just a note these are totally non-linear. they are just 14 moments in times between Asahi & Yui
(about 2400 words so it’s a bit longer than the junk drawer bits)
1.
Asahi only half watches as Michimiya approaches Daichi and says something to him; Suga is at his side, chattering a mile a minute and he’s trying to listen to him and make sure they don’t walk into anyone on their way out of the school. It’s their last day as high schoolers and the mood is somber and happy in equal turns. Daichi lets out a bright laugh and pats Michimiya on the shoulder with a grin. Asahi tunes out Suga and turns his attention fully to Michimiya just in time to see her eyes dim a little. Then she shakes her head with a small smile, as equally somber and happy as the day in general has been, and blinks rapidly. Their eyes meet and somewhere deep in the back of his mind Asahi thinks ‘Oh’ when her smile flashes into something brilliant and she straightens her shoulders, laughing as Daichi throws his arm over her and Suga’s shoulders and drags them towards where Kiyoko is waiting for them all.
2.
Sometimes Yui isn’t sure if she loves her job or wants to strangle everyone she works with. The two feelings aren’t mutually exclusive, she figures, as she tunes out yet another coworker’s mindless blathering. Her phone rings and she answers it without even looking at it.
“I swear you’d think I work with a bunch of children. We’re not in the academy anymore. Why do they insist on acting like it?”
“Because boys are dumb and these boys feel threatened by you. As they should because you are amazing.”
Yui laughs. “You know just how to brighten my day Asahi.”
3.
They don’t normally use local police for security for events. But a long string of mishaps that Asahi wants to stay as far from as possible has made it a necessity. And as the newest designer on the team that means Asahi gets the crappy job of being the go between for his boss and the police. He nervously straightens his jacket, tucking away a stray hair from his artfully messy bun, and knocks on the door to the security office.
There’s a lot of scuffling and laughter and a frustrated voice calling out and then the door opens and a figure steps out into the hallway. Asahi presses a hand to the center of his chest and vaguely wonders if this feeling of ‘Oh’ will ever go away when he sees Michimiya Yui squaring her shoulders and meeting his eye.
4.
Yui stares blearily at the door of the fridge. It’s not her fridge. She’s not entirely sure whose it is. There’s a lot of things she doesn’t know right this moment. But there are plenty she does. She knows that Suga is evil, Daichi is no better, Tetsurou is passed out on the kitchen floor near her feet which serves him right, Iwaizumi arm wrestles like his life is on the line and holy damn if that man was even remotely interested she’d jump into bed with him.
“I want a puppy,” she announces, unprompted, to the kitchen.
“I want a painkiller,” Asahi mutters from behind her.
She spins around, startled, and trips over Tetsurou. Asahi manages to save her, though he settles her on her feet and bolts out of the room a moment later, looking nauseous and miserable.
“My hero,” she murmurs, rubbing her arms idly where he had grabbed her. His hands had been so warm.
5.
She’s laughing, laughing so hard she’s ugly crying with tears and snot and hiccups and she can’t even reach out and punch Azumane on the shoulder. She has to settle for throwing her phone onto her bed and burying her face into her pillows. She can’t remember the last time she’s laughed this loudly, this… freely. Probably sometime back in high school. When she gets herself under control enough to breathe properly she grabs her phone and scowls at Azumane.
Azumane looks truly unrepentant and innocent and something in her chest tightens and she thinks ‘huh’ as he smiles gently at her.
6.
He waves her off, face flushing so much he wonders if he has any blood left anywhere else.
“It’s true,” Michimiya says softly. Softly but sincerely. Her words have a trace of steel in them that makes Asahi’s spine straighten despite himself. “I’ve always admired you.”
“You have plenty of cops and real heroes and shit to admire.” He tries so hard to avoid looking at her. She makes it nearly impossible when she kneels in front of him. He wants to tell her that she’ll get the knees of her tights dirty but the way she looks up at him and takes a deep breath, eyes flashing, makes all his thoughts scatter.
“I do. And I still admire you. What you went through back in school? Everyone always talking about you? The rumors about you being a delinquent and all that stuff that followed? And then everything that happened with volleyball? The way you came back and broke through? Inspirational.”
“Oh,” he whispers.
7.
Yui watches Asahi frown at the papers spread out in front of him and rub at his forehead. He’s already got a headache, she can tell by the set of his shoulders and the way he keeps rolling his head back and forth, and he’s going to make it a million times worse if he doesn’t relax soon. Especially since he’s not wearing his glasses.
She doesn’t tell him to stop though, to take a break, even though she knows she could easily convince him to. Instead she sets a mug of tea and his glasses on the table in front of him and tells him to take the dog out when he inevitably goes for a run later while she, and the rest of the world, are fast asleep.
8.
Yui looks over at him, eyes sparkling with joy, and then leaps into his arms with a shout. He catches her easily and smiles up at her when she wraps her legs around his waist and props her elbows on his shoulders.
She leans down and nudges his nose with her own.
“I love you,” she whispers against his lips.
He can feel the tension in her body, the way her shoulders are tight and squared despite the way she seems to lounge against him.
‘Oh’ he thinks as he stares into her warm eyes.
“I know,” he whispers back. She sinks against him with a content hum.
9.
He doesn’t even want to participate in an arm wrestling competition. But Noya had looked at him with puppy eyes and he’s always had a weakness for Noya. And for puppy eyes. And for Noya’s puppy eyes. So here he is. At the table. Rolling his shirt sleeves up while Noya fans his face and dramatically collapses against Tanaka.
“Lordy,” Noya shouts out. “I thought Daichi and Yui were the ones with the guns.”
