly that makes Kei pick up his pace so they won’t see him react to that, too.
“I don’t have my contacts so I can’t actually surf today,” he says. “We’ll just work on positioning and getting up on the board properly. You’re terrible at that, too.”
Hinata agrees to this easily, dropping his board in the sand next to Kei’s, and Kageyama follows suit.
Kei can’t quite believe he’s doing this. He is not an instructor, and if he were he’d be getting paid, but instead he’s here in the sizzling afternoon sun for no reason, when he should be heading home to enjoy his time off.
“Like this?” Hinata asks. He’s sprawled out on his board, and it is not supposed to be like that at all.
“No,” Kei says, focusing on Hinata’s failings instead of the arc of his spine and the lean muscles tensing in his arms and shoulders as he lifts his upper body. “Your hands should be closer together. No, lie back down, then...closer to your chest....yeah. Spread your legs a little more.”
Hinata’s eyes flash over to him and a crooked grin lifts his round cheeks. “Got that Kageyama?” he calls to Kageyama on Kei’s other side. “We gotta spread our legs more.”
“Shut up,” Kageyama says. Kei is extremely gratified to see that he, at least, is blushing, even if his boyfriend is completely shameless.
“Can you take this seriously or not?” Kei asks (because he is blushing, too, and he will not have that). “I don’t need to be doing this.”
“Yes!” Hinata says, eyes moving over Kei as he shifts his own body into the same position. He looks intensely focused for about five seconds while he adjusts the set of his hands and feet, and then he’s smiling again. “I’m taking this very seriously,” he adds.
Kageyama laughs quietly and Kei ignores them both, aside from a quick glance over Kageyama’s body, only to confirm that he’s mimicking Kei’s form correctly.
“You’re both idiots,” he says. “Try getting up now.”
Kei does it first, moving swiftly into a deep, upright stance, feet spread wide and knees bent. Kageyama watches him carefully and then copies him, pulling it off fairly well. Hinata pops up like a jet powered jack-in-the-box and falls off the board.
“Oh God,” Kei says.
Hinata scrambles up in a flash, getting himself back into position before looking to Kei with bright eyes full of determination. “Sorry! Again! Tell me what to do,” he says.
Kei exhales heavily, and then he does. He spends an entire two hours on the sand, first coaching the boys until they’re both springing into a decent crouch more or less seamlessly, then sending them out into the water and hollering further instructions at them.
The waves are still shit, but they at least get a chance to learn to paddle with some semblance of efficiency.
“Come in!” Hinata shouts to him when the two hours have just about worn down.
Kei shakes his head. He doesn’t want to risk his glasses falling off, and he’s practically blind without them.
“You won’t be surfing!” Hinata argues. “You don’t need to see, you just need to enjoy the water.”
“Your time is up!” Kei calls back. “I’m going home.”
“Tsukkiiiiii...come on.”
“Don’t call me that,” Kei says, turning on his heel and raising a hand in the most disinterested farewell he can manage.
“Tsukishima!”
Kei sighs. Hinata’s the one who’s always talking, always catching Kei’s eye with his stupid, charming smile and general way of glowing like the fucking sun, but when Kageyama speaks, he’s the one Kei can’t ignore.
He turns around and waits while the two boys paddle towards him (properly, he can’t help noticing with pride).
“Thank you,” Kageyama says, inclining his head slightly so sleek, black hair falls over his eyes. “We appreciate your time.”
“It’s fine,” Kei says. “I’m off the next two days, so try not to drown.”
“You should come surf with us then!” Hinata says. “Bring your contacts.”
“I’m not your personal instructor,” Kei says, and almost kicks himself for it, because what better way to spend time with them than by pretending it’s only because they need his help.
“Don’t instruct us then,” Hinata says. “Just surf.”
“Why?” Kei asks. “I’ll only make you look bad.”
Hinata grins, seemingly determined to take all of Kei’s slams and accept them as friendly jabs. “We’re fast learners,” he says. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“I’m pretty damn sure,” Kei replies.
“You’re pretty arrogant,” Hinata says.
“I’m realistic.”
“Kageyama can be arrogant as fuck, too.”
Kei looks over at Kageyama, who appears completely unperturbed by this assessment. “Congratulations?” he says.
