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He doesn’t know why the notebook catches his eye as he’s walking past—Takeda’s handwriting is thick and hard to read, hardly eye-catching—but something makes him pause on his way to join the third years where they stand talking to their teacher. He peers down at the open page, twisting the towel in his hands.
I’m not being sneaky, he tells himself. If he looks over here he’ll see me looking.
The characters resolve into words:
in [my] dreams / along dream paths
without resting my legs
[I] go often [to you]
in the real world, a single glimpse
is different
Keishin fights the urge to step back. A poem, then—not notes on volleyball, like all the other pages. A flush of heat goes through him. This is what Takeda was thinking about during practice?
“Ukai-kun,” Takeda says, and Keishin jumps. The conversation with the third-years has wrapped up, and Takeda has caught him looking after all. He twists the towel in his hands tight, searching for something to say that doesn’t have something to do with dream paths or glimpses.
“Uh—I wanted to see what notes you made today, but, uh, I guess you were working on your own thing—” He gestures.
Takeda glances down at the notebook, and his face colors when he sees what’s on the open page. “Oh—you read that? It’s a famous poem from the ninth century. I was trying to see if I could remember all of it—”
“Oh!” Relief floods Keishin. Someone else’s poem—not his. “A single glimpse is different, or doesn’t come at all? I wonder what he means.”
“She, actually. The author was a woman.”
“Oh! Of course, yeah, that makes sense.”
“It does?”
“Well—it’s very sensitive—” he says, and then fumbles. That makes it sound like he thinks Takeda is feminine for liking poetry, which he doesn’t, even if Takeda is a bit more delicate than the average guy—
He shakes his head to clear it. “Ah, what do I know about poetry? I’m just talking out of my ass. Better to stick to volleyball.” He grins, and Takeda smiles back—a small smile that could mean anything.
“Anyway, were you kidding about treating me earlier?” he asks, wishing he hadn’t stopped to look at the notebook at all.
“Would I joke about that?” Takeda asks with a serious face, and Keishin claps him on the shoulder.
“That’s what I like to hear, Sensei!”
Takeda ducks his head in acknowledgement, and as Keishin watches him pick up the notebook he wonders if there are more poems inside, half-remembered, and if so, what they might say.
They sit in their usual spot at the izakaya, at a small table opposite one another by the upstairs window, Keishin’s pint already finished while Takeda nurses a much smaller glass of beer, only sipping occasionally. There’s something on his mind; he keeps pausing to look at Keishin, and doesn’t decline with his usual fervor when he’s offered the last piece of gyoza. Keishin’s relieved when he finally seems to come to a decision; his shoulders unbend, and finally those bespectacled eyes meet his.
“Ukai-kun, could you teach me volleyball? The moves, I mean. Not just the rules.”
Keishin sits back. “You want to learn?”
Takeda’s gaze lowers. “It’s silly, isn’t it? You don’t have to; you’re already doing so much for the team. I know it’s rude of me to ask—”
“No, no! I’d be happy to!” He taps against the wooden table, considering. “Of course. We’ll start with serves, or—no, maybe receives—”
“You mean it?” Takeda asks, and his whole face is lit up.
He frowns. “Yeah, of course—even if I said no, wouldn’t you badger me until I gave in anyway?”
Takeda rubs the side of his face. “Well, no, I wasn’t…” He colors. “It’s easier when it’s for others, isn’t it? This is just my selfish request.”
Keishin snorts. “You, selfish? I’ll believe it when I see it. Hey, are you going to eat the last skewer?”
“It’s all yours,” Takeda says with a smile.
That weekend Keishin imagines what teaching Takeda volleyball might be like, and a lot of the images his mind produces are embarrassing in a way that’s familiar by now. It’s been a few months since he made the mental leap from Takeda-is-someone-I-enjoy-spending-time-with to Takeda-is-someone-I’m-attracted-to, and they’ve been a weird few months; notebook snooping is only one of the symptoms. He finds himself constantly distracted by Takeda’s voice or the line of his throat or his hands moving, to the point where he feels like a dumb teenager with a crush.
in my dreams / along dream paths…
The poem and their bumbling conversation after have made it worse; that and the way his body fills with restless energy when he imagines positioning Takeda’s hands in preparation for a serve. He’s on edge at the store, and can’t seem to calm down when he’s at home, his head whirring with inappropriate thoughts of a dark-haired, bookish guy he has nothing but the Karasuno volleyball team in common with. On Monday, though, he finds that all the scenarios he played out in his head—they’re not fantasies, he won’t call them fantasies—fall short of reality. Mainly because he didn’t imagine all the volleyball players running around begging to help Sensei learn.
