Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
Tsukishima had learned silence before he learned anything else.
His brother had been the first to teach him silence. Don’t speak too loud, don’t talk back, don’t step too firmly or laugh too loudly. Akiteru always said it was a game. ‘Whoever is quieter the longest gets an extra slice of cake’ he’d say. Akiteru would always make sure it was strawberry shortcake and so Tsukishima always made sure to stay quiet. It wasn’t until the first day that he didn’t, that he found out why.
His mother had taught him silence too, but she never promised him cake or sweets. She hadn’t been happy and gentle in her lessons, she’d been frantic and begging. Don’t tell them. Don’t tell the teachers, don’t tell your friends. Don’t cry when it hurts. Don’t cry when it doesn’t. Just don’t, don’t, don’t-
His father didn’t like noise.
He asked why once, and they told him that his father would get headaches. He worked so hard that when he came home any noise would hurt him. He was angry when it hurt.
He learned later of course that it wasn’t headaches. His father was a good man, but he was a mean drunk. There were times he’d come home and his father would be dancing in the kitchen with his mother, their wedding song playing on the radio. His mother would laugh, the sweetest sound Tsukishima would hear, and his father would spin her with a look in his eyes unbearably fond. His mother and Akiteru would latch onto those small moments, and they’d forget about the man he was when he was drunk. Tsukishima never did.
When his father died they still stayed silent.
He was a good man, people would say and Tsukishima wouldn’t tell them about being seven years old with bruises on his ribs. He was a kind man, people would say and Tsukishima wouldn’t tell them about being ten and picking shards of glass from his hands.
He was good.
Eleven and pretending he broke his arm by falling from a tree.
He was kind.
Twelve and hiding more bruises than years he’d lived.
He was one of the best men I knew.
Fourteen and forever on his stomach so he couldn’t worsen the marks of the belt on his back.
I’m sure you’ll grow up to be just like him.
Fifteen and far too thin. Body aching with scars and cuts and bruises which all spell his father’s name. Everything well hidden beneath his tongue and his funeral suit.
He was a good man, they said. Tsukishima wondered if he was meant to believe them.
The flower on his mother’s arm wilted and died. Lavender. A message of devotion. It had grown on the inside of her arm when she was twenty (the phrase ‘late bloomer’ was surprisingly accurate) It blossomed fully the day that she met his father. His own Lavender had been on his chest, the peaks of the purple edging up to his collarbone as if it was demanding for his love to be seen. On the better days she left it exposed; it would stand vibrant and blooming, a window to her soulmate’s rare joy. On the worse days, Tsukishima would catch the petals angry and wilting and falling like tears.
Everyone else considered soulmates a blessing. Tsukishima could only ever think it a curse. Devotion, lavender had meant. He found it oddly fitting. His mother had been devoted to his father. Devotion. He wasn’t sure if it had ever truly been love.
—
The day the flowers appear he’s sixteen years old. His father is not yet cold in his coffin. His bruises have not yet faded. Akiteru still walks silently through the halls. His mother still thinks that scars equal love.
The day the flowers appear he’s sixteen and terrified.
They come when he returns home from practice. The orchid rises at the edge of his thigh and the buds curl over his hipbone. Thoughtfulness and mature charm. The delphinium spreads unabashed over the side of ribs, buds stacked and towering. Hope and lightheartedness. Tsukishima almost misses the Astilbe on his lower back, perfectly placed across his spine. Waiting and dedication.
Tsukishima stares at the flowers with a growing dread and promptly throws up.
Fate he decides is a cruel, heartless bitch, and he’s reminded of that every time he gets a glimpse of green stems.
There had always been rumours that he was flowerless. He’d covered himself so much to avoid his father’s work from being seen that for others it was a natural conclusion to jump to. After his flowers appear, he doesn’t dispute the rumours. The fact that he refuses to discuss flowers and openly vilifies them in class doesn’t exactly convince people otherwise, but they can think what they want. He’d rather be flowerless than lose himself. It becomes an unaddressed subject with him- or rather none of the team dares ask him to his face. The second and third years give him sympathetic looks when they think he doesn’t notice. Yamaguchi knows not to ask until he’s ready and even the King himself never mentions it.
Hinata is too dumb to notice the rumours until they’re on the bus heading to Nekoma.
Tsukishima slouches in his seat, head tilted back and headphones settled comfortably over his ears. He’s rather content in the journey, at least until he catches Hinata staring at him over the back of the seat in front of him. He’s practically vibrating in his spot, Tsukishima reckons he’d be bouncing if it wasn’t for the height of the bus. The blonde closes his eyes.
“Come back during regular business hours, Shrimp. Or don’t. I don’t particularly care.”
He blatantly turns up the volume of his phone and let his thoughts fade into the music. Well, he tries.
“-ngyshima? Stingyshima? Stingyshima!”
The Shrimp’s voice rises over the beat of the song and Tsukishima tries his best to ignore it.
“Stingyshimaaa” Hinata continues, drawing out the vowels like a petulant child. The blonde yanks his headphones down to his neck.
“What?!” He snaps irritably.
Hinata blinks.
“Is it true you don’t have a soulmate?”
The chatter around them quiets suddenly as Hinata breaches the only subject Karasuno tried to stay away from. A chill runs over the back of his neck, sobering and unrelenting and Tsukishima lets his nails dig into the palms of his hands.