“I’m just saying. I don’t mind a little arrogance. You should hang out with us.”
Kei falters for a moment, unsure of how to reply to this. This is different than them asking him for help. And the way Hinata said that, the way his lips curved so playfully and his voice dropped just slightly with the words I don’t mind a little arrogance...Kei knows what flirting sounds like, and that seemed dangerously close.
“Maybe,” Kei says, because he should say no, but can’t bring himself to. He doesn’t like this, he doesn’t like the idea that Hinata is messing with him just because he can, because he knows Kei has been watching them, but he does like the way he laughs when Kei insults him (teases him...that must be how Hinata sees it), the way Kageyama looks at him with those serious, deep blue eyes.
“We’ll be here at eight,” Kageyama tells him.
Kei doesn’t say anything, but he nods his head slightly before lifting his board. He manages to not look behind him at all until he’s returned it to Yamaguchi, then he sends a quick glance their way and finds that they’re right where he left them, fingers laced together now and eyes on him.
They’re going to have to pay extra again for not getting their boards back on time, and all Kei should be thinking right now is how stupid they are. He should probably feel a burn of irritation in his gut over their thoughtlessness. Those things that should be there are absent, though, and in their place there’s just a mild heat in his cheeks. Something similar in the vicinity of his chest.
It’s a damn good thing Kei nipped that burgeoning crush in the bud, or he would have a real problem on his hands here.
* * *
Kei purposefully does not set his alarm for the next morning. He sighs when he wakes on his own and finds that it’s not yet seven o’clock.
He could slip his crooked glasses on and spend the day at home, wondering what Kageyama and Hinata are doing. Or he could get out his contacts, head over to the beach, and join them. It feels slightly more complicated today than it did yesterday, when he agreed to stay and help them. He’s not at all sure any of his theorizing can hold up to the new developments. To the way Hinata’s ready smile sometimes seems to be just on the verge of wolfish, or to Kageyama’s quiet focus, and the way it challenges Kei’s belief that he’s too dumb to be worth his time.
In the end, Kei comes to the conclusion that a lifetime of reasonable decisions should be enough to cover over a few poor choices made in the heat of summer. He gets to the beach before the other boys do, and watches them when they come charging onto the sand, Kageyama in the lead.
Hinata grabs the back of Kageyama’s shirt, but the taller boy just keeps going, dragging Hinata along behind him until they both arrive, panting and disheveled, in front of the surf shop where Kei waits.
“Piece of shit,” Kageyama says, reaching behind himself to pat at his stretched out shirt.
“You cheated!” Hinata cries. “You took off on three instead of go!”
“We always start on three! We’ve literally never said go!”
Kei considers taking the path back up to the train station. He was right all along. They’re so, so stupid.
Hinata blinks a few times, faced screwed up in thought. “Really?” he asks.
Kageyama laughs and ruffles Hinata’s flyaway hair. “Yes, dumbass.”
“Oh my God,” Kei says. “You’re children.”
“You’re here!” Hinata replies brightly. “And you...huh...”
“What?” Kei asks, taking a step back as Hinata clutches Kageyama’s arm, rising on the balls of his feet to peer up at Kei.
“Nice face,” Hinata says. “You know...without the glasses.”
“Um…”
“I like the glasses,” Kageyama says thoughtfully. “They look nice.”
Kei’s face goes up in flames. He feels naked without his glasses on, and these two stupid boys staring at him look unbearably good in the buttery light of early morning, so the only thing he can think to do is change the subject.
“Are we going to surf? I don’t have all day,” he says.
He does, in fact, have all day, and as it turns out, he spends the entirety of it with Kageyama and Hinata.
At first he mostly ignores them, letting Hinata flail, and pretending not to notice Kageyama’s awkward stance. But there’s nothing that thrilling about being better than the two shittiest surfers on the beach, so he relents before long and starts to coach them again. Snapping at Hinata when his timing is off, gripping the slick, tanned skin of Kageyama’s arms to guide him into a perfectly balanced position.
Eventually they take a break for lunch, then finish it off with kakigori, eaten while sprawled out in the sand.
“Well, Tsukki,” Hinata says. (Kei does not correct him. He tells himself it’s because he’s smart enough to know there’s no point, and not because of how cute it sounds on Hinata’s tongue.) “Is our form still atrocious?”
