Archive of Our Own

There were a lot of things that Tendou Satori was counting down the days until he could leave behind. Bunk beds were on the list, along with exams, plaid pants, and anything that had ever happened before eight am.Topping the list, though, was the uncompromising and vicious judgment of teenagers. Sure, there was a part of his well crafted persona that was hardened to the way people might look at him, there was an even bigger part that reveled in the shocked expressions and horrified looks he received, and an important part knew that it didn’t matter, not at the end of the day, that he wasn’t ever going to fit the model of the perfect Japanese Beauty, and even if he did it wouldn’t make him happy. 

But even so, even so, even with all those parts of him, Tendou is seventeen years old - turning eighteen in the Spring - and caring about something is not yet his choice. That, of course, is at the mercy of his age. 

So he does spend some time in the morning, staring at his face and wondering if there’s any easy, painless way for him to fix the hook of his nose, or the curve of his brow over his eyes. Probably not, that’s all bone, or cartilage… He tries to decide if intentionally holding his eyes open a little wider make him look nicer, before deciding that it only makes him look crazy, and then when he relaxes back to his natural expression decides that he just looked stupid, now. 

He gels his hair up, out of his face, and wonders if he looks better this way, or if he should try styling his hair to be softer, around his face. Maybe it’ll improve the shape of it. 

Either way, either way , the concerns only last for as long as he’s looking in the mirror. Then, he gets to be blissfully ignorant of his appearance until he’s getting dressed for bed and can give himself the time to wish himself into a different body. And then he goes to bed, and he tends to dream about chocolate bunnies or nothing at all, so sleep is nice. 

He’s pretty sure it’s not a unique experience at all.

He is, again, seventeen. 

And this school is so goddamn rich everyone else seems to be drowning in high-end moisturizer and expensive clothes.

Or, correction, the concerns normally only last as long as he’s looking in the mirror. 

He really likes the Shiratorizawa volleyball team. He joined about halfway through his second year, and by all accounts was and has remained the obvious black sheep of their little super-soldier army, gangly and awkward in all the ways they weren’t, loud and boisterous in all the ways nobody wanted him to be. 

But they, themselves, were pretty cool individuals. And Leon! Christ, Tendou had almost dropped to his knees to thank whatever god there was when he’d spotted him. Not being the only not-100% Japanese person has been a godsend. 

Sure, they had absolutely nothing in common culturally, or personality wise. (Leon had informed him that his parents had been from the U.S. Actually, what he had said was “Pennsylvania,” but Tendou was pretty sure that wasn’t a real place and he wasn’t going to follow-up on it. On the other hand, Tendou, woefully, remained French.) But, the camaraderie was there.

(And then Leon had betrayed him, and gotten himself a girlfriend, but that was another issue.)

The issue, the correction, was one Ushijima Wakatoshi. A man who, by Tendou’s calculations, shouldn’t be able to exist. It was like he had stepped off some mad scientist’s experimentation table. If Tendou were inclined to write poetry, he could probably spend hours trying to find the best way to describe the level of perfection Ushijima exuded. But he’s not a poet, and Tendou is seventeen, so instead of poetry, Tendou’s brain tends to just scream ‘ holy shit he’s so hot!’ every time he saw him. 

Tendou didn’t even mind his incredibly rigid, strict personality. He didn’t mind that he sort of just looked at people blankly and then said incredibly mean (albeit correct) things about them. Or that when Tendou talked, he would just listen. And Tendou meant just listen. It probably took five months of knowing the guy before he said a sentence that wasn’t prompted out of him through direct question.

He was odd, but Tendou was also odd, and that was probably why he liked him so much.

Ushijima had perfect facial symmetry, Tendou thought. Not that he had been able to measure it, but sometimes, when they were changing after practice, Tendou had to give himself something to stare at on Ushijima to prevent himself from staring at literally anything else about Ushijima.

So his face worked just fine, and he had a very good face, with a sharp jaw but low cheekbones and nice eyes and hair that looked very soft, in the way that only hair that had never been touched by heat or a styling product could look, and Tendou had a problem. 

That correction, the correction of oh my god every time he caught himself in the reflection of the glass, when normally he would never be thinking about it, laughing and walking with Ushijima and Leon and then passing by anything reflective, and be overcome by this feeling of panic, of oh fucking hell is that what I look like right now? Why is my hair doing that? Why is my face like that? Why do my clothes hang like that? Is that my posture? Oh, god-

Tendou was not used to being concerned about his appearance outside of the 10 mirror-minutes in the morning, or if he was being overtly and directly bullied for it. 

Tendou was also not used to having a crush of any kind on any person, though he had not yet connected these two anomalies as being related. 

“Tendou.”

It’s odd how Ushijima says his name. Tendou is pretty sure he’s trying to inquire into what has distracted him, but Ushijima doesn’t always get his intonation right and it sounds like he’s just observing that it is, in fact, Tendou. 

“Mhm? Ah, sorry,” Tendou chirps in response, pulling himself away from his reflection in the window of the hall. He hadn’t realized he’d started to fall behind. 

“What are you looking at?” 

Tendou laughed. “Myself,” he teased, and then had the utmost joy of watching Ushijima hesitantly turn to look out the window, as if he might see a second Tendou. “My reflection,” Tendou corrects. 

“Of course,” Ushijima replies, immediately looking back at Tendou very much to cover up the fact that he had looked out the window at all. “Obviously.”

Tendou cannot help but smile, but he catches sight of himself in the glass of the window again, at the way his smile isn’t really a smile so much as a sneer, it’s not even, and it’s not pretty, and he forces himself to stop. 

Ushijima seems to have run out of things to say, and since Tendou didn’t take up his usual job of filling the silence, Ushijima opts to point down the hallway in the direction they were walking, indicating that was still the plan, and then turns to leave without saying anything else. 

Tendou thinks he’s going to collapse into a jittery mess. 

Leon had had to watch this whole interaction with a straight face, and probably deserves an award for it. 

---

They’re in their third year, they’ve just won the interhigh preliminaries and Tendou is on his way to his second national competition. Last year, at the Spring Tournament, they’d ranked in the top eight overall, and that was pretty fucking good. Since then, freshly eighteen, Tendou had grown about two inches taller, which meant Ushijima had grown about two inches taller, because he still hadn’t managed to surpass his height. They also had their funnily adorable little to-be Ace in the first-year Goshiki, and even if he wasn’t quite up to par with Ushijima and Leon, he certainly had the fire for it. 

Either way, there was about a week before they were bussing into Tokyo and competing again, hoping desperately to make it back to, or past, that top eight slot. National Champions. Tendou could get used to a title like that. 

There’s a point in the Shiratorizawa dorms that seems to have been an afterthought - it’s a corridor off the hallway right out front the stairwell that connects to the common space, but it’s designed in such a way that you can’t see into the common space from the stairwell, only down the hallway. Tendou is pretty sure it’s the result of bad architectural design, someone forgetting and having to add in at the last minute the way to enter this space. Though he supposed, maybe, it was intentional. Considering its lack of windows and the narrowness of the hallway, he doubted it. 