“Because I heard these rumours and nobody even knows if they’re true and I was like woah! Tsukishima doesn’t have a soulmate?! So I tried to ask-“
Kageyama hits him on the back of the head and he squawks.
“Bakageyama!”
“I don’t have a soulmate.” Tsukishima says loud and curt. He makes sure the others hear it, no doubt eavesdropping. The disdain in his voice is real, but it covers over the wash of fear he gets whenever he thinks about his soulmates. Everytime he blinks he sees snapshots of his mother’s petals wilting, the omen to his father’s coming rage.
“But...everybody has a soulmate.” Hinata says confused.
“Well I don’t.” He says shortly. I have three, Tsukishima thinks but doesn’t say. I don’t have a soulmate I have three.
Hinata opens his mouth again and Kageyama physically pulls him down and into his seat. Tsukishima settles his headphones over his ears with shaking hands. He remembers his mother’s shaking hands every time his father’s car pulled up outside. Yamaguchi gives him a sad smile.
“Shut up, Yamaguchi,” he mutters quietly.
He sees his friends lips move but his music is too loud to hear what he says.
Sorry Tsukki.
He must fall asleep during the ride because he wakes up to Yamaguchi shaking him awake, Sugawara hovering behind him like a mother hen. He wonders if he should remind the third year that they actually aren’t his children. They file off the bus and Tsukishima doesn’t pay attention to much else. Daichi and Nekoma’s captain (He wears his hair like that willingly? Does he not own a mirror?) are being stupid and competitive. Hinata and Kageyama are being stupider. It’s all painfully normal. At least until their last match when Kuroo turns around to talk to his teammates and Tsukishima catches sight of the slowly blooming Astilbe on the back of his neck. The feathered flowers spread across the expanse of skin and his own feels warm against the base of his spine. The captain seems too engrossed in the game to notice.
As soon as the game ends he slips away to the bathroom. He’d met him. His soulmate. One of them at least. Tsukishima is far too grateful that the other hasn’t noticed. Had Kuroo met their other soulmates yet? Had he looked for them the way Tsukishima refused to? Had he been looking for Tsukishima too?
He might not be, it might just be a coincidence... Tsukishima doesn’t allow himself to hope and the memory swallows him like a wave.
He can hear the glass breaking in the living room, Akiteru’s hands over his eyes. Don’t watch this, he’d whispered, pulling him back upstairs even as their mother had cried out a painful and devastating thing. Why is she crying, he’d thought. Mom always said not to cry.
Mom and Dad are soulmates, he’d said tentatively sitting on Akiteru’s bed.
Yes, he’d said with a wavering smile. They are.
He’d nodded then, hair not quite long enough to hide the bruise above his eye. Will I have a soulmate too?
One day, Akiteru promised.
Will my soulmate make us quiet? He’d asked and it had taken Akiteru a while before he realised his little brother was asking: will my soulmate hurt us too?
Your soulmate, he’d said quiet and unconvincing, will always be with you. They’ll take care of you, they’ll keep you safe and I promise they’ll love you for the rest of your lives.
Tsukishima had examined him, even as young and naive as he’d been he could see the tightness of his brother’s eyes and his forced smile. You’re lying, he’d said quietly before sneaking back to his room.
(Let’s play a game he’d whispered once, a volleyball court and his brother in the stands, Dad loves us in his own way he’d promised, applications to a university abroad— Tsukishima realised eventually that his brother had a penchant for telling lies.)
“Tsukishima?” The door opens tentatively and the blonde looks up from where he’s bent over the sink. Tsukishima wonders when it became so hard to breathe. “You shouldn’t run off without telling anyone.” Sugawara scolds lightly and the blonde’s shoulders hunch.
“I apologise Sugawara-san. I didn’t mean to be an inconvenience.”
“You’re not an inconvenience,” he says gently and a hand lays between his shoulder blades. The blocker tries not to flinch away. “Are you okay? Do you need me to get you anything?”
“I’m fine,” he says quietly head spinning. Sugawara nods and turns to leave. “Sugawara-san,“ he blurts without thinking. Tsukishima hangs his head. He can’t look for himself but he needs to know...he needs to know if... He could ask Yamaguchi but he doesn’t want to waste anymore time.
“Tsukishima?”
“My shirt.” Tsukishima says quietly, white knuckled grip on the porcelain sink. “I need you to lift up my shirt,” he knows he’s being vague but his throat feels like it’s closing. Sugawara seems to understand the gist of it and carefully pulls up the first year’s shirt and the vest he wears beneath it. If he’s surprised he doesn’t show it, he merely runs a finger over the blossomed flowers and settles Tsukishima’s garments back into place. Sugawara doesn’t ask who they’re for or why he lied.
“Do you want me to tell them?” He says gently.
“No,” Tsukishima says. That’s all the confirmation he needs. Kuroo really is his soulmate. His soulmate. He thinks he might throw up. “Just...take me home?” His voice breaks and Tsukishima feels too much like the little boy sat on his brother’s bed.
“Okay, lets go home.”
(Tsukishima goes home and settles into silence just like his mother taught him. Don’t tell them. Don’t tell your family. Don’t tell your teachers. Don’t tell your friends. Don’t cry when it hurts. —Tsukishima wants to cry because everything hurts.)