Kei hums noncommittally, taking a bite of his strawberry shaved ice. “You’re too eager,” he says. “Your timing makes me cringe.”
“You’re such an asshole,” Hinata says with a laugh. “I’m better, right?”
“That’s not saying much.”
Hinata rolls his eyes, and then pokes at Kageyama’s side with his bare toes. “I’m better, aren’t I, Kageyama?”
Kageyama catches Hinata’s foot and tickles it instead of answering, and Hinata hoots and shrieks and wiggles in the sand. It’s just as dumb as all the other things they do, maybe even dumber, because Hinata’s remaining kakigori is now covered in sand, and it takes a minute for Kei to realize that there’s a smile on his face as he watches them.
He carefully removes it, but there’s something that feels like the internal equivalent of a smile in his chest for the remainder of their time on the beach. Through Kageyama sharing his kakigori with Hinata, and Hinata’s cheerful babbling while they work up to getting back in the water. (Also through Hinata kissing some stray ice off the corner of his boyfriend’s lips, though Kei pretends not to have seen this.)
The boys make enough progress in the afternoon that Kei’s able to direct less focus towards correcting them, and more towards enjoying the waves with them, which is.....weird. The enjoying.
He refuses their invitation to join them for dinner, because then they’d be heading back into the city at the same time, and this whole thing would become more involved than it already is, which is far more involved than it should be.
They should have remained Blue Eyes and Red. He shouldn’t have learned their names, or the way Kageyama’s eyes crinkle up in quiet pride when Hinata does something well, or the way Hinata’s whole face lights up when Kei grudgingly admits he’s not entirely terrible. They should have remained ideas. Dumb boys with cute faces, nothing more.
Now...now Kei has an actual sense of who they are. He knows Hinata is all ease and warmth and pluck, while Kageyama is loyalty and drive and thoughtful silence, and goddammit Kei is breaking all of his own rules in the stupidest way.
“Tsukki!” Hinata calls, after Kei rather abruptly says goodbye. “We can pick you up tomorrow, if you want to come in together.”
“No,” Kei says. “I have things to do in the morning.”
“You’ll come later, though?”
“Probably,” Kei says.
He will, obviously. And he has nothing to do in the morning, but he can’t bear the idea of the other boys knowing where he lives. This way, when summer ends and this weird little bubble they’ve drawn Kei into has popped, they’ll be completely disconnected. It won’t hurt that he doesn’t hear from them, because how could he?
He’s accepted, at this point, that he’s being an idiot—putting himself in this place where the only possible outcome is unrequited pining on his part—but he can at least confine the stupidity to summer break where it belongs.
He takes out his contacts when he gets home, and exists in a blurry, pleasantly overtired state for the remainder of the evening. Until his phone buzzes, repeatedly, with incoming messages.
Unknown number: tuskkiiiiiiii
Unknown number: it’s hinata! we got your number from yamaguchi-san
Unknown number: he’s so nice!
Unknown number: u sure you dont want us to pick you up in the morning? we can wait till you’re readu to go
Unknown number: lol...i meant tsukki!!! kageyama is dying laughing right now
Damn Yamaguchi to the deepest circle of hell. He’s not nice, he’s a sneaky, meddling little shit. Kei rubs his eyes hard with the heels of his hands, before sighing and putting his glasses on so he can read without squinting.
Kei: i’m sure
Unknown number: when do u think your coming?
Kei: i don’t know. you’re doing fine..you’ll survive without me
Unknown number: i think u mean im doing great XD
Unknown number: still like u to come though
Unknown number: u did say probably
Kei: probably does not mean definitely
Unknown number: OuO OuO OuO
Kei: oh my god
Red: come on tuskki...we kept practicing after u left. bet we could kick ur ass pretty soon
Kei: how hard is it to type tsukki?
Red: alskdjflk
Red: omg i’m
Red: i cant stop pictring u with walrus tusks
Red: or! picturing a walrus wtih glasses!
Red: kageyama’s about to piss himself on the train
Kei: i’m going now. i’ll be there around 10 tomorrow. you will not kick my ass
Red: how is there no walrus kaomoji??/
Red: i think kageyama is crying omg
Kei: stop texting me
Red: we’ll see u 2morrow!!!