“That’s enough!” he says, catching the ball Hinata served before the net can. “What do you call that serve?”
“A failure,” Tsukishima supplies helpfully, and Yamaguchi smothers a laugh.
“I was just trying to demonstrate,” Hinata mumbles, clearly embarrassed.
“You explained it really well,” Takeda says, even though Hinata’s explanation was all gwah and pah. Hinata brightens visibly, and Keishin gives Takeda a look, which at least makes him rub at the back of his neck self-consciously, acknowledging the lie.
“Everyone out,” Keishin says. There’s whining, and Nishinoya insists that Takeda must learn the libero way—but eventually the gym clears out, and they’re left with just the two of them. Keishin walks up to stand a few feet from his new pupil, eyebrows still furrowed.
“Don’t scold me, Sensei,” Takeda says laughingly, his hands up. “It’s hard not to encourage Hinata-kun’s enthusiasm, isn’t it?”
“For you maybe,” Keishin says. He’s never had trouble telling noisy teens to shut up. “You ready?”
Takeda nods, and Keishin begins to teach, not entirely confident in his abilities. He’s never taught someone completely new to volleyball before, and even with all the determination in the world Takeda is sort of—well… clumsy.
“You can laugh,” Takeda tells him after his serve lands a meter away from him because he hit his own hand for the third time in a row. He’s smiling. “I won’t be offended.”
“I’m—not—” Keishin stops. He doesn’t feel like laughing at all, and that’s weird. He watches punishment games to unwind; he loves seeing people mess up—but his stomach is tight and his head is filled with that stupid poem and Takeda’s wrists are smaller than his but still unmistakably male and it’s weird seeing him in a T-shirt and loose exercise pants and this has been going on for months and it has to stop.
Doesn’t it?
Keishin gives his head a mental shake and resumes teaching, trying to loosen up. It works for a while, and when he sees Takeda attempt a jump serve—after shouting at Keishin that he knows he won’t succeed—Keishin does laugh, and so does Takeda, and the lesson doesn’t seem like it’ll be a failure after all.
Until Takeda sighs and says, “I guess I’m better at poetry, after all.”
“Uh?” he says, an involuntary sound he hadn’t meant to make. Shit. He made an ass of himself last time poetry came up.
“You seem nervous,” Takeda says, seeming to catch his discomfort. “What’s wrong?”
“I—um—” Keishin folds his arms, unfolds them, tries to remember how he stands normally. “Last time, I didn’t mean I thought you were girly for liking that poem, or anything, not that that’s an insult—”
Takeda blinks up at him. “Ukai-kun?”
“What I mean is, uh, I think it’s great that you like poetry! I mean, of course you do, since you teach Japanese literature. But that’s great.”
He feels sweat beading on his skin. That was even worse than the original conversation. He looks down at Takeda’s hands, the red where he’s been hitting volleyballs, and tries not to think about how much he’d like to slide his hands down those forearms, catch those hands in his.
He’s a guy, Keishin reminds himself, but it doesn’t help because he knows that and it doesn’t matter. He likes Takeda’s voice and his smile and how he always sees things differently than he does—all grand sentiments that don’t belong in a rural town like theirs. He likes how easy he is to talk to, when Keishin isn’t making a massive fool of himself.
“Oh,” Takeda says. “Um…” He plucks at his T-shirt. “Did I make you uncomfortable, maybe?”
“What?” Keishin asks, wondering how he could have possibly come to that conclusion. He’s the one who made himself uncomfortable.
Takeda glances at his briefcase by the gym doors. “Ukai-kun, did you… hear something?”
Hear something? Keishin swears, taking a few steps in the direction of the doors. “Are they still out there? I’ll—”
“No, no!” Suddenly, Takeda’s hands are around his bicep, pulling him back. Keishin jumps, and Takeda steps back guiltily. “I mean, um, about me.”