Asahi is beginning to regret even agreeing to come to this get together with Noya. So between that and giving into the puppy eyes it’s a pretty typical Friday night.
What isn’t typical is Michimiya sitting down across from him, elbow on the table, and grinning at him. He gulps and slides his hand into hers, trying hard not to think about how much smaller than his it seems.
He fails.
10.
It crushes her heart a little, when Sawamura doesn’t get what she’s asking him and simply lets out that laugh of his that she’s come to love and pats her shoulder. It’s the day they graduate and she finally got enough courage to tell him her feelings and okay it crushes her heart a lot. Especially when he turns away with a grin and pulls Sugawara into a conversation without a second thought. She watches him for a moment, almost certain she’s going to start crying, before she manages to blink away her tears with a shake of her head. She looks past Sawamura and locks eyes with Azumane and he looks so concerned, so contemplative that she can’t help but flash him a reassuring grin. Sawamura laughs again and tosses his arm around her shoulder to steer her and Sugawara towards the gate but before she turns away from Azumane something flickers across his face.
‘Huh’ she thinks as Sawamura guides her around fellow students, warm against her side. She kind of wishes she would have had time to get to know Azumane and Sugawara better before today.
11.
“No,” he says as sternly as he can. “We can’t.”
Yui pouts up at him, eyes wide and pleading. She’s dripping water all over the floor and he wants this argument to be over so he can yank off her wet clothes and wrap her in a warm, dry towel.
“But Asahi,” she coos.
“Nope.”
She lets out a huff of frustration and then bends down to scoop up the bundle at her feet. He knows what’s coming and tries to brace himself but not even his years of dealing with Noya can prepare him to face down double puppy dog eyes from the woman he loves and an actual puppy.
12.
“I love you,” Asahi announces one night. Out of the blue. His hands are twisted in his lap and his eyes dart up to her face and then away, again and again.
‘Huh’ that little voice in the back of her mind says as she sets her carton of take out on the table and reaches for his hand. He flushes bright red when she tucks herself against his side with a smile.
13.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Azumane says. His phone has been buzzing all night, rattling across the counter until she had finally put it on silence and tossed it onto the chair across the room. He’s beyond stressed and she wishes she could do something for him. But all she can do right now is sit on the other end of the couch and watch as someone who has become one of her best friends breaks down.
“I really don’t,” he continues. “You’re always so bubbly and cheerful. You don’t let anything get you down. You’ve always got a smile and the patience of some kind of saint.”
Yui snorts. Azumane looks at her in confusion.
“Everything gets to me,” she admits.
“But you’re so confident and-”
She snorts again. “I am insecure as fuck, Azumane. I’m always afraid that I’ll say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing and everyone will realize how much of a fraud I am.”
“But then…” He tilts his head and looks at her, really looks at her, and a thrill runs through her at being the center of his focus. “How do you do it?”
“I pretend. And I find something that makes me able to keep going no matter what.” She smiles at him, suddenly tired and more than a little unsure of where this conversation is going to go.
“And what’s that? What that something?”
She licks her lips and notices the way he’s watching her as if her answer was the key to everything he was searching for.
“Well for the last year or so…” She takes a deep breath. “It’s been you.”
“Oh,” he whispers.
He looks awestruck and he blinks rapidly as he processes it. Then he gives her a brilliant smile and reaches out for her hand.
“Huh,” she lets out when their fingers meet and warmth settles in her chest.
14.
“It’s just been a shit week,” Yui says softly. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too.” He can hear the snickers behind him. He’s heard more than one snarky whisper about who wears the pants in his and Yui’s relationship. They don’t bother him nearly as much as they would have in the past. Yui’s shared plenty of her steel backbone with him over the years they’ve been together and he uses some of it to straighten his shoulders and spin his chair around to give his coworkers an unimpressed look. It’s doesn’t completely stop the snickers but it at least makes them all look sheepish.
“It’s been a shit day and a shit week and you know that asshole I was dealing with last week? Well he’s back in the station again and he’s been a royal jackass and I just. I really wish you weren’t on the other side of the country right now.”
Her tone sets off his mental alarms and he straightens even more. He can feel the scowl on his face as he presses the phone to his ear to hear her even more clearly. She’s breathing steadily but there’s a stuffy quality to the end of her inhales that means she’s been crying and she takes a deep breath and swallows thickly before she starts talking softly which means she’s sitting on the couch clutching a cushion. He knows his girl. She won’t flat out ask him to come home. But she wants to.
“I know. I hate being away too,” he says distractedly. A few of his coworkers snicker again and he glares at them. For once they shut up.
“I just-” her voice breaks off as she lets out a sob.
“Shit. Yui,” he says the moment he hears her suck in a breath. “Love. Who do I need to beat the shit out of? Say the word and I’m there. I’ll pick up Noya and Ryuu on the way.”
She lets out a watery laugh. “You’d come all the way back just to beat someone up for me?”
“Of course.”
Fifteen minutes later he has his things packed away and his temporary desk cleared. He can do all of this work from home. Which he tells the lead designer he’s been working with when he explains that he’s leaving. The man tries to get him to stop and reconsider staying for just a day or two more.
Asahi stares him down, eyes narrowed, until the man nods once and asks Asahi to send him his portion of the collaboration as soon as he has the chance.
When he tells Yui about what happened she laughs until she’s nearly in tears and tells him she wishes she could have seen it.
“You scared the shit out of them babe,” she explains as they’re curled up in bed. “When you drop into Ace Mode? You’re intense.”
He flushes and pulls her against his side, kissing her face until she giggles again and buries her nose against his throat.