Kei shuts his phone off after resisting the urge to call Yamaguchi and yell at him. (He’s mildly afraid he may end up thanking him.) He gets into bed, presses his face into his pillow, and tries very hard not to imagine Kageyama laughing so hard his eyes are streaming. He tries not to picture a somber, bespectacled walrus, but he does, and he can’t get the image out of his head. He can’t not laugh at it.
He’s becoming just as stupid as Kageyama and Hinata, and just now, with his head still fuzzy from too much sun and saltwater, he’s finding it hard to care that much.
* * *
The morning feels unreasonably long. Kei wakes early as always, and has hours to fill, pretending to be doing something, before he meets the boys at the beach. He spends a good ten minutes fiddling with his glasses, ignoring the fact that he could get off his ass and actually take them to be adjusted properly. Instead, he putters around his tiny studio apartment and half reads the book that is very good, but still very hard to focus on.
At a quarter after nine there’s a knock on his door.
“This is stupid,” a voice on the other side says, low and familiar. “He said no.”
“We’re not forcing drugs on him, Bakageyama, we’re just taking him to the beach.”
“No,” Kei says out loud to himself. He opens the door and is ready to say it again, but Kageyama is pink faced and awkward, Hinata is beaming, and Kei just sighs.
“Yamaguchi?” he asks.
“He’s so nice!” Hinata says.
“He’s so dead. You can sing his praises at his memorial.”
“Ready to go?” Hinata asks.
Kei looks at Kageyama who is lingering a couple steps behind Hinata. He shrugs, still looking apologetic, but also rather fond when his eyes fall on the back of Hinata’s head. “You can’t really say no to him.”
“I can. And I did.”
“Didn’t work though,” Kageyama points out.
“That’s—you can’t just—” Kei sputters, feeling a fiery return of his irritation with everything about these boys. “That’s not how life works! You can’t just ignore—”
“Oh my God,” Hinata says. “Are those...”
“Get out,” Kei says, without needing to hear the end of that sentence. “I just need my contacts, I’ll be there in a second, get ou—”
“Dinosaurs?” Hinata continues, ducking down to poke his head under Kei’s arm. “Oh my God there’s so many dino—”
“Out!” Kei barks, bodily turning Hinata around and pushing him towards Kageyama.
“I wanna play with them!” Hinata cries, but it becomes muffled when Kei slams his door shut halfway through. He hurriedly grabs his bag and contacts, then casts a disparaging glance at his display case of dinosaur figures, which he immediately feels guilty about. His brother gives him a new one every year and he loves them, he just has company so rarely that he doesn’t know how to deal with other people seeing them. “They’re not toys,” he says, after he’s quickly slipped out the door and pulled it shut again.
“Okay,” Hinata says, grinning.
“Can we see them, though? Tonight?” Kageyama asks.
“You won’t be here tonight,” Kei says, “so I don’t see how that could be anywhere within the realm of possibility.”
He believes this, when he says it, despite the disappointment painted all over Kageyama’s face, but after a day spent surfing and arguing, and a late lunch of sticky rice balls and spicy shrimp, Kei finds himself sitting beside the two boys on the train, on their way back to his apartment.
He holds himself upright and stiff, while the other two lean into each other, fingers intertwined and Hinata’s head resting on Kageyama’s shoulder. Kei couldn’t help noticing that there was a lot more of this, these little touches between the two of them, throughout the day. He wonders if this is because they’re more comfortable around him now, and his chest does that stupid, warm thing again at the thought.
“You can’t stay late,” he says, when they’re following him to his door, as if they don’t already know exactly where it is. “I have to work in the morning.”
“We won’t,” Kageyama says, slapping a hand over Hinata’s mouth when he starts to argue.
Kei fixes the redhead with a threatening stare before pulling the door open. “You can not play with the dinosaurs.”
Hinata nods his head as vigorously as he can with Kageyama still restraining him. Kei feels that shaking his head would have more appropriately shown his understanding, but he reluctantly opens the door anyway and lets them inside.
He’s expecting disaster. Mockery and mayhem and tragically shattered dinosaurs, but it’s actually, in the end, very nice. Hinata and Kageyama kneel on the floor, listening attentively while Kei shows them each figure and lets them carefully hold them.