“What? No, of course not. The kids only have good things to say about you. You’re not sick, are you?”
“No! Nothing like that. Ah, I just though that—given your reaction to the poem—you might have, um, had…” He raises a hand, rubs at the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “…suspicions…”
Keishin stares, and he barely catches what Takeda says next because it’s said in a rush, but it sounds like I-thought-you-might-think-the-poem-was-about-you.
His heart races. “What?”
But Takeda doesn’t clarify; instead he starts spouting about poetry and meaning carrying across centuries and how something-or-other begets something-or-other, all too fast for Keishin to understand.
“Wait,” he says, and Takeda’s voice tapers off. He looks a little dazed, like maybe he forgot to breathe during that whole speech, and Keishin folds his arms. He has to tell him. It’s only right; right now he seems to be laboring under some delusion that Keishin’s judging him for something.
Something Keishin’s quite guilty of himself.
Keishin walks to the door and looks outside, finding no one. He closes it and walks back to stand opposite Takeda, his heart hammering.
“I got nervous because the poem made me think,” he says finally, carefully—more carefully than he’s used to speaking. “I guess you’d never said anything about romance, and when I saw that poem I thought… well, I don’t know what I thought exactly. But it made me nervous, thinking about you writing out love poems.”
Takeda’s eyes look large behind his slightly-askew glasses, and he pushes them up onto the bridge of his nose more firmly as Keishin watches.
It’s too endearing by half.
“I guess I like you?” Keishin finishes weakly. “Have for a month or two now. Thought it might go away but it hasn’t.”
Takeda shakes his head, smiling. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t?” Keishin asks, wondering how someone as well-read as Takeda hasn’t heard of guys liking guys before. Does he think it’s an urban myth? That would be one way to be rejected.
“I thought you were uncomfortable because of me,” Takeda says. “Because of me liking you. I thought you’d heard a rumor about me or something, and you were trying so hard to be supportive without, well… encouraging me.”
Keishin snorts. “Does that sound like me?”
“It does,” Takeda says, sounding convinced. He must rate Keishin’s consideration levels higher than they are.
“Wait,” he says suddenly. Because of me liking you. Takeda just said that, didn’t he? Had he imagined it? “You like me?”
Takeda nods, then holds up his hands quickly, waving them back and forth. “That’s not why I wanted you for the team though!” he assures Keishin, as if that thought might have crossed his mind; it hadn’t. “Even if I’d been looking for an excuse to talk to you, it was all for them.”
“Since then?” Keishin asks, amazed at the thought. Back then, Takeda had only been a nuisance.
Takeda ducks his head down in a nod, and that restless energy fills him again. Well, shit. Apparently he’d been worried for nothing.
Of course, both of them could get in deep shit if they start something and someone in this tiny town finds out—but that’s not the primary thought in his head. The primary thought involves taking a few steps forward and finding out whether kissing a guy is any different from kissing a girl.
“Uh,” he says.
“Uh,” Takeda agrees. He’s flushed, his fingers wrung tight together.
“So that poem…”
“I didn’t write it, obviously,” he says, his color high. “But I can understand the sentiment.” His eyes flicker up to meet Keishin’s, and all Keishin’s breath seems to leave his body. He takes a step forward—another—and then he’s standing right in front of Takeda, less than a foot apart, and the shorter man is peering up at him from behind his glasses.
“Can I…?” Keishin asks, and Takeda nods. They both take a breath—huff it out in a laugh when they notice their perfect symmetry—and then Keishin lets his fingers rest against Takeda’s jaw, bending down just a little. Takeda is so small.
He doesn’t have to bend down the whole way; Takeda angles his head up and presses his mouth against Keishin’s, one hand pulling at Keishin’s jacket to steady himself.
He’s on his tiptoes.
That realization seems to unlock something in Keishin, and he lets his other hand pull Takeda in close, his hesitation lost, the frames of Takeda’s glasses bumping beneath his eye as he increases the angle of the kiss. Takeda responds in kind; he presses his body against Keishin’s, bending back so as not to lose contact with Keishin’s mouth, his warmth sinking into Keishin’s front. He smells of sweat and a light cologne—a hell of a lot better than Keishin’s cigarette smell tamped down with lavender febreeze because he still hasn’t remembered to buy unscented. From the way Takeda’s hands move up his neck to curl his fingers in his hair he doesn’t seem to mind the smell, though; in fact, he seems to be trying to wrap himself around it.