Shiratorizawa Admin had put a big decal of their white eagle mascot on the wall of this horrible little corridor. Again, it’s too narrow to really appreciate the artwork, you can’t stand far enough back to do so, but it’s certainly technically there.

Tendou is just trying to return to his dorm on a Saturday evening, after spending the afternoon with a day pass and a bookstore, but laughter catches his attention. Specifically, it’s Leon’s laughter, a noise that was very recognizable due to how oddly deep and incredibly powerful it could be. 

And if Leon is there, there’s a not insignificant chance that Ushijima would be awkwardly standing and also attempting to socialize, so if he was lucky, maybe Tendou would be able to go and awkwardly socialize beside him.

But when he slips through that odd little hallway and into the common space, he is shocked by what greets him. 

First of all - it’s most of the volleyball team, not just Leon. 

Second of all, Ushijima is certainly there, but he’s most certainly not standing awkwardly and trying to socialize behind Leon. In fact, he seems to be the center of attention. Now, that in itself wouldn’t be so shocking except-

Ushijima is sitting with his back to Tendou, at the end of a table, and he looks relaxed. He’s wearing a grey hoodie that looks well worn out, he’s actually tilted back in the wooden chair he sits in, in service of needing to bend up a knee, since he’s resting a clipboard against it, and in his hands - miraculously, in those hands Tendou has never seen do anything except crush a volleyball - he holds a ruler and a hard graphite pencil, and he is drawing.

He looks so-

Well-

It’s the same focus, the same intensity that Ushijima gets in the middle of a game, that same drive, Tendou has just never seen it put towards something not so violent as spiking a ball through a three-man block. 

“Hey! Tendou,” Leon calls, when he sees him come in. Tendou gives him a nod, and Ushijima’s hands still for a moment, as he lifts his head up to glance at Tendou and give him a small nod of welcome. Tendou tries to echo it back, before being unable to resist his curiosity and heading over to stand at Ushijima’s shoulder and look down at what was going on. 

The image on the paper is-

Fucking good.

He’s drawing what looks like a lotion bottle, which is odd, but Tendou easily figures out that it’s the same bottle set on the table the whole team is crowding around, so it’s probably more of a parlor trick that they’re all enjoying and this isn’t just how they spend their evenings (sitting around a lotion bottle.)

Tendou wonders if he’d be able to call Ushijima’s work artistic - is there not a point in which mimicry of realism loses a significant element of creativity? If you get it too correct, it’s not art, it’s… creation, replication, skill, talent, remarkable, even, but is it art if it’s perfect?

Tendou has never seen anyone use a ruler and a protractor for anything other than math, and even then only begrudgingly, but Ushijima has both out now - his right hand is doing something odd, spread out over the page and occasionally lifting up towards the bottle he’s drawing - the ruler zips around, the pencil is sharp and clean and accurate, the image left behind by his quick and terrifyingly efficient interpretation of artwork is one of deep realism, and scattered guidelines. Tendou thinks it looks quite neat, as he first looks at the bottle, and then notices the other images, the papers that have been set aside after use -an apple, a toaster, a chair. They all look the same. They seem to have a grid pattern underneath them, though the paper was blank to begin with. There are sharp directional lines that Tendou is pretty sure must be for perspective - it seems Ushijima’s concern with realism overrides any concern with a clean drawing, as they end up relatively messy. 

Especially considering the wrist of his left hand keeps brushing over the pencil and smudging it more. 

Thankfully for Tendou, most of the other boys also seem flabbergasted by this unusual version of their captain. Leon and Semi are not quite so excited, but they seem to enjoy the way Goshiki is losing his mind in awe. 

“I didn’t know you could draw,” Tendou says after a moment, and Ushijima’s hand stills. He seems to think about this for a moment before saying:

“No, I don’t believe it has ever come up before.”

Tendou cracks half a smile, before saying: “I mean, you’re really good. Like… that’s insane. How do you do that?”

“It’s all… proportions,” he says, frowning slightly. “There’s a correct way to do it. Anyone here could do it-”

“No, no, no, you tried to pull this bullshit on us before,” Semi interrupts. “Absolutely not, you talented motherfucker, don’t say anyone can do it.”

“But anyone can,” Ushijima says, sounding genuinely confused. “All you have to do is draw what is correct.” 

Semi rolls his eyes so hard Tendou is genuinely worried for his brain. 

“Ushijima, I think you’re underestimating yourself,” Tendou teases, putting a hand down on his shoulder. “Even if… okay, even if you’re… in some ways right, it’s not easy to do what’s correct. People study for years and can never get this kind of accuracy.”

Ushijima doesn’t seem to be sure how to process this comment, thinking for a moment before shaking his head and saying:

“I suppose I do have considerable experience in drawing,” after a moment, which prompts Semi, across the table, to throw up his hands in the air. 

“See? I knew it. Bastard.”

Tendou snickers, before moving around and kicking one of the first year boys out of his seat so he could sit beside Ushijima, leaning his head on his hand on the table. 

“So when did you start? What prompted you one day to think - hey, I want that lotion bottle to be an image on my paper?”

Ushijima stares at him, looks down to the paper, and before he can open his mouth, Tendou figures out what’s about to happen and hurriedly adds: “In your childhood, when did you start drawing as a kid in your life, not this exact image.”

“Oh. When I was young,” he replies. 

“Fascinating. No more details?”

Ushijima has to think about it for a moment, before saying: “I… had a lot of… spare time, when I was young. After my father left for America I could only play volleyball at school, so when I was home I had to find something new to occupy my time. And… I was not very good at making things up in my head. So I would just pick items I could see in my room, and draw them from where I was sitting.”

Tendou’s brain has to swirl around that one for a bit, trying to figure out what part of a child’s brain would decide “yeah, let’s draw that calendar on the desk” as a form of entertainment, but clearly it had been working for him. 

“That’s… kind of fascinating,” Leon says, in a way that only Leon can ever really sound, in awe and also deeply concerned about one Ushiwaka. 

“So you just got really good at drawing random objects?” Tendou says, a little skeptically, reaching a hand out to pluck the lotion off the table and inspect it. As he does, everyone around the table goes: 

“Ah! No, Tendou- shit-”

He freezes, not super used to having everyone start screaming at him before he had initiated some kind of prank, ploy or trickery. His shocked expression must have been enough to explain himself, because Leon explains:

“Ushijima can’t - or… won’t finish a drawing, after the object has been moved.”

Tendou feels a wave of embarrassment, putting the bottle down. “Ah, sorry, I’ll just… put it back…”

Ushijima is shaking his head. 

“Why… why no?” Tendou complains. “I put it back-”

“Angle is different.”

“Wh- it’s in the exact same place!”

“Angle is different,” Ushijima repeats. 

“...sorry…”

“It’s fine,” Ushijima replies, before taking the paper out of his clipboard and tossing it onto the table in front of him. “It was basically done anyway.”

It’s so impressive, Tendou thinks, but that wasn’t entirely unusual, everything about Ushijima seemed impressive, so this may as well be too. The image of the bottle wasn’t… detailed - that is to say, it didn’t look like it was a photograph or anything. It was just… accurate. There was something so shockingly correct about the length of the pump, to its neck, to the body of the bottle, and the very subtle shadowing details Ushijima had just been in the process of beginning to create when Tendou had ruined it. 

“So you only ever drew… things?” Taichi says, from where he’s sitting with his chair turned backwards. “Never people, animals?” 

“I drew what was in my room,” Ushijima repeats. 

That’s fucking depressing, Tendou wants to say, but holds his tongue. 

“Well, let’s see,” Taichi prompts, waving a hand. “You’ve got a handful of people here now, let’s give it a shot, see what you can do.”

Ushijima thinks about this for a moment, before nodding.

“Okay,” he agrees, before turning his attention over to where Tendou was sitting, making a very indecipherable motion to him. It takes his brain a second to process what was going on, and when he does ends up squawking in surprise, sitting back in his chair. 

“You’re gonna draw me?” he said. “Uh-”

“If you don’t mind,” he says, all too casually. Extremely too casually, actually, because Tendou had very little interest in watching his stupid face get captured in perfect proportion by Ushijima’s godly hands. 

“What? No way,” he scoffs, waving it off and hoping that his face wasn’t starting to heat up or betray his emotions any. “Don’t waste your time drawing my ugly mug, draw Semi.”

Ushijima is staring at him.

Mistake.

Normally the joke would be nothing more than a joke, normally saying it aloud first stopped others from thinking it quietly, later. But this was Ushijima Wakatoshi, with the social grace of a fucking almond and no verbal filter. 

Don’t disagree with me, he wants to scream, because nothing would be more humiliating than Ushijima trying to comfort him, drawing attention to the whole matter and asking why, why say that, why?

Ushijima does have a look of mild confusion, at the reaction, and Tendou swallows nervously, expecting to be in this for a while, but then-

“Oh,” Ushijima says, as if finally having solved a puzzle in his head. “Mug means face.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then everyone in the room is laughing. Not at Tendou, thank God, but his relief is short lived, and immediately overshadowed by the reaction Ushijima has to the laughter, looking up and around the room with this painfully sad sort of look. Actually, it might be the first time Tendou has seen an emotion cross his face that wasn’t frustration. 

He thinks they’re laughing at him.

He doesn’t understand why they’re laughing at him.

Tendou’s whole body is doing this really horrible thing, humming with a sudden anxious panic, nauseous and scared and incredibly empathetic towards him at this moment, because no, no, that’s not it at all, I promise- but he can’t say that out loud. Lord knows he’s been on the receiving end of mockery frequently enough to know that guessing someone’s secret anxieties isn’t exactly how to make friends, especially not if you say it out loud. 

Stop laughing, he wants to demand. Can’t you see that he doesn’t understand the joke?

Why was he the only person who ever knew what anyone else was thinking?

“Hey,” he says, reaching forward and grabbing Ushijima’s arm. It seems to startle him, and he looks back to Tendou, face already back into that flat, inexpressive look. “Maybe it’ll just be a challenge for you, eh? I’ll let you draw me.” 

Ushijima hesitates slightly, before giving a nod and saying: “Okay. Please try and sit still.”

Tendou returns the nod dutifully, before pushing himself back in his seat and sitting upright, trying to stay as still as possible and immediately regretting everything about having to model. Tendou’s body was not built for still. All he wanted to do, suddenly, was violently thrash around. 

Everyone else, seemingly unaware of the brief moment of insensitivity, has calmed down and is now eager to watch. Shirabu moves out from where he’d been sitting, pacing around behind to watch over Ushijima’s shoulder, and Goshiki sits up to lean over the table and gets closer. Tendou tries to sit still. 

Ushijima stares at him for a while, before adjusting how he sat and gliding his ruler across a fresh blank page, and then-

It’s phenomenal, Tendou thinks, the absoluteness in which he wields a pencil, he doesn’t leave any room for second guessing himself and probably doesn’t even need to. 

And he keeps looking up - he keeps looking at Tendou. 

He’s looking at his face.

In perfect proportion, undoubtedly, with the same severity that Tendou had once analyzed Ushijima’s own face, in its perfect symmetry and wonderful sum of parts, they were now in the reverse. He’s not sure Ushijima had ever really looked at his face before, but to do the kind of art he does, he’d be doing so now. Every asymmetry, every blemish, every… undesirable curve, whatever it was doing. Had he not noticed a bit of acne on his chin this morning? Was his hair styled well, or had it fallen out of place during his day? Should he open his eyes more - no, no, Ushijima has already started, he can’t move now…

“How’s it looking?” Leon asks. It takes every ounce of Tendou’s self control not to look at him on reflex. 

“Amazing,” Shirabu replied. “I think he was being modest about it being just objects-”

“Really? Let me see?” and Semi is getting up and moving behind Tendou, to join Shirabu over his shoulder. 

Everyone is looking at his face. 

Tendou hadn’t thought about that. Sure, it was horrifying enough to be under the sharp appraising of Ushijima, but the rest of them would be gawking too - and checking, if Ushijima draws a line, they’ll be looking to see if it’s where it should be. 

He can see Shirabu doing exactly that, up and down, as if trying to predict what line Ushijima might make next. 

He thinks his face might be turning red, which will probably make him look even worse, but that’s not something he can control. He tries to breathe evenly and calm down, he tries not to move, but it’s so hard.

 Just when Tendou thinks he’s about to collapse, he hears a soft sort of tch come from Ushijima, and the ruler is set down on the table with a sharp click. 

“Are you done?” Tendou says. 

Ushijima just furrows his brow, and deepens the stare he’s holding down at his own artwork. 

“... can I see it?” 

“It’s not any good,” Ushijima replies, and Tendou flinches back slightly, caught off guard by the genuine irritation in his voice. 

“What in the fuck are you talking about?” Semi says, voice pitched up an octave. “Look at it! It’s-”

But Ushijima is shaking his head, and seems bothered by something, but Tendou can’t even begin to guess at what the hell was annoying him so badly. 

“Can I see it?” Tendou repeats, and this time Ushijima sighs, relenting after a second and taking the page off the clipboard, passing it over to him. 

Tendou isn’t sure what to expect. 

Somehow, an image of him isn’t it. 

But that’s all that it is. 

It’s not… quite the same as when Ushijima had been drawing the inanimate objects, but it’s very similar. Same grid guidelines, jarring diagonal reference lines for perspective, smooth arches of the protractor making guides for his jaw, his scalp, his lips, and then overtop, sharp pencil movements. The image isn’t detailed, again, Ushijima doesn’t seem to mind textures or any significant lighting, it’s merely the size and shape and lines that he’s captures, with a slight attention paid only to the most obvious of shadows or details, like the way his pencil seems to have spent extra time in the shape of his eyebrows and eyelids, and around the bottom curve of his lip. 

It’s just him. It looks fine. Tendou tries to find anything fundamentally wrong with it. Actually, he’d like something to be fundamentally wrong with it, because that would give him an excuse to write off the imperfections of the piece as being a flaw on Ushijima’s part, and not his own. 

But it’s not. It’s perfect. It captured everything wrong with his face perfectly. 

“What’s wrong with it?” Tendou asks, putting the image face down on the table. It serves no long term purpose, as Leon has immediately grabbed it to look. 

“It doesn’t look like you,” Ushijima replies.

“Yes it does,” Tendou counters, before he can even think of holding his tongue. 

Ushijima takes constructive criticism incredible well - he takes direct disagreement very badly.

He just shakes his head. “No,” he says. 

“It’s got… it’s got everything!” Tendou replies, shifting forward. “What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know,” is the reply, a sentence Tendou rarely hears him mutter with such earnesty. “It’s just… wrong, it doesn’t look like you.” 

“Dude,” Leon interrupts. “This is fantastic, it’s perfect.”

“Yeah, I think you’re doing that thing again,” Semi agrees, patting Ushijima’s shoulder. 

“What thing?”

“Being modest.”

“I’m not modest,” Ushijima replies, and Tendou has to agree with him. 

Ushijima isn’t modest. So if he thinks there’s something wrong with it, there’s something wrong with it.

With his face. 

That drawing is still being passed around to the other boys. He sort of wants to leap up and play his monster privilege and just freak out and tear it up but he doesn’t. He can’t. He wants them to like him. And people don’t like people who make big deals about stuff like this, so he pretends like it doesn’t bother him to have everyone in his life hyper-analyzing every feature he has. 

He, instead, pretends like he’s bored with the whole situation and leaves. 

---

Tendou’s roommate isn’t on the volleyball team. He’s a preppy kid who plays the flute in the school’s orchestra and normally is completely fine to live with. Tendou thinks he’s actually quite attractive - he’s certainly gone through two or three girlfriends since he’s known him - but he often complains about his clothes and his hair and his shoes. Tendou and him aren’t friends, not by a long shot. He’s actually pretty sure his roommate dislikes him, and certainly seems freaked out enough by the way Tendou moves and acts and talks. 

But, thankfully, that roommate is also a pretty normal person and is capable of cohabitating with someone he’s moderately perturbed by. 

So they don’t really talk. 

They don’t help each other study. They don’t trade notes. 

Sometimes Tendou will ask him a question, and there will be a boring response. 

They don’t even fight. Can you be so uninterested in someone you lose the ability to be mad at them? 

A small joy, Tendou has, is that his roommate, for all his normality, is also victim to the social pressure and malicious high school zoo they lived in, and is constantly trying to climb the social ladder. Get a hotter girlfriend, be friends with cooler guys, get into a different social clique. Shiratorizawa was bad for its social circles - that’s what happened when you had students on daddy’s money, academic integrity and sports or music scholarships from around Japan all mixing in the same thirty-person classroom. Sharing the same dorm.

The reason that is a joy to Tendou is merely because Tendou is a starter on the nationally ranked Shiratorizawa Boy’s Volleyball team. Tendou is seen sharing lunch boxes and manga with Ushijima Wakatoshi, the certified star of this school no matter who you were. 

He’s pretty sure his roommate's baffled jealousy every time the school’s golden boy swung by to very confusedly tell him he ‘didn’t really understand this one,’ and return an old manga back to him could fuel him for goddamn lifetime. 

“Okay,” his roommate says, after a long extended silence and breaking their usual no-chit-chat policy. “You got a date or something? What’s going on?”

“Eh?”  

Tendou turns his attention away from the mirror on the wall he’s been fluffing his hair in and over to where his roommate was laid out on the bottom bunk, laptop open, but now just staring at him. 

“You’ve been… touching your face for like… twenty minutes,” he replies. “Where are you going?”

“What? I’m just - over to Ushijima and Leon’s room, to study,” Tendou says. “We’re leaving for Nationals in a few days, but we have a math test the day after we get back - unless we come back early… we won’t, but, y’know. So we’re cramming it in now.” 

His roommate stares at him a bit, probably some kind of internally envious freakout over the fact that Tendou was about to go casually hang out with two of this school’s favourite people, before eventually snapping to reality and saying:

“So… wait, why are you spending so long looking at yourself? It’s kinda funny to watch, the way you’re… bobbing your head around.”

Tendou hums, looking back to himself in the mirror. There’s definitely some kind of acne on his chin. His roommate never had any acne, which was very unfair. He had great skin, and great hair, and great everything else. 

“I dunno, I just wanna look good,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about changing how I do my hair.”

“Ah,” he says, in that condescending tone that meant yeah, good luck with that one. But, surprisingly, he follows it up with: “Well, can’t blame you, if I had to be seen beside Ushijima, I’d probably also try and change my face.”

“What does that mean?” Tendou scoffed, looking at him through the reflection of the mirror. Perhaps it’s only the oh-so-casual, matter-of-fact way his roommate talks that makes his stomach sink, but the next horrible sentence out of his mouth is:

“Uh - are you not looking in the mirror?”

---

There were a lot of things Tendou was looking forward to leaving behind, Shiratorizawa’s horrible exams being up there on the list. The school prided itself on being the best, and that meant in every subject. It wasn’t enough for them to be nationally ranked athletes, they had to surpass expectations in their academics as well. The exams were mean, and seemed designed to make you fail, and even students like Ushijima, who seemed to suck up information and formulas like a sponge found themselves staring at questions that, they would swear, on their life, had never been covered in any kind of classroom. 

Tendou had good luck on exams that either had right answers - math, chemistry - or exams taken in multiple choice format. Guessing, after all, was his specialty. He had very bad luck on exams in other fields - history, literature - or taken in essay or written format. You can’t guess on an essay question about eighteenth century imperialism the same way you can guess that a math question might be answer B. 

It didn’t help that he tended to get distracted easily in this written exams, ending up staring at a question prompt for so long his brain went numb, and his answer went from moderately cohesive to completely irrelevant to the subject as he filled it in with whatever lateral information his mind had gotten ahold of in that moment. One particularly bad time, after said eighteenth-century-imperialism test had gotten off topic from motivations and influences and he’d accidentally added an entire paragraph regarding first what kind of boats they were using at the time, and then just spun out into boat history in general, he’d received the note: fascinating that you know this at all, did not answer the question.

He was almost proud of that one. 

Ushijima did not struggle in mathematics. That, partially, is why Tendou and Leon are here right now. 

Ushijima does struggle in articulating his thoughts, so ‘hey can you teach me how to do this’ isn’t exactly helpful, but they’ve found a system that lets them work. Ushijima does his best to explain the process of a formula and how he had gotten the correct answer, and then Tendou and Leon hold a conversation back and forth until they’ve rearranged Ushijima’s words into something they can learn from. Ushijima, politely, lets them do this without really realizing that’s what they’re doing, but will chime back in if he hears them get it wrong. 

It’s an accurate and deeply inefficient system.

Ushijima is looking at him a lot. 

More than usual, sorry. 

Typically Ushijima did look at people a lot. It wasn’t especially unusual to find him standing by himself and just… observing an individual or group of people, like a zoologist in the field observing the natural behaviour of a pack of animals, but it was usually very passive, or distant. Now, today, Tendou is sitting so close to him that their knees are touching, and he can basically feel the eyes on him. It’s not unusual for Ushijima to be staring - it is unusual for him to have tilted his head ninety degrees with the express intention of keeping complete focus on Tendou’s face, especially when to do so requires him to lean down a bit and look up, since Tendou was looking down. 

Tendou is trying to ignore him. Ushijima, after all, was a fucking weirdo, and trying to question is behaviour was an unpleasantly impossible task. 

He does flick his eyes up across at Leon though, who is also starring, but at Ushijima, face staying mostly neutral but slowly developing a look of bemused concern, probably wondering when or if Ushijima was going to need to blink. 

Leon makes eye contact with Tendou, when he looks up - they both acknowledge the slightly weird behaviour without needing any words, and Tendou gives him a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head, to advise him to just let it slide, this wasn’t worth a conversation.

Leon returns a very brief look of alright man whatever, before looking back down to his homework. 

“Question 17,” Tendou says, after a moment. “On the back - I didn’t get the right answer, but I swear I used the right formula, what’s going on?”

He turns his head now, to where Ushijima is looking at him, waiting for an answer. 

Ushijima moves his attention off Tendou’s face, and to the textbook he was holding, scanning for the question. After a moment, when he finds it, he holds out his hand. Tendou hands him his worksheet for a silent appraisal. 

While they sit and wait, Leon initiates eye contact. 

He’s being weird, Leon is saying. 

He’s always being weird, Tendou dismisses.

Not like this. Ask him why he’s being weird.

No, I’m not going to do that, you do that if you care.

Uh - but you’re the one he’s being weird about, Leon reminds him. Ask.

No! I don’t want things to be awkward.

“What are you two doing?”

Both Tendou and Leon snap their heads towards Ushijima, who’s staring at them with a slightly guarded look, pulled back slightly where he sat to watch them. 

“We’re not doing anything,” Leon says. “We’re waiting for you.”

“With your faces,” Ushijima replies, dismissing Leon’s explanation. “You were looking at each other and doing something with your faces.”

Tendou raises an eye, and Ushijima gives him his full attention again. 

You’re really that concerned about us looking at each other? he’s trying to say, but Ushijima, as per usual, does not receive any kind of non-verbal cue and just maintains a steady stare back. 

After a second Tendou shrugs, and says: “Sorry, I dunno what to say, bud. We were just waiting for you to check the math.”

Ushijima continues to stare at him, for a little bit too long, long enough that Tendou almost starts speaking again. 

But eventually Ushijima just looks back down to the math, and in a voice that is as level and monotone as usual, but Tendou swears is laced with something negative - upset, sadness, annoyance, concern - it’s impossible to tell, says:

“You just misread the question. The math was correct, you just put the numbers in the wrong place.”

Ushijima hands the worksheet back to him. There’s a heaviness in the pit of his stomach, and Tendou doesn’t like the feeling at all. He feels like he should apologize, like he was guilty of something, but he’s not even sure what they did.  

Tendou takes the paper. “Thanks,” he says, but his voice comes out as a weak sort of wavering noise. 

Ushijima gives him a nod. That concerns Tendou more than anything else, since Ushijima had been known to, even in the most obnoxious of situations, reply to a thank you with a full “you’re welcome,” regardless of whether or not the thanks had been sincere or justified. 

If Tendou were to take a guess, he would say that Ushijima wasn’t choosing not to follow his usual patterns so much as his tongue had shut down, and he simply hadn’t been capable of doing so. 

Tendou looks back over to Leon, but Leon has gone back to reading their textbook. 

---

They’d sort of given up on studying by the time Leon’s phone rings, opting instead to just complain about teachers and coaches and exams and math, past, present, and future. 

“Ah, sorry, it’s my girl,” Leon says, but then makes no other indication that he cares at all about the other two people in the room, and flees to answer the phone. Tendou watches him go in amusement, unable to help but smile slightly. It was kinda cute, how rapidly Leon had gone from ‘I don’t know, she’s sorta sweet…’ to being absolutely smitten. 

“Do you not like Leon?”

The question is so batshit insane that Tendou takes a second to process it, slowly looking back to where Ushijima was, now, staring at him again. 

“I’m sorry?” Tendou says. “What are you asking?”

“Leon,” Ushijima repeats. “Do you dislike him?”

“...no? Leon’s awesome, he’s one of my best friends,” he replies, frowning and looking back to the textbook he had given up on. “What the hell are you on about?”

“You smiled when he left the room. I assume you were happy he was gone.” 

This makes Tendou laugh, though it’s more of a single snort of amused confusion and he has to look back at Ushijima, who, bless his heart, is just staring blankly still. 

“What? No, no, I just… I think it’s cute how much he dotes on that girl,” Tendou explained. “I wasn’t smiling because I was happy he was leaving.”

“Oh,” Ushijima seems to think over this for a moment, and since Leon has left the room, Tendou decides to take his opportunity. 

“Are you feeling alright?” Tendou asks, leaning towards him slightly, reflexively lowering his voice even though they were alone. 

Ushijima lifts his head again, looking surprised by the question before saying: “I am in perfectly good health, thank you.”

Now that’s funny. Ushijima was a lot of things - painfully blunt and direct and prone to overly literal interpretations and it’s not impossible that he had believed the question Tendou asked was one of sickness and health, but that’s not what Tendou thinks happened. There was a hesitation between the question and the answer uncharacteristic of Ushijima’s usual speech patterns, and a tightness to his words indicative of discomfort - Ushijima had taken advantage of his own reputation to find a reason to avoid the question. Tendou has never seen him do that before. 

“Are you sure?” Tendou replies, as gently as he knows how to use his voice. 

“Of course. I am experiencing no ill symptoms.”

“Let me rephrase this,” he tries, scooting a little bit closer to him. “You’ve been… acting a little odd. I’m worried that we’ve upset you, or that something is bothering you…?”

Ushijima is still and quiet for another few seconds, probably weighing his options and wondering if he was capable of continuing his intentional density, before his shoulders sort of slump forward, and he’s looking at Tendou with a lot less of a guarded expression, and looks genuinely sad. 

“I don’t understand your face.” 

Tendou honestly probably could find the insult in that, but given Ushijima’s tendency towards saying what he means, it confuses him more than anything. 

“You don’t… understand my face?”

Ushijima nods along his confirmation eagerly, before saying: “The other night, when I was drawing it, I… I kept thinking that I was doing it correctly, that it was accurate, but it never… looked like you.”

“Ush-” he cuts himself off, deciding to be a tad more careful with his words and trying: “It looked like me, when I saw it,” he said. “You got everything right, it was really good. My face is… ridiculous, and over exaggerated and-” he shakes his head, waving a hand. “It’s challenging to draw human faces, don’t beat yourself up over something so stupid.”

“Human faces are challenging,” Ushijima agrees, and Tendou is almost satisfied with having placated his concerns, before realizing that Ushijima was no longer talking about art. “Yours is so… fun, and expressive, and it moves so much… I wish I could capture that better. How much you-” and here he just waves a hand in the air, to express some unknown quality. 

Tendou has no idea what to say to that. 

His instinct is to refuse it all. 

There is no redeeming quality about my face.

“It’s just my face,” is what he says instead. “It’s not special.”

“May I try drawing you again? I want to try again.” 

“Oh, ah…” he lifts a hand up, scratching at the back of his neck. “I don’t know… maybe find a different model, if you wanna do faces-”

“I don’t want to find a different model.”

Tendou feels that horrible, anxious swirling in his stomach again, merely at the suggestion of having Ushijima assess and breakdown every nook and notch on his face. It’s like his tongue moves before he can filter it, as if a stronger deterrent might make Ushijima understand this whole affair was stupid and not worth caring about. 

“There are better faces to draw.”

“But I quite like yours.” 

Tendou shuts his mouth. 

Ushijima looks at him. 

It takes him a second to reboot his brain into functionality, and even a minute longer to figure out what in the fuck he was supposed to say to that. He’s never been charismatic with his words, or discrete with his intentions, and perhaps it’s his own fault that the only thing he finds to say, in a loud and baffled tone, is:

“Why?”

And Ushijima - oh, Ushijima - does what he always does, which is misunderstand Tendou’s bafflement and treat the question seriously. He answers why.

“Goshiki smiles, whenever you enter the room.”

“...Ushijima-”

“You always look like you’re thinking about something, your eyes move around a lot and you… you seem so lively. Your face fully commits to every emotion you have. I would give anything to look like you do.”

“No-” Tendou doesn’t even know where to start with that one. “No, you don’t want to- to look like me, I… Ushijima, your face is… it’s-”

“Fundamentally fine, I know, but…”

“-I mean, you’re… I… people would give anything to look like you. I… I would give anything to look like you-”

“What? No-” it’s the closest thing to genuine alarm Tendou has ever heard from him. “You don’t want that, no, you’d lose-”

“Do you not know how attractive you are?”

“-your smile.”

Tendou blinks, and now he can feel his face turning red, heat under the skin betraying him. “...my smile?”

“You smile at people,” he says. “I see you smile all the time. You… you smile at me, nobody else does that… And it’s… so…” Ushijima seems to run out of words, lifting a hand up instead to rub against his chest, as if feeling a pain there. “I wouldn’t wish my face on anyone. It doesn’t… smile… And… I don’t know why. It’s not that I don’t like seeing people, I just… I just don’t. My face doesn’t do anything, actually…”

Tendou cannot help but start to smile, though it’s not in any kind of joy, perhaps just a dull empathy, a pain for his friend that he cannot just make this go away for him. 

“Can I-” Tendou starts, lifting a hand up. Ushijima looks confused. “Sorry - I mean, can I touch you? Your face?” 

Ushijima is still confused, but nods, and Tendou scoots forward until their knees are laced together, and he can put his hands on Ushijima’s cheeks to pull him towards him. 

“Listen to me,” Tendou says, firmly. “Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.” 

“There is nothing wrong with your face. Your face is phenomenal. Gold standard. Excellent. And you are plenty expressive, in your own way. I see it. And it’s everyone else’s problem if they can’t get their shit together enough to see it too.”

This, in itself, was so much more than Tendou had ever intended to be saying or doing this evening. It’s overwhelming enough, to be using his own stupid face so close to Ushijima’s, to be touching him like this and be sharing in a moment so deeply ironic, for Tendou to be preaching that you can’t bother yourself with what other people think of you. 

Yes, that was enough to make him all dizzy inside, and then Ushijima goes and does the worst best thing in the world he could have done, and falters in his complete imperceptibility for just a second. 

His eyes flicker down, to linger on Tendou’s lips, before correcting themself and focusing back up. 

Tendou thinks he’s stopped breathing. Actually, if he doesn’t start breathing again soon he’s going to have an entirely different problem. He’s definitely lightheaded now-

“What the hell are you two doing?”

Tendou jerks back from Ushijima so fast and so dramatically, as if he’d been caught by his mother trying to smoke a cigarette, that he ends up tipping himself over and has to actually catch himself on his elbow on the floor. 

He looks up at Leon. 

“Studying?” he says. 

Leon’s attention immediately looks over to where Ushijima is sitting. 

“...what were you doing?” he repeats, clearly intending to take advantage of Ushijima’s incapacity for social grace. 

Oh god please don’t-

“Studying.” Ushijima says, flatly. 

Tendou bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling, looking over at him and wishing he could convey the good job sentiment he wanted to. 

To his surprise, Ushijima returns a look that seems equally as smug at the comment as Tendou felt.

---

“Take that, you fucking freak,” the rival team’s irritating middle blocker sneers, as the ref turns the scoreboard on their third set. 27-29. This blocker had been good, their team had been good, the game had been good. This blocker had been going toe-to-toe with him the whole game. He’d been snide and mean and crass the whole game, he’d been distracting. That was probably his job. 

Tendou lets his face curl into a sneer, knowing he looks more like a snaggle-toothed monster than an opponent, snapping his teeth at him. 

“Careful how you use your words,” he hisses. “The game’s over, I don’t have need for the refs to like me anymore.”

The blocker glares back at him, a look of something bordering disgust crossing his face before his team has pulled him away. He can hear them muttering as they leave: crazy fucking monster, or something akin to it. 

Tendou lets his breath out of his body, at the same time he feels a hand on his back. It startles him slightly and he lifts a hand to wipe sweat from his eyes, and turns to find Ushijima behind him, staring off across the net, to where the other team was celebrating their big win. 

Tendou thinks, maybe, to say or do something, to break the silence, to ease the tension that was building on their side of the net.

He feels Ushijima’s thumb rub, just gently, between his shoulder blades. It’s a comforting motion, a moment of firm connection, agreement, into how much this feeling fucking sucked.  

It is better than saying anything aloud. 

“Let’s go,” Tendou says, turning around to lead him off towards the bench. 

He takes a quick glance around their team, at the survivors of this competition and their relative states - Leon holds himself together pretty well, but that’s not unusual for him. Semi, having not been on court in that final rally, looked out at them with a longing expression - clearly wishing he’d been on court to lose with his team properly. Goshiki is sobbing. Shirabu is pretending he isn’t. 

They circle around coach Washijo, who’s staring at them all with blankness in his expression. It feels like forever before he speaks. 

“There was no reason we should have lost this match,” Washijo starts after a minute. “Top sixteen is good, but you boys are better than that. What happened out there?”

There’s silence. Nobody wants to say anything. Nobody even knows what happened out there-

We played our best, didn’t we? Shirabu’s sets were good, my intuition was good, Yamagata was on fire, Semi hit seven service aces across all three sets, Ushijima was phenomenal, he always is, did we not play our best? Is it our fault that they were good?

“Ushijima?”

“Yes, sir?”

Washijo has turned to face his star ace with a pointed look in his eye. Go on, he’s saying. You’re the ace, you’re the captain, you’re wearing the number one. 

“What happened?” Washijo prompts.

“We lost, sir.”

“Yes, I have eyes,” is the sharp, irritated response. “Why?”

“...why?” Ushijima hesitates slightly, thinking over this inquiry and gathering his thoughts for a moment, before saying: “I didn’t score enough points to win.” 

Washijo stares at him for a minute longer. It’s a painfully, horrible literal interpretation of the question but it’s the exact kind of answer Washijo wants - We failed because we’re failures. We know what we did.

He nods after a moment, before turning and grabbing his bag, to head towards the gym doors. “You all can walk back to the hotel,” he adds, over his shoulder, and Tendou can feel the entire team deflate. 

---

Practice doesn’t ease up even for a second - it never does. Tendou is used to being tired in the mornings, and the afternoons, and he’s used to covetting those rare days when they don’t have practice, but that’s changed in the wake of their loss. Seven days a week, Washijo says. Until you boys learn to play better.

He’s exhausted all of the time. 

He thinks everyone else must be exhausted too, but they hide it better.

They wrap up late in the afternoon on a Friday. Tendou is all too glad to drag himself to the locker rooms and change and leave , but he catches sight of Ushijima, for the fifth time that week, hanging back and setting up with a ball bag to practice his serves. 

Tendou wants to let his feet carry him away to freedom, but instead they start wandering back across the gym. Traitorous feet. 

“Hey,” he calls. 

“Tendou,” Ushijima greets. 

Tendou crosses his arms, standing awkwardly a few paces away from him for a minute before realizing that was all Ushijima was going to say, so he’d have to speak up. Ushijima grabs one of the volleyballs. 

“Let’s go,” Tendou says, surprising even himself. He’d expected to be more subtle, talk about how long he was planning on staying tonight, how much he’d been sleeping recently, how sore he must be getting, and beat around the bush a little bit. But he doesn’t. 

Ushijima looks at him. 

“Let’s go,” he repeats, voice cracking. “I’m exhausted, and you’re not a robot, you must be too, and… we have to be back tomorrow at six in the goddamn morning so let’s… let’s just go, for tonight.”

“There’s nothing better to be doing,” he says, spinning the volleyball in his palms before turning away to head towards the service line. 

“You… you said you wanted to give another go at drawing my silly face, yeah?” Tendou prompts. “Why don’t we go do that instead, give yourself a break.”

Ushijima glances at him. 

“I can’t do that correctly either,” he replies, and before Tendou can reply, he has given himself a nice, high toss for a run up. 

It takes his breath away every time. Tendou has always reveled in watching their ace in his element, in the way his form hangs in the air, in the sheer force of nature that he is. Everything about him, from the placement of his eyes to the curve of his lip to the set of his shoulders is in near perfect symmetry and it shows, when he strikes the volleyball and sends it with obscene power through the air, cutting just over the net and cracking into the gym floor with a resounding bang!

Tendou watches the ball bounce into the wall on the other end of the gym, and then lifts his head to watch Ushijima approach to pick up another volleyball. One of his hands, absently, has lifted to rub at his left shoulder. The only hint that his body was as torn up as the rest of them. 

“Is your shoulder hurting?” Tendou asked. 

“Not that badly.”

“I’m not going to sit here and watch you injure yourself.”

“Then leave.”

Tendou bites his tongue, waiting until Ushijima had picked up one of the volleyballs and turned back towards the service line to call: “You didn’t do anything wrong. You played well. You played brilliantly, actually, you always do. We just lost.”

“Exactly,” is the reply, but Ushijima waits to throw the serve up, meaning he’s giving Tendou a lot more attention than he’s pretending to. 

“Exactly?”

“I played the absolute best I could have possibly played. And we lost. Which means I’m not good enough. If I had been better, we would have won.”

Tendou thinks about this for a moment, long enough that Ushijima begins to move to make the toss, so he hurries to cut him off with the first thing that comes to mind. 

“I don’t know if it counts as artistry if your attention is put exclusively into correctness of an image.”

This does succeed in halting Ushijima from throwing another volleyball, and now he’s looking at him again, with an expression that borders on fear, as if Tendou had begun speaking in tongues. 

“I… don’t understand.”

“You have an incredible talent, your eye for detail is… unparalleled by anyone else I know, you are skilled, in everything you do and yet I cannot help but think when you-” he beckons towards the net on court. “Only think about being correct, being perfect, being better you lose the whole fucking point! Who the hell wants to be as good as you are if… if you’re this miserable about it all the time!”

Ushijima swallows, looking down to the volleyball in his hands and slowly beginning to wrap his arms around it fully, hugging it to his stomach. He does not say anything. Tendou doesn’t know if it’s a choice or if he’s just not able to anymore. 

“You’re supposed to love volleyball,” Tendou says, when a few quiet seconds have passed. He can hear the conviction in his own voice wavering. “And if you can only enjoy drawing when you do it perfectly, you shouldn’t be doing it at all. The reason you didn’t like the way that picture of me turned out is because I am not someone with a face that can look perfect. You cannot draw me in a way that will satisfy your ego-”

“No.”

The word is sharp and confident and cuts him off, and Tendou catches his breath as Ushijima lifts his head again, hurriedly lifting a hand to use his thumb and wipe the corner of his eye. 

“What?”

“No,” Ushijima repeats. “I would usually defer to your judgment on matters of the arts but I reject your conclusion that the reason I didn’t like my drawing was due to imperfections in your face.”

“Then what is it?” Tendou snaps. “What is so fucking problematic about the way I look?”

Ushijima’s jaw tenses, and if Tendou thought he were capable of doing so, he’d say he had rolled his eyes. Indications, Tendou’s rapidly processing brain tells him, of the fact that Ushijima might have known what the problem was a lot longer than he had let on. Lying by omission, it seemed, was not outside of Ushijima’s realm of ability. 

“I didn’t like how it looked because graphite can’t do you justice. Everything about you, from your hair to your eyes to the way you smile is so confoundingly full of life. It’s not about my ego needing to draw you perfectly, it’s about the fact that you’re you. There is no image of you that will compare to the way I… I stop breathing when you laugh, I lose my train of thought when you smile at me, I-” and he cuts himself off, lifting the volleyball in his hands up to press against his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut. “Nothing I draw will be good enough to capture how I feel when I look at you.”

Tendou can feel himself breathing, but he’s pretty sure no oxygen is getting to brain. 

His tongue betrays him - it always does, old habits are hard to break. 

“My face.. Isn’t that good, it’s not worth… driving yourself crazy over,” he mumbles. 

“It is to me.”

“Then you’re…” Tendou watches Ushijima toss the volleyball he’s holding aside, the echoing bounce fading away. He doesn’t even know what he wants to fight. Maybe just the whole implication that anyone on this planet - let alone Ushijima Wakatoshi - had looked at his face and seen something more than just pleasant, but desirable. “You’re…”

“May I touch you? Your face?” Ushijima says, and since Tendou’s tongue has gone numb, he nods shakily. 

Ushijima pushes the ball bag out of the way, and Tendou’s attention is dragged along with it, only snapping back to Ushijima once his hand has come into view. His hand is calloused and rough against Tendou’s cheek, thumb brushing under his eye. But he holds his face with the reverence of someone holding something absolutely priceless, and he cannot help but lean into it. 

“I don’t know anyone else like you,” Ushijima says, after a moment, prompting Tendou to lift his head again. “Faces have never been my specialty. I don’t remember them well, I don’t notice their details, I pay little attention to their expressions and I cannot read their emotions, but I have found myself coming increasingly, incredibly fond of yours.”

Tendou manages a weak smile for him, trying to not let his nerves betray him. 

“Yeah?” he says. “Even though it is - I am - far from perfected?”

“I’d much rather appreciate you as artwork, than perfection, if you say they are mutually exclusive.” 

Tendou has to take a breath to pull himself together, before a suddenly intuitive brainwave clicks into place. 

Christ, Satori, you never told him you like him back. He’s not gonna figure it out if you don’t say it directly.

“I’m… crazy about you, by the way, and if it’s something you want, you should… you should definitely kiss me,” Tendou says, and his voice is awkward and his posture is weird and it feels like everything is so imperfect all of the time when he’s involved. 

Ushijima kisses him anyway. 

---

The Shiratorizawa bunk beds are very narrow, barely enough for a person and certainly not enough for two, but Tendou and Ushijima have found a way to share them anyway. The light of the lamp was a little too dim to be useful for drawing but they made it work. The benefits of a left-armed cuddle-buddy was that Tendou got to squeeze himself between him and the wall and Ushijima still had full use of his elbow. 

There are several images scattered around the paper they had drifted everywhere, on the bed, on the floor, of little items from around the dorm room. Ushijima has been trying to explain how his process works, but Tendou has decided it’s just another unbelievable, perfect thing about Ushijima Wakatoshi that the rest of the mortals would never be able to understand. 

There are a few, half-completed, undetailed outlines and sketches for Tendou’s face, around the page. An hour ago, Ushijima had sat in front of him and given it a go, but very quickly Tendou had decided that if Ushijima was going to admit to having a crush on him, he wasn’t going to get away with sitting over there ever again. So sitting across from him had turned to sitting beside him, and then sitting beside him had turned to swinging his legs over him, and then that had turned to both of them collapsing back on the little bed, laughing and mumbling in low, teasing voices as they moved on from the still-life drawings to other matters. 

“Come on, try and draw something that’s not in this room,” Tendou teases, from where his cheek is squished in against Ushijima’s shoulder. Even if it restricts his mobility somewhat, he keeps an arm thrown across his chest as well, and enjoys the feeling of the rise and fall of his chest beneath him. He likes the way it jumps when Ushijima huffs, the only sign of amusement he ever gives. Tendou has been making him do it a lot lately. 

“Like what? I do not have a very good imagination.”

“Anything! Whatever comes to mind first!” 

Ushijima thinks about it for a moment, and then lifts the pencil to the paper, scribbling finally without all the guidelines and rulers, though still in neat, decisive movements. It takes Tendou’s brain a minute to processes what the fuck he’s looking at, before realizing that Ushijima has now produced what is officially the most rectangular absolute shape of a cat, with a tiny face and small feet. He gives it a stubby little tail, and then looks to Tendou for approval. 

“Who’s that?” Tendou laughs. “Why is he square?”

Ushijima shrugs, looking surprised by Tendou’s outburst, before looking back down to the cat. 

“He is a cat,” Ushijima explains, unhelpfully. 

Tendou finds himself smiling more and more, before breaking into proper laughter and tilting his head back against the pillow. 

“Maybe you do have an imagination somewhere,” he teased, after a moment, before catching his breath and pushing himself back up to lean in again. “Where did that come from?”

Ushijima shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Well, either way, he looks lonely, give him a friend.” 

Ushijima almost does, before stopping, and then offering the pencil over to Tendou. 

“Me?” Tendou scoffs. “Oh, no, no, I am not an artist. Far from it, I’d say-”

“Give it a friend.”

Tendou takes the pencil quickly, snickering at the severity in Ushijima’s voice, before reaching over. It’s awkward at this angle, trying to give it a cat friend that looked even a little bit like a cat. The image he creates doesn’t have any of Ushijima’s control and intent, but is a spikey, gangly little fucker that looks like it might have just been electrocuted. He makes sure it looks like it’s having fun, before setting the pencil on Ushijima’s chest. 

“Friend,” Tendou announces. 

“Good.”

There’s a moment of silence, before Tendou starts laughing again, maybe just because of the absurdity of both odd cats now together on the page, but before he can say anything else, a voice from the top bunk says: 

“Are you two always going to be this annoying?” 

“Sorry, Leon,” Ushijima calls, but Tendou watches him almost immediately bite on the inside of his cheek, and it occurs to him that Ushijima is trying to hold back a smile. Trying and failing.

“Sorry, Leon!” Tendou chirps an agreement, before pushing himself to sit up, shoving at Ushijima’s shoulder. Ushijima tries to swat at him, clearly aware of what he’s trying to do - that is, break him and get him to smile - but trying to honour Leon’s attempts to also exist in this room by not making a ton of noise. 

Eventually Tendou decides that he is not leaving here without seeing that smile, and plays the dirtiest trick he can, which is to shove his hands up Ushijima’s shirt and dig his fingers into his sides. It only takes a few seconds of this ticklish assault - in which Ushijima almost immediately begins thrashing in alarm - before he successfully breaks him. 

The sound of Ushijima laughing from the chest like that almost stops his heart.

“Who the hell is that?” Leon says from above them, somewhat concerned, and Tendou figures it’s a fair question, since he’s pretty sure they’re the only two people on planet earth to have heard him laugh like that. (Tendou might have to kill him later.)

“Nobody!” Tendou sings, before letting his hands still, but he doesn’t withdraw them fully. Ushijima is left, taking deep breaths beneath him and smiling, and-

And-

Tendou stops, staring down at him. Ushijima, perfect from his hair to his toes to his art to his laughter - Perfect Ushijima Wakatoshi - has a crooked smile. There was no way for Tendou to have ever noticed it before, but when he smiles with his teeth, naturally and without thinking, his lip quirks up more dramatically on his left side, the look is completely lopsided, and it is undeniable, overwhelming, asymmetrical. 

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Tendou says, quickly, before leaning in to kiss him, and almost immediately feeling Ushijima respond, wrapping his arms around him and encouraging him to crawl over him, to kiss him more. 

There are a lot of things that Tendou is counting down the days until he can leave behind. Exams are very high on that list, seconded by Coach Washijo. He thinks he can do without the purple plaid pants, but he might miss the blazers. 

He will not miss the harsh judgment of malicious, mean teenagers, but he thinks if Ushijima keeps kissing him with such genuine enthusiasm, he might actually miss being eighteen one day.