“Uwaahhh,” Hinata cries when Kei takes the carnotaurus out. “What is that? It’s so cool!”
Kei hands it to him and tells him all he knows about the South American therapod, while slim, pale fingers slowly revolve the figure, and gently stroke over its spiny back.
“I don’t have any collections,” Hinata says glumly, after they’ve worked their way through everything in the case.
“What about all your bad grades?” Kageyama asks, earning himself a sharp elbow in the ribs.
Kei laughs, loud and genuine, and immediately finds himself the focus of two pairs of surprised eyes.
“Woah!” Hinata says.
“What?” Kei asks (almost snaps, actually), but he already knows exactly what. It’s the first time he’s laughed around them in a way that isn’t dry or vaguely (or not so vaguely) scornful.
“N-nothing!” Hinata says. “You’re just...really cute, when you laugh. Did you know that?”
Kei did not know that, nor does he believe it to be accurate, but it’s currently the least of his concerns as his mind is overwhelmed with other thoughts. With how this is not going according to plan, not following the most likely course of events at all, and—
“Dumbass,” Kageyama says. “That makes it sound bad. He’s cute when he’s not laughing, too.”
“Wha—” Kei manages. If he had his wits about him whatsoever he would murder these two in cold blood for bringing him to this state of mortifying incoherence. “What is the matter with you?” he forces out. “Aren’t you in some kind of dysfunctional relationship? You can’t just go around saying you like other guy’s glasses and calling them cute.”
“We’re not dysfunctional,” Kageyama says, as if this was in any way the most pertinent detail of what Kei just said.
“And we both think you’re cute,” Hinata says. “So...first of all, exactly, we’re not dysfunctional, we agree! And second—”
“Dysfunctional does not just mean you disagree, it means—”
Kei stops suddenly, because rather than cowering away from his barely contained fury, Kageyama has inexplicably reached toward him and is....touching his glasses. Tenderly adjusting the arms where they rest on Kei’s ears.
“They’re crooked,” Kageyama says softly.
“I know,” Kei says vehemently, latching on to the one thing that he is sure of in this moment. His glasses are crooked, yes. But also Kageyama is touching him, and Hinata is watching them, and this was not the fucking plan.
“You like us,” Kageyama says, with that slight hint of arrogance (or maybe just self-assurance) that licks at Kei like a flame, because apparently he doesn't mind it any more than Hinata does. “You act like you don’t, but you do.”
Arguing with this would be worse than stupid, it would be embarrassing, because Kei’s pulse is hammering and Kageyama’s hands are right there, his thumbs pressed lightly against the sides of Kei’s throat, and heartbeats don’t respond like this to the touch of someone who only incites the disinterest Kei has been feigning.
“So what?” he says. It lacks the bite he intended it to hold.
“So we like you too, stupid,” Hinata says.
Kei can’t see him, because Kageyama is still holding his face, and Kei doesn’t have to wonder why he hasn’t pulled away or pushed Kageyama back. He is very good at lying to himself about his feelings, but he knows when the time has come to acknowledge the truth, and the truth is very simple—Tsukishima Kei has a great big crush. On the boy in front of him, and the one next to him who has just slipped his hand into Kei’s. Not even a summer crush that he can wave away with a dismissive figurative hand, but an actual one. The kind that has him inviting people into his home and letting them touch his prized collection. Letting them touch him.
But, even with that being acknowledged and accepted, what is happening now does not make sense. His theory should have held up. They have each other, so there’s absolutely no reason for them to look at him as more than a surfing companion, and maybe, maybe a friend.
“That’s illogical,” Kei says.
Kageyama smiles and finally his fingers leave the overheated skin of Kei’s face, dropping to where Hinata’s hand is tucked into Kei’s and closing over both of them. “You’re dumb,” he says. “Can we take you for dinner when you get off tomorrow?”
“No,” Kei responds automatically.
“So yes, then?” Hinata asks.
“Yes,” Kei says.
Hinata beams in response, and Kageyama smiles first at Hinata and then at Kei. Kei means to smile back, but his mind is very busy trying to sort out how these two can manage feelings both for each other, and for someone else.
“Is this...something you guys do regularly? Randomly pick up third wheels and ignore their refusals until stockholm syndrome takes over?”