Keishin’s surprised by how forceful Takeda is—but pleasantly. His whole body is warm with the way Takeda presses into him, the way the first tentative, shy kiss turns into an open-mouthed one, and he wishes he could just pick Takeda up, maybe pin him against the wall of the gym and continue this there.
It seems a bit early for that, though, even if his body aches to do it.
They draw back after a long moment of sliding hands and lips and shared breath. Takeda’s breathing hard, his face still flushed with what looks like embarrassment—but his lids are heavy, pupils blown wide. Even that lust-filled look is cute on him, although it’s cute in a way that makes Keishin revisit the pinning-against-a-wall idea.
Takeda laughs a little. His arms are still around Keishin’s neck, and Keishin has—accordingly—neglected to remove his hands from the small of his back. “The poem was right,” Takeda says. “Dreams really don’t measure up.”
Keishin tries not to feel too gratified at his awed tone. “You’ll make me blush,” he says dryly.
“I sort of hope to do more than that,” Takeda says easily, and all Keishin can do is stare. Oh, fuck. He’s not sure what Takeda has in mind, but he’s pretty sure he wants it.
“And… your job?” he asks tentatively. “If this gets out we’d be in trouble.” He blinks, realizing that Takeda hasn’t said he wants an actual relationship. “Unless it’s a one-time thing…?”
Takeda shakes his head a few times fast, nearly dislodging his glasses. “I never dreamed you’d actually want to, though. You’re so popular—”
Keishin can’t help but laugh at that. He’s a twenty-six year-old with a boring job whose list of accomplishments dead-ended at graduating high school with thoroughly mediocre grades. The poems he knows by heart are limited to dirty tankas he memorized when he was fourteen—and yet Takeda looks at him like he’s the greatest gift to mankind.
It’s nice—really nice.
“I think you have a skewed image of me, Sensei.”
“Not at all. You work hard, and you have an easy way with people, and—”
Keishin sets a finger over his mouth, fairly sure this could go on for a while. He’d like to continue it some other time, at leisure, when he isn’t aching to find out how much of the skin beneath those workout clothes Takeda is willing to let him explore.
“Back to the subject at hand?” Keishin says.
“Right. I… don’t want to hold back just for the sake of what other people might think. We’ll be careful.” Takeda glances at the closed doors. “You were careful already.”
“Would being careful include us not going home together right now?”
Takeda ducks his head, seeming embarrassed. When he speaks his voice is a note lower than usual: “Why would it? There’s no one around.”
Keishin steps back with great effort, letting his hands slide down Takeda’s bare arms. They’re cool to the touch, the sweat evaporated, and maybe he’ll get to kiss the bruises that are likely to form on them—maybe as early as tonight. He’s not sure whether the flutters he feels in his stomach at that thought are nerves or excitement.
“One condition,” he says, and what he’s about to suggest embarrasses him, but he doesn’t think Takeda will judge him for it.
Takeda waits, eyes wide.
“Tell me more of your favorite poems sometime?” Keishin says, looking away. In my dreams / along dream paths… He glances back in time to see Takeda grin.
“It’d be my pleasure,” Takeda says—with a formal bow that forces an awkward Keishin to slap his back so he stumbles and has to right himself. He’s laughing, though, and his hand slips into Keishin’s a moment later. He grins.
“Here’s one you might know,” he says as they begin to walk to the doors. “Spring has passed, and summer, it seems, has come…”
Takeda isn’t dissuaded by the metal grunting of the doors, or the cold outside; he keeps talking, and barely pauses for breath all the way to Keishin’s home, needing little input. He’s nervous, but it doesn’t seem like a bad kind of nervous. Keishin manages to catch a word in every five, distracted by his own anticipation and the way he feels a little like he’s floating.
He’s proud of catching that many words, if he’s being honest with himself.
In my dreams… he hears the poem insist, trying to wrap around him again the way it has since he read Takeda’s notebook, teasing and tempting at the same time—and he grins, feeling a sense of victory. His hand tightens around Takeda’s.
They won’t be dreams anymore, soon.