the moment tsukishima kei is offered to play volleyball professionally. he never really grows out of hesitating. he's trying his best, though.
tags 一 tsukishima k. x gn. reader, tsukishima-centric, kuroo tetsurou, post-timeskip, character study, self-doubt (because who is tsukki without it), comfort, happy ending
The email has sat in his inbox for three days now.
Position Offer for Sendai City Frogs
He got the notification after getting out of his afternoon class, nearly swiping it away to check his other messages. The moment he read the title, he shoved his phone back in his pocket, making a beeline straight for the library, a cafe, anywhere he could calmly open his laptop and reassure himself something wasn’t wrong.
Volleyball wasn’t part of his plan after high school. Though he kept playing well into his third-year, he’d answer any questions of his future with a nonchalant, I’ll probably play in college. Because Tsukishima Kei could never respond to anything with a bout of enthusiasm, even if the idea of living with volleyball beyond teenage nostalgia made his skin tingle. This though, an offer from a V. League team, was unexpected.
Tsukishima knew from the moment Ushijima’s spike hit his hand and the sight of the ball hitting the floor behind him, that he loved volleyball. Truthfully, he knew that fact long before, but that was the day he could finally admit it to himself.
That fifteen-year-old fear of his kicks somewhere in his ribs. It never truly left after that block. Just lowered itself beneath the power and greatness of his newly awakened passion. It’d show up every now and then. After every loss and failed play. By that point, Kei learned how to shape the disappointment. He taught himself to morph the pain into a weight he could lift and drop to strengthen his will instead of carrying the burden of loss on his back. And if it ever became too much, he taught himself to look to his team, to reach out to Coach Ukai more often, to accept their doting no matter how humiliating it was to be helped by the two weirdo energy mutants he had for peers.
Those lessons could never be solely self-taught, but he’d try to guide himself all the same. If only to avoid a despair he knew would never come to fruition as long as he kept loving volleyball more than he feared his insecurities.
This was different. This was something he could give his life to. More than those three years in his teens.
He leaves the email unanswered.
Possibly against his will, he tells Kuroo first.
He doesn’t explain why he’s in Sendai, and Tsukishima is never given an opportunity to ask. Only pulled into a dingy Chinese noodle hole-in-the-wall that Kei is still trying to figure out how the Tokyo local discovered to catch up.
Inside, the TV above the bar is switched to the Olympics, right as fresh high school graduate Kageyama is shown on the national court, landing a service ace that Tsukishima has witnessed in-person countless times.
The match goes on, but Tsukishima doesn’t think about his former teammate. He doesn’t even pay attention to the match. Kei looks at the orange court, synthetic instead of hardwood. A ground he’d only had the opportunity to play on a number of times. His eyes drift to the edges, Japanese flags on display and their cheers resounding over the low music in the restaurant.
The former captain reads him like a block. For a moment, he's transported back to their match against each other. Watches the way his eyes move as the ball responds to a set, waits for the point he can guarantee its course, then as he taught Kei, stops and jumps. Pounces, per his alma mater’s namesake.
“If you don’t like hearing me ramble, you can always tell me what you’re dying to say right now.”
Kuroo rests his chin in his hand.
His eyes narrow. Kei speaks, despite himself. “I got an offer to play for a Division 2 team.”
Surprise paints over his face. Kuroo pulls his congratulations back to himself when he sees Kei’s expression, not exactly enthused, but not decided. It reminds him of the night he walked into the third gym that summer, fiddling his fingers and asking “why”. Why try? Truly the question of the century, Kuroo reminisces.
“You still like volleyball, don’t you?”
A scoff nearly escapes him. Of course Kei likes volleyball.
Kei wonders again if he loves volleyball enough to hurt himself. He wonders if the pain will feel like the moment they lost to Kamomedai, and those long three days in Tokyo suddenly felt like seconds. He wonders whether his mature, young adult heart has grown enough to not feel as he did when his fingers bled playing against Shiratorizawa, and he all but begged to be let back in the game—to not let it end when he’d just started to love, and fight, and feel again.
“Yeah.” He mutters, eyes never meeting Kuroo’s.
“If I know anything,” Kuroo starts. “That should be enough.”
Kei tells you next, like what he’d initially planned if not for the impromptu high school reunion and dinner.
You could always read him, just like that captain, and you tilt your head at his hesitance.
He tries to justify himself. Futile, he knows. But it’s not stupid to consider. There’s contracts and actual money. Adult money, and the time that costs more, as much as the classes he’s still taking and the degree he’s yet to complete.
As Kei continues to speak, you look at him so tenderly, he doesn’t think you realize the costly time it could take from you. Stolen across late practices and away games—he can just picture it in his head.
Well, all of that’s part of the reason. But it sounds a lot like what he’d said in his first year, repeating “it’s just a club” like a broken alarm.
Deep, deeper inside, it’s his fragile spirit. Not as fragile as fifteen, but if not seen, the seams between the cracks could be felt beneath his fingertips.
Suddenly, he thinks about nineteen-year-old Olympian Kageyama Tobio. He thinks about Hinata across the globe. It’s probably morning in Brazil right now, and it makes perfect sense why that moron would go there. A spirit like his couldn’t wait through the night, feet eager to chase the sun through time zones.
But Kei has always been a child of the moon. It’s read in his family name.
You frown, placing your hand above his, rubbing over his thin knuckles. “Do you have to be so sensible all the time?”
“That’s how we get our bills and our tuition paid, babe.”
You crane his face towards yours, sweeping light strands out of his glasses, reminding him he might be due for another haircut.
“You can trust yourself, you know.”
He inhales. Exhales. Quiet, in and out.
Tsukishima isn’t fifteen anymore. Just like his old teammates. He isn’t twelve-year-old Kei, looking over into his brother’s room and listening to his cries.
He thinks of the moment he got hooked on volleyball, and every kill block and irritating one-touch for his opponent thereafter served to feed an addiction.
All of that feels so much more than the fear of disappointment he cowered under in his youth.
Vaguely, it comes across something like Stockholm Syndrome. How he treasures the sting against his fingers and palms, how every breath he takes fills his lungs with more air than he’ll ever need. Maybe it is an addiction. Maybe, despite his mortal shell, he’s shaped himself in the image of the hungry monsters he’d once spent his days with.
For now, Tsukishima Kei wants to experience the rush for as long as he can have it.
All of this he reels in his mind as you sit beside him, watching him type his reply.
His debut match is in Sendai City Gymnasium. Kei’s never been one to fall for nerves, but he’s the tiniest bit grateful he’s in a place he’s become so familiar with.
His name hasn’t been announced like this since his final high school match; the last time he was in center court. Kei silently promises himself he will do it again. And again, and again. Not until he dies—he’s not such a monster. But long enough he can relish in a feeling he hopes he'll never forget, and perhaps play amongst them once more.
“Middle Blocker, Tsukishima Kei.”
note. does anyone else still get emotional at the fact that tsukki was one of three karasuno players to go pro ?? tsukki ??? tsukishima "it's just a club" tsukki ??? makes a man cry
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