“I don’t know what that means?” Hinata says, while Kageyama shakes his head. “But no? We must both have a thing for grumpy, future paleontologists, because this is a first.”
“I’m studying geology,” Kei says.
“Whatever. Can I see the carnosaurus again?”
“Carnotaurus,” Kei corrects.
“Sounds illogical,” Kageyama says, and Hinata snorts. “Every other dinosaur has saurus in its name.
“That’s not even close to true,” Kei argues.
He pulls out a thick encyclopaedia of dinosaurs to prove his point, and Kageyama and Hinata settle on either side of him on the floor, leaning against his shoulders and listening to all the varied names rolling off his tongue. Deinonychus. Saichania. Gallimimus.
His chest is doing the weird metaphysical smiling thing, and his lips are smiling, too, so at least despite a number of things being turned on their heads, something is in balance. He is, somehow. With them.
* * *
It gets easier, as the long summer days slowly pass by, to stop theorizing so much. To let go of his certainty that three is an imbalance, and recognize that nothing feels terribly off kilter when they all share a meal together, or when they cram onto Kei’s two-seater sofa to watch a movie at the end of the day.
He would be a little worried that so much time in the sun has muddled his higher thought processes, but he still thinks Hinata is too loud, and Kageyama is even dumber than he realized sometimes, so Kei knows he hasn’t lost his grip on reality. He just....he just doesn’t care. Hinata is good at listening, too, and along with being painfully stupid at times, he manages to be clever and perceptive. Always so quick to smile and laugh.
And Kageyama is the quiet to balance Hinata’s noise. He’s honest and earnest and so goddamn beautiful, and Kei stops saying no when he or Hinata suggest anything, because they don’t have to ask anymore, they just do.
They come to his place. They take him home to theirs. They wave him over from the water when he’s finished his shift, and he doesn’t have his contacts with him but he just slips his glasses off and goes. He floats on his back and tells them about ancient sea monsters until the fingers woven between his own start to shiver in the cooling evening, and they paddle back to the shore together.
They kiss him for the first time, then, on the empty beach. First Kageyama’s cold lips pressed to his, firm and slow, and then Hinata’s, a little messier, a little more eager. Kei has a passing thought that their personalities could be fairly accurately represented by their kisses, but then Kageyama and Hinata are kissing each other with a lack of restraint he has not witnessed before, and all he can think is that illogical was not the right word to apply to this setup they have here. Brilliant would possibly be a better descriptor. Particularly for the way Kageyama’s lips returns to his, slick and warm from the heat of Hinata’s mouth, and spread the spark that ignited between them to Kei.
“Okay?” Hinata asks, when he has kissed Kei again, too, and Kei doesn’t know which taste on his tongue is from which boy. (Though determining this is something he looks forward to applying his mind to in the future.)
“Yeah,” he says. “You should have led with this. Much better than your surfing form.”
Hinata laughs, and Kageyama cuffs Kei’s head gently before pulling him into another kiss. One that spits in the face of Kei’s slow and firm personality/kisser theory, and is clearly meant to compensate for Kageyama’s continued inability to kick Kei’s ass in the water.
(Kei doesn’t love having his theories debunked, but he’s found, lately, that he really doesn’t hate it either.)
Hinata digs Kei’s glasses out of his bag for him after, and Kageyama takes them (because he was very serious about his affection for the glasses, or, more accurately, for Kei’s face with glasses) and carefully slides them into place, frowning when he’s unable to get them to sit properly.
They seem to get progressively more crooked each time Kei wears them, which makes no sense at all, but he can’t find it within himself to be that bothered by it. He doesn’t need them that much now, with so many hours whiled away on the water, with so many evenings spent with eyes closed and two sets of hands moving over him and keeping him steady. His senses of taste and touch providing him with all the input he needs.
He does take them to be adjusted eventually, when their break is about to end, and Hinata and Kageyama go with him. They all try frames on together just for fun, which feels terribly domestic somehow, but Kei doesn’t fight it. If this were a summer crush, he would probably be concerned by everything he stands to lose with the end of the season upon him. But, luckily, Kei does not get summer crushes.
He has, however, gotten something bigger. Something unconventional and unexpected and good, and he’s much too smart to think that the end of a vacation means that what he has, what they have, needs to do anything but keep